Category Archives: life

We have birds coming to the bird feeder

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Trying not to scare the birds away by taking a picture from the further window.
Trying not to scare the birds away by taking a picture from the further window.
At our old place we only sort of had a yard. Our first two landlords (yes, the property ownership changed hands twice during the 21 years I was there) were quite happy to let us manage the two flower beds near our door, and to grow tomatoes in containers, but the lawn portion of the yard and the bushes had to be left as they were. The original landlord had very specifically said he did not want Ray and I to put up a bird feeder, because in his experience they just attracted rats. When the new owner took possession (after Ray died and after Michael and I had gotten together), she said she had no objection if I wanted to put up a bird feeder. But then the question became where.

I will freely admit that much of the appeal of a bird feeder for me is to actually get to see (and hear) the birds. So I wanted to hang it somewhere that I could see it from a window in the house, right? But at the old place I almost always kept the curtains closed, because most of the windows were very close to either the sidewalk (and there was a lot of foot traffic in the old neighborhood) or the walkway to the neighbors’. So whenever the curtains were open it felt as if I were on a stage rather than in my own home. And because the lot the building was on had a steep slope, and our unit was essentially a split-level, the only window whose curtains were routinely open was in the computer room, where the windowsill was about 10 feet from the ground. So if I had found a location to hang the feeder where I could see it from that window, we would have required a ladder on uneven ground to refill the feeder. The upshot was that there was no place that appealed to me to put a feeder so we never had one.

At the new place our veranda is on the third floor (from that side of the building) with tall tress screening most of the view. There are blinds instead of curtains on all the windows, which give us more options. The blinds of the big living room window and the sliding glass door, for instance, are almost always open.

Shortly after we moved in, we bought a sock-style bird feeder kind of on impulse. A friend had been talking about all the goldfinches he got visiting the sock-style feeder he had on the balcony of his apartment, so when I saw one in the store, I grabbed it. After we hung it up, I got one sparrow, but not eating from the feeder. It was eating the seeds that had spilled on the deck when we first set up the feeder.

The feeder was out there all summer. We moved it a few times, thinking that maybe being too close to the window was a problem. It wasn’t just that we never saw any birds at the feeder, the amount of seeds never changed, and there was no bird poop underneath the feeder (something several people warned us we’d be cleaning a lot of once birds starting using the feeder).

I see and hear birds outside from time to time, but never at the sock. I eventually came to the conclusion that at least some of the seeds had started rotting inside the sock, and that clearly a sock-style feeder wasn’t recognized as a food source by the birds in our neighborhood. But I still wanted to try to get some birds visiting the veranda. So we picked up a different type of feeder and a fresh bag of birdseed. I hung the feeder up Saturday. It was raining most of Saturday, and the only birds I saw flying around were crows.

But Sunday morning, while I was out on the veranda having a mug of coffee. A chickadee started flitting in the vicinity of the feeder. It kept flying near it, then flitting away and chirping. Probably being scared off by me. So I went inside. As soon as I got the glass door shut and had walked over the the other window the bird was perched on the feeder and eating enthusiastically. And as I watched, a brown sparrow landed on the other side. They chirped at each other and kept eating. I figured if I opened the blinds further to try to take a picture that would scare them off, so I went over to the glass door to get a picture from there. The second bird had flitted away by the time I had the shot lined up. About five minutes later it was back. I sat down in the living room and just watched them through the blinds.

More birds coming to the feeder!
More birds coming to the feeder!
Over the course of the day, more birds showed up. Some birds went after the seeds that got scattered onto the deck by the other birds eating at the feeder. It appears that the new feeder is a success. I’m hoping this means that there will be a lot more birdsong audible at our house.

Coffee and tea and the raining and me

life

I drink coffee in the mornings and usually switch to tea in the afternoon. At least when I’m in the office. When I’m home (whether it be a work from home day or simply a day off), I’ll make a pot of coffee in the morning, and since I’m the only coffee drinker in the house, that’s usually more than enough for me for the day. Most of the time. If the weather is cold, I’m likely to make a cup of tea or two for myself in the evening. I’ll also opt for tea if I’m feeling under the weather.

The last couple of weeks my husband and I have been fighting off some kind of virus. One or the other of us will get some cold symptoms one day, and the other comes down with the same thing a day or two later. The symptoms never last more than a couple of days, and we seem to get better for several days… until it starts again. But it’s not just us. A number of my friends and several co-workers have been talking of experiencing the same thing.

On my most recent work from home day I woke up with the sinus headache making a comeback, so as I was getting things started, I set up the coffee maker to make a pot of coffee. But there had been just enough left over in the pot to fill my favorite mug, so I also stuck that in the microwave. And because I was feeling as if I were coming down with something again, I also turned on the electric tea kettle, which gets hot enough to make tea before the coffee maker can finish a pot.

I zipped off over to the bathroom to grab my morning meds and came back to the kitchen to find that everything was dark and silent. It took me a moment to realize what had happened. I’d actually tripped the breaker! At our old place we had to be very careful about not having certain appliances running at the same time as others. The place had been built in the 1950s and the wiring just wasn’t really up to a modern set of gadgets. So we had been very careful here, and had tested a few times to see if we had a similar problem. I was delighted that we could have the microwave and the dishwasher running at the same time without a breaker going.

But we had never had the microwave, coffee pot, and electric kettle all going at the same time, along with the under the cabinet lights that are on the same circuit.

I grabbed my coffee mug out of the microwave and sipped warmish coffee while the real coffee maker perked. And when it was done, I turned the kettle back on and made one cup of tea, because now I was craving tea. I know it’s weird, but when I’m not feeling well there is something soothing about tea that coffee just doesn’t deliver.

And because if was nicely raining and foggy outside, and I had a little time before I had to call into my first meeting, I went out on the veranda to drink the mug of tea. It was cool and breezy out there, so if I had lingered over the tea too long it would have gotten cold. As it was, it was barely above tepid by the time I reached the end of the mug and headed inside.

More than one friend had commented on my love of the veranda. I’m sure it seems very odd. There are so many things I liked about living in our old neighborhood, and I’d been happy living in that specific building for over 21 years. But it wasn’t perfect. There were things we didn’t have, such as a nice spot to sit outside if the weather was at all amenable. I mean, yeah, sometimes I would set up one of the camp chairs on the front lawn, but the lawn was just right next to the sidewalk, and we had a relatively busy neighborhood, so there were always people walking by and I always felt as if I was in a public space. It was always a little odd.

But I really like being able to hear the rain and the wind and the birds and the sound of the neighborhood. And opening windows gives you some of that… but also makes your heating bills really high. Having the veranda–being able to be outside but not have others walk by just a few feet away all the time is really nice. So I go out there a lot. Even now that the weather is getting cooler.

I have been using the temperature of the coffee or tea I take out with me to keep track of the time. Which is especially important if I take more writing out there with me, because it’s easy to lose track, and then wonder why my feet are swelling up with pre-gout because they’ve gotten too cold.

So I need the coffee to wake me, the tea to sooth and focus me, and the rain to inspire me.

Does that make me high maintenance? Or just human?

One brain, two brains, my brain, your brains!

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Cup of coffee with the phrase, “Hello Darkness, my old friend.”
“Hello Darkness, my old friend.”
I’ve seen the opinion expressed more than once that there is nothing more boring than reading about other people’s dreams. But I have also noticed that the people who say that frequently are the sorts whose blogging consists of long cynical (and boring) discourses on how horrible every single person they have ever known is and/or how every book/game/movie/TV series episode they watch is horrible. So, I’m going to ignore them.

Recently I had a weird series of dreams. My husband leaves for work about two hours before I need to get up to get ready for my job. So most weekday mornings I wake up at least partially while he’s getting ready. So I may mumble something to him and roll back over in bed, then wake up a couple of times again before my alarm goes off, each time squinting at the clock and being relieved that I have time to get a little more sleep in. This was one of those mornings. Right after Michael left, I fell back to sleep and seemed to immediately begin dreaming that our friend, Keith, was trying to help me reach an important destination and was driving me in a car belonging to another friend, Mark. We kept getting interrupted by weird things, like a golden box full of Magic: The Gathering Cards being left on the side of the road, or a couple of people who desperately needed directions somewhere, and I was getting increasingly worried we weren’t going to make it to whatever we were trying to get to.

Then someone outside was revving their car motor, and I woke up enough to squint at the clock, note that I had only been asleep, at most, 25 minutes, and fell back again. And I began dreaming not about the weird road trip, but instead about trying to finish laundry. Except the laundry room was inexplicably located inside a hollow tree in a park that was perhaps across the street from my home. It was a little unclear. I kept running back home to work on errands, then back to the park to move the laundry from one machine to another. And there was this guy who kept stopping me in the park to ask questions. I kept thinking he was trying to steal my wallet, and then being relieved that I still had it each time I got away from him.

Something woke me up again, I peered at the clock to see that I still have nearly an hour to go before the alarm went off, and rolled back over to start dreaming about helping a bunch of people I didn’t know restore a six-color web press because we needed to get news out to the world because there had been some horrible disaster, the city was half destroyed, and so forth. I had been drafted to help because I had some familiarity with the process. Some moments the group I was working with included soldiers or government agents of some sort, and other moments we were all just ordinary civilians.

Then I heard another noise outside, pried my eyes open, and saw that my alarm clock was going to go off in less than twenty minutes. And I needed to go to the bathroom, but even though I only had a few minutes left before the alarm went off, I laid back down afterward and closed my eyes. And seemed to immediately dream that I was awakened by a noise outside and I looked to see what time it was and the clock clearly said it was 6:20pm, and I had somehow slept through the entire day or possibly several days and I need to get up right now and start getting ready…

…and I did leap out of bed, because I was convinced I was very late for work, and I grabbed my watch off the charger, strapped it on my wrist, was trying to get my thoughts together… and the watch on my wrist started vibrating because it was exactly 7:30 in the morning and time to wake up. And I stood there, after tapping the snooze button, for a good 40 seconds trying to figure out what was dream and what was reality, because I swear that the watch was flashing in weird colors both a time and a date later in the week just milliseconds before it started vibrating on my wrist, and I was standing there wearing the watch and its face was just changing to 7:31, so the jumping up and grabbing the watch had been real while also being part of the dream.

And while my watch has a lot of customizable faces, none of them look anything like the flashing “OMG, you’re late!” watch face which I could still close my mind and see in memory as if I had just been looking at it.

I don’t understand my brain. I mean, sometimes I am able to tell that a particular dream is just anxiety manifesting because of things going on in real life. And occasionally I recognize individual elements in a dream as probably being inspired by this specific thing that happened to us recently. But mostly they are just weird mishmashes of things that make no sense outside of a dream. So sometimes I think it is a pretty amazing that we manage to communicate and have conversations and such where we seem to understand each other.

Even more amazing that we can read some fiction that someone else has written and get caught up with it to the point that we imagine the events of the story, become invested deeply enough to care about what happens to the imaginary people, and even get into long arguments with other people about whether these imaginary people in an imaginary setting having imaginary adventures were portrayed realistically. Like the time back in high school where one friend angrily asserted, “Come on! A real dragon would never behave that way!” and another starting laughing so hard, he fell off his chair.

In conclusion: brains are weird. Not just mine.

What’s not to love about Halloween?

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“I love Halloween. I can't wait for that time when the leaves fall, weather is colder, the sun is bright, the decorations are up, scary movies are on, and the hot chocolate is out!”
“I love Halloween. I can’t wait for that time when the leaves fall, weather is colder, the sun is bright, the decorations are up, scary movies are on, and the hot chocolate is out!”
I’ve written a few times before about my love of Halloween and my fondness for a certain type of spooky movie. Some years I have done elaborate decorating for the holiday. I often spend time planning a costume to wear to any Halloween party we might be attending. I always spend at least part of the month of October listening to what I consider Halloween music while planning what kind of movies I might watch on the actual night. And then, of course, there is trying to decide how much candy we will need to hand out that night1.

My love for Halloween began long before I knew that it used to be considered the high holy days of queers everywhere. Which was true at least since the 1920s until the straights co-opted it for Heteroween2. But I recognize that at least some of the reasons I loved Halloween back then are the same reason the holiday appealed to queer people for so long:

  • it was a day I could dress up as silly or weird as I wished without getting strange looks from people;
  • it was a day where other people would show off bits of their personality that weren’t obvious the rest of the year;
  • being closeted cultivated an ability to find humor in the absurdities and misfortunes of life;
  • trying to get along as a queer child in a straight world means that embracing make-believe and pretending to be what we aren’t a survival trait;

…which fits right in with Halloween!

Of course, when I say I could dress as silly as I wished, that wasn’t entirely true. I remember, for instance, the year that I really wanted to dress up as the character of Witchie-Poo from the Saturday morning live action show, H.R. Pufnstuf. Mom didn’t act appalled, but she argued with me until I gave in and let her buy me the really tacky H.R. Pufnstuf costume. Pufnstuf was supposed to be a dragon who was the Mayor of the enchanted island where the show’s action took place, but the store-bought costume was just a weird shaped green mask and a generic green onesie that had a picture of the character printed on the chest. My sister mentioned that I had wanted to dress up as Witchie-Poo within earshot of my dad and I got yelled at quite seriously about how boys don’t dress up as witches!

It wasn’t even that the character of Witchie-Poo appealed to me that much3. My recollection is that the store-bought costume for her had a magic wand prop, and I really wanted the magic wand. Of course, she was the villain of the show and I quite frequently find myself sympathizing with the villains.

Our friends that have been hosting a Halloween party almost every year for about 30 years are skipping this year. So I don’t think either of us will be making a costume. And although they gave us plenty of warning that we could have opted to host our own party, all of the years of going to their themed and wonderfully decorated parties casts a more-than-slightly intimidating shadow over the notion.

Maybe we’ll just try to get together with some people on the Saturday before.

But I have been working on my new Halloween playlist. I spent a lot of the last week listening to every single Halloween playlist I have made in the past4 as I decide what kind of list to put together this year. I have one assembled, I just haven’t decided if it is finished or still needs some tweaking.

Whether there is a party of not, or any dressing up, I still intend to enjoy myself, getting my spook on in various ways for the rest of the month.

Let’s have fun!

Footnotes:

1. My husband and I don’t believe in handing out so-called “fun size” candy. We usually get a few cases of full sized bars in hopes that we will get lots of kids.

2. But that’s okay. Straights need a socially sanctioned night to dress up as sexy nurses or sexy firemen. They’re so reppressed the rest of the year!

3. I mean, I thought she was hilarious, but…

4. Fifteen such lists in my iTunes library, by the way.

Weekend Stuff 9/30/2017: Every unhappy family…

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This isn’t going to be my typical Saturday post where I talk about news stories that either I missed for this week’s round up of links or new developments. I’ve already made a couple of pretty personal posts this week, between my birthday and remembering my late husband on his birthday just a few days later.

And tomorrow would be my dad’s birthday, if he were still alive. Which doesn’t make me sad, by the way. It fills me with a bit of dread, because I suspect there will be communications from some of my relatives that I’d rather not get. I can’t use the phrase that one friend made me practice saying right after Dad died so that I wouldn’t make people who were just offering condolences but didn’t know our history wouldn’t feel bad: “We weren’t close. We’d hardly talked in forty years.” Depending on which family member is reaching out, that comment is likely to get an angry, “Well, whose fault is that?”

“Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse.” —Stefan Molyneux
“Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse.” —Stefan Molyneux
And I’m dreading it because I got such comments (and confrontations) on Father’s Day and on his previous birthday. Maybe I need to memorize this Stefan Molyneux quote and say that back to any of them who trot out the admonishments that it isn’t healthy for me not to grieve or not to forgive or whatever. The former is the mostly darkly funny, because I did grieve the total lack of a loving, functional father decades before my actual dysfunctional dad died. I took myself to therapy because I realized that many of his abusive behaviors and attitudes were manifesting in my own relationships. I didn’t want to turn into him, so I got therapy and dealt with it, and yes, part of my healing process was letting myself grieve for the relationship that could have been. To grieve for kind of childhood I didn’t have.

I know most of them are doing it because they worry about me. unfortunately, some are doing it because they need validation for their own feelings, or validation of the rationalizations that let them look the other way while those of us living with him were subjected to the abuse. Anyway, being angry at them doesn’t solve anything. I will probably do what I did with most of the messages that came on Father’s Day: ignore them.

But, completely unrelated: I was pointed to some cartoons by an artist I had not previously been aware of, and while checking out his web site, I found this interesting thing he created last March: My Mother Was Murdered When I Was a Baby. I Just Found a Photo of Her Funeral for Sale Online. It reminded me that there are many other ways that one’s childhood can be dysfunctional. But also, it reminded me of a bit of advice I received from one of my lesbian aunties (not an actual aunt) back around the same time I was seeing the therapist. My childhood was bad, yes, but I survived it. Not everyone who suffers domestic violence does. So, while I’m grieving what I didn’t have, I should remember to be thankful that I lived to make a better adulthood for myself.

Confessions of a sentimental fool

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This is Ray's new resting place since the move. His urn guarded by teddy bears, tigers, penguin, and a mouse.
This is Ray’s new resting place since the move. His urn guarded by teddy bears, tigers, penguin, and a mouse.
I keep trying to finish some more posts about writing, but between the actual writing and real life, there hasn’t been as much time for the blogging. Among the real life issues I always have to deal with this time of year is a kind of seasonal depression. Not really seasonal, at least not in the sense that it is triggered by neuro-chemical responses to changes in sunlight. The approach of my birthday always reminds me of my late husband, Ray, since his birthday is just a couple days after mine. His birthday was a great excuse to get him silly cards or new cute plushies and so on. And mine was a great excuse for him to give me many many cards (so many cards—I learned early in the relationship it would never be a contest, he would always find a half dozen more great cards for me for any occasion) and silly toys and so forth.

So the usual pattern is that around the time I realize that my birthday is coming up (which is also the beginning of Gene-Isn’t-Allowed-To-Buy-Himself-Things Season) until the anniversary of his death mid-November, I’m more prone to feeling down, being cranky, and getting deeply sentimental and/or crying over inconsequential things.

This year has, thus far, not been too bad. Yeah, there’s still a month and a half to go, but usually if it’s a bad year I’ll have had several bouts of surprise cries by the time his birthday gets here. This year, it’s just been a little tearing up over things.

Floppy tiger makes the best helper!
Floppy tiger makes the best helper!
I have various ways of dealing with the mood swings. Sometimes when I’m trying to write or work on some other project that requires concentrating, but I find my mind wandering down sentimental pathways, I recruit Elton. Elton was one of Ray’s favorite tigers. He’s soft and floppy (which means it’s easy to pose him in various settings). It’s amazing how getting him out and setting him next to me at the computer, or draping him over something so he’s watching me will help. It’s like whenever I look at the tiger I can hear Ray’s voice saying, “Hey, Buster, shouldn’t you be writing?”

I had thought the mood swings and depression might be worse this year, since this is the first fall since Ray died that I’m no longer living in the last home we shared together. That hasn’t been the case. Perhaps because sentimentality is often triggered by familiar sights and sounds. When I step outside on my way to work each morning, for instance, I don’t see the rose bush he planted any longer.

I will say that one of the advantages of the new place and the way we have replaced some furniture has given me a great opportunity to put a lot of the plushies in new locations. And because many locations are determined by the size and pose of a particular plush to fit at a particular place, that’s brought a bunch that used to be half hidden at the old place out where they’re easier to see. And because at the old place we tended to leave a plushie where it was until some compelling reason arrived to rearrange a bunch, the ones I’ve owned longest (and therefore are most likely to have memories of Ray associated with them) were more often half buried by others.

Maybe the new setting is why most of the random reminiscing has been of the warm fuzzy feelings kind and less of the sobbing in sorrow sort.

In any case, if Ray were here, about this time tomorrow he would be asking me, “So, how are we going to decorate for Halloween?” It’s because of the way Ray encouraged the kitschy decorator in me that I’ve long referred to the entire period from late September through at least New Year’s (and often all the way until Easter) as Decorating Season. That’s right! It’s not just Halloween and Christmas we can decorate for! Decorative gourds and cornucopias and cartoon turkeys can be deployed during November, hearts and cupids or just red and pink roses from late January until Valentine’s day, then you have St Paddy’s and Easter. I probably won’t go all out on all of them, but I see that several of our neighbors have already put Halloween things in their windows, so I need to get at least my new Spooky Banner that I bought last year (And because the building was being shown to prospective buyers, I wasn’t allowed to put up until the day before Halloween) up where people can see it.

Because as soon as I saw that first pumpkin and spider in a neighbor’s window, I heard Ray’s voice in my head ask, “Hey, Buster, shouldn’t you be decorating?”

Confessions of an aging homo devil

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“Old age ain't no place for sissies.” —Bette Davis
“Old age ain’t no place for sissies.” —Bette Davis
One of the less toxic stereotypes ascribed to gay men is an intense fear of getting old. When I was a mostly-closetted queer guy in my 20s I heard it frequently from other gay men. “Oh, no! He turned 30, that’s 60 in gay years!” and so on. The explanation of the stereotype is that gay men are obsessed with young and/or young-looking romantic partners, and fear they will stop being desirable themselves once they pass some arbitrary age. Even back then, I thought it was a bit strange to say that this was a gay-only thing, because for how long have middle-aged and older actors been paired with actresses significantly younger than themselves playing their spouses, love interests, et cetera? And back when I was a kid and a teen, it was very common in comedy TV shows and movies to have at least one woman who was obsessed with her own age to insist in face of overwhelming evidence that she was only 29 years old. Seems to me that heterosexual men are pretty youth-obsessed, right?

Please note that I said this stereotype is only somewhat less toxic than many others about queer men.

So a few years ago when I mentioned in blog post that it was my birthday and my age (it was 53 or 54, but I don’t feel like going on an obsessive search to try to find the specific post), some random person I didn’t know commented about how broken-hearted I must be, since everyone knows that fags are all obsessed with being young. I typed a reply to the effect that no, I actually considered myself quite lucky. But then I decided that rather than argue with a troll the better thing to do was to simple delete the troll’s comment and move on.

But I keep running into people making this specific observation, or variants of it. A gay activist who is a frequent guest on news programs passes the age of 50 and all the anti-gay hatemongers start referring to him as an “aging activist.” This is pretty rich coming from a completely white-haired anti-gay pastor who is pushing 70, let me tell you. If a 50-year-old is “aging,” what do we call a 68-year-old, hmmmmm?

So, I’m still a couple years from 60, yet, and I know that I frequently make references to my age, mostly because 1) I am older than the average people active on the internet, 2) I’m older than the average age of people active in the various fandoms I participate in, and 3) I frequently find myself being a little boggled at people who otherwise seem really well informed being completely unaware of (or deeply misinformed about) fairly major things that happened in the world when I was, say, in my 20s.

I was still very closeted in my early 20s when the AIDS crisis began. This mysterious illness was striking gay men down, and not only did the White House Press Secretary laugh and make a fag joke when a reporter asked about the first Center for Disease Control alert about the illness, but all of the rest of the reporters in the room joined in on the laughter. One night at a church service I was sitting with my head bowed when a pastor went on a long digression in his prayer thanking god for sending the scourge of AIDS to punish the wickedness of gay people and wipe them from the face of the Earth. 10 years later, as an out gay man, I found myself going to memorial services of men sometimes younger than I. One particularly bad winter, 16 different people we knew died in a single three-month period. It really did seem that every gay person was doomed. And it didn’t seem to matter that we all now knew to practice safe sex—because condoms can break, and so on.

As much of an optimist as I’ve always been, in the face of all the overwhelming chilling life experience, I seriously doubted that I would live to see my 50s.

So, I am not in the slightest bit sad or embarrassed to have reached the “ripe” age of 57. I’m not sad that my beard is mostly white, because I’ve earned every one of these grey hairs! I’m not ecstatic that some of the medical issues I’ve always had are getting worse as I get older. I’m not joyful when I read about the death of someone (famous or not) that I’ve known and admired for years. I know that that is going to happen more often, that’s just the natural consequence of the passing of time.

Getting older has its drawbacks, yes. But the alternative is worse, right? So I say, “Bring it on!”

Among my role models growing up was a very cantankerous paternal great-grandmother (who taught me how to listen in on the neighbors’ on the party line phone, among other fun things) and an even more ornery maternal great-grandfather (whose jobs when he was younger had included driving souped up cars, including sometimes outrunning the police, to deliver illegal alcohol during Prohibition). Both of them said and did things around us kids back then that embarrassed their own children (my grandparents and great-aunts and great-uncles), and I fully intend, if I’m lucky enough to live as long as them, to similarly embarrass some of my younger relatives and acquaintances.

On ocassions such as birthdays, one is often asked to share some words of wisdom. I’m going to give you two pieces of advice, one from each of the aforementioned great-grandparents:

“Life is too short to carry grudges or worry about what other people think of you.”

“Never let the revenuers piss on your parade.”

Happy Fall to All of Y’all!

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“Happy Fall, y'all!”
“Happy Fall, y’all!”
I started to write up my thoughts on a few news developments that either happened or I found out about after posting this week’s round up of news and other things of interest, but I think I’ll wait on that. Yesterday was the autumnal equinox, and therefore the first day of autumn, and fall is possibly my favorite season.

There are a few things to note about this particular transition of the seasons at least where I live. First, we officially can enter summer 2017 into the weather record books for a couple of different things. It was officially the driest summer (going by solar summer: June 21-Sept 21). Seattle summers are usually relatively dry, particularly compared to our Novembers, but this year was exceptional. Only 0.52″ of rain total, and it is worth noting that 0.50″ of that rain came in the last six days! Which certainly contributed to many days that the city was blanketed in smoke from various wild fires in British Columbia, Eastern Washington, and Central Oregon.

Summer 2017 also tied for the hottest summer ever recorded (1967). Though it is worth noting that 2014 and 2013 are tied at second hottest only one-tenth of a degree cooler (and 2015 was two-tenths of a degree cooler, so we definitely have a trend going).

But that nightmare is over, at least until next year. The jet stream has shifted. We got light rain last weekend, the daytime highs have been in the high 50s to mid 60s all week. We may break 70 again late in the week, but that’s a considerable improvement over the temps just two weeks ago.

So, autumn is here! Time to start thinking about Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations. Time to break out the pumpkin spice (I actually started experimenting with pumpkin spick cocktail recipes the day we got the first rain last week).

Welcome to fall!

“Hello Autumn”
“Hello Autumn”

How people use a word can tell you more about them than they wish — more adventures in dictionaries

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Abuse as defined in one of my dictionaries... (click to embiggen)
Abuse as defined in one of my dictionaries… (click to embiggen)
I can’t count the number of times, as a child, that some adult (relatives, teachers, or people from church) would take me aside to suggest or insist that if I would just be more obedient or behave the way my dad expected, he wouldn’t have to be so strict with me. I know my younger siblings got similar admonishments: Dad wouldn’t be forced to use such strict punishments on us if only we could placate his moods. They never referred to his behavior as “abuse,” it was always said that he was “strict” and that he “had a temper.” And while they often implied that they thought his punishment was harsher than necessary, they never acknowledged that his behavior had crossed a line into being unacceptable or uncalled for. Which is quite amazing if I explain some of the specifics.

Content Warning: the following essay (which will also touch on dangerous misperceptions and myths about sexual orientation) includes some specifics about physical abuse of children and worse. Only click when you’re ready … Continue reading How people use a word can tell you more about them than they wish — more adventures in dictionaries →

If you don’t know labor history, you’re doomed to repeat the bad parts

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“Union Accomplishments: Safe working conditions; Safety regulations; No toxic dumping; No child labor abuses; Standard minimum wage; 40-hour work week; Overtime pay; Paid vacation; Pensions; Healthcare; Equal Pay for Equal work.”
“Union Accomplishments: Safe working conditions; Safety regulations; No toxic dumping; No child labor abuses; Standard minimum wage; 40-hour work week; Overtime pay; Paid vacation; Pensions; Healthcare; Equal Pay for Equal work.”
Both of my grandfathers were life long union workers. Dad moved in and out of union and non-union portions of his industry. When Mom re-entered the work force after my parents’ divorce, she became a union member and other then a few stints in management, remained one until she retired. I, on the other hand, work in an industry that has fought to keep unions out, and for various social reasons, the same co-workers who complain loudest about how everyone is classified as “professional” and therefore exempt from overtime pay and the like, are also convinced that unions would be a disaster.

Which is really sad. Mostly I blame the decades-long war on unions waged by mostly the Republican party. They have managed, somehow, to convince people to believe, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that businesses have always given out wages and benefits out of the goodness of their hearts.

I don’t understand how anyone who has worked for any business larger than a mom-and-pop operation can believe that.

“If unions are bad for the economy, why did America's greatest era of prosperity have more workers under union contract than any other time in history?”
“If unions are bad for the economy, why did America’s greatest era of prosperity have more workers under union contract than any other time in history?”

It’s not that profits are driving business decisions, it’s that maximizing benefit to business leaders while milking short-term profits without investing in workers and their skills for long-term benefits.

You can keep talking about the economic insecurities of angry white guys, but you have to recognize that the source of economic insecurity is not market forces, or immigrants, or equal opportunity laws. It’s the people in that top 1%. And somehow we’ve got to get those scared angry white guys to recognize that they are being duped.

“Did it ever occur to you that union workers aren't overpaid, maybe you're underpaid? Where are the gains going? From 1970 to 2010, in inflations-adjusted dollars, income of private sector workers fell from an average of $32,000 to $29,000, while income among 'job creators' rose from $2-million to $16-million.” Source: nyti.ms/saez-and-piketty-on-inequality
“Did it ever occur to you that union workers aren’t overpaid, maybe you’re underpaid? Where are the gains going? From 1970 to 2010, in inflations-adjusted dollars, income of private sector workers fell from an average of $32,000 to $29,000, while income among ‘job creators’ rose from $2-million to $16-million.” Source: nyti.ms/saez-and-piketty-on-inequality