THINKLINGS

Published January 5, 2021 by Nan Mykel

I DON’T like to think of canine pets as “dogs.” It doesn’t seem right. And of course the word for female canines is even worse…I found some warm quotes about canine pets at Konrad Lorenz on Google. “The bond with a dog is as lasting as the ties of this Earth can ever be.”

AS A CHILD I thought I might become a detective when I grew up because I could tell the good guys from the bad ones so easily…. (The good guys wore white hats and the bad ones, black hats.)

ONE SURE NEEDS a lot of faith in the miracles of evolution to avoid belief in intelligent design! I’ve been doing some “escape” reading in Grammatical Man by Jeremy Campbell (Simon and Schuster (1982), and the concept of information theory is just beyond my ken. It’s exciting, however, to think that the unconscious rules of grammar pre-dated the acquisition of language. Some think it’s true for music and even numbers. And to imagine what kind of communication scheme Neanderthal engaged in with his burial customs, etc., grabs the imagination. Interesting that child prodigies can be considered mutations from a hypothesized biological process yet not from the influence of a past life. (Not that I believe that; I’m just messing with you.)

SPEAKING OF messing, I wonder what precipitated our president to mess his pants on the eve of the runoff election in Georgia today. Gee, and on January 6 violent conspiracy theorists from all over the USA are invited to party wildly in Washington at 11 a.m. on the day the vice president is scheduled to present the results of the electoral college to the senate.

HOW ABOUT a way to inform bloggers that one of their followers (or those followed) has died? I’d like to leave an obituary that my daughter could enter so blog friends would know why I’m no longer writing. Writing a cheerful obituary would be a challenge.

PANDEMIC PUTTERINGS

Published January 1, 2021 by Nan Mykel

If still alive when the pandemic passes

Will anyone be willing to get off their…chairs?

The cloistered world of expanded mind

Fits, as time goes by.

Patches from old songs flitter

Among recycling litter “As Time Goes By.”

Jumping spider in the tub

Takes on significance, that’s the rub.

The phone sings its cradled song

As mail from good causes go unopened.

Poets need not rhyme; or not;

Nor dress. Time o’erflows with polka-dotted

nights, several times a day.

Outside, a passing motorcycle farts

and while I ply my art alone I find

that self-quarantine works for me

just fine.

WHOA!

Published January 1, 2021 by Nan Mykel

On the farm my grandmother used to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me.” She said “harm,” not “hurt,” I realize now. I realize and understand how the “n” word can hurt, but until today I had not realized how the “alien” word could hurt the recipient but also affect the listener or reader. It gave me the creeps when I came across it in an article about ICE today. And…

I broke my rule about noting the source of information worth re-visiting, and I am unable to find once again the full details about various punishments against the female detainees who reported their gynecological abuse at the hands of and/or direction of Dr. Mahendre Amin at the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia. The original report was made by a former nurse at the center in September. Women who went on a hunger strike following the alleged abuse in detention had their water rationed, and two were deported.

At some point ICE reported it had quit sending women to ICDC for treatment. Forty female detainees submitted testimony on their alleged gynecological abuse while in ICE custody to the Middle District of Georgia Federal Court on Dec. 21. I have no additional information about the current status of the whistleblowers’ punishment. (Partial source for this story is Victoria Bekiempis in the December 22, 2020 Guardian.)

LIVING ON THE EDGE

Published January 1, 2021 by Nan Mykel

Not everyone has the luxury of wonder. Far too many have been driven from their own country into a bleak, hungry future. Self-conscious about my fortune, I wrote State of the World in 2015:

If we lay out human experience what do we see?

A percentage warm, snuggly, well-fed and free.

And the others–many others–less lucky than we.

Why have we been blessed and not the others,

no more deserving than our other brothers.

Yet I still hide with you, warm under the covers.

I read that the scourge of agent orange still wreaks havoc on the babies of Vietnam

As for our country’s health coverage for the birth defects of our women veterans who served there, the statement is that:

VA recognizes a wide range of birth defects as associated with women U.S. Veterans’ service in Vietnam. These diseases are not tied to herbicides, including Agent Orange, or dioxin exposure, but rather to the birth mother’s service in Vietnam.

Mysterious, eh?

A PERSONAL OBSERVATION

Published December 30, 2020 by Nan Mykel

I have recently witnessed the “super religious” (evangelical) among us cling to their thirst for power over “militant secularists” who they say are behind a “campaign to destroy the traditional moral order,” as former AG Barr has preached. In their longing to do away with the separation of church and state they appear willing to stomach dishonesty, cruelty, and the trashing of the Ten Commandments. How in the same breath can they proclaim their religion yet rally around opposite values? And does “secularists” includes those of other faiths?

Today I reached into my book pile and pulled out Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, which more accurately describes my own personal religion. I found nothing militant in it…

“Every person you have ever met, every person you will pass in the street today is going to die. Living long enough, each will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?…

“The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty and love.” I don’t know if I agree with him on consciousness –didn’t get into that chapter yet.

Mindful Mondays, using past pain, and Adulting as racial sensitivity work

Published December 28, 2020 by Nan Mykel

Supreme!

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest publications Offers Project Do Better

So, why bother: Why work and walk, when being who you were born still hurts?

1994 Baltimore, when I had finally secured the protection of a job at Space Telescope Science Institute, and was trying to make friends with co-workers, and forget my origins:

“There are people here who will not want someone who looks like you on their land.”

“The races don’t mix.”

Apparently, the South had risen, again, up in northern Maryland.

Why bother, again?

Because Adulting includes the responsibility to strive for better. Better from oneself, and better from and for our world.

Though many up north do not recognize those of us whose families have always officially been labelled “colored” (as my birth certificate reads), yet called “mulatto families” informally, the resentment remains, and so does the pain. Brown parties were real, but so were efforts to use our light skin for the good of our…

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I’M SO HUMAN…

Published December 23, 2020 by Nan Mykel

I just realized I feel rejected by Anderson Cooper for leaving CNN…

I’m wondering if Trump plans to sell the U.S. to Putin…

I’m planning a poem on my death called “Chortlings.”

I just hate it when I see a photo of someone much younger than me sitting with their great-grandchild.

If evolution boo boos can grow a tail on a puppy’s forehead, why couldn’t it also make monks fly and some folks have esp? ((Photo; Puppy named Narwhal with tail on his forehead adopted by …abcnews.go.com › story)

I’m both gullible and a little paranoid–a confusing mixture.

WHO WAS IT THAT…

Published December 20, 2020 by Nan Mykel

Discounted nursing home deaths because “they are going to die anyway?” NEWSFLASH! We will too, even you. On a more cheerful note here are some words from Lewis Thomas’ The Lives of a Cell (1974 p50):
Lewis recalls a memoir by David Livingston about his own experience of near-death. “He was caught by a lion, crushed across the chest in the animal’s great jaws, and saved in the instant by a lucky shot by a friend. Later, he remembered the episode in clear detail. He was so amazed by the extraordinary sense of peace, calm, and total painlessness associated with being killed that he constructed a theory that all creatures are provided with a protective physiologic mechanism , switched on at the verge of death , carrying them through the haze of tranquility.”

Submit your work to these two anthologies

Published December 16, 2020 by Nan Mykel

Sounds like a good opportunity!

petrujviljoen

BUT YOU DON’T LOOK SICK: THE REAL LIFE ADVENTURES OF FIBRO BITCHES, LUPUS WARRIORS, AND OTHER SUPER HEROES BATTLING INVISIBLE ILLNESS AND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: REFLECTING ON MADNESS AND CHAOS WITHIN Indie Blu(e) Publishing is thrilled to announce that we will be starting off 2021 with sister anthologies,But You Don’t Look Sick: The Real […]

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Indie Blu(e) Publishing sending out a Call for Submissions. Click through for the details.

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REFLECTIONS

Published December 15, 2020 by Nan Mykel

I just now realized why some people slurp when drinking anything hot: it helps cool it! Insight on 12/15/2020

I wonder what others have learned from the zooming endeavor?

I wonder if it’s right to interfere by force with another culture’s cruel practices?

Eerie to think mankind (via Israeli unmanned spacecraft April, 2019) has left life on the moon. “There’s no danger of the tardigrades colonizing the moon; to reproduce, they’d need to return to Earth and rehydrate.” Oh shucks… (From The Week August 21, 2019). The image of a few thousand tiny “water bears” taped between DVD-sized etched nickel discs that contain a “library” of human civilization is difficult to erase from my mind’s eye. Is it an answer to how to do it or how not to do it?

I wondet when it will be a-okay to try and interfere with privatization?

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A mixed bag

All posts in the A mixed bag category

THINKLINGS

PANDEMIC PUTTERINGS

WHOA!

LIVING ON THE EDGE

A PERSONAL OBSERVATION

Mindful Mondays, using past pain, and Adulting as racial sensitivity work

I’M SO HUMAN…

WHO WAS IT THAT…

Submit your work to these two anthologies

REFLECTIONS

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