Month: February 2012

Why Travel?

Answer: Architecture

Having no interest in getting to know the people or the cuisine, I’ve been short of a reason to go abroad until this morning, when Ron showed me this.

Another answer: Scenery

Good Advice

from Carla Rover (Content Curator, The Advertising Technology Review) women2.org

“Rich, powerful, well-educated people – and their kids – don’t carry these bags. It’s not because no one ever picks on them or questions their legitimacy in whatever role that they may take on. It’s because they have been socialized not to accept the idea that they don’t belong on top. They don’t have a chorus of voices claiming that the mystical “they” have success all sewn up in their pockets. They haven’t been indoctrinated with the idea that difficulty or a struggle on a learning curve is indicative of their not deserving social or economic ascent.

“The idea that you have to prove yourself is one from the days when humans where taught that kings and queens, by some divine right, deserved wealth, unlimited privilege, and boundless opportunity. That idea that you have to earn a shot at greatness is toxic. You simply have to grasp for it. You have to stop holding on the what you have been handed if it is holding you down. The opinions of those who regard you with suspicion or disdain because of your gender? You won’t win them over with your brilliance or willingness to tolerate their ignorance. Stop caring. Stop listening.

“Give the “I’m a woman in a man’s world” bag back to the 1950′s. Yes there is, for some, a glass ceiling. It’s delusional, and perhaps slightly sinister, to tell a generation of talented, ambitious, hard-working women that if they are not reaching gender parity in income and executive hiring then it is probably their fault. The ceiling might not exist for everyone, but it is out there. The ceiling however, is not the issue. If you are hoping to ascend to the executive suite in a building run by people who’ve built an invisible force field to prevent your ascent, the ceiling is not your only problem. Drop the bag of wanting to be liked, or approved.”

ODD and Occupy

Many people with severe anxiety and/or depression are also anti-authoritarians. Often a major pain of their lives that fuels their anxiety and/or depression is fear that their contempt for illegitimate authorities will cause them to be financially and socially marginalized, but they fear that compliance with such illegitimate authorities will cause them existential death.

It has been my experience that many anti-authoritarians labeled with psychiatric diagnoses usually don’t reject all authorities, simply those they’ve assessed to be illegitimate ones, which just happens to be a great deal of society’s authorities.

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (Chelsea Green, 2011).

http://www.alternet.org/health/154225/would_we_have_drugged_up_einstein_how_anti-authoritarianism_is_deemed_a_mental_health_problem?page=entire

Recital

We went to a student recital at the Cape Cod Conservatory in Falmouth yesterday afternoon. Some very talented kids.

On Saturday, Emme and I went for a walk, or at least tried to, at the Pickerel Cove Recreation Area. We got a fair way into the woods when we were stopped by “Private Property – No Trespassing” signs.

We stopped at a yard sale and picked up a file cabinet for Ron, then went back to the house for tea. Ron made his special spaghetti and clam sauce for supper. Emme was very gracious and allowed us to bore her with Fluffles stories and reports of the price of fish. She also helped me in the back with the dead limb and catbriar cleanup.

More Clearing

Got to use the Stihl because Ron was hurting from yesterday’s clean-up. It’s fun!

Tom Capizzi came over with a revised proposal for creating a new room in the basement.