Mary Beth Writes

6/1/2022 

Last Friday evening on PBS Tonight David Brooks said something like this. “I am afraid for all of us. The news just pummels us.”

There are as many tough stories as there are fingers on a closed fist. The shooting in Uvalde. The shooting in Buffalo. The corrupt power of the NRA and other obscene wealth-mongers that are destroying our society from the inside of elected reps’ pockets outwards. Ukraine. Global climate mayhem. Oh, and covid is everywhere. Less traumatic for most; long covid for some. So that’s six fingers on that pugilistic fist.

No answers here other than it isn’t as if mayhem and injustice are new, it’s that we have global media coverage so it feels as if we are being pummeled. Would we rather NOT have had the video of George Floyd being murdered? Would we rather NOT have the audio of cops not responding to those children?

Offer a weird thanks that at least now we know.

That said, here are three things that moved and calmed my mind and heart in the past week.

This should be depressing but I didn’t find it so. Real information helps us figure out what’s going on.

The Washington Post ran a long article last week about white men and suicide. The writer is Jose A. Del Real and I am now following him on Twitter because journalists who tell a story clearly are my heroes.

Click here for the WaPo article. 

“Of the 45,979 people who died by suicide in the United States in 2020, about 70 percent were White men, who are just 30 percent of the country’s overall population. That makes White men the highest-risk group for suicide in the country, especially in middle age, even as they are overrepresented in positions of power and stature in the United States. The rate that has steadily climbed over the past 20 years.”

“Here in cowboy country, the backdrop and birthplace of countless American myths, Bill knows “real men” are meant to be stoic and tough. But in a time when there are so many competing visions of masculinity — across America and even across Wyoming — Bill is questioning what a real man is anyway. …..  Often, what he sees in American men is despair.”

MB here: The take away for me is this. What is the story by which we as individuals live our lives? Who did we admire and emulate as young people? Have our ideals changed and expanded? Are we claiming stories that ask us to be both kind and authentic? Or are we still living by stories that say “Sorry Buster, but you are not rich, nor handsome, and your closest people are losers? No wonder you can’t make it here anymore.”

Like this: This morning I saw a tweet that dissed Trump as a fat something or other and I cringed. I do not think calling someone fat should be used as a pejorative. Many of us have changed our idea about using fat as a slur or as a way to judge the intelligence and character of another person. Fat simply means large. That story that has changed.

Many of us watched the movie Nomadland which is a portrayal of a story that is changing now. Is it failure to end up one's life broke, living in a vehicle, driving from job to job?  Is that a failing of character? Or is that a failing of the tax codes and social systems of our society?  A story that is changing.

We don’t slander people because their brains don’t work the way our brains work. This is a changing story and many of us who grew up with minds that worked a peculiar way - and who got in trouble for it - we are here to say this story is changing, too.

This is what I mean by paying attention to the stories we live by. In huge and small ways, we constantly update and renew the stories by which we live. This is not about being politically correct. This is about finding a space in which to stand and breathe and feel something beyond despair.  

If you can’t get into the article, contact me by email or in the comments; give me your email address (I won’t publish it) and I can send the whole article to you.

Biking Borders

Speaking of slow stories that welcome your mind and heart. Len and I watched this compelling and non-dramatic documentary a few nights ago. By the end of the movie I felt calmer about the world. No little thing.

German Max and Portuguese Nono; two young men who are biking enthusiasts, traveling companions, and friends, ride their bikes from Berlin to Beijing. They do this to raise money to build an elementary school in Guatemala. The film pulls one into the adventure of meeting people with whom one cannot speak because of language barriers and yet those people extend beautiful hospitality. It is healing to watch humans being fully, humorously, and graciously human. Plus, the scenery is often gorgeous. I felt a little sad that I will never fly on a bike down mountain roads in Turkmenistan.

Biking Borders streams on Netflix and Amazon Prime.

This is their website.  

Their adventure was in 2018 so I’m not sure what, if anything, they are up to now.

My daughter gave me the novel 'A Gentleman in Moscow' by Amor Towles.

This novel is about fictional Count Alexander Rostov. In 1922 he is judged by a Bolshevik tribunal to be an unapologetic aristocrat and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov must now live in an attic room while Russian history of the 20th century evolves and explodes. His woeful circumstances provide him a doorway into a big world, after all.

Reading the novel felt a bit like ‘Ferris Bueller in the Russian Revolution.’

One of the things I did while reading which I recommend is this. Towles sometimes mentions pieces of classical music. I made a “Gentleman in …” file in my streaming service into which I saved those pieces - and listened to all that gorgeous music yesterday while repainting the cement apron of our garage.

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Concrete actions: 1. Both Len and I emailed our electred reps asking them to support gun registration and regulation.  2. When Beto O'Rourke interupted that new conference, I celebrated that powerful moment by immediately sending some money to his campaign. 

Comments

Loved “A Gentleman in Moscow”; way more than his first “Rules of Civility”. I could not get into “The Lincoln Highway”. I also sent money to Beto’s campaign after watching him confront power.
Mary Beth's picture

The phrases I keep thinking of: Speak truth to power. Good Trouble.

the photo of your garage apron made me smile :)

Beto is a good guy. Are there enough good ones around for us to get behind? I am an optimist, so I think there are.
Mary Beth's picture

Len is very active in the work of the Waukesha Dems. Len, you tell us who you are most impressed with right now.

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Be a (bit of a) Scientist This Summer!

3/23/2023

This is an updated rerun of a story I posted last spring.

This is about Stream Monitoring and How to Do It. You don’t have to be a man to do this, but many are and that’s as close to the obvious joke as I’m going to go.

Len and his volunteer pal Tom enjoy this volunteer gig a lot. Once each month in the summer they go to the same stretch of the same stream to check water quality and to discover what creatures are lurking in the water and muck.  

A-Z Ice Cream & Marco Polo

DQ will never look the same. This photo is of a patio where one eats their gelato, somewhere in Italy. 

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3/22/2023

What is the thing most people spend a great deal of time, energy, and money keeping off our necks and out of our homes?

Chilly air

What is ice cream?

Chilly air with sugar.

Igloos

3/16/2022

We are working our way through an Alphabet of Topics and we are currently considering the letter I. Two days ago, I wrote about Idiosyncrasies. Today is Igloo. Next up is Ice Cream.

So here we are again with nervous banks and a jumpy stock market and we “commoners” quietly peruse how many bags of beans we have in the pantry. I hope by the time I finish and post this the news is more stable, but I doubt it. “May you live in interesting times.” Right?

You know what I learned while researching igloos?

I is for Idiosyncrasy - "I'm not goofy. You are..."

3/14/2023  (Happy Pi Day)

Idiosyncrasies are like cave drawings; enigmatic clues that say once upon a time something happened here. A story unfolded. Someone tried to solve a problem. The solution worked, or at least it kept the person comfortable or comforted long enough for the idiosyncratic habit to form.

A-Z Humor Me

Humor 3/8/2023

I heard this joke in a sermon in 1974. I heard that highly revered minister preach at least a hundred sermons and this is the ONLY thing I remember him saying.  

A guy loses his job and is desperate for a new one with which to support his precious family. Nothing turns up until one day the newspaper Help Wanted Ads (so now you know how old this jokes really is) says the zoo has an opening. Guy applies. The HR person looks worried and then says the zoo changed its mind, the job is too demeaning. Guy says he’s desperate, will take anything.

A-Z Heaven ...

3/3/2023

First of all, you should realize that tomorrow is March 4th which is the only date of the year which tells you what to do. Hah.

This week I was amazed by this map/representation of the process of the creation of a new star. A year ago, there were no visuals of this process. What you are looking at is cutting-edge stuff observed and collaborated by 90 astronomers worldwide.

That + in the middle is the new star that right now is bigger than our sun. We know it’s young and new because it’s growing.

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