Hallway to Nowhere

Category: society

  • Put Down Your Cell Phone-A Creeper Trail Rant

    Put Down Your Cell Phone-A Creeper Trail Rant

    RANT WARNING!

    Every morning my dog and I take a long walk on the Creeper Trail. The Creeper is one of the many things I love about Abingdon. It’s a great place to walk and enjoy the beauty of our gorgeous area. We generally go early before 8AM to avoid others and before the heat of the day becomes oppressive. At that time of the morning traffic is usually light on the trail and to and from the trail. (I live less than a block from the trail entrance so we walk.)

    This morning I counted FOUR people on their cell phones! I wanted to say, “You’re on the Creeper! Put your phone away!” For one thing, it is DANGEROUS. We get bikers on the trail frequently. I’m sorry to say that most I’ve encountered do NOT signal when passing, though trail rules (clearly posted at the head of the trail) state that they must do so. I’ve almost been hit several times though no fault of my own. My dog and I walk well to the right; she is on a VERY close lead (not a free-ranging retractable lead like some dogs I’ve encountered); I try to be alert to my surroundings. But bikers are quiet and sometimes going extremely fast. If you don’t hear them, then you get no warning. So a walker paying attention to his phone in the middle of trail (and it is narrow in places) could be toast.

    For another thing, and this is purely a personal opinion, YOU ARE ON THE CREEPER, for fuck’s sake. If you want just a place to get your exercise, there is a macadamized track at the Coome’s Center. Put the phone away for the duration of your walk. Take time to disengage. Look at the trees, fields, and squirrels. Smell the different aromas of the trail (this morning was distinctly musky). Greet your fellow trail denizens. BREATHE……and remember that there is a life beyond the electronic world. (And I say that despite my love of the internet.)

  • Gay?Not Okay! Anti-LGBTQ Legislation Continues To Be Passed

    Gay?Not Okay! Anti-LGBTQ Legislation Continues To Be Passed

    Remember DJT promising to be a great friend to “the gays” and brandishing a rainbow flag at his rallies (well, at at least one rally that was photoghaphed)? So much for that! The rollback of protection for LGBTQ indviduals and couples coninues apace, as states pass laws that place “religious liberty” above the rights of LGBTQ citizens and deny  the protection of law from those who are most often targeted.  The courts in one state, Mississippi, even went so far as to pass an entirely redundant law to PROTECT those engaged in anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

    And lest you think this is purely a Southern state phenomenon, the courts of South Dakota, North Dakota, AND Michigan joined Virginia, Alabama, Texas, West Virginia, and as mentioned, Mississippi, to pass laws that either allow institutions to discriminate against LGBTQ persons in the name of religion or deny LGBTQ persons protect from hate-crimes.  Apparently, along with no longer being counted in the Census, we can no longer do things like adopt children, GET BURIED (Mississippi-why am I not surprised?), or oh, I don’t know….JUST EXIST without being an affront to right-thinking people everywhere.

    This is not to be taken lightly. We need to treat this seriously. Just because OBergefell became law doesn’t mean a f…. thing anymore. We need to get out and put people into office who will stand up for HUMAN RIGHTS. Not tomorrow. Not next week. NOW. Stand up; speak out; RESIST and VOTE!

  • Where Are You From?-A Southern Question

    Where Are You From?-A Southern Question

    Since the removal of the Confederate statues in NOLA continues to be in the news, the South is on everyone’s radar. Something happened at work that really caught my attention, juxtaposed as it were with the business with issues of  the statues,  history, race, and Southern identity in general.  I had overheard a conversation between a colleague of mine ( a person born in the South and very much a Southerner) and a person who had moved here from the Northeast. She was aking him why people in the South always ask the question, “Where are you from?” She said that she never got that question in other parts of the country. I’ve lived in other places (the midwest, greater NYC) and she is indeed correct. When I lived and worked in those places, no-one ever inquired as to my origins unless my accent slipped out. (I don’t have much of a Mississippi accent. My mother went to extreme lengths to ensure that I spoke with a neutral accent, not the mush-mouth that my more upstate cousins had.)

    I ‘ve been thinking about that question. WHY do we here in the South ask that question? And it is usually the second thing that follows hello, the first being an inquiry as to whether you want a glass of sweet tea.  I discussed it with a friend of mine who was not from the South originally but who lived in Louisiana for a long time.  I proposed that we do it as a tribal thing, to find out who your people are, because we might be related. (A deceased friend once half-jokingly claimed that everyone in the South was related to everyone else.) My friend retorted that it might be a tribal thing but to see if you are one of us or not, to establish bona fides, i.e. are you a Southerner?

    That lead to the reflection that the South is the only region of the US that has an unique geographical identity.  I’m hardly the first nor the last person to make this claim.  It has a hold on me as an individual, like it or not. I am a Southerner, though I like to describe myself as reconstructed Southerner. I’ve hated this fact, tried to escape it geographically by moving to NYC, and finally made my peace with it. I grew up in Mississppi, lived and worked in the heart of the Deep South (the Mississippi Delta), and have known and loved Southerners. I’ve hated some of them, too. But in my maturity I recognize that I can’t erase the fact that I was born and bred in the deepest South, though I don’t have to the subscribe to the “Never Forget” attitude many take in regard to the Civil War and to the not-so-subtle racism that still lingers in those who wish to bring back Jim Crow laws and worse. I actively attempt to overcome my white privilege by educating myself. I read as much as I can, watch podcasts, docs, movies, and series that will help me get over myself. I will never know what it means to be an African American or any other minority (except Jewish, of course) in the South but perhaps I can intellectually understand and notintentionally be such a jerk.

    I’m listening to the The Dead South, btw.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Statues, Memory, And Soil

    Statues, Memory, And Soil

    I’ve been reading lately about the heated atmosphere surrounding the removal of statues of Confederate figures in New Orleans. I know those statues and have often used them to give directions to people attempting to get to various places in the French Quarter.  I’ve followed the story of their plight with some interest, as I am from the South and this IS a particularly and peculiarly Southern problem.  The South is dotted with statues, obelisks, plaques, and other monuments to the glorious heroes and fighters of the Lost Cause. Now, mind you, when you grow up in the South, as a young child it can be a LONG TIME before anyone ever tells you THAT THESE ARE PEOPLE WHO LOST THE WAR! I had extraordinary parents who did do and at an early age. I reasonably asked,”Then why are there statues of them everywhere?” My father sighed and replied, “This is the South; that is a difficult question; you’re much too young for hard liquor.”

    Personal history aside, I’ve heard the arguments that we should leave these things up for the sake of history and as some sort of teaching instuments. I find those argument totally and completely spurious. For the sake of history? Like the entire South is going to have a complete bout of amnesia, should the monuments get taken down? The battles of the Civil War and the struggles upon which it was based-that of slavery and man’s oh-so-human urge to trample wholesale on the rights of others based on skincolor-are soaked into the very soil of the Southern states. Southerners, whether there by birth or geographical accident and whatever their race-are confronted with the legacy of the slavery every day, like it or not. I hardly think that the absence of some statues will make us forget. Not when we’ve got neighbors who persist in flying the Confederate flag from their pick-up truck or porch. Not when we’ve got the legacy of Jim Crow lingering in our voting districts, our laws and our attitudes. Not when when we’ve got a resurgence of white supremacists looking back fondly to a society that exists only in fiction and calling it the South. I’m not sorry to see the statues et al. coming down.  As for the “Never forget!” contingent, some of us are busy trying to build a new society, not hark back to the Old Dixie that lives mainly in your beer cans and fevered imagination.

  • The Mirroring Effect Of Twin Peaks

    The Mirroring Effect Of Twin Peaks

    I decided to flee from the harrowing political landscape into the welcoming embrace of Netflix. I found, much to my delight, that Twin Peaks has released a SECOND season and thought that this would be just the thing thing to take my mind off possibly losing my healthcare, my immigrant friends, and that pesky nagging thing….not being bombed by anyone with nuclear capabilities lately b/c our prez went eyeball to hairy eyeball with the OTHER madman currently ruling a nation.  I was a Twin Peaks fan(atic) when it arrived on television back in the day.  It was the the first and only thing I was remotely cultish about, unless you count the fling I had with Rocky Horror Picture Show in my misbegotten youth. And it turned me on to David Lynch in a huge way! Not only did I follow Twin Peaks with rabid devotion, but I made a point of finding every movie and television show he did afterwards and watching those, also. Even the children’s films. But I digress.

    I decided to watch the first season again, from love and b/c it’s been a number of years since I’ve watched it and I wanted to make sure the story was fresh in my mind for Season 2. Twin Peaks Season 1 was odd enough in itself, even without the eerie sound-track playing in the background. I tried watching it with subtitles and-yep! Still weird AF. But I turned the sound back on and proceeded to settle in to reacquaint myself with Twin Peaks and its inhabitants.

    Then the mirroring effect kicked in. I found myself watching myself watch Twin Peaks in my memory on television. But I was also watching Twins Peaks on my computer. This felt rather strange, almost trippy (from what I can gather from friends’ descriptions), but I couldn’t make it go away! This occurred only for Season 1. I haven’t gotten to any episode of Season 2 yet. I’m going to try and go with this, as watching Twin Peaks the FIRST time around messed with my mind. So why shouldn’t the second? I’ve come to expect bizarreness to ensue when I watch David Lynch. I wonder what will happen when I get to Season 2? And I wonder what it would be like to watch Twin Peaks while drinking ayahuasca? Not that I’ll ever know, mind you, since I’m unlikely to encounter a trained shaman where I live. And were I to do so, I doubt he/she/whatever would consider watching Twin Peaks to be something to do under the effects of the tea. But you never know…..

     

  • Trump’s Continuing Attack On The Free Press

    Trump’s Continuing Attack On The Free Press

    Friday Trump (#notmypresident) escalated his attack on the free press to new levels. After first excoriating what he called “fake news” at CPAC and then later on Twitter, the White House then barred reporters from certain news organizations (The NYT, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, BBC, and HuffPost) from a press briefing. Conservative-leaning organizations such as  Fox News, The Washington Times, The One America News and the mainstream outlets ABC, NBC, CBS were allowed, as was that purveyor of racism, homophobia, and general bigotry, Breitbart News. The Washington Post chose not to send a reporter. I’m sure their reporter, too, would have been barred. This action contradicts what Trump’s press secretary claimed in December. Trump has said that he doesn’t mind criticism, yet this shows with glaring clarity that he cannot stand to told again and again that he and his administration are having problems. He is attempting to use the power of of the White House and the Presidency to stifle dissent: directly by shutting the press out and indirectly by making people distrust the press. He asks that we trust HIM, the prince of lies! If you’ve been fact-checking, you know that Trump cannot make a speech or indeed have a simple conversation without uttering lies. (I’m not going to make nice and use pretty language. He flat-out lies.) He makes claims such as “The administration is running like a fine-tuned machine” and “We’ve spent 6 trillion dollars in the Middle East.” Does he not know or care that not just reporters but ordinary citizens (like me) are, one, watching the chaotic mess that is his administration and, two, fact-checking what he says? Oh, wait, I forgot…this is the administration that deals in “alternative facts” with an “alt-right” chief strategist at the White House and a favored “alt-right” news outlet. This is NOT normal behavior, even for a paranoid president! Nixon didn’t do this, and he had his truly bizarre moments. Clinton didn’t do this, even during the whole Monica Lewinsky thing. But Trump is barely into his Presidency and already he has designated the press “an enemy of the people”. Not of HIM, mind you. We, the citizens of the the United States, are now supposed to be on our guard against not ISIS but the NYT, the Washington Post, Politico, and other liberal media. I don’t know about you, but my fears are directed towards the White House and its current occupants, as well as his Republican minions. To use that famous quote from The Fly, “Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.”

  • White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”

    White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”

    Recently I was talking to a friend of mine. He is a 50-ish Caucasian male, Christian, employed, and heterosexual/married. He informed me that he feels oppressed. My jaw dropped in amazement. After a moment of silence on my part, while I processed this, he went on to tell me WHY: he thinks that he and his kind are now persecuted and ridiculed by the media, that everyone else has governmental protections for their rights-he cited those protecting minorities and equal rights for women, and that Christians are daily being harassed. Now, mind you, this is in a smallish town in the mostly white white white Appalachian foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where there is nothing BUT Christians around! I can hit four churches with a rock from my apartment…and those are just the ones from the MAJOR denominations. This place is still tribal and patriarchal. I could not stay quiet in the face of this errant nonsense.  I understand that if you watch a steady diet of right-wing news, you will get fed this erroneous view.  I find it on Fox and Breitbart and Infowars, sites that I visit regularly. I do so in order to find out just what people like my friend are viewing. (Trust me, this is not something I enjoy.) I challenged him to give me some concrete examples of HOW he was oppressed: Had he ever been arrested for “driving while white” or had the local police view him with suspicion b/c of his skin color? Had he or his ancestors ever been forced to leave a region or country b/c of their race or religion? Had he ever been denied a job or promotion b/c of his gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to vote b/c of his race, religion, gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to run for office b/c of his religion? Had he ever threatened with death b/c of his race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation? He was quite taken aback by these questions. He wanted to know why I was asking them. I told him that unless he could answer YES to any one of these questions, he had no right to say he was oppressed, that oppression had not to do with a “feeling” or “discomfort” but with real consequences in the world and to THINK ABOUT THAT the next time he heard a white Christian man talking about his oppressed status. I told him about my relatives who never made it out of the German death camps b/c they were the wrong religion (Jews). Then I told him about friends who were fired from jobs for being queer. Women are STILL paid only 79 percent of men’s hourly wages. And 7 states currently have laws even now prohibiting atheists from running for public office. So…HE wants to talk about feeling oppressed??? Smh. And the internet trolls all whine about liberals being crybabies!

  • White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”

    White Christian Male: “I Feel Oppressed!”

    Recently I was talking to a friend of mine. He is a 50-ish Caucasian male, Christian, employed, and heterosexual/married. He informed me that he feels oppressed. My jaw dropped in amazement. After a moment of silence on my part, while I processed this, he went on to tell me WHY: he thinks that he and his kind are now persecuted and ridiculed by the media, that everyone else has governmental protections for their rights-he cited those protecting minorities and equal rights for women, and that Christians are daily being harassed. Now, mind you, this is in a smallish town in the mostly white white white Appalachian foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where there is nothing BUT Christians around! I can hit four churches with a rock from my apartment…and those are just the ones from the MAJOR denominations. This place is still tribal and patriarchal. I could not stay quiet in the face of this errant nonsense.  I understand that if you watch a steady diet of right-wing news, you will get fed this erroneous view.  I find it on Fox and Breitbart and Infowars, sites that I visit regularly. I do so in order to find out just what people like my friend are viewing. (Trust me, this is not something I enjoy.) I challenged him to give me some concrete examples of HOW he was oppressed: Had he ever been arrested for “driving while white” or had the local police view him with suspicion b/c of his skin color? Had he or his ancestors ever been forced to leave a region or country b/c of their race or religion? Had he ever been denied a job or promotion b/c of his gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to vote b/c of his race, religion, gender or sexual orientation? Had he ever been denied the right to run for office b/c of his religion? Had he ever threatened with death b/c of his race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation? He was quite taken aback by these questions. He wanted to know why I was asking them. I told him that unless he could answer YES to any one of these questions, he had no right to say he was oppressed, that oppression had not to do with a “feeling” or “discomfort” but with real consequences in the world and to THINK ABOUT THAT the next time he heard a white Christian man talking about his oppressed status. I told him about my relatives who never made it out of the German death camps b/c they were the wrong religion (Jews). Then I told him about friends who were fired from jobs for being queer. Women are STILL paid only 79 percent of men’s hourly wages. And 7 states currently have laws even now prohibiting atheists from running for public office. So…HE wants to talk about feeling oppressed??? Smh. And the internet trolls all whine about liberals being crybabies!

  • I Blame Religion

    I Blame Religion

    With increasing evidence that many individuals are either unable or unwilling to employ the critical reasoning skills necessary to discern between what is factual and what is not and thereby conflating fake and actual news, I’ve been considering the possible reasons for this alarming lack of judicial faculties. There is much I COULD say on the topic, as in a former life I have taught Formal Logic and Critical Reasoning courses. But over the course of many years, after teaching students, listening to other profs talk about their students, reading, and observing patrons at the libraries where I’ve worked, I place the blame for this squarely on the back of relgion, particularly the American brand of Prostestant Christianity. It places BELIEF, a uniquely personal and private belief that you have been saved  (which of course cannot be objectively verified), above anything else.  As long as you testify positively to this, everything (and I do mean everything) else falls by the wayside. Some might point to the Bible, saying that it is factual. That merely illustrates my point and highlights the believer’s maleable relationship with reality. At any given time, no two sects of Christians will likely believe the same set of facts from the Bible; in fact, one might be hard-pressed to find two individual Christians who each believe the same set of facts from the Bible. (N.B.-I’m using the term “facts” here ironically. I highly doubt that most anything found in the so-called New Testament has any basis in history and is largely myth. The Tanakh MIGHT record some events that happened in ancient times (but only a few) but it is also mostly mythological.) But Christians cherry-pick. What displeases them, for whatever reason, they discard. REMEMBER THIS-IT’S IMPORTANT! God says keep kosher, observe the sabbath, and, later on, the more incendiary whatsoever you do to the least of these, you did for me. Let’s not do any of this, too inconvenient, not modern, been superseded, etc. etc. It’s not what we believe. ….It’s not what we believe. That’s it in a nutshell.  If your view of reality is that what is true is determined by what you FEEL and what you BELIEVE, rather than by factual evidence, then of course you will fall for fake news. You will believe preposterous claims like the ones made about Hillary Clinton being involved in child sex scandals or the ones claiming that Sandy Hook was a hoax. You will believe, despite actual hard evidence that shows otherwise, that Donald Trump won the popular vote. You will believe that that China or some guy in a basement somewhere, not the Russians, hacked the DNC, despsite what U.S. intelligence agencies have to say.

    What can be done? In a perfect world, stop indoctrinating children with pernicious religious doctrines. Should they wish to become relgious as adults, fine. That would be a decision made with a more informed consent. START TEACHING CRITICAL REASONING SKILLS AT AN EARLY AGE! FORMAL AND INFORMAL LOGIC COURSES AS REQUIRED COURSES IN HIGH SCHOOL (IF NOT BEFORE)! Have parents expose children and teens to actual (as opposed to fake and “faux”) news media-show them the diiference between real researched articles by journalists with credentials and false, often conspiratorial, news articles or shows that are often little more than alarmist headlines by persons who have little to no trustworthiness. I am not a parent (nor do I play one on TV). But I am a human being and a citizen so interested in the continuation of the species, one, and of the fate of our country, two. So, teaching kids to reason is not optional. IT IS VITAL.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Surrender, New York By Caleb Carr-A Review

    Surrender, New York By Caleb Carr-A Review

    If you haven’t read anything by Caleb Carr, now is the time to start! Surrender, New York is a superb literary thriller that features Dr. Trajan Jones, a criminal psychologist in the upstate town of Surrender. He is the foremost authority on Dr. Lazlo Kreitzler (hero of Carr’s book The Alienist, also excellent)  and follows in his unconventional footsteps throughout the winding paths of this novel. If you follow shows that like CSI or Bones, then you will definitely want to read this, as much for the protagonist’s trenchant views on forensic science, as for the plot. The plot is intricate, involving throwaway children, politicians, and the wealthy in New York City. But this is no simple matter, and Carr has a very deft way of surprising you. I’m a long-time mystery reader, and and I didn’t see the plot development in this one. I was impressed, I must say. Highly recommended! ( The book has also lead me to do some research on the troubling topic of runaway parents. I had no idea this was such a burgeoning problem. Smh.)