Hallway to Nowhere

  • Wild Scrabble

    Wild Scrabble

    So I followed the World Scrabble Championship match Sunday with bated breath. Kudos to Brett Smitheram who won with “braconid” and thereby earned the game, trouncing his partner by a whopping 174 points with that one word alone. I f you are wondering just what the word means, it refers to a parasitic wasp. I love Scrabble and play online at the Internet Scrabble Club. Before I found that site, I played on FB but playing there was frustratingly slow, and the quality of players I would encounter were variable. Sometimes  the responses were downright bizarre. I had one person-(I assume this was a male but don’t know for certain)- demand that I take my clothes off before playing, telling me that “this was scrabble for the grown-ups, chickie.”  I declined to play this person. It traumatized me to the point where I shut down my FB profile altogether, something I had wanted to do anyway. I had found The Internet Scrabble Club, a MUCH more professional venue for serious Scrabble players and am very happy there.

    But let me recount my Scrabble adventures in RL! I mourn the loss of my Scrabble buddy to relocation. He was a colleague from work, a fellow librarian, and the only person I’ve found willing to play around here. We’d meet every Friday evening for dinner and a game. When I initially moved here, a friend who lives in a much larger city, suggested that I advertise on CraigsList for a Scrabble partner. Naive me, I did so. That might work in a larger venue. HERE, it only garnered me offers to play for kinky sex. I quickly took the ad down, horrified at the responses. I only wanted a plain vanilla SCRABBLE PARTNER. People apparently thought it was code for something else, but I’m still not sure what. SMH. I can’t find ANYONE who will play me. I’ve got a nice board, the latest edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary…..I’ll provide endless cups of very high quality hot tea to fuel the game! Of course, I DO play for blood and don’t consider a game well-played unless both players have scored well over 400 points.

    My landlord loves me. I pay my rent early.  I always inform him if there’s ever a problem (and he always gets it fixed). I look after his place, should his family go on vacation. My dog plays with his dog. I never throw bashes. A hotly contested Scrabble game is as wild as I get. What better tenant than a librarian with a non-barking whippet? (The whippet yodels, she rarely barks. And she has my landlord wrapped firmly around her front paw. He not only brings her steak scraps, he brings whole steaks, plus organic treats he buys specially for her from the vet’s office.) Now, if ONLY I could FIND a Scrabble partner!

  • Wild Scrabble

    Wild Scrabble

    So I followed the World Scrabble Championship match Sunday with bated breath. Kudos to Brett Smitheram who won with “braconid” and thereby earned the game, trouncing his partner by a whopping 174 points with that one word alone. I f you are wondering just what the word means, it refers to a parasitic wasp. I love Scrabble and play online at the Internet Scrabble Club. Before I found that site, I played on FB but playing there was frustratingly slow, and the quality of players I would encounter were variable. Sometimes  the responses were downright bizarre. I had one person-(I assume this was a male but don’t know for certain)- demand that I take my clothes off before playing, telling me that “this was scrabble for the grown-ups, chickie.”  I declined to play this person. It traumatized me to the point where I shut down my FB profile altogether, something I had wanted to do anyway. I had found The Internet Scrabble Club, a MUCH more professional venue for serious Scrabble players and am very happy there.

    But let me recount my Scrabble adventures in RL! I mourn the loss of my Scrabble buddy to relocation. He was a colleague from work, a fellow librarian, and the only person I’ve found willing to play around here. We’d meet every Friday evening for dinner and a game. When I initially moved here, a friend who lives in a much larger city, suggested that I advertise on CraigsList for a Scrabble partner. Naive me, I did so. That might work in a larger venue. HERE, it only garnered me offers to play for kinky sex. I quickly took the ad down, horrified at the responses. I only wanted a plain vanilla SCRABBLE PARTNER. People apparently thought it was code for something else, but I’m still not sure what. SMH. I can’t find ANYONE who will play me. I’ve got a nice board, the latest edition of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary…..I’ll provide endless cups of very high quality hot tea to fuel the game! Of course, I DO play for blood and don’t consider a game well-played unless both players have scored well over 400 points.

    My landlord loves me. I pay my rent early.  I always inform him if there’s ever a problem (and he always gets it fixed). I look after his place, should his family go on vacation. My dog plays with his dog. I never throw bashes. A hotly contested Scrabble game is as wild as I get. What better tenant than a librarian with a non-barking whippet? (The whippet yodels, she rarely barks. And she has my landlord wrapped firmly around her front paw. He not only brings her steak scraps, he brings whole steaks, plus organic treats he buys specially for her from the vet’s office.) Now, if ONLY I could FIND a Scrabble partner!

  • The Money Cult By Chris Lehmann-A Review

    The Money Cult By Chris Lehmann-A Review

    Make room on your bookshelf next to Jeff Sharlet’s  The Family and C Street and Kevin Kruse’s One Nation Under God. The Money Cult offers yet another look at the entwined history of American Christianity and capitalism. Rather than the Weberian analysis given by Kruse, Lehmann takes the stance that the underlying foundation of  the American Protestant tradition is in fact a Gnostic one, which I found to be fascinating. He traces this back to Puritan times, then begins his history of economic Christianity. He does a very detailed job, including an explanation of Mormonism as the quintessential American religious experience. He does not neglect the modern evangelicals, and indeed the book begins with the popular Joel Osteen. If you are looking for a reason not to view Christianity with a  jaundiced eye, this book is not for you. He casts it, at least the American Protestant version, as not so much a spiritual pursuit as a thinly veiled economic and financial system that revolves around profits, power, and the creation of wealth.

     

  • The Money Cult By Chris Lehmann-A Review

    The Money Cult By Chris Lehmann-A Review

    Make room on your bookshelf next to Jeff Sharlet’s  The Family and C Street and Kevin Kruse’s One Nation Under God. The Money Cult offers yet another look at the entwined history of American Christianity and capitalism. Rather than the Weberian analysis given by Kruse, Lehmann takes the stance that the underlying foundation of  the American Protestant tradition is in fact a Gnostic one, which I found to be fascinating. He traces this back to Puritan times, then begins his history of economic Christianity. He does a very detailed job, including an explanation of Mormonism as the quintessential American religious experience. He does not neglect the modern evangelicals, and indeed the book begins with the popular Joel Osteen. If you are looking for a reason not to view Christianity with a  jaundiced eye, this book is not for you. He casts it, at least the American Protestant version, as not so much a spiritual pursuit as a thinly veiled economic and financial system that revolves around profits, power, and the creation of wealth.

     

  • River Road By Carol Goodman-A Review

    River Road By Carol Goodman-A Review

    Everyone has secrets, or so it seems in this novel by Carol Goodman. The main character, a professor who might or might not have a problem with alcohol, struggles to untangle both the web of deceit she finds herself caught up in and he rown knotty personal life. The book begins with a terrible accident, but Nan finds that nothing is what it appears to be. There are so many threads that could be followed in this plot that the novel loses its momentum and fails to follow any one of them successfully. It devolves into a college drug scenario (reefer madness, anyone?), pulls an unbelievable villain out of the blue, and throws in a town and gown romance for good measure. Don’t waste your time reading this one. I give it a firm thumbs down.

  • River Road By Carol Goodman-A Review

    River Road By Carol Goodman-A Review

    Everyone has secrets, or so it seems in this novel by Carol Goodman. The main character, a professor who might or might not have a problem with alcohol, struggles to untangle both the web of deceit she finds herself caught up in and he rown knotty personal life. The book begins with a terrible accident, but Nan finds that nothing is what it appears to be. There are so many threads that could be followed in this plot that the novel loses its momentum and fails to follow any one of them successfully. It devolves into a college drug scenario (reefer madness, anyone?), pulls an unbelievable villain out of the blue, and throws in a town and gown romance for good measure. Don’t waste your time reading this one. I give it a firm thumbs down.

  • My Thoughts On Trigger Warnings

    I went  college in the 70s. I was 16 at the time. It was a state college, though I suppose  I was in a somewhat sheltered environment, as I was admitted to the Honors College. It functioned autonomously at that time, acting as a small private Liberal Arts College within the larger university. We Honors students were regarded (if noticed at all) by the other students as odd and usually kept to ourselves, though we occasionally played to this image by doing such things as  running one of our own for king during the student elections. But we-and our professors-would have been appalled, had anyone suggested that “trigger warnings” were deemed necessary or appropriate for us or the greater university at large. This would have been so, b/c first and foremost, this was a place where we expected to be met with ideas that could disturb, upset, challenge, and turn our world upside down. That was the entire POINT of coming to college! Second, we were part of the world now and didn’t want to be sheltered. We saw ourselves as emerging adults and wanted to engage with what we saw as important. (An example of this was our petition for our own dorm. It was rejected b/c the university had a policy of not allowing mixed-gender housing at the time, unless you were married. So we simply moved off-campus en masse and rented our own apartment building. We had contemplated a group marriage to satisfy the university requirement but decided to do this instead.) When I went to grad school, no-one said anything to me about what I could say in the classes I taught. It was assumed that I would teach them in a professional manner. Later, when I was a Phil prof, again, no-one said a word about the content of my classes. I would have laughed in the face of anyone who did so.

    I think that universities have to give their students a place where they can flourish academically and intellectually in physical safety. I AM against students carrying guns on campus. And I’m all for universities attempting to provide for their students’ emotional well-being. BUT a university is not a high school. Students have to realize that by attending a university, they are stepping out into the world and so will thereby be subject to things that might offend/upset/disturb or worse. Part of being a student is learning how to deal with that. It’s called growing up. Universities, with their many resources, offer wonderful places to do that. But that trigger warnings should be thought necessary? Are students really that much more sensitive and tender than they were back in the 70s? Or are these trigger warnings sent out in letters designed to placate anxious parents?

  • Fallout By Harry Turtledove-A Review

    Fallout By Harry Turtledove-A Review

    The second book in his alternative history series featuring the Cold War has a United States where Truman is President, Stalin rules the U.S.S.R., and atomic bombs fly, as these two superpowers vie in a seemingly never-ending struggle. Europe is in ruins, as is part of the U.S. west coast from atomic bomb strikes. Moscow is no more, but Stalin escaped. And in Korea, where all this began, Mao’s army and allies fight the few U.S. forces left there without hope of reinforcement, since Washington is concentrating on the Russian front. As always, this book offers a gripping look at the war from several different characters. As we follow them through the books, we get a idea of life from the Russian, American, and German soldier’s point of view. Truman, also one of the wearied actors, reflects on the awful consequences of his use of atomic weapons but goes on  nevertheless as he leads the country though perilous times.The Hot War has just gotten hotter, and this book will gladden Turtledove and alt-history fans everywhere!

  • Fallout By Harry Turtledove-A Review

    Fallout By Harry Turtledove-A Review

    The second book in his alternative history series featuring the Cold War has a United States where Truman is President, Stalin rules the U.S.S.R., and atomic bombs fly, as these two superpowers vie in a seemingly never-ending struggle. Europe is in ruins, as is part of the U.S. west coast from atomic bomb strikes. Moscow is no more, but Stalin escaped. And in Korea, where all this began, Mao’s army and allies fight the few U.S. forces left there without hope of reinforcement, since Washington is concentrating on the Russian front. As always, this book offers a gripping look at the war from several different characters. As we follow them through the books, we get a idea of life from the Russian, American, and German soldier’s point of view. Truman, also one of the wearied actors, reflects on the awful consequences of his use of atomic weapons but goes on  nevertheless as he leads the country though perilous times.The Hot War has just gotten hotter, and this book will gladden Turtledove and alt-history fans everywhere!

  • The Burkini Ban

    The Burkini Ban

    I’m conflicted about the burkini issue, because it raises some questions for me. My first impulse is to say, of course, women should be allowed to wear burkinis. I believe in freedom of religion, even though I’m an atheist, and the idea that women appearing fully covered is offensive strikes me as patently absurd. Do we then ban men wearing wetsuits? (No, because they carry no weighted meaning.) And this also seems another instance of men once again making rules that target women , which I detest on feminist grounds. But then I thought more about this. Burkinis and burqas are themselves a gender-imposed restriction that has no male equivalent. I would say, at risk of offending my Muslim readers, that they are just as much an instance of men trying to control the actions of women as the bans that restricted them. So, while I wish to support religious freedom and I would not support bans of burkinis, I can’t say that I’m a fan of the garment. I’ve had Muslim friends who wore the hijab explain their reasoning. It makes sense in their worldview. I just don’t share it. I think that patriarchal religions like Islam, Judaism, and Christianity can in their fundamentalist forms be especially damaging to women. The burkini debate highlights for me why I am an atheist and resolutely secular