On Language: Are You Uninterested or Disinterested?

1. If you were on trial for murder, would you rather the judge were:

A. Uninterested

B. Disinterested

2. If you were giving a speech and you saw most of your audience yawning or nodding off or staring at their smart phones, would you conclude your audience was:

A. Uninterested

B. Disinterested

The answer to Question 1 is B, Disinterested. The answer to Question 2 is A, Uninterested.

Here’s why:

Disinterested means  unbiased, unprejudiced, impartial, neutral, nonpartisan. All qualities you would want in a judge trying your case. 

Uninterested means unconcerned, bored, distant, uninvolved, aloof. Exactly what you would not want in the audience to your speech.

Here’s the problem:

Increasingly, Disinterested has overtaken Uninterested as the universal word for unconcerned, bored, aloof, and for unbiased, unprejudiced, impartial, as in “He was disinterested in the magazine article.” In this example, it’s possible the person was taking a neutral, impartial stance on the magazine article, but it’s much more probable he was just bored by it.

Some dictionaries have given up and are now accepting disinterest and uninterest as meaning the same. Do not follow their lead! Stand up for precision in using these two words. Use Disinterested when you’re standing before a judge. Use Uninterested when you’re standing in front of a bored audience.

You’ll be a language pro.

Do Animals Have Souls, Part Two: How Can People Be So Cruel?

Kitten roasted alive in an oven.

Greyhound repeatedly thrown against a wall because it did not win a race.

Neglected horses in a pasture slowly starving with hooves so overgrown they can barely walk.

Cat beaten to death with a pole and video shown on  the internet.

Young  pitbulls used as bait to teach older pitbulls to fight.

Mother cat and kittens tied in a sack and thrown in the river.

Chihuahua dropped from the top of a multi-story parking garage by teenage boys, just to see if it would survive the fall.

Orcas kept as captive entertainers in sea parks.

Elephant kept chained in a roadside zoo.

Elderly dog left at animal shelter because family now wants a puppy.

Family cat left behind when family moves away.

These are just a few of the things people do to animals. The list could have been a lot longer. How can people be so cruel?

One reason: We don’t even agree on what constitutes animal abuse. Some would say all the things on the list are animal abuse. Some would not, arguing that elephants and orcas enjoy performing for humans, that pitbulls are born fighters, that the owner of the starving horses had grown senile or was having financial difficulties or had just forgotten about the horses.

Some might even say the most horrific abuse examples on this list are okay, because animals don’t have the intelligence, the self-awareness, and the feelings that people do, and therefore God gave man dominion over the animals to use as he wished. After all, it’s only a cat, or a dog, or a chicken, or whatever.

Whether animals have souls, as the title of this post asks, is as debatable as whether we have souls. We do know, though, that as human beings we have intelligence, self-awareness, and feelings. There is more and more evidence that animals share these same qualities with us, that there is even a bond between us, based on our shared existence on this planet Earth.

Those who don’t believe animals share our “human” qualities just may be uninformed and still guided by the stereotypes about animals they learned in childhood. They aren’t deliberately cruel to animals; they just don’t think of animals as having the same emotional wants and needs as we do.

These are the people who may accept using animals for medical testing, or raising them for food in cramped conditions on factory farms, or having them perform for humans in zoos and parks, or turning in a pet at an animal shelter because it is no longer convenient to have it in the family.

And then there are the real, true abusers. The people who get joy out of torturing, killing, and abandoning animals. They abuse animals because they are dead emotionally and because making an animal suffer at least makes them feel something.

So maybe you don’t care that much about animals, but here’s a reason you should care about their abusers: people who abuse animals may go on to abuse people–like maybe their wives and children.

My thinking on animals has evolved over time, as readers of my earlier posts Do Animals Have Souls? Part One and Who Keeps Abusers from Abusing Again? already know. My thinking evolved because of all the companion animals who have shared my life and the shelter animals I have encountered as a volunteer and the examples I have seen, heard, or read about of animal intelligence, emotion, and bonding among animals and between animals and their humans.

My newspaper earlier this year carried an especially poignant story of a mother animal feeling grief:

A female orca whale in a pod roaming the Pacific Ocean between Vancouver, B.C. and San Juan Island gave birth to a calf that was the first live birth in the pod since 2015. This calf lived only about half an hour. For 17 days the mother orca carried her dead calf with her “in an unprecedented act of mourning,” according to whale researchers following the pod.

The mother would balance the baby on her head or push it along with her nose, and retrieved it each time it began to sink in the water. This made it difficult for the mother to keep up with her pod, but she would not let her baby go. Finally, after 17 days, she did release the dead calf to sink in the ocean.

How could anyone seeing this whale mother’s behavior deny she was grieving her dead baby, just as a human mother would?

How could anyone witnessing a tortured animal howling in pain or a victim of past torture trembling in fear deny that animals suffer physically and psychologically from ill treatment, just as humans do?

At this point it is appropriate to recall the wisdom of Charles Darwin:

There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel  pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.  

Charles Darwin

I’m  with Charles Darwin. Animals and humans have too much in common for animals to be treated as commodities or objects of neglect and abuse.  All humans and all animals deserve respect.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Joy and Peace, and may you always respect and be loved by the animals in your life.

Marjorie Beck

Introversion: The Third Leg of My Three-Legged Stool

It is high time I finished the third leg of my three-legged stool. I wrote about the first leg, Depression (“What’s With That Blog Title?”) on May 9; I wrote about the second leg, Shyness and Anxiety (“My Three Legged Stool”) on June 1. I intended to finish the job long before now. Life intervened.

With apologies to my many followers waiting with bated breath for the third leg of my stool:

The third leg of my stool is Introversion. Here’s what I wrote May 9:

“Depression, shyness, and anxiety are disabilities to be managed. Introversion is not a disability; it is an innate part of  who I am and is to be understood and embraced.” 

I use the term Introversion as the psychiatrist Karl Jung (1875-1961) defined it in his seminal work Psychological Types (1921).  He identified three innate aspects of everyone’s personality:

• How you get your energy for living (Introversion, Extraversion)
• How you take in information (Sensing, Intuition)
• How you make decisions (Thinking, Feeling)

In the 1940s, two followers of Jung, Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers, identified a fourth aspect of personality:

• How you relate to the world (Judging, Perceiving)

They developed an instrument called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to help people identify their innate psychological types. Today the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one of the most commonly used and best regarded psychological instruments in the world.

I am going to cover here only the first aspect Jung identified, Introversion and Extraversion, because that is the third leg of my stool.

Introversion does not mean you are shy; Extraversion does not mean you are outgoing. There are shy Extroverts and outgoing Introverts.

As Jung, Briggs, and Myers identified Introversion and Extraversion, they are two different ways (or preferences) of getting your life’s energy. You are born with these preferences. They are both good ways of being. You do not change your basic preferences, but you can, at least to some extent, change behaviors associated with them.

Simply put:

Extraverts draw their energy from engaging with other people and their environment.

Introverts draw their energy from within themselves.

To identify which preference you have, you could ask yourself:

At the end of a hard, stressful day, would you rather:

1. Go out and unwind with friends at a bar,                         OR
2. Go home, pour a glass of wine, and enjoy a quiet evening with a good book.

Here’s another situation:

You are at a large party, and you know only a few of the people there. Would you probably:

1. Circulate around the room to meet and talk with new people,      OR
2. Stay close to the people you know and talk with them.

If you are an Extravert, you probably would pick the first answer to both questions. If you are an Introvert, you probably would choose the second answer.

I say “probably” because for some people those choices might be reversed. Remember, there are shy Extraverts and outgoing Introverts.

I am a shy Introvert. I get my energy from within myself, and in social situations I’m  more comfortable with people I know than with strangers.

Introversion and Extraversion even can be detected in how we move our bodies.

Extraverts, drawing their energy from the people and environment around them, tend to move more than Introverts, Extroverts may tap a foot or drum fingers while sitting, or shift position frequently, or get up and stretch or move around the room. as if they are extending feelers out to their surroundings.

Introverts, who draw their energy from within, usually sit more quietly and for longer periods without much body movement. Introverts also may smile less than Extroverts.

In the same vein, Extraverts tend to listen more expressively than Introverts. An Extravert listening to someone might lean forward, smile, give head nods, say “I see,” or give other facial or body signals that he or she is hearing and reacting to the speaker.

An Introvert may do little or none of that, leaving the speaker wondering what the hell the listener is thinking about what the speaker is saying.

Being introverted, I tend to be a stone-faced listener. That can be a problem with people who don’t know me, and was, early in my city government career.

My boss was the city manager, and I had a lot of contact with the seven city councilors. I had cordial relationships with most of the councilors, but there was one, a very extroverted person, who did not like me at all. The city manager, who understood me very well, took me aside one day and did me the favor of explaining the reason for this councilor’s dislike.

It was my stone-faced listening. The councilor would talk to me and I would give no visible reaction, which the councilor interpreted as indifference or hostility.  (Truth was, such an extroverted, dominant personality intimidated me. And when I’m intimidated, I do shut down.)

 From then on, when I talked with that councilor, I gave lots of listening cues. I leaned forward, I nodded, I said “uh-huh,” and “oh, I see.” Things gradually improved between us. Later, when I ended up working on a project for the councilor that especially called on my skill set, we became friends.

I will always be grateful for my boss’s intervention early in my career on an aspect of  introverted behavior I needed to change. It was some of the best coaching I ever got. I continued working on my listening skills, and in time active, extroverted listening became second nature to me.

This is an illustration that your preference doesn’t change, but your behavior can. I was and always will  be an Introvert, getting my energy from within. But I can change introverted behavior when it’s not working for me.

Growing up, I knew nothing about Introversion or Extraversion. I knew nothing about depression. I did know I was shy and anxious, and that wasn’t a good thing. I knew I liked to be alone a lot, and I thought that  was a good thing. I still do. But now I understand that I do better if I’m not alone too much, as I was too often in the past. Some of my worst bouts of depression came when I lived alone. I’m living with a partner now, and I need that.

Learning about my Introversion also helped me understand why I had difficult relationships wi th my parents when I was growing up. My mother and father were Extraverts; my older sister and I were Introverts. My mother and I clashed a lot over privacy: As an Introvert I wanted lots of it. As an Extravert and a mother she felt I should have little of it. There was a lot of drawer snooping and pocket searching and diary reading that led to anger and raised voices.

This Introversion-Extraversion example of privacy attitudes is extreme, because there were a lot of other reasons my mother and I clashed on a lot of things.  It is true, though, that Introverts and Extraverts may have different ideas about privacy.

Introverts tend to be bad at spreading gossip. That is because If you tell something to an Introvert, he or she  may consider the message intended for him or her alone, not necessarily for anyone else.  Extraverts hearing the same message may consider it interesting information to be shared with others.

I have been burned by this difference several times, talking to a friend about something I considered personal and confidential, only to discover later that the friend told other people. I considered this a breach of confidence. The friend, for whatever reason, did not. I learned from those experiences that if I talk to someone about something I consider private and confidential, I need to say that.

I was not able to embrace the strengths of my Introversion when I was younger because it was so pathologically entangled with my depression and shyness. Now that I understand my depression and shyness, I love being an Introvert. For me, it’s the only way to be.

 

Thank you for reading this post. If you like what you read, you can follow my blog and get notification when I do a new post.

Marjorie Beck

 

 

Why I Hate China

I’ve lived in Lane County, Oregon for 44 years, far longer than I lived anywhere else, and I’ve lived in its county seat Eugene for 26 years. Since the 1970s, Oregon has been known as a “progressive” state, and Eugene has been known as an even more “progressive” city. The last Hippie Refuge, some call it. If it’s good for the environment, we Eugeneans latch on to it.

Thus you probably would not be surprised to learn that Eugeneans have been recyclers since forever, and that Lane County has been promoting recycling since almost forever. In Eugene, we had curbside comingled recycling for just about everything–paper, glass, metal, plastic. The only restriction was it had to be clean when it went in the bin. It was recycle heaven.

I say “we had” and “It was” because there is now a big exception to our recycling options: Plastic. 

It seems China has been our market for plastic recycling, and China has gotten sick and tired of all the dirty, food-contaminated plastic we’ve been sending them. So they’ve stopped accepting most of it.

This applies not just to Eugene and Lane County, but nationwide. Now we in Eugene and Lane County have to throw almost all our plastic bottles and tubs and whatnot in the garbage, which goes to the landfill, which takes up more room on this poor old tired planet and leaches all kinds of nastiness into our groundwater. Every time I throw a plastic yogurt tub in the trash I feel like an earth murderer.

Actually, I’m not mad at China for this. (Although, given our quasi-adversarial history with China, could it be a kind of environmental warfare, the newest development after cyber hacking?) But giving China the benefit of the doubt, I don’t blame them for not accepting our dirty smelly plastics; I blame the lazy slobs in the U.S. who can’t be bothered to follow directions and clean out their ketchup and mustard jars.

Apologies, China. I don’t really hate you. But I sure wish you’d start accepting our plastics again.

 

Thanks for reading my blog. If you like my posts, follow me and you’ll get notices of new ones.

Marjorie Beck

 

Some Post-Father’s Day Thoughts About My Father

Before June ends, I’d like to write about my father. This will be a long post.

I didn’t think much of my father when I was growing up. I wanted a strong father, and he was a weak one. I considered him weak because my mother was always the dominant parent. I considered him uncultured because, even though he was a college graduate, he sounded like an uneducated hick to me with his “them old boys” and other such countryisms.

I didn’t find him particularly handsome;  I thought he looked like Dagwood, minus the hair shocks. Also like Dagwood, he fell asleep easily and a lot. I was mostly ashamed of him.

Here’s some truth I’ve since learned about my father.

He was an alcoholic, although he was not drinking by the time I came along. He did not drink while he courted my mother, so she did not know she was marrying an alcoholic. She found out quickly after they were married when my father would go on week-end benders with friends from work. Since I never saw my father drinking, I did not know about his alcoholism until my mother explained, long after he died, what their marriage was like while he was drinking. That made me understood a little better why she was the strong one in the family.

My father was born in Oklahoma, but his father’s people came from Tennessee. His grandfather had fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. His mother was virulently racist. So my father inherited the usual southern baggage of racism and white privilege. He used the N-word. I wasn’t bothered much by that then because there was a lot of racism in Oklahoma, and I heard the N-word a lot. But I never heard him say it with malice, and I never heard him speak unkindly to black people, or for that matter, to anyone.

He was, in fact, a gentle, caring man. He loved my mother and my sister and me dearly, but I did not see or appreciate that at the time. He spanked me a few times for transgressions, but only because my mother made him do it, and I could tell his heart was not in it.

As a child, I saw how he cried when our cocker spaniel Lucky died. Much later, in 1968,  my ex-husband and I eloped to get married after completing our masters degrees in English at the University of Oklahoma. I was 24; he was 25. My mother was with my older sister at that time, helping after the birth of my sister’s second daughter. My father was at home. I called my mother first to tell her I was married, and you would have thought I had said I just robbed a bank and killed the tellers. She chewed me out royally.

I then called my father at home, half-expecting more of the same. His first words were “Well, bless your heart.” I almost cried. I wanted to kiss him for that kindness. My mother’s love was conditional; my father’s was unlimited.

He had a fine mind. He was an avid reader. As a geologist, he knew and taught us about  rocks.  Hearing his down-home speech as a child, I dismissed him as a rube. Later, once at a summer music camp, once in college, I received two letters from him, admonishments for things I had failed to do or had done and shouldn’t have. I knew my mother made him write,  but those letters were an awakening.

He had beautiful, strong handwriting. His grammar, spelling, and punctuation were impeccable. And he knew how to deliver a scolding that was firm, yet did not make me feel attacked as a person or unloved.  My mother could have learned a lot from him.

Those letters were the beginning of my reassessment of him.

Like me, my father had depression. His depression did not manifest in sadness or a need for social isolation. On the contrary, he was usually a sunny, gregarious person. He enjoyed people. He laughed easily. He liked a story or a joke.

His depression was about a lifelong low energy that manifested in difficulty staying with projects to completion and a lack of ambition that led him away from activity and toward the couch or chair for a nap. I can’t count the number of hobbies he took up and then dropped. I can’t count the number of times I saw him nodding off in a chair.

Nodding off on the job was what got him fired. He was a petroleum geologist, starting at Sinclair Oil Company as an oil scout just out of college, and ending as a desk geologist in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Sinclair was the only company he had ever worked for, and he was laid off, actually, rather than fired. The oil business in Oklahoma was in an economic downturn. Sinclair had to let people go. My father had been sleeping at his desk for years, and they had tolerated it in the good times, but they couldn’t afford to be so tolerant in a business downturn.  Sinclair laid him off just before he would have qualified for a pension.

This happened while I was in high school. We were living in the university town of Norman, just south of Oklahoma City where my father commuted daily to work. After he was laid off he kept going to Oklahoma City every day for several months before he admitted to my mother he’d been laid off. A combination of wounded pride and cowardice, I suppose.

After that my father managed to scrape together a few temporary jobs, but he never worked full-time again. Our mother’s teaching job at University School  was our only reliable income.  Money was tight for us from then on. A big strain on an already strained family.

I’m happy to say there is a happy ending to the story. My mother was asked to join the faculty at a small college in Chickasha, not far from Norman. She got better pay, and a title. My father discovered, and stuck to, the joys of vegetable gardening. In time he qualified for social security.  Then my mother retired with a nice pension and her social security, and they became more comfortable financially. They bought a small RV, started exploring the country, and gradually fell in love again.

In 1981, at age 75, my father died suddenly in an RV campground in Jackson Hole, Wyoming  He and my mother had just visited me and my then-husband in Oregon before they left for Jackson Hole. It was a good visit. They were obviously happy. When I got the phone call from my mother she was crying, and I cried, too.

He had been a good man, and now I knew it.

Growing up I thought my father and I had nothing in common. Now I realize how I am like him:

• I got his big, blue eyes.
• I got his love of rocks and geology.
• I got his love of reading.
• I got his intellect and curiosity.

These are all good things.

I also got:

• his depression gene, and specifically, his low energy
• his difficulty sustaining interest in projects once started
• his genes for alcohol and other addictions. He smoked cigarettes most of his life until he finally had to quit because of pneumonia and emphysema. I started sneaking his cigarettes when I was thirteen. I smoked on and off for the next 50 years, and I lost track of the times I tried to quit before I finally did it.

These are not-so-good things.

But all in all: Thank you, Daddy. You were a sweet and gentle soul, and I’m proud to be your daughter.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Marjorie Beck

You Can Say Something Sucks Now

I’m showing my age. Once upon a time the word “suck” was shorthand for something you weren’t to say in polite society.

In my high school and college days, I was very much into folk music. I subscribed to Sing Out! Magazine, must-reading for folkies back then. There were many folk music album reviews.

In October 1966, Simon and Garfunkel released their brilliant album, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Not really a folk album, but for some reason it was reviewed in Sing Out! I thought the review sucked, and decided to write a letter to Sing Out! saying so. I considered myself rather a social rebel at that time, but being shy, I rebelled mostly in writing.

The letter was short and to the point. I don’t remember the reviewer’s name now, so I can’t quote the letter exactly. Here it is.

     Dear Sing Out!

Your review of  Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme sucks. Perhaps Mr. (reviewer} just doesn’t understand poetry?

Well, they published the letter. But it read, in publication:

     Your review of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme . . . .  Perhaps Mr. (reviewer) just doesn’t understand poetry?

Such language delicacy wouldn’t happen now. People say something sucks all the time. I still say it sometimes. People say “fuck” all the time now, too. I say it sometimes, but only with people I know won’t be offended. I don’t consider “suck” and “fuck” my always go-to words, as many people seem to these days. Those words are meant to have shock value, and I think they just get boring when they’re used all the time.

Well, times change. As I said, I’m showing my age.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Marjorie Beck

 

Flawless Documents

I have not posted for a while because I have been setting up my new business, Flawless Documents Proofreading and Editing. I invite you to visit my website, http://www.flawlessdocs.com, if you would like to learn more.  I serve clients in the Eugene-Springfield, Oregon area and online nationwide.

Here is one of my local business ads:

Flawless Documents Proofreading and Editing

Marjorie Beck, Eugene, Oregon

I help you create Flawless Documents: Letters, Manuscripts, Term Papers, College Application Essays, Resumes, Dissertations, Family Histories, Memoirs, Whatever. I love to work with your words.

I can work with online text editors, old fashioned typewriting, handwriting. (I taught 7th and 9th grade English classes; I can read just about anybody’s handwriting.)

I am a meticulous proofreader and editor. At minimum, I will guarantee your document is free from grammar, punctuation, spelling, and word use errors. If you feel your writing needs a little more help, I will edit as much or as little as you want. I enjoy helping non-native English speakers with their writing.

I charge $20/hr, with a minimum of $20, and a 20% first-time discount for new clients. For really long documents, I will negotiate a maximum charge. I guarantee my work. If you don’t like my editing, you don’t pay.

Call 541-913-1370 or email marjoriebeck@flawlessdocuments.net to tell me how I can help you with your writing. I also invite you to visit my website, http://www.flawlessdocs.com.

Thanks for reading my blog. 

Marjorie Beck

 

My Three-Legged Stool

My depression is one leg of a three-legged stool. The second leg is shyness and anxiety, and the third is introversion.  Depression, shyness, and anxiety are disabilities to be managed. Introversion is not a disability; it is an innate part of  who I am and is to be understood and embraced.

Today’s post is about shyness and anxiety.

Growing up I was morbidly shy and anxious.

How shy and anxious were you?

 I was so shy . . .

When I was a Camp Fire Girl in Seminole, Oklahoma and it came to time to go door to door selling candy, I would stand on the front porch and pretend to ring the doorbell, wait a few seconds, and leave.

Later, in Norman, Oklahoma my mother gave me a coupon from a beauty salon that offered a shampoo, haircut, and coloring all for $20. Quite a bargain, and money was tight for us in those days.

At the salon, the stylist gave me the shampoo and coloring but not the cut, and I was too shy to ask why no cut. When the shop then charged me $60 instead of $20, I meekly paid the $60 and was too shy to say I was supposed to get a discount. My mother had a hissy fit when I got home, because it was her $60.

When I was in a store looking for something, I would scour the store aisle by aisle rather than ask a clerk for help. If a clerk did ask, I would say “I’m just looking, thanks.” Anything to avoid talking to a stranger.

In a room full of strangers I would stand in a corner and hope not to be noticed.

I was so anxious. . .

I would lie rather than admit I’d made a mistake,

or done something bad,

or didn’t know something,

or couldn’t do something.

I feared I would appear bad or ridiculous or inadequate,

and quite likely provoke my mother’s wrath.

Hooray for Paxil!

When I started taking medication for depression in 1997, my doctor prescribed Paxil, which was developed initially for social anxiety, and later prescribed for depression. It proved a lucky choice for me.

A reaction many people have when they start depression medication is “I’m the me I always wanted to be!”

And so it was for me.

In addition to working on my depression, Paxil started eliminating my social anxiety. This was an effect I had not anticipated, and it surprised and delighted me.

I started asking for help in stores. I started cheerfully admitting  it when I didn’t know something or had done something wrong. I even sometimes made small talk with strangers. An amazing transformation.

Being who I always knew I could be is so much fun.

So that’s the second leg of my three-legged stool. My shyness and anxiety reinforced my depression in lethal ways. Now my shyness and anxiety and depression still show themselves from time to time; they are, after all, thought to be at least partly genetic. Medication alone doesn’t fix everything.

But for me medication plays a big part in the way I can now manage these two legs of  my three-legged stool. And, as Martha Stewart would say, that’s a good thing.

Still to come: The introversion leg of my stool. Stay tuned.

Thanks for reading my blog.

Marjorie Beck

Twitter, Hatefulness, and Karma

In this internet age of instant communication, it seems everyone from individuals to politicians to news organizations uses Twitter now.  I wish Twitter  had never been invented. Sometimes I wish the internet had never been invented.

No, not really. I think the internet is a marvelous addition to our lives with benefits too many to enumerate. I use it daily. Yet it is also an agent for great harm, such as identity theft and election tampering, to name just two.

My greatest beef with Twitter is that it too often brings out not the better angels of our nature, but the worst. It is easy to spew venom at the world while masking your identity behind an anonymous handle. It’s a safe way to say hateful things you don’t have the courage to say otherwise. I wish all social media sites required posters to use their real names. Maybe it would promote a little more civility in online discourse, which would be a very, very good thing.

Of course, some people do say hateful things on Twitter using their real names. I feel sorry for them. I think they must hate themselves a little bit to lash out so hatefully at others. I think they are building pretty bad karma for themselves.

In closing, I wish you good karma and civility in all your interactions. May you always remember what goes around, comes around.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Marjorie Beck

Politics

When I introduced my blog I said politics was one the topics I might be writing about. Well, I mostly  lied. I think the current political climate in our nation is too toxic and painful to write about. I would like to offer more positive posts. I will, however, write about our  political history from time to time, a topic I find intensely interesting .

     History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

This adage has been popularly attributed to Mark Twain,  but there  is little evidence he actually said it. Whoever said it, it is very, very true.

Thank you for reading my blog.

Marjorie Beck