Checking the Internet for an old friend

 Today I was cleaning out a drawer and found a stack of papers with old addresses.  In the stack was a 1987 letter from a friend I was intensely involved with in 1986. She lived in Upper Arlington, and although our children didn't date or even run in the same circle, they knew each other and went to the same high school. She had moved to Texas, so it was a catch-up letter with a 22 cent stamp and she promised to stay in touch.  Obviously, we didn't, because I hadn't thought of her in years.  So I of course turned to the internet.  She had a double surname, hyphenated with her husband's, which made the search easier. I found her professional activities and position in several places, the last being Washington. She was listed as a marriage counselor and other specialties, although I don't think she was a professional when I knew her. I recall she was getting some sort of accreditation for addiction counseling.  I looked at her photo (sort of looked like her), and in the final site I found she was using only her maiden name.  Still, I can't imagine she's still working at age 83--I don't know how old some of these web sites are, but the last one I could find had a 2020 blog which referred to the pandemic and the mental problems it was causing.  These problems for which one might need counseling were listed under her name:

Addictions
Abandonment and Rejection Issues
Abuse – Sexual, Emotional or Physicial [sic]
Adult Children of Alcoholics
Alcohol Abuse
Anger Management
Anxiety and Panic
Bipolar Disorder
Depression
Codependency
Family of Origin Issues
Inaction/Indecision
Life Issues/Transitions
Low Self Worth
Martial and Relationship Issues
Obsessive/Compulsive Issues
Parenting Issues
Post Traumatic Stress
Spiritual Issues
Stress Management
Trauma
Workplace Issues

This is not the kind of work I would want to take home every night--not at 83.  I'll keep looking.  I did find an e-mail address.

I also found a letter from 1983 from a friend who'd been through a divorce.  Too bad I couldn't have gotten them together--the counselor and the grieving ex-husband.

Jeanellen grieves the loss of a friend

This happens far more often than it should—bigotry and intolerance in politics. She writes:

“Feeling a heavy heart tonight as I may have lost a friend due to politics. Had dinner with a few friends that came into town who I haven’t seen in years. They all are very liberal, but one in particular looked at me & said, “Please tell me you would not vote for Trump again”. I was trying to keep it light but it just degenerated with her bringing up the abortion debate and acting like I was utterly ridiculous for believing that life begins at conception.

This is a person I like and respected who always agreed to disagree with me. Even though I was calm & respectful during the discussion she was barely speaking to me at the end.

This is not the first time this has happened and I really avoid bringing up politics but the media has poisoned the waters and makes people in the left feel like they have the right to take the stance of righteousness and unfettered disgust towards those who don’t agree.

How did we get here?”

If you think Trump divided your family, abortion is worse

From a Facebook acquaintance:

“Up until this week, we have navigated the differences in political positions within the family without major upsets. We have weathered liberal children, weathered acceptance of a gay son and his partner (love the partner as he’s a great guy). However, this week, the position young women are taking “triggered” deeply held beliefs about the unborn child. We both support abortion up until a point of viability, but not after. Our daughter reposted something after the Alabama law was signed which essentially said: get over yourself, forget what you learned in church, they are only cells.

My response first said that I disagreed with the Alabama law as eight weeks is far too son for some women to even realize they are pregnant and miscarriages are quite common in first trimester. Should have stopped there but I didn’t.

I said do not be dismissive of other people’s beliefs. I went own to say that I don’t consider the fetus just cells when it rolls, kicks, punches, sucks it’s thumb, and moves away from the ultrasound wand. Next, is where I went a step too far in saying, but believing, if you can dismiss this, I question your humanity. I would love to post the exact wording but I have been blocked, unfriendly, and she has enlisted her brother and her sister’s husband to do the same. This is my step daughter who is 30. We have had a very close relationship for 20 years. She has considered me her mom over her natural mother because mom is unstable.

I am a bit angry and disappointed. She’s most likely hurt (mom would have never said these things to her). Yet, other than the unfortunate choice of words, women celebrating their abortions have really set me off as it is not something to celebrate. I think of all the couples who want a child and cannot get pregnant and/or carry an infant to term, and I feel for them at the callousness of someone dismissing the fetus as “just cells”. “

Trump Derangement Syndrome among Democrats

I received this e-mail from a “friend” of 65 years.  She was writing my cousin and not content with just gossiping, she sent me a copy! I don’t understand what bitterness is behind trying to turn family members against each other. It’s evidence of the corrosive affect Trump Derangement Syndrome has had on an otherwise intelligent, nice person—and it’s definitely out there, destroying friendships, the work place and family relationships.   But it’s all coming from the Democrats--and they've fallen to new lows, as this hate filled e-mail demonstrates. I follow the WalkAway Facebook page which I occasionally re-post here, and it is shocking to read, especially from the gay community and minorities, the kind of hate being directed at them by Democrats because they support Trump.

This was my transgression (besides voting for Trump—my last choice out of an excellent group of candidates who has accomplished far more than I could have hoped for). I sent her a photo of a dress bought with the gift card from my daughter, and of my “new” $3 dress I bought at the Discovery Shop (cancer resale shop)—I guess I won’t send her the one of my blue and purple Coldwater Creek blouse I bought at Volunteers of America for $6. Don’t want to flaunt my wealth.

  “Cousin Norma has been sending her old classmates and most of her relatives photos of her in dresses! She send new phtos of herself all the time..She does not have enough to do and  too damn much money. She works on herself 24/7 whne she isn't blogging her right wing crap..I feel so sorry for her. I know we change as we get older-I for sure, am not the same girl I was at 18-thak God..But to chance to such self-centered me-me me-that type of change...some say she was always like that maybe she was but it now is unacceptable for friendship... It is all for show...I feel sorry for Joanne and Karen and Julie.. and Norma's Trump shut down the government in a brat fit...and take off on Romney when he gets it! Keep in touch...we need to support each other until this guy is gone...think of it-if he lasts two more year what can he still do! Scares the crap out of us!

She's scared of what Trump can do in 2 more years?  Like a better economy than I can remember (I made more in TIAA-CREF first quarter than I ever did working), lower unemployment for blacks and minorities in the history of keeping statistics, protecting our borders (although I think Obama was called the Deporter in Chief), speaking up for the unborn, uncovering the muck and evil in the deep state swamp, de-nuking North Korea, outstanding court appointments,  establishing fair trade agreements, lowering our taxes, exposing the hypocrisy and nastiness of the Democrat Party which has now become the Socialist Party, and standing up to the Mueller coup and crowd.

 Economic expansions don't die of old age, Ben Bernanke said, they get murdered, and this won't last.  And she will be dancing in the streets if there is another recession because it will hurt Trump. That's how much Democrats hate.

“ 

That’s hard to do at Christmas

Guess which party the splitting partner or friend or family member belonged to. Exactly.

“Many people with divergent perspectives from their partners have not been able to make it work in the Trump era. A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed in early 2017 found that in the months following Trump’s election win, 13 percent of 6,426 participants had cut ties with a friend or family member over political differences. This past summer, another survey of 1,000 people found that a third declared the same.”

New York Magazine, November 27. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/donald-trump-is-destroying-my-marriage.html?

I warn you, this article sounds like something out of “The Onion,” and you almost can’t believe women can be this stupid over political differences, or in the one case, because her husband had less enthusiasm for being so ridiculous (neither liked Trump, but he didn’t go crazy).  But then you remember the 1970s when we discovered consciousness raising, and the late 80s when we discovered menopause, and it all starts to sound like just a bad movie that’s been re-made too many times.  One woman admitted she was obsessing, posting on social media, not speaking civilly to her husband and after counseling remembered she’d been date-raped and this was a way to take back power.  Oh puleeze!

The most interesting couple (using their real names, perhaps because of their professions) was a life coach and couples therapist. The woman was a Republican and the man a Democrat, but until the 2016 election it never came up.  Then the sparks when she decided to vote for Trump. I’m just saying, she was the far more reasonable and respectful of the two about their differences.

Nothing ruins a relationship like politics

On Facebook, Christopher Buckley writes:

“It has long been my dour and sour view that you don't get to make good friends later in life because they don't have the same background or share the same experiences as the ones you've had with old friends... Well, my best friends died. (From living large. We should all be so lucky.)

Other friends, shockingly, have unfriended me because I believe in reason and they, passionately, in unthinking madness.

But I will tell you now that I was very wrong about what the length of a friendship means.

I am very glad to know everyone I have met here on this platform along the way and on my life's journey...

We expire... That's the deal.

So fill your barrels as you sail on... Life is a continuum... (funny if you know me IRL) and we will be cruising these waters until the end! XOXO

Phone etiquette

Playing board games

Sometimes I'm really surprised at how "old" some of our problems are. Like face to face interactions. I wrote this at my coffee blog 9 years ago.
----------------------------------
I had the most delightful, surprising conversation with a clerk at Panera's this morning.

"Did you have a nice Christmas?" (me)

"Yes, we had a wonderful time? And you?" (him, 20-something, but looks younger)

"Yes, we did."

"Plans for New Year's?"

"Well, I'll just be doing things with the family. We're going to try out the board games we got Christmas."

"You mean, real board games, not computerized games?"

"Oh yes. My wife got Scattergories and my sister got the new Monopoly. Have you seen it? And I got (couldn't understand what he said)."

Imagine. An evening with family playing board games.

Brothers, Sisters, and Technology

A relatively recent development that psychological scientists must account for is the role of technology in helping siblings stay in contact years after they leave the family nest. . .

 

Sixty-three percent of siblings in the study said they were friends on Facebook, according to Conger, and those siblings reported more frequency in sibling contact, greater levels of advice-seeking behavior, and higher ratings of relationship satisfaction compared with siblings who had no Facebook contact. Siblings participating in the study also used other forms of technology to keep in touch, including phone calls (51%), texting (20%), and email (9%). Compared with other modes of communication, phone contact between siblings was associated with greater advice-seeking and better psychological adjustment and overall health outcomes.

“Siblings matter, and they are in a unique, lifelong, dynamic relationship,” Conger said.

 

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/the-many-flavors-of-relationships

Love and relationships

The best way to celebrate St. Valentine's Day is to attend church together. "Using a national sample of about 1,600 adults ages 18-59 in romantic relationships, the researchers, Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia and Nicholas H. Wolfinger of the University of Utah, found that shared religious attendance and a man’s religious attendance are associated with higher relationship quality."

The same study also showed  shared prayer was a stronger predictor of relationship quality than all other factors measured in the study, including the education and age of couples.

 http://dailysignal.com/2016/02/12/want-to-improve-your-relationship-go-to-church-with-your-spouse/

On this day in 269 "Valentine was martyred the day before the pagan festival to the goddess Februata Juno at which boys drew girls' names for acts of sexual promiscuity. Were legends about the martyr's death modified to replace the heathen custom? No one knows for sure. In fact, there may have been two or even three martyrs named Valentine who died in different parts of the empire at about the same time. We know little or nothing about any of them."

 http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1-300/martyrdom-of-st-valentine-11629626.html

Still taking applications

Almost 5 years ago I wrote a blog about the perfect daughter-in-law. Someone today responded and said she was having issues with her mother-in-law and would look at my list for help. Well, apparently my ideas weren't very good because I still don't have a daughter-in-law. I say that as a joke, because obviously, I have no say in the matter.

I suspect it's my son . . . he just can't get over the idea that he wants to be wrong only 50% of the time. Can you imagine?

Decisions about disclosure

The opening paragraph of an essay titled, "Disclosure" by Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky of Boston in the May 5, 2010 issue of JAMA was stunning in the author's lack of understanding her role in protecting the general public and specific individuals from serious disease. Others I'd give a break, but she had an MD and MPH after her name! The paragraph really wasn't essential to the thrust of her topic, which was about being a woman (pregnancy, motherhood) in academic medicine. Here's what she wrote:

"Early in my career, one of my patients with HIV infection, Robin, a recovering heroin addict, had re-enrolled in school and was newly engaged. Her fiance was unaware that she was HIV infected and she would not discuss using condoms, let alone her HIV infection, with him. I encouraged her to confide her infection to her fiance--for the integrity of their relationship and for the value of his health--at each of our clinical encounters. Finally, she did so. He left her. She stopped taking her antiretroviral medications and restarted using heroin. Although the fiance may have reduced his risk of infection, the consequences of my intervention were tragic for my patient. Robin's case reinforced that disclosure is a risky business because the truth can trigger an unexpected, sometimes devastating chain of reactions."

No, it wasn't unfortunate that the fiance left her; it probably saved his life, assuming he wasn't already infected. No, Rochelle Walensky's intervention as a doctor and public health official wasn't tragic--it was probably a requirement of her job! No, Robin didn't start using heroin again because her fiance left her--she was an addict and no one, not even the love of a good man could change her if she wasn't up to the tough behavior needed to kick it. No, stopping the antiretroviral meds wasn't a tragedy because she would just become reinfected as the heroin addiction took over her mind. Part of getting well is a behavior change, chastity and monogamy, something she can't do on drugs. And finally, it's just entirely possible that the fiance left her because he realized she valued his life so little, that he would never again be able to trust her.

Sweetie, honey, dearie, babe

My father called me "Baby" even in my 60s. I didn't mind at all, even though I knew I wasn't a baby. He wasn't belittling me and that was also about as affectionate as he got. However, when I was a little girl I can remember watching the blood rise in my mother's face if we were in a dress shop and the saleswoman called her "Honey," or "Dearie." Usually, Mom's fingers clutching her purse would start to twitch (a bad sign) and that was the end of that store for that day, regardless of the need. The other day I overheard a young, accomplished, educated woman say, "The little girl who works for us had her baby and will soon be back at work." If a man had said that about a female employee it would have raised eyebrows, or even caused disciplinary action. Women often use the phrase, "little girl," or just "girl" as a term of endearment, but it can also describe a woman in a lower social status, the same way men use the term.

I'm not saying it's in the same category as a hip hop artist using "nigga" or "Ho," but I think we're in the ballpark.

51 Sounds vaguely familiar

I noticed this abstract (free) in the PNAS 100 (19):11163-1170 Sept. 5, 2003 (there is a charge for the on-line article). Sounds like the difference between the thinking of men and women, doesn’t it? Although as more women subscribe to male values of the work place, our differences in thinking, social relationships and preferences for the built environment are diminishing. Even so, I’m thinking if the house is burning down, we (the women) will still grab the photo albums while our husbands are moving the car to a safe distance.

(Abstract)
Culture and point of view
Richard E. Nisbett * and Takahiko Masuda

*Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109; and Department of Behavioral Science, Graduate School of Letters, Hokkaido University,
N 10 W 7 Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0810, Japan
Contributed by Richard E. Nisbett, July 21, 2003

East Asians and Westerners perceive the world and think about it in very different ways. Westerners are inclined to attend to some focal object, analyzing its attributes and categorizing it in an effort to find out what rules govern its behavior. Rules used include formal logic. Causal attributions tend to focus exclusively on the object and are therefore often mistaken.

East Asians are more likely to attend to a broad perceptual and conceptual field, noticing relationships and changes and grouping objects based on family resemblance rather than category membership. Causal attributions emphasize the context. Social factors are likely to be important in directing attention. East Asians live in complex social networks with prescribed role relations. Attention to context is important to effective functioning. More independent

Westerners live in less constraining social worlds and have the luxury of attending to the object and their goals with respect to it. The physical "affordances" of the environment may also influence perception. The built environments of the East are more complex and contain more objects than do those of the West. In addition, artistic products of the East emphasize the field and deemphasize individual objects, including people. Western art renders less of the field and emphasizes individual objects and people.