Going through the Blog Roll is not an experience of undiluted joy.
Into each life some rain must fall...
Sometimes reading down the Blog Roll reminds me that someone I enjoyed following is no longer alive.
Barbara Ehrenreich became one of my favorite writers when I read For Her Own Good in grade ten.
I didn't agree with everything she said even in For Her Own Good, but I knew she was one of those writers whose every book I would want to read just for the pleasure of her snarky, precise writing voice.
Then I grew up and worked, from time to time, in the same building where she did.
She was one of the founders of the Democratic Socialists of America--the Loony Left minority now in the process of destroying the Democratic Party. Her generation of Democratic Socialists, however, were aware that they were a minority and needed to work with others rather than against them. This made them as likable, reliable, easy to work with and delightful to know, as today's Loony Left are not. They were trying to make friends.
It's sad to think that, if Ehrenreich hadn't died in 2022, she might today be another one of those horrible people who scream that Republicans are Nazis and mentioning any Christian practice is oppressive and classic books should be burned because they're not p.c. enough. Maybe I'd rather remember her as the independent, classically liberal thinker, who claimed Socialism as the religious faith of her childhood but freely criticized the errors of all political factions, that she was.
She wrote several books about the history of medical abuse of women, but I think her most important books are The Hearts of Men, which documented how the social trends that gave rise to Playboy magazine directly created the ones that gave rise to Ms. magazine, and Bright-Sided, which documented how "Positive Thinking" came to exist and how it sometimes helps, and perhaps more often harms, those who try to practice it.
Also worth reading was Nickel and Dimed, in which she went undercover and did whatever entry-level jobs she was able to get as a middle-aged woman. In that book Ehrenreich was reasonably accused of underestimating the ingenuity of real low-income workers, who have built up skills for living on their low salaries, and built social networks, and can become quite comfortable (if they own their house and some land, or share those resources with family) on the kind of income on which Ehrenreich was acutely uncomfortable. How could she have done otherwise? The book was not a lie, exactly; the author was one human being and had limitations. She did accurately describe the plight of, e.g., young couples who have eloped and not dared to ask either pair of parents for money yet, or college dropouts who are just starting out, probably renting flats in high-rent neighborhoods, and paying off college loans.
I liked her books, and I liked her blog, and writing this post feels...weird.
I am, as Ehrenreich was, a naturally cheerful person who tends to feel that one might as well laugh as cry, even when documenting the damage popular products and practices have done to people.
Natural cheerfulness is not, I say, the virtue it is sometimes imagined to be. It does not even make people easy to work with.
When I'm feeling good, which is most of the time even in our polluted world, I walk faster than people who are taller than I am for a couple of miles before breakfast. When I'm feeling bad, I lie in bed thinking of wisecracks about my symptoms.
My natural sister is not naturally cheerful--is, instead, depressive. I think that that makes me more fun to know than she is, but not everyone who knows both of us agrees.
Secretly, deep down, even the people who preach Positive Thinking don't necessarily prefer the company of people who are naturally cheerful. At home "a merry heart does good like a medicine." In an office a merry heart makes resentful co-workers vow, "Little Miss Perky may type 160 words a minute, be able to read the branch manager's handwriting, cheer up the bereaved office manager, go miles out of her way to help the customers, and stock the break room with the best refreshments, but we will NEVER let it be said that she could get along with co-workers." Then there's the fact that a merry heart doesn't flinch away from unpleasantness in the way a depressed one does. Bad things are to be overcome so why would we not talk about pollution, war, diseases, disasters, and misery? Talking about animal abuse might motivate somebody to adopt a shelter dog. Talking about the devastation a hurricane wrought might motivate somebody to donate money. If someone in the audience has the kind of weak soul that can't even relieve the anguish of thinking about starved dogs and homeless hurricane survivors by praying for them, how would we even know that it's possible to be that kind of person? A cheerful temperament can be fearless and forthright and also horribly insensitive.
Ehrenreich tended, as I do, to choke on all those Positive Thinking platitudes about cheerfulness being a virtue, like honesty, instead of a natural trait, like hair color. As a cancer survivor she certainly saw the lighter side of cancer, and appreciated the (she probably wouldn't have said) blessing of a longer than average remission after cancer has appeared as a breast tumor. At the same time she could also see how much better it would have been not to have had cancer at all.
This morning I did a feel-good post about things for which I feel thankful to God, and in that post I mentioned that actually I had spent this Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday feeling pretty bad, physically. I live with a cat who normally does not cuddle; from early kittenhood she's tried to redirect all petting, caressing, and cuddling behavior toward her idea of fun, which has been a good fast game. Any display of affection from this cat, Serena, is noteworthy. Serena assumed that "heart to heart" position in which some cats and cat-people like to snuggle, this morning. It was a moment to be cherished. It had some additional meaning beyond the "Get up and come home for breakfast" message that could have been conveyed by simply meowing. "Ouch! Get up! Get off! Go away!" I said. The inflammation in my midsection was so bad that even up there the 14-pound cat seemed to weigh like a load of bricks. This is not a way I want you readers to have to feel. But it also seems funny to me. I'm old and sick, what a hoot, who ever thought any baby-boomer was ever going to be old...
Then I checked the Mirror, the blog/forum/community that grew from what initially seemed like a silly idea of ridiculing the Obama Administration's mistakes in the voice of "Michelle's Mirror" (whose job was to convince Mrs. Obama that she looked all right). As regular readers know, the woman who wrote it has had a brain tumor removed. Posts there have become irregular and are never to be missed because who knows how many more posts there will be.
This week's Mirror is about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and how the Great Lakes really seem to the people who live near them like an inland freshwater sea, because they're so big and can form ocean-sized waves and storms. The sudden storm that sank the massive "Fitz" ("As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most") was not technically a hurricane, but it behaved like one. It's an interesting topic for a forum discussion, and of course, given the crowd who hang out at that site, the discussion branches off into news items and the history of popular music and some people's pedigreed pets and some people's animal rescues and who knows what-all. Great fun...on Veterans Day...remembering a shipwreck and the Great War...
Then a link at the Mirror led me past Scott Adams' vlog during his live chat time. As regular readers/listeners know, he's going through treatment for cancer, too; who knows how many more posts his vlog will have, too, but he's trying to reduce the pain by making each post funny and really worth listening to.
Then it was time for a "Meet the Blog Roll" post, and...I deleted BarbarasBlog from the blog roll this morning but I found that I wanted to mention that it's been there, all these years
We hear so much about how various new technologies make our lives better. I'm not so sure. Cancer was a rare disease, once.
I thought about my computers and the friends who gave them to me. Well, M, who gave me the "smart typewriter" with its floppy disks, is still alive and well; we were about the same age. A, who gave me the computer I sold--retired, moved to Arizona, had cancer. E, who built the older desktop computer I use--died in 2005 from cancer. Z, who gave me the Original or Practically Perfect Toshiba--died in 2018 from cancer. B, Grandma Bonnie Peters, who was part of this web site and who gave me the splendid HP laptop on which so much of this web site was made--died in 2020 from cancer. J, also known as Adayahi, who was also part of this web site and who inadvertently gave me the Piece of Garbage as well as its replacement, the Unsatisfactory Toshiba I'm using now--died in 2021 from cancer. The people who gave me the Sickly Snail, the newer desktop computer, and the funny mini-desktop computer are still alive, but. Still. I'm a cancer widow and sometimes the incidence of cancer among people I know, or used to know, feels overwhelming.
Can we keep on making progress? Can we put the things that cause all this cancer as far behind us as we think we've put the horrors of bubonic plague and tuberculosis?
I hope so.
That is what Glyphosate Awareness is for.
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