So Ray and I went to see "The Women" at Driftwood Friday night and poor little Cora Foss, in the middle of her little emotional scene while pounding the floor and screaming "MOTHER DEAREST! FATHER DARLING!" was interrupted by the craziest senior moment I've yet witnessed. An older lady in the third row appeared to wake up when Cora started her speech and yelped, "WHAT'S GOING ON!" Although it sent a ripple of annoyance through the audience, Cora kept going. Go Cora!!
Saturday night we went to the Hoquiam Shows Its Best auction where for my birthday Ray got me a ride with Besty Seidel in her Lemondrop, a BMW Isetta. The ride also entails a sundae at the Sweet Shoppe.
What I have been hinting for is a way to get a bedside table and lamp by my side of the bed for more convenient reading.
Speaking of reading, I finished three books this weekend!!! (one exclamation point per book). The first was "Authentic Happiness," about positive psychology. Basically it states that we all have a baseline of happiness and there's not much we can do about that permanently except volunteer more and do more fun stuff and work on our capacity to love and be loved. For people who do not have so many of Maslow's Hierarcy of Needs met that they can pursue these ways to be happy, well, tough luck. Actually, people in poor countries tend to be happier than people in rich countries. Seligmann, the author, posits something that comes close to why Mildred Kalish, who wrote the last book I read about growing up in the Depression on a farm and all the chores and stuff she had to do, loved her childhood. It had a lot of purpose, a lot of work that was challenging but accomplishable and although her folks were "hearty handshake Methodists" (i.e. they did not hug and kiss on meeting) there was a lot of security in the family.
Basically, we'll all have to be sustainable agriculturalists before we get back to being happy.
I also learned from the online assessments that I am in the top tier of happy people. I scored in the 80th percentile compared to my gender, age, occupation (probably even higher in these times) and zip code. Ironically, I am also among your more vengeful and avoidant types. If you've wronged me, chances are, I'm p.o.'d about it still. This is made even more ironic by my "core strengths," which include broad-mindedness and fairness/justice.
Perhaps this explains why I think I can write mystery novels. I KNOW why people want to murder. I don't DO it, of course (my style is avoidant, so if I'm not looking at you while you talk to me, well, if you have half an inclination to social skills, figure it out). But I understand. ;-)
Sign up and test yourself at www.authentichappiness.org.
In "Guyland," Michael Kimmel really does us a service by doing an anthropological and psychological study of a bunch of "guys." Male entitlement and frustration abound, and the misogyny he uncovers will freak you out. If you are a guy, you should probably read this, especially if you feel like your disgust with your situation hasn't found a voice, or that the ones that are popular, like Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, are selling you a bill of goods that are too foul.
But absolutely the best read and the most enlightening was "The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw" by Bruce Barcott. Although he is perhaps too sympathetic to the protagonists of this real-life fight against ecological destruction, developing world corruption and the arrogance of multinational corporations that fly beneath the radar, well, the protagonists ARE fighting ecological destruction, corruption and arrogance, not to mention the undermining of a young democracy and the people's rights to know and to health. Read this book. If you like the writing of Michael Pollan, John McPhee or you just like the style of the New Yorker, this is a non-fiction book that you'll totally like and it will take you a little further than Pollan will on the meaning of sustainability.
So, ah, there you are. After my feminist screed on the dumbness of weddings I hope this is remarkably more positive and enlightening. Oh yeah, I am back to my happy baseline. The prospect of a ride in Lemondrop with Betsy has totally picked me up.
No comments:
Post a Comment