Strike! — But Hear Me First

An idle mind, it is said, is the devil’s workshop, and stretching that premise further to the Covid19 pandemic situation, an idle state of being is that on steroids. Everyone is WFH (working from home). Everyone is overwhelmed by everyone else being at home. Everyone escapes by gluing themselves to their gadgetry arsenal of cellphone, laptop, iPad… whatever have you. And everyone has an opinion that everyone else needs to listen carefully. Nothing wrong with that per se, except when expressing that opinion is a chance to show some warped sense of superiority by being unkind and offensive. I partly attribute that to the (now ex-)President’s 4 years that normalized bullying, tough talking, rough-speak which utterly disregards everyone else’s rights, thoughts or feelings. About a month ago, in a social media group of female attorneys (a private group where we can refer or consult on our questions), I posed a question where I used the word “alien” while narrating in bullet points the background or fact pattern of my question. To lay the background “alien” is the word that is used in the law and regulations. I did not use the word out of legal context and I had no bad or misplaced intent. I was merely drawing the background to my query. I got a couple of answers, but one young fairly fresh-out-of-law-school lawyer posted this response in all caps, to the effect of — “CAN WE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop referring to our clients as “aliens”? I KNOW THE LAW USES THAT TERM BUT THE LAW IS RACIST AND DO WE NEED TO SUPPORT THAT?” Woh, calm down, girl. First of all, the foreign national I was asking about was not even my client, contrary to your assumptions. My client is the institution that is the other party in a collaborative contract with a foreign element and therefore may have a legal repercussion that I was exploring. I used the word “alien” once, and it was clear that I had not used that term in any racist or divisive way by ANY stretch. I merely asked about someone whose status was referred to in the law and statutes as being an “alien”. It was bland, impartial, and neutral. I shrugged that person’s all-caps rant off although, being a law practitioner for over 20 years…. it really shocked (appalled) me how the courtesy people in the profession has evolved — almost totally gone. In these times, every chance someone gets to call others out, to be rude, to be woke, to grand-stand, to outrightly attribute moral values on words — will be used on the pretext of justifications like “speaking truth to power”, “using your voice”, and every other woke reason you have to cancel and judge people outright. Did that reaction look, or even so much as glance, into the context of my question? Was that kind of response even proportionate to the perceived wrong? Is alien a word that has now become the unspeakable “A-word”? And more strikingly, does not the rudeness and disrespect in your reaction underscore the moral hypocrisy of your woke-ness? I wonder. Just because you can say something does not mean you should. And if you do choose to speak, it doesn’t mean you should shout and scream. If you demand kindness and respect, show that yourself in your dealings. Give people a chance. In law, it’s called due process, and is a very basic hurdle before you render any kind judgment. Strike — but hear me first. With that incident, I remind myself that the feeling I get now and then of being bothered by disproportionate overkill reactions is not real. People get hypersensitive especially in this weird past year that get us all cooped up and with almost no real face-to-face social interactions. But while my feelings may not be real, the bandwagon of the Cancel Culture and its many little variants are galloping forwards fast. And one day, it may be the norm that no one will be able to say anything other than safe, politically correct things. No one will express their true opinions. We will be imprisoning people for their thoughts and conscience. By then, what a bland, homogenous, unoriginal and dangerous world this would be.

That’s Life.

“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.” 

― George Orwell

Green Thumb Potential

It has become a strange, self-imposed tradition that I buy amaryllis plants every Christmas in England — something festive, alive and full of color to watch for when everything is drab and cold outside. I usually get them from M&S (formerly Marks & Spencer), or Sainsburys when we do our Christmas food shopping (grocery). When they are “On Offer” (Britspeak for sale or discount) you can get 3 for £10 instead of £5 each. We usually give 1, sometimes 2, to Hubby’s parents. Last December, being Covid December, we couldn’t and didn’t manage to buy any. The one we had from the previous winter (a “double dragon” variety if I remember right) was dried and dead — like a burnt onion bulb. Hubby didn’t even store it correctly for a re-plant. But with all that happened in 2020, I really couldn’t be too disappointed. Still, I could be experimental — because what do I have to lose? So I took what looked like the deadest amaryllis and gave it a serious “hair cut” — meaning, I trimmed off everything I could, and peeled off the dry parts of the bulb. In the end, I was down to what looked like a possibility, but not much. I put the plant by the window and for the next week or so…. nothing happened, despite daily watering. The water seemed only to collect, the compost wouldn’t even drink. To force-dry the damn thing, I decided to bring the plant into the bathroom, and put it by the radiator. The bottom of the radiator is at the right height to dry the compost quickly, and in the next couple of days I saw promise — a thin line of green at the top of the cut bulb. Finally some sign of life. Needless to say the Bathroom was the perfect hothouse/greenhouse for the amaryllis. I never even had to water it because it was humid enough with our daily baths and nonstop hand washing. Today, I am happy to say the first two bright red buds are out of the shell. And I’ve put it by the window when the sun is shining. Whaddyaknow….I have somehow managed to have my amaryllis this winter, with almost nothing to start with, a little luck and no pressure to succeed. :)

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough.

– George Washington Carver, botanist.

Nerves

Called to be an “expert” on a particular foreign law on short notice. I have a knot in my stomach. I’m a strange mucky pot of soup of:

1.  Dang, I need to brush up on this and make mental and paper outlines.
2.  Dang, I need to switch to millennial-speak explaining to young(er) start-up entreps. The inadequacy I feel is possibly imagined more than real, but it’s not a lingo I’ve imbibed.
3.  Dang, I need to remind myself that I can’t doubt myself now.
4.  Dang, I need to repeat to myself:  This is your niche, a very narrow area, that you know better than any one in the room, and if you freeze, JUST WING IT.

Bring it on.  And then bring on the weekend.  I need a drink.

 

Random Thought About Growing Old

We often think hair grows gradually.  I found out, it grows in spurts.

We often think we would grow old gradually.  Not so.  We grow old overnight.  The day I turned 40 was the day I realized I had to take my glasses off to read, that I had a paunch that runneth over the top of my jeans, that my jawline has lost the cutlass definition that it used to have. It gets worse — now add to the list back aches. Weak ankles. Knees that are not as bending. Memory that can’t be summoned. Thoughts that refuse to be censored.  And to think, I am young-old, and not yet old-old.  What’s it going to be like when I am really old. Hmmmm….

Age has taught me that what other people think of me is none of my business.
― Jane Tara, The Happy Endings Book Club

More Bird Notes

Our backyard probably rivals the local bird park for bringing in birds but that’s because we’re underhanded.  We cheat.  We put all the bird-feed gimmicks from Wilko Bird Food : suet logs, suet blocks, fat balls (premium!), mealworm, robin mix which are berry mix with nuts and mealworms, bird seeds, nuts, sunflower seeds — you name it, I’ve bought it.  I made the crazy mistake of buying those super-cheap ones from B&M, bargains on a post-Christmas deal — cute little seed-studded gnomes — but ugh big mistake… the birds take forever to finish them.  I recently hid one in the suet block plate… guess what?  My winged friends finished the suet but the gnome is pretty intact — maybe they will eat it when they have nothing else to eat.  But now back to what I was going to say — Every time I head out to feed the birds, I make sure I bring out the bright yellow water bottle, hoping the birds will get used to seeing that and knowing it means feeding time.  It seems to me (and I could be wrong on this) that they don’t scurry off as fast when I come around to feed them, so I believe (because I so want to believe) that this is the Pavlovian effect of the bright yellow water bottle.  Could it be?

The Bird Watching Diary

They are coming more often now to the backyard. My part in that being dotting more food stations and water around, and replenishing them more often.  They also seem to be moving more in pairs, showing off in a dance sashaying their wings, and singing in unintended chorus that make mornings so much more beautiful.  I will miss this when I go back soon.  But not to worry, hubby is putting cameras inside the bird houses (we have 2) and I will be able to see how they are growing their families. If I often gripe about how Technology has alienated people from one another, I marvel at how close it has brought us to our animal friends. :)  Note:  Magpies, I learn now, are not just black and white.  They have that electric blue stripe from the edge of  wings to tail.  As if they could get prettier.

“The early bird catches the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”  ~ Willie Nelson

Bird Watching

When I tell friends in the US about the “British things” I like or do when in the UK, I get reactions like eyes widening (or rolling) or raised eyebrows.  Drives home the reality that my lives on either side of the pond are VERY different, and this oftentimes makes my interests on one side of the pond sound quite incredulous to people on the other.  But I always say “vive de difference” as it is always difference, diversity, even incongruence, in life that makes things inviting and fun.  The latest thing I have developed is (get ready for this) BIRDWATCHING.  In Chicago, I don’t get the chance to see the variety of birds that i can when in our little village in the UK.  I can tell you though that at any one time when I look up the sky in the Windy City, I can see at least 3 planes flying northwestward over Lake Michigan, en route to Ohare International.  Mechanized flying things that roar, not quite as graceful as birds and their songs.  And so I started noticing these feathered friends from those daily look-outs from the window by the kitchen sink here in England, and hearing their tweets and calls.  What a refreshing treat.  Not long after my father-in-law gave us a colored poster of common birds (pull out from a Sunday paper) which piqued my curiosity even more. Add on a day at Caernarfon Castle with the RSPB (Royal Society of the Protection of Birds) selling (and me buying) lapel pins of a host of bird species to raise funds, and the serendipitous £1 find I got from a charity shop (RSPB Pocket Guide to British Birds by Simon Harrap) the very next day, and there we have the perfect storm of the birth of a new hobby.

Over Christmas, Hubby bought me a pair of binoculars, specifically, a NIKON PROSTAFF 7s 10×42.  They are not the typical small little things that birdwatchers can thrust into the pockets.  More the type you hang on your neck while you move around. They feel “substantial” — which I like, because they have more the feel that you’re holding a piece of equipment rather than a toy.  The best part of it is that it is lightweight, for all the power it packs in.  

I keep on the window sill the RSPB pocket guide, and a more expansive “Birds of Britain and Europe” by Rob Hume. I like that both books either describe the bird voice/sounds or illustrate their flight pattern.  Both books also provide a cross reference to confusion species or similar species.  I also have a small notebook where I have begun to note down the birds I have seen and where.  For now, I think the most special one I have on the list is the Great-Spotted Woodpecker which honored us with its presence when it came for the bird-feed pellets we have just put out.                                                                                                                            With his bold black wings decorated with little white dots, and a bright red crown and under tail — what a beauty.  We now have 3 feeders in the backyard, and we like to think it has become Blue Tits Central in this little neighborhood.  They fly together, and oftentimes we have finches, blackbirds, chaffinches, robins, starlings, chubby wood pigeons and even the odd pheasants joining in there party.  I am so looking forward to more of these glorious feathered creatures, in number and types, coming over in the spring and summer.

“…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” ~ Mark Nepo (author, in “Facing The Lion, Being The Lion, Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives”)

Vienna (Preview Note)

 

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
The calendar pages are indeed flying off like crazy. A week ago we came back from a long weekend in Vienna, and next week we go to Normandy/Brittany.
Still haven’t written my notes on Vienna. That will come shortly. Meanwhile, here’s a visual overview :

Vienna, view from St. Stephen’s Bell Tower

 

The Right To Bare One’s Arms

This is the day and age of the Selfie Photograph.  Gone are the days when a camera was a major purchase for an entire family; and long forgotten are the time when only professional photographers would have a pretentious tripod on which to perch that precious camera.   Cameras are now everywhere — in our bags, in our person, pockets, integral features of our little army of handheld gadgetry — Do we have phones with cameras?  or are they cameras with a phone feature really?  Cameras are so commonplace that everyone has the capability to document their lives every day, many times over.  We snap away and post the places we visit, the common or unusual sights along the way, the things we eat, the outfits we tried, the outfits we wore.  “OOTD” (a.k.a. “#OOTD, a.k.a. Outfits Of The Day) photos are displayed by stylists, fashionable types, celebrities and trendsetters, —  all the way to those irritating trying-hard wannabes who spew fashion advice as if their readership are idiots who know nothing about dressing themselves (pointless — this is the age of the individual expression and quirks).   And who needs a tripod when you can extend your arms to take that self-portrait, as often as you like and can?

Byproduct of this love affair with the camera is the hand-on-hip (HOH) pose. It has been called the “chicken wing” or the “tea pot”.  This postural affliction that affects women and girls of every age.  A world-wide phenomenon of sorts, strangely enough.  Anytime a camera is trained to take a shot, The Pose is assumed almost instinctively –arm crooked at the elbow to form a small diamond between arm and oblique (chicken wing or teapot handle up).  Needless to say that pose also entails arching one’s back (upwards, and sidewards) to cut and define a clear angle on the waist.  This, I must say, is not a look I really enjoy.  The said “pose”, once the monopoly of fashion models and starlets, has since trickled down to Reality TV stars, the famous-for-being-famous, and now it is EVERYWHERE.  Just look through the Newsfeed of your FaceBook page.  Or possibly, take a look at your own photos.

Per se, I have nothing against The Pose.  I just don’t think it is an entirely flattering stance or look to affect, at any age:

1.  The pose doesn’t look good on little girls or kids.  It’s creepy.  It’s Jon Bennet Ramsey-ish.  It’s just doesn’t look right.  Kids should enjoy their childhood and days of play.  Save the attempts to look saucy or beauty pageants for much later, should they wish.

2.  The pose doesn’t look good on college kids and younger adult women either, especially if they do it ALL THE TIME.  Diane Von Furstenberg once tweeted the advice that the hands on hip look makes one look like a starlet, and not the star.  I couldn’t agree with her more.  The pose just smacks of trying too hard (to be what?  Glamourous? Sexy?  Cool?  Real Housewives of Hollywood-ish?  or just simply “trying too hard”?).

3.  The pose is not a very professional look –unless you’re a fashion model, Paris Hilton, part of a girl band or a reality TV star.  Imagine seeing a shot of your lawyer or your surgeon with that pose all the time. Comfortable with that? I thought not.

4.  The pose is not a very good look for women of a more mature vintage (ha!), either.  I have seen many of that going around.  It can be an amusing look, but let’s face it, it’s not exactly elegant.

Perhaps it is because I think this way that I have never taken to affecting this pose.  In most of my shots, one or both my hands are either in my pocket(s), folded in front of me, or joined behind my back. Awkward poses of the unsure? Perhaps. But that’s how I like it, eversince.

Reality Check (from city to village)

Over the weekend, the British hubby and I headed out for dinner, not because it was “date night” or anything like that but just because I declared war on any more cooking and dish-washing for the day.  People here in the UK seem to generally dress-up more when going out for dinner compared to Americans.  It’s most likely because eating out here is for the most part luxury (at the very least it is not cheaper than eating at home) rather than for convenience — meaning bone-tired, no desire to wash or cook, let’s head out to the local restaurant.  So when in Rome, bring out the toga.  I made sure I had on killer heels despite the cold, put on a stylish coat and my make up was right.  I have yet to purchase those furry, fake eyelashes British women would have you believe they are born into, but on the whole I was spruced-up and decently ready for a beautiful night out with the hubby.  Shortly after we get on the road, I begin to notice an odd stink in the car.  I began to sniff and look around — trying to figure the source of this funk.  Did the hubby leave yesterday’s lunchbox overnight at the backseat?  Did a rat find it’s way into the car and died?  The hubby noticed my fuss around the car and asked what was going on.

Me :  There is a strange stink in this car and I am trying to find the culprit.

Hubby (very calmly) :  That’s probably the smell of manure fertilizing Farmer’s Geoff’s farm at the back of the house.

Me (with that flash of enlightenment):  Oh yeah.  Manure and a farm.  I forgot about those.

And so the process of reorienting myself to the change in geography and lifestyle continues.  :)