celebrities, housekeeping tips, music, musings, YouTube

“Buck up, baby… the world is your oyster…”

Today’s featured photo was taken while I was walking Noyzi yesterday. I noticed how nice the flowers smelled and snapped a picture.

I’ve been kind of busy this morning, washing my bed linens. Maybe most people wouldn’t think that would be such an onerous task, but it does actually take some time. First off, I have kind of a small washing machine. I bought it in 2014. It holds seven kilograms. If I recall correctly, that was the middle size available. I should have bought one that takes eight kilos, but we were a lot poorer at the time, and I figured that with just two of us, we didn’t need the biggest size. I have no idea if there are bigger ones available now. I guess I could check…

Okay… so according to my very brief check of Amazon.de, a person can now purchase larger washing machines on their website. Looks like they go to at least to ten kilos. But, in 2014, I don’t remember seeing any larger than eight kilos. I remember spending about 300 euros, more or less, on the washer, and another couple hundred on a dryer.

Most of the time, they do an adequate job of handling our laundry needs. If I need to do something out of the ordinary, like wash the bathroom rugs, blankets, or duvet covers, I wind up doing several loads. Loads take longer to do here than they do back home in the United States. We have a front loader here, while my machine in the USA is an old fashioned top loader. Consequently, it’s now about 9AM and I’ve been working on that chore since about 5:30. It’s now done, but not without some minor ass pain. Putting duvet covers on duvets is a bit of a hassle, but worth it. Clean bed linens are heavenly.

I don’t have to wash the duvet covers as often now, since we lost Arran last month. I’m glad I don’t have to wash them as often, but I sure miss his warm little body at night, and having someone to nap with when I fall asleep trying to read my books. I hope we’ll have a new friend for Noyzi soon, after we take our vacation. I also hope the new buddy is a little more food oriented. When Arran was still here, we had a dog who would help keep the floors clean, if you know what I mean… Well, at least he helped when he was cleaning up crumbs, as opposed to stealth pissing on my favorite rug. 😉

While I was waiting for the wash to be done, I decided to run CleanMyMac. In doing that, I got overzealous and deleted all my cookies, which has meant going through and signing into everything again. Today, I also happen to be getting a bunch of bot spammers trying to subscribe to my blog. There have been six or seven so far… random folks/bots with sketchy email addresses, signing on as “users” of my blog. So I’ve been patiently deleting those “people”/bots, too. As I’ve been doing routine computer maintenance, I’ve been looking at my most recent blog post titles. I realize I must come off as quite a curmudgeon.

I don’t want to be someone who who pushes “toxic positivity”. That’s when a person insists that people “buck up”, when they don’t feel like bucking up. There’s nothing wrong with positive thinking. Sometimes, it can legitimately make things better. However, when someone tells you that you must be positive when you’re not feeling it, then it can be toxic. Lying to yourself about how you really feel isn’t healthy. There are times when “creating your own miracles” isn’t possible. And sometimes, people just get on my nerves, just as I know I get on other people’s nerves.

Like in The Golden Girls, when Rose Nylund gets Dorothy and Sophia to go to a positive thinking group… an example of “toxic positivity”.

It’s hard to keep positive sometimes, especially when you keep up with the news, which is so frequently just “bad” at best, and absolutely tragic at worst. On the other hand, I can’t deny that I have a pretty good life. My biggest problem today was taking care of washing the linens. Now, that’s done… the sun is out, the weather is getting warmer, and I have a vacation to finish planning. Last night, we got to see a video of Bill’s daughter and her adorable kids. She shared a tip on how to clean the Le Creuset Dutch oven we gave her for Christmas. Actually, we probably ought to try her trick on our pots. They’re in need of a good cleaning.

Bill has to go away again at the end of next week. As much as I dread hanging out here alone, at least I don’t have to worry about Arran this time. Last time Bill went TDY, he got home just two days before we had to say goodbye to Arran. This time, it’ll be just Noyzi and me, bored, but basically healthy. And I can spend the time looking for more things to do when we finally go on our much anticipated trip. I look forward to taking more photos, trying new things, and seeing more places I haven’t seen before. That’s a great privilege.

So… in the interest of not being so damned negative all the time, today’s post is relentlessly positive. I also made a couple of new videos yesterday, both of which turned out okay. I heard Linda Ronstadt do a very beautiful version of “I Love You For Sentimental Reasons”, and decided I wanted to try it. I probably ought to record more songs. Most of my musical postings are pretty positive and non-controversial. 😉

I played it for Bill, and he liked it… I must admit, I was inspired by him when I did it.
And then I tried this jaunty tune…

When I made these recordings, I didn’t know that Harry Belafonte was on his way to shoving off the mortal coil. He died yesterday, having lived to be 96 years old. Against all odds, he managed to have a truly extraordinary life, affecting and entertaining multitudes of people. When I heard that he’d passed, I was immediately reminded of a song a dear college friend and I used to sing a lot during our college days. I didn’t know this song before I met Donna, but now it reminds me of her…

Two friends having fun performing…

What does Harry Belafonte have to do with yesterday’s musical stylings by yours truly? Well… the two songs I did were both sung by Nat King Cole; the second was actually written by him. And as you can see from the video above, Nat King Cole collaborated with Harry Belafonte, too. Isn’t it funny how things are connected?

Anyway… I don’t have much else to write about today. I’d really like to finish the book I’ve been trying to read for the past couple of weeks. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll be ready to review it. I’ll just “think positive” that I’ll manage to complete that task. I’ve got others I want to get to before I, myself, join Harry Belafonte in the Heavenly Choir…

So, have a nice hump day, y’all. 😉

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home, technology

My big time office makeover…

The featured photo is of my new setup for my old computer, and the snazzy new lighting strip. I can control the lights from my computer (home app). They’re pretty cool.

Yesterday ended up being very busy. I ordered a bunch of stuff for my office, and most of it showed up yesterday. It started with a slim dock port I got for the new computer, so I would have some ports that could handle my old peripherals until it’s time to replace them with USB C type devices. Then I got a new table for my old computer. I was going to add the old machine to my pile of discarded computers, but then I determined that I might be able to use the old computer for media… making videos, playing music, watching movies or videos etc.

The new table is very nice. It’s made of solid pine, and has a lovely aroma of fresh wood. I was in the middle of putting it together when my new HomePod Mini showed up with a smart socket and smart Nanoleaf strip lights. I hadn’t planned to buy the socket or the lights, but Apple did a successful suggestive sell move. I’m actually glad I bought the strip lights, because they look really cool and offer much needed lighting to my usually dim workspace.

I spent about an hour putting the table together, mostly screwing in the forty screws it took. It’s perfect for what I needed it for, but putting it together came with a price. I got two blisters on my right palm. It was also quite an effort to get it upstairs to my room. The thing weighs a lot. It’ll probably last for the rest of my life, though.

After I got the table set up, I put the old computer on it, and started configuring things. I unpacked the light strip and wondered where I should put it. Then I realized it was just about the right length to go around the front of the new table. Now, I have new lighting on my new table holding the old computer.

Meanwhile, I’ve been slowly setting up the new computer, which is turning out to be more difficult than I expected. Starting with the new VESA arm and ending with transferring files– mostly music files, some of which are on CDs– has been a real pain. For some reason, even though Apple still sells the SuperDrive (with the USB connection), I had to buy a special connection to get it to work on the new computer. And even then, there’s no telling if it actually will work. Half the time, when I try to import a CD, the Internet gets knocked offline.

I will say this, though… When the Internet is robust, and I have all of the speakers going, it really sounds good. The trouble is, our Internet has become very fragile lately. This was a problem even before I got the new computer. My next upgrade will be a CD tower for all of the CDs I’ve accumulated since we’ve been in Germany. I don’t buy them unless the music is something I really want in my collection and I can’t download it. I have a whole lot of CDs in storage, too. If I ever move back to the USA and live in my own house, I’ll have a wall full of them.

I actually moved my old office chair back into my workspace. It works better than the new one Bill got me for Christmas. I put that one in the entertainment/Noyzi’s room. Someday, maybe we’ll use that room more often than we do.

By the time I’d written two fresh blog posts and practiced guitar, I was pretty exhausted. When Bill got home, he walked the dogs. Today, I’m not expecting any deliveries, so I plan to walk the dogs. The exercise will do us all some good, although Arran looks like he’s getting kind of tired. He seems determined to stay with us for as long as he possibly can. He truly adores us on a rare level. Unfortunately, the lymphoma will eventually win.

This post is probably not that interesting to most people. I could be writing snark about the Duggars, especially Josh– who appears to have gotten into some trouble in prison. I haven’t read Jinger Vuolo’s book, and I probably won’t, because to me, it seems like she traded one cult for another.

I could also write about Timmy Rodrigues, who has apparently found himself a partner for courting… I could write about that, but I don’t care enough about it to watch the videos. Or, I’ve just been busier than usual. That could be a very snarky post. Maybe Toni will come back to chastise me. 😀

Meh, we’ll see. I’d like to get to a point at which I feel comfortable and functional with my new equipment. I sure have more computers than I ever thought I would. It’s hard to believe there was a significant portion of my life when I didn’t even have ONE computer. Now, I have six of them… and three of them don’t really work anymore and need to be ditched.

Yeah… I’ve been unusually busy this week. I hope the building projects will be finished soon.

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fashion, good news, rants, social media

Energy surges… my body is finally kicking the crap out of the virus.

I think I’m starting to feel somewhat better now. I can tell, because when I start getting over a sickness, I get a surge of energy, and I start getting annoyed by little chores that need to be completed. Yesterday, the weather was cooler, so I took the dogs on a much needed walk. I ended up walking longer than I had planned, because there was a lady sweeping the narrow pathway where we usually go when I’m feeling lazy or sick. I didn’t want to get in her way or have to maneuver past her. When we got back to the house, I had every intention of vacuuming, because I always do that on Thursdays. But I was, all of a sudden, so tired that I hosed off the sweat in the shower and laid down on my bed. Before I knew it, I was sound asleep for two solid hours, complete with vivid dreams about a woman from my childhood to whom I haven’t spoken since the early 80s.

I went downstairs after my nap, noting that it was mid afternoon, and I just really didn’t feel like vacuuming. The vacuum remained in the closet, and I pulled a notice taped to my front door, letting me know that the chimney sweep is coming. In Germany, it’s a law that chimney sweeps have to inspect every year, even in homes that don’t have fireplaces. In our old house, we didn’t have a fireplace, but we did have a visit from the chimney sweep every year– a pretty brunette lady who was quick and polite about her business. Former landlady would always show up to “supervise” her work (and be nosey). In this house, we do have a fireplace, but our current landlord doesn’t feel the need to bother us or “supervise”. So I have to wait for the chimney sweep. It’s a good thing we weren’t away, since we got very little notice. Hopefully, I won’t share germs with him.

Bill got home last night at about 8:00 pm. Arran was as delighted to see him as I was. We had a little dinner and beer, and went to bed. I got up a little later than usual, and Bill was making us breakfast. I started a load of laundry. Bill said he thought he’d try to come home early, and I remarked that I hoped he’d be home in time to deal with the chimney sweep. After he left for work, I went up to my trusty iMac and started thinking about what I wanted today’s topic to be. Suddenly, I had an overwhelming urge to vacuum, in spite of a coughing fit. I went to the kitchen, got the vacuum, plugged it in, and briefly considered getting the laundry. Then I realized that I’m so slack about vacuuming, that I could just vacuum and be done with that dreaded chore very quickly. It’s not even 9:30 am, and I’ve already done laundry, vacuumed, and written half a post. I think I still have the energy to walk the dogs, turn on the robot mower, and deal with the chimney sweep! So let’s hear it for strong immune systems! Maybe by tomorrow, I’ll be even closer to my old self. I might even try to weed whack a little.

I still don’t know if this was COVID or a cold. It felt mostly like a cold. I had something similar last month, only my nose ran a lot more, and I didn’t have a sore throat. If it was COVID, it wasn’t bad at all, as sicknesses go. I think that’s proof that vaccines work, even though I know I’ve read comments from people who have said they were unvaccinated and didn’t get really sick with the current COVID variant. Maybe the mild illness isn’t such a good thing, though. Maybe it gives people a false sense of security when COVID doesn’t bite very hard. Then, they get really sick with a different variant. I won’t pretend to know… What I do know is that nothing I’ve had so far as come even close to what I think was swine flu in 2013. That shit knocked me on my ass for a solid week, and I was coughing and fatigued for many weeks afterwards.

Having typed all of that, I now realize that if that was COVID, it was really contagious. I wasn’t in super close contact with anyone last week, except for when we went to the wine stand on Friday, and when we went to AAFES on Sunday, to pick up a few things. We did talk to one person who said her partner had been sick with COVID, but we weren’t that physically close to her. She was probably the source of the sickness, though.

I’m still plowing through my book about Roe v. Wade, marveling at how very comprehensive and well researched it is. Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe) was a very complicated woman, but there were so many other interesting and complex characters in the story of Roe v. Wade. I look forward to finishing the book so I can write about it. I think it will make for an interesting blog post, which will probably parent a few other blog posts. 😉 And while Roe v. Wade may have been a very flawed decision, I still believe, and continue to see strong evidence that overturning the ruling is going to have tragic and devastating consequences for a lot of people. I continue to be saddened by the terrible and ignorant comments people have about abortion. Are Americans really that uninformed about why abortions are necessary sometimes? Do so many people really think that the only people who have abortions are heartless, irresponsible, awful people who are loose and careless? Do people really believe that using pregnancy as a “punishment” is a good idea?

I am genuinely heartsick about it, even though that particular ruling won’t affect me. I did read a comment from a woman last night who wrote that she got pregnant at age 50. Fortunately, she had a miscarriage, because the prospect of being pregnant at 50 was “horrifying” for her. I read a comment from another woman, who at age 51, wrote that she was going to get her tubes tied. Obviously, this is a woman who hasn’t reached menopause yet, just as I haven’t. Some asshole MAN wrote, “I think you’re good, ‘Grandma’.” Seriously? What an inappropriate and tone deaf comment by an ignoramus. I hope no woman ever lets that guy get close to them. He shouldn’t be breeding!

Can I just say I’m so sick of those kinds of rude, dismissive, snarky comments from people? And I’m also sick of people who “react” to things they haven’t bothered to read, or in the case of videos, haven’t watched. Yesterday, I shared a video by this hilarious androgynous person named River. I think River is technically a male, but they present as female– or a princess, even. River often comments on the British Royal Family and fashion, and Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are frequent topics. Yesterday, River made me laugh as they shared a pretty pink ring “Second Hand Suzy” purchased. River said that they didn’t have a pink ring… at least not one that one can wear on a finger! I thought that was hilarious and shared the video, which had a title that suggested it would be about throwing shade at Meghan Markle. River is actually quite kind and fair to Meghan, but I still got an “angry” reaction from a friend… who didn’t even bother to check out what she was reacting to. I know it happens constantly and almost everyone is occasionally guilty of doing it, but it’s still annoying. Why not just keep scrolling instead of making erroneous assumptions? Leaving angry reactions to friends, particularly when they aren’t really warranted, is kind of disrespectful.

The reason I shared this is at about 2:33, and my reason for sharing it has NOTHING to do with Meghan Markle.

I don’t like most of the Facebook reactions, anyway, because people use them inappropriately. On the other hand, there are times when I can feel satisfied leaving an angry reaction to someone’s rude comment rather than firing back at them. Sigh… social media is such a mixed bag, isn’t it? Remember the days when you had to communicate face to face or by letter? Seems like life was so much less complicated then. Someday, I hope someone will come up with a better version of social media. Or I’ll just simply stop caring about it.

Well… I suppose it’s time to wrap up this post and walk the dogs, so I’ll be ready when the chimney sweep gets here. I doubt Bill will be home early enough. He has to take the bus home from work, since he had to get a rental car for his overnight to Stuttgart. I need to take the dogs out for their walk… ride this wave of energy while it exists. Because, just as today’s featured photo suggests, sometimes energy surges are tragically fleeting. I’m just glad the vacuuming is done. I hate vacuuming. I need a riding vacuum.

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holidays

The last day of 2021… (cross post)

This post also appears on the travel blog, since I have different readers there. The featured photo is of cookies the landlord brought us.

I’m getting a late post up today. I was actually thinking of taking off the last day of 2021. I didn’t have anything earth shattering on my mind that I felt compelled to write about. Bill had the day off, and we were both kind of tired. Bill was especially tired, since he never gets a full night’s sleep. So I worked on reading my book, and he took a nap. Later, he’ll fire up the fondue/raclette grill set I got him for Christmas, and we’ll try it out. He’s already used the new hot tea pot I got him. He’s drinking tea as I write this.

Bill and Arran, preparing for tonight…

Arran took a nap with us, while Noyzi tried to steal my brand new fuzzy slippers. I think he thinks they’re small animals. I might let him take them, but he’s already eaten a couple of toys. The emergency vet is the last place we want to go tonight.

I managed to accomplish a couple of other chores, too. After I worked on trying to rid the toilet of lime scale and calcium stains, I went on Amazon.de and bought some citric acid, as well as cleaning soda and salt. Today, I tried the acid on a really terrible hard water stain in the shower that I’ve never been able to get rid of. I poured the acid on the stain and, wouldn’t you know it? That stain was gone in minutes! There’s no trace of it. I think it’s a wonder drug. It’s hard to believe it’s taken seven years to figure this out. Vinegar is good, but citric acid is the bomb! And it’s cheap, too!

I also climbed up on a stepladder in the shower and knocked the calcium off the shower head jets, so the nice rainfall spray won’t squirt all over the place anymore. Now, the new shower head is as nice as it was in September, when it was installed.

I heard that fireworks weren’t supposed to be sold in German stores again this year. Like last year, the government wants to discourage people from setting off fireworks, because they don’t want people getting hurt and needing to go to the hospital, thanks to COVID. I suspect there will be fireworks, anyway… Germans are law abiding people, but they love fireworks on New Year’s Eve. I think that’s pretty much the only day they are allowed to be set off, at least by the regular rank and file folks. I seem to remember that there were fireworks last year, despite the ban on them.

Our New Year’s celebrations are usually pretty boring affairs. We spend them much the same way we spend any night at home… listening to music, drinking wine, and talking.

I’m hoping 2022 will be a better year for everyone… although 2021 wasn’t, for me, a particularly bad year. I’ve had worse. But this COVID-19 shit needs to be fixed. Hopefully, 2022 will bring us some breakthroughs.

In any case… I want to offer sincere thanks to everyone who’s been reading my blogs. This site, in particular, has really taken off this year! In the past month or so, I’ve had an explosion in traffic. That really does my heart good, and makes writing this blog worth the time and effort.

The travel blog has been somewhat less trafficked this year, but I can understand why. I haven’t been traveling as much… nor have many other people! I’m sure the traveling we have done may even be a downer for some folks. I know some people suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out), and it can be depressing to look at other people’s travel posts when travel is so potentially risky and definitely stressful. I am very grateful, though, that we finally managed to go to Croatia. I hope we can visit again. There are more places I want to see. And with any luck and maybe God’s grace, if you’re into God, that is– maybe COVID-19 will be more under control by this time next year.

I’m still making music, too… Been getting better with my guitar skills and can even play some songs. There are some times when I find myself playing things completely spontaneously. I still have plenty of learning to do, which is a good thing. And I’ve also found someone to collaborate with on YouTube, too, which is very rewarding. Maybe I’ll put up a new song or two, now that I have new gear. Maybe I’ll try to learn bass guitar and banjo, too… if the virus continues to spread, I might have to do something else to pass the time.

Well… I don’t have much else to say, except…

I wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year’s Eve, and a very fortuitous New Year’s Day… and 2022!

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book reviews, housekeeping tips, lessons learned, movies

“Well-fed butts!” Barbara Ehrenreich and C. Thomas Howell have something in common.

Like today’s title? I wish I could claim it as my own quote, but I actually read it first in a book by Barbara Ehrenreich. Back in 2001, I was a second year graduate student in a state where I had few friends. I went to the local Barnes & Noble, looking for something interesting to read. I found Ehrenreich’s book, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. At that time of my life, I still considered myself fairly conservative in my politics, although looking at today’s right-wingers, I see that I’ve always been more of a moderate. But back then, I voted Republican.

I picked up Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, not knowing anything at all about her. I read about how, at different times from 1998 until 2000, she tried being a member of the “working poor”. She worked at Walmart, Menard’s, a hotel maid, waitress, cleaning woman, and at a nursing home. She moved from Florida to Minnesota, taking the cheapest lodging she could find and whatever jobs she could find. And she tried to live on the wages she was paid. In the course of her research, she lived in trailer parks and at residential hotels. And, at one point, while scrubbing a toilet while working as a cleaning lady, Barbara came up with that beaut of a phrase… “well-fed butt”. She was referring to the comparatively wealthy white people who employed people like she was pretending to be, thinking nothing about what it was like to be a member of the “working poor”, surviving on minimum wage and “not getting by”.

This was the original book cover and the one that is on my hardcover copy. The cover on some editions now look different, because in 2007, the woman in the picture, Kimmie Jo Christensen, sued Ehrenreich’s publisher for using the image without her permission. The photo was originally taken for an unrelated 1986 cover of Fortune magazine. The suit was eventually settled out of court.

At the time that I read Barbara’s book, I was a social work and public health student. In 2001, my focus was exclusively on social work. Oddly enough, I really hadn’t known anything about social work when I applied to the program. I was mostly looking for a way to be employed, making more than the low hourly wages offered at big box stores and waiting tables. I’d had my fill of dealing with the public and wanted to do something less taxing… because, as Barbara Ehrenreich had discovered, there’s no such thing as “unskilled labor”. Even working in food service at Busch Gardens was physically and mentally taxing, on hot days when the park was full of people, lines were long, and tempers were short. For that, I made $4.75 an hour during my last year, back in 1992.

Eight years later, as a graduate student editing and writing about the CDC’s Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance Survey, I made $10 an hour. But I only worked ten hours a week, so I had to supplement that money waiting tables at a country club, where I earned $8 an hour, the odd (and rare) tip, and occasional free meals. The rest was paid for by student loans. If only I had discovered Epinions.com back then. I could have made a nice side income writing product reviews. I didn’t discover Epinions, though, until 2003. Sadly, Epinions is now defunct, as are a lot of the other online writing gigs where I used to make my own money.

For some reason, I thought of the phrase “well-fed butts” as I was vacuuming today.. I always vacuum on Thursdays. I hate doing it. This morning, I joked to Bill that I wish I had a riding vacuum cleaner. It just seems like such a pointless activity, since as soon as I’m done sucking up the household dirt and dog hair, one of the dogs or another human invariably tracks more dirt, dog hair, or grass clippings into the house. On the other hand, I am always kind of gratified when I see the canister fill up with debris, which I can later dump into our “black bin” (trash that goes straight to an incinerator, rather than being recycled).

When Barbara wrote of “well-fed butts”, she was leaned over a toilet bowl, scrubbing shit stains and urine splashes. She wrote a snarky comment about how she was making low wages, cleaning up the residue left from “well-fed butts” belonging to rich people who had no appreciation whatsoever for her low paid labors. She had been vacuuming the carpets in a company patented fan style, leaving marks in the pile so that the customer knew that the cleaning woman had properly cleaned. Barbara confessed that the techniques were actually just cosmetic, since the cleaners weren’t using a lot of water or soap as they mopped floors and scrubbed grout. They were under pressure to be fast, so a lot of things got missed. She wrote:

“The first time I encountered a shit-stained toilet as a maid, I was shocked by the sense of unwanted intimacy. A few hours ago, some well-fed butt was straining away on this toilet seat, and now here I am wiping up after it”(54).

It’s interesting to look at Amazon reviews of Nickel and Dimed. The book gets an overall score of 4.3 stars. Many people liked it and learned from it. Others considered Ehrenreich preachy, judgmental, and occasionally racist. More than a few mentioned that as a well-educated woman who was merely acting as a low wage worker, she had no idea of how difficult it really is to be a member of the working poor, especially since she could scrap her experiment at any time. For whatever it’s worth, The Guardian ranked Nickel and Dimed 13th in its list of the 100 best books of the 21st century. Since we’re only 21 years into the 21st century, it seems kind of premature to be ranking books for this century. But writers are always looking for ways to make content, aren’t they?

A trailer for Soul Man… wow… things were cheap in 1986!

Barbara Ehrenreich’s book reminds me of Soul Man, a 1986 movie that was kind of popular, but today would likely be taboo. C. Thomas Howell, who was prior best known as one of the “Wolverines” in the anti-Soviet propaganda film, Red Dawn, played a rich White guy whose family cuts him off from the family fortunes. Howell’s character, Mark Watson, wants to go to law school at Harvard University, but as a rich White person, he doesn’t qualify for financial aid. So, his solution was to take tanning pills and pose as a Black student so he can qualify for a scholarship that is only available to Black people. Naturally, this role required that C. Thomas Howell wear blackface, which led to protests against the film’s release.

Worth watching for this scene. I like James Earl Jones a lot.

Today, Soul Man probably would not have been made, although I remember many television shows and movies where blackface was used in the 80s. In fact, I was watching The Kids in the Hall, a hilarious 90s era CBC/HBO comedy show last week, and noticed that at least two characters were in blackface. James Earl Jones and Rae Dawn Chong were both in this movie. And while many people think Soul Man is “racist”, the last scene kind of sums up things nicely. In that scene, Mark Watson is talking to his law school professor, Professor Banks (James Earl Jones), who tells Watson that now he’s learned what it’s like to be Black. But Watson reminds the professor that he doesn’t actually know what being Black is like, because he could always “escape” it. Real Black people can’t do that. Likewise, Barbara Ehrenreich could have bailed on being a member of the “working poor”. She was a successful writer with education and notoriety who had money. But she didn’t bail, and managed to write a book that was compelling to a lot of people, despite the “woke” naysayers’ complaints.

I think it’s too bad that so many people are so “woke” that they miss the main point sometimes. Our society has gotten to the point at which if you’re not spouting off politically correct rhetoric, you will get shouted down by the masses, many consisting of people who don’t stop to think about anything for more than a minute or two. They read or hear something, have a knee-jerk reaction to it, and just drive on without another thought. They don’t always stop to see the other sides of an issue and think critically. And if you dare to bring up the other sides, they get all ragey about it, which is why comment sections are often useless and reading them does nothing more than raise my blood pressure and occasionally provide fodder for my blog.

Soul Man is kind of cringeworthy on its surface, because it shows a clueless White person pretending to be Black– and frankly, not very convincingly, as I don’t think C. Thomas Howell really pulls off racial appropriation. To me, he doesn’t really pass. But that final scene, in which he talks to his Black Harvard law professor about the trick he pulled, the main idea of the movie is spelled out. And I think a lot of people miss that, and just want to crap on the film because they think it’s “racist”. If it was meant to be a racist film, that last scene would not have been included. That being said… Soul Man is not a great film, in my opinion, although I do think the people who made it had good intentions. But thinking about Barbara Ehrenreich’s book this morning made me remember it.

Rae Dawn Chong, who is mixed race– Black, White, and Asian– reportedly was very offended that Spike Lee took exception to Soul Man. She said:

“It was only controversial because Spike Lee made a thing of it… He’d never seen the movie and he just jumped all over it,” she added, recalling that it was a time when Lee was coming up in his career and making headlines for being outspoken.

“He was just starting and pulling everything down in his wake,” Chong asserted. “If you watch the movie, it’s really making white people look stupid.”

That was my take, too… although my favorite part of Soul Man was the music. The soundtrack was pretty excellent, if I recall correctly.

In any case… I hope my days of being a member of the working poor are over, for I know that is not an easy status. But one never knows what the future holds. I have been very lucky, but as Don Henley pointed out in his song, “New York Minute”, everything can change in an instant. One minute you’re here, the next minute you’re gone… So I try to keep that in mind as I clean up after the two well-fed human butts and two well fed canine butts in my household and feel great relief when my vacuuming chore is over for the week.

Bill managed to get his second Moderna shot yesterday. He was feeling okay until about 3:00am, when the shot kicked in. He woke up this morning feeling achy and flu-like. I’m glad we washed all the bedding yesterday, so he can enjoy clean sheets while he recovers. He worked so many hours in Bavaria that he’s taking most of this week off. I wish we could have used the time off to see some of Europe, but the weather has been positively horrible lately. It’s currently 54 degrees outside and cloudy. Yesterday and Tuesday, it rained for most of the day. I did catch a rainbow, though…

I hope this is a good omen.

Well, it’s time I got on with the rest of the day. I don’t know if I recommend Nickel and Dimed. I liked it a lot when I read it, but at 20 years old, it’s now a bit dated. But I do like that turn of a phrase, “well fed white butts”… and I hope Barbara Ehrenreich meant it when she expressed empathy for the working poor… just like I hope C. Thomas Howell learned something from his turn as “Mark Watson, Soul Man”. I guess Barbara Ehrenreich and C. Thomas Howell really do have something in common besides having well-fed butts of their own.

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