Who Are You?

I’ve often said that if some of my friends knew how I really feel about some subjects, they would reject me as a friend. For this reason I usually don’t discuss politics, and keep silent when they do. If they take that as agreement, that’s up to them.

           

But I’ve decided to be brave. Despite my distaste of politics, I’m going to go there. No, not in the Republican vs Democrat debate, since I believe that both parties have lost all sense of ethics and morals and stand only for getting re-elected (as seen in the POTUS having re-election campaign rallies less than a month after he was sworn in rather than getting down to the business of learning his job and carrying it out.)

           

I suppose what I’m really going to discuss is morals and values, but they get tangled up in politics. People like to be able to throw a label at you: liberal, conservative, right wing, left wing, chicken wing, whatever. I don’t categorize myself as any of those.

           

I consider myself a moderate, politically. I look at what’s on the menu and choose some from each column. Besides, labels are for food containers, not people.

           

Having been raised Roman Catholic, certain people expect me to have a certain set of very strict rules I live by. People make assumptions about what I believe about faith as well as certain social issues. Those people would be wrong, in the main. As a Catholic priest once told me, I’m something the Catholic Church fears: a thinking Catholic.

           

I took that to heart, along with things I felt the Catholic Church was doing wrong, namely not defrocking priests who molest or rape people.

If I were the victim of one of those priests, I would not go to the pastor; I would go to the police. Yes, I know the reason those who were abused did not come forward. They were children, they believed what they were taught and they were afraid.

But as a “thinking Catholic,” I do not consider a criminal capable of condemning my immortal soul, so a priest who commits a crime against me has no authority to  restrict me from telling anyone what he has done.

The fact that the Church did nothing but hide these criminals made me question more than a few things about the institution. The fact that one of the people who, when in ultimate authority (pope) in the church did not do anything about it, and was then canonized for it by the next pope, who was his deputy in deceit was the final straw that caused me to leave the church.

I joined another church, one I was assured had a zero tolerance policy with regard to priests molesting people.

While the Episcopal Church is similar to the worship and practices with which I was raised, I can’t say I was entirely comfortable with my choice. I’m not really sure why.

I suppose part of it is that I’ve never considered myself terribly religious. Church on Sunday, try to do what is right, but people who constantly bring religion into the conversation tend to annoy me. I can pray on my own; I don’t need to be a Pharisee about it.

I also got annoyed that everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) about my chosen religion was done by committee.

Ok, I can see that they have a committee who decided on a new pastor. But please, why does it have to take more than a year? If you have to have a questionnaire for the congregation on what they’re looking for, fine, do that as soon as you find out the old pastor is leaving, and have someone collate the results. The 10 most often listed things are your criteria. Give people a couple of weeks to return their questionnaires. I could get that list together in a couple of hours.

But no. Not enough people participated, so we need to have a meeting to set up what our quest is. 

Then there’s another meeting to tell the people about the quest. 

Then months go by, waiting to make sure absolutely everyone who wishes to participate has had the opportunity to do so.

Meanwhile, we had interim pastors.

To one who was used to the archdiocesan office sending a new pastor the day the old one left, this was nonsense. 

But finally, after a year of interims, I suppose an ad went out, and eventually applicants were interviewed. And the names of the ones who fit were submitted to a committee for approval and finally –finally – a pastor was chosen.

And this is the way things are done. Needless to say, I was not one of the participants. I was there to be in the choir. I don’t care about the politics of the church. And I ended up leaving because that church didn't meet my needs, either.

The truth is, I probably don’t belong in any church. I think much of what I do is to cover myself in case all of this afterlife business is true.

Some will be horrified that I am such a pagan. Others would laugh at the idea that I would adhere to a superstitious talisman. I’m just trying to make the best of an unknowable situation.

The idea of religion then brings us to the moral question. I’ve often been told, “Oh, you’re Catholic, so you don’t believe in birth control.” Have I mentioned that I hate having people tell me what I do or do not believe? 

Perhaps it’s because I don’t believe what they think I do.

I do believe in God, after a fashion. I believe he (oh, don’t get all feminist on me; I was taught masculine by preference in English class, and it’s shorter than he/she, etc.) gave us minds to think with. 

He put things on this earth to be discovered. If he has an agenda and things he doesn’t think we’re ready for, we don’t discover those things (which makes one wonder why we discovered how to make nuclear weapons; but I digress). 

The fact that we have discovered how to do birth control tells me that it’s something there for our use. And I believed that when I was still Catholic. There is no “thou shalt not use birth control” commandment.

And I do not equate birth control with abortion. It doesn’t kill anyone. It prevents two cells from connecting. Abstinence does the same thing. Cancer drugs kill something growing in someone’s body, but I don’t hear anyone complaining about that.

When I was in Catholic school, three pregnant women (“We wanted to get pregnant,” they said. Uh huh) came in to class one day and gave us very detailed, scientific rules for using the rhythm method. I found it very hypocritical, since it was a method of preventing pregnancy. Oh, but it’s not 100%.

Newsflash: Nothing is but abstinence.

Oh, but the Catholic Church declared artificial birth control a sin.

Fact: no, they did not. Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical letter about it. An encyclical letter is NOT doctrine. It is a guideline. And if you want to go out on a limb, it is a guideline set out by men who either molested children or protected those who did. So, you see where I’m going with this.

The funniest (well, not to the person involved) thing I ever heard was years ago when a friend told me she was pregnant, and she wasn’t married. That in itself isn’t funny, especially considering how religious she was. When I asked why they hadn’t used birth control, she said, “But that’s a sin!” (Well, no, as I explained above) My reply was, “Not to be judgmental, but what you did was a sin. If you’re going to sin, sin well.”

Then there’s abortion. Personally, I have never been in a position where I would need to make that choice. But then again, I’ve never been pregnant. And I'm not bothered by either of those facts.

Personally, I don’t agree with that as a form of birth control.  To me, birth control is something you take care of before you get undressed (or at least before sex). But then again, those birth control methods are not 100%. I don’t think it takes 5 months to figure out that you’re pregnant or that you want to terminate.

I also recognize that some people DO feel that abortion is a form of birth control or controlling their own bodies, and who am I to lecture? I don’t try to tell others what to believe.

I don’t think women who decide to have abortions should be made to jump through hoops: listen to a heartbeat, wait a week, etc. I have never met a woman who had an abortion who didn’t know exactly what it was she was doing. It was not a decision that came lightly, and it wasn’t  simply a “procedure” that she had done and then forgot about. I don’t see the need to torture anyone who comes to the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy.

There are also circumstances in which I feel abortion is justified. If the woman’s life is in danger, I don’t see why anyone would hesitate. I’ll put this in terms a gun owner can understand: if your life is in danger, protecting it is self-defense.

Saying the baby’s life is paramount above all else is ridiculous. If that baby was meant to live, the mother’s life wouldn’t be in danger.

Also, if the mother dies, there might be no one else to raise that child. Would you like living with the knowledge that you killed your own mother? It was difficult enough to grow up with the reality that my mother and I both almost died at my birth.

If there are other children already, they will also be deprived of a mother. The woman could always have another child – not to say that people are interchangeable.

I also believe that if a child has no chance of any quality of life because of severe debilitating disease, that is a case where a mother choosing an abortion is acceptable.

I find it curious that the same people who complain about welfare are the same ones who are adamantly against abortion at any cost. For those who are opposed to any abortions who say their tax dollars should not go to abortions, I say that then you must assume the cost of the myriad services needed for a child who has no quality of life, who will have to be taken care of for the rest of its life.

I’m not saying anyone should be forced to have an abortion. I’m saying it’s a decision made by the individual or the couple. There are consequences in choosing it and consequences in not choosing it.

Rape goes without saying, as the most acceptable reason for an abortion. If, despite all of the services and medical care available, a woman who is raped gets pregnant, she should not be forced for any reason to have that baby.

My opinion is that that baby has no business being born. It is not the result of a sex act, it is the result of violence.

Forcing a woman who is raped to have a baby that is the result of a rape is forcing her to be raped a second time.

Rapists are criminals, and as such, should have no rights in the decision. And if the woman chooses to have that baby, the rapist should have to pay support as any rightful father would have to, since he forced the pregnancy.

As far as married couples go, both should have a say in whether or not an abortion happens. They have made a commitment to each other. Unless they’re in the process of a divorce, they should be in this together. The only instance where I don’t think this should be so is in the case of rape. (See above paragraph.) But the woman has to file charges of rape in order for that to be a consideration. No one should ever be forced into an abortion.

A single woman should not have to have the “permission” of the “father” in order to get an abortion. If you’re not willing to make the commitment, you shouldn’t have the authority to decide what happens to a woman’s body.

The idea that, as has been put forward in our male-dominated political structure, a woman is a host organism for a fetus is patently absurd. These same men would be horrified to be considered the same.

If a woman wants an abortion and the man who impregnated her wants the child, there is now a scientific solution, what amounts to a womb outside the body. Let the artificial womb be the “host,” relieve the woman of any parental responsibility, since she doesn’t want the child, and let the “father” raise it.

My guess is that, confronted with that reality, most men who want to stand in the way of a woman having an abortion would disappear, since their stance is more often than not about control, not about parenting.

Euthanasia was another hot topic when I was in high school. The nuns painted horror stories about doctors putting people to death if we started down the slippery slope of abortions. While euthanasia has become spoken about, the gunslinger mentality has failed to materialize outside of authoritarian political regimes.

I believe that one has the right to choose not to have heroics performed to save their life. Whether the individual believes that when their number is up, it’s up and we shouldn’t play with nature, despite what science has devised, or whether an individual is terminally ill and has a DNR in their file, that is their right, and the government, as well as the Church backs this up.

I don’t happen to believe in saving a life at all costs. The chances of someone waking up out of a permanent vegetative state and going on to lead a normal life are so miniscule that I don’t think it should be forced on someone. If a person wishes to be kept alive that way, that’s their option and their expense. Of course you have to think about this while you’re still sentient enough to have something written down.

While I understand why some people take their own lives, I could not go that route. There are palliative care options to take away pain. Since I am not in their shoes, just as in the situation of abortion, I wouldn’t judge them one way or the other.

I would imagine no matter which side of the conservative/liberal debate you may be on, I’ve probably offended or at least shocked you.

While I wouldn’t necessarily participate in some of these options (I think – again, I have never been in the situations), I don’t believe I have the right to deny others these same options, and I would defend their right to make decisions on their lives.

Memories

Memoirs have become a popular forum, not just for the rich and famous, but also for the unknown and middle class. And while the “misty water-colored memories” of song fame may sound cheerful and nostalgic, more often the modern memoir is an outpouring of vengeance on those who are perceived to have done the memoirist wrong. Too often, common decency takes a back seat to salaciousness.

Famous actresses are particularly fond of tell-all stories cataloguing the transgressions of their numerous ex-husbands, without taking into account how trashy their lack of propriety may make them look.

Fans buy into it in an effort to get to know what it’s like to be one of the rich and powerful. But I wonder if some of those tell-all books are any more honest than the headlines from the tabloid newspapers reporting on the 20-pound, two-headed baby or the, “She’s having my alien-abducted baby” stories.

           

Knowing what these memoirs are often like, it was with some trepidation that I bought Carly Simon’s Boys in the Trees. While I’d bought her albums and learned to sing and play many of her songs on guitar in college, I’d also heard enough gossip about her life that now would be touted as, “It’s on the Internet; it must be true.”

           

Wanting to know how the other half lived didn’t mean I wanted confirmation of slutty behavior. It was refreshing to read the book.

While it was a fairly comprehensive autobiography, it didn’t give a blow-by-blow recitation of her every sexual encounter. She was private about what should stay private.

           

There were even surprises, like her admission that she had met and was delighted to play a concert with Cat Stevens, someone the inquiring minds in college had insisted she’d had a torrid affair with.

Even on her marriage to James Taylor, which ended in divorce, she was polite. She didn’t lay blame. She took and gave blame equally, and demonstrated that she still cared about him.

           

Compared to other famous memoirs, Carly Simon’s was so non-lurid that the biggest headline about it were what few revelations she made about who “You’re So Vain” was really about.

           

The fact that a famous person can pen a revelatory memoir without sinking into the muck shines a light for regular folks to see that they can write a memoir that can be insightful for their children and grandchildren. They can show how their lives mattered, and what life was like in a different time.

The key is to find what makes an individual’s life important by showing how it reveals the times in which they lived.

Caught by the 21st Century

Recently, I bought my first iPhone. Many of my friends consider that as my having been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the 21^st century.

Not so.

I love the idea of technology. But I don’t necessarily see the point sometimes. I don’t like to have things just to accumulate them.

 The technology that exists today is not what I was expecting, growing up. In the ‘60s we were told that by the year 2000 we would have robot maids and possibly flying cars. While I never really expected to live like the Jetsons, 17 years beyond the promised date, I’m still waiting for my robot maid (and no, the Rumba doesn’t dust or make beds -- or dinner).

While Star Trek may have hinted at mobile phones and computers with Siri (or Alexa, depending on the brand), expecting that future seemed a bit too Twilight Zone for this century. Perhaps next century was my thinking.

I like computers. I truly do. In fact, it always surprises me when I know how to do things with them that my much younger colleagues don’t. I mean, they grew up with computers, whereas laptops appeared too late for me to have benefitted either time through college. Yes, the big ones were around, but my family couldn’t afford one, and the Internet wasn’t ubiquitous back then.

To me, a computer is a fantastic typewriter, one that saves a lot of paper when I’m writing a novel. I love being able to delete or move words, sentences and paragraphs without having to start from scratch. And autocorrect is great for my typical typos. The fact that I can also save the many novels that I’ve written on a single thumb drive instead of a filing cabinet is fantastic.

I love being able to look up information on the Internet instead of needing an entire set of Encyclopedia, which are outdated in a year or two. It is frustrating, though, when I type in a search word, only to be flooded irrelevant information. In that regard, it doesn’t save me time or frustration.

While research on the Internet can be frustrating, social media is an introvert’s dream.

Facebook allows me to be social with people I might otherwise never meet. It also allows social contact without physically being in a crowded room. I can read someone’s blather, call them an idiot and never type a word. They’re none the wiser and we’re all happy. (So, if I actually answer something you've posted, I haven't called you an idiot.)

The idea of email is exciting, but the actuality is it’s mostly junk mail. I had dreams of keeping up correspondence via email. I do that with a small group of friends I’ve known since elementary school, but  most people now tell me they’d rather get texts.

There are several things I wish I could do with the computer. Being married to an IT guy, you’d think I’d have an easy time of learning cool things like Photoshop. But no. I had to take a class to learn the finer points of blogging. My husband, The Blue Scream of Jeff (read his blogs) didn’t understand why I needed to take the class when he could have shown me. The point was he didn’t.

I was told I can’t do Photoshop because I don’t have the program on my computer. When I asked about getting it, I was told I didn’t need it. Blue Scream could do those things for me. What about independence? What about creativity? I think I could be good at it, even if I can’t draw. When I do need something, I have to wait around until Blue Scream has time, instead of being able to do it myself.

But he says it’s expensive, so I won't be getting Photoshop anytime soon.

I’m not anti-technology.

I am just against wasting things.

I have a computer.

I have an iPod.

And until recently, I had a perfectly good phone to talk and text on. 

I also have a perfectly good DSLR camera, although it will never be as good to me as the old 35 mm camera for which I have difficulty getting film.

I don’t need a phone that does all of those things. Once everything breaks, a single item that does it all might be okay, although I don’t know how you can listen to music, chat on the phone and take photos all at once.

But why waste things that still work perfectly well? Besides, the camera on the phone isn’t very good compared to my real camera, as it demonstrated recently at a Moody Blues concert. And the charge on the phone battery doesn’t last anywhere near as long as the one on my iPod, despite the iPod being an ancient 5 or 6 years old.

Originally, I got a mobile phone because Blue Scream was worried about my having to drive long distances for my job. Once, on the way home, a not-so-reliable previous car broke down. There was no payphone anywhere, even at the gas station I stopped in to find one. The attendant was kind enough to let me use his mobile.

With the total demise of pay phones and a job that requires my boss to be able to get in touch with me when I’m in different places, I got a phone that allows texting as well as calls. Of course, outside work, I seldom get calls or texts, other than robocalls and hoaxes.

People have frequently, over the past few years, told me I need an iPhone or droid.

Why?

It has Internet!

My old phone could’ve had that, but it was far more expensive than the phone plan I had. Besides, I have a computer for getting on the Internet. The phone that had texting had been a concession to modern advances. The one before that was a flip phone. Ever tried to text on one of those? Can you imagine trolling the Internet on one?

Still, while my newer model phone suited my needs, it was getting old and the battery was starting to go. It was showing other signs of failing, too. I had been hearing about plans that included Internet and were cheaper than the plan I had. I thought I might just have to give in simply to save money.

Looking around, I noticed that many of the stores I frequented (mostly for tea between schools) had apps now rather than punch cards to allow one a free cuppa every 7^th or 10^th purchase. But you couldn’t get apps without Internet.

So, I bought an iPhone.

I still seldom get calls or texts. My boss, colleagues and Blue Scream call or text at times. And it does have some interesting features.

It’s nice that I can get weather updates, but not being tied to my phone, I usually don’t see them until a couple of hours after a storm has already passed. I really don’t need the news flashes about the latest governmental lunacy. I still don’t use it for the Internet; I don’t send emails or look up information. When I have the time, I do those things on a computer.

Recently, I even used the GPS, although I couldn’t get mine to show the cool map on the screen in my car the way Blue Scream’s does (we have the same model car). After I came home, with a bit of playing around with my phone (he has a droid, so it works a little differently), he was able to show me how that worked.

I do know I’ve earned 2 free teas so far and a hoagie, and I’ve recently earned a free Rita’s water ice on my apps. I wasn’t able to download my boarding pass for our recent vacation on it, although I suspect having it on the phone will be as awkward as a paper one going through TSA.

Getting the iPhone has allowed me to get an iPad for a really good price. I haven’t yet figured out what to do with an iPad, but I’m sure I’ll eventually find it useful.

Just know you’ll never see me walking anywhere with my head down and eyes glued to a phone screen. And don’t expect me to give up my SLR any time soon.