On Being Human
Our bodies, ourselves
The body is a private thing. It belongs to us. We identify with our body and sense ourselves within it. Our body is us. We cannot separate who we are from our bodies. It is for this reason that humans are so concerned about their bodies. We want our bodies to appear attractive to others or, at least, to appear the way we want them to appear. We want control over our bodies.
We often fear the loss of our bodies in several ways: control over our own bodies, our physical privacy, our health and safety, even our very lives.
We want to be able to control how much of our bodies to reveal to others. Americans views the sight of the naked body as something shameful or erotic, but often not as something natural. European cultures, though not all, are less inhibited about nudity compared to Americans, yet many people, regardless of where they live, are fearful of being naked. …
Historical Evidence
Do not open until 2120
How can we document this year and quite possibly The End of the World as We Know It?
In light of this momentous year, I propose that historians create a time capsule, sealed, and interred somewhere safe with a marker that says Do Not Open Until 2120. The trauma of 2020 needs time be distilled to be fully appreciated by humans in the future.
The events of this year will go down in history books, but history is the stories told most often by those in power and the occasional everyman who leaves behind some written documentation.
This year, with its many horrors, should be fully documented for posterity, supposing there is any posterity left if something isn’t done about global warming and the many other ways humans are endeavoring to destroy the earth and make it uninhabitable for humans. …
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Women’s magazines influence women today much as they did in the 1950s and 1960s.
Women’s magazines today still offer advice on family, love, and relationships as much as they did in the past. Women’s roles in marital relationships is a long-standing favorite topic. The feature “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” survived for over fifty years in the Ladies Home Journal. Columns like this one prescribed the norms for women’s expectations for married life.
Editorial Assumptions
In the post-war era, editors of women’s magazines presumed their readers either were married or wished to be married. …
I think not
When I think of the greatness of America, I think of World War II and America’s part in defeating the Germans. I think of the Space Race and America landing the first man on the moon.
I think of America’s contributions to the inventions of and improvements to modern necessities like the electric lightbulb, television, computers, and cell phones, medical advancements, and communications satellites.
I think of America in the 1930s when Social Security, a social insurance program, was established to pay retired workers a continuing income after retirement.
I think of America in the 1960s when it began to address inequities based on race and gender, when Medicare and Medicaid were made available to those who needed it. …
Music with a Message
Soundtrack for a Revolution
The images I have watched on the tv screen and computer screen in the past few months reminds me of the political atmosphere of the 1960s. The protests, violence against the protests, arrests of the protesters, calls for Civil Rights and the end of violence against Black Americans, the KKK, the government stepping in, suppression of Black voters, debates on tv for and against the protests.
In addition to the usual problems of the 60s is a new layer of danger from the Coronavirus and open carry and armed and dangerous white supremacists, amid calls for racial equality and an end to police violence against black citizens. …
HUMOR
So I wrote this article
I’ve been meaning to write this article ever since March 2014, but some things came up: things like Netflix, books I wanted to read, dumb video games I’ve played to help me space out, napping, shopping on Amazon and Chewy.com, and a million other priorities like rearranging things in my closet.
I made a to do list and writing this article was on it…way up at the top.
I intended to do it. I planned to do it, but it kept getting pushed out into the near future when my brain would be functional again, but that just hasn’t happened yet. …
Poe and The Black Cat
If you’ve never read Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat,” I highly recommend it.
Although this story is not as well known as “The Tell Tale Heart” or “The Pit and the Pendulum,” it shows that Poe knew the dark heart of mankind intimately. He demonstrates how man is capable of great evil just as easily as he is capable of great good. This unsavory truth is something that most of us would prefer not to acknowledge.
Whether at work or in your personal life when you do something wrong, especially if it hurts others, do you admit you did it and take the blame for your actions? If you are like most people, you probably don’t or you’ll admit you did it while blaming someone or something else for making you do it. …
Motivate Them Instead
I am currently reading Edward Said’s memoir Out of Place. Said, a professor of literature at Columbia University, was the author of such books as Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism, and The Question of Palestine as well as Music at the Limits and On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain . He was the only son of Wadie Said, a very wealthy businessman.
Edward’s father provided him with the best education, the best books, the best opportunities for travel, the best entertainment, the best clothes and toys. There were few material goods he was denied. Yet his relationship with his parents was complicated. …
Our content is being hijacked!
I have begun to see a number of articles about Medium’s change in Medium’s Terms of Service. I have not been disturbed by this change because, since I first began writing on Medium more than two years ago in June 2018, I could see in the details of my Stats that my content was being hijacked.
See below the stats on this article from June 2018:
Sometimes as much as 83% of my views are for an external sources such as these.
