It's odd when you know more about a particular topic than the hip, chic, eclectic people who write the articles for the New York Times "Modern Love" column.
A few days ago, the column detailed the adventures of Katherine Ruppe, who found herself a surprised and then an bewildered extra in someone's love life.
Her nerd turned out to be a swinger--complete with married girlfriend.
As I've said before, I know something about swingers. While I haven't had personal experience, I've had enough conversations with some to come a few conclusions.
One is that both swinging and polyamory create complexities, like jealousy, that most people aren't equipped to cope with. The situation Ruppe describes probably is not all that unusual. Another is that swinging, having sex with many partners, requires a certain amount of numbing, or compartmentalization.
Men are usually more comfortable with this than are women--although women are becoming more adept.
Monogamy can indeed become boring, if both partners aren't committed to spicing it up. That explains, perhaps, why some Christian pastors have started producing these R rated books for married couples.
But is bringing a third party, or parties, into a relationship the answer to a tedious sex life?
I'm skeptical. If a couple is having sexual problems, there's usually more to it than sex. And intimacy is something you earn, not something you find by posting on craigslist.
lundi, janvier 19, 2009
dimanche, janvier 18, 2009
Unblinking
When Paul exhorted his readers to stand up to the principalities, I'm not sure he would have considered Colosimo's gun shop one of them. But read the column in Sunday's newspaper by Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Monica Yant Kinney and tell me how you feel about this gun shop owner.
He sounds like a man who doesn't give much thought to anything but his business -- at the least. At the most, as the city alleges, he may be allowing criminals to buy guns that allow for more killings in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
I know the Rev. Isaac Miller. He's a cool-headed guy.
I admire his guts, and that of the men and women arrested with him, in taking a moral stance against gun violence. The shots and woundings and funerals happen in his neighborhood.
This isn't about fuzzy headed liberalism. This is, as Kinney says, going face to face with the gun lobby, and saying what needed to be said, even in a prison cell. Enough. Enough. Enough.
He sounds like a man who doesn't give much thought to anything but his business -- at the least. At the most, as the city alleges, he may be allowing criminals to buy guns that allow for more killings in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
I know the Rev. Isaac Miller. He's a cool-headed guy.
I admire his guts, and that of the men and women arrested with him, in taking a moral stance against gun violence. The shots and woundings and funerals happen in his neighborhood.
This isn't about fuzzy headed liberalism. This is, as Kinney says, going face to face with the gun lobby, and saying what needed to be said, even in a prison cell. Enough. Enough. Enough.
Feeding at the welfare trough
Remember the outrage when outgoing (YIPEE) Treasury secretary Hank Paulson wanted 700 billion to bail out struggling banks? That wasn't me. With a lot of other people, I took a passive approach--believing that so called experts knew better than I what needed to be done.
Read this article in the New York Times and ask yourself-what should we have done? Now I understand the anger--these banks are using the money, as I've said before, not to lend to worthy consumers, but to buy other companies and strengthen their positions.
This is welfare for the finance sector --affirmative action for the wealthy. I'm sure a lot of these guys who are folks who point their fingers at poor people and say they should climb out of poverty by their bootstraps.
If we'd left the smart men and women at these institutions to figure it out, would we have suffered? Well, apparently, most of the money went to healthy banks. And not a hell of a lot has been done to craft a plan to help investors or others who need credit.
I'll climb back off this soapbox -- until it pisses me off all over again. I think what infuriates me that most is that the scale of the suffering in this country is getting larger every day--while the wealthy continue to enrich themselves. They're good at it, aren't they?
Read this article in the New York Times and ask yourself-what should we have done? Now I understand the anger--these banks are using the money, as I've said before, not to lend to worthy consumers, but to buy other companies and strengthen their positions.
This is welfare for the finance sector --affirmative action for the wealthy. I'm sure a lot of these guys who are folks who point their fingers at poor people and say they should climb out of poverty by their bootstraps.
If we'd left the smart men and women at these institutions to figure it out, would we have suffered? Well, apparently, most of the money went to healthy banks. And not a hell of a lot has been done to craft a plan to help investors or others who need credit.
I'll climb back off this soapbox -- until it pisses me off all over again. I think what infuriates me that most is that the scale of the suffering in this country is getting larger every day--while the wealthy continue to enrich themselves. They're good at it, aren't they?
Martin's Dream
Monday, of course, is the day we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King. The day before Inaguaration Day.
Forty years (41) is a long time. We recall the life so brutally cut short, but possibly we don't give enough reverence to the prophet.
For Martin Luther King was a prophet. I had occasiona to think about this when I came across his "I have a dream speech."
My daughter, the DQ, is reading part of that speech with a group of students at our Constitution Center this Monday. Part of a local theater group called New Voices, they are young people from Chester, one of the poorest cities in this area, and from suburban Philadelphia (one of the most affluent). Chester, by the way, is where young Martin Luther King attended seminary.
"With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into…
a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day"
Sometimes progress seems so go in tiny baby steps --and sometimes, as with the election of Barack Obama, in big leaps. Dr. King might not have known how such transformation might occur, but he never lost hope, and faith, that it would.
Forty years (41) is a long time. We recall the life so brutally cut short, but possibly we don't give enough reverence to the prophet.
For Martin Luther King was a prophet. I had occasiona to think about this when I came across his "I have a dream speech."
My daughter, the DQ, is reading part of that speech with a group of students at our Constitution Center this Monday. Part of a local theater group called New Voices, they are young people from Chester, one of the poorest cities in this area, and from suburban Philadelphia (one of the most affluent). Chester, by the way, is where young Martin Luther King attended seminary.
"With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into…
a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day"
Sometimes progress seems so go in tiny baby steps --and sometimes, as with the election of Barack Obama, in big leaps. Dr. King might not have known how such transformation might occur, but he never lost hope, and faith, that it would.
vendredi, janvier 16, 2009
From the Yellow House to the White House.
I've never been crazy about predictable people--and I guess that includes columnists. Assuming that columnists are people, instead of a committee of people. But I came across a column that suprised me with its hope, and its graciousness and its sense of history. This opinion piece was written by Michael Gerson, a regular commentator for the Washington Post. Entitled "Words for This Journey" it's a meditation on what Barack Obama can say to us at this extraordinarily historic moment.
At the same time, the columnist calls on the President to lift high the bloody flag of commonality.
This hope of unity is stronger than all the hypocrisy of our past and louder than the clank of chains. It led men and women to travel on immigrant ships and the Underground Railroad -- and it explains the amazing journey from the Yellow House to a white one just down the street.
I can't do this justice. Click the link and read it for yourself.
A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Gerson was a speechwriter for our soon to be former President. He's also a Christian, and, judging from his columns, an extremely thoughtful man. If he was all about polemics, a Rush or a Frank (bright as they are), I wouldn't have time for them. I'm so tired of writers who stoke the fires of antagonism.
But it seems that Gerson, and perhaps a few others, have caught the spirit of hope that pushes a few slim buds amidst the cracked earth. Perhaps we, too, can be inspired...and become a part of the healing--signs of spring in our own communities.
At the same time, the columnist calls on the President to lift high the bloody flag of commonality.
This hope of unity is stronger than all the hypocrisy of our past and louder than the clank of chains. It led men and women to travel on immigrant ships and the Underground Railroad -- and it explains the amazing journey from the Yellow House to a white one just down the street.
I can't do this justice. Click the link and read it for yourself.
A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Gerson was a speechwriter for our soon to be former President. He's also a Christian, and, judging from his columns, an extremely thoughtful man. If he was all about polemics, a Rush or a Frank (bright as they are), I wouldn't have time for them. I'm so tired of writers who stoke the fires of antagonism.
But it seems that Gerson, and perhaps a few others, have caught the spirit of hope that pushes a few slim buds amidst the cracked earth. Perhaps we, too, can be inspired...and become a part of the healing--signs of spring in our own communities.
mercredi, janvier 14, 2009
Kids and cats ...
One of my friends, childless herself, likes to claim that fostering manners in children is basically a lost art. I engage in the conversation as though I could address the topic with perfect indifference. Which, of course, I can't.
After reading an article by pediatrician Perri Klass on the subject of raising children who are gracious and polite, I recalled a fairly few recent instance at the doctors where one of mine had a meltdown when the doctor said that "they" (to protect the guilty) would have to get a shot.
Even our pediatrician, a cheerful, down-to-earth and motherly woman who has known the kids since they were babies, started to sound strained in the face of tears and fear and general tantrum.
Was this child's poor self-control my parental responsibility? Did fear (face it, who likes getting a shot?) outweigh years of education in appropriate social behavior? Or is learning that the world doesn't revolve around oneself an ongoing part of maturation?
I tend to think the latter. But I'm always aware of my shortcomings in this regard -- and waiting for an expert like Dr. Klass to draw it to my attention.
I guess I shouldn't give up on training the cats, either.
After reading an article by pediatrician Perri Klass on the subject of raising children who are gracious and polite, I recalled a fairly few recent instance at the doctors where one of mine had a meltdown when the doctor said that "they" (to protect the guilty) would have to get a shot.
Even our pediatrician, a cheerful, down-to-earth and motherly woman who has known the kids since they were babies, started to sound strained in the face of tears and fear and general tantrum.
Was this child's poor self-control my parental responsibility? Did fear (face it, who likes getting a shot?) outweigh years of education in appropriate social behavior? Or is learning that the world doesn't revolve around oneself an ongoing part of maturation?
I tend to think the latter. But I'm always aware of my shortcomings in this regard -- and waiting for an expert like Dr. Klass to draw it to my attention.
I guess I shouldn't give up on training the cats, either.
lundi, janvier 12, 2009
Evening in Venice
It was one of those evenings that seems to progress, if that is the correct word, in fits and starts. Sometimes we rushed forward, sometimes we stalled. The DQ and I determined to finish the episode of "Brideshead Revisted." But by the time we really got into it, Mr C wanted to go to sleep. When I got back to the series, they were in Venice. As I watched the boatmen and the seaside and the palaces, the gentlemen walking arms thrown around each other's shoulders, I wondered what my 13 year old was thinking. At her age, I took in all of the (admittedly staged) sights and sounds of 1920's Europe like a morning glory opening its petals to the summer sun. Listening to Jeremy Iron's wonderfully upper class accent isolating each word of Waugh's novel and making it elegantly vibrant, half aware of his lovely face...she yawned. Yawned.
That is closer to sacrilege than anything Sebastian, Charles and Julia did. But somehow we navigated Venice, and returned to London in the rain.
I wonder what my daughter will remember. And for me? I will try to expose her to culture outside of her experience, while reminding myself that she doesn't need to love Jeremy Irons to be my daughter. But it don't hurt.
That is closer to sacrilege than anything Sebastian, Charles and Julia did. But somehow we navigated Venice, and returned to London in the rain.
I wonder what my daughter will remember. And for me? I will try to expose her to culture outside of her experience, while reminding myself that she doesn't need to love Jeremy Irons to be my daughter. But it don't hurt.
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