Next up, if you do even a little bit of cooking, look into a Chinese knife. I've been teaching myself to cook the last couple of years and regret never watching mom and learning from her. Need to make a concerted effort in the next year or so to teach the kids some basics as you can read a recipe, but navigating the kitchen properly is not intuitive. In an effort to learn more, I take a cooking class when I can find them, but what I really need is a basics of kitchen class. The local Community Center offered a "How to use a knife" class last week and I learned a ton. Most importantly, I was holding the damn thing wrong and thank my guardian angel for allowing me to keep all parts of my 10 fingers. In addition to helpful tips on how to chop all variety of meat and vegetables, was introduced to the Chinese knife.
For the third tip this week, have been sprinkling in a term into my rotation that seems to have a readily apparent positive response to the person I'm talking to. That term is "I love that about you". Pretty easy to work it in...if someone does something nice for you or just society in general, throw it out there. Don't use it too much, and only once in a long time with each person, but when you do, watch the person's face light up...happens every time. It's magic.
Something that has been on my mind lately has been space. Not the Final Frontier kind (although Rosetta and New Horizons and everything that mankind does outside of our plant is supremely cool and completely fascinates...and am lining up early to check out Interstellar ), but what we do with our personal space and how being aware of it is one of the three pillars of being a decent human and ultimately will determine if we survive as a species. When you are out in the world this next week, think about how you are using your space and watch how others use of theirs affects everything around them. How about the morons that need to swing left before making a right turn, like they are driving some unwieldy big rig. One of my least favorite people is the one that sees that you are looking like you are going to be in a tie to hit the same spot, so they speed up to get in front of you then proceed to slow down or stop. This happened to me at the airport a couple weeks ago, when the family with too many suitcases rushed in the doors and froze in front of the departure information board...their look of wonder at the changing screen reminded me of Dorothy when she stepped from B&W Kansas into the Technicolor of Oz.
I do it subconsciously but sometimes realize that I am navigating life as if I were a speedboat. I will go as fast as possible when in open water, but when cruising into harbor, will go at a speed to create as little wake as possible.
What got me onto this train of thought was the Catcalling video that went viral a couple weeks ago but is still being discussed a couple weeks later (unusual in our 24 hour news cycle). This one seemed like a no brainer...a call out against misogyny in hopes of raising awareness that this shit is unwanted by many at best, and can be life shattering if taken to its ugly extreme. What has nearly made my head explode is the backlash against it from everywhere. From the usual troglodyte dude talking heads on Fox (and their bubble headed bleach blonde co-anchors), to people I know (and used to respect) on social media. More women than not said that she was a bee-atch and that they like getting catcalled. That it makes them feel good about their appearance. Shallow? Do those women realize that some men would catcall just about any woman? One even said that this is how some people find their partners. I'd wait the full year before I buy that wedding present. A couple of international types argue that what women in the US experience is nothing like what they get in other countries. We want to compare ourselves to them? Sure, while I contemplate how great the roads would be without women driving, a la Saudi Arabia, realize that probably isn't cool.
A statistic that I see a lot is that 1 in 3 women will be sexually abused or assaulted during their lifetime. That feels a bit high to me, but even if you say consertaively that it is 1 in 10, that is a horrificly high number. A lot of the reaction is that saying simply benign comments like "hello beautiful" are non-threatening, but the fact that some women do should be enough to stop it. How do you know that the person being catcalled isn't having a horrifically bad day or experienced some terrible episode in their past. And if was just the "you look pretty" stuff, you might be able to persuade me that I'm overreacting. Watch the video and see the parts where the dude is following alongside the girl for 5 minutes. One friend said to me this video is worthless because it was edited that way, and I asked him if he believes that that kind of thing doesn't take place. Got the 'yeah, but still' reply back. That guy in the video should be locked up. When I think about the women in my life having to deal with that complete lack of respect and fear for them when they walk alone, and that so many people think that is OK and that women are looking for it (especially from horribly insecure women that are), it makes me shake in anger. Tell me a woman you love that you don't worry about when she is out walking alone, especially at night. Actually, if you can do that, please don't tell me and would prefer that you don't enter my space at all.
I though I was supposed to be less of a bleeding heart as I got older, but find I am becoming more of one.
Finally, have been seeing a few 20 year retrospectives on the OJ trial. Seems incredible that he got off. He was sooooo guilty. And thank karma that he is in prison and hope he is suffering.
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