WOMEN IN PORN

"Legalization and support of sex work can open the door to helping the sex/adult industry become safer and healthier for sex workers." --KaeLyn, Feministe She writes further: "Feminism has a love/hate relationship with sex. The "Feminist Sex Wars" rage on and not just between second and third-wavers. I once spent an evening at a hole-in-the-wall strip club with a 20-something friend fiercely debating her anti-pornography/anti-prostitution position. We spent half an hour of that night talking with a dancer, a young single mom and the only woman-of-color on the floor. She said it was better than working at a grocery store; she made more money and didn't have to pay for day care. How could I blame her? It was naive and classist for us to engage her in this conversation, but I was in college and didn't know how stupid I was being. This also happened to be the night I bought my first vibrator, with that same friend, at a sleazy adult store in Syracuse, NY. Long story short is that I became passionate about the rights of sex workers and people that work in the sex/adult industry and began a more intelligent and articulate study of why I felt so compelled to defend pornography, prostitution, women's sexual pleasure, and my own sexual desires." See the entire article.

Refraining myself from pointing you to other porn sites, at your own risk, check out by a Google search, women in porn. Since anyone under age can do that, I would not some of the younger set to be watching them....at least not before they can speak the body parts!

MCCAIN, HAD YOU BEHAVED IN A MORE GENTLEMAN LIKE MANNER, I MIGHT HAVE RESPECTED YOU

As the greedy oil barons scream for rights to the pristine land that is still untouchedM while they hoard the rights to many oil-rich property totally untapped, the public is left with few places to turn for the truth.

When a candidate (in this case McCain) chooses to focus in negative personal guesses on what he thinks he knows about Obama's intent, one might wonder if he has been listening to TV 'journalists' too long. I, for one, do not respect a man as Presidential material who could say that another candidate's intent is selfishness and malevolence for the needs of the country. For shame, John McCain! Either your own head is evil or you have not chosen your advisers wisely. In either case, that you listened to them or thought it by yourself automatically rules you out as a candidate of my choice. Pretty 'left-cheeky' of you, Sen. McCain.

GRANDCHILDREN GROW UP FASTER THAN YOUR CHILDREN DID

As if seeing myself in the mirror is not shocking enough to show my aging, I am forced to show it to my grandchildren, four or five of whom are older than I was when I was married and already a mother. I try to keep this fact in mind so that I do not repel them by reacting to them as I think their immature behavior sometimes warrants. At other times I am amazed at how much more they know than their parents did at their ages and just how much minds have matured about life and people.

Having spent the past few days with three of the boys, 17, 16 and 14, I've learned much about Dungeons and Dragons, what a DS is and does, the Internet site Cartoon Dump, how Mystery Science Theater 3000 can take the most archaic and boring films...acting at its worst...and turn them into pure amusement. I've learned they can be interrupted from their games and sustain a conversation of several sentences, responding to my attempt to learn a bit about who they are becoming, before asking if they can return to their game! I've learned that three days with each other is enough for them to have seen everything in the house of interest to them (actually five minutes would have sufficed, and for me to begin to long for my uninterrupted periods of quiet. Most of the time, if it isn't edible or plug into an electrical outlet to recharge the battery, they lose interest.

If I were a secretive or private person, I would never need worry because, age appropriately, they are disinterested in my life except to ask when and what they will be served to eat or when we are planning to go to a Mall. I also know they will probably grow out of this stage one of these days and can only hope that I will be more kindly remembered than most of the boring old people I have known; they who thought kids cared about their life lessons and what it was like when they were kids. One was kind enough to recreate what he was able to do until he was six and that is to wake me up (5:40 AM in this instance) before everyone else was up. Our conversation was long and primarily about relating to people of all sorts and places in one's life. We no longer talked about Thomas the Tank Engine or dinosaurs but how to communicate with people and maintain their attention and connection to the conversation. He understood the logic of never making someone anxious and defensive because they then stop listening. We talked about how to make the toxic, non-toxic. We talked about making things safe for people to allow them to break through their resistance to share of themselves. We talked for two and a half hours.

In all accuracy for the three of them, I could not have asked for more willing helpers if I prevailed on them to do something, (which I am somewhat loathe to do for reasons unknown even to me). The three are generous with bear hugs (they know I no longer have a husband around to give them to me). They are polite and carried their dishes and utensils to the sink after inhaling their food and asking to be excused from the table. They would have put them in the dishwasher but I urge them not to do that, knowing it will just take more time for me to re-stack it.

I've know that I have learned far more from them than they will learn from me...and that is as it should be!

THE PRICE OF LACK OF ORGANIZATION

As the sorely missed George Carlin used to say, "You have to have something to put your 'stuff' in." I have used precious book shelf space to store the how-to-organize-your-life-and-stuff books, but failed to find where it teaches me how to find the time to read them. Of course, that my life is a blivet (trying to put 3 pounds of manure in a 2 pound bag) makes the situation serious. I have more 'stuff' than my should-be-adequate house fits.

But storage problems are miniscule to the overall problems. Being a bit compulsive (which is in degree akin to being a bit pregnant). I make massive use of databases and spreadsheets to track my life. Yearly expenses are noted on a spreadsheet to ease life near April 15th. This should make filing income tax a breeze. To the papers I thought were neatly filed, the breeze resembles a gale in my office. I try to keep track of online payments, note checks paid, file receipts, balance two checking accounts, photocopy check deposits, so that any trip to the bank turns into the 'event' of the day, not made too often.

Sorting mail, if not done daily, piles up so I tremble thatI will never be able to lower the mountain. The only space in the house for mail is the dining room table. (I do have to lay my food down somewhere). When I have more than one person for a meal, the whole pile has to be moved. Often the pile contains a bill, unceremoniously buried, which can be costly when not paid on time; too severe a punishment for my organizational lapses.

For years it has been a firm rule that I will not play a CD (used to be an LP) unless first entered in my database and numbered on the disk. Too often I find CDs that have missed this baptism ritual. When my filing system gets disrupted and I can't find what I want on the database, I assume I don't own it and have been known to buy a second copy. In fact, that happens with tools, kitchen gadgets, office supplies, and all sorts of things that get lost. Sometimes in my wanderings I note seeing something I have lost but since I am not likely to need it at the time, it quickly gets forgotten. I am apt to replace it for a third time when I need it.

Why then, after emptying the dishwasher, folding the clothes from the dryer and putting them away, replacing things to the papers I thought were neatly filed after using them, do I find no surface without something piled so high that I am constantly holding back avalanches. In an attempt to 'assist' me to sort mail daily, my husband once tried putting the mail on our bed. His assumption that I would deal with it before I could get into the bed was wrong. My eyes were rolling around in my head as I headed for its horizontal comfort, already comatose. He was stopped at the pass when all I could do was push it all to the floor with no time to pick it up in the morning as I rushed off to work. I realized that being utterly exhausted much of the time figured as a strong factor in my lack of properly of organizing. Naps have been suggested to ease this. I have not found the time to schedule naps but sometimes the bed finds me when my face hits the pillow. I am instantly useless. Sometimes this is after I have awakened, realizing that my face was on my keyboard, having fallen asleep while sitting, trying to type.

As I try to solve this problem (which uses up more passive time) I realize that I have unconsciously placed the clutter problem at the bottom of my priority list. I shall waste no more time trying to lift it high up on the list. Even if the sign of an uncluttered mind is an uncluttered house, I will accept that my multi-tasking, ever curious, ever busy mind will just have to remain cluttered.....as will my house.

YOUR BRAIN IN LOVE

With the magic of brain scans, the brain chemistry of love is being uncovered as no poet in history was ever able to do describe. Lee Ann Obringer writes:

The Chemistry of Love

There are a lot of chemicals racing around your brain and body when you're in love. Researchers are gradually learning more and more about the roles they play both when we are falling in love and when we're in long-term relationships. Of course, estrogen and testosterone play a role in the sex drive area (see How Sex Works). Without them, we might never venture into the "real love" arena.

That initial giddiness that comes when we're first falling in love includes a racing heart, flushed skin and sweaty palms. Researchers say this is due to the dopamine, norepinephrine and phenylethylamine we're releasing. Dopamine is thought to be the "pleasure chemical," producing a feeling of bliss. Norepinephrine is similar to adrenaline and produces the racing heart and excitement. According to Helen Fisher, anthropologist and well-known love researcher from Rutgers University, together these two chemicals produce elation, intense energy, sleeplessness, craving, loss of appetite and focused attention. She also says, "The human body releases the cocktail of love rapture only when certain conditions are met and ... men more readily produce it than women, because of their more visual nature."

Researchers are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch people's brains when they look at a photograph of their object of affection. According to Helen Fisher, a well-known love researcher and an anthropologist at Rutgers University, what they see in those scans during that "crazed, can't-think-of-anything-but stage of romance" -- the attraction stage -- is the biological drive to focus on one person. The scans showed increased blood flow in areas of the brain with high concentrations of receptors for dopamine -- associated with states of euphoria, craving and addiction. High levels of dopamine are also associated with norepinephrine, which heightens attention, short-term memory, hyperactivity, sleeplessness and goal-oriented behavior. In other words, couples in this stage of love focus intently on the relationship and often on little else.

Another possible explanation for the intense focus and idealizing view that occurs in the attraction stage comes from researchers at University College London. They discovered that people in love have lower levels of serotonin and also that neural circuits associated with the way we assess others are suppressed. These lower serotonin levels are the same as those found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorders, possibly explaining why those in love "obsess" about their partner. The entire article is worth reading(How Love Works).

One of the research projects, to clarify the issue, among many, can be seen on many sources.

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all. Alfred Tennyson

CONFUSING WORDS

The diner ate dinner in the diner.........



On this date:
We ate a date:
Then went out on a date:
........not on the limb.

BACK TO THE MAIN MENU

There was a time when I worked the equivalent of 2 full-time jobs, shared housework with my husband, and tended to the ‘his and hers’ collection of offspring we shared, collectively. I was younger, had more energy, and required more sleep.

Today, much older, I never seem to finish more than one item a day, of import, on my priority list. I am reminded of my long-deceased mother-in-law who, after she passed 70, always planned one ‘event’ a day other than personal or household maintenance... She had time to knit, read, go to the hairdresser, stay current with friends, and teach her grandchildren to observe and understand Nature, attend theater and so much more. My own mother who, once moved back to her home in the city, found time to make slipcovers, sew coats for her grandchildren from old drapes, bake bread, make yogurt and the list goes on.

A good day to me, now that I work a much more limited patient schedule, is when I am able to get out of bed, perform my ablutions, eat something that doesn’t require preparation, get dressed, catch up on my e-mail, and then reverse the procedure to get ready for bed! Gone are my leisurely hours of piano playing, knitting, rug hooking, working with stained glass, water coloring, silversmithing, hiking, photographing, canoing, biking, caring for the elder generation, and all those activities that leap into the vacuum called empty nest.

An ‘event’ in my life now is when I can get through to a service representative I fill almost all my recreational and non-recreational time trying to understand for what I am being billed, why something is no longer working and what to do about it, and finding the best to keep my house from becoming as dysfunctional as some of the people around me. Managing the phone maze is formidable. “If this, press 1, if that, press 2”, and, if you make a mistake, a lovely voice tells you she does not understand that command and either hangs up on you or suggests another number to take you back to the Main Menu. I have visions of incompetent, young MBAs who think they have planned and covered all exigencies and no longer need to have 0 to press for a human to answer.

When opting to change a credit card from one that offered air miles ( $50 yearly service charge) to one with no fee and refund of a tiny percentage of what I have spent, I found myself ‘transferred’ on the phone to ‘John’, (with a distinct accent, somewhere in India he answered me upon my question, on a wireless phone that kept having dead spots.) I felt distinctly uncomfortable giving this faceless, male voice my Social Security number and all sorts of personal and financial information when the company already had it all on file.

“Yes, ma’am, I know the company has all that on file but I do not have access to any other account.” With all the data bases Citibank must maintain, I found it worrisome that he couldn’t save my time by accessing the information he insisted on having me repeat, rather than risking me repeated information might be hi-jacked. Then I remembered being in an Emergency Room about to go into shock with the clerk (though I said no information had changed since I was last there) asking if I still resided at *****, If my phone number was still ****, if my husband still worked at **** (at which point I told her she was losing me and could pick me up off the floor. Someone noticed my color and screamed, “Quick, she’s going into shock!” The world is full of blind and deaf, human robots.

A recent Globe article by Ellen Goodman, sent to me by a friend, started me thinking along lines that I experience viscerally but never translated to language. I remembered the self checkout lines at Home Depot, the lack of bags (or boxes that don't quickly fall apart) at Costco. There is even more reason to be happy to have a computer when you have to pay more to buy a plane ticket by phone. Here is another example being tested in Denver of the Do-It-Yourself world we are becoming.

The only do-it-yourself service about which I have no complaint is Google on my computer. I can instantly look up a word and get better understanding of what I am reading, and answer most questions I may on how to do things by myself. This is directly helpful to me and saves time, unlike the phone mazes and many savings of time that directly serve someone other than myself or a company in whose stock I have no investment!