Why I hate the word "deserved".

As I mentioned last week, we're heading into our busy season at work. This year, it's coinciding with Trump's second inauguration and all the crazy-making stuff that we know will go with his return to power. During the first go-round, I was working in an office building two blocks from the White House; I am not the most empathic empath, but to me, the dysfunction and insanity seemed to seep from the White House and permeate the air around it. One of the reasons I decided to retire when I did, in mid 2020, was to escape that madness.

Now the madness is returning to power, and I'm hoping I'm far enough away from it that I won't feel that same ol' anxiety creeping back. 

Here on the blog, I don't plan to comment a lot on the day-to-day craziness. Instead, I'll probably write about peripheral or tangential stuff, which is what I did last time with my several posts on gaslighting. 

Today's post is in that vein. It's not about gaslighting; instead, it's about this idea that people get what they deserve.

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lightsource | Deposit Photos

I have two problems with the word "deserve". First, it's often deployed as a way to part you from your money. Marketers bait the hook with "You deserve this!" to convince you to spend money on things you don't need. I put it right up there with "pamper yourself" (which always brings to mind an image of swaddling one's bottom with a disposable diaper, but maybe that's just me). We can all think up justifications for impulse buys and impulsive actions: we had a hard day/week/month/lifetime, we need to complete the set, just one more won't hurt, whatever. But the shiny thing we're convincing ourselves that we need might have hidden within it a painful hook in the form of a price we won't want to pay.

That brings me to my second problem with the word "deserve", and it's wrapped up in being judgy.

Every morning for several years, I was sprinkling Penzey's Justice seasoning on my morning eggs and chanting three times, "Trump in prison." It wasn't much, as spells go, and the fact that I was asking for something that I had no direct effect on made it unlikely to succeed. But spellwork sometimes acts as a nudge to make a thing happen. And it seemed for a while like Trump going to prison really could happen; he was facing dozens of criminal counts, after all -- surely some of them would make it through to a conviction. 

Then one by one, each of the four cases bogged down in legal challenges. When Trump won re-election in November, I stopped casting my little daily spell; the chances that he'd face any sort of penalty for his actions, I figured, had pretty much evaporated.

But then, at the eleventh hour, Justice Juan Merchan of the New York Supreme Court came through. As a practical matter, he couldn't sentence Trump to jail time, house arrest, or even community service. But he made damn sure it was on the record: Trump was a convicted felon.

It's not the perp walk and orange jumpsuit I was hoping for, but I'll take what I can get. I'd given up on getting any results. Oh, me of little faith.

But did he get what he deserved? 

The temptation is to say no, right? He should have gone to prison. Others guilty of far less have done time. Our system of justice is skewed to favor those who can afford high-priced lawyers and who can buy, one way or another, their own Supreme Court justices. And so on.

But that way lies bitterness and anger. Is that any way to live? 

Or would it be healthier to acknowledge that the outcome was the best one possible, given the circumstances? Especially since I had no control about any of it from the beginning. I don't work for a prosecutor; I don't work for any court system; I wasn't on the jury. All I had was a jar of Justice seasoning.

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I've said before, although maybe not here on the blog, that I don't see any point in seeking revenge because people do themselves in by their own actions, and sometimes the Universe even lets you watch. That last part is kind of tongue-in-cheek; I've come to believe that "the Universe" is as much a construct of Western thought as Jehovah or the Force. I'm not a Buddhist, but my ideas may actually be closer to the Buddhist concept of karma, which has less to do with "you get what you deserve" and more to do with the results of the choices you've made in this life and the actions you've taken in response to those choices. Karma also speaks to the intent behind your actions. There's no Sky God of any sort judging you as Good or Evil; whatever happens is just the consequences of your intent.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon. He'll have to live with that for the rest of his life. 

Did he get what he deserved? I can't say. For one thing, it's not my place to judge. 

For another, his life isn't over yet. He won the blue ribbon he was after, but he's still on that hook.

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These moments of karmic blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Pace yourselves, guys -- it's gonna be a long four years. 

"Wicked" defies gravity.

 

Stolen from https://www.brit.co/wicked-movie/

I realize I'm about a million years late to the party -- the movie version of Wicked has been out in theaters since Thanksgiving weekend -- but my bottom line still holds: If you haven't seen it already, you should.

It's still playing in theaters, but I chose to pony up $20 to see it on my TV at home. It was definitely worth the cost. 

The story, in one form or another, has been with me for most of my life. When I was a kid, I watched the original movie, The Wizard of Oz, every year when it ran on TV. I also read L. Frank Baum's novel that started everything off (plus a couple of the sequels). Pretty sure I saw The Wiz at some point, too.

Then Gregory Maguire's version of the Wicked Witch's story was published in 1995, and turned the whole thing on its head. One of my daughters read the novel first, then loaned it to me. After decades of rooting for Dorothy, reading the ending of that book seriously messed with my head.

We saw a touring production of Wicked the musical at the Kennedy Center in 2011. So of course I wanted to watch the screen version to see if it matched up. It did not disappoint. Cynthia Erivo is terrific as Elphaba, and Ariana Grande is perfect as Galinda/Glinda. Michelle Yeoh seems to be everywhere these days (Star Trek: Section 31 starts in just a couple of weeks), and she is as wonderful as always as Madame Morrible, both before and after her true nature is revealed. Jeff Goldblum is sorta typecast as the Wizard. Jonathan Bailey does a great job as Fiyero, the bad boy who turns the heads of both Glinda and Elphaba. (I couldn't remember where I'd seen him before; it turns out he plays Anthony on Bridgerton.) 

It will come as no surprise to anyone that the movie has whizbang special effects -- much more so, of course, than the stage version, where Elphaba just flying, live on stage, was impressive. 

Speaking of the casting, there have been some complaints among certain factions, particularly in regard to Erivo as Elphaba -- because Erivo is Black, and there has been no effort to make her appear less so. I think it's important to note that "woke" casting goes way back for this show; the original scriptwriters were Jewish, and Idina Menzel, who is also Jewish, originated the role of Elphaba on Broadway. Elphaba's whole thing is not just her magical ability, but that she's green. She's clearly used to getting a lot of flak for her skin color, and it seems like it would be a no-brainer to cast someone in the role who has lived experience as an "other" throughout her life. Plus Erivo does a great job in the role. So, y'know, whatever.

Grande has also been the target of criticism for being cast as Glinda, but she's not just a pop singer -- she got her start on Broadway.

I'm a bit bummed that the movie only covers the first part of Elphaba's story, although it shouldn't have been unexpected; it seems like Hollywood has lost the ability to wrap up a story in under two hours.  But I get that "Defying Gravity" was written to send the theater audience to intermission on a high, and it would be asking a lot of a movie audience to just pivot to the next scene without some time to catch a breath.

I'll be interested to see how they handle the second half of the story. The material is a lot darker than in the first half; the ending should be absolutely wrenching. I can't help but think of a comment I overheard from someone leaving the movie version of Into the Woods: "They should have stopped it at intermission," or words to that effect. Guaranteed there will be viewers of Wicked: For Good who will feel the same way. Here's hoping they take time to read the book between now and November, so they have some sense of whether to see it at all.

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I may be taking some time off from blogging here shortly. I'm heading into the busy season at work -- the state legislature starts a 60-day session January 21, and we're gearing up for it now. On top of that, I've signed myself up for two online classes. One is a five-session class on the Celtic god Cernunnos offered by John Beckett and Jason Mankey, which starts the week after next. The other one is a seven-week course in beginning Irish that starts next Sunday. Yeah, I'm gonna try learning that blasted language again. I won a contest for a free course from Let's Learn Irish, and I could hardly turn it down. 

Anyway, the point being that it's gonna be a busy winter here at La Casa Cantwell. Something may have to give. If blogging ends up being that something, I'll try to let you know in advance.

I may go mad by mid February. But I might come out the other side with some ideas for another book. Weirder things have happened.

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These moments of musical blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Why chasing an hourglass figure is a fool's errand.

 

ursus@zdeneksasek.com | Deposit Photos

It's close enough to New Year's that we can talk about resolutions, right? And people still automatically write "I will lose weight this year" as one of their resolutions, right?

Perhaps capitalizing on this trend, BBC Science Focus magazine has an article in its latest issue called, "Key weight-loss mystery solved: New research suggests fat cells have a 'memory'". (I would love to give y'all a link to this article, but it looks like you have to subscribe to see the articles in the latest issue. I have access through Apple News+, which I have found to be a decent news aggregator.)

The article quotes Dr. Ferdinand von Meyenn, assistant professor at ETH Zurich's Department of Health Sciences and Technology, on a recent study conducted by him and his team. They looked at a group of people, some of whom were "living with obesity" (their phrase) and some who weren't, who had lost 25 percent of their body mass index, and compared the differences in DNA sequences in their fat tissue before and after the weight loss. What they discovered -- brace yourselves -- is this: "The body really fights against [weight loss] and wantes to return to its original weight. The adipose tissue is programmed to want to regain that weight." 

As a reformed yo-yo dieter, I am here to say: No shit.

He goes on to say that people who lose weight and can't keep it off aren't weak: "There really is an underlying molecular mechanism driving gaining the weight back."

As the same reformed yo-yo dieter: Also no shit. 

We have discussed this several times here on hearth/myth. To save you from trawling through years of posts, I will give you the link once again to Wikipedia's article about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, which was conducted toward the end of World War II. The idea was to find the best diet for people who endured starvation during the war to make them healthy again. But first, the researchers had to create starving people. So they recruited a bunch of guys and put them on a starvation diet. Long-term dieters would recognize the result: many of the experiment subjects quit, many others cheated, and a significant number developed mental illnesses ranging from depression to hysteria: "Participants exhibited a preoccupation with food, both during the starvation period and the rehabilitation phase. Sexual interest was drastically reduced, and the volunteers showed signs of social withdrawal and isolation."

The point being that yeah, fat cells want to be fat again. Duh.

You would think that could be circumvented by getting rid of the excess fat cells. That procedure is called liposuction, and it was all the rage in, oh, the '80s or '90s. It sounded great 'til people started getting infections from having it done in sketchy clinics. Nowadays, it's recognized as plastic surgery and not a weight loss option, and patients are advised that if they don't watch their diet, the weight can come back -- because as it happens, it's not just the fat cells themselves that remember how big and robust they used to be. Our bodies have developed a system over centuries to survive famine -- it's called adaptive thermogenesis -- and they interpret diets as just another famine. Which is why all those guys in the starvation experiment went kinda crazy. Also, vacuuming out some fat cells doesn't do away with your body's ability to make more fat cells to replace them.

Dr. von Meyenn says we should be focusing on obesity prevention instead of trying to cure it after it has already happened. That's not much help for those of us for whom prevention is too late.

Here is the one thing I know for sure to be true, after decades of dieting: Diets don't work. And chasing that hourglass figure will probably just leave you disappointed, depressed, and thinking about food all the time. And that's no way to live.

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These moments of anti-dieting blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Snow Globe: a holiday ficlet.

As alert hearth/myth readers who have glanced at the calendar recently know, it's time for my annual holiday gift to you: a ficlet that has something to do with the season.

It looks to me like I wrote the first holiday ficlet in 2017, making this the eighth year of the tradition. I haven't written a lick of fiction since last year's ficlet, but I've resisted the urge to make this into a regular essay-type post.

I'm also not going to do what I usually do and make this a promo for one of my existing series (mainly because I'd have to spend way too much time re-reading to get the voices back in my head. Wait, that didn't come out right. Oh, you know what I mean). 

Anyway, here goes. Hope you like it. 

🌟

NewAfrica | Deposit Photos

Cynthia wandered the town square like a lost soul. Here she was, on a tour of European Christmas markets -- a trip that had been on her bucket list forever -- and she couldn't focus enough to buy a single gift for anyone on her list.

She had been feeling so discombobulated lately, and she couldn't figure out why. She was in her late fifties, with the blessings of good health, good skin, and a job that allowed her to afford European vacations. Her kids were grown. She'd kicked their sperm donor to the curb years before. The kids hadn't given her any grandchildren yet, but to be honest, she was okay with that. She had friends, hobbies, the works. And yet sometimes she wondered what she was doing with her life.

She was pretty sure she wouldn't find the answer to that question at an English Christmas market, but here she was anyway.

A booth full of shiny baubles caught her eye. She looked closer: jewelry? Christmas ornaments? No -- snow globes. She couldn't remember ever giving anyone a snow globe for Christmas.

She ambled over. There were lots of designs to choose from: churches, thatched cottages, snowmen, single snowflakes, Christmas trees, nativity scenes, and even a Nakamura tower. She picked up an old-style London telephone booth filled with a Christmas tree in the requisite sparkly goo and asked the attendant, "How much?"

"Thirty pounds, mum," the woman said brightly. "It lights up, you see, and even plays a little tune."

Cynthia mentally toted up the gift list for her office staff, did a quick pounds-to-dollars conversion in her head, and nodded. "I'll take a dozen."

The clerk's eyes widened. Then she smiled broadly. "Excellent choice, mum! I will box them up and send them to your hotel straightaway."

Cynthia laughed as she handed over her credit card. "I guess it's obvious that I'm a tourist."

"We do get a lot of you at this time of year," the woman said. Then she gave Cynthia a long, almost calculating look. "If you would be interested, we have a special offer just now: buy a dozen, get one free." In a confiding tone, she went on, "You could keep the extra for yourself."

For the first time, Cynthia took a good look at the clerk. She was short and plump, white-haired, with round cheeks and a grandmotherly smile -- but something in her gaze seemed to shoot straight through to Cynthia's soul. She heard herself say, "Which one would you recommend?"

"This one," the woman immediately said, holding out a traditionally-shaped globe. "It's very special."

Cynthia took it in her hands and examined it. "It's empty," she said. It held usual glittery snow and liquid, but nothing else.

"You fill it yourself," the woman said. "The directions are in the box."

Cynthia was by no means an artsy-craftsy person, but she took the globe anyway. She gave the clerk the delivery information for the box of phone booth globes; the "special" one went into her tote bag.

That evening, back in her hotel room after a convivial dinner with new friends she had met on the tour, she remembered the odd globe. She pulled its box out of the tote bag and opened it. The directions for filling it were odder than the globe itself.

Second Saturn Return Globe

Hold the snow globe in your hands and visualize your life ten years from now. 

"Ten years from now," Cynthia murmured. She would be nearly seventy then, and hopefully retired. Although her job was lucrative, and satisfying in its way, she didn't mean to do it until she dropped dead. What would she do instead? Where would she live? 

Holding the globe, she closed her eyes. A door clicked open in her mind. She could see herself on the deck of a beach house, gazing across a calm body of water as the sun rose. She knew instantly that her day would be full: teaching part-time at the local community college, swimming in the college pool, having dinner later with good friends. Life was perfect. She felt at peace.

She raised the mug of tea in her hands to her lips -- and kissed the snow globe. "Oh!" she exclaimed, pulling it away hurriedly. 

The globe was still empty, but she thought she could see inside it the palest outline of a beach cottage on a sandy shore.

"It's a start," she said, and smiled.

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These moments of imaginative blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Happy holidays!