I love the guests in this hotel and the conversations we have over breakfast, it is such a great way to start of the day. One man, an author, has a solution to the current political woes suffered in this county. He said there should be a new rallying cry: Bring Back the Guillotine. The French, he opined had the best solution. You young ‘uns may be unfamiliar with the concept; The origin of the word tells it all: late 18th century: from French, named after Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (1738–1814), the French physician who recommended its use for executions in 1789.
So way back then they knew how to do things – they got together the ruling class then got rid of them with ease and great public spectacle. Such lively television coverage – it would definitely excel the bores who constantly opine about Trump’s behaviour. Perhaps opine can be the word of the day: submit, advance, propose, venture, volunteer, put forward, moot, propound, posit, air, hazard, say, declare, observe, comment, remark, believe, consider, maintain, imagine, be of the view, be of the opinion, reckon, guess, estimate, conjecture, fancy, suspect, feel, have a/the feeling, assume, presume, take it, suppose, expect, gather; contend, be convinced, be of the conviction, reason, deduce, conclude, theorize, hypothesize, take as a hypothesis. The bores are constantly guessing, estimating, supposing and theorizing about Trump – a clear waste of time and effort. .
There may be a problem however with Trump’s thick neck. I cannot imagine that the poor guillotine is going to have an easy job defacing that talking head from the rest of him. Perhaps it will take a series of hits in order to succeed but wagers could be laid and it could turn into a gambling game. It could be great fun and sport.
Sometimes all you can do is laugh at a situation – some things are irresolvable but laughter and living well is the best revenge. Things do not seem so oppressive if one can laugh at them. Oppressive: Overwhelming, overpowering, hard to bear, unbearable, burdensome, unendurable, intolerable, heavy; uncomfortable, grinding. Usage: an oppressive sense of despair.
Some gentle readers may recall that this habit of defining words came from a lengthly email correspondence with Joo Kim Tiah. One of the sweetest things he ever said to me was this.
He: Every time I open an email from you, I learn a new word.
Me: That is the nicest thing you ever said to me.
But we got into a fight or I should say, I got extremely angry and ended our correspondence.
I guess I would have handled it differently these days. I would have been more conciliatory or used a concept called responsive reaction but way back in October of 2017 I had not learned of that concept. He was a problem solver, it would have worked. You see rather than solve the problem yourself you invite the other for their suggestion and you dialogue back and forth. I was able to employ it a couple of weeks ago and it did work but other things came into operation and the relationship faltered.
The other factors that came into play in the faltered relationship were outlined in a recent email stemming from NPR Health. It questioned this premise “Should a man go to therapy? Certainly not, according to traditional notions of masculinity. Yet men face higher rates of suicide than women, and can have difficulty expressing emotions.’ The piece reported on the Masculinity Project in Philadelphia and the news is heartening. In supporting each other emotionally, men need alternative solutions to those offered by the misogynist incel — “involuntary celibate” — community or other men’s rights activists who believe men are oppressed.”Incels or the right wing provide a solution that’s really based on more control of women and more violence toward minorities,” Jin says. He went on to say that supporting minorities and women was actually empowering for men. The other good news is that groups are spreading all over the world and appealing to men of differing ethnicity and different classes. Today, the global nonprofit ManKind Project says it has close to 10,000 members in 21 nations, is ethnically and socioeconomically diverse and aims to draw men of all ages.
Other comments in the article spoke of a more traditional therapy model.” Aylin Kaya, a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology at the University of Maryland, recently published research that gets at that wider range of masculine norms and stereotypes in a study of male college students. Norms such as the need to be dominant in a relationship or an inability to express emotion were associated with lower psychological well being. The traditional norm is a drive to win and succeed but this could be turned around and agency and mastery emphasized rather than bearing other people. Kaya went on to say: As clinicians
our job is to make the invisible visible … asking clients, ‘Where do you get these ideas of how you’re supposed to act? Where did you learn that?’ To help them kind of unpack — ‘I wasn’t born with this; it wasn’t my natural way of being. I was socialized into this; I learned it. And maybe I can start to unlearn it. Kaya says men come looking for insight because of their struggle with romantic relations. It turns out that the issue is the feeling that they cannot show emotion without being ridiculed or demeaned, so they cannot be intimate.
This study makes clear the reasons behind one man’s actions towards me and it leaves me with a feeling of peace and acceptance.
But I do have a different relationship with a different man. I texted Grandson that for sure I would be able to come to his wedding in Las Vegas because there will be no knee replacement surgery. .
He: That’s wonderful G.Ma, I can’t wait to meet u.
Me: Me too. I cannot wait. Bought a new dress today so I shall be cute. Hahaha Cute like a G.Ma should be. Hahaha
The photograph shows the store where the dress was purchased. Such a clever name, Seldom Seen. One does not want to see everyone else wearing your dress. The dress is long, so soft and comfortable. A G.Ma dress with style. Grandson (not my real grandson) will be proud.
