Hugh Hefner and Me

Hold on because I'm about to use the "F" word.  Feminism.  Hugh Hefner died this past week at age 91.  He's getting mixed reviews for his life choices.  He was, by almost any measure, successful.  We remember Playboys, bunnies, the clubs, the mansion, the non-stop sex and materialism.  He was seen as a "visionary."

Hef's doorplate at the original Playboy Mansion read "If you don't swing, don't ring." He projected his personal image as a man having sex with multiple young women 24-7.

And it was all mainstream and glamorous - as long as the men had money and the women were young and beautiful and pretended to enjoy themselves.

In the 60s and 70s I was a civil rights person which means to me, by definition, a women's rights person.  Some people thought the same was true of Hugh Hefner.  I didn't think so.  Somewhere along the way Hefner started writing these rants that were eventually called The Playboy Philosophy.  I actually read them.  In response I wrote several poems.  Here are two that were published.

THE DEHUMANIZATION OF ALICE

She posed for the number one magazine,
And was euphoric to discover,
That because of her magnificent body and brain,
Low and behold! she made the cover!

Last week I saw Alice on the magazine,
In the midst of a card game on a wooden chest,
Withe the score being kept on her exquisite face,
And a beer can sitting on her lovely breast. 



THE THINGMAKER

i saw a layout
in playboy magazine
featuring a racing car
shaped like a women

dear playboy
i am not a machine
i am a human being

is your relationship
with your machine
unfulfiling
undemanding
unsatisfactory
unloving
incomplete
unfinished

next time 
try a person


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Vertigo Update

Thanks to all of you who've wondered why I haven't been writing for a while.  Let's blame the vertigo.  Actually, it's not so much the vertigo as the medication I take to tame it.

It renders me unmotivated.

I found a doctor who's known as the vertigo expert in Florida and he's only 20 miles away. He's called "The Dizzy Doctor."

He immediately diagnosed me with Meniere's Disease.   It's characterized by severe, spontaneous bouts of vertigo and vomiting lasting from several hours to days - along with a boatload of other symptoms that are disturbingly familiar to me.  The treatment is totally different from my previous diagnosis, BPPV.

It's hard to believe how difficult it is, especially as we get older,  to get a proper diagnosis for our ailments.  I have two friends who suffered for years before learning they had Parkinson's Disease.  For those of us who don't like to make fuss, it can take much longer.  It's up to us to persevere.

I'm coming along.  I take the meds and haven't had a bad bout since June.  I still feel happy for every single day I'm alive on this crazy planet.  Some additional symptoms of Meniere's Disease are depression, anxiety and fear.

I don't have these.  What a blessing!


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Hurricane Irma is Like a Three-Ring Circus

I'm writing this late Saturday afternoon, September 9th.  The biggest, meanest Hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic is hovering around Cuba and trying to decide which way to turn.  This is only a couple of weeks after Hurricane Harvey tore into Texas and devastated a huge area.

Will Irma visit our house?  We don't know.  But you know you're in trouble when Anderson Cooper shows up on your local TV screen.

We're as ready as we can be.  But for what?  We don't know.  Our hotels are full of people who've been chased off the east coast of South Florida.  Now Irma has decided not to visit the east coast.  (Maybe.)

I'm getting ready to lead a five week noon luncheon study at my church on "The Cultivated Life" by Susan Phillips.  She compares this cultivated life to a "Circus" life.  In the circus some people are constantly performing (think all news channels today) while others are just watching and getting excited and nervous. (Think every person in Florida.)  The watchers are thinking "I'm not doing enough."  "I don't know enough."

And just when we think we might be getting it - "It" changes.

The Cultivated Life is all about relationships.  There are people trying to grab the last loaf of bread in the convenience store and there are people giving the last loaf of bread to somebody else.  This afternoon my friend invited us to go with  several people in our neighborhood to the movies to see the new Reese Witherspoon film.

It's a romantic comedy and has nothing to do with whether or not we're all gonna die tomorrow at 4 p.m.

Of course, the most helpful relationship is the one we have with a God who loves and cares for us.  Except if, in fact, you believe that God is sending these monster hurricanes to teach us a lesson.  In that case, you're on your own.


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We're All in This Together

Today at lunch Dave and I talked about Hurricane Harvey.  The horror of it and the amazing heroes who keep emerging out of it.  We wondered if some day we'll be able to harness the weather by finding a way to distribute water thereby eliminating hurricanes and drought.

Dave was skeptical but I think it's possible.

A while back I read a book by American Catholic theologian, Robert Barron.  It's a tough read but I liked it.  In one section he talks about all of creation being connected.  I love the following illustration.

The movement of my fingers now typing these words is dependent upon a chain of causes stretching up through my muscular and nervous system to my brain; and my brain's activity is here and now dependent upon the influence of the oxygen that I am breathing; which is in turn dependent upon the gravitational attraction of the earth that keeps it in the atmosphere, which is dependent upon the spin of the planet, which is dependent upon the pull of the sound, etc.  If we continued in this vein, we would inevitably arrive at God.....

So, whether we like it or not, we're all interconnected.  And most of us, including God, are pretty good problem solvers.


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