. Spinning .

The Kryptonite glowed green beyond the fence. His steed, perhaps in warning, perhaps resentful of the superman that flew above him, stopped short, and Clark Kent flew on alone.

With sad thoughts of the heartache and handicaps a great man fought valiantly to overcome, granted relief from his burdens, but leaving a legacy of hope and faith for those to follow; a true Superman and American Hero, Christopher Reeve has died. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and the world today, and with him, at last free to fly again.

I’m sitting here trying very hard to keep my mouth shut about the hooplah Opray Winfrey caused by her gifting of cars to 276 audience members. No matter that GM paid the bill, it’s the blind rationale of the screaming that’s going on about it that I’m focusing upon, and I don’t have time to do the research that nobody else has bothered doing either.

I may have to shut all the computers down for the day.

I knew a man from Yucatan; golden skinned, straight black hair and feathers. And one from even further south and east that wore great wondrous lions dancing on his dress. Bronze-skinned, rock-faced sturdy braided souls that wandered with the buffalo, and those who peeked from holes of warming fur and lived in domes of ice. It made me long for ribboned wreaths and gaudy spangled velvet vests. I wore them once, but likely never will again.

We need be careful what we lose in our great rush to be alike.

Just watched The Apprentice while doing a bit of stats homework and finishing up the paper I just posted. I don’t like several things about the new trend of reality shows. First, I don’t like the fact that people are getting nastier to each other, and by virtue of so much exposure, it influences viewers to a certain degree that this is an okay way to be–particularly when the nastiest win and are rewarded. Secondly, they’re all starting to look alike. Third, I don’t like the fact that I am still attracted to them.

Is it because of the personal nature, the untutored (well, somewhat) unstaged “live” action? Are we fed up to the gills with the fantasy worlds of cowboys and Indians, gumshoe detectives, moms and dads dealing with unreal “everyday” lives?

What Donald Trump said to the gentleman he fired tonight was deplorable. The man had made an unwise decision to give up his exempt status in order to defend another player, and Mr. Trump called him “stupid” at least a dozen times. He also said he was probably the best player in the room, but the mistake the man had made was something that could destroy a company.

I’m not naive about how business runs. I do prefer it to be considered as the bad side of doing business, rather than held up as something you can handle ruthlessly and with scorn. Mr. Trump obviously knows how to conduct business, and has admittedly learned from his own mistakes. That does not mean that he has the right to be rude. His decision may have been just; it just wasn’t handled with any consideration for his victim.

Are we denigrating the niceties of life in the name of entertainment? How sad.

Okay, enough of the politics already. As predicted, I already lost one Bloglines reader and happily, I don’t even know who it is. I have tried to avoid politics here in Spinning, but it is regretfully more a part of me than I’d suspected, and with the wealth of discourse on the topic via weblogging, it has been as tough to keep it out of my daily musings as more personal information. But you still don’t know exactly which way I’m going—no, you don’t–because I myself am not fully settled into a decision.

Man is a social animal, seeking common ground with others as a communication device. Just had a thought here, that as God has lost footing in the contemporary world as a super power, man has replaced the concept of a god due to his own needs by anointing other humans in His place. Sometimes based on celebrity, sometimes on political power and energy.

Guess it’s true that civilization seeks a leader. Only difference is that the many versions of “God” based upon religious belief all have much in common; goodness, guidance, promise of reward. In deifying human specimens, we specify instead certain qualities such as youth, power, wealth, as much as goodness.

Sorta like the multitude of gods of Greeks and Romans, no?

Found at Teddy Bear Victoria’s, one of those quizzes that you hate to admit sometimes nails it on the head when it comes to your personality–if you answer the questions honestly. Try it here: Twenty Questions to a Better Relationship.

I’m not telling you how I fared. It wasn’t very flattering one little bit.

(P.S. I know I’m supposed to be doing homework or framing instead of blogging. That just shows you what kind of person I am.)

For my friend Neha, and with thanks to J-Walk for the link, here’s a great site for creating and listening to some Indian music, called Shankar Drum Ganesh Machine.

Wonder if they could do something with an accordian and some “Woohs”?

Today is my eldest sister’s sixty-fifth birthday, and I can only call down south to wish her well. Ten years ago they fled New England cold and taxes, large yards to mow and keeping up with neighbors. Floridians prefer a level playing field, and cluster in their homes in groups of age and retirement income that determines outdoor gardenia trees and limes.

I wish that I could touch her now, as I once reached out to her when I was eight. She was seventeen and like an angel, dressed in mom-designed and sewn pink satin gown. She married the man who took her to the prom that night, and he was handsome, tall and skinny, though he’s handsome yet. And she, despite the distance of the heavens and the land, is proud and strong and caring, like an angel still.

Happy birthday, E.

This article by Adam Liptak in today’s New York Times sickens me.

“Should Doctors Help With Executions? No Easy Ethical Answer”

“ATLANTA, June 7 – Dr. Sanjeeva Rao used to look after the inmates at the state prison in Jackson, Ga., treating their high blood pressure and more serious ailments. When the state started using lethal injections in 2000, he took on another task: helping to execute them.”

I cannot abide the concept of capital punishment in that it grants to the State the very right which it is denying the individual, and rightly so.

The ethical and personal morals of a physician put into this position are challenged when he is being asked to assist in an execution. But capital punishment is legal in some states. He therefore is doing nothing illegal. And would I want him there if I were facing execution? Yes.

I cannot justify “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” I cannot believe that this is right, despite the Code of Hammurabi or the Bible (Matthew 5:38).

This makes me sad.

Kelly at I Spy Gemini managed to poke through the black clouds I’ve surrounded myself with lately with an interesting reference to an article called, “Why so Many Old People are Stupid” by Dyske Suematsu.

Embarrassed I am, to get riled up and respond so quickly with sarcasm and annoyance just as I fall into an obvious trap. Happy, I suppose, that sometimes outrage at injustice can still tip the scales of maturity when necessary, and that I’m not as yet one of the apathetic stupid old people.

Thanks Kelly, for pointing to this article, wondering about it, and knowing how to apply it to your own store of knowledge. Oh yeah, and for knocking me out of my rocker!

Ever wonder how you are evaluated as a worker by your employer? What is expected of you and how you measure up? Well, I got a hold of one of the crazy methods used by corporate today. Check this out:

Work Calculator

(John at J-Walk: This one’s for you–it features Excel!)

No, not a heavy post on discrimination–you know I hate arguments. But one of the previous posts on Cook! Bake! has started me off on a tangent that in no way indicates any feminist declarations will be forthcoming, no male-bashing, no roaring woman; just a subtle introspective thought on some typical–yeah, I said typical–masculine/feminine traits. Now please keep in mind that I am one who, up until Psychology I didn’t realize there is in fact a physical difference in the male/female brain, and bowed gracefully to that whilst never accepting totally that in truth, the two genders are not interchangeable in most areas of ability and very different in many others. While I have several extremely close female friends, I have always gotten along better with almost any man than I have with most women. Don’t tell me what this indicates–I don’t think I want to explore this further.

But even I must acknowledge some things as highly probably gender-related.

(more…)

A smile is just agenda, and the kiss is the eraser of bad feelings in the human way of living life.

Last night we put together plastic shelving for the flooded basement room to stack the boxes off the floors in case a pinhole in the pipe decides to blow our lives for days again. An engineer and a creative spirit may have much in common, but when it comes to working well together there is usually a point of disagreement early on.

I truly don’t know if we’d produce higher quality products if given the chance again in the U.S.A., but nothing now is easy, nothing fits precisely, and it will all eventually come down to human ingenuity to make it work. When faced with a pole and a hole that it fits into but doesn’t quite straight from the box, I took my handy Stanley knife and starting shaving round the edges while he insisted I would cut myself that way. This was really just a stall until he finally couldn’t bear it and simply blurted out that I was doing it all wrong.

While I shaved and fit, and shaved and fit, the seconds ticked almost audibly in sync with the gears in my husband’s brain. He came back with the perfectly sized and gauged rasp and took the pole to work away at it while I focused on the other poles and shelves.

Relieved, I hear the phone ring and before his back is turned to go upstairs I have the knife to edge again, careful not to cut myself and prove him right of course. Before the phone stops ringing, the pole is firmly set in place. The shelving is up and standing and being loaded before the wrong number is answered and J is back downstairs, happy that “he” has fixed the problem and we seal our situation with a kiss.

There are certain things we don’t tell everyone: the true number of our lovers; the very worst thing we’ve ever done; for some, their age or weight; and whether or not there’s a gun in the house. These are just examples and there are so very many more little parts of us that for one reason or another is kept inside.

For even the most honest among us, there are secrets. For those less honest, the secret is more safe because it’s often hidden even from the one who holds it, by nature’s own compassion or by desire.

“And this above all: To thine own self be true” is a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that I’ve tried to follow all my life, and yet it is a dictum that offers the most argument within myself. It’s not as simple as being honest for it involves conflict sometimes between intellect and emotion, feelings of others over our own, morality and what is best for the whole versus the individual, the now versus the future. We have just as much to debate within ourselves as that with others and can only seek assistance from the great philosophers and leaders and by reading what they had to say.

Because I think it can safely be assumed that anything that may confront and force us to look inside ourselves more closely, has already been tangled with before.

After all, aren’t there truly only variations of 37 plots in life?

You’ve heard (?) me mention my friend Neha, a student at the campus here and an inspiration in writing, friendship, author of Wanderlust, and who has planted the seeds for a Writers’ Conference in April.

You’ve heard me mention (and they’re a more famous lot than the likes of me) Professor Dennis Jerz and Professor Michael Arnzen, of Jerz’s Literacy Log, and Pedablogue and Gorelets respectively.

Well they will meet. Neha has been accepted at Seton Hill in Pennsylvania for the fall semester. The good thing is that I’ve gotten to know her a bit, and with blogging and e-mail, won’t completely lose her to higher education.

Personally, I wish her the best of luck, the best of time, and congratulations on an honor well earned.

NOTE: An oversight on my part for which I apologize, and thank Professor Jerz for his following comment:

“I believe Neha has also corresponded with John Spurlock, the chair of the SHU humanities division, and also the author of The Blue Monkey Review.”