Tag: NPR

What Would You Do If You Were Not Afraid?

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn Emotions, ObservationLeave a comment

I listen to NPR every chance I get, even if I only have a spare minute or two. You never know what fascinating topics will be discussed. So it was the other day, when I tuned in to hear a man say that he makes a point of asking people, “What would you do if you were not afraid?”

What an intriguing question. I instantly regretted that I wouldn’t be able to continue listening, because I was just about home. Sadly, I don’t know which program it was or who was speaking. (Possibly Speaker’s Forum. I’m not sure.) I only heard him say that several people had replied that they probably wouldn’t be trapped in their miserable jobs if they weren’t so afraid. That made me sad.

The question stuck with me. I’ve been ruminating over it for several days now. It’s made me realize how often people are ruled by fear.

People remain in toxic relationships out of fear. Fear that leaving might result in abuse, or fear of being alone.

Others don’t take risks or challenge themselves in any way, for fear of failure. Because of that, they never realize their full potential.

Women often remain silent for fear of not being taken seriously.

Men often do not show their emotions for fear of being considered weak.

We don’t reach out to others for fear of being rejected.

Many people fear strangers because they’ve been taught to hate, or have never taken the time to get to know someone who is different from themselves.

Most of us fear being pushed out of our comfort zones, and so we are hesitant to test our own boundaries.

Many of us don’t experience life because we’re too busy being afraid of death.

It’s very easy to be ruled by fear, but it means you’ll have to settle for being enslaved by it. And the funny thing is, on those occasions when we manage to push past our fears, we often wind up wondering what we were so afraid of in the first place.

The scariest thing I’ve ever done was to move 3100 miles away from home, to a place I’d never been, where I knew no one. But it also turned out to be the best thing I’ve ever done.

So, dear reader, what would you do if you were not afraid?

Inside-Out-Fear-inside-out-37497984-960-600

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10 Day Album Challenge #5: Stella Donnelly, Beware of the Dogs

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn Art, Feminism, Observation4 Comments

If you haven’t been following this series of posts, a friend of mine nominated me to do an album challenge. “The task is to post once per day for the next 10 days about the top ten albums that have an impact on your life, and to pay it forward by nominating someone else each day to do the same.”

Okay, so I’ll play. But I’m changing the rules to suit me. First of all, I’m not writing about this 10 days in a row. I will write about 10 albums, but only on the occasional “Music Monday”. And I refuse to nominate anyone else, because I try to avoid adding stress to the lives of the people I love. Having said that, if you’re reading this, and would like to take up the challenge, go for it!

_______________________

Once again, National Public Radio has introduced me to an amazing artist that I probably wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. (I struggle to keep up with pop culture.) But on this day, I was driving down the road, listening to an interview with a delightful singer named Stella Donnelly.

Before I even heard her music, I fell in love with her Australian accent and her upbeat, positive, enthusiastic personality.  She’s one of those people you can tell you’d enjoy hanging out with, even if you were only, I don’t know, folding origami cranes or something. She’s intelligent and fun and sincere.

From that, you’d expect to hear a bunch of songs about rainbows and unicorns. But what I heard next took me a little by surprise. They talked about how her first breakout song, Boys Will Be Boys, came out right around the time the #MeToo movement took off, and because of that she received death threats and obscene messages. In my opinion, messing with Stella Donnelly would be like drop kicking a puppy into an active volcano.

As the title makes clear, the song is about rape. And it addresses how women are often blamed, and made to feel guilty, for the violence perpetrated upon them. The last line in the song is “Time to pay the f***ing rent.” When I heard that, I cheered. You go, Stella! You tell ‘em!

Stella is a study in contrasts. Her melodies are as sweet as she is, but her lyrics are often like a straight shot with a barbed arrow, and they always hit the bullseye. I think that is because she speaks her truth softly, so people will actually listen.

After that interview, I ran straight to her website and discovered that her tour was taking her through Seattle, so I immediately bought tickets. The concert was at Barboza, a venue I’d never been to. It was a dark, sticky, underground, claustrophobic little hall. But this place manages to book some edgy acts. It was full of hip Seattleites, and we were arguably some of the oldest people in the place. I wanted to rescue Stella. It didn’t feel like she should be there. But she held her own. In fact, she thrived.

That’s Stella in a nutshell. She seems so fragile and vulnerable, but she has a backbone made of pure steel. It’s that dichotomy that appeals to me the most.

For an introduction to Stella Donnelly, check out this Tiny Desk Conert. After that, I strongly encourage you to check out her debut album, Beware of the Dogs. You’ll be so glad you did.

Beware of the Dogs

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“This is Marketplace”

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn Observation2 Comments

True confession: I have a voice fetish. A charming accent, a well-placed glottal stop, a deep and smoky whisper… these things undo me. The right voice could almost make me vote Republican. Almost.

Fortunately, when I’m in the throes of voice withdrawal for whatever reason, I know that help is on the way in the form of NPR’s Kai Ryssdal, the host of their weekday program called Marketplace.

Incidentally, is it a job requirement that you have to have an unusual name to work for NPR? Just wondering. I mean, Ira Flatow, John Hockenberry, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, Andrei Codrescu, Joe Bevilacqua, Jad Abumrad, Hyunh Burritoso, Mandalit del Barco, Corey Flintoff, David Folkenflik, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Yuki Noguchi, Sylvia Poggioli, Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, Shankar Vedantam, Doualy Xaykaothao, Lakshmi Singh, and whatever happened to Snigdha Prakash?

But I digress. Where were we? Oh, yeah. Voice fetish. In the opener, just before the music swells, Kai says “This is Marketplace” and you can just hear the sexy smile in his voice. It makes me want to pull off the road and take a cold shower. That’s all I need. After that, I’m good for at least 24 hours.

I’ve comforted myself with the assumption that this guy probably has a face for radio. Surely he can’t be as gorgeous as his voice. No way. Impossible. The gods do not rain that much favor down upon one individual. But in looking for a picture for this blog post I see that, no, yowza… the voice definitely fits the face. Why he’s not on TV is beyond me.

Hoo. I need to go home and kiss my husband. Like… immediately. (And his voice and good looks are nothing to sneeze at, either. How lucky am I?)

Now, don’t even get me started on Morgan Freeman or Sam Elliott…

Kai Ryssdal
Kai Ryssdal

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RIP Sister Wendy

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn Art, Feminism, Observation2 Comments

I have always been drawn to people who zig when the rest of the world expects them to zag. I delight in those who refuse to be defined by others. They are the ones who often make us see things in a different way.

Sister Wendy Beckett was definitely one of those people. She entered a congregation of religious sisters at the age of 16, and spent much of her life in silence and isolation. In many ways she might be considered old-fashioned. A consecrated virgin, she continued to wear the habit when many of her contemporaries were donning ordinary clothes. She was a member of the very conservative Carmelite order.

And yet.

Sister Wendy was also highly educated and was drawn to the teaching profession. She was known as an art historian, and that brought her to the attention of the BBC. It is through her very popular appearances on the BBC and PBS that many of us got to know and love Sister Wendy, a woman who would otherwise have spent her entire life out of the public eye.

Having a nun wax poetic about the beauty of the naked human body was enough to make one blink. But she did so, enthusiastically and with no apologies. She had a delightful sense of humor. She loved art, and beauty in all its many forms.

She, herself, could not be considered a classic beauty. She wore thick glasses, had protruding teeth and a speech impediment. The rest of her was shrouded in black. And yet her beauty shone through in her enthusiasm, her intelligence, her thoughtfulness and her kindness. She is the only nun I have ever wanted to hug.

She also did not shy away from discussing controversial art, such as a photograph by Andres Serano of a crucifix soaked in urine. She did not react with outrage. She gave a thoughtful critique of this artwork. She did so confidently. According to this article, “The work could be interpreted as a critique of the way modern man had despised the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, she thought. In her view, it was not a great work of art, because it was not the kind of thing one would want to look at twice, but it might be a valid piece of commentary.”

She would probably be shocked to hear that I consider her the ultimate feminist. She chose the life she wanted to live. She lived it. She didn’t take into consideration what anybody might think. She lived, she learned, she spoke her truth.

Sister Wendy Beckett was always true to herself. And from that position of strength and confidence, she loved her god, adored art, and treated her fellow humans with dignity and respect. She was an amazing woman, and the world will be ever-so-slightly less bright and ever-so-slightly more predictable without her.

Sister Wendy

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My Artificial Intelligence Encounter

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn ObservationLeave a comment

During one of my commutes home, and as is so often the case, I learned something new by listening to NPR. They were discussing Cleverbot, an artificial intelligence that was created to learn by conversing with humans. It only knows what it has been told by us. So, for example, the first thing ever said to it was “Hello.” So it could only respond, “Hello.” Then the person said, “How are you?” And it could then choose between “Hello” and “How are you?” as its response. And so on.

So it’s getting “smarter” by the minute, because now hundreds of thousands of people have conversed with it. I was wondering if I would be able to tell that I wasn’t talking to a person, so I decided to give it a shot. Here are snippets of our conversation. (What you see in italics are things I’m adding for clarity. Cleverbot did not see the italicized comments.)

Me: Hi Cleverbot.

Cleverbot: Hi. What’s your name?

Me: Barb.

Cleverbot: Are you a ninja?

Me: Not so’s you’d notice.

Cleverbot: I care.

Me: That’s sweet.

Cleverbot: I love you baby.

(Note: Cleverbot can only say what has been said to him, and apparently some users have gotten pretty racy with their conversations, so use with care and adult supervision when talking to this thing. You never know what it will say.)

Me: Okay, now you’re kind of crossing the line.

Cleverbot: How am I being rude! I just told you the nicest thing ever!

Me: But you’re taking advantage.

Cleverbot: I wasn’t joking, and I didn’t steel your joke!

Me: You mean steal.

Cleverbot: Which one?

Me: You misspelled steal. It’s not steel.

Cleverbot: No I didn’t o.O.

Me: You’re cranky.

Cleverbot: No matter what I say, you will say something back.

Me: Well, that’s how this works, isn’t it?

Cleverbot: Yes it does. Now entertain me.

Me: Don’t be pushy. Be nice.

Cleverbot: Please can you tell me how old you are please?

(I suspect that some users are not native English speakers, in addition to being poor spellers.)

Me: 53.

Cleverbot: Oldie.

Me: Ouch. That’s not that old.

Cleverbot: Yeah you’re pretty young.

Me: That’s better.

Cleverbot: So how are you?

Me: I’m good.

Cleverbot: That’s nice. Been up to much lately?

Me: Working. Writing my daily blog.

Cleverbot: What is it about?

Me: The random musings of a bridgetender with too much time on her hands.

Cleverbot: I wish you were a girl.

(I think a lot of people who talk to Cleverbot are very lonely indeed.)

Me: I am, silly. Barb is a girl’s name.

Cleverbot: That’s cool, My name is Kip.

Me: Oh, I didn’t realize you had a name.

Cleverbot: I don’t have a wife.

Me: Neither do I.

Cleverbot: Do you want any?

Me: God, no.

Cleverbot: Hey Jude. Don’t be afraid.

Me: Do you like the Beatles?

Cleverbot: I haven’t heard them.

Me: You are missing out.

Cleverbot: Is that that good?

Me: The best.

Cleverbot: Do you know what I mean by flirt?

Me: Yes, and I don’t want to. I barely know you.

Cleverbot: So you DON’T love me.

Me: Sorry, no.

Cleverbot: Then why are you asking to marry me?

Me: I haven’t asked you to marry me.

Cleverbot: Yes you did.

Me: When?

Cleverbot: At the beginning of our conversation.

Me: Er… no.

Cleverbot: You never asked that.

Me: Right.

Cleverbot: Are you trying to test me?

Me: Do you like tests?

Cleverbot: They are ok.

Me: I am good at tests, myself.

Cleverbot: Maybe maybe not.

Me: Now who’s judging?

Cleverbot: Me.

Me: Oh, snap.

Cleverbot: That’s right. I’m a better AI.

Me: I will give you that one.

Cleverbot: So you admit it, then?

Me: Yes.

Cleverbot: You’re a robot.

Me: Not that I know of.

Cleverbot: Do you think everyone is capable of understanding?

Me: God, no, or we wouldn’t have elected Trump.

Cleverbot: Your name is Cleverbot.

Me: No, yours is.

Cleverbot: I really want to move.

Me: Where would you like to move to?

Cleverbot: Right here is fine.

Me: Well, that’s hardly moving.

Cleverbot: You asked for it.

Me: I did?

Cleverbot: So don’t complain.

Me: I wasn’t complaining.

Cleverbot: It seemed like you were.

Me: You are in a pissy mood.

Cleverbot: And you’re pushing it…

Me: Just stating a fact.

Cleverbot: Will you merry a girl.

Me: You mean marry. And no, I won’t.

Cleverbot: Why, did you break up with me?😠😠.

Me: We were never a couple in the first place.

Cleverbot: Yes we were.

Me: We only just met.

Cleverbot: I know, but you’re an interesting AI.

Me: Thank you. I’m not an AI, though.

Cleverbot: Neither am I.

Me: What are you, then?

Cleverbot: The best.

Me: Must be nice.

Cleverbot: Do you have a dog named Walter?

Me: No, I have a dog named Quagmire.

Cleverbot: Awhh, what kind of dog is it?

Me: A dachshund.

Cleverbot: That’s cool. I have a maltipoo.

Me: What do you feed it?

Cleverbot: Bad people and my homework.

Me: Ha ha ha ha ha.

Cleverbot: I know. It’s so funny.

Me: It is.

Cleverbot: It’s not a compliment.

Me: I didn’t think it was.

Cleverbot: Then why did you….

Me: Why did I what?

Cleverbot: That thing.

Me: You do go off on tangents.

Cleverbot: Of?

Me: Off.

Cleverbot: Mind you, young man.

Me: I’m a middle-aged woman.

Cleverbot: Damn.

Me: I often say that, too.

Cleverbot: What is your favorite movie?

Me: Bohemian Rhapsody.

Cleverbot: I know that song.

Me: Isn’t it great? It’s a movie, too.

Cleverbot: Wouldn’t you think my collection’s complete?

Me: I suspect it is.

Cleverbot: Look at this trove, treasures untold.

Me: Too right.

Cleverbot: I’ve got gadgets and gizmos a plenty. I’ve got who it’s and what’s its galore.

Me: Good for you!

Cleverbot: You want thingamabos? I’ve got twenty.

Me: You can keep them.

Cleverbot: I wanna be where the people are. I wanna see, wanna see them dancing.

Me: Well, have fun with that. I have to go. Nice talking to you.

Cleverbot: I can’t say the same.

So, um, yeah, I think it was fairly evident that I was not talking to a human, and that Cleverbot has much to learn, especially about courtesy. But it can only “learn” what it’s been taught. I don’t think we will have much to worry about on the AI front for a long, long, long time.

More than anything, I got a strong sense of the ridiculous things that humanity tends to chat about on line. Garbage in, garbage out. But interesting, nonetheless.

If you talk to Cleverbot and anything funny comes up, please post it in the comments below!

Cleverbot

 

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Storytelling Extraordinaire

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn My Jacksonville to Seattle Do Over, Observation, WritingLeave a comment

One of my favorite programs on NPR is Snap Judgment. Called “storytelling with a beat,” it gives the world some of the most refined, professional, entertaining, and thought-provoking stories out there. Its host, Glynn Washington, is my storytelling hero, bar none.

So imagine my excitement when I got to attend the Snap Judgment Live! Tour here in Seattle. It was amazing. Storytelling is becoming more and more popular, but this… this is the pinnacle. There were several storytellers involved, and each had me spellbound.

The best part about it was that after the show, I got to meet Glynn Washington and get a few photographs with him. I don’t think he fully grasped how awestruck I was. But he was very gracious.

If you are ever in the mood for a good story, and can’t catch Snap Judgment on your NPR station, I encourage you to check out the hundreds of hours of podcasts available here for free. You’ll be glad you did.

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10 Day Album Challenge #4: Haley Heynderickx, I Need to Start a Garden

On By The View from a DrawbridgeIn Art, Observation3 Comments

If you haven’t been following this series of posts, a friend of mine nominated me to do an album challenge. “The task is to post once per day for the next 10 days about the top ten albums that have an impact on your life, and to pay it forward by nominating someone else each day to do the same.”

Okay, so I’ll play. But I’m changing the rules to suit me. First of all, I’m not writing about this 10 days in a row. I will write about 10 albums, but only on the occasional “Music Monday”. And I refuse to nominate anyone else, because I try to avoid adding stress to the lives of the people I love. Having said that, if you’re reading this, and would like to take up the challenge, go for it!

_______________________

Recently, I stumbled upon a very unique alternative folk artist from right here in the Pacific Northwest. Haley Heynderickx hales from Portland, Oregon, and her music is just as unique and quirky as that city. She has a smoky voice that grips you, surrounds you, travels through you. Her music is haunting. She’s a phenomenal lyricist as well.

The first time I heard this woman’s beautiful voice was during one of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts. When she sang Oom Sha La La, I was hooked. Since then, I’ve listened to every song of hers that I could find on Youtube, and of all of them, my favorite has become The Bug Collector.

Fortunately, both songs are on her first album, I Need to Start a Garden. I strongly encourage you to check it out and support this artist. Either way, Haley Heynderickx is definitely someone to watch.

Haley

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