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Honne and Tatemae
Recently a dear friend introduced me to the Japanese concepts of honne and tatemae. I had never heard these words before. Without her, I would probably just have assumed they were the names for a Japanese pop culture couple or something. (They do say that opposites attract.) After reading several articles on the subject and…
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Your Good Opinion
The other day, I wrote a blog post entitled “A Surreal Encounter”. After a friend read it, she said, “You did the right thing. And your response was good, too. Proud of you.” Of course I thanked her and told her that that meant a lot to me, but I don’t think that adequately puts…
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On Leading Horses to Water
I have this unique gift. I know what’s best for everybody except, perhaps, myself. At least, that’s the reality I choose to live in much of the time. It’s really easy to look at people’s lives from the outside and come up with quick and easy solutions for them, isn’t it? The real challenge is…
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The Contradictory Metrics of Ignorance
I just came across a group on Facebook called Jewish Ritual Murder. It has 1057 likes. Its sole purpose is to perpetuate false stories that promote the myth of the Jewish blood libel. There’s an insane belief out there that Jews ritually murder Christians and use their blood for any number of nefarious purposes. This…
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%&#@*^% Opinion Polls
As election day drew near and my stress level increased, I took a great deal of comfort from visiting the fivethirtyeight.com website. This is considered the poll of polls. Nate Silver combines a wide spectrum of sources to reach kind of an aggregate on his website. And right up to the big day, he predicted…
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Revel in This Privilege
priv·i·lege ˈpriv(ə)lij/ noun privilege; plural noun: privileges synonyms:advantage, benefit a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group of people. When I was a little girl, my mother took me to a special place. We stood in line. Then we went into this booth and drew a curtain.…
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You Don’t Have to Believe in Global Warming
It must be awfully stressful to be a climate change denier. If you fall into that category, I have to admire your tenacity, your grit, your firmness of conviction. Especially in light of the fact that fewer and fewer people agree with you. According to a Gallup Poll in March, 2016, 64 percent of Americans…
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Everything’s an Observation
I was looking at my blog categories, and I just realized that I categorize every blog entry, over 1300 now, as an observation. That makes me wonder if I should do away with that category entirely. When you get down to it, everything in the world is an observation, isn’t it? To form an opinion…
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One Slap at a Time
I am convinced that the reason so many violent and/or abusive people in this world get away with their bad behavior is that we have a tendency to break things down into separate incidents. If you look at a wife beater’s conduct one slap at a time, for example, it should still be considered unacceptable,…
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Help Me Map Out My Walk Down Memory Lane
Hi everyone! I really could use your help. I’m going to be doing several anthologies of my blog entries, and I need your opinion. My blog is a bit eclectic. In general, it’s about stuff I think about while sitting up here on my drawbridge. So I’ve been going through old posts and trying to…