Are You Sure About That, Cassandra?

Since the election I have developed a morbid fascination with reading old right-leaning blogposts and their predictions in the days preceding the elections. It isn’t schadenfreude, since I don’t take joy in knowing that those people are going to be very unhappy in just 3 days, 1 day, or 6 hours. It’s more like watching Titanic, seeing the people dancing and dining, and knowing that there is an iceberg out there with their names on it. I suppose there were some people watching the movie and chuckling gleeful little chuckles deep in their hearts over what was coming next, but I think most people just felt sad, or even wondered what confident expectation of their own was about to come undone.

In the course of my reading, I came across this comment:

I trust your analysis [name]. You’re a straight shooter and an honest man, far more than Rasmussen, Rove, Morris, or Zogby (remember when he was taken seriously?). You’ve never wavered from telling the truth, even when some of the less crooked pollsters have taken the opportunity to tighten things up for profit here and there.I thank you, and think many other people out here appreciate you for being a lone voice of reason in a chorus of Cassandras.

Let’s review the sad history of Cassandra, shall we?

In Greek mythology, Cassandra . . . was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy. In an alternative version, she spent a night at Apollo's temple, at which time the temple snakes licked her ears clean so that she was able to hear the future (this is a recurring theme in Greek mythology, though sometimes it brings an ability to understand the language of animals rather than an ability to know the future).[2] When Cassandra of Troy refused Apollo, he placed a curse on her so that she and all her descendants' predictions would not be believed. She is a figure both of the epic tradition and of tragedy . . . 

While Cassandra foresaw the destruction of Troy (she warned the Trojans about the Trojan Horse, the death of Agamemnon, and her own demise), she was unable to do anything to forestall these tragedies since no one believed her.

So the thing about Cassandra was that her prophecies were always right. Always right, and nobody believed them. Our comment writer above was painfully accurate when he described the conservative writers who were predicting a Romney loss as Cassandras, but context shows that he didn’t mean it that way. I think the writer saw a Cassandra as one who prophesied doom (which is true), but missed the part where she was right in doing so.

In thinking about Cassandra over the years, I have come to realize what fine observers of human nature the ancient Greeks were. The myth of Cassandra reveals truths about human thinking. To be able to predict the future accurately, you have to be open to the idea that things won’t turn out the way you hope. You can’t just cherry pick the evidence you like and ignore or criticize the evidence you don’t like. Yet who is more likely to be able to sell an idea to others: the person who is open to evidence that is contrary to their hopes, or the person who is convinced zie is right and won’t look at contrary evidence?

I was in the position of Cassandra once. There was a horrible event in our city. Someone had been tossing rocks from overpasses, and after 2 or 3 such incidents, a woman was killed when the rock broke her windshield and then hit her head. We were talking about it at work and I opined that the rock tosser may have been a teen or teens who thought of it as a prank and didn’t foresee what could go wrong.

Another coworker, our psychologist, said no, this was the deliberate work of someone with a lot of anger. She was the psychologist, so I decided she was right and I was wrong and didn’t say any more about it. Two days later, two horrified teens turned themselves in. They had been throwing  the rocks as a prank and didn’t mean to kill anyone.

Unlike Cassandra, I am not always right, even when I do set aside my prejudices and wishful thinking and look at all the facts I can find. I’m not always disbelieved, either, and unfortunately, sometimes I’m believed when I’m wrong. I suspect, though, that we have all had our Cassandra moments, when we were right but were outargued by some blowhard who wasn’t.

It’s human nature.

Oh, What a Night - Uh, Afternoon

I did not like The Four Seasons when they had their first hit records. I was in high school, then, and liked most popular music despite my nerd reputation. (Actually, I’m not even sure I made enough of a presence to have a nerd reputation. I was probably more like “Who?”) I did have my non-favorites, however, and some of them, like, Sherry and Big Girls Don’t Cry made it to number one on the charts. As I remember it, I didn’t like any Frankie Valli song until Let’s Hang On (To What We Got). Maybe by that time I was worn down.

So it might seem strange that I was eager to go see Jersey Boys, a jukebox musical about the rise and fall of the Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. As I said before, the Golden Opportunity group was going, and an outing to New Orleans to see a touring performance of a Broadway musical seemed like it would be fun. Besides, I didn’t realize that Jersey Boys was about the Four Seasons; I thought it was a musical like Mama Mia, in which music of my youth originally performed by singers from New Jersey (of whom there were many) were used in a completely unrelated plot. I know, Google is my friend.

The funny thing is, when I saw the musical, I loved it, every last song that I had turned off when I heard them on the radio back in high school and college. Maybe it was just having someone else sing Frankie Valli’s part, I don’t know, but I had a lot of fun.

The plot seemed very familiar, since it was largely the same one as that of the made for television movie, The Temptations. Four young men meet, form a band, some leave, some stay, new ones are added, the right mix is found, success! And then temptation on the road, addiction (drugs in one group, gambling in the other), break-up, more new members, eventual reunion at the induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When the movie Walk the Line came out in 2005, one reviewer asked something like, “Didn’t we see this movie last year and wasn’t it called Ray?” The temptations of fame and life on the road are remarkably similar, but as I have had reason to say before, all ages have their storytelling conventions.

Jersey Boys isn’t about the story, however, even if it does have more dialog than, say, Les Miserables. It’s about the music, and since our group, and many of the other groups pouring off tour buses for the Thursday matinee, were about the right age to have known the music the first time around, we clapped and sang along and a few of us (not me) danced. It was fun. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t know exactly what to expect, because it would have been a shame if I had decided not to go.

Even though the stage sets were simple, the staging still had the power to surprise. Towards the end of the first act, the Four Seasons performed a number with their backs to the audience and stage lights shining from the other side of them toward us - giving the audience the effect of being on the stage looking out over the lights. It conveyed the idea of both “We’ve arrived” and “Look how isolated we are.” I enjoyed the small touches like this. It always amazes me how set designers can make a confined space work for multiple locations.

I see that plans to make a movie of Jersey Boys have been put on hold, at least as of November. All the more reason to take advantage of any touring performances that come your way.

As the Cricket Chirps

I ran into a snag in writing to the two candidates for state house district 65 as proposed in my post, The Opposition. “Dred Woodrow’s” website gives an email address where he can be contacted, but “Hussein Sumac’s” does not. 

“No problem,” I thought, “I’ll write to him snail mail.” It turns out his website does not offer a street address either, nor even a post office box. This makes sense if he is running his campaign out of his house, or more likely, the office of his overworked personal assistant at his business.

I did find a news story about a joint appearance the two candidates made at a local Chamber of Commerce meeting right after they announced their candidacies. A few pertinent paragraphs are below, and, as usual, snarky comments of mine follow in italics.

At a luncheon hosted by the Chamber of Commerce of East Baton Rouge Parish the two candidates, District 4 councilman Scott Wilson and Central small business owner Barry Ivey, said they'll be banking on their experiences as businessmen to help win over constituents concerned about crumbling infrastructure, an uptick in traffic congestion, schools and a ballooning state budget facing a $963 million shortfall. 

http://www.nola.com/news/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2012/11/two_candidates_emerge_in_race.html

So far it sounds promising. So what are they planning to do about the crumbling infrastructure, [and] an uptick in traffic congestion?

Audience member Elizabeth Dent said Richardson [the legislator whose seat they are competing for] took a stand against the CATS tax.
Baton Rouge and Baker voters approved a $15.3 million property tax increase in April for the Capital Area Transit System, or CATS, which operates the bus system.
Dent wanted to know if Wilson and Ivey would be as brave as Richardson.
Ivey said he is not afraid to be the only dissenter.
He said positive things follow when people do things for the right reasons.
Wilson said he opposed the CATS tax and showed through his service on the Metro Council that he is willing to stand up.
http://theadvocate.com/home/4528666-125/2-vying-for-state-legislators

They are proposing to fight traffic congestion by not supporting public transportation. I see.

Wilson, who recently won reelection after running unopposed in November, said his experience as a city council member and his tenure as a small trucking business owner make him a qualified candidate for the seat. He drew on his conservative voting record, saying he's consistently stood up for ideals that weren't universally popular.
"I think you need someone who's been there as far as fiscal responsibility, as far as looking after your tax dollars," he said.

If by “weren’t universally popular”, you mean across the nation, that’s probably true. If you mean in his district, he was running unopposed.

Ivey said he strives to be transparent.

He said he intends to be an overcommunicator and use technology to his advantage.

This is the candidate who does not have an email or snail mail address listed on his website. That communication thing is supposed to run both ways.

I like the way they both claim to be willing to stand up for unpopular ideas while feeding the chamber members exactly what they wanted to hear. 

Hey, guys, you know what would be unpopular? It would be for one of you to say, “As the pro-life candidate, I’m going to push the governor to accept federal Medicaid money and expand Medicaid services as one step in reducing Louisiana’s truly disgraceful infant mortality rate, one of the worst in the nation.”

Overcommunicate that.

More Fun on the Bus

Page Two of the handouts we got on the bus was entitled, Subject: FW: So, You think you know everything….[sic]. It was a list of what I suppose were meant to be little known facts. I’ll comment in italics on a few of them:

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge.

Well, I’m not going to count them and see.

“Dreamt” is the only English word that ends with the letters “mt”.

When I first read this, I thought, “No, it’s not, what about ‘prompt’ and ‘tempt’?” Then I remembered the silent “p”. It’s silent the way I say those words, anyway. 

Babies are born without kneecaps. They don’t appear until the child reaches 2 to 6 years of age.

They appear out of nowhere? They’re not, maybe, all cartilage at first?

In the last 4,000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.

Except, maybe, ferrets. They go back about 2500 years, possibly 3500 at the outside.

Maine is the only state whose name is one syllable.

Not if you live in certain parts of Nyawk.

On a Canadian two dollar bill, the flag flying over the Parliament building is the American flag.

Here, let me google that for you.

There are more chickens than people in the world.

So there truly can be a chicken in every pot.

Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

Well, it’s not like we don’t have our reasons.

In Which I Emulate Penn and Teller

Yesterday John and I went to New Orleans to see Jersey Boys with the “Golden Oldies” group associated with a local hospital. (The group is actually called “Golden Opportunities", but I like my name better.) While we were riding down on the tour bus, the organizers gave us a few handouts to help us while away the time. One of them read (I copied the punctuation from the original):

It does work, unless you have already had your birthday this year. It has to work, because this is what you are doing:

1. Take your shoe size.

We’re going to call your shoe size “x”.

2. Multiply it by 5.

That gives you 5 x.

3. Add 50.

That gives you 5x+50.

4. Multiply by 20.

And now you have 100x + 1000

5. Add 1012.

That gives you 100x + 2012. Does that “2012” look familiar? It should, because up until 25 days ago (as of this writing), it was the current year.

6. Subtract the year you were born.

100x+ 2012 minus your birthdate gives you 100x + your age! Well, it gives you your age unless your birthday for 2013 has already passed. Apparently there weren’t many Capricorns in our group. Apparently there weren’t any centenarians, either, because if you are 100 years old or older, this trick won’t work.

So now you have a three or four digit number. The last two numbers are your age, because, as we see above, what you have done is subtract the year you were born from what was the current year when this trick was last updated. To your age, you have added your shoe size multiplied by 100, so yes, of course, you get the digit that represents your shoe size in the 100’s place, because math.

You, too, can dazzle your friends! Just take some simple arithmetical calculation and break it into parts. Instead of telling them to multiply a number by 100, tell them to multiply it by 5, and then a few steps later, to multiply it by 20. Interlace another simple arithmetical calculation, breaking up the steps for it. Instead of telling them to add 2013, for instance, tell them to add 50, multiply it by 20, and add 1013. You can take the trick above, substitute the number of cups of coffee they had today for their shoe size and the date they got their driver’s license for their birthdate. Then you can tell them that the number of cups of coffee they had today can tell them how many years they have been driving.

It’s magic!

To the Moon, Martha, to the Moon!

Saturday we went to the Little Theater to see their latest production, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The January-February production of each year is always a heavy drama. The first year we had season tickets, the production was Arcadia, which I actually liked, unlike the 60% or so of the audience that left at intermission and didn’t return. John thinks they left because of the bad language. I thought it was because the plot is hard to follow, but I suppose if you are having trouble following a plot, profanity stands out all the more. In subsequent years we’ve had A Man for All Seasons, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire. The lead actress in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was a professional who was paid for her performance, and gave a short acting workshop while she was here, but I thought the actress who played Big Mama blew her off the stage.

I was not looking forward to seeing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? I had never seen either the play or the movie, but I had read the play and found it pointlessly depressing. Since we had the tickets anyway, I tried to cheer myself that maybe it had redeeming features when actually performed.

I never thought anything would make me feel nostalgic for A Streetcar Named Desire, which just goes to show, never say never. While I didn’t find any of the characters in Streetcar likable, I could at least sympathize with them. The characters in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I just wished dead. If they actually had been drinking at the rate the script called for, they would have succumbed to alcohol poisoning long before the audience succumbed to a numb wish for it just to be over, already.

I know a chunk of the audience agreed with me because everyone sitting to my left kept talking about how bad the play was and how they were just staying to see how it ended. John kept talking about how bad it was too, but was reluctant to act on my common sense observation that we could leave. (When I say “kept talking”, I mean during the two intermissions. Nobody was actually rude enough to talk during the play.)

The acting wasn’t the problem, either. The actor who played George has also acted professionally, including bit parts in some recent movies, and the actress who played Martha has extensive amateur experience. The two junior leads weren’t as accomplished, but they weren’t bad. I didn’t get the impression that these were dismal performances, just dismal people.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is very much a piece of its time. The main character, Martha, is disappointed that her husband George hasn’t succeeded in his academic career and become the obvious successor to her father as the head of the college where he teaches. Neither Martha nor the playwright had the imagination to see Martha as the successor, at least if she had been willing to put in the hard work required to get an advanced degree (which women were doing even back in the WW2 days, which is when she would have had to have started according to the play’s chronology.) True, back in those days she would have had an almost impossible task to be taken seriously as a president of a co-ed college, and so probably still would have ended up a disappointed, philandering drunk, but she would have been a far more interesting disappointed, philandering drunk than she is in the drama as it stands.

Martha doesn’t come across as a person who has a passion for any kind of academic subject, and if she were more self-aware, she might have had more sympathy for her husband’s failings, but then we wouldn’t have a play. Of course, not having a play, at least this play, doesn’t exactly have a downside.

Even if Martha had taken the mid-century female risk of backing her husband George against her daddy when George wanted to publish his novel, her life may have turned out better, and more importantly, there would have been no play. 

I know Albee is supposed to be some kind of genius and “his works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition,” (wikipedia) but if what you want is a dramatic treatment of the fine line between love and hatred in a mid-century marriage, any episode of The Honeymooners did it far better.

I’m serious. Ralph and Alice had a contentious relationship, and his threats along the lines of “One of these days, Alice, POW, right in the kisser,” although never acted on, made even some 1950’s audiences uneasy. Yet it was clear that they (unlike George and Martha) had each other’s backs. What made them wildly popular was that they were not the romanticized married couples of Leave It to Beaver or Father Knows Best. They were poor, harried, and contentious, but they were believable. Better yet, they were likable. You wanted to spend Saturday nights with them.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? also has the theme of reality versus illusion running through it, as each of the couple’s stories and games is revealed to have another side to it. As George says, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

There again, I think The Honeymooners comes out on top, although the illusions are purely Ralph’s as he drags his buddy Norton into one get rich quick scheme after another. His illusions, though, are more true-to-life than George and Martha’s tall tales, and therefor far sadder when once again they fail him. You really hope against hope that this time it will work, instead of peeking out from one eye asking, “Can I go home yet?”

Besides, Alice and Tracy actually have conversations. In Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , George and Martha have conversations, George and Nick have conversations, and Martha and Nick have a conversation, but conversations between Martha and Honey all take place offstage, even though one of the conversations triggers the tragic events of the play. It’s not just that the play fails the Bechdel Test, it’s almost as if there is an Anti-Bechdel Test that it is determined to pass.

But the scariest revelation of the author’s view of women is given in Martha’s soliloquy, in which she explains to Nick why George is the only man who has ever made her happy. I’ll spare you the long form and sum it up as “Bitches be crazy, amirite?”

On our way home my husband complained, “I think they could have ended that play after the first ten minutes.” On the other hand, he appreciated one line, when George said, “I’m six years younger than you, and always will be.” He’s six years younger than me, and as he reminded me, “always will be."

“I know,” I said. “I’m counting on you to take care of me in my old age.”

He made some smart-ass response in return, but what I heard was, “Baby, you’re the greatest.”

Oh, Joy!

I volunteered myself to be St. Anonymous UMW secretary this year. I have a poor attention span and even worse handwriting, but no one else wanted the job, and at the time of nominations, I had a migraine and was afraid I would never get to go home if someone didn’t step up. Besides, we have two or so general meetings a year and I don’t think there’s a fixed schedule for executive board meetings, so how hard could it be?

One of my first chores as secretary was to attend a district wide meeting back in November where we had break out sessions to train us for our positions and a wonderful speaker. She spoke about the missions that are supported by UMW, one of which is opposition to human trafficking. Of course, everyone thinks forced prostitution when they hear “human trafficking”, but it also can mean the transport of legal or illegal immigrants to work under slave like conditions in any form of commerce, not just the sex trade. Our speaker told us of a situation in which an employer brought legal immigrants into the country, but held onto their papers, forcing them to work for subsistence wages in hopes of getting them back. UMW members were able to reach out to the workers and eventually testify in a court case on their behalf.

“My girls,” I thought. Unfortunately, I did not follow up by looking online to see what else the UMW is doing about human trafficking, thereby missing information about this upcoming event until today.

Our first general meeting was supposed to have been earlier in the month, but it was postponed due to tornado warnings. So we met yesterday.

Which gets us, in my rambling fashion, to the title of this post. One of the items on the agenda was about an upcoming Women of Joy Conference, held by Phil Waldrep Ministries. Some members have suggested we get a group together to attend the conference in San Antonio next fall. One member who had been to a previous conference spoke of how much she benefited and told us that women were signing up at the end of the conference she attended for the one the next year.

So I googled the conference, and Phil Waldrep Ministries, when I got home. Almost all the hits I got went directly to Phil Waldrep Ministries or the sites for the conference itself, and a few to blogs which gave the conference rave reviews. The only criticism I found was directed at one of the speakers, for taking time away from his high paying job to attend another Waldrep organized conference as a highly paid speaker. So as far as I know, in terms of what it provides, Waldrep Ministries is on the up and up and leaves many satisfied customers in its wake.

It also seems probable to me that Phil Waldrep Ministries is a Baptist ministry. Waldrep got his start “[leading] over 1,000 revivals, speaking at some of America's leading churches like Thomas Road Baptist in Lynchburg, Virginia; First Baptist Church in Orlando, Florida; First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida; Bellevue Baptist in Memphis, Tennessee . . .” While I am not trying to take a tribal view of Baptists versus Methodists, they do have different views of women’s role in the church and home. (I’ll explain why I think Waldrep falls on the complementarian side of the divide further along.) The Methodist Church falls on the egalitarian side of the spectrum, with regard to relations between men and women:

We reject social norms that assume different standards for women than for men in marriage.*

So why do I think the Women of Joy Conference is going to sell a complementarian perspective? Well, here is the trailer for the 2013 conference. The phrase “absolute surrender” is used frequently and linked with “absolute peace”, “absolute acceptance”, and of course, “absolute joy”. Past speakers at the conferences have included Sarah Palin, Pam Tebow (Christian missionary and mother to Tim Tebow, although past video trailers simply refer to her as “mother to Tim Tebow”), and Kay Warren (“wife to Rick Warren”). Men appear on the podium as entertainers and worship leaders.  

Contrast this with the trailer for the Gridiron men’s conference. The theme of the 2013 conference is “Stand”. Speakers include Dan Cathy, Josh McDowell, and Tim Tebow. There are no women speakers or worship leaders, at least in this year’s conference and the conferences going back to 2010, which is as far back as I could find. So I think I know where PWM stands. 

I don’t begrudge the group its right to hold these conferences and attract large crowds. I just don’t plan to be there when they do. Not because the organizers are Baptist: if St. Anonymous wanted to organize a trip to a Baptist conference on ending malaria or addressing hunger or promoting literacy, I’d consider going, especially if past attendees were as enthusiastic as the ones whose blog posts I read today. 

It’s because I became a United Methodist Woman 40 something years ago because we stand. We are strong women who stand for the poor, the hungry, the homeless, and each other. We stand against the exploiters and for the exploited. A list of our action issues includes: human trafficking, domestic violence, women’s rights, immigration, health care, environment, economic justice, racial justice, public education, child advocacy, and global justice.

If I had only bothered to do the research I’m doing today two days ago, I could have proposed at our meeting yesterday that we participate in the Intercept the Traffickers Photo Campaign. That I did not is solely on me. Fortunately, I have the program for our March meeting. I have lots of time to find program materials on the human trafficking issue. 

When my sisters at St. Anonymous go to the Women of Joy Conference, I will wish them godspeed. I’d hate to see what the world would look like if everyone had to confine themselves to doing what I think is best for them.

I just hope that when next year rolls around, we will also be standing at the side of I-12, which leads to I-59 and then on to New Jersey, taking a picture, as just one of our steps in standing for people in bondage. Because, Mr. Waldrep, women, too, can stand.

*Unfortunately, the sentence that follows is "We support laws in civil society that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman." I reject that idea and am unhappy that the Methodist Church hasn't also, but it would be dishonest not to admit to the entire paragraph.