A True Blue Spectacle

It should not be a surprise to anyone, particularly Mr. Ginley, that I am easily distracted and should not take on philosophical discussions when I'm driving.

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And yet, here we are.

I'm not sure how we got on the topic, but somehow we landed on John 2:1-11. For those of you who haven't memorized your bible verses (frankly, I had to Google it myself), this is the story where they run out of wine at a wedding in Cana.

Jesus' mom (aka Mary) turns to her beloved son and says, "They don't have anymore wine. Do that thing you do." (I may be paraphrasing.)

An exasperated Jesus turns to Mom and says, "It's not my time yet. You don't get to tell me what to do."

What I imagine was left out of the bible story is Mary turning to Jesus and saying, "Are you f-ing kidding me, Son? Do you have any idea what I went through to bring you into this world? Do you think anybody bought the story of how I got pregnant? It was no piece of cake explaining the whole angel visitation and Immaculate Conception thing to Joseph. I go through all that, and you can't work a little miracle for your mother?"

Then, with righteousness on her side, Mary sidles over to the servants, points at her son, and says, "Do what He tells you to do."

It's not been recorded what Jesus' reply was, but undoubtedly, He was reminded of the 5th Commandment to "honor thy father and thy mother." Or maybe He just got a case of the guilts. In any event, He caved, told the servants to fill the jars with water and take them to the man in charge. The head guy took a swig and went steaming over to the bridegroom. 

"Hey, dunderhead, you're supposed to serve the best wine first. Then when everyone is slobberknockered, you give them the cheap stuff because they're too stiff to know the difference." (Again, I may be paraphrasing.)

Thinking about this story made me wonder aloud how women came to be considered subservient in the church. Maybe it's the bad publicity Mary Magdalene got. (No she wasn't the hooker, the one who anointed Jesus' feet with perfume to atone for her sins. Although church leaders did their best to meld two different women into one.) 

It was the women who wept at His feet when Jesus was crucified. And it was the women who went to the officials to claim His body and discovered the stone was rolled back. And where were the apostles? They were in hiding. 

After my rant in the car, I nearly missed a turn. 

It was a miracle I didn't get us totally lost.

Attribution: Mutialulu, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

  

Algorithm Follow-up

Well, so much for my experiment.

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As my regular readers know, last week I created a blog, put it out on FB, and asked for those of you who saw it to like it (even if you didn't) so I could see who was seeing my blog posts.

Yes, I cheated a bit by featuring a photo of my feline, because a post with a cat pic will often pop to the top of any cat lover's FB feed.

Even with Maggie's help, I had just 4 viewers chime in that they saw the post. Mind you, this is apropos of nothing, other than my curiosity about how FB presents things. It confirmed what I already knew, which is:

1. If there is money to be made from a post, that will appear in my feed, no problem.

2. FB will present dozens of random sites to me daily, trying to lure me into joining a new group or following a celebrity.

3. If I really want to see what's going on with friends and family, I need to go to the little spyglass and click on the folks who have posts, scroll through, and like or ignore as appropriate.

I realize there are no revelations here. And yes, I'm going to continue to blog, not because I'm setting the world on fire, but because I need a creative outlet. 

If you're reading this, thanks!

If you're not reading this, I hope it's because you've walked away from your FB page and the rabbit hole that ensues.

Just for shits and giggles, I'm including a picture of a Corgi this week. Maybe a dog lover or two will pay a visit!

Photo attribution: Nglengna, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

I've Got Algorithm

 "I haven't seen your blog in awhile," my sister, Diane, mused recently.

"Well, that's weird," I replied. "I've been posting every week."

That's when I started paying more attention to my FB feed. As most of you have likely noticed as well, the top of the feed is chock full of ads, clickbait, and all kinds of stuff that the FB overlords think we want to see. 

I mean, sure I love a good cat video as much as the next crazy cat lady, but there is a limit. 

And soooo much political stuff. I know I need to keep up on the news, but isn't that what the news is for? FB was supposed to be a safe place, where you could see what friends and family were doing and spy on old boyfriends and such. The intrusion into my happy place is not appreciated.

I've started using the little looking glass thingy to see who of my friends/family have posted anything new. Now I go through and click on them instead of scrolling, and it's way more efficient. This, of course, is assuming that FB deigns to actually show all of the folks who've shared something, not just the ones with the most posts or the most popular ones.

That's when I decided to do my own little lab experiment. If you're reading this, bless you. And if you would be so kind, please either "like" it (even if you don't, that's okay, I won't take it personally) or post a comment (i.e. react in some way) to indicate that you've seen it. 

I'm just curious to see if my posts are actually showing up in my friends' feeds. 

Thanks in advance to all who participate in this little exercise of mine.

I'll update you next week on the results. 

P.S. If you're wondering, "what's up with the kitty pic?", I'm putting my thumb on the scale, so to speak, by throwing in a little cat porn. 

 

Learning the Joy of Learning

School always felt like a punishment to me, and that's a shame. Because learning should be an adventure, not a grind.

What a tangled web we weave...

To this day, I'm slow to learn new things. I'd like to go about my day, do my thing, and move along to the next thing. But that's really no way to live.

I want to be one of those people who wake up in the morning, greet the dawn with open arms and feel blessed to be given another new day. I really do.

But I'm just. so. tired.

In this era of living "intentionally," I've been attempting to notice the little things. I was washing my hands the other day, for example, and I marveled at the silky feel of the soap, the bubbles that glistened in a rainbow of colors, and the sensation of being clean.

I noticed a spider had woven a web into the window screen in the kitchen. Bees buzzing in these little teeny daisy-like wildflowers growing in the backyard. And wisps of steam coming off my coffee in the morning. All little things.

And yet, yesterday I was doing what I image my cat would identify as "the zoomies," cutting the grass on a break from work, making our lunches, and cramming in a few chores before heading back to my desk. None of this was conducive to being "intentional."

Have I learned nothing?

Well, I guess I'm a work in progress, but that progress is awfully slow.

Was there anything I learned in school that's helping me today?  Well, sure, I got a good Catholic education (grade school, anyhow). I learned my maths and my English pretty good. A little science. (Which I didn't enjoy at all until middle school and lab. Hands-on science is great, I discovered.) And a little geography (emphasis on "little"). Our schoolbooks made foreign countries sound about as exciting as a day in a cornfield. 

Of course, I was fortunate that in high school, I was able to take vocational classes, where I learned how to type, do basic accounting, and overall business skills. Home Ec taught me rudimentary cooking and sewing. And the co-op class my senior year had me working half days in a print shop, an experience that went a long way in providing depth to my education in a valuable way.

Looking back over my career, I've learned more than I realized. While others were reluctant about the internet when it became a thing at work, I embraced it. I've kept up with technology, although I still think that watching a DVD or reading a book I can hold in my hands is better than the digital alternatives, which live in a cloud and can go POOF at the whim of their host.

I'm learning to manipulate AI for work, although I find it worrisome. Am I contributing to the downfall of intelligent thought by using this tool? 

Perhaps I'm delusional (more likely than perhaps). But I believe that someday, people will want to shop in malls again, that we'll return to interacting in person, that cell phones will become passé, and we'll finally turn them off to get away from the exhaustion that is social media. 

Which is why learning new things is all well and good, but retaining basic skills from the beforetimes is important, too. Using our imagination, being in touch with the world around us, looking out for each other. The good citizens we were taught to be growing up.

So many important things we learned early on that seem to have been pushed aside. 

Although I can confidently say, memorizing the Jabberwocky poem by Lewis Carroll in 5th grade is not something that will ever prove useful in daily life.

But I digress. I've learned how to do that pretty well.