Childlike or Childish

                                                                                                                                                                               
     Being childlike includes many positive traits like being curious and playful.   It may also include finding comfort in being dependent and having an authoritative figure guiding their life.
     Being childish often means not thinking and behaving like others of your age and experience.  Emotional immaturity, lacking self-control, being self-centered and insensitive to others, and being impulsive without considering the facts or the consequences are all considered childish.  Adults labeled narcissistic often get upset when criticized,  blame others for their mistakes, and rudely belittle those who disagree with them.
     Adults can benefit from being childlike at times while still having the self-confidence to prefer independence.  Taking a break from adult responsibilities can actually refresh us so we can return to adulthood.  It would be to our detriment to be childish ourselves or accept childish behaviors in leaders responsible for our well-being.
   
       

Secular Ethics

                                                                                                                                                                                                 
     This pandemic has required us to think about what is best for ourselves, our country, and the world.  We all are sacrificing, feeling compassion for those suffering, and trusting science to return us to better times.  Ethical decisions have been made for our survival.
     Secular Ethics is based on human faculties such as logic, empathy, reason or moral intuition and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance.  Secular ethics has much in common with many religious morality codes.
     The beginnings of ethics can be witnessed in nonhuman animals as they form social behaviors first within their kinships as parents sacrificing for their offspring and continuing as they follow behaviors that benefit their group like sharing food.  Those animals that reciprocate and help each other strengthen the community.  Evolution continued these positive traits in human beings who became more reflective and logical, then designed the best ways to live and set rules of behavior.  Beneficial behaviors were encouraged such as honesty and cooperation, while other behaviors were discouraged, even prohibited.  The concepts of good and bad, right and wrong were established.  Punishments were put into place for the lawbreakers.
     Throughout history, some cultures were sidetracked, created a deeper divide between the powerful and the powerless, instituted slavery, resorted to violence and war, which in some cases led to their downfall.  A few cultures became more democratic, valuing the individual.   Some cultures yearned to understand the unknown and placed value on supernatural explanations.  Religions seemed to produce answers and created their own set of ethics and rules of behavior.  Many myths and stories of heroes were handed down even before written language.
    Today, many people value supernatural explanations which include rules of behavior.  They may believe that human nature is too selfish and misguided to do the right thing.  Others believe that logic and reason can prevail with good parenting and ethical leadership, that individuals can behave well for their own benefit and for the benefit of the group.
    We still have a long way to go.  Secular ethics can guide us to ensure our citizens and people around the world have equal rights and opportunity.

The Yellow House

     "The Yellow House" 4112 Wilson Avenue, New Orleans East, Louisiana from 1961 until Hurricane Katrina damaged it beyond repair was home to Ivory Mae who raised twelve children there, the youngest being author Sarah M. Broom.  This memoir tells the story of Broom's ancestors, parents, siblings, other family members, neighbors, and friends.  This also is a story of place: the development and decline of the community just east of New Orleans and New Orleans itself including the French Quarter, both the romanticized image and the real story of the residents and workers.
     Sarah Broom relates her life story as a young girl growing up who kept a journal throughout her life, went away to college, and had various jobs including as a writer for Oprah Magazine, then as a speech writer for Mayor Ray Nagin until she lost faith in his leadership rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
     "We are all born into histories, worlds existing before us.  No place is without history."  As a teenager she states, "I wrote in a notebook (my writing everything down having become, by then, habit.)."  After living in other places, she rented an apartment in the French Quarter. "Thus it could be said that my reaching to understand the French Quarter was a yearning for centrality, a leading role, so to speak, in the story of New Orleans, which is to say the story of America."
     Eleven years after Katrina, "Mom signed away the yellow house and its land, which she had owned for more than half a century."  "The story of our house was the only thing left."

Alone

     Are you stranded on a deserted island?  Are you in solitary confinement, imprisoned because of misdeeds?  Are you a prisoner  of war?  Are you a refugee who has fled from a dangerous home?  Are you confined to a hospital bed fighting for your life?  Are you an orphan, widow, or widower?  Are you really alone?
      Remember or imagine before computers, iPhones, and TVs were invented when landlines, radio, snail mail, and paper newspapers were the primary ways to communicate other than face to face?  What about books as a way to look into the minds of others?
      Actually, everyone is alone inside their own body and within their own mind.  Nature around you presents mostly good things for human survival.  Nature also creates mutations, some within the human body and some that invade the human body which at times has a difficult time adjusting.  These mutations can occur anywhere in the world when certain conditions present themselves.  Medical science can often help.
     Many people believe supernatural forces can help.  They also believe that the great supernatural force created nature and answers pleas for help.  This is a comfort for many.
     Take time to think deeply into your beliefs.  Also consider why you have the opinions that you do.  Have you been manipulated to have extreme likes and dislikes?  Consider what you have instead of what you don't have.  Realize the freedoms you have instead of the freedoms that have been curtailed.  Use the time you have in beneficial ways.
     Stay healthy and survive.       
     

The Book of Gutsy Women

     
     All around the world for many centuries, women have had the courage and resilience "that made the world a better place."  Hillary and Chelsea Clinton present stories featuring both famous women and some not so well known; however, all deserve to have their stories told.  Eleven categories include a multitude of women: Early Inspirations like Helen Keller and Anne Frank; Education Pioneers like Maria Montessori and Joan Ganz Cooney; Earth Defenders like Rachel Carson and Jane Goodall; Explorers and Inventors like Sally Ride and Marie Curie; Healers like Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton; Athletes like Venus and Serena Williams; Advocates like Eleanor Roosevelt and Gabby Giffords; Storytellers like Maya Angelou and and Ali Stroker; Elected Leaders like Bella Abzug and Barbara Mikulski; Groundbreakers like Katharine Graham and Ellen DeGeneres; Women's Rights Champions like the Suffragists and Fraidy Reiss.

     "Throughout history and around the globe, women have overcome some of the toughest and cruelest resistance imaginable from physical violence and intimidation to a total lack of legal rights or recourse, in order to redefine what is considered a woman's place."  "Ensuring the rights, opportunities, and full participation of all women and girls remains a big piece of the unfinished business of the twenty-first century."

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

                                                                                                                                                                                   
     In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, formerly know as Ludwig Eisenberg, "was just one among countless young men stuffed into wagons designed to transport livestock."  They were taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps.  For two and a half years, he endures this horrible prison and survives by being a Tatowierer.  During that time, he meets Gita, and they fall in love.  He tells his fellow prisoners, "I don't know what fate lies in store for any of us."  "He thinks back to the vow he made at the beginning.  To survive and to see those responsible pay."
     Lale tells Gita, "How any merciful god could let this happen, I don't know."  "I believe in you and me, and getting out of here, and making a life together..."  Gita tells Lale that he "will honor them (those who suffered and died) by staying alive, surviving this place and telling the world what happened here."
     And that is what happened.  The Nazis were defeated.  Lale and Gita married in 1945 and many years later had a son Gary.  He asked his mother how she handled later challenges in life.  "With a big smile on her face she said that when you spend years not knowing if in five minutes' time you will be dead, there is not much that you can't deal with."
     In his later years, Lale finally told his story to author Heather Morris.
 

The Show

     Give them what they want.  The main event, the Super Bowl, gives us male strength, agility, and controlled violence.  Halftime is a break from all that.  Music and dance is in the spotlight.  The girls give us what we want.  We hear upbeat sounds and see feminine moves that highlight their strengths.
     What does football give us?  That is another topic.  What did the show give us?