Rocket Scientist: Ebolapallosa!

Great blog post about Ebola - from a scientist's perspective. 

Rocket Scientist: Ebolapallosa!

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Debriefing Compliments

Posted to Gather, September 18, 2012 08:35 AM EDT

It’s hard to imagine anything looking more painfully wrong. The gown, while still dangling from a hanger in a doorway, reflected the impeccable skill and attention to detail that brought people in need of a special occasion seamstress to my mother’s door. The near paralyzing shock was not related to the garment.

My job that day was to assist with the hemming fitting. Jo changed into the gown and a pair of pumps, clunked across the room, and nearly broke her neck climbing up to stand on a chair. Mom measured and turned fabric – yards of fabric around the bottom of the full-length, gathered skirt of the gown. I held the red felt tomato cushion and supplied Mom with pins. I had done this many times before with no problem other than wondering why she placed the pins I handed her between her lips before using them on the dress. Was I too slow? Did it enable her to position the pin the way she wanted before using it? Did it replace the cigarette that was usually between her lips? What should I do if she swallowed a pin?

This time, seeking an explanation for the shocking wrongness replaced the usual boredom-evading questions. The soft, frilly, bubble-gum-pink bride’s maid gown looked ridiculous on Jo, who could easily have passed for a male in the cloths she had worn in. A quick, self-conscious meeting of the eyes told me she knew this as well as I did and couldn’t wait to change back into her trousers, plaid shirt, and Chuck Taylors.

Guilt almost destroyed me a few pins into the job. I was disappointed in me for not wanting to tell Jo she looked pretty in her new dress. And I hated myself for hoping Mom would swallow a pin since that was obviously the only thing that might stop her continuous stream of mumbled-around-pins, ridiculously unbelievable compliments. Couldn’t she see that Jo looked more miserable with each word?

By the time it was over, I felt as sorry for me as I did for Jo. Not only was I forced to witness the wrongness of Jo in her pink gown and pumps, and her misery in being complimented for looking a way I’m sure she never wanted to look, I was also forced to realize how little my mother’s compliments actually meant. Mom wasn’t blind or stupid so she couldn’t possibly have thought miserable and wrong was attractive on Jo. How many times had she complimented me because she thought it was the right thing to say and not because the compliment was sincere?

If I could relive that day, I would give Jo the honest compliment she deserved: You are a wonderful friend for agreeing to buy and wear this dress in your friend’s wedding since it isn’t your style and you will probably never wear it again.

I would like to believe that I learned a great lesson that day and, since I am older than dirt, that it was a different time and saying the wrong right thing got lost along the way. The truth is I’ve been slammed with that lesson repeatedly, as recently as last week.

I was present the day my daughters experienced this realization together, as adults. A friend, who had praised them from birth and whose compliments they had taken to heart, commented on the beautiful character of a group of people that neither of my daughters would ever have wanted to be compared to. I felt their eyes on me and hated to look because I knew immediately what each was feeling. How could they treasure the compliments she had paid them if her judgment was so different from theirs, or her honesty so questionable? We discussed it later and I shared my Jo story.

I might have learned to tailor compliments so they will honestly fit, and to withhold insincere praise. But, the fact that I can still feel the sting of false compliments, whether sent in my direction or aimed at someone else, or allow a lifetime of compliments to be negated when I hear someone whose opinion I appreciated lavish false compliments on someone else tells me I haven’t mastered this lesson yet.

The big question for me today falls in the chicken/egg category. I do believe that everything that happens, and every person who passes through my life, contributes to who I am today. If I had not had high self-esteem to begin with, how would insincere or undeserved compliments have affected me? Would I have blown them off and not believed them, or might they have boosted my esteem?

Let’s Talk About Legacy, Senator McConnell

Dear Senator McConnell:

Legacy:  something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past legacy of the ancient philosophers>

Thirty years is a long enough pattern to become legacy. When looking at your thirty years in office and focusing, as most people will, on the years since 2007, when you became the Minority Leader in the Senate, your legacy should not make you (or your children and grandchildren who will have to live with it) proud. You will be remembered mostly for your vow to make President Obama a one-term President, with no concern for how badly your attempts to do that harmed the residents of Kentucky, the nation, and the world. You will also be remembered for your pork, which you bragged about for years until your party decided it was a terrible, horrible, must-be-stopped-and-criticized-forever activity. Your filibuster record, including the fact that you are the only Senator to filibuster his own bill, will most surely brighten up a few history classes.

Regardless of the something a voter considers important, you have left the majority of us with less than we had before – exactly like the parent who dies and leaves his children with more overdue bills than assets.

We have fewer jobs. People work harder for lower wages, and each dollar buys less than it did when you came into office. Many people lost their homes and their health care, and are unable to feed themselves and their families. When given an opportunity to vote for something that helps, you consistently fail. Even if it were true that the majority were doing better (and that is not true), ignoring the people who are hurting the worst is inexcusable. Inhumane disregard for those in need will be your legacy. I will help keep that legacy alive for you as long as I can and then ask my grandchildren to continue for me.

Unfortunately for you, regardless of party affiliation/registration, most of us would say we have lost rights during your leadership. Your side screams about being persecuted Christians who are no longer able to pray in school and plaster the commandments they can’t remember on every public space so they’ll never forget to ignore them in public. They mourn the fact that their party has not delivered the theocracy they want, that big brother is watching over home-grown terrorist groups/militias, that they might possibly be close to losing the right to be armed and ready to kill in the grocery and daycare. They are fearful that they might be forced to work somewhere that won’t cause them to have black lung, and that a same-sex couple will get married and cause their spouses to abandon them. Both sides are angry about feeling spied on. Failure to protect our rights will be your legacy (Remember

The Protect America Act and Legislation Related to the Domestic Surveillance Program

which you introduced but tried to squirrel away from?). http://www.llrx.com/extras/nsa.htm

You are in a no-win legacy position, Senator. Your destruction makes you a loser from my proud liberal perspective. The fact that you didn’t destroy this country quite enough makes you unpopular on your own side. If I were you, I’d wish I had been a one-term Senator.

You still have a month to change all of this. You could admit the truth, apologize, and resign. I would remember you quite differently and bet others would, too.

If not for yourself, you might want to consider your party. If, by chance, you care about anything other than yourself. In the thirty years that you have been in office, your party has been circling the bowl. Making that last-ditch-effort change might encourage others in your party to do the same before the final flush. (Food for thought doesn’t really work here, but you get the idea.)

This is what a winning legacy looks like: Ted Kennedy   http://www.legacy.com/news/legends-and-legacies/ted-kennedy-10-facts/826/

Sandy