IMHO

I(dentity)

There's been a great deal of discussion lately on one of the jewelry boards I frequent about whether the board denizens consider themselves "artists," "crafters," "artisans," or something else entirely. To some, this may seem like an exercise in belly-button staring. To those invovled, however, it is a question fo vital importance, a question of identity.

It might be true that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but a rose carries with it centuries of symbolism that far sweeter smelling flowers do not. There is more to a name than the physical object it signifies.

Most of us go through life, knowingly or not, with a label. Or, more accurately, with a whole constellation of labels that makes up what we think of as our "identity". Discussing "artist" versus "crafter" only makes more present what is rarely considered. The labeling starts at birth: "the pretty one", "the smart one," "the troublemaker", "the good child". By middle school, many labels are internalized -- "jock", "geek", "flirt", "nerd". Occasionally, a child will consciously rebel against a label, but that very act shows how important the labels are.

It is one of the peculiarities of modern life that something as important as identity is rarely examined. The first time many of the people I see at my weekly Weight Watchers meetings ever have to think about identity is when they start going to meetings. Changing your identity has long been a concept central to WW. When I first started years ago, the buzz was all about changing your identity from a "fat" one to a "thin" one. My own "food self" came from my family, where I was known all through my childhood as "the one who could eat anything," and it was a difficult lesson for me to learn that that was not the case.

As with most of the WW ideas, this one has become more refined, sophisticated and helpful over the years. The newer WW uses your "identity" to help you figure out how to make the program work for you. My current leader, for example, says her identity is "capitalist". She asks herself before she eats something whether it's "worth it" to do so. As I look around at the faces at my meeting, I realize that most of the women and men there have never before tried to figure out their own identities and that they may never be able to.

Most of us go through life without paying conscious attention to the labels we wear. And yet, when we suddenly realize that things are not as we thought, that we are not who we thought, it is a brutal shock. When the child always called "the smart one" suffers a head injury, when the Catholic realizes he doesn't believe in Jesus, the result is more than a shock, it's an identity crisis.

If you had to define your "self" and your values without reference to religion, politics or individual celebrities in any field, could you do it? Could you define yourself without saying "I am a democrat", "I am a conservative", "I follow Jesus", " I follow Allah", "I follow Elvis?" And could you do it in the positive? Could you manage not to say "I am against X", phrasing it instead as "I am for Y." If there were no book -- political, religious, philosophical -- with rules for you to follow, could you write your own?

This is the challenge I believe needs to be presented to every individual if we are to get past the divide in our country today. I don't believe we are as far apart in "values" as the media would have us believe, but our insitutions, especially political, but religious and socio-economic as well, have a vested interest in creating readers and followers, rather than writers and leaders, of our own value systems.

Fwd:

A letter forwarded from the 'Net, as so many of the mails I get are forwarded, and addressed to anyone who may forward email.
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Well, the new year has started.  I want to thank all of you who have taken the time and trouble to send me your damn chain letters over the past year. Thank you for making me feel safe, secure, blessed, and wealthy.
 
Because of your concern... I no longer can drink Coca Cola because it can remove toilet stains. I no longer drink Pepsi or Dr Pepper, since the people who make these products refuse to put "Under God" on their cans. I no longer drink anything out of a can because I will get sick from the rat feces and urine. I no longer use Saran wrap in the microwave because it causes cancer. I no longer check the coin return on pay phones because I could be pricked with a needle infected with AIDS. I no longer use cancer-causing deodorants even though I smell like a water buffalo on a hot day. I no longer go to sh0pping malls because someone will drug me with a perfume sample and rob me.

I no longer receive packages from UPS or FedEx since they are actually Al Qaeda in disguise.
 
I no longer shop at Target since they are French and don't support our American troops. I no longer answer the phone because someone will ask me to dial a stupid number for which I will get the phone bill from hell with calls to Jamaica, Uganda, Singapore, and Uzbekistan.
 
I no longer eat prepackaged foods because the hormones they contain will turn me gay.
 
I no longer eat KFC because their chickens are actually horrible mutant freaks with no eyes or feathers. I no longer date the opposite sex because they will take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice. I no longer have any sneakers -- but that will change once I receive my free replacement pair from Nike. I no longer buy expensive cookies from Neiman Marcus since I now have their recipe.
 
I no longer worry about my soul because I have 363,214 angels looking out for me and St. Theresa's novena has granted my every wish. Thanks to you, I have learned that God only answers my prayers if I forward a e-mail to seven of my friends and make a wish within five minutes. (Jeeze, the Bible did not mention it works that way!)
 
I no longer have any savings because I gave it to a sick girl who is about to die in the hospital (for the 1,387,258th time). I no longer have any money at all, but that will change once I receive the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL are sending me for participating in their special e-mail program. Yes, I want to thank all of you so much for looking out for me!
 
I will now return the favor. If you don't send this e-mail to at least 1200 people in the next 60 seconds, a large bird will crap on your head. I know this will occur because it actually happened to a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of my next door neighbor's ex-mother-in-law's 8th husband's 2nd cousin's 3rd husband.
 
Keep looking up and Happy New Year!

Dog News

Today we went to the veterinary behaviorist. She says there are three things that are tangled up in Oscar's case:

1) He is a naturally obsessive dog. This is not normally a concern, and she says that as long as he doesn't hurt anyone if he's interrupted in his obsessive behaviors, that it's not something to worry about.

2) He is a naturally anxious dog. He has a higher level of nervousness than many dogs. Again, this might not be anything to be worried about and could be dealt with relatively easily but...

3) He appears to be having seizures. There are lots of little things that seem to indicate this. He is very visual [he doesn't jump at loud noises, but sudden movements freak him out and he sees every speck of dust and excessively dark areas annoy or puzzle him] and epilepsy is found more often in dogs who are very easily stimulated visually. The age of onset is right for a seizure disorder. He seems to have fugue states. The only "triggers" appear to be adrenalin-based...any time he's overly happy, overly scared, overly excited, overly playful, any of those can lead to an aggressive behavior whereas if he's calm, nothing you do -- taking away his food, taking away his toy, putting him in his crate, attaching a leash, rolling him onto his back, nothing -- will provoke an attack. He appears to have no recollection of the attack after it happens.

He's having blood tests to rule out thyroid and a recurrence of Lyme, but she says that the sporadic nature of the attacks don't indicate either of those. She wants to start him on phenobarbitol because she says that it will help the seizures, which will, in turn, help his anxiety. He *knows* he doesn't feel right, but doesn't know why, which in turn makes him more anxious, which in turn can provoke the seizures, which makes our other dog and us afraid, which makes him feel odd...you can see how it goes. He is also going to go to a neurologist to see if there is anything the neurologist can easily recognize, but neurological problems in dogs are very hard to diagnose -- you cannot hook them up to an EEG machine like you do a human!! (And sometimes, even an EEG won't tell you the story....)

So the idea is to get the seizures under control, and do things to generally lessen his anxiety level. If it's not one thing...!

"Christianity" and Social Security

So, if you know me, you know that "morality" is a hot-button issue with me. Many years ago, when I worked in a record store, there was a guy who worked there who trumpeted his "Christianity" to the rafters. Whenever he got the chance, he played Christian albums (frequently Christian rap, occasionally traditional gospel). And when I say "whenever he got the chance", I mean that he frequently manufactured the chance by calling away whoever was at the front desk for some reason and going up there himself to take off whatever they were playing so he could put his music on. At one point I mentioned to him that such actions were not particularly "Christian", but he seemed to miss the point.

As I listen to the pathetic noises coming out of the Bush camp about Social Security, I am reminded of that guy. He was fired for stealing. I wasn't there when it happened, so I didn't have a chance to ask him what he thought was "Christian" about theft. But listening to the Bush camp bemoaning the fact that Social Security is in crisis, when all evidence is to the contrary makes me want to ask them....

"What's Christian about lying?"

Legislating Morality

As many of you know, people who try to legislate morality really drive me up a wall. Making adultery illegal won't make people more moral, for example, it will just cause a lot of people to go to jail. Recently, on one of the jewelry boards I belong to, the board "leader" posted this:

Its a policy at [forum name deleted] that we are a family.

This is the kind of thing that drives me absolutely up the wall. You cannot have a "policy" that says you are a family. You can create a nurturing environment, or a strict environment, and either one of those is going to feel to a certain segment of participants like a "family." As I have noted before, everyone's idea of "family" is different. But even with all those definitions of family out there, no policy is going to make people feel as if they are in a family.

Talking about "family" is like talking about "values". When someone says they have "values" what they mean is conservative Christian values. I have "values", too--freedom, equality, honesty, kindness, generosity, etc--why aren't those included when people talk about "values"? And when people talk about "family values", that's the worst. For example, what this forum leader apparently considers "family values" are:

We don't randomly post remarks that would make another feel bad without the facts. If we do happen to make an inappropriate remark, we always apologize.

Wow, she didn't grow up in my family, I can tell you that.

I hate this kind of crap enough when the government tries to foist it on me and I have no choice in the matter. It's too bad, but I guess that is one jewelry forum I won't be attending any longer because when I *do* have a choice, I choose to go where people don't push their ideologies on me.

Lately

Between the dogs and the house, I haven't had a lot of time lately to write. Besides, the news is kind of depressing. Any time I have to write, I have been writing the new website for my business. It won't be live for a couple weeks, so I thought if anyone was interested I'd show you something I've been playing with in jewelry. This is a Japanese weave in sterling silver with a Balinese clasp set with a citrine cabochon.

Aggression

And for the crisis du jour...

I have been reading up on dog behavior, because one of my dogs is acting oddly. We've already had a full blood panel, but the next step seems to be visiting a specialist, a "veterinary behaviorist." The best descriptions of Oscar's behavior fall under what appears to be called "Idiopathic Aggression". The following description is full of grammatical and spelling errors, but adequately describes the problem.

Idiopathic aggression is an unprovoked, unpredictable form of aggression with no known cause.  Dogs frequently get a "crazed" look seconds before they become violent.  This form of aggression is very difficult to diagnose correctly because the age of onset is 1-3 years which corresponds with the age that dominance aggression and idiopathic epilepsies first present and the symptoms of this disorder are very similar not only to dominance aggression and epilepsy, but numerous other medical behavioral disorders such as rage syndrome. 

Dogs suspected of having this form of aggression should always be treated by a veterinary behavioralist to get a correct diagnoses.  Many of these dogs have medical problems which can be identified and treated (for example, epilepsy).   For those dogs which are truly idiopathic aggressors, the prognoses is poor.   The unpredictability and violence of their outbursts makes it dangerous to live with them.  It is probable that there is a genetic or medical basis for the behavior of these dogs, but until it is identified and understood, treatments will likely remain largely ineffective.  Some dogs do respond to various drugs - and these can only be appropriately prescribed by a veterinary behavioralist.

Why can't I ever have a normal, healthy dog?

OK, OK

I know, I have been slacking. The house is eating up my time and energy. I cannot believe how much work it is turning out to be. But Mike is heading out again next week, so I will be back to the computer since I won't be ABLE to work on the house!