Memes to minds as viruses to bodies

By Sharon Stoner

meme noun
1: an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture

Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.

—Richard Dawkins

—Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Some believe in Trump so badly they can’t comprehend the mistake they made in voting for him. They literally soak up his pronouncements into the sponges of their minds, devouring any memes that seem to justify their support for him and whatever else he wants them to believe.

Our Troubled Times

By Sharon Stoner

So, South Carolina likes Joe Biden. If the same contender won each pivotal state it would be much easier to choose the Democratic candidate than it seems destined to be.
    While Biden took South Carolina, I am not sure I will vote for him in Florida’s primary. However, he would be a good choice for the Democrats, better than Bernie Sanders would be at proposing a realistic agenda.

Creation or Evolution?

Compromise (a poem)

By Michael Vázquez, when he was 11

[Contributed by his mother, Sharon Stoner, who reports that at age 11 Michael “wrote and illustrated a book of his poems, including some limericks. Using cardboard and stick-and-peel vinyl, he made a book to put them in. I still think he missed his calling to be a writer.”]

There’s an argument in the nation,
about evolution and creation.
    Tho I don’t know what it is,
   I hope they settle the whole biz.
Maybe compromise, and call it Evolation!

Copyright © 2019 by Sharon Stoner

Be Happy

It’s your choice

By Sharon Stoner

[Editor’s Note: Readers need to know where Sharon is coming from, in order to understand that her advice was hard won and does not come from a place of comfort and ease. Sharon has experienced much pain and suffering. I asked her three days ago how her hands and kidneys were doing.

Work-wife mentality and the matter of sexual harassment

By Sharon Stoner

Jill Filipovic’s January 20 NY Times article, “Donald Trump and His Work Wives,” goes to a vital organ of the matter of “sexual harassment” (and other offenses, in or out of offices). The terms “work wife” and “work husband,” she explains, originally described “typically benign egalitarian workplace intimacies: a close co-worker with whom you share not only tasks but also complaints and office gossip.”

Owed to a little dog

By Sharon Stoner

Things are really getting me down right now, and I am frustrated. For one thing, my dog, Timmy. Ordinarily, when I wake-up and take off my CPAP mask, he comes out from under the covers, sits on my chest waiting for his ears to be scratched, and then flops down for a belly rub. During this routine he never barks or makes any other sound. But what has he just done?

My winter doldrums

By Sharon Stoner

My personal editor wrote me, “Keep warm. Or are you already air-conditioning down there?” (I live in “sunny Florida.”)
    Well, I told him, it’s 41° ‪at 11 a.m‬. Up from 28° last night. I think that the AC will be off for quite a while. Hard freeze this morning.

Sheep No More?

By Sharon Stoner

Ever ask yourself why people have “overlooked” the sexual misconduct of powerful men?
    Has it been out of respect for their positions, admiration for all they own, a hope someday to acquire similar power and wealth?

Remembering April 4, 2014

It started with “More about creativity”

By Moristotle

Thanks to Sharon Stoner for reminding us today, by commenting, of a “Fish for Friday” column published exactly three years ago today (when April 4 was a Friday). She made this comment:

I’ve often wondered if when I die will there be anyone left who knew me. Without friends all that is left is, alone!

In Your Dreams: Escape to a parallel reality

By Sharon Stoner

This experience (I don’t call it a dream) occurred about twenty-five years ago, when I was in my early 40s and had lived in my own house in Tulare, California for about fifteen years. I experienced waking up in my house. I was hearing voices coming from the living room. When I got out of bed and put my feet on the floor, I noticed that it was a bare wooden floor, not carpeted as usual. As I moved toward the door, I realized that the room was larger, and it was decorated better. I was totally bewildered! I was in my own bedroom, in my own home, but it was different, and better.

First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

William Silveira, by train and car

Marylin and I recently completed a 19-day trip into New Mexico and Arizona with a couple of friends. We spent some time in Santa Fe and Taos, and at Red River in New Mexico.

First Monday with Characters

Edited by
Morris Dean

James Knudsen, from the 4th row

Among my many, hidden treasures – some hidden so well that I can’t find them, is a collection of old concert T-shirts from the 1980’s. As a teen-ager I made several trips to Fresno’s Selland Arena to see the headliners of the day; Cheap Trick, Van Halen, and The Scorpions were some of the acts I was lucky enough to see. And if my budget allowed, I would purchase a T-shirt that I would proudly wear to school the next day, and it would declare, “Yeah, I was there!”

First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

Siegfried, at 6
    Siegfried’s sixth birthday was January 24. We commemorated the event with our cousins Duvall over lunch at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock [see André’s &Morris’s reports, below]. In the photo right, Siegfried, recently groomed, seemed unsure about being top dog. He's a modest companion, but demanding all the same. He has us well-trained, though, so it works out fine.

First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

Tom Lowe, in remembrance

Fella by the name of Clemens complained years ago, “The coldest Winter I ever spent was a Summer in San Francisco”....He left too soon. From the middle of September to around Thanksgiving the Bay Area experiences the warmest part of its year. That’s where we are right now, with afternoon temperatures in the mid-eighties some days, and foggy mornings. A good season to get some work done, I’m hoping. Finishing my “Spring cleaning” would be a start.

First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

James Knudsen, in the garden

You're probably thinking, “enough with the bugs already!” But, this fellow... fella, I suspect it's a she, charmed me. She has made her home in the patch of mint off the back porch that has been there since my youth. And if you're wondering about the orientation of the picture, that's how I snapped it. Praying mantis' seem to enjoy hanging around upside down. They really do move in a three-dimensional way, forward/back, right/left, up/down. At some point this mantis decided, via her well-developed, binocular, stereoscopic vision, that I was nothing to be concerned about and started cleaning her forelimbs. That's what the camera has captured here.

First Monday with Characters

Monumento a Pau Casals en Barcelona

Edited by Morris Dean

Geoffrey Dean, en España

Every year it’s a special hope of mine that I will not be in Sofia for the Christmas craziness in the Bulgarian capital, and this year I took special measures to make that happen. Inspired by Eric Siblin’s book about the famous Catalan cellist Pau Casals (Pablo in Spanish) and the Bach cello suites (the two stories are interwoven in an engaging journalistic style), I decided it was time to visit some of the places he lived. So we took a budget flight to Barcelona on the 19th, and on my birthday we went down the Catalan coast to En Vendrell, where Casals was born. We also visited Sant Salvador, where he summered at his beachfront villa in the 20s and 30s, and in time for Christmas eve we traveled to Prades in the French Pyrenees, where Casals lived in exile after Franco came to power. On the 26th a friend surprised us by taking us to the ballet in Monte Carlo—Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, choregraphed by Jean Christophe Maillot, was a completely engrossing celebration of movement, color, and holiday humor!

First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

The Neumanns, at anchor

The Pineapple people have had a very busy month, what with the football preseason, a trip to Sonoma County to see Yo Yo Ma on his "Goat Rodeo" tour and a little bit of boating thrown in. We haven't taken the big boat out all month and hope to make up for that in September, starting with being anchored out for the four-day weekend ending today. This is our three-year anniversary of owning Pineapple Girl II, and what a great three years it has been. We are really looking forward to relaxing and sure feel like we need it after the hectic summer we've had.

First Monday with Characters

Edited by Morris Dean

Click photos to enlarge

Allen Crowder,
the King of Jacksonville
     On January 19, Allen fought William Baptiste in the "King of Jacksonville" mixed martial arts event in Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Ask Wednesday: Sharon Stoner on flirting

It came to our attention during some casual conversation recently that Sharon Stoner, a high school classmate of one of our contributing editors, possesses some particular knowledge of and expertise in the art of flirting—something our readers have likely practiced a bit themselves...or been on the receiving end of, we hope enjoyably.