Yesterday, my beloved long-time friend Barbara headed over to our place for our first in-person meeting since the pandemic. After she parked her car and saw me waiting for her outside, the realities of the coronavirus momentarily went right out of her head and she instinctively hugged me — I turned my head away during the hug. Then, we headed out for a walk and a delicious lunch outside, wearing masks on our heads.
Our conversational topics were headed up by:
the current head of the United States,
systemic racism,
other things that are worrying our heads (like voting and bureaucracies),
photography, and
how Barbara helps her partner, Jim, get his head out of the sand and how Jim helps Barbara get out of her head.
I have it in my head, here and now, that there will be many heads in my recently captured images.
I usually have it in my head that the Daily Bitch calendar will somehow relate to my daily blog post and sure enough, the name of this adorable neighborhood dog with the amazing head …
Yesterday, after making minor adjustments so we could connect beautifully on a ZOOM call, my friend Barbara and I talked about her brilliant realization that major issues like the current pandemic can become much more bearable if you make minor adjustments.
During the call, we made minor adjustments so we could see and hear each other better and we discussed minor adjustments to important relationships, interpersonal strategies, our health, nature walks near us, our living spaces, our diet, our weight, Zen-like attitudes, and high school connections. Here are the photos I took of Barbara while we were talking about minor adjustments:
That’s Barbara showing me a sunset outside her window and also a view within her apartment which reminds her of a Thomas McKnight painting. Later in the day she sent me a better photo of that view which I should be able to find and share once I make some minor adjustments. Hold on ….
Those minor adjustments included saving the draft of this post, shutting down my laptop, using my iPhone to find and include that photo, saving the post again, and restarting my laptop to continue creating this post, but I’ve adjusted to the minor adjustments required to bring you these blog posts, every day.
Do you see minor adjustments in any of the other adjusted images I’ve captured recently?
Yes, I sometimes need to make minor adjustments to my self esteem and reading helpful feedback like Maddie’s helps in a very major way. The minor adjustment I would make to that text exchange is the fact that I am no longer President of my local group therapy organization. I am having no trouble adjusting to that.
Also, I’m making minor adjustments to the original song I’m planning on singing at my Zoom-based 50th high school reunion in September. I’ve adjusted this verse …
Now it’s 2020 and we’re all here
To connect over food and beer
To embrace the living and to miss our dead
As we gather here in Marblehead.
… to this …
Now it’s 2020 and we’re all here
To connect and give each other cheer,
To appreciate the living and to miss our dead
As we gather here on Zoom instead …. of Marblehead.
Knowing me, I’ll keep making minor adjustments to that song until I sing it on September 12.
I just made the minor adjustment of following Zaccai Curtis on YouTube.
Please feel free to express minor or major thoughts about minor adjustments in the comments section, below.
Gratitude is another minor adjustment with major effects, so thanks to Barbara, Maddie, Zaccai Curtis, Thomas McKnight, my family, my high school friends, adjusting cats, and everybody else who helps me create and adjust these daily blog posts, including YOU!
Yesterday was a day of ordinary miracles, especially because miraculous blogger Beth sent us this extraordinary hand-made condolence card for the loss of our ordinary miracle of a cat, Oscar.
It’s a day of ordinary miracles when a miraculously wonderful person like Beth gets me in such a profound way. Yesterday was also a day of ordinary miracles because somebody in my Coping and Healing groups said, “It’s great to have a group like this where other people get you.” These days, it’s an ordinary miracle when people get each other.
Yesterday was also a day of ordinary miracles because my 22-year-old son Aaron agreed to take a walk with his mother. Let’s see if you can see ordinary miracles in my other photos from yesterday:
It would be an ordinary miracle if you could find Aaron in one of those photos.
Here’s what The Daily Bitch Calendar has to say about another day of ordinary miracles:
I am woman, hear me
sigh,
cry,
try,
laugh,
speak up,
lead,
follow, and
blog*.
Gratitude always creates a day of ordinary miracles, so many thanks to Beth, my son Aaron, Dr. Jenny Taitz, Marconi Union, and the other ordinarily miraculous ones who sustain me in this blogging journey, including YOU.
* For other days of ordinary miracles, see the rest of the thousands of posts for this daily blog.**
** Because it’s been so long, it’s an ordinary miracle that I remember how to insert asterisks here and now.
Who has time to read carefully these days, with all the information pouring in?
Nevertheless, I am going to read carefully before voting in the Massachusetts primary election by absentee ballot. If you read carefully, over the next few moments, you will discover that I need an absentee ballot because I’ll be attending a week-long group therapy conference in New York City the first week of March.
Read carefully when you look at my other photos from yesterday.
If you read this daily blog carefully, you know I’ve been mourning the death of jazz keyboardist Lyle Mays all this week. Last night, when I was reading my recorded Stephen Colbert shows carefully, I noticed that keyboardist and band leader Jon Batiste was also carefully paying homage to Lyle by interjecting a musical phrase by Lyle during Stephen’s monologue:
If you read that video carefully, you’ll find the sounds of Lyle at 2:44, 4:14, 7:26, and 9:46.
Here’s “Close to Home,” the Lyle Mays composition that Jon Batiste was carefully reading and sharing.
If I read carefully, I always realize that I am not alone.
If you leave a comment, of course I will read carefully and respond.
Read carefully and you’ll see that I’m grateful for all who help me create this daily blog, including YOU.
I just called this post, in its first draft, “Just Another Ordinary Day,” which is a lyric from “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” by Stevie Wonder:
But when I heard that Stevie Wonder song in my earmuff/headphones yesterday, it was NOT just another ordinary day. It was New Year’s Day, which I just called extraordinary as I was reviewing the 2020 visions I captured yesterday:
I just called a few of those photos extraordinary (including the ones with Oscar and the vacuum cleaner) and I’m wondering which photos you’d call out in a comment, below.
Also, I just called today another extraordinary day, because I get to
Let’s look at the meaning of today’s title: “Looks can be deceiving.”
looks can be deceiving/deceptive
idiom
—used to say that something can be very different from how it seems or appears to be
The restaurant doesn’t look very appealing, but looks can be deceiving/deceptive.
I think many things and people can be deceiving, especially these days. I wish that those who are commenting on the deceiving people would focus less on their looks and more on their deeds. For example, I’m tired of hearing how
Rudy Giuliani looks like a ghoul or a vampire (even if these observations are appropriate to the season) and
Donald Trump looks like a cheeto or something else orange.
After all, looks can be deceiving. I’m sure there are people out there looking like ghouls, vampires, cheetos, or other odd-looking things who are honest, kind, and effective leaders. Likewise, there are people out there who look great and are deceiving, manipulative, and scary.
… many social scientists and others who study the science of stereotyping say there are reasons we quickly size people up based on how they look. Snap judgments about people are crucial to the way we function, they say — even when those judgments are very wrong.
On a very basic level, judging people by appearance means putting them quickly into impersonal categories, much like deciding whether an animal is a dog or a cat. “Stereotypes are seen as a necessary mechanism for making sense of information,” said David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University. “If we look at a chair, we can categorize it quickly even though there are many different kinds of chairs out there.”
Eons ago, this capability was of life-and-death importance, and humans developed the ability to gauge other people within seconds.
Susan Fiske, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton, said that traditionally, most stereotypes break down into two broad dimensions: whether a person appears to have malignant or benign intent and whether a person appears dangerous. “In ancestral times, it was important to stay away from people who looked angry and dominant,” she said.
Women are also subdivided into “traditionally attractive” women, who “don’t look dominant, have baby-faced features,” Professor Fiske said. “They’re not threatening.”
Indeed, attractiveness is one thing that can make stereotypes self-fulfilling and reinforcing. Attractive people are “credited with being socially skilled,” Professor Fiske said, and maybe they are, because “if you’re beautiful or handsome, people laugh at your jokes and interact with you in such a way that it’s easy to be socially skilled.”
“If you’re unattractive, it’s harder to get all that stuff because people don’t seek you out,” she said.
AGE plays a role in forging stereotypes, too, with older people traditionally seen as “harmless and useless,” Professor Fiske said. In fact, she said, research has shown that racial and ethnic stereotypes are easier to change over time than gender and age stereotypes, which are “particularly sticky.”
Since I’m an older woman, I have to work extra hard to prove that I am neither useless nor any other “particularly sticky” stereotype. I’m sure I’m not alone in needing to show that looks can be deceiving.
Let’s see if looks can be deceiving in any of my photos from yesterday.
