From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V6 #205 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Monday, August 6 2001 Volume 06 : Number 205 Today's Subjects: ----------------- OT: Re: Alloy: opinions are like . . . here's mine [Merujo ] Re: Alloy: opinions are like . . . here's mine ["Robin Thurlow" ] Alloy: Re: alloy-digest V6 #204 [Barbara Cohen ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 12:11:08 -0400 From: Merujo Subject: OT: Re: Alloy: opinions are like . . . here's mine Well, here's my opinion. And I hope no one takes offense. This is the kind of conversation I'd like to have over coffee after a good dinner. Tom Trudell wrote: > And as far as the East/West Coast thing goes, I can speak with some authority. I grew > up in San Diego, lived a decade in the Bay Area, and now spend time in Portland and > Seattle. I've travelled the East Coast a fair bit, and married someone from > Pittsburgh. It's funny. I guess I've never thought of Pittsburgh as East Coast, since Pennsy is such a big state and Pittsburg almost borders Ohio! Then again, I was born a few miles outside of NYC. A Jersey girl who likes beaches and sand squished between my toes. > 1) Using L.A. as a point of West Coast reference is unfair. LA sucks, sucks, and > sucks... Any city can be like this. Washington, DC, where I currently live, is like this. Big hair, big boobs (both the kind attached to female bodies and the kind that run for political office), waaaaay too many people on cell phones driving Lexus and Mercedes SUVs that they can't handle, and a genuine disregard for others. I am treated like garbage here on a daily basis (and I'm not joking) because I don't fit in. It disgusts me to be here most of the time (especially with the Monicas and the Condits and the sideshow that is Capitol Hill), but I can't find work in my field in many other places. > 2) The west coast is a place where you realize that you don't really need to wear a > tie to go out. It's ok not to iron that shirt. With respect, I disagree. It's a stereotype that works for lots of people, but not for others. It depends on what pocket of West Coast you live in. It depends on the work and social culture in which you find yourself. There are enclaves of laid-back wherever you go. There are tie-wearing enclaves wherever you go, too. Most of my mother's family are business owners and academics on the West Coast, and I know they don't fit this picture. > Sandals and Tevas are intelligent options. That depends on the weather, what you're doing, where you work, or whether or not you're AT work! :-) (On a side note, I just read a Washington Post article about the return of the business suit in a lot of IT firms, in the wake of so many dot.com failures - a lot of managers want their teams to be taken more seriously by clients, etc.) > People are seen as more independent, free-willed beings and as such are to be > treasured while they are there. The vagaries of a life lived independent of oppressive > social norms will lead them in and out of your life, and that's ok. I don't think it Really? Wow. I've never felt treasured out west, except when I've been with close friends, who enjoyed spending time with me, and vice versa. Try this on for size: I am a very large woman who dresses in funky clothes, with chopsticks in my hair and Birkenstocks on my feet. I laugh alot, and I say hello to people I pass on the street, and I wear wacky eyeglasses because it makes me happy. You'd think I would be a natural for feeling at home on the West Coast. And know what? I have been picked on, laughed at, and crapped on out there, just as much as I have on the East Coast, and the Midwest. Superficiality is universal. Maybe if you are a "normal" person, you feel treasured. But my uniqueness is scorned. (And I keep bouncing back from the abuse, but I don't know when my brain and my soul will have had enough, and my smile will just go away.) I think it's a surface level independence from social norms, for the most part. Or, it's a freedom from oppressive social norms as long as you fit within another set of social norms. Case in point - I was in San Francisco on business a couple of years ago, and I went to the Castro to visit a tiny chocolate store (Rococoa Faierie Queene Chocolates) at the request of a friend. It was my birthday, btw. Walking down the Castro, a fat straight girl in a very gay community, I felt I would be okay. This is a very accepting community in the heart of the most free city in the country. Nope. I was mocked mercilessly by a group of men who all wore t-shirts identifying them as members of an AIDS support group and had obvious signs of suffering from AIDS (Kaposi's sarcoma, etc.) I was shocked, embarrassed, and just amazed that, even in a group of people much marginalized and stigmatized, I was still a freak - I didn't fit within their social norms. > has anything to do with a psychological impermanence created by earthquakes. It's > people preferring to live by their own code. If everyone lived by their own code, we would have chaos. > 3) The east coast is where people live their lives more in accordance with oppressive > social norms and adhere to codes created for them long before they were born. Perhaps > your thought about a sense of history applies here . . . personally I think that the > horrid humidity builds into the East Coaster an innate desire to suffer. I think you might be confusing puritan-based New England for the entire East Coast. You will find the same type of people you describe as West Coasters down the Georgia and Florida coast to the Keys. And, having traveled both places, I found the people in the Florida Keys (other than tourists, who seem to feel they have a right to coatcheck their moral compass when vacationing) friendlier and more accepting than Californians. It seems to me that weather, history, ethnic make-up, and religious community focus all work together to form the social norms (whether high context or low context) for a community, but I still have trouble categorizing regions and towns and people. Because of my life experience, I tend to not think about a region as being one way or another. Unless my experience somewhere is universally good or bad (like in, say, Thailand, where I feel comfortable no matter what the circumstance - thank you, Buddhism), I have to take things on a day-to-day, people-to-people basis. Town X is pretty friendly in the Bay Area, but Town Y is where I had three yahoos call me a cow on the day I drove through. Let's avoid Town Y - the people are less friendly. I have no overarching view of the West Coast as great or the East Coast as awful. Maybe I'm just glum because I haven't found a community or social norms that welcome me, but, for me, a general view of the West Coast as laid back and accepting just doesn't work for me. So, well, that's just my nearly worthless $0.02. :-) Cheers, and thanks for the opportunity to offer a view from my odd little perspective. - - Melissa ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 11:29:41 -0600 From: "Keith Stansell" Subject: Re: Re: Alloy: opinions are like . . . here's mine Hi Melissa, It is sad how people can be rude and crude and you haven't found a community that welcomes you, except.... You are always welcome and respected in Alloysville! We are really glad you are here. - -Keith - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Merujo" > Maybe I'm just glum because I haven't found a community or social norms that welcome me, > but, for me, a general view of the West Coast as laid back and accepting just doesn't work > for me. > > So, well, that's just my nearly worthless $0.02. :-) > > Cheers, and thanks for the opportunity to offer a view from my odd little perspective. > > - Melissa ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 06 Aug 2001 10:29:58 +1000 From: Paul Baily Subject: Re: Alloy: opinions are like . . . here's mine > It is sad how people can be rude and crude and you haven't found a community > that welcomes you, except.... > > You are always welcome and respected in Alloysville! > > We are really glad you are here. Thug two: yeah! Call me overly optimistic/naiive/idealistic (I'm often accused of these by people who think it a bad thing :-) but I try to think that for every maladjusted, hung-up, close-minded schmuck out there, there are many, many more kind, considerate & caring people in the world. The problem is one tends to hear the former far more frequently than the latter. It's tough keeping that asshole-coefficient in perspective; if five people go off at you in one day for some reason, you have to wonder where the hell the missing 50 normal people got to! I think the only thing anyone can do, is to strike their own individual blows at making the world a better place. Someone termed it as practicing random acts of kindness. Little things like, as Melissa does, saying hello to complete strangers, or when you go into a shop or a servo (trans. Service Station), making an effort to smile at the attendant, say g'day and ask how their day's going. You know, treat them like the actual person that they are rather than just a 'customer service interface' (even if they treat you as just a 'sales generation interface' :-) Gotta go, the servers beckon - they're like having kids playing in the next room: when they go quiet you /know/ they're up to something... Paul. This message powered by Enchanted off Karma/Delirium. Hmm, karma. Now there's a word... ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 05 Aug 2001 21:18:16 -0400 From: Merujo Subject: Re: Alloy: opinions are like . . . here's mine Thanks, Paul and Keith, for the very nice words. I really do apologize to everyone at Alloy for being so passionate about what I wrote. I know I sound like a broken record at times, and none of you need to be dragged into my personal campaign against the end of civility in the United States. What I wrote was simply my take on things coastal. I am *so* sorry for sounding preachy - I assure you I wasn't looking for any sympathy. It really just is my life experience, good, bad, or ugly, to throw into the mix. Sometimes wishing I'd learn when to keep things to myself, Melissa ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 21:56:04 -0400 From: "Robin Thurlow" Subject: Re: Alloy: opinions are like . . . here's mine Melissa wrote: > > I really do apologize to everyone at Alloy for being so passionate about what I > wrote. No apology necessary, and you don't sound preachy at all. Your experiences, like everyone's here, are welcome topics of conversation. And passion is cool. We all feel passionate about our own lives (or at least, we *should*!) and the things that affect us. I think we should go away and start our own planet somewhere else. There are too many jerks on this one, lashing out at others because they themselves are so miserable. Or no one was ever nice to them so they don't know how else to behave. Rude people breed more rude people, and the numbers are growing exponentially. The best we can do is try to steer clear of these toxic ones, and look after ourselves and those who are good to us. I don't mean to sound preachy either... but please don't lose that beautiful smile of yours, Melissa. xxxxx Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 23:30:14 -0400 From: "Robin Thurlow" Subject: Alloy: my apologies!!! I've just gone to send something to Dave that's on his c drive, and had to access my email account via his computer. By way of some fluke, I accessed my old Worldshare account by mistake (which is no longer valid, but is still receiving mail for some reason... I'd better write to them!) and downloaded more than 300 email messages that have been languishing there!!!! I'm SO SORRY to those here who have written to me and got no response. I feel absolutely horrible about this. I didn't mean to ignore you all this time! this goes all the way back to May 31st, when my old Worldshare account ran out. To all those who missed my posting of it last time, my new email address is rfhthurlow@earthlink.net. The old worldshare one is no longer active. Sorry once again!!! I promise I'll get caught up. Thomas had even sent a couple of internet links for me to forward to Alloy, which I'm not sure if they ever made it through in some other way... anyway I've got to get to work getting caught up..!! xxxxxx Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2001 23:42:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Barbara Cohen Subject: Alloy: Re: alloy-digest V6 #204 >Speaking of trips, we have just gotten a great idea for our next trip to >Britain. I've been wanting to go back and take a hiking tour to see some >of the great geological features. I've been reading a BBC publication Robin, can't speak for the cheese, but if you hike Mt. Snowdon in Wales, you're in the Cambrian Mountains, for which the Cambrian (and pre-Cambrian) Era was named. Also, in Holyrood Park outside Edinburgh, that volcanic neck that you can hike up, up there is the quarry where Charles Lyell figured out the principle of superposition -- that is, younger rocks lie on top of older rocks. It seems obvious now, but it was a big breakthrough in geology at the time. My goal for next time I'm in England (in 3 weeks actually) is to go to Jersey, Hampshire, and York. Having already been to New Jersey, New Hampshire, and New York of course. I've been to both Mexico and New Mexico already :) And, when we go to Italy in September we'll try to mae a quick trip to Mt. Etna...! _____________________________________________________________ Dr. Barbara Cohen, lunatic bcohen@utk.edu Dept. of Geological Sciences http://web.utk.edu/~bcohen/ University of Tennessee phone (865) 974-6024 Knoxville, TN 37996 fax (865) 974-6022 All that glitters is not gold, but at least it contains free electrons. _____________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V6 #205 ***************************