Whenever I have stress in my life I go roller blading. Fast and furious. It blows off all my steam and I can think more rationally afterwards. This morning I went down to my town park, which has a skateboard thingy…with all the concrete ramps and paved ways…I must have looked bizarre at 4:30am, in the cold, the dark, roller blading to some Pink Floyd tunes. I took my old beat up boom box down with me and blasted the music.

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This time of year always reminds me of those first days of school…the autumn colors and leaves and pumpkins- and school buses and book bags and lunch boxes.

I was a tomboy when I was very young. Much to my mothers horror, she would buy me expensive frilly dresses and tights and bows for my hair, and ugly black shiny shoes- and I would throw these clothes into the pond…I would run around in my PJ’s before wearing those awful dreaded outfits. My mother finally figured me out and started buying me clothes I would wear: jeans and t shirts and sneakers and sweaters. My friends and I used to play out in the woods and in the water and mud- we climbed trees and built forts out of sand and rocks and tree trunks. We dug into the dark dirts of the forests around our houses, we caught frogs and toads and salamanders and snakes and turtles. No matter what the weather was, we were always outdoors- rain, snow, sleet, blizzard.

By the time first grade rolled around, I was a full fledged blue jean baby queen. No pink dresses and ribbons for this kid.

I was one of a kind. But I didn’t know it at the time. I figured every kid was just like me, in the innocent way we all thought about life when we were six or so. My friends, Kim and Patty were just like me but they would wear dresses and nice shoes. I wouldn’t have any part of that. The first day I ever went to school, I remember holding my mothers hand as she dragged me into a classroom, full of boys and girls I didn’t know. Kim was in another class and Patty wasn’t coming to school for another week. I was on my own.

The girls all wore dresses- with these checkered patterns and nubby materials. They had tights and shoes on too…and fancy things in their hair. It didn’t bother me, as I paid little attention to all that. I went right over to the toys and books and wanted to know when I would be able to go outside and play. My poor Mom- I remember she was crying up a storm and I didn’t know why?
Me, being the baby of her family, was going to school for the first time and these things make Moms emotional. I don’t remember her leaving…but I do remember hearing the teacher, Mrs. Kullgren, call my name and she showed me where my little desk was. It was a wooden desk with a top that lifted up. Other than that I don’t really remember too much about that day.

As the weeks moved along I began to really like recess. Going outside. Getting out of that stuffy classroom that smelled like old books and some other scents I can’t describe. Recess was THE best part of the days. We had three: One in the am, one after we ate lunch and one mid afternoon. I think they were 15 or 20 minutes long but I could be wrong here. A bell would ring out loud to alert us that recess had either started or ended. When it began, I would run out the doors and sprint down the corridor, slide down the barrister on the stairwell and break through the doors to get outside. Mrs. Kullgren would yell for me to WALK!! or SLOW DOWN!! but I always ignored her. I wasn’t the only one either- bunches of us would do this.

Once outside, the serious business of play would start. Tag. Touch Football. Hide and seek. Four square. All worthy things and usually reserved for the warmer sunny days. When it was raining out, we would do recess outside too- the fresh air did wonders for kids with foggy brains, our principal would always tell us. And we loved it: Rain always meant MUD. And puddles to jump in.
And worms to dissect. We never used umbrellas but I remember those rain coats and how sweaty we got under them.

After a few weeks of this it occurred to me that other than Kim and Patty and myself, the other girls never played with us. They would be doing the jump rope thing or marbles and jacks…while we chased each other and the boys or organized ourselves into teams for the contact games. One never saw the girls on the playground equipment- the swings, the jungle gyms and slides. We were always climbing on the gyms - hanging upside down, or swinging so high we went around the frame. The girls wouldn’t do these things cause they had on their dresses…

In the winter we brought our sleds to school, and recess meant some extreme sliding down a huge hill that was part of the property of the school. The boys would always have their toboggans- we girls would bring those red saucer things or the blue rolled up pieces of plastic. Sometimes we would just build forts in the snowbanks and other times we would build snowmen.
When you’re a kid you don’t think about stupid things like how cold it is- so if you forgot your hat or mittens it wasn’t a big deal.
You could lay in the snow for hours and it didn’t bother you. It seemed Mrs. Kullgren always had an extra set of hats and gloves and even a coat here and there for those of us who got so wet from the snow we needed a change. She always brought in cookies too, which were always hot when we returned to the classroom.

Of everything I should remember about first grade, recess is the ONLY thing I remember. Those were the days huh??

You Have Your PhD in Men

You understand men almost better than anyone. You accept that guys are very different, and you read signals well. Work what you know about men, and your relationships will be blissful.

How Well Do You Understand Men?

LOL!! I’m bored…can’t you’all tell??

You Are a Sleek Black Bra!

Subtle, sophisticated, and classy. You’re not the first woman a man notices in the room… But you’re the one he remembers a week later. You need a guy who will make a lasting impression on you too!

Hmm…I don’t call myself subtle, sophisticated, and classy- thise are traits I kind of despise to be honest LOL. Oh well…these stupid blogthings obviously aren’t totally accurate.

What is going on with men’s fashions?? EEw I hate that word, fashions. It sounds so fake and phoney.

What is THIS shit?

ACCORDING to the current fashion playbook, Thom Browne has made several crucial errors in his five years as a men’s wear designer. He has been out of step with the real world, focusing on a fastidiously tight and buttoned-up look when most designers aim to accommodate a dressed-down workplace. He has been out of step with fashion, working in fusty, old-man fabrics like gray flannel, while others are dressing men in denim, velvet and nylon.

Sounds like the latest fashions, velvet and nylon, belong in the gay book. YUCK. DISGUSTING.

The result of all those blunders is that Thom Browne, 41, is today the most envied and influential American men’s wear designer. Five years ago, the short-jacket-and-pants silhouette he created looked sweet but goofy, a look no real man would wear. Now he has won the Council of Fashion Designers of America award as men’s wear designer of the year; the venerable Brooks Brothers has signed him up to do special collections; and his signature look is being copied, however blurrily, by more than a dozen men’s wear lines, from traditionalists like DKNY and Zegna to edge-of-fashion houses like Nom de Guerre.

THESE outfits are envied and….influential? To who? The American Association of Steve Erckle GayBoy Lovers? UUGH.

I’m sorry. If I see a man dressed like this I will laugh and point and ridicule and HURL. Gimme some TUMS now. My tummy hurts just looking at these pictures. EEECK.

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NOW this on the other hand— mmMMmm- soothes the soul here. Jeans and t shirt please, maybe a flannel shirt on top. Maybe.

It’s hard to be a man; hard to live up to the demands that come with the dominant conception of masculinity, of the tough guy.

Masculinity is a conception now?

What is masculine anyway? According to this definition:

-pertaining to or characteristic of a man or men: masculine attire.
-having qualities traditionally ascribed to men, as strength and boldness.

I like men. Real men who aren’t afraid to be just THAT: fearless, strong, steady, forward, clear thinking. I like the John Waynes of this world; I like the cowboys. The Marlboro Man.

On a quiet street in Washington DC, there is a memorial to men:

TO THE BRAVE MEN
WHO PERISHED
IN THE WRECK
OF THE TITANIC
APRIL 15 1912
THEY GAVE THEIR
LIVES THAT WOMEN
AND CHILDREN
MIGHT BE SAVED

One of the men on board that fateful voyage was overheard to say this:
“We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.”– Mr Benjamin Guggenheim of New York was offered a seat on a lifeboat. He was given a life jacket and had a free ride to safety. Instead, he removed his life jacket and gave it to a third class woman, dressed himself up in his finest, had a stiff drink and awaited his certain death.

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They don’t make them like that anymore, or according to this author’s opinion, they shouldn’t make them like that anymore.

So, guys, I have an idea — maybe it’s time we stop trying. Maybe this masculinity thing is a bad deal, not just for women, but for us.

We need to get rid of the whole idea of masculinity. It’s time to abandon the claim that there are certain psychological or social traits that inherently come with being biologically male. If we can get past that, we have a chance to create a better world for men and women.

It might be hard for you to be a man, perhaps, but that doesn’t mean all men find it difficult to be who they are. We don’t need to get rid of anything except gays who promote this line of thinking. The soft, weak, sweet and teary eyed men of this world will destroy it. I don’t want real men to change.

That dominant conception of masculinity in U.S. culture is easily summarized: Men are assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being a real man is therefore marked by the struggle for control, conquest and domination. A man looks at the world, sees what he wants and takes it. Men who don’t measure up are wimps, sissies, girls. The worst insult one man can hurl at another — whether it’s boys on the playground or CEOs in the boardroom — is the accusation that a man is like a woman. Although the culture acknowledges that men can in some situations have traits traditionally associated with women (caring, compassion, tenderness), in the end it is men’s strength-expressed-as-toughness that defines us and must trump any female-like softness. Those aspects of masculinity must prevail for a man to be a “real man.”

It’s the truth and it’s how I like it. I don’t like men who wimper and whine and cry like babies. I see that as a weakness. As is being sensitive…and soft spoken and passive.

I look to men for strength and support. I look to men for sound emotion-free advice and guidance. I look to men for some sense of control- and that comforts me. A real man knows the right moments to be to be caring and compassionate and, yes, tender- but these moments are rare and special and not something I want to see all the time. I want men to be rough and tough and competitive and yes, aggressive- because I know these traits would protect me when and if I ever needed that.

My female ancestors also looked to men for strength, and aggressiveness. Their very survival depended upon this. The men did the hunting for food and worked the farmlands to feed his family. And they defended this family at all costs.

That’s not to suggest, of course, that every man adopts that view of masculinity. But it is endorsed in key institutions and activities — most notably in business, the military and athletics — and is reinforced through the mass media. It is particularly expressed in the way men — straight and gay alike — talk about sexuality and act sexually.

Oh please. Part of being masculine is about sex. Men are sexual beings and there is nothing wrong with that, at ALL. In fact it is natural and normal. I would question the manliness of any GUY who wasn’t sexually suggestive at times.

That view of masculinity is dangerous for women. It leads men to seek to control “their” women and define their own pleasure in that control, which leads to epidemic levels of rape and battery. But this view of masculinity is toxic for men as well.

Bull shit. Pure utter bullshit. Real men don’t try to control women; they aren’t serial rapists and murderers and such. Those who do these acts are cowards. The real men of the world will do anything to protect the women they love…real men worship the ground women walk on. Real men want to provide for the women they love- they want them to have everything they need to raise a family. And real men want to please their women in every way.

Of course there are obvious physical differences between men and women — average body size, hormones, reproductive organs. There may be other differences rooted in our biology that we don’t understand. Yet it’s also true that men and women are more similar than we are different, and that given the pernicious effects of centuries of patriarchy and its relentless devaluing of things female, we should be skeptical of the perceived differences.

Men and women are different; each compliments the other. One lacks what the other offers. We balance each other out. Men are sometimes too assertive and women are often times too submissive. When this happens that balance goes off keel a little. Most of us know ourselves well enough to see this when it happens and correct it. Women will stand up for themselves when they have had enough; and men will do the same. The exact method we each use to communicate this may be different, but the point gets across. Human kind would not have survived if we hadn’t figured out how to get along.

We identify masculine tendencies toward competition, domination and violence because we see patterns of differential behavior; men are more prone to such behavior in our culture. We can go on to observe and analyze the ways in which men are socialized to behave in those ways, toward the goal of changing those destructive behaviors. That analysis is different from saying that admirable human qualities present in both men and women are somehow primarily the domain of one gender. To assign them to a gender is misguided and demeaning to the gender that is then assumed to not possess them to the same degree. Once we start saying “strength and courage are masculine traits,” it leads to the conclusion that woman are not as strong or courageous.

I don’t think men have destructive behaviors. Yes, they do stupid things at times- usually to attract women. Usually it is the young man who does these things. He is showing off. He is still learning. The stupid things don’t teach violence or domination.
I know many a real man who has been very compassionate about issues important to him. Does that make him feminine? No. I also know men who have called me couragous and strong for surviving some of things I have experienced. Does that make me masculine? Hardly.

Of course, if we are going to jettison masculinity, we have to scrap femininity along with it. We have to stop trying to define what men and women are going to be in the world based on extrapolations from physical sex differences. That doesn’t mean we ignore those differences when they matter, but we have to stop assuming they matter everywhere.

And who determines just WHEN these things matter? Who writes the rules on that?
So lets be gender neutral and ignore our differences. Let’s be gone with all the physical and emotional variables that define who we are. Let’s all be equal. Sounds like we should be identical robots. No thanks. I have emotions and irrational thoughts at times. I experience fear and anger as well. I am apt to overeact to things, and I’m moody once in a while. I’m a woman and I am proud of that. I can’t change that. I don’t want to change that. And I don’t think men have to change- they don’t need to go soft.

I don’t think the planet can long survive if the current conception of masculinity endures. We face political and ecological challenges that can’t be met with this old model of what it means to be a man. At the more intimate level, the stakes are just as high. For those of us who are biologically male, we have a simple choice: We men can settle for being men, or we can strive to be human beings.

History has proven this author wrong here. Mankind has survived quite well. I dare say it is because of this concept, masculinity, that this is true. I also say that if men were to change, to become this kinder, softer version written of by this author, humankind would soon cease to exist.

There are two forms of human beings. A man. And a woman.

We need real men. We need more cowboys. More John Wayne. More Benjamin Guggenheim.

I want to provide a warm and welcoming home to men- with the fruits of their labor readily available for them. I want men to be men, not sissies and girly gurls. I want men to do stupid attention seeking stunts to get my attention. I want men to be sexual beings. I want men to compete in their work so that they can earn a decent living to provide for their families. I want men to continue running into burning towers to rescue people; I want men to give up their seats on the lifeboats so that women and children can live; I want men to go to the war fields and fight off the enemies who are trying to kill me. Men start wars and men end them. Men have saved mankind from itself.

***UPDATE***
Ogre has thoughts about Mr. Jensen’s article.

A little winding road leading to Baxter State Park in Maine.

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Mt. Katahdin coming up:

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Way cool huh??

Yesterday morning as I was preparing to go out for the day, my neighbors came over for the usual gossip and coffee session. One of them turned on my TV to watch **gasp** Good Morning America. ICK I hate that show. I hate all TV and watch very little of it…anyway they had this segment on about prenups. Times are changing and I am SOOO glad I have decided to never ever get married again.

They talked about the usual things that go into these pre-marriage agreements, contracts. Money, assets, insurance, ect. THEN they talked about this stuff:

Weight Gain
One guy had a requirement of his soon to be wife: She cannot ever weigh more than 160lbs.
WHAT happens when she gets pregnant and gains weight that she has no control over?? That’s what happens. Or if she gets sick- some illnesses cause bloating and weight gain. What a fucking ass.Guess his lady friend ditched him. As would I in a fast blind second.

It went both ways though, on this:
A woman maintained that her sweetheart could never be heavier than 190lbs. AND, she also had it written in that he is to go to his gym forever. No beergut allowed. In fact he isn’t allowed to drink anything in this prenup. FUCK that shit. Hope he dicthed her on the side of some country dirt road.

Hair Loss
One lady insisted her fiance never lose his hair. Hmm. She claims that he can get his hair back via surgeries and other hair saving methods…BUT if he loses a certain amount of his manly manhood, she will have reason to divorce his ass. HE can come see me. Hair means nothing. What a bitch.

A guy also had his demands:
SHE is never allowed to cut her hair. Ever. I like my hair longer too BUT come on! Putting this into a marriage contract???? GO TO HELL you POS.

THIS IS THE GEM though:
A man wants his lady soon to be wife to have breast implants as soon as HE determines she is getting a bit…saggy.

And a lady put this in her prenup:
HE is to have a penis implant as soon as he loses his abilty to…well…you know…work as hard as he once did. No viagra for her.

Me? No thanks. Not getting married again. And I will not enter any relationship that has expectations. No fucking way. THIS shit is so selfish and petty and you know what- these people all deserve each other because they can’t be content with being in love. I don’t think there is such a thing- LOVE- I haven’t believed in it- and this just proves this to be true.

It’s bad enough that people have to resort to marriage contracts for Christ sakes. I understand WHY- it’s almost always the woman who tries to screw over her guy when it comes time for a divorce. Bitches. LOL they ruin it for the rest of us who could care less about these things.

BUT placing physical attribute expectations into a prenup is just going to far. We have become a society that cares more about ourselves than anything else. No one can blame me when I decide there is no such thing as love. When I decide relationships with men are not worth the aggrevation. I’ve been sheltered to long I guess- in a miserable marriage that I chose to end. Only to see the world as it is. Full of ego fondling selfish people who have no compassion and empathy for anyone but themselves. Who only care about their own wants and needs- and place such high value upon these needs they have to contract them before settling down. I say- to hell with it all and it can all go to hell. I want nothing to do with it.

***sigh***
I give up.

**not a picture I took**
I am trying to make this. Heh.

Ingredients:

brownie layer:
2 eggs, at room temperature
4 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt

cheesecake layer:
1 egg, at room temperature
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon flour

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour or using baking spray with flour one 8×8 inch pan. In a medium pot, melt chocolate and butter, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Whisk in sugar, flour, eggs and vanilla. Pour into prepared pan, smoothing the surface with a spatula as needed. In a separate bowl, beat together cream cheese, egg, sugar, flour and vanilla until fluffy. Carefully pour over brown layer. Bake for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack then slice and serve. The cooler the brownie, the easier it will be to cut.

Ahh THE place to be when solitude is needed:

Trek a little further into the woods and we find this place:

…and this:

NOTHING is as awesome, though, as the mountains when they first see snow.

Mt. Lafayette: