So come on down, baseball fans, and join the fun. Through Airbnb, I’ll be staying in a private home with some well-informed locals walking distance from the park, so I should know the ropes quickly. And you could hang out with me in my comfy digs. The Motel 6 on Camelback Road is about a mile away and there’s a bus stop nearby. Airbnb spots are filling up and may all be taken soon.
Or join me in New Orleans April 11-14 for the 30th annual, free French Quarter Festival, reportedly better than the Jazz and Heritage Festival. As stated on their website:
French Quarter Festival is dedicated to supporting Louisiana’s music community. The festival only contracts local musicians. No matter what style of music you enjoy, you'll find it at French Quarter Festival. French Quarter Festival has over 20 outdoor stages featuring every genre from gospel to jazz, from funk to classical, from Cajun & zydeco to brass band. Over 1,400 musicians will perform at the 2013 French Quarter Festival.I’ll be staying at the affordable Crescent Palms Motel and will have a rental car, so I could pick you up at the airport. You could sleep in the second bed or get your own room (book soon, for hotels are filling up).
Before returning to San Francisco on June 1, I plan to rent a car and, if I can manage it, play blackjack in Nevada, clean my mother’s grave, visit with friends (including my sister Sara) in Los Angeles, St. Lake City, Kansas City, Dallas, Austin, East Texas, Atlanta, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington DC, New York City, Rochester, Seattle, and Olympia, go on an individual retreat at stone circles http://www.stonecircles.org/, and do some sightseeing. So it looks like wherever you live, if you want to meet for a cup of tea, please let me know and let’s try to arrange it!
I’m making good progress on my autobiography, with about 80 pages and 40,000 words written.
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Usually, once a day, I post a philosophical comment, sometimes a quote, on my Facebook status. The one yesterday generated some interesting comments. That thread reads:
Wade Hudson:
I did not hurt your feelings and you did not hurt mine. We are responsible for our own feelings. Stick and stones hurt, but words do not.
Rene Burke Ellis:
Bingo.
Roy Harrison:
Is this message really coming from you Wade, it is hard for me to believe
Wade Hudson:
Yes, it is Roy Harrison. And you did not hurt my feelings by asking. :-)
Rene Burke Ellis:
Words only hurt when we give them the meaning and the power to do so.
Laurie Pollock:
I was told by a wise person a long time ago that if words hurt, "consider the source."
Valerie Winemiller:
Sorry, I'm not willing to let this platitude absolve people of responsibility for what they say.
Susan Mahler:
Do no harm.....and I think that includes the hurt that words can cause.
Wade Hudson:
We are responsible for what we say. We should take care to avoid speaking in ways that easily LEAD to others feeling hurt. But there is no automatic cause-and-effect relationship. We can avoid feeling hurt, even when others want us to feel hurt. So I say it is not WORDS that hurt. As Howard Thurman, the great African-American theologian who was a mentor to Dr. King wrote, "Jesus...recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. It is a man's reaction to things that determine their ability to exercise power over him."
Steven Shults:
It's a challenging concept. Yes, we have some control over how we respond to what is said to us, but that control is not 100% and to pretend that anyone, even a buddhist monk, has 100% control over the emotions they experience in response to stimulii requires some very serious denial of human emotions and intellect, and how the two interact.
This concept should be reserved for very specific, low-stake situations. E.g., if you make a suggestion to someone about how they could do a task more efficiently, and make the suggestion with no ill-intent, and they respond angrily that you hurt their feelings, when you were honestly trying to help them, that might be an appropriate scenario to express that sentiment.
But, as a defense against an accusation of, say, for example, sexual harassment, it's not acceptable to say "It's not my fault you were offended or felt harassed. I didn't mean it that way, I was just playing around." Well, no, you weren't "just playing around", you were being a sexist, misogynistic asshole and you are responsible for the results of your actions.
There are also workplace and domestic situations in which verbal and psychological abuse are very real and very damaging. Pretending otherwise is just blaming the victim.
Wade Hudson:
Well put, Steven. I largely agree with what you say, which, I believe, does not contradict what I said or what Thurman wrote. Certain words are not acceptable because they often lead to hurt feelings. But language matters. To say "you hurt me" gives you too much power and disempowers me. There are three steps: 1) You speak. 2) I process/interpret what you say, influenced greatly by deeply embedded core beliefs which I can change over time. 3) I have feelings about what you said. Granted, we're talking about an ideal. But we can steadily move in the direction of fulfilling that ideal more frequently.
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