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Change the World: Become a Karen

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It was a version of "Karen" which blew up the alleged sexual misconduct at Fox.  Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit contending that was the standard MO of Fox founder Roger Ailes. Soon enough the Murdoch brothers called in law firm Paul, Weiss to investigate. That was the end of the Ailes era. Yet, the concept of a Karen carries so much negative baggage. If you are a white middle age female who reports suspected wrongdoing or subpar service you risk being type-cast as obnoxious. For example, your server brings the steak well-done, not rare. After you complain, everyone in the kitchen laughs and rolls their eyes about your being a Karen. You bet, you can feel the vibes. So, chastened you might tend to surrender your ability to change a snippet of the world as we know it. In tarot reading the Karen Effect is symbolized by the World Card.  It exudes possibility. Life opens, even in the midst of obstacles. On free streaming platform Tubi, featured are film genres about the SS'...
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Is Lack of Courage a Crime Punishable By Death?

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The slow-moving minimalist 2016 film "The Interrogation" is extraordinary. All the moving parts push us to actually have sympathy for former commander of Auschwitz Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hoss. The movie is now playing on free streaming platform Tubi. Essentially the plot is about Polish Judge Albert's assignment to get a confession from Hoss. Albert, although young, has been successful in the past. He is at this too. But what is disclosed creates questions about the justice of the coming death penalty for Hoss as well as some other SS members. What Hoss feels is his real crime was his lack of courage. Himmler forced the Auschwitz "mission" on him. Quickly Hoss sized up that he didn't have it in him to say, no, I can't handle this. That's because he also sized up what that could cost him professionally. The rest is history.  Later, when on the job, Hoss also couldn't summon the courage to allow anyone to see that he experienced compassion for th...
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Boomers Return to "Catcher in the Rye" Search for Phonies

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  There we oldest of the Boomers were: jumping through the system's hoops to get into the college of our choice and simultaneously embracing as our hero teen rebel Holden Caufield from "Catcher in the Rye."  We ran around eager to denounce among ourselves the phonies. Of course, we didn't share that bit of subversion with authority.  Well now hitting 80, we're back. This time we have very little to risk fingering the phonies in very public ways. Since we're now more worldly we can expand the category beyond people to ideas and institutions. But unlike the zest with which we did that as high school juniors and seniors it's with sadness. In the tarot that's captured in the Five of Cups card. You bet, we regret how we might have been duped for more than half a century.  At the top of the list is our hefty consumption of higher education. The mindset was: The more education the better. Only the non-ambitious stopped at the BA/BS.  We scramblers after succe...
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Can't Earn a Good Living? Maybe Blame Your Happy Childhood

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In 2024, at the Academy Awards,  Robert Downey Jr. thanked his unhappy childhood when accepting the award for best supporting actor. Pop culture writer Molly Jong-Fast got a bestseller "How to Lose Your Mother"  from growing up with self-absorbed problem-drinker Erica Jong as primary caretaker.  And Eminem, Gloria Steinem and myself are among those in creative/activist professions who had mentally ill mothers. Mine committed suicide. The research , expert opinion and observations about how a crappy childhood can generate unique professional success are piling up. Those include: No Hallmark/Disney world view, later to be shaken off when reality intrudes. From the get-go, the gestalt is that life is tough and survival is up to us. Problem-solving is embedded early. Mine was to ace high school in order to get a scholarship to an out-of-state college, away from the crazy family.  Raw resilience. With instability the norm so is the necessity to continually regroup. We ...
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AI: Accidental Therapist, Huge Implications

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Was that blood in dog Bentley's stool? Or just traces of dye from treats? I could have done a cold search among Google links for information. Instead, since I also needed to be calmed down and comforted, I keyed in a prompt on a free version of ChatGPT. No, it wasn't s a specialized AI mental-health app such as Abby and Ash . Instead, it was the old trusty free ChatGPT I have been using since November 2022 when OpenAI released the chat bot.  I was not disappointed. The tone was empathetic. Also since ChatGPT has a memory feature it could customize the response. For instance, it factored in that Bentley was an older dog - more than 10 years old. In addition, the chat bot understood that I tend to worry and over-react. So, essentially the takeaway was what we in Buddhism call the "sacred pause" : Wait and see, hold off planning, with specifications about how long. As usual, the bot pointed me in the right direction, along with providing emotional support. The symptom va...
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The Scenic Route and Other Pivots Away from Efficiency

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  Several   years from now will the new cultural power structure be laughing hilariously at Meta, VW and more which boasted how efficient they are and how more efficient they would become.  Actually, even in its heyday - that is right now - the efficiency mandate seemed comically overwrought. The ethos reminds us of all those back-seat drivers who insisted Route A was the most efficient. Verboten was taking the scenic one that treated us to the serene snippets of cows and horses grazing, ghost towns and general stores.  In the tarot the anti-efficiency card is The Chariot. The journey is being determined by natural contours. Yeah, let it be. Don't hold tight to the reins.  The biggest successes in my career emerged when I was off the efficiency game. Beyond burnt out to deep fried, I had left methodically chasing revenue through ghostwriting/speechwriting. I fell into dabbling in blogging, often staying up all night playing around in that new medium in 2004....
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How You Can Forgive Your Younger Self

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  Hardened with regret, lumbering with age and excess weight Helga Bahlmann arrives at a hotel to conduct on-film a reconciliation session.  Back in 1942, as the 2026 movie "Aryan Papers" depicts, she was a youthful enthusiast of the Nazi regime. That prompted her to participate in the Lebensborn, a breeding program for Aryan babies. During that time, she took it upon herself to murder Jews and others she found lacking the right views.  From the get-go in the reconciliation process, Helga has to confront the question: How can she forgive the younger so misguided, so cruel self. Initially she distances herself from that entity, referring to that self in the third person. Then she comes around to owning that monster was her. "Aryan Papers" is currently available on free streaming platform Tubi . Just key in the title in the search bar. With humans living longer more are "doing a Helga." They are forced to dredge up a self that is so incongruent with who th...
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