What is good sex? (Letter to the NYT editors)

Re: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/28/opinion/after-dobbs-what-is-feminist-sex.html

"Is this a lasting treasure or only a moment's pleasure?" Carole King

The problem with casual sex for men and women is that it's not intimate. Intimacy requires both persons being vulnerable and nonjudgmentally open to one another in a relationship where it's safe to be yourself. Casual sex is, at best, like a recreational drug. It can be fun and interesting but you don't take anything away from it other than whatever you learn from the experience.  An intimate experience, sexual or otherwise, produces an invisible connection between both people that's what we all need to feel whole.

Owen Scott, III (retired clinical psychologist)

Baton Rouge, LA

Can you spot the recurring themes in this dream?

Conner, David Stammer, a third guy and I are supposed to play at a wedding. We leave in a car with me driving. It seems we are leaving from Baton Rouge heading west although later it emerges the gig is in Buford, Georgia. We take a fork in the road and I'm not certain it's the correct route but I keep driving. Eventually we arrive at a town and stop at a church. We go in and I ask a middle-aged woman if this is the right place. "This is a Catholic church," she replies. I get out my MacBook to use Maps to find the correct route; but, the app doesn't allow entering search terms. Frustrated, I fumble with it unsuccessfully. Then, we are on the road again with Conner driving. We're on an unpaved road through pasture land. This doesn't seem right and I'm distressed because we won't get to the church on time. 

Active dreaming

 I often dream after I've been up having my bowl of cereal and gone back to sleep. This morning I was at my parents' house in Athens. It was a week or so before Christmas. Mom and Dad were both there along with some other people, possibly Mary Clayton or another small child. The floor in the big family room was messy with pieces of a jigsaw puzzle spread out all over the carpet and various junk items lying about. I started to pick things up to restore order. My Dad came in as if returning from the golf course, wearing cap and blue polo shirt. I asked how if felt to be hitting a few balls and said I'd go to a driving range with him if he wanted to. He made some incoherent statement that I didn't follow up on. I was thinking I would stay there until Christmas rather than going back to Baton Rouge to be with my parents longer,

What I think about all day

1. The war in Ukraine and the global situation 

2. The transience of everything 

3. People who have canceled me

4. How good I've got it

5. The need for peace and justice

6. Whether I'm using my precious time wisely 

What's up with me?

 1. I'm obsessed with Ukraine's fight to defeat Russia and expel their forces from all occupied territory.

2. I'm having dreams with my classic recurring themes. Jean Perkerson showed up in on two days ago. This morning after I went back to sleep around 6am,  I had an elaborate dream about being at an event in a multistory building in downtown Athens. When I left I couldn't remember where I'd parked my car. A number of people helped me look. I went up into an oddly built parking garage but it wasn't there. I tipped two people $5 each for helping me look. It was getting late. I wandered around outside at one point running through an archway of trees in the dark, thinking that this was a dangerous thing to be doing. I decided to call an Uber but I couldn't get the app menu on my cell phone to come up. The phone kept displaying galleries of full page ads. Finally, I took an Uber with a Vietnamese driver that a group of young people helping me called. It went down Lumpkin Street close to my parents' house, It seems like my mother was at home and I thought she's be worried about how late it was. I wanted to get out and walk home but the driver kept going further, finally stopping near a park-like area, As usual, I was relieved to awaken and find it was a dream,

3. I'm procrastinating about taking care of items on my To Do list,

4. I'm concerned about Lauren because Jenny reported to ML that Lauren is very depressed,