we walking wounded
I'm sure, even as I write this, there are additional dead and wounded out there across the world from where I sit after a day watching my world as through a camera lens.
She walks. Dead woman walking. She hurts, all over. She needs to drink, but she gives us a hard time. She needs to sit or lie down, but she refuses. It's as though if she stops, she thinks will die. Or maybe she thinks that if she stops, she won't die.
The doctor says we need to consider taking her to the emergency room, getting her hydrated, getting a CAT scan to see if she's got blockage in her intestines somewhere. The last time we took her to the hospital she got worse and worse until we signed her out "against medical advice." We had her feeling better in a day.
Her bones are so fragile that any mishandling (which happened last time) might likely cause even more little fractures than she has. If she needs surgery, we wouldn't risk it; she doesn't want it. At her age, the anesthesia would probably kill her.
And this morning I had one of my front teeth pulled. The crown was loose (all the clenching, grinding, clenching), and apparently I shattered the root, which had a root canal anyway. So, I get home with a wad of gauze in my mouth, take three Advil, and sleep for two hours until my mother wakes up.
She can't seem to communicate; I don't want to. We both hurt, want it all to end.
She is sleeping, finally. She ate a little, drank some orange juice, took her meds.
I am not sleeping. When I sleep, I grind my teeth, wake up wounded. But not as wounded as she
And we not as wounded as they.
Categories:
feeling looowwdowwwnn
This has not been a good week. In addition to my mother losing fluids all week and becoming enraged when we try to get her to drink Pedialite, and my sib and I totally disagreeing on how to handle her and what to give her to ingest, I couldn't figure out how to get into the chat room for Mandarin Meg's memorial yesterday (so I missed the whole thing, and, while I finally got into the BlogHer Conference chat room, I found I had nothing to add to the conversation.
My mother has insisted on constant attention all week. I know that she's not feeling well, but after putting up with sib's disagreeing personality while at the same time taking care of my mother's sanitation needs (which have been constant) I have nothing left to give her -- not even the tenderness and compassion that she needs very much. I can't be both her daughter and her home health aide.
We're taking her to the doctor's on Monday to get the results of some lab tests. I'm going to ask him for a referral to a local medicare-approved long term health care agency that provides nurse's aides and home health care. It's certainly not going t get any better. If we had been a part of that system already, she probably could have been getting intravenous hydration right here at home. And someone else could have been on call all day to help her into the bathroom and help her clean up. Then I would have had the psychic energy to do the hand holding and quiet talking, and maybe I could have smiled at her instead of frowning all day. I looked in the mirror and, I swear, the frown lines are now there permanently.
I'm hoping for August to bring some new energy into my life. We will be getting a visit from cousins coming by this way from Florida on their way upstate. I'm supposed to meet one of the college buddies (male) for lunch while he's down this way visiting a buddy of his who has been ill.
I need things to look forward to. I certainly am not looking forward to getting up in the morning.
Categories:
those women's perspectives
There are lots of those perspectives being shared over across the country at the BlogHer conference, and among them are Beth Kanter's photos of some of the best feet being put forward. While I'm not at the conference (being committed to helping my mom through a very bad bout of loosing fluids), I actually figured out how to do IRC and hope to participate virtually tomorrow. Hopefully, when the time comes, I will be able to fall in behind Jeneane Sessum (as I have often done before). Of course, that all depends on how near I have to stay by my mom and her bathroom.
However, in keeping with the notion that one doesn't have to be there to be there, I figure I'll add my self-pedicured feet, in my much-too-expensive sandals, to Beth's gallery.
And meanwhile, it's almost like being there looking at these accumulating photos, referred to by Jeneane: Betsy Devine has started a Flickr photo pool for BlogHer pix. Watch the ladies strut their stuff. And schwag!
Categories:
diarrhea, diarhea, diarrea
It doesn't matter how you spell it, google will find it.
And my mother has had it for four days now. We called the doctor today and will be bringing a sample to the lab for testing.
Nothing has worked to get it under control. I'm trying to make her drink Pedialite, but she's not very cooperative. Right now she's up combing her hair with a toothbrush. I'm making her some chicken broth with cut up baked potato. That's supposed to OK for her to eat.
We'll soon see.
Categories:
Let's Run Bill Moyers for President
This idea did not begin with me; I got it from Molly Ivins, in her open letter to Dear Desperate Democrats, posted on Common Dreams. I quote it all below to make sure you read it:
"Here’s what we do. We run Bill Moyers for president. I am serious as a stroke about this. It’s simple, cheap, and effective, and it will move the entire spectrum of political discussion in this country. Moyers is the only public figure who can take the entire discussion and shove it toward moral clarity just by being there.
The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy.
Bill Moyers has been grappling with how to fit moral issues to political issues ever since he left Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and went to work for Lyndon Johnson in the teeth of the Vietnam War. Moyers worked for years in television, seriously addressing the most difficult issues of our day. He has studied all different kinds of religions and different approaches to spirituality. He’s no Holy Joe, but he is a serious man. He opens minds—he doesn’t scare people. He includes people in, not out. And he sees through the dark search for a temporary political advantage to the clear ground of the Founders. He listens and he respects others.
Do I think Bill Moyers can win the presidency? No, that seems like a very long shot to me. The nomination? No, that seems like a very long shot to me.
Then why run him? Think, imagine, if seven or eight other Democratic candidates, all beautifully coiffed and triangulated and carefully coached to say nothing that will offend anyone, stand on stage with Bill Moyers in front of cameras for a national debate … what would happen? Bill Moyers would win, would walk away with it, just because he doesn’t triangulate or calculate or trim or try to straddle the issues. Bill Moyers doesn’t have to endorse a constitutional amendment against flag burning or whatever wedge issue du jour Republicans have come up with. He is not afraid of being called “unpatriotic.” And besides, he is a wise and a kind man who knows how to talk on TV.
It won’t take much money—file for him in a couple of early primaries and just get him into the debates. Think about the potential Democratic candidates. Every single one of them needs spine, needs political courage. What Moyers can do is not only show them what it looks like and indeed what it is, but also how people respond to it. I’m damned if I want to go through another presidential primary with everyone trying to figure out who has the best chance to win instead of who’s right. I want to vote for somebody who’s good and brave and who should win.
One time in the Johnson years, LBJ called on Moyers to say the blessing at a dinner. “Speak up, Bill,” Lyndon roared. “I can’t hear you.” Moyers replied, “I wasn’t speaking to you, sir.” That would be the point of a run by Moyers: He doesn’t change to whom he is speaking just because some president is yelling at him.
To let Moyers know what you think of this idea, write him at P.O. Box 309, Bernardsville, NJ 07924.
And then, also on Common Dreams, John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, takes Molly's idea even further.
"But why limit this quest?
Why ask Democratic primary voters to send a message when they can send the best man into the November competition and, if the stars align correctly, perhaps even to the White House?
With all due regard to one of the finest journalists and finest Americans I know, I respectfully disagree with Molly Ivins -- not on the merits of a Moyers candidacy, but on the potential.
I'm not suggesting that Bill Moyers -- with whom I've had the pleasure of working in recent years on media reform issues -- is a sure bet to win the Democratic nomination or the presidency in 2008. I'm not even suggesting that he would be a good bet. But the politics of 2008 are already so muddled, so quirky and so potentially volatile that I believe -- as someone who has covered my share of presidential campaigns -- that Moyers could be a contender.
Moyers would enter the 2008 race with far more practical political experience than Dwight Eisenhower had in 1952, far more national name recognition than Jimmy Carter had in 1976 and far more to offer the country than most of our recent chief executives.
Against the candidates who are lining up for the 2008 contest, Bill Moyers and his supporters would not need to make any excuses.
After all, the supposed Democratic frontrunner is a former First Lady who ran her first election campaign just six years ago. One of the leading Republican contenders is a guy whose main claim to fame is that he did a good job of running the Olympics in Salt Lake City, while another is still best known as the son of a famous football coach. And the strongest Republican prospect, John McCain, is actually more popular with Democrats than with his own partisans.
Consider the fact that a professional body builder is the governor of the largest state in the union, and that the list of serious contenders for seats in Congress and for governorships this year is packed with retired athletes, former television anchorpersons and bored millionaires, and it simply is not that big a stretch to suggest that someone with the government and private-sector experience, the national recognition and the broad respect that Bill Moyers has attained across five decades of public life could not make a serious run for the presidency.
So, Molly, I'll see your suggestion of Bill Moyers, and up the ante to suggest that Moyers really could be a contender.
What would happen if all of us literate liberals here in the blogosphere and elsewhere used the Net to rally support for Moyers.
Maybe we CAN change the world..
Categories:
little gems
This morning I have a little gem of time, as I listen to the thunder roll over the mountain and wait for rain and my mother to waken. The last two days have been a grueling example of how no good deed goes unpunished, as my mother recuperates from the family picinic with bi-polar bouts of crying and fits of terrifying anger.
So, while I have a few minutes, I sit here at my computer and take the time to actually read through a document to which I linked in my previous post, finding it full of gems of information I didn't know,.
And among those gems is a rare one, indeed -- reference to Marietta Holley, a little-known 19th century writer from Ellisburgh, New York:
Between 1873 and 1914, Marietta Holley wrote more books and made more money than Mark Twain did his whole life. She donated $500 to each local library, and offered entertainment in her home. Her books were translated to various languages over a period of 40 years. In 1887, Holley’s newest novel, Samantha at Saratoga, outsold the Bible – an unheard of occurrence in the late 1800’s.
Holley became close companions with such women’s rights pioneers as Susan B. Anthony and Clara Barton, who wrote and visited her often. In one such letter, she was invited to come to the 30th anniversary of the women’s rights movement, but declined because she was wary of speaking in public with her lisp and shyness. In 1877, Frances Willard invited Holley to be a delegate to the annual convention of the Women’s National Christian Temperance Union in Chicago, but again felt that her home in Bear Creek proved to be a less embarrassing venture.
What a blogger Marietta Holley woul have made in today's culture! No doubt she would be a part of the BlogHer conference, to which Jeneane Sessum of Allied should be going this year, but -- as life sometimes goes -- can't.
Wait until next year Jeneane. Maybe we can both make it.
Categories:
the disgraces of the "chosen" ones
At the family picnic last Sunday, one of my cousins told me about a book he was reading called The Mayflower, about which story the Washington Post said this in its review (as posted on Amazon.com):
The famous Mayflower Compact that they [the Pilgrims] wrote and signed during the Atlantic crossing did contain a few of the seeds from which the United States and its democratic system eventually sprang, but the settlers were not especially democratic themselves. They disliked and suppressed dissent, enslaved Indians and shipped them off to brutal conditions in the West Indies and clung with such stubborn rigidity to their belief that they alone understood God's will that they were incapable of comprehending the Indians' very different culture.
In a very real sense, in their conviction that they were God's chosen people, they became just what they imagined their enemies to be.
Between then and now, similar scenarios have played themselves out, with various peoples, convinced they were God's Chosen, using that conviction an an excuse to terrorize, murder, and try their best to eradicate the "non-chosen."
HItler's Nazis, of course, continue to stand out as the model of such ignominious behavior.
And here we are again, as Israel takes its cause to the extreme, becoming what was once their own worst nightmare.
Non-blogger myrln put it well in an email:
"Without approving the homicidal tendencies of Muslim terrorists, I urge you to look back in history to learn about the modern hypocrisy of Israel (and the US).
Do this: google "irgun" then read the Wikipedia entry about it and learn (if you don't already know) about the terrorist beginnings of the Jewish state, actions and tactics we all approved after WWII because of the deserved sympathy for the horrors inflicted on Jews (and many others). Yet, we can't deny that without terror tactics by those early Jews, there likely may never have been an independent nation of Israel. So the wholesale condemnation of "terrorism" seems hypocritical: it's all right if your "side" does it but not if the "other side" does it.
And I also have a bone to pick with news media. I hear every day about how many rockets have been launched into Israel, but I don't hear how many missiles, bombs, artillery shells have been dropped into Lebanon.
Also today, after repeated assurances to the UN that it's border outpost would not be attacked, Israel bombed it, killing at least 2 UN observers and maybe 4 total. They also continued small arms fire as rescuers tried to get to the victims.
I'm sorry, but my moral compass, while condemning all parties involved, tilts more heavily against Israel, which I've supported for many years. I can no longer do so. They have lost their moral way, justifying civilian casualties by saying accidents happen in war. Right: accidents.
The most used word in the Israeli vocabuary these days is, Oops.
Look up irgun.
And then we have the RIGHTeous of Amerika, who are guiding us down that well traveled road to historical ignominy.
Categories:
day tripping
I took a chance. Pillowed her up in the front seat and took her for an hour's ride to the old family farm, where cousins and such were gathering for their first introduction to the toddler on her first visit from Poland (accompanied by her family, of course; oh boy, do we have cousins).
It was the perfect scenario for my mother, who, as the last remaining relative of her generation, got all the attention she craves. I was there to serve her, in all senses of the word. "You're a saint," they would whisper, as they walked by, patting my arm, nodding their heads solemnly. I want to scream "I hate my life!!" but instead I go about the business of filling my mother's plate, and mine, with all of the golabki, kielbasa, kapusta, and various apple and blueberry cakes -- all homemade and all to drool for. I made sure I got some doggie bags to bring home.
Over the course of the afternoon (the best weather of the summer, so far) each relative stopped to pay hommage to the nonagenarian, even though she really didn't remember who anyone really was. She can't hear well, can't remember worth a damn, and the conversations with her all had a tinge of the old "who's on first." But they all humored her, winked at me, and then went back to enjoying interactions with those with whom they could actually have an intelligent conversation.
At least the rides back and forth went smoothly (which isn't always the case because she starts panicking when she realizes that the seat belt is constraining her; she started in on the way home, so I just unbuckled her seat belt, figuring that if we had an accident, with her fragile bones, she'd be better off not surviving it). Frank Sinatra crooned from a CD compilation sent to my by a college buddy, John S., and that set just the right tone for the long (for her) drive.
You would think that she'd be tired from the long day with no nap, but nooooo. Bugging, bugging, bugging me.!! In my frustration, as I brush her teeth I mutter that taking care of her is like taking care of a baby. "I don't want another baby," she misreplies. (Surprise, surprise.) "Neither do I," I sigh. She doesn't get it. I've had it.
And so I go up to my space and check my email -- which includes a long catch-up from someone with whom I went to grade school who found my weblog when she Googled "Yonkers," and another long catch-up from one of my former colleagues, recently retired, who just got back from a week of doing Chinese brush painting at the Omega Institute.
My "real" life pretty much sucks. And I thank the oddities of fate and the miracles of tecnology for a virtual life that keeps me interested enough to get up in the morning.
Oh, and, of course, there's always him:
Categories:
it's been that kind of day
Maxine is my alter ego.
Categories:
funny and not funny
All of this news of what is amounting the WWIII is not funny. Coming home to my mother in the middle of a dementia episode is not funny. It's not funny that theVatican announced that, while it paid $9 million for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, it still made a $12.4 million profit in 2005. It's not funny that Red Buttons died. Except for the statement about my mother, the above "not funnies" are from Harper's Weekly.
I don't know if it's funny, but it sure is interesteing that:
-- Scientists in Maryland found that two thirds of people who consumed the hallucinogenic drug psilocybin had extremely meaningful experiences.
-- scientists in Massachusetts implanted sensors in a paralyzed man's brain that allowed the man to check email.
-- Jack Kevorkian, who is dying, said that he would not choose suicide
The above interesting facts are also from Harper's Weekly.
What was really funny was watching my grandson in his airline pilot uniform, and his chef's uniform, and his astronaut uniform (with talking space helmet), and his Red Sox uniform -- all of which he got for his birthday. In addiition to trucks, of course. And watching him hit a ball with a one-handed bat-swing and then run around invisible bases, only to roll around the grass in his version of a slide into third.
And now I'm back to what's not fun in my life, and it's not just a matter of my mother's self-centered needs sucking up all my time and energy; it's also dealing with a sibling who wants everything done his way. We are as unlike as two siblings can be. I am almost at a point at which I can pack up and leave all of this behind and feel not a shred of guilt.
But then I get a comment left on one of my posts from someone who found my weblog and is in the midst of a situation even more exhausting than mine. Her weblog is part of her strategy for dealing with the tragic death of her daughter, a victim road rage, and with the challenge she now faces of raising her daughter's twins -- in addition to her own young son. I read this post of hers and I have such admiration for what she is so lovingly and valiantly doing. She does have family nearby, and they are becoming that "village" that it takes to raise a child.
Unfortunately for me, there is no "village" here to share what it takes to help at the other end of life's line.
So, I will get up early tomorrow morning and plant the colorful annuals I bought on the way back from Masschusetts today, and I will weed and water and try to create a little more color and beauty in my own life before she wakes up and I lose sight of the sun and the memory of fun.
Categories:
hot town, cool kid
I'm heading out tomorrow to join in the celebration of my grandson's fourth birthday. The day will be hot, but the kid is very cool, so I'm looking forward to spending a couple of days being a Grammy instead of someone whose name she doesn't always remember.
Categories:
answers, some straight, some skewed
When I made the post that asked the question, I didn't know what to expect as answers. Here's the question:
If you could make up ONE new law and have it enforced FOREVER, by goons, what would your law be?
Use your imagination, let your despotic instincts run free.
First, here's my answer -- at least as close as I can remember, since I didn't make a copy of what I sent in:
I would enforce a U.S. law that would greatly limit tax write offs/loopholes and significantly increase the tax rate (to somewhere around 40%) on the income of individuals who make more than 2 million dollars a year (in gross income) and on corporations who make more than 2 billion dollars a year in gross profit. That tax money would be used to fund universal health care and also set up an updated version of the
WPA to provide fair wages for work done to shore up and enhance the country's physical infrastructure.
Now, you have to undersand that my dad was a centrist Republican who use to tell me that the older he got, the more he thought that the best form of government is a benevelent dictatorship. Of course, given human nature, we know that would never work because we'd never be able to find a thoroughly fair and moral individual to take the job. At any rate, that's why I had no problem "letting my despotic instincts run free."
However, there were several respondents who couldn't do that and answered with the following:
-- Well...mine would be paradoxical and self-contradictory, making it impossible??? The new law to be enforced forever by goons would be: No law forever enforceable by goons may be passed. (non-blogger myrln)
-- Stu's new law : Fascism is forbidden, e.g. you are not allowed to enforce anything, by goons or military might. (Stu Savory)
-- Well, there's the obvious One New Law: Henceforth, I get to make ALL new laws! But there's probably a clause in the contract that results in making NO new laws and probably getting beaten up by the goons to boot. I'm really not sure, Elaine. All laws are flawed. For instance, what if all public schools got equal funding, but it was zero? Maybe a law outlawing goons. But then only outlaws would have goons. But maybe we do need some goon control laws. (Dave Rogers)
Then I had a few whose first thought was for the Golden Rule. I also believe that we wouldn't need a whole lot of laws and wouldn't have all these problems in the world if everyone lived by the Golden Rule. I just don't know how even goons could enforce it:
-- Well, it's a close call -- "Do to others what you would have them do to you" has a lot going for it, but it leaves a lot of room for equivocation and manipulation. The simple clarity of "Thou shalt not kill" wins for me. (AKMA)
-- When I first read your question, my initial reaction was to demand the implementation of The Golden Rule: compulsory in all educational levels, from pre-school through university. I have always felt that if we could just submerge our young people with the cause and effect/action/reaction physics based on human emotion so that it is ingrained on all levels, in multiple dimensions within our beings ... the world would be a much better place for all.
Then I re-read the question and saw the part about "the goons" enforcing this new law and well, ... that whole passive, empathic ideal kind of collapsed in on itself. (Klondike Kate)
Then there were those, like me, who feel a little coercian can go a long way:
-- my first thought is that we have all the laws on the books that we need. The problem is the laws are not enforced. Another thought is that a law banning all cars (except emergency vehicles) over four cylinders could solve a lot of problems.. A law banning private ownership of automatic or military weapons would make America a better place, but might cause a revolution. (non-blogger John)
-- Equal funding for ALL public schools wherever they are. (Tamarika)
-- My law would be that everyone would have to be polite and considerate of others at all times. (And no one could drive a car and talk on the phone at the same time). (non-blogger Bonnie)
-- I would dictate that...that no one and no book would dictate to you how to live. (Steve James of Lunchmoney)
-- 1. Mankind must never be allowed to use weapons of mass destruction ever again against each other, and includes but not limited to nuclear bombs and missiles, biological and chemical warfare, grenades, landmines, bullets, firebombs, arrows, and rocks. 2. Mankind must never be allowed to destroy any ecological system, nor treat in an inhumane manner, any living creature, and must be good stewards of the planet earth and its inhabitants one and all. (Cowtown Pattie)
-- Nationalize the arms industry. the pentagon wants our tax money? fine; let them use it to actually manufacture weapons. maybe they'll get a little more parsimonious with using them. this has the added benefit of taking profit out of the arms dealing equation, to my way of thinking. economic and military experts may have very good reason to call me insane on this one, but i'm just thinking if it's not profitable anymore maybe the vultures will no longer rule our society. same goes for drugs. legalize it and tax it. maybe less gang violence then, no? and less deficit. spend some of the money on drug rehab and other programs for addicts. (Ex-Lion Tamer)
-- 1. All politicians must henceforth be squeaky clean honest.
(a)No money may be accepted from any source other than the government for conducting political campaigns.
(a.1) While in office no money may be accepted from any source other than the government
(a.2) Upon leaving office the candidate may not work for, or serve in any paid capacity for, any person, company, organization or corporation directly and positively affected by any legislation voted favourably on by the candidate.
(a.3)All politicians must immediately resign their seat if any relative closer than 1st degree cousin assumes a paid position with any person, company, organization or corporation directly and positively affected by any legislation voted favourably on by the candidate
Penalty for breaking this law is life in prison without parole and no country club prisons either. (posted at Doug of The Alders)
-- That everyone had to tell the truth. (non-blogger Joe)
-- I'd have them repeal the Mann Act. (non-blogger Pete, who never takes anything seriously)
Any chance we can get those goons to sit on Congress until they deal with the global warming situation?
Categories:
it figures
Yes, it figures that I would ask for comments (see previous post) on a day when Typekey comment feature is not working and my mother slips into some kind of weird mental place that requires my constant presence. But I am getting very interesting and unexpected email responses and will post them soon. If you haven't responded yet, please do.
Categories:
b!X in a Jayne hat
For those of you who know my son and are curious as to what he's like these days, go here to see him and hear him speaking to the audience at the Portland Serenity benefit, wearing a Jayne hat. :-)
By the way, the world-wide effort he coordinated has raised more than $64K (and still counting) for Equality Now.
Categories:
it seems I'm a socialist
I took a Politics Test and came up with this assessment:
I am a Social Liberal (70% permissive), an Economic Liberal (11% permissive). I am described, as a Socialist: You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.
Well, yeah. Shouldn't everybody??
On the montage of famous people depicted in a visual representation of where they fall in the political spectrum, I fall somewhere between Gandhi and Boris Yeltsin.
At the end of the test is this:
AND FINALLY, if you could make up ONE new law and have it enforced FOREVER, by goons, what would your law be? Use your imagination, let your despotic instincts run free.
Leave a comment or email me your idea.
How would you answer that??
Categories:
there is something to be said for intelligence
Intelligence -- brain power -- is a wonderful thing, but they wouldn't know that over at March Together, where the resident blogger, never having heard of The Onion, mistook an article, by-lined by a writer who doesn't exist, as serious instead of satire. And then the anti-abortion blogger made it even worse, including excerpting a definition for satire that omitted the fact that it is based on wit and irony.
b!X is right. This is the kind of person who voted for our current president. However, there's hope if you look at the more than 600 comments and several trackbacks to this post.
The level of writing and critical thinking displayed on the March Together weblog makes it hard to take it seriously. It almost seems as though pro-choice people might have set it up to make a laughing stock of pro-life people. The scary thing is that's not the case. These people are serious. Seriously uneducated.
Best line in one of the comments:
the opposite of intellectual Left is unintelligent Right
And so now the unEjumacated blogger thinks he can escape the criticisms of both his allies and his opponents by starting a new weblog at www.marchforlife.blogspot.com.
You can run, Pete, but you can't hide.
Categories:
it's Harper's Tuesday
There is so many awful newsworthy things happening throughout the world that this Tuesday's Harper's Weekly digest contains very few oddities to report:
"New research confirmed that smoking and obesity increase the risk of erectile dysfunction.[New York Times][Reuters] U.S. tax revenue was up.
"It was reported that Melinda Gates is more comfortable than her husband Bill when it comes to holding AIDS babies in Africa or talking to male prostitutes in India.[New York Times] The world's oldest crow died in Bearsville, New York,[Associated Press] and astronomers observed what they said might be a strange glowing blob of dark matter sucking in gas.[New Scientist] .... .[Bloomberg] President Vladimir Putin of Russia explained that he had recently kissed a young boy on the stomach because he “wanted to stroke him like a cat.”.
The depressing news is that, according
to the NY Times
"A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.
"We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," the group quoted a Defense Department investigator as saying in a report to be posted today on its Web site, www.splcenter.org. "That's a problem.".
'YA THINK??!!
Read the reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center here and here.
On this mountain home front, life is just as surreal, as mom wanders, babbling something that has the word "potato" in it. During lucid moments, she wants to help -- cook, clean, all the things she knows how to do to keep busy. I can't let her do anything because she's a danger at the stove or with a knife, and she's not supposed to bend down and everything she touches seems to wind up someplace else and then we can't find it. She gets really mad at me, shouting that she hopes someone does to me someday what I'm doing to her. "I hope that someday my daughter will try to keep me safe and take care of me if I'm like you," I say. "You don't have a daughter," she throws back at me as she stomps away.
I spent all day today making homemade chicken soup and trying to keep her calm. She just wouldn't sit for more than five minutes; she paced and panted and cried and refused to lie down and rest. On top of that, I got up early today and colored my hair, which didn't come out the color it should have. Feh. I'll bet it's the stupid minerals in the well water, which my sib says he runs through a softener. I think he needs a new one. FEH! (as my old Polish grandmother used to say.)
Categories:
it's my party
When I first started blogging five years ago, I was very concerned about protocol. Is it OK to go back and change what I had written in a post? Is it OK to delete comments that are just way off the mark or offensive to other commenters? I don't care about any of those things any more. It's my party, and I'll blog the way I want to.
Oh, of course i don't want a reputation for being inauthentic or manipulative, and to be honest, only once have I gone back and made signficant changes to a post, and that was to keep much-needed peace in the family.
I am, however, at the point of considering tossing a commenter out on his ear. He's an "intelledtual," he claims; he's also confrontational . He doesn't seem to understand that one needs to be affective in order to be effective. If he has a "totem animal," I suspect it's a beaver -- gnawing, gnawing, gnawing away at the same spot until he makes it give away.
Back in May of 2005, I blogged an item about what "truth" is/isn't that continues to generate comments. The early ones were informative; the later ones seemed to be a battle between linear logic and the the more illusive emotions. It seems to me that the goal should always be to combine both in any argument because individuals are both rational and emotional. What we feel affects what we think -- it's just human nature. Unless, it seems, one classifies himself as an intellectual and ergo doesn't have to look beyond the apparent "facts."
For now, I let the dialogue between the mind and the heart continue, with my interjections when I feel like it. After all, it IS my party.
And the truth here is that you're invited to join in the comments over at my Whose Truth post.
Categories:
bitches, bimbos, and ballbreakers
I haven't blogged about blogging in a while; back in the "old" days, we all did a lot of that -- especially as we women bloggers asserted our places in the blogsphere and commiserated on how to deal with commenters whose comments contributed nothing to the conversation and with the issue of just what family-related things shouldn't be blogged. I finally had to resort to a system of commenter registration, as did Tamara, who wound up starting a whole new weblog.
Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers: many of us have been called that and more by some males who have stumbled onto our weblogs. There is a book by that title (Bitches, Bimbos, and Ballbreakers: The Guerrilla Girls' Illustrated Guide to Female Stereotypes), published by the Guerrilla Girls. I indulged myself and recently sent for a copy.
The Introduction to the book has this to say about stereotypes:
It's rearely a girl's own choice. It's a label someone else give you to make you less or more than you really are.
By empowering women to create their own stereotypes and to reject the ones our culture tries to squeeze us into, the Guerrilla Girls want to do our share toward saving the world from sexists and misogynists everywhere and have fun along the way.
A lot of us bloggrrrls are Guerrilla Girls at heart.
Which brings me to Shelley Powers (the blogger previously known as Burning Bird), who was a major figure in the blogoshpere before she took a long break. She's baaaaack, this time with Just Shelleyas her home base, but with other sites as well.
And I think it's funny that all of a sudden bloggers are discovering the clever, funny, talented, and prolific zefrank. I discovered him when I started blogging in 2001, and if you go here on my old blog and scroll down to May 16, you will see that I blogged about him then.
Ah, as usual, this crone is ahead of her time. (That's my chosen stereotype, doncha know!)
(That's this Crone, South Park Style)
And this has always been one of my favorites, thanks to Gary Turner over in the UK.
Categories:
clever, clever, clever
Stole his from Jeneane's blog:
Can you tell my mom went to bed early tonight??
Categories:
it's a bird.....it's a plane.... it's...
No, it wasn't any of those -- that thing that swooped low and heavy over the sunroof of my car from a tree at the foot of the driveway. At first I thought it was a wild turkey, but when it landed in another tree across the road, I noticed that it had a red head. It looked more like a buzzard.
What it was is a turkey vulture, and it must live somewhere very nearby because I saw it again this evening flapping through the woods toward the lake.
I know when they soar high in the sky, gliding on air currents, turkey vultures look like hawks, and now I know that's what I often see high above the cliffs. But when one makes its landing approach through a stand of trees, it looks like a big fat ball of feathers hurled from the sky.
It must have a nest somewhere nearby. I wonder if I can find it.
Categories:
not just another dance movie
I make sure I see just about every movie about ballroom dancing that comes out. Some I've seen several times. But I watched one the other day that is worth watching even if you don't dance. After watching it, you might want to.
I never head of Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing & Charm School , but my sib rented it thinking my mom and I would like it. My mother loves to watch ballroom dancing. Marisa Tomei, Mary Steenburgen, Sean Astin, John Goodman, Sonia Braga, Adam Arkin -- the list of great performers goes on. Even Danny DeVito (although I'll be damned if I remember him in it!) And none of them is a "ballroom dancer."
There is a line in the movie about dancing "to exorcise my demons." I guess that's how it always worked for me. But that's not what the movie is about, and what it's about is not just one simple idea.
If you can find it, rent it.
Categories:
It Matters
While many citizens of New York State scrambled to figure out what to do about the state's Supreme Court's ruling against gay marriage, I was having lunch with a male couple who have been together for 37 years. That's a lot longer than many heterosexual marriages.
The lunch was at their weekend home, filled with memorabilia from their various travels. Lunch was home cooked and delicious, beginning with an fettucini Alfredo prepared at the table, with real butter, fresh egg yolk, parmesan cheese, and (I think) scallions. I wished I had asked to take the leftovers home with me.
John Lennon
Categories:
a broccoli bouquet
The broccoli never went for good green food; instead, it flowered whitely and prematurely behind the row of healthy but inedible marigolds. Obviously I did something wrong when I planted it, so its growing life was considerably stunted. It all looks pretty, but it's lost its purpose.
I sit on the bed with my mother this morning as she cries. "I'm thinking about my brother," she says. She misses her brother. Before I moved her in with me, which was a year before her brother died, they shared a two family home. He drove; she cooked. They were good company for each other until each started down that road toward senility. Even then, they had those old memories to share of their childhood years when their mother took them to live in Poland, after WWI and before WWII. That's what they would remember. That's what they would talk about.
Over on Doug's site, he's remembering his childhood, which was similar to mine.
Hah (I commented on his post) I remember those days too. The first tv I saw was at my aunt’s house — 9 inch black and whilte screen that most of the time showed a station symbol because there were only a few shows available. We called pizza “hot pie,” and the kind that oozes as in your {Doug's) description is still the best kind. It’s hard to find these days. “Fast food” came form Fred Laney’s hot dog wagon that was pulled by a little pony and came around once a week.
In the summer, trucks laden with fruit and vegetables came by once a week, too, with their drivers shouting “waaterrmellonnnn!!" Coal was shunted into our cellar to heat the coal furnace, which my father had to fill with a shovel. I would swipe some to draw “Girls Are” on the sidewalk.
Doug describes many of the things I also remember: the black and white televisions on which we put a plastic sheet that was blue (like the sky) on the top, red in the middle, and green (like grass) on the bottom. There were no such things as credit cards, and our phones all were "party-lines." (Go over to Doug's; he explains it all.)
Meanwhile, I've got to stop at the market to pick up some broccoli. The kind without flowers.
Categories:
heh
I subscribe to Harper's Weekly, where included items come strung together, the significant mixed with the strange. You wind up with an oddly accurate cross section of current life on this planet. Here are some excerpts:
”[Scotsman] A three-foot-long escaped porcupine named Twinkle was captured in Langwathby, England.[BBC] President Bush said that it was “disgraceful” for newspapers to report on a secret intelligence program to trace bank records,[New York Times] and China announced that media outlets would be fined up to $12,500 if they reported on any “sudden events” without prior authorization.[New York Times] The library of the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas, cancelled its subscription to the New York Times.
Bruno the bear was shot and killed by German authorities, ending his seven-week rampage through Germany and Austria; Bruno, officially tagged Rampant Brown Bear JJ 1, had killed sheep and rabbits, stolen honey, eluded Finnish bear trackers and elkhounds, and squashed a guinea pig. “Sexual frustration,” said a German official, “may be a reason for the random killings.”[Times Online (U.K)] Rush Limbaugh was detained at an airport when authorities found illicit Viagra in his luggage.[Hamilton Spectator][local6.com] A Vermont teenager was convicted of stealing the bowtie and eyeglasses from a corpse and cutting off its head to make a bong,[NBC5.com] and in Nigeria a professor at Olabisi Onabanjo University was found dead behind Poopola Hospital in Ijebu-Igbo; Professor Oyedola is believed to have been killed by one of two warring campus cults--either the Eiye Confraternity or the Buccaneers.[Vanguard] In Rajasthan, India, a low-caste bridegroom on a horse was stoned by onlookers when a camel in his wedding procession ran amok,[Hindustan Times] and David Hasselhoff hit his head on a chandelier while shaving. [AP via AOL News]
A study showed that rich people get more sleep than poor people, white people get more sleep than black people, and women get more sleep than men,[Reuters] and another study found that money does not buy very much happiness.[LiveScience.com] A gang of marauding transvestite thieves was terrorizing New Orleans businesses,[New Orleans City Business] and scientists were trying to create tomatoes containing an HIV vaccine.[New Scientist] It was revealed that a Minnesota Timberwolves basketball player crashed his SUV into a parked car because he was drunk and masturbating to porn.
Meanwhile, it's Independence Day. Independence! I think I remember what that is.
Categories:
the movies we watch
Movies on AMC and TCM are the movies my mother will watch. Well, sort of "watch." I'm never sure if she's really paying attention; I think the movie becomes background noise for her ruminations.
We watched Gold Diggers of 1933 yesterday -- or at least I did. Mom wandered off sometime before the end and took a nap. I couldn't help think to myself that things haven't changed all that much. Near the end is a production number (Busby Berkely certainly knew how to stage them) centered around a song "Remember My Forgotten Man," who was the soldier returning home from war, the farmer losing his land to a national depression. He was broke, defeated, jobless, alone. There were a lot of them then, and there are a lot of them now. Sung by Joan Blondell, it's a very UN-feminist song, but it did reflect the truth of many women back then.
The other night we watched The Emerald Forest. I thought my mom would object to the nudity; the fact that she didn't makes me think she wasn't really watching it. I loved the lushness -- of the forest, of the people, of the myths. I guess that's why I can stand living in the situation I'm in: I live in the middle of natural lushness. Even though my vegetable garden has succumbed to various critters, my flowers are abundantly blooming. The sky is curtained with trees, and birds of every color flock to our feeders.(Even though I bought a book to help me identify the birds, I've decided not to bother. It's enough to watch them up close) One feeder, outside our window, puts me close enough to look into their eyes. As long as I don't move, they don't notice me through the glass.
Al Gore's movie about global warming is not playing at the movie theater in town. I guess I'll have to buy that one:
It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on his not understanding it.
-- Upton Sinclair
I have mentioned before that I've been a science fiction fan since high school, and so much of what I have read eventually comes to pass. I wouldn't be be surprised if, in another generation, we are living in a "Blade Runner" world. I won't be around, but, unless some drastic action is taken, it's the world my grandson will inherit.
Categories:
taking a breather
After she refused to eat the salmon I prepared, after she took my book and hid it in her nightstand, after she walked aimlessly around her space while I sat encouraging her to watch television with me, she wandered over to my sib's space and is watching tv with him. Ahhhhhh! I have some breathing space before the "4400" comes on.
And so I go and read some of my favorite weblogs and come upon By Bea's Bedside weblog, to which I linked from the comments left on Ronni's post at Time Goes By.
Alexandra, who is Bea's daughter and also her caregiver is having a much different experience than I. I envy her selflessness and her mother's personality. I plan on reading her often; maybe I can learn to look at my mother through her colorful eyes.
Meanwhile, while I was at Ronni's I lifted the "Keep on Blogging" poster now in my sidebar from Ronni's site. I've got to get over to Ronni's more often. Everything she has to say winds up being something I already care about.
Categories:
I am such an idiot!
I don't know anyone around here, and my chance of meeting any interesting men is zero.
WRONG!
But I blew it.
I'm standing in the line at ShopRite, and behind me is a tall, gray-haired, slim guy who starts talking to me.
"Ah, watermelon," he says, glancing in my shopping cart. "You know it's summer when there's watermelon."
And so the conversation starts. I find out that he's cooking for sixteen people this weekend -- chicken on the BBQ, peas and chopped shallot salad, asparagus and procuitto, three bean salad. He loves to cook. He comments on the good stuff I have in my cart, we both have grandchildren, he's single (he works that in very subtly). He's SINGLE. I think he leaves me an opening to invite myself to dinner, but I don't pick it up and run with it.
What's the matter with me!!
I get out to the parking lot and pack my car with my groceries. I get in and take out of my wallet my weblog "business card." I drive around the parking lot to see if I can catch up with him -- good excuse: I'm always looking for readers for my weblog.
No dice.
I blew it. I am such an idiot.
That snake is living right under my doorstep -- scared him/her out when I left to go grocery shopping. Lithuanian folklore says that snakes under your doorstep are good luck.
I blew it.
Categories:
