So, now we’ve added another varmint to the cast of characters who come for the fallen birdseed and move on to munch to the quick my various plantings.

It looks like a big hamster; I suppose it’s a young woodchuck. I watch as it calmly meanders around the overgrown back “yard” (such as it is), nibbling clover and pawing at what’s growing in some of my pots. I think it comes at night and scoops out the stones that I use to anchor the post on which the bird feeders hang. I used to think it was the raccoons, but I’ll bet it’s the brazen ground hog digging for seeds. Every morning, the post is tipped at a precarious angle. I know, the solution is to use cement to hold the post in place. It’s on the list of things to do. Heh!
We thought that my mother might enjoy sitting in the screened breezeway watching the parade of chipmunks and squirrels and birds of all feathers. But the present doesn’t interest her, no matter how cute and colorful. She is locked in a past full of losses, and she is terrified of what the future promises.
“I’m afraid. I’m afraid,” she chants. But when I ask her what she’s afraid of, she can’t seem to say. And so I stroke her hair and put my arms around her and tell her she’s safe and she doesn’t have to be afraid. That usually doesn’t help. I suppose she’s afraid of dying. Yet, this afternoon I heard her muttering, “Jesus, take me. Jesus, take me.”
She’s begun napping several times during the day. I suppose it’s the meds. She’s now taking Namenda, a relatively new Alzheimer’s medication. I should have had her start on it years ago. But she’s always given me a hard time about taking her pills. These days she’s even worse. I often have to wait until she lapses into a state where she’s lost in her own inner world so that I can slip the pill into her mouth and coax her to drink the water.
When my kids were young, we had a cat named Saffron, because he was a “mellow yellow” color. And I liked that Donovan song. His name is really irrelevant. What’s relevant is that, at age 13, he developed painful tumors just under his skin. He spent most of his time in the darkness under the bed. Petting and cuddling him was out of the question. I took him to the vets and sat there and cried while he was put to sleep. I couldn’t bear to see him live in pain and isolation. He had a good life. He was loved. There was no point in allowing his suffering to continue. He would never get better or younger.
We can’t deal with human beings with the same compassion. It’s against the law. Look what happened to Dr. Kevorkian. As I do my best to ease my mother’s mental and physical suffering, I wonder what my last years will be like. I’m not afraid of dying at the end of my life; I’m afraid of continuing to exist deprived of the capacity to “live.”
I’m sure that groundhogs don’t think ahead to their day of dying. They’re too busy just being groundhogs.

Thou Shalt? Or Not?

Last week, the Vatican issued its Ten Commandments for Drivers, a move which surprised and amused many. Especially since the Pope, so far as we know, doesn’t do much driving. (And while the Driving Commandments weren’t directly attributed to the Pope, make no mistake: Vatican offices are not free agencies.) Makes one wonder what might be next: Commandments for pedestrians? eating? sleeping? skateboarding? making donations to the Church?

Anyway, inspired by the Papal Driving Edicts, below are some helpful, well-meant suggestions for the Pope in return — a kind of Ten Commandments for Papal Behavior.

1. Thou shalt not live in a palace nor be surrounded by gold and marble embellishments nor be ministered to by servants.

2. Thou shalt not take money from the poor worldwide to support a rich Vatican lifestyle

3. Thou shalt not remain silent in the face of a holocaust.

4. Thou shalt not terrorize people with tales of fire and brimstone in order to gain control of the nature and practice of their lives.

5. Thou shalt not pontificate about any matter unless thou first livest in a manner exemplary of the behavior sought by such pontification.

6. Thou shalt wear garments befitting a vow of poverty and of unity with most of the world.

7. Thou shalt eschew the use of luxurious vehicles in favor of riding upon an ass on all occasions.

8. Thou shalt decry the naming of former Popes as saints lest doing so become based on the prideful hope that the same might be done for you some day.

9. Thou shalt take harsh steps against any and all ministers in your church who abuse children in any way or abet such abuse through silence, making open and public display of any and all offenders, and not hiding the same inside the Vatican.

10. Thou shalt devote at least half of each year ministering in the field to the poor and sick in different parts of the world on a personal basis.

Active pursuit of the above would surely constitute leadership by example rather than by pontification. Oh, and by the way, the “Vatican hiding” in Commandment 9 refers to Cardinal Bernard Law, formerly head of Boston archdiocese who conspired to hide the hundreds of abuses occurring on his watch in the Boston church. Turns out he’s living quite comfortably in an apartment inside the Vatican.

Also, the Driving Commandments are puerile.

[MYRLN is a non-blogger who guest-posts on this blog on Mondays when the spirit moves him.]

He’s not a kid anymore, but he’ll always be MY kid.
The b!X-organized second annual benefit screening of the movie “Serenity” brought the PDX Browncoats (and others) out in force this weekend in Portland, Oregon. The proceeds of the benefit will go to Equality Now and the Women’s Film Initiative.
The global benefit screening effort (which b!X was instrumental in organizing last year as a birthday present to writer/director Joss Whedon, whose favorite charity is Equality Now) has raised more than $41,000 thus far this year. The funds from the global screenings go to Equality Now.
Read the story of this year’s “Can’t Stop the Serenity” global benefit project here.

There are two ways to fight a battle like ours. One is to whisper in the ear of the masses, try subtlely and gradually to change the gender expectations and mythic structures of our culture. That’s me. The other is to step up and confront the thousands of atrocities that are taking place around the world on an immediate, one-by-one basis. That’s a great deal harder, and that’s Equality Now. It’s not about politics; it’s about basic human decency.
– Joss Whedon

Happy Birthday to Joss Whedon, and Congratulations to my son the feminist on another rollicking successful Can’t Stop the Serentiy benefit bash.

The other day, I got one of those emails that friends pass around — this one made some disturbing statements that included the following:

Wait a minute, wait a minute, I think as I read this. What about the American fanatics! What about Darth Cheney, the embodiment of all the political evils that honest Americans are supposed to despise? What about our piss-for-brains president, that fanatic who, along with his equally manipulative minions, created the lies that fueled the fanaticism of these wars in the Middle East? Why aren’t peace-loving, fanatic-hating Americans speaking up against these dangerous fanatics and their followers who “threaten our way of life???”
I was about to respond to the dozens and dozens of individuals who received the original myopic jabber with the above knee-jerk rant of my own, when I thought: wait a minute, wait a minute. Take a deep breath. What’s the reall issue here?
But before I had any rational thoughts, a response arrived from someone else on that email list, and I rejoiced in having a kindred spirit among the lot, someone who could make the point more thoughtfully and intelligently than I. He said:

So, my thanks to the guy who did take the time to send his reasonable response to all of those email readers as a reminder of what the debate should be about.
Of course, in my estimation, the way we deal with the issue is to throw those bums (and their minions) out and elect someone to lead the Executive Branch who actually knows how to think critically and knows how to pronounce “nuclear” and whose leadership is motivated by more human, humane, moral values; who adheres to and protects the purposes of a constitutional democracy. I’m tending towards Edwards, myself.

And so I walk while the sun sets. I walk up and down the driveway because it’s too dark to walk on this country road.
262 steps. Up and down. Down and up. I lose count of the cycles.
The woods are quiet and cool. Even the flying insects are still — except for the flireflies that sparkle the darkness.
I walk after sunset because it’s the only time I can get out. She is finally calm enough for my brother to sit in front of the television with her.
I have a headache from shouting because she can’t hear. She cries so much, and I don’t know if it’s from pain or despair. “Where’s my mother,” she sobs. I wonder who I will call for when I am 91 and demented. Not my mother, certainly.
She wants water. I hand her a glass of water and she pushes it away. She does not look at me. She is somewhere else.
“Warm water,” she says.
“You want to drink warm water?” I ask.
“Hands,” she says, rubbing her hands together. Her hands are cold.
I fill a bowl with warm water and she puts her hands in them. I wonder if she’s thinking of a winter time long ago when her mother gave her a bowl of warm water for her chilled hands.
She’s so weak that she can barely stand, but she won’t sit down, won’t lie down. She wants to walk. Wants her shoes on. Wants her feet on the floor. Wants her brother. Her mother. Her sisters.
We’re trying new meds.
And I’m trying. I’m trying.
And I walk in the dark.
I sit for a moment on a boulder by the side of the driveway. Mother Earth’s old bones, I think. What about my mother’s old aching bones, the surges of pain, the despair and longing and inability to rest, finally.
And so I walk at nightfall. And go nowhere.

Aaarrgh!

This is one of my planted-early tomato plants, exhibiting shriveled leaves and green tomatoes, which, no doubt, will not be able to ripen.
Can’t find any bugs or creepy crawlies. I sure must have done SOMETHING really wrong.
I have three other plants on which I see similar problems beginning. This is the last time I try to grow tomatoes out here!! Last year it was the tomato worm. Bleh!

As reported by ABC news,

Sajani Shakya, 10, is the first living goddess to visit the United States from Nepal, where she is worshipped and believed to inhabit the Hindu goddess Kali, who is thought to live in girls until they reach puberty.

Strange, it seems to me, that the people of Nepal associate the Indian goddess Kali with purity, since

Kali is represented as a Black woman with four arms; in one hand she has a sword, in another the head of the demon she has slain, with the other two she is encouraging her worshippers. For earrings she has two dead bodies and wears a necklace of skulls ; her only clothing is a girdle made of dead men’s hands, and her tongue protrudes from her mouth. Her eyes are red, and her face and breasts are besmeared with blood. She stands with one foot on the thigh, and another on the breast of her husband.

The “kali” in “kalilily” is for the goddess Kali.

A far cry from a sweet, ten year old who is one of only a rare few who

…meet the so called “32 perfections” of the girl who holds the goddess Kali. They include having the gait of a swan, and teeth and golden, tender skin so perfect the skin has never even had a scratch.

We humans might not create our gods and goddesses in our own image, but we do seem to make up myths to meet our need to have what we already believe, reinforced.

As far as I’m concerned, these are the best quotes from the latest Harper’s Weekly Review. Click the link to get the citations and other tidbits that YOU might think are more interesting.
“The one fact I’ve learned–I can’t get out of my mind,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said to an audience at the Center for American Progress, “is that Rudy Giuliani’s been married more times than Mitt Romney’s been hunting.”
Piles of human feces were found in the Senate. “There was,” said a staffer, “so much of it.”

(thanks to Jim Culleny’s daily poetry email.)

MYRLN is a non-blogger who guest-blogs here on Mondays.

T.B.? So What? Revisited

Andrew Speaker’s the sociopathic tuberculosis carrier who decided what he wanted was more important than the possibility of spreading his disease by traveling. So he went on an international jaunt to get married.

So what’s new about that? This: it turns out that lawyer Speaker’s lawyer father — who insists he and his son weren’t told travel was inadvisable — was less than cooperative with or responsive to health officials even after the full extent of his son’s condition was known. The Centers for Disease Control called him to learn of the peripatetic Andrew’s whereabouts so they could get him back to the U.S. quickly and safely. Father Speaker’s response? “I can’t do that. I don’t know where he is. I appreciate your call.” And hung up.

Additionally, it turns out that Andrew’s new father-in-law, Robert Cooksey — who, ironically, works for the CDC — was asked to help stop the planned wedding in Greece. He not only declined to help, he went off to the wedding himself — obviously knowing by then the full extent of his new son-in-law-to-be’s condition.

And in a gesture that would make his daddy and daddy-in-law proud, Andrew has apologized for the scare and for putting dozens through the need for t.b. testing. How nice of him.

It’s a whole familyload of sociopaths who deserve both each other and some jail time. If only and as if.

And next month, Andrew Speaker will have surgery to remove lung tissue infected with the deadly, drug-resistant t.b. he carries. It’s a particular surgery in which — back in 1943 — a five-year old’s mother died on the operating table at Saranac Lake, New York. As despicable as Andrew Speaker is, one must wish him better luck in his surgery. If only for the good of those unfortunate enough to have contact with him afterwards.