Laughin' and cryin' with Sherman Alexie, Waneen and Barb

So here is the rest of the story that ended with me and Waneen reading Sherman Alexie aloud in North Bend, Washington:

In 1976, Steven was needing to transfer to the University of Idaho in order to finish up his degree.  So I went searching for a job and eventually found a job with the residence life program at Washington State University, which is 8 miles west of Moscow, Idaho, where the University of Idaho is located.  That is where I met my friend, Barbara  (I have two friends named Barbara, one of whom is alive and well and living in Spokane). Barbara was the Associate Director of Residence Life.  I was hired as a Head Resident, which meant that Steve and I lived in a high rise women's dorm with 350 screaming, hormonally unbalanced 18-20 year old young women. How we survived this situation, I shall never know. We were pretty young too at the time, so that helped

  Barbara became my fast and good friend almost immediately.  She was a full on feminist, a thinker, a reader, a lover of music.  And she was a fantastic cook.  I became a part of a little women's community of friends.  Those were great days, except maybe for the crazy  young women, nuttier guys, elevator rides, drunken parties and other charms of dorm life in the mid 70's. Steven was 24-25, I was 27-28 these years.  One of our favorite memories of this time was the Miss Va Va Va Voom story.  One day there was a knock on our door and Steve answered.  There stood the most luscious, gorgeous college Freshman the world has ever beheld.  And she says, "There's something wrong with one of the washers downstairs.  Could you get it fixed?" Steve replies, "Uh, uh, uh, uh, ...okay". He did manage to keep from drooling, which under the circumstances was a good thing.  So we named her Miss Va Va Va Voom and have never forgotten her.  

Well, two years pass and Residence Life decides that they need to get supervisors for the Head Residents, who can supervise everything more closely.  So I applied for the job and got it.  Another person who applied and took the job, site unseen, was my friend, Waneen.  She and I met on a grassy hillside one late summer day.  I said to her, and I swear this to be true, "You and I are going to be lifelong friends." Here it is 47 years down the road and I'll be darned if that little prediction hasn't held up. Waneen became good friends with Barbara as well and life continued apace for another two years.  I remember long dinners and longer talks with Barbara, Waneen and myself.  I remember glasses of wine and breakfasts at the Biscuitroot Park or the Hotel Moscow.  I remember dinners at the most fabulous restaurant in Pullman called the Seasons.  It was this little house up on a hill in downtown Pullman.  It was chef owned and operated and served the best food in the world.  It really may have been world class cuisine.  I remember Waneen, Barbara, me and several other women going to the San Juan Islands to go to a workshop put on by Anne Wilson Sheaf, who at the time was a big feminist writer and lecturer.  At the time she was in the process of writing Women's Reality, which became really kind of central to my emerging self. I remember, I remember, I remember...

But life being life, in 1980 we all went our separate ways.  Barbara went back to Delaware, where she had been before coming to Pullman.  Waneen started on her journey that took her all over the world first as a Peace Corps volunteer, then as a trainer for the Peace Corps, then as a country director then on to other countries and places for the next 20 years.  Steve and I moved to Portland, where I started graduate school at Portland State University.  Barbara and I stayed in touch.  In fact she came to visit me in Portland the first year I was there.  But as the years went by, our contact diminished as both of our lives took on different trajectories.  

Until 1995.  By then, Waneen was traveling back and forth and around and decided to visit Barbara in Delaware. Well, she found her in a mess.  This crazy thing had happened at the university where she worked.  Somehow she got caught up in some kind of crazy thing where a colleague accused her of racism. And her boss sort of threw her under the bus over this allegation.  This all came of the accuser harassing her and her responding, as I recall.  Barbara was the last person who would use race as some kind of weapon.  They called me while Waneen was there.  Waneen was very worried about her and so I invited her to come out.   She came in July of that year.  She spent about a week with me and was visibly shaken, not herself.  She was doing all the right things, going to a therapist, taking medication.  She had married, but the man was an idiot and didn't know how to support her. Her friends kind of deserted her it seemed like.  She was broken.  She really was.  But at the time, I didn't really believe that.  I thought she would be okay with time.  Well, she wasn't and in September she killed herself while on suicide watch in a psychiatric hospital.  I had called her the week before and she was hysterical.  I tried to talk to her husband, but he wouldn't talk to me.  I called back again in a few days and she said she would be alright.  By then she had decided to end her life and was just waiting for the right time and way.  A few days later she was gone.  It was a classic ride up to suicide.  I was a therapist by then of course.  But I couldn't have done anything. She died while on suicide watch in a locked facility. So Barbara to find a way to make it happen. There was something about this thing that happened that took her to her knees and she just wasn't able to get up again.  I will mourn her forever.  

Well, now to the part where Waneen and I met in North Bend, near Seattle.  It was somehow the most convenient place for us to meet at the time with Waneen's work and life. She we meet up in North Bend, about 20 miles or so from Seattle.  We stayed at Steve's friend Don't house.  He was off on a Himalaya trip, so the house was ours. This was not too long after Barbara's death.  We had wanted to meet so we could have some sort of ceremony of goodbye to our beloved friend.  We did a bunch of stuff, all of which I can't totally remember. The biggest thing we did is we took these photos that I had taken of Barbara while she was visiting me in July and took them down by the waterfront in Seattle and tore them up and lit them on fire and let the ashes go into the water.  We talked and cried and carried on.  I had brought my copy of The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven  and took to reading it aloud to Waneen each night before we went to sleep.  It really did make us laugh and cry.  Or it made me laugh and cry.  Anyway, this one night we had just turned out the light and out of nowhere the smoke alarm went off.  Well, I being of little or no use in a middle of the night, have to do something situation, just kind of ran around while Waneen got up on a chair and somehow got the thing to stop.  So we go back to bed and a little while later, I would not make this up, the faucet on the washing machine breaks off and starts gushing water all over the place.  Well, if I can't deal with a smoke alarm, you can only imagine how completely useless I am when water is gushing out all over the place.  Again, Waneen gathers herself and somehow manages to turn off the water.  It was the craziest thing ever.  We were convinced and still are that it was Barbara's spirit in there giving us shit. Saying goodbye.  Telling us to let her go. It was amazing.  Truly.  

I don't have much left of Barbara. A cookbook of her's and a recipe that I still have in my little recipe box.  I still make it every now and then. It is the original paper, in her writing. Here it is: 

Sherman Alexie

Just last week, I wrote a post on Sherman Alexie and then promptly and accidentally erased it.  It's taken me all week to try to get up the gumption to re-write it.  Here goes:

Last Wednesday, Steve and I attended one of the Readings and Conversation programs put on by a local outfit called The Cabin.  They bring in wonderful writers from all over to talk to an eager audience that pays a lot for a seat.  Last time it was Chris Albani and the time before it was Erik Larson.  We have seen Amy Tan and Marilynne Robinson and a bunch more.  If my memory wasn't totally shot, I would name off a few more.  But there you go.  This time, it was Sherman Alexie.  I love the writings of this guy. We heard him speak years ago when he was just starting to gain fame.  He was kind of snarky and insulting to his audience then.  This time, he was more good-naturedly snarky. No telling what a few years and lots of money can do for a person's stage presence. He was  so great, so funny.  I have read so much of his work: Blasphemy, Indian Killer, War Dances, Flight, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, and, of course, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (more about that one later).

Anyway, many of you may know that The Absolutely True Diary... was banned by the Meridian school district a couple of years ago and then subsequently reinstated.  Of course, his talk had to start out with some joking about that.  And he had a few words of teasing and gentle ridicule for the white liberals types in the audience, which of course included me and Steve. But then the rest of his talk was a memory story about when he was 15 and going to an all white high school and fell in love with an 18 year old girl with a big,giant boyfriend, who eventually tried to beat him up.  The story was infused with so much tenderness, humanity and humor.  It was lovely.  It is amazing how much he is able to capture what is uniquely individually him and so universal at the same time.  Both Steve were inspired and enlivened by his words that night.  

So here is the part that is more personal and also one of the reasons why I love his writing so much:  Back in 1995, a friend of mine, Barbara, took her own life.  She was my good and dear friend and was also the good and dear friend of my friend, Waneen. We had all worked together at Washington State University in the late 70's. At the time of Barbara's death, Waneen was working and living abroad. Somehow it was convenient for Waneen and I to meet in Seattle.  So we decided to do that to grieve for Barbara and sort of comfort one another.  So I met Waneen at the airport and we drove to North Bend, near Seattle to stay at Steve's friend, Don's house.  At the time, Don was on one of his many Himalaya trips.  So Waneen and I had the house to ourselves.  I had just started reading the wonderful book of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, by our buddy, Mr. Alexie.  During the day, Waneen and I would do all kinds of stuff related to honoring our friend.  This whole thing is grist for another blog unto itself, because, believe me, it is filled with drama.  Anyway, at night, we would lay in Don's little double bed and I would read aloud from The Lone Ranger and Tonto.... We would laugh and cry and carry on.  That book helped us through. No doubt.  I'll never forget. I think Barbara was helped into Heaven herself with those stories.  I will never tire of Alexie's tender, angry, hilarious and beautiful words.  He speaks to the best in all of us.  And I thank him humbly for that.

This whole Netanyahu thing

Okay, so today Netanyahu is supposed to address the U.S. Congress and tell them what a ding bat he thinks Obama is for trying to negotiate a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Iran.  He's been saying the same thing about Iran for the last 20 years and, of course, to some degree he is correct. Their government is populated a bunch of nuts who hate Israel.  I can't make any claims to know enough about anything to have an intelligent opinion about whether Obama is right or wrong on this issue.  I do think, however, that I am smart enough to know when I am being played like a violin.  Boehner and  Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in some kind of crazy shenanigans that have more to do with politics than whether or not Obama is doing the right thing regarding Israel and Iran.  It is absolutely inconceivable to me that Boehner would invite a leader from another country to address the Congress of the United States without the involvement of the President of the United States.  He is doing it for purely and nasty political reasons.  If Nancy Pelosi did this when George W. Bush was President, she would have been, rightly, run out of town on a rail.  But, of course, Nancy Pelosi would not in her wildest dreams have taken such an incrediable action.  It is equally inconceivable that a leader of another country would agree to participate in such a dog and pony show.  To collude with the likes of John Boehner says something about Netanyahu, although I'm not sure what.  Maybe when the people in your own country are of varying opinions about what to do about Iran, the best thing to do is to go to another country where you will speak to an audience that mostly agrees with you.  What an unspeakable insult to President Obama, both the invitation and the acceptance.  What an act of disloyalty to this country Boehner has committed.  To circumvent the most basic protocols of political and policy discourse in order to humiliate a President you don't like.  Wow...  Where the hell were you when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were invading Iraq based on total lies? That did more to destabilize the Middle East than anything Obama is doing in our policy with Iran.   I can only hope that this comes up later to bite them both in the ass.  They richly deserve it.

Here's a link that makes sense to me:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2015/03/03/390187703/after-netanyahus-speech-a-reality-check?sc=ipad?f=1001

More on Chance, the dog and the Summer of Nick Von Bell

I thought quite a bit about Chance the dog and his owner from my last post.  I hope actually that Chance is still running wild with lots of open spaces and things to explore in heaven. Or maybe he has come back as a dog whisperer who works with aggressive dogs. I hope to God, truly, that his owner is now clean and sober.  Maybe that was the event that tipped her over into sobriety and recovery.  And I hope that little boy doesn't remember that day at all.  May it be so.  

On another note entirely, I have been remembering an even more ancient set of events than the one I shared last time.  During the summer between 6th and 7th grade, I decided that I would invent a make up boyfriend.  I was 12 at the time, right?  Some of you who are my Facebook friends who I went to school with may remember this and be relieved that I don't continue to believe this story.  Anyway, his name was Nick Von Bell.  I kid you not.  He was from Paris and during the summer, he took me to Paris and we just had the most wonderful time.  I must have met his family and we toured the city and I learned French and all kinds of things.  

  So when school started up in September I actually decided to tell people this story.  I remember the kind of blank stares I got from the girls I told this story to. It was like, "Okay, Linda.  Thanks for sharing."  I kept up with he story for quite a bit of the first part of 7th grade.  I finally just let it go and never did go back to the girls I told the story to tell them I had made it up.  I guess I thought they just forgot about it and had concluded I was nuts.  Which at some level I had to have been to think it was a good idea to make up something so absurdly not possible.  But let's remember, Kennedy had just recently been elected, we were still being subjected to the duck and cover drills to help us survive a nuclear holocaust, the cold war was very cold and the Cuban Missile Crisis just around the corner.  It was like Camelot meets Dr. Strangelove in the wider world.  Why not make up a story about a boyfriend and going to Paris? Of course, there was that tiny other backdrop to this fantasy in my "real" world.  That was the worsening of my mother's alcoholism that set the stage for much of the way my life has played out since, the good, the bad, the absurd and the sublime.  Back then, it was the bad.  Anyone who knows about alcoholic families back then, before we all started talking about Everything, knows that drill.  So Nick Von Bell and Paris.  Not a bad deal, when you stop to think of it.    

For my Valentine

Once upon a time,not so very long ago, in 1981 or1982, Steve and I lived in Portland while I was going to graduate school. We were living in NE Portland near the Lloyd Center in a little apartment with these wonderful neighbors living in the same building. There was Escobar, who was from Peru and made us lovely pastries. His wife, Jan. Then there was a young woman who lived downstairs, who's name I can't recall right now, but I do remember her cat's name, Loretta. That's kinda nutty, I know. Anyway, in the house right next door there lived a woman, who was almost for sure a crackhead. Which is okay as far as that goes. But she had a big Malamute Husky named Chance who she kept tied up on a short leash in the front yard all the time and I do mean all the time. He was kind of an unpredictable dog. Like one minute he might bark like crazy at us and run to the end of his leash and another time he might just walk over to the edge of the driveway and be sort of friendly. We would talk to him then, but otherwise we would usually give him a pretty wide berth.

In the meantime, there were bikers and kinda scary looking people coming and going from this house with Chance standing watch at all times. Well, one day I was standing in our living room and I hear this growling sound. I stepped out onto our little porch to check out what might be happening. I looked over and here is Chance with his jaws clamped on to a little child's head, shaking the child like a rag doll. Well I let out a scream and Steve came running. He took one look and raced over to the scene, while I continued to scream like a crazy woman. First he yelled at the dog and then quickly jumped behind the dog and yanked at his collar until Chance released the child. He held the dog above the child and either me or someone else was able to get to the little boy and get him out of there. His little head was bleeding and the little guy was panicked and crying. Chance did not do anything. He just let Steve lead him away. Steve said he thought it was like he knew he had done something very wrong.

We later learned that the child, who was about 4-5 years old, had to have multiple stitches in his little scalp. There is no question that Chance would have killed that baby if Steve had not been there to pull him away. We later appeared in court, in a case brought by the boy's parents,  and Steve testified to that fact. The judge was all ready to dismiss the case, but was shown a picture of the injuries to the little guy. He took one look and ordered the dog destroyed. I have always held that Chance should have been given to some rancher out somewhere and the woman who kept him so cruelly should have been destroyed. That would have been way more just. But, no one consulted with me on the matter.

Steve's actions that day represent who he is in his deepest self. I suppose you could say that anyone would do the same given the same circumstances. I honestly don't know if I could have. Maybe I would have beaten the dog on the head with a shovel or something. I really don't know. But there was no time to think, just time to act. And Steve did. Yesterday he told me he was riding his bike and passed a dog and it suddenly all came rushing back, the fear and panic. That happens every now and then. That guy who saved that child, who is probably around 38 years old today, that guy, my husband, that is who he was then and who he is today. I am ever grateful.

This, That and the Other Thing

Here I am in Barcelona a few years ago

Not sure why I chose that photo for today's blog.  But there you go.

I have been thinking lately about my strange relationship with cyberspace via Facebook and this blog mostly.  For instance, just very recently I had an entire process of decision making occur that included 4 other human beings that took place via Facebook and email and nary one word was spoken in actual in person speaking fashion.  The whole thing happened over a period of several days as well.  Ideas were shared, other people consulted, etc. Very interesting to me.  It's dangerous territory for someone such as myself, who is basically an introvert.  For instance, my last blog about my childhood friends, the Pearson's, I am not too sure I would share that story verbally, face to face with just anyone.  I actually have told only a very few people that story face to face. It was also somewhat of a departure from my usual blog fare, kind of going from "hey, what's going on in The World to what's going on in my world or my head or heart.  One risks oversharing, if you get my drift.  Especially if one is an introvert.  Hey, let's just let the whole world know a little somethin' about me they didn't know,bam!(Well, not the whole world. In view of the comments I get back it may really be like about 10 people who ever really see this thing, but hey, that's 10 people who didn't know my Pearson's story) I seem to be using the word, "hey" quite a bit today.  But I digress.  Back to my point: I feel that I am creating another persona on this blog.  Not my original intention.  I mean, not totally another persona, but sort of. Is that entirely a good thing? Is doing that feeding some insatiable force in the universe pulling us all away from actual human contact and interaction? This is my question to you, dear reader, if you are out there and inclined to reply. No pressure, you understand, but still... and "hey"!

On another topic entirely, I just finished reading the book "All the Things We Cannot See", by Anthony Doerr.  Not to brag or anything, but he lives right here in Boise.  Anyway, it is the best damn book I have read in a very long time.  I highly and unreservedly recommend it.  What a lovely and compelling story.  The title so captures the very essence of the story. And, ironically, given the above paragraph, the story involves a relationship that develops with very little face to face contact and how the most obscure things connect us.  

And also, this whole thing with Brian Williams...how much we seem to want to hang out in the corridors just waiting for the popular guy to trip and fall on his face.  Who amongst us hasn't totally exaggerated or actually lied or done some damn thing that we hope nobody hears about? (See Anne Lamott's post on Facebook today)  And as Bill Moyers points out so well, who cares whether Brian Williams lied about something he did or didn't do in Iraq.  How about calling out the liars who started the entire war on a giant pack of lies, the result of which is a much destabilized Middle East.  No, let's rattle on like a bunch of junior high nerds on CNN and other "news" channels about how Brian Williams lied.  Are we really that dumb as a nation? 

And then again, there is all the bruhaha about President Obama pointing out the obvious about Christianity.  Maybe he should be impeached for speaking the truth about something.  Jeeeeezzz...

Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, part II

I have gotten a few responses to my last blog that make me think that I need to add something.  I am really appreciative of the encouraging and reassuring responses I have gotten.  I kinda think we all have some sad or traumatic experiences of childhood that are not completely resolved and maybe never will be. Things we look back on as adults from the perspective of being adults.  I am not suffering terribly with this memory.  But my relationship with the Pearson's and the abrupt and sad way it ended is a profound and poignant aspect of who I am. That's a big part of what I learned about suffering and trauma in my work with refugees in the last ten years of my career.  Well, that's it.  Let us take comfort in one another and carry on.