Well, well, well...ACA and Marriage for Same Sex Couples, the Law of the Land

Sometimes right just prevails.  Or maybe right prevails after people fight and sweat and protest and show up and take it to court and stand on their heads and many years pass, then right prevails.  But to have two such epoch rights happen within 24 hours of each other is really something to get excited about.  Yet, then we have the massacre in Charleston. And yesterday President Obama's eulogy for Clementa Pinkeney somehow squeezing some measure of hope out of the murder of 9 innocent people by a psychopath wrapped up in the Confederate flag.  Don't ask me how he summoned the guts and pure damn eloquence to do it, but he did.  And leading the people in attendance to "Amazing Grace"...wow, my peeps, it don't get too much more mind-blowing than that on a Friday afternoon.  May we somehow find a way to dig down deep in our souls and confront the legacy of slavery in our country once and for all.  It's killing this country.  It's killing young African American men every other week it seems.  We have a prison system that incarcerates in hugely out of whack percentages black and Latino men, which my friend, Joan, refers to as slavery, and she just may be right.  President Obama referred to slavery as our country's original sin. I've heard it put that way previously, but to have the President of the United States say it in front of God and world...wow and mercy.  So maybe the next right to prevail will be that.  It will be some kind of national spiritual upheaval that makes us look reality in the eye.  And do something about it.  Like for instance, if we recognize that our police officers carry our projected and denied racial hatred on their shoulders and act it out for us in shootings of unarmed black men, and instead, recognize that racial hatred in ourselves, maybe we will start getting someplace, white people. No offense, my fellow white people.  But really.  We got to own it and stop pretending racism is something of the past. And I do not mean by that that I, you, we go around saying "I hate black people and Latinos and Asians and Native people".  That ain't it, my white peoples, my tribe, my familiars.  It is recognizing that we have benefited from institutionalized racism that is the legacy of slavery.  Period.  That legacy has driven a psychic and spiritual wedge between "us" and "them".  And the "us's" are the ones that have to do something about it.  Start with yourself and go from there.

The other thing is this sudden upset with the Confederate flag.  As these things go, it is better than a sharp stick in the eye as a place to begin confronting our long history of racial hatred.  A Bill Moyers posting says it better than I ever could.  You may have seen it on Facebook or some other social media.  The author is a guy who grew up in Mississippi and knows of which he speaks.  I shall attempt to include the link here:

Why the Confederate Banner Must Come Down

That's it for now.  Let's create a world worth living in.

More on Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner

This is not a topic that I would think to write about out of a clear blue sky. But this whole thing that has been stirred up around Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn has just gotten me thinking about a bunch of stuff. I have identified myself as a feminist since my early 20's. Over all those years I have fought against the sexualization of women. Not that I have necessarily been in the streets about it. More in my own life and where I might have influence on other lives. It offends me and I think degrades women for Caitlyn to pose for Vanity Fair using all the bells, whistles and technologies available to her, the end product being a dolled up caricature of a woman. For chrissake, this is a 65 year old person. What the hell is the matter with posing as a 65 year old woman?? What kind of message is being sent to girls, boys, women and men by this ridiculous caricature? That the only kind of woman worth anything is a young, beautiful one?

The other part of this that really bothers me is that Bruce Jenner, now Caitlyn, has been a part of a family that has made celebrity into some kind of circus act. They have dedicated themselves to appealing to our very basest instincts such as greed, an obsession with "looking good" and other degrading bullshit. I get that it is a good thing for all of us that a famous person has come out as transgender. I just don't think that posing in this circus act way for Vanity Fair does one damn thing to "normalize" this variation on our humanity. It just makes it seem glamorous. So in other words, this, like all the other cheap antics of the Kardashians, is just another glamorous thing for the rest of us to long for and never quite achieve, gay, straight or transgender. I believe the harm this image does outweighs the good in the long run of things. What would have been so bad with being a 65 year old transgender woman, plain and simple? Instead we have an image that promotes self delusion and foolishness. And, believe me, I understand that Caitlyn gave up her youth playing the part of a man she didn't feel herself to be.

I want LGBTQ people to live in a world in which they can be people. Just people, not stupid caricatures. To marry, have civil rights, have children if they wish to. I want to live in a world in which sexual and gender identification is no longer some kind of a hot political issue. I wouldn't mind seeing the end to sexism and racism. I want a lot of shit that I probably won't live to experience. I'm just not sure that glamour poses on the cover of magazines does much to advance us toward those ends.       This is me, last year, age 65:

More this, that and the other thing

What with this, that and the other thing, I have neglected my blog of late.  I'm going to try to do better as Spring becomes Summer.  I am reading the wonderful Lila by Marilynne Robinson.  For those of you who have read this set of stories that were started with  Gilead and Home, you know what I am talking about when I say, "Gee whiz, what writing." It's just lovely prose.  Sometimes I just loose myself in the words.

Seems that my little world has changed since Steve and I returned from a trip back East.  Steve had his last day of work on March 27 and we left for Cape Cod on April 1.  We returned on April 16 and since then life has felt like it is screaming down a 12 lane highway at about 100 mph.  Just stuff, you know, but lots of it.  Then we both got sick for several days and here I am.  I finally feel ready to reflect on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness a little bit.

Something very interesting happened while we were in Boston.  I am kind of sure that this sort of thing happens with a certain amount of regularity in big cities.  But for this Idaho hick, it was interesting and a bit disturbing.  We were on the T, which is what the subway is called in Boston.  First time for both of us.  We were on our way to visit the JFK Museum and Library.  Well, the doors close and right away this lady, standing in front of the door, starts yelling, "Please somebody give me $5.00". And then elaborates on why she wants the $5.00, something about her brother died in New York and she is trying to get there to go to his funeral. She just keeps yelling out her story and begging for the $5.00. Well, I look around me and everyone is just staring forward or looking a their phone.  I am the only person even looking at the lady.  I just sat there frozen between my compassion for this lady and my fear of being thought of as an idiot if I got up and gave her some money.  I am ashamed to say it, but it is the truth.  I get it.  It isn't going to exactly engender sympathy in others to stand in a subway car and yell at people to give you money.  But, man alive.  She was somebody's daughter.  And I just sat there frozen in my own ineptitude and fear.  She did bitch us all out when she got off the car at the very next stop.  She said, "Have a nice day, and I don't mean it!" or something like that.  Guess we all had it coming. Not one of humanity's prouder moments I guess.  She had some moxie, I'll give her that.  I wonder how much she made that day. She could have used a consultation on more effective ways to panhandle, I suppose.  But still.  Would it have killed me or anyone else on that car to get up and hand her a few bucks? Talk about your existential dilemmas. And if anyone was filming this little encounter for some college paper or something, we all flunked whatever the test was, including the lady yeller.  Anyway, one of those moments that makes life continually intriguing.

In the meantime we have Ferguson, Baltimore and God only knows what else.  Oh yeah, nut cakes yelling about how Obama is going to invade Texas or some damn crazy thing.  Steve and I just watched the movie "Selma" last night.  I thought it was very well done.  But I couldn't help thinking that we have gotten so short a way down the road to freedom and equality in this country.  The violence and mayhem visited upon the people who walked across that bridge 50 years ago is still going on.  Never stopped.  As much as we would all like to believe that things are better, they are not.  The pieces have just moved around on the game board.  Some of our police forces around the country have themselves caught in a big mess, fueled by racism, fear,  I don't know what all, that has led to a black citizens being shot dead.  As a person who has benefited from institutionalized racism, one of the things I can do about it is write about it here and show up where I can.  I intend to do that until I can't do it anymore.

I also just watched a PBS show on Kent State called "The end of the 60's". It made me realize that the  the simpleton mindset that developed during the Nixon era of "the folks who dissent are not real Americans" has morphed into something much more insidious.  It's this faction of the Republican Party that has become a cult of insurgents.  What used to be considered kind of far out cuckoo thinking has now become mainstream Republican party conversation.  Actual elected people are spouting utter nonsense like "Obama is going to invade Texas". Steve had a teacher in high school who was a famous John Bircher type, who at the time was correctly thought of as being cuckoo.  Well now that cuckoo lady would be welcomed with open arms into the bosom of the Republican Party.  I'm telling you, there is something festering in the Republican Party that allows this kind of insurgent mentality to emerge.  I just read an article by one of my favorite journalists, Leonard Pitts. I have enclosed a link to his article because he says exactly what I mean. The link is to an earlier article and there was  follow up article into today's Idaho Statesman.  Thank you, Leonard Pitts for articulating so well what I have been thinking on for a long time.

 Leonard Pitts Jr.: 20 years after Oklahoma bombing, hatred still out there 

Depression and the wrong headed notion that it would cause someone to fly a passenger jet into a mountain

I just read an article in the NY Times that supports this crazy idea that the guy who flew the jet into a mountain a few weeks ago suffered from depression. The Times article does a great disservice to people everywhere who have depression and suicidal thoughts. The article focuses on the guy's history of mental health treatment and so on, all of which I assume is true. But what journalists and others fail to grasp is that a person has to have a certain level of sociopathy, or more to the point, psychopathy,  to choose to end his life while murdering 149 other people. While there may be a certain number of suicidal people who may impulusively drive their car into another car or something of that sort, generally speaking, people who kill themselves are only interested in harming themselves, not others. People who fly passenger planes with people on board into mountains are after something more than their own deaths. It may be notoriety or fame or attention or whatever. Psychopaths kill because they can. They live their lives outside the normal assumptions and rules that govern most people's lives. Whether he was depressed is far less important than the reality that he was very likely a dangerous person, bent on doing something awful.

I don't think airlines have the tools to differentiate between normal depression and a potentially dangerous person. To not recognize the difference between the two in the aftermath of a terrible incident like this one and to paint this bad guy with the same descriptive brush as a person with clinical depression, only serves to feed our ignorance and fear of people with treatable mental illness. We don't yet know how to detect the psychopaths among us. They are usually pretty good at masking their real intentions and fooling the people around them. This guy probably left clues that were ignored that might have gotten him caught before this happened. We don't know and probably never will. But please read with great skepticism newspaper accounts that call this guy "depressed". I spent my career as a mental health therapist. I know from depression. People who I have worked with deserve way way better than to be lumped in the same category as this murderer.

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