Utah Savage

Why Mormons Love Multi-Level Marketing: The Celestial Kingdom

2012-01-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/The_Plan_of_Salvation.jpg
It's a complicated place, this Mormon version of heaven, but what most non-Mormon's don't know about it is that men get to have more than one wife in the Celestial Kingdom. This is a pretty good deal for men who were cheated out of plural marriages by the pesky laws of the US Government not all that long ago.

Mitts Grandfather took the family to Mexico to escape those laws which is why you'll never hear Mitt tell heartwarming stories about his grandfather. It's as if Mitt has no ancestors at all. But he has his money to keep him warm (at least his money that isn't staying warm in the Cayman Islands where it's sheltered from taxes. as if taxes were much of a problem for Mitt, at 15% or less). But he can still look forward to that big polygamous family in the sky, once he dies.

One of the strange things about that Multi-Level Celestial Kingdom Mormons believe in is it seems to breed a fondness for all kinds of multi-level marketing schemes. Some of them turn out to be semi-legit and some of them turn out to be as bogus as chain letters, but if you're a Mormon and a fellow Mormon is selling you some load of crap, you're likely to buy. Why? Because he has a Temple recommend, that's why.

Mitt's a Mormon and Mormonism Is a Great Business Plan: Food for Thought

2012-01-15T14:33:00.003-07:00

Mormonism is a successful religion precisely because it's a business that requires total belief in a paternalistic dogma. Big Daddies are at the top. Mommies are in the kitchen popping out babies and children fall in line to do their share based on their gender. Chores are gender specific and so are rewards at home and in the Church. As it is on earth so it is in Heaven. Heaven is as hierarchical as the Church. There are in the Mormon version of heaven actual levels. And yes they do wear magic underwear and believe in Baptism for the dead. I'm fairly sure my atheist and rabidly anti-Mormon mother was, once dead, delivered unto the Lord to some inferior level of Heaven in one of the Temple back rooms by my friend's well-meaning doddering once polygamous mother in one of those mass baptisms for the dead by the good women of the Relief Society. It's confusing I know. I don't exactly know how to make it simpler. You die. They snatch your soul. That's about it. My feeling is, once I'm dead, I'm dead. I don't believe in any of that shit so I don't care what they do. But, oddly, my mother did. If you're Catholic and you die, your family probably cares a whole bunch. If souls represent gold, is this a Ponzi Scheme?

Another way to grow the tithing population of the congregation is to convert the heathens. Up until the 1970s Mormons didn't admit black folks to the Priesthood, so the darker skinned natives of the world's peoples were off limits. They loved them on the college football teams but not in the Church. That was becoming a bit of an embarrassment once the Civil Rights movement was on the front page of even the Deseret News and playing on KSL's nightly news. Even in Salt Lake you couldn't avoid seeing it, no matter how hard you tried. So finally the Big Daddy at the tippy top of the Church's hierarchy had a "Revelation" from God that the dark folk were no longer unworthy of Priesthood and should be gone after by missionaries all the lands of the earth where the dark folk live. I kid you not. It's a strange, strange, "Religion." Tithing is not optional. Neither is joblessness. Even kids tithe 10% of their allowance. Mormonism is a money maker. Money's colorblind. That was the real "revelation."

Every boy who comes of age in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints doesn't first serve his Country in the Military - not without a fight from his family and his Bishop. Oh no, he serves his Religion on a Mission first, then he goes to college. And a wealthy family like the Romneys sees this service to Church a final and fitting method of Service with a capital S (even if this service is done in France in a fancy-pants setting). It's odd to me how the men who are the biggest blood-thirsty fans of war and torture are the ones who never went to war and have sons who haven't enlisted.

I love my Mormon neighbors. They are kind neighborly people who, if I asked for the name of a good handyman would hook me up or offer to help me. They are plugged in, in the know, and well organized. If we had an earthquake, they'd be the ones with the plan. the shelter, the supplies... They'd probably even try to rescue me. They're that kind of people when you've lived next door to them forever even if you are a heathen and a recluse.

Happy Fiftieth Anniversary Tom

2012-01-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

I know I'm late in writing this, but I've had to think about it. It's still incomplete.

We began our relationship fucking like bunnies. Glad I wasn't the fertile kind. We spent our fiftieth anniversary talking quietly about politics and family. I remember once in our on again/ off again relationship suggesting that if we were still together ten years later, we get married. Thank god we never did that. We probably wouldn't be half so happy to see each other now.

I've been wondering how many times I left you. Was it fifty? I got so good at it when we lived up Emigration Canyon I could bag all my possessions in minutes and leave while you were reading the paper or playing the guitar. I imagined the only sign you had I was leaving was the screech of my tires as I peeled out of the driveway. I hadn't been diagnosed bipolar then, but I certainly was. I did try to talk to you about the things missing from our relationship that made me so desperately unhappy, but you didn't really hear me. Or if you did, you didn't seem to care.

The best thing you did for me was give me the confidence to inhabit my body, to enjoy my sexuality.

The worst thing you did was not being receptive to reading what I wrote. You once read a letter I wrote to you and your only comment was, "nice handwriting." What a condescending fuck you were. It's only now, now that you're so far away and the words are printed for everyone else to read, you read me. And yet, I was your audience... Of course you're talented. Of course I loved hearing you play. You are the best. But why couldn't you read me? The lack of reciprocation was ... still is ... painful.

But of course I love you. You are more my family than any member of my "real" family every was. I will always love you. I will always want to see you when you're near. Happy Anniversary Tom.

It's Just Another Winter Day

2011-12-24T20:35:00.001-07:00

No Black Friday Tasing or Pepper Spray was used in the making of my peaceful winter Sunday. It is merely the 25th of December to me.

I'm not a Christian so it makes no more sense for me to celebrate Christmas than it would for me to celebrate Hanukkah, not being Jewish. Do I wish everyone I meet on the street Happy Hanukkah? Do you? Does every greeter at Wall-Mart? The only significance to this particular day to me is an outworn convention I can't shake kinda like a tick. I get a call from an old friend and we trade holiday well wishes. I guess it's harmless. The best thing about the 25th of December is the lengthening of the days.

But I can't leave the subject of the birth of Jesus Christ without wondering what he'd think of the way Christians celebrate his birthday. What's up with the Pagan "Christmas Tree" and the Black Friday shopping stampedes that result in trampling of children, of guns and tasers and pepper spray being pulled and used by shoppers bent on being the first to get at that X, Y, Or X bargain worth sleeping out over night for, worth nearly dying for, worth nearly killing for? It all seems awfully far from the spirit of Christianity.

The best stories of the season have been the ones of people helping the homeless, feeding the hungry, sheltering others from the cold and sharing what little we have in times of scarcity. The Occupy movement has embodied this impulse to share. The riot police with their billy clubs and rubber bullets, their pepper spray and the relish with which they use it have represented the power of the one percent. It kind of looks like Christ in humble clothing on one side and the power of a hostile state with all its money and might on the other. "Dirty hippies" on one side and the Police and Wall Street and Mayor Bloomberg on the other. Who could imagine from this tiny band of dirty hippies a national movement would grow?

Walk Like a Model

2011-12-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

I used to do these exercises when I was a kid to get in shape for ski season, so I never understood how hard they were for the teenaged girls I tried to teach to walk like a model. They were second nature for me. Stand against a wall with your back pressed from upper spine to tailbone into the wall. Then slowly walk your feet out from the wall, keeping your spine pressed to the wall so that there is no space from shoulders to tailbone, as you make yourself the shape of a kitchen chair without the kitchen chair beneath you. Then hold it until you feel the burn. Keep your spine pressed into the wall all the way down and your stomach flat. Keep your shoulders back and down. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it....

The easy version of this is to lie on the floor with your legs bent, roll your pelvis forward, press your spine into the floor from just below shoulder blades to tailbone, tighten your stomach muscles, then slowly lower your legs to a straight position while keeping your spine pressed into the floor and your stomach muscles tight. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it until you think you can't another second. Sounds so easy doesn't it. Then repeat several times. And do it several times a day for days on end until it's second nature and you can do it standing against the wall and you can do it walking. Then that's the way you always walk. Keep your neck long, shoulders back and down, back straight, pelvis rolled forward, stomach flat, lead with the hips...

If you do yoga it probably is easy. If you ski it probably is. If you model it probably is. It's why at fifteen modeling was so easy for me and was into my fifties. But a couple of bad sports injuries and one backyard fall in my mid-fifties plus taking care of my mother put me out of my profession permanently and now my back is killing me.

I have Lumbar Stenosis. Now the exercises I have to do at physical therapy are some of the same exercises I used to give to teenagers who wanted to learn to walk like a model. And every muscle in my lower back, inner thighs, and stomach is screaming in pain. It never occurred to me that the poor little girls were in agony trying to roll their pelvises forward enough to get their spines flat against the floor to hold that posture long enough to strengthen their gut muscles enough to hold that posture in an upright position. I have the advantage in that my body has the sense memory of this posture. I know how to roll my pelvis forward, straighten my spine, hold my gut in, and walk like a model. I never realized before how hard it is. God it hurts.

Medicare"Advantage" and the Insurance Companies

2011-11-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

Once again I feel the need to repost to remind you that you do not need to listen to the insurance companies or their shill AARP when it comes to "Medicare Advantage Plans." Please listen to me. There is no "advantage" when it comes to "Advantage Plans."

Dear Insurance Companies,
There is no place for you in our well-functioning Medicare program. Medicare is the public option we want to give the rest of the populace, since you have so horribly abused them with your sky high monthly premiums and your policy of questioning every doctor visit, test, referral to a specialist, or procedure. And who makes these decisions to question every possible charge? Low-level phone-bank bean-counters make these decisions to get between the consumers and their doctors at your direction. How is this better than Medicare? Medicare has never questioned a single decision my doctors and I have made together to manage my healthcare needs. When I had private insurance every decision made by my doctors and me was at first denied, and then had to be negotiated by functionaries with no medical credentials or expertise at the big impersonal insurance company and my doctors office, driving up costs by requiring the hiring of new staff to deal with all the denials of coverage or medicine or referral or procedure or hospitalization. My doctors hate you bastards. So do I. We want you out of the only public option we have. And we are confused about how the hell you insinuated yourself into Medicare in the first place. You are now, once again, driving up costs for all of us. And we are, so far, just the low-income elderly and the disabled. You are everything that is wrong with our economy. Your greed knows no bounds. Your disregard for our well-being is nothing short of criminal negligence. You must be expelled from Medicare before you take it over completely and there isn't even a public option for the neediest and most at-risk disabled among us. You represent a cancer in the system. We need to cut you out before you turn this country into a poor third-world nation with no health care coverage for anyone but the wealthiest few.

I have had a long and detailed conversation with my medicare information personnel and I have been assured that there is no "advantage" in your "Medicare Advantage programs." We do not need you at all. But your dishonest advertising makes most of our citizens believe that they do need one of the "Medicare Advantage" programs being so aggressively pushed on us from every source. You have the money to push this program. The government run medicare program does not advertise. That would raise costs to all of us. The government run medicare program does not solicit over the phone or in mailings. That would raise costs to all of us. Why do you have the money to push your "Medicare Advantage" plans? Because you, in the private sector, have raised rates every few months just because you can. Because you have denied coverage for "pre-existing conditions." Because you have doubled premiums in a single month once a diagnosis has been made that will require surgery and ongoing treatment. You are bloodsuckers at best. Get out of Medicare. You offer no "Advantage" and cost all of us a great deal more than our modest public option does.

Happy Holidays!

2011-11-25T17:24:00.001-07:00

This was last years Thanksgiving post: How prescient am I!? I didn't know we had the 99 percent then as a movement but we all should have. So, eat your turkey and have your little dinner time squabbles because it seems nothing much changes as long as the same old turkeys stay in power at the top.

There is this story

And this story

Then there was this story

It's not exactly a poem, but it is some of what's happening in our country during this holiday season. I have ignored the stories of frantic holiday shoppers trampling other frantic holiday shoppers on the aptly named Black Friday. Extraordinarily sickening this year. Somehow more so this year than any I remember. The dark freakshow of materialism in a down economy. I might be one of those crazed shoppers if I had a family counting on me to provide it with all the American Christmas creature comforts (like a bigger flat screen TV than last years version). And I might be the provider who finds death preferable to the alternative since the future doesn't look rosy unless you're one of the top 2%. If Thanksgiving was a disappointment to children of the 99ers, imagine what Christmas will be... Don't know what the 99ers are? You must be a member of the TeaParty or one of the 2% at the top.

Newt Gingrich Is A Big Fat DooDoo Head

2011-11-21T09:48:00.011-07:00

I have reposted this because... Well... Newt is a still a big fat doodoo head. At the time I first posted this, I was letting google ads, advertise on my blog, and every time I said something nasty about Newt, which was often, low and behold, there was Newt, hawking some shit of his on my site. It was almost enough to keep me using google ads, but not quite.

Thanks to The Lazy Iguana for this wonderful art work. Now I have photoshop envy.

So, just tell me Newt is not a Media Whore! Last time I posted a piece about Newt being a media whore, I got a google ad suggesting that you could get actual messages from Newt if you just push this button. Now I'm creeping myself out. But I needed the money. So I guess that makes me a whore too. And don't forget to check the sidebar. I do not agree with the statement that the NYTimes is a liberal newspaper. (I'm guessing google ads has not figured out that I'm a liberal). Newt is spreading the love, and probably herpes as well. So when you come a callin, bring a condom.

Media Whore Newt Gingrich

2011-11-19T10:30:00.001-07:00

I'm reprising my old Newt posts. I've loathed Newt for a long time. Honest whores deserve some respect but politicians who are nothing BUT whores do not. Newt is the worst of the worst and I've written a few posts about this particular whore. Now that the old whore is running for President again, it's time to replay the old posts, so here we go: 6/7/09

"Whores and politicians become respectable if they stick around long enough, as someone once observed, and the same is plainly true of media personalities – especially in a culture that never pauses long enough to remember anything. Where amnesia is the rule, there can be no accountability for the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Patrick Buchanan and the rest of the broadcast mob denouncing the "racism" of Sonia Sotomayor. If anyone remembers who they are and what they have said over the years, their complaints about the Latina Supreme Court nominee will only elicit raucous laughter." Joe Coneson, from an Opionion piece in Salon June 5th

Then on Face the Nation this morning we have half the program devoted to the outrageous bullshit of Newt Gingrich. My question is WHY? There are so many skeletons in Gingrich's closet I can't list them all, but another resoursful blogger has and you can see them here.

When Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor for being a racist on Twitter, he ignited a debate over her objectivity. Both sides of the argument had a chance to respond on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Senior White House advisor David Axelrod defended his administration’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor against attacks that she is a racist.

"I think what she believes, harry, is that everyone is the product of their experiences. She's the product of hers," he told guest moderator Harry Smith.

"Have there been patterns of discrimination? Of course there have been. We all know that," he admitted, referencing the numerous occasions where Sotomayor said a “wise Latina woman” would make "better" decisions than a white male.

Axelrod called Gingrich’s comment “unfortunate” and said, "I think that it is so unfair and so unreflective of who she is."

Later in the program, Mr. Gingrich had a chance to respond.

He explained that he rescinded his initial comment because he called Sotomayor a racist, when really he does not know the nominee and meant that her comments were racist.

"One of the challenges for the administration is having first chided me for language, then having said she didn't mean it, and then having said she ought to restate it. Now they face the fact that she has said this, written about it four or five time," he argued.

He argued that, "if you say people of this ethnic background are superior to people of this ethnic background, take out her language and put in the word white. Put in white male where she had Latina, that person would be disqualified from the court. Also would be disqualified as a juror."

Gingrich admitted that it is "very doubtful" she will be disqualified as a high court pick because of her earlier remarks.

"She said the court should be radical. The court should rewrite law. The court is where policy is made. That's a direct quote. I'm not very comfortable having somebody at that level with that level of power," Gingrich said.

This is the first time I know of that anyone's asserted that Sotomayor said she was "superior" to a white man. And Harry Smith just let it stand, no challenge to that outrageous lie, no question about how Newt jumped from calling her a racist, retracting the term "racist", but then saying she has stated that she is superior to white men. Jesus, why is this idiot allowed to go on a Sunday morning news show and lie without even a challenge? Harry Smith, you are a disgrace for letting that one stand. Since Newt is not an elected official of any kind, just an over-the-hill has-been, why are he and Buchanan, Rush and Glen Beck getting so much play in the mainstream media?

Old Sports Injuries

2011-11-18T15:57:00.000-07:00

I was always athletic. Sure, some of it was forced. I was taken on ski trips before I could walk. We rode horses, went swimming. I remember none of this but there are photos to prove that baby Peggy was the game little sport. And some of that love of sports stayed with me.

I loved softball until breasts got in the way. I loved skiing but not the same way my hyper-competitive friends in Jr High and High School did--like it was a game of chicken and if you weren't willing to actually risk killing yourself every run you weren't really skiing. I always liked the wide open bowls more than the narrow rutted chutes. I liked the beauty of the carved turns, the gentle spray of snow on a sudden perfect stop. I liked the clothes. When I was skiing, skis were long, children. It was harder then.

Last time I went skiing was early in the incarnation of Deer Valley. My last ski injury was there. It was a torn anterior cruciate. I was skiing with Tom. I couldn't keep up with him, so he was riding up on the lift as I was going down. He saw it happen beneath him. I think that's how it happened. I was trying to keep up with him. Bastard! It's so embarrassing to be taken off a mountain in a basket by the Ski Patrol. But thank god for them. I was in agony. It's a very painful injury. You can hear it happen.

Good thing skiing wasn't my favorite sport.

Child Rape: It's Personal!

2011-11-11T20:08:00.001-07:00

Finally the whole nation is talking about it. It doesn't surprise me that this time it's big time college football that gives us another opportunity to get it right. Oddly, I don't have much hope we will. We've been here before. Only when it's boys, and only when it's all male institutions and all male institutions we revere out of all proportion to the horror to the crime they have committed, serially, creating many, many victims, over decades, leaving lifetimes of wreckage that will ripple out into the lives of others when we stop and look in horror and wait. Will we just look and move on this time again? I was a raped child. The wreckage lives on in me. It's personal!

The perpetrators of these crimes have lived like heros, gods among men, rewarded with riches and fame, and honors. Are we shaken enough to stop for a moment and gasp? What have we done! Will we hold them accountable? Will we charge them all (and there are many) with the crime of child rape? Will we fully investigate? Will we find all the victims? Will we pay them reparations for their injured lives, the therapy they'll need, the emotional support they will continue to need? Are we willing to keep our eyes focused on the worst within what we thought was our best? If we're asking men who worship sports heroes and famous coaches to do that job for us, I fear we'll be let down.

He Tweets!

2011-11-08T17:33:00.001-07:00

One of the reasons I no longer blog is that I tweet. Twitter takes care of my need to vent. Twitter is the place for news and politics. Every political writer I admire is on twitter and I can follow their tweets whether they follow me or not. But what amazes me is that often they follow me back. Another thing I've noticed about twitter is that news breaks hours faster on twitter than it does on the broadcast news. If you hear it on TV, it's old news.

Most of my blogger friends are there too, and/or on facebook. You guys were the ones who nagged me onto facebook. Now I've been called a friend whore. I can't help it. When Ezra Klein friended me I was hooked.

Anyway, Tom called. Now he tweets. He's catching on fast.

I'm still agonizing over the Hook for the book. It's the hardest thing I've ever tried to write. Should be only a sentence or so. A very good short paragraph. Impossible. I'll keep trying.

See you on twitter.

Love,
Peg

Dear Mystery Caller

2011-10-20T12:48:00.002-06:00

Tom, how is it you only call when I'm not home and I only leave home once a week or so? That seems damn near statistically impossible given the extremity of my isolation. Hardly anybody knows I exist back here, so deep is my cover. I could die and not be missed for weeks. Yet only when I leave the house to go to the library and then straight to the grocery store do you call and leave a cryptic message with a phone number that's supposedly in Costa Rica so we can talk about "interesting things" (and god knows, I'd love nothing more). But when I call that number, some gringo with no hint of an accent, answers and says, he is "not Tom" and "no this is not Tom's number" and "no, Tom doesn't live here," and "no," he doesn't know Tom so stop calling. What's up with that? Why the bogus number? You've done it twice? I've redialed the caller ID number off the phone just in case I didn't hear your voice message correctly but I still get the same slightly impatient gringo with a voice so close to the same timbre as yours but without any of the warmth or musicality as yours. What is going on at that phone number? Call me at night. I'm always home then. I never go out after dark. If I don't answer then you can safely assume I am dead and stop calling. Either that or I forgot to take the phone into the bathroom with me.

PS
I tweet. We could meet up there for a 140 character chat. Surely a with-it guy like you has a twitter account. If not twitter, how about Facebook? Send me an email. A blog comment? Anything. Just don't call during the daytime when I'm not at home and leave another bogus phone number please.

Living in Utah

2011-09-04T17:59:00.001-06:00

Utah is the Reddest State in the Nation. We are more like the South than the South in our conservatism, but less like it in our inclusiveness. Utah goes out of its way to encourage immigrants to come from far flung places and take low wage jobs if they'll agree to join the Mormon Church. That's what Mormon Missionaries are all about—bringing in the sheep so they can tithe and work for the Church in it's many "non-profit" ventures.

Utah is orderly. It's orderly and clean. It's also spectacularly rich in natural beauty and opportunities for sports. Visitors often remark on Utah's cleanliness. Utah towns and cities have wide streets laid out in orderly grids that are clean and almost sparkly. Get on a plane to fly to Utah and you'll be struck by the number of pretty blonds traveling with blond children with straight white teeth returning home from one of the many Disney locations or some other very wholesome family-friendly vacation destination. They'll all be tan and remarkably well behaved. But you'll be shocked by how much they'll all resemble the perfect family in an ad for a cosmetic dentist or Mitt or Jon's vision of the perfect American Future if either of them wins the Presidential Jackpot.

I have no voice in the larger political landscape of Utah politics. My vote has never counted in a Presidential election if I cast it in Utah, though this has never stopped me from voting. I feel like an exile living here. I'm profoundly alienated from the larger culture here. So much so that I don't take the paper, don't watch local news, don't pay too much attention to what Utah's idiot Senators and Representatives do. I used to follow the careers of Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett because I knew them from the time they were both on the City Council. I became a night supervisor at the Central City Community Center after Bennett's police goons kept getting their squad cars bombed in their attempt to "police" the center failed. I was never once menaced nor was there ever violence while I was on duty. God what victory that was! Take that Bob! I used to do Orrin's make up for local interviews. I always wondered how such a womanly man managed to avoid scandal all these years in Washington. I'm still waiting for something to undo him besides the Tea Party. But it is the Tea Party that's made Utah politics unbearable for me to continue following. It's just too awful now.

My neighborhood is all that saves my sanity or what's left of it. I live in one of the best little enclaves in downtown Salt Lake City. More on that in another post.

From Yes We Can to No We Can't

2011-08-20T17:27:00.010-06:00

My first clue should have been the health care bill. Yes, it was great we were finally getting a health care bill but without a public option it was a gift to the insurance industry. I have no idea why the Right isn't thrilled with it since it's entirely privatized. It's much like Bush's Medicare Part D only funded and phased in slowly. It sure as hell isn't socialism.

Hope is hard to give up on.

Yes. He's done some good things. He rescued our auto industry. He proved we can manufacture cars here and make a buck doing it. We bailed them out and they paid us back. It's a shame the banks didn't didn't treat us as well as the auto industry. But that's the difference between blue collar thinking and hedge fund thinking. It's interesting that Republicans are still bitching about bailing out the auto industry, since it's the most successful part of the bailout.

Then there was the negotiation over extending jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. The Republicans insisted the President give them an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in exchange for some pitiful extension of unemployment benefits for people looking for jobs—but not the 99ers. Oh no, if you were unemployed that long you were just shit out of luck, but the rich folks got their tax break extended. That one broke my heart and made me worry for the future.

Negotiation isn't one of his strong suits. He seems far too willing to cave to the least bit of Republican arm twisting. Why? This is our first black President. This is the President who located and killed Osama Bin Laden while roasting Donald Trump. What the fuck?

Turns out President Obama either isn't a very good negotiator or he's a really a moderate republican. He's far to willing to give in to the wishes of conservatives. He is certainly not a progressive. At every turn he seems to move a bit farther to the right.

Yes, there have been things on the good side of the balance sheet, but the list of on the side of disappointments is so huge that it tips the scale to the right so horribly I won't be voting with much enthusiasm this time. I'll be voting in fear of a Rick Perry Presidency more than likely.

Dear Tom

2011-08-13T11:26:00.004-06:00

It's almost your birthday and I always think of you this time of year. This is not to say I only think of you this time of year. I get mail for you at least once a week so I'm pretty much forced to think of you on a weekly basis and sometimes I find myself either thinking of you fondly or not so fondly as I curse you for not changing your mailing address. Remember when we had that conversation about my place not being your real legal address? That was a long time ago. And yet... AARP still thinks you live here. Ditto the DMV. So does Harold Clark. Wonder when he'll give up sending his bills here? I even got a certified letter recently. Can't remember what bill that was. When will they get a clue?

I kept your last long distance phone message on my phone and listen to it now and then. It was left as you left the country from some airport like LA or Dallas or Miami. I'm guessing you were headed back to Costa Rica. I know I've said and done some heinous things in my time and to make them worse, in public and/or in print. Keep in mind that over the years we lived together you, my dear, did and said some heinous things as well. Maybe you didn't say and do them in print and in such a public way, but they hurt every bit as much. But now I offer you my sincerest apology for whatever it was I said that made you stop speaking to me. It was said in a moment of stupidity the way we all say stupid things. We all say stupid things sometimes, remember? Tell me what it was, and I'll do a public retraction.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a very happy, healthy birthday.

Maybe it's finally time to change your mailing address.

PS. I'm getting all your viagra spam as well, along with everyone else on your email list which gets forward to me too.

Downgrade

2011-08-08T12:23:00.003-06:00

I give myself a downgrade for the prolonged silence here. I've been paralyzed by the freak show of the spectacle of the Congress in Paralyse. The horrible prolonged haggling over the debt ceiling and the President's caving to the Tea Party's hostage taking of our future has led to a downgrade by S&P. Frankly I think it's long overdue. Today they've downgraded Fannie & Freddie who happen to hold the Mortgage on my house. This doesn't make me feel too terribly safe, but I've never felt terribly safe so...nothing new here, move along, nothing to look at, just another old wreck...

Friday anybody watching news (like I do, obsessively) saw the Dow fall off a cliff and then, when the Market's closed, heard the news that S&P dropped our Credit Rating from AAA to AA & 1/2. Is this a wake up call to the Tea Party that their brinkmanship is disastrous as a governing strategy? Fuck no! It's exactly what they wanted. Bring us to our knees, starve the beast! And in so doing defeat Obama! Well then, mission pretty much accomplished!

Now it's Monday, a little after noon and the Dow is plummeting again. The news is bad all over the world. Happy Tea Party?

Who's The Father?

2011-06-26T21:27:00.001-06:00

An old voice talent I once dated for a moment called me the other night and I said, "Who's this?" He said, "Peggy, don't you recognize my voice?"
"No. Should I?"
"It's Scott?"
"Scott who?" I was kidding by then. (He'd driven by my back gate early in the spring and I was out in my grubbies wrestling with the overgrown garden, my hair gone as wild as the yard. He stopped his car. Oh no. Not good.
I said, "My eyes are bad. I can't hear you. I have company coming." Anyone could look at me and see this was a lie. I actually waved him on. As if we didn't speak the same language. And in a way we didn't. He's a really old man. I'm just an old womam.)
"I had a dream about you."
"Really. What sort of dream?"
"I was living in a big house and you came to my door in the middle of the night. You woke me up. I came to the door and you looked awful. I said Peggy, you look awful. What happened to you? You said, "I'm pregnant." Then the phone rang. I answered it. It was our agent. I told her you were pregnant. She asked me to ask you one question."
"What was it, you tactless bastard?"
"Who's the father?"

Anthony Weiner's Sexting

2011-06-08T15:36:00.001-06:00

I'm in my mid-sixties and I'm not shocked at all about Anthony Weiner's sexting. Frankly I've never known a man who didn't like phone sex or some kind of virtual sex. It might be my generation. We are the generation of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, so why is someone like Chris Matthews acting like such a prissy, childish, clueless, moron about it? Unless Weiner was sending pictures of his naked, erect penis to underage girls it isn't a crime, unlike most of the bullshit that Vitter and Ensign and so many others on the Family Values Right have carried on without anyone calling for them to resign. The Left tends not to wrap themselves in the lily white sheet of Family Values Purity so when they do something stupid like this it doesn't reek of hypocrisy. Let the House Ethics Committee decide what it wants to do with Anthony Weiner. Then let the voters of New York decide what they want to do with Anthony Weiner. I'm betting he stays. New Yorkers tend to be pretty sophisticated about such nonsense. It doesn't have anything to do with the issues that effect their lives. Only two newscasters have handled it sensibly and they are Lawrence O'Donnell and Rachel Maddow. The rest of you are children or hypocrites.

Run Sarah, Run

2011-05-26T19:45:00.002-06:00

I can't think of anything more satisfying than the spectacle of Sarah Palin making a run for the Presidency in 2012. Imagine the comic potential—the great debates between Sarah, Newt, Romney, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Bachmann, Santorum (teehee)... Whoever. It'll be fun.

She'll be a big draw for the lunatic fringe: the homophobes, the bible thumping anti-abortion zealots, the birthers, deathers, the racist, neo-Nazi skinhead nation. You know, the Tea Party. Men love her. Women too, clutching her book so fervently, hoping for an autograph. It'll be grand. Can't wait! She'll do well in those early Primary States too. She'll clean your clock boys. Her only problem will be in debates unless she's just debating Michelle Bachmann. Then it might be a toss-up.

Sarah will do some serious damage to the Republican party. She already has. Maybe I should restate that. John McCain did serious damage to the Republican party by picking her as his running mate. He created the monster that is Sarah. If he hadn't, none of us would have heard of her. I do feel sorry for Megan McCain. She'll damn near die of embarrassment and she doesn't deserve that.

Mormon's will be conflicted about Sarah. She talks more Mormon than either of the Mormon men who'll be running against her. And Mitt has that Mitt-Care problem that became the model for Obama-Care. And Huntsman worked for President Obama. So sitting here in the deep wholesome bleeding heart of the Mormon Holy land it's going to be a spectacle worth observing.

Sadly, Sarah isn't really running. She just wants us all to think she is. It's a fund raising bonanza. But she's far too thin skinned to take the heat of a real run to the finish. Too lazy to do the homework. And that's a shame. She's depriving a hungry nation of a good belly-laugh and don't we all need one?

Dear Paul Ryan, You Idiot

2011-05-24T20:31:00.002-06:00

The people of New York's 26th Congressional District have spoken and they're your kind of people. It's solidly Republican. Should have been a sure thing. Here's the thing you don't understand about fucking with the old people's Medicare and Social Security. Those old people have children who would have to take care of them if they didn't have Medicare to pay their medical bills and have Social Security to live on. We old people spent a lifetime paying into that trust fund. We worked like dogs paying taxes to earn our right to retire with a minimum of security and now you want to give us a voucher so we can try to find an insurance company that will cover our hip replacement or cancer treatment? Get real you morons! You want to privatize Social Security? Hand it over to the very people who tanked the housing market and pension funds this last time around? We may have short memories, but you bastards are still refusing to extend unemployment for the 99ers and you're still looking the other way while unscrupulous mortgage companies in cahoots with crooked bankers are busting into peoples homes claiming they're not current on their payments on their upside-down worthless houses and turning them out. Why should we trust you with something as personal as our health care?

We watched spellbound as your newly minted TeaParty driven GOP controlled House of Representatives flanked you as you rolled out your brave new solution to controlling the problem of the "exploding deficit" (which, by the way, happened under your watch under your GOPer President GWBush and his wars and his unfunded bullshitery and tax breaks for his rich cronies and unfunded Medicare part D (which I happen to like by the way—too bad you didn't raise taxes on the rich to pay for it, morons). You'd rather cut every single thing that helps children and old people, the unemployed and the poor while you roll back regulations that protect us from all the abuses of power that got us into the mess we're in while you keep in place tax breaks for the gluttonously rich and the biggest of the bussinesses—those who rape and pillage the earth and ship their profits off-shore and pay nothing in taxes. I hope you're happy now. Can you feel the cold wind of defeat blowing your perfectly coiffed hair? Is that a shiver of fear running down your spine?

Mother's Day Isn't A Good Day For a Lot of Daughters

2011-05-07T22:49:00.003-06:00

I had a mother I wasn't good enough for no matter how hard I tried. She didn't make a secret of her expectations and I tried to live up to them, but I always fell short. You might think this was some rebellion or some passive agressive bullshit of a sullen daughter and maybe in my adolescence for a moment or two you would have been right, but I did try to be a good enough daughter for my mother from beginning to the bitter end.

There are many people who knew my mother and almost worshipped her. The mythology about her is larger than life and I have no reason to do battle with that ghost. That woman was a fiction anyway so no amount of revision can correct the record. That woman had press clippings. That woman won awards and served on boards of directors and Grand Juries. That woman went to the International Year of the Woman. That woman was a poet and an artist. That woman was a pioneering Utah Feminist and those two words aren't often spoken in the same sentence together. That woman was larger than life. And I knew her just well enough to know my job was to stay well out of her lime light.

My mother told her fans and those she called her friends that she loved me, but I knew that was part of her image. How could you tell your friends you didn't love your own child? Truth was it was motherhood she hated. And any competition for attention. Maybe it wasn't personal, but why did she hang onto me so desperately? To me it seemed like mere sadism, that need to ruin things for me just when I was starting to have a bit of a life for myself. She would manufacture some personal crisis of hers that required my return home to Utah and I'd be trapped again. Why was I so dutiful? Why was I so obedient? It was then again the list of my many failures and shortcomings that would be hauled out and enumerated over and over just in case I'd forgotten how much of a failure I really was. I smelled bad to her, she hate my voice, I walked too fast or too slow, I payed to much attention to others and too little attention to her. I didn't share her hatreds or causes. She hated fat people. Though always skinny, I empathized with them. I always felt sorry for the targets of my mother's enmity, since I'd always been one. She said jump, I asked how high. Why was that? Why did I never have the courage to turn my back and walk away? Because she was my mother. That's the power a mother has. Use it well mothers. You have the power to warp a life forever.

Borrowed for Tom

2011-05-02T11:30:00.000-06:00

Edna St. Vincent Millay

02 May 2011 Borrowed from Katie Schwartz 0 In Great Quotes

“Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that’s permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish-and men do-
I shall have only good to say of you.”

Characteristics Of Fascism

2011-04-29T11:16:00.002-06:00

Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt
Source Free Inquiry.co
5-28-3

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

From Liberty Forum

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If You're Pro American, You're Pro Union

2011-02-20T17:30:00.003-07:00

I know that seems like a big leap, but I don't think it is. Union labor built this country and made the things we used to buy. Now that corporations have shipped all the good manufacturing jobs overseas there are fewer good jobs here for working men and women. About the only big unions left are the Public Sector Unions. Support your union workers. We need them and the wages they spend in our communities. Without them our cities would cease to be livable. I always loved this song. It's a relic of the days when we had healthy unions all over the country.

The Thirty Year Secret

2011-02-08T11:35:00.012-07:00

I got a call yesterday from a close male friend of mine who wanted to talk about something he'd just discovered about a girl he knew when he was a young man living in Portland and involved in the music scene there. I know so little about that particular music scene since grunge wasn't music that ever interested me. I know who Kurt Cobain was and I know who that hot mess Courtney Love is, and only the tinyist bit about their relationship. That's all I know about the Pacific Northwest's biggest contribution to the music world. I know grunge was the music of the Gen Xers. I don't know how generation X got the name or exactly what it meant, but I have a male friend who was there when it all happened and was a musician himself. He and friends of his knew many of the players in that music scene which in many ways defined their generation.

My friend got a call from one of his friends of that period with news about a lovely girl they both knew. She'd made the news in a particularly shocking way and what made it big news was the man who sent her spinning off into madness and a life of drug fueled self destruction. The man was Neil Goldschmidt, perhaps Portland's most famous politician. This is the story that finally hit the local Willamette Week on May 12th 2004. Old news, right? Nothing to see here, move along. It's the story of a coverup that mostly succeeded, and could only have hurt the girl in the story by revealing so little about her, so little about the consequences to her. Yes, there was much made of the consequences to the famous mover and shaker at the center of this story. It was a big bump in the road for Neil Goldschmidt but I'm willing to bet he's weathered the storm and is still moving and shaking and making money hand over fist. But the unnamed girl in the story? This is what happened to her. Now she has a name. Now that she is dead we know this lovely girl was named Elizabeth Lynn Dunham, and her downward spiral and death was an avoidable tragedy. Elizabeth Lynn Dunham might have had a normal life. She could have been a girl who wasn't seduced at thirteen by a man twenty something years older than she, a man so famous and powerful his reputation was much more important than her very young age or her possibly bright future. It was all about him and his very public bright present, past, and future. And the event wasn't just a one time thing. It went on for at least a decade or more. Now that she's dead we'll never know the complete story. But it's clear that the precipitating factor in her downward spiral was the sexual relationship Neil Goldschmidt began with her when she was thirteen. It's now known that Elizabeth's mother also knew this well guarded secret. Since the mother isn't talking, it's hard to know exactly when she knew, but that she knew is not in doubt. After her daughters ongoing "relationship" with Goldschmidt the mother got a job in the Goldschmidt camp. Would he have given her a job if he hadn't been schtupping her underage daughter? Who knows?

This story has brought up all the terrible events of my childhood. I kept my families secret for fifteen years. My father was a psychologist and my mother was his accomplice. The thing that kept me silent was shame. Like most very young victims of sexual abuse I was also an accomplice in that I didn't tell anyone. It took a cousin's suicide when I was twenty one to make me decide to tell my father I knew what he did to me and I needed help coping with the damage. During that one private confrontation I was told it was my fault. At age six I was a very seductive child. I begged for it. I made him do it. He was the victim. And then he threatened to have me committed to a mental institution for the rest of my life. Did that shut me up? No. Because once that genie is out of that particular bottle, truth is power. But once I'd told my father's sister and her family, I was shunned and then disinherited by his entire family. He returned all the photos of me, every letter I'd ever written him. It came in a package that might have been a delivery of pornography--in a plain box wrapped in brown paper with no return address. And that was it. They were all done with me.

I've been writing this story of mine for the better part of twenty years. I'm still working on it.

Addemdum: After my father's death I spoke to some lifelong friends of his who knew us all during the years of his abuse of me and the years after he stopped. They all knew about it. These are nice, well educated adults with children of their own. They did nothing. When I moved back to Salt Lake and into the family home I talked to the woman who was my best friend's mother when we were little kids. She knew. They all knew. And no one did anything. This seems to be the most ignored crime of all.

Barometric Pressure, the Sudden Onset of a Migraine, and the Homeopath, or How I Become a Flaming Asshole in a Matter of Seconds

2011-02-03T16:45:00.002-07:00

I have very few friends but one of them is so intent on convincing me my doctors are killing me I never have an encounter with her that I don't smack my forehead and wonder what the fuck was I thinking when I told her I was okay with her dropping by on short notice. For one thing she'll say she's in the neighborhood but it will take her an hour or two to arrive, and I almost always have a moment with her that I want to reach across the table and slap her a good one. So far I have resisted this impulse, but now I think for my mental health I should claim I'm unavailable next time she calls or I won't be able to resist the impulse. She thinks of herself as a homeopathic or naturopathic healer, but I think she should heal herself before she starts in on her friends. She has never taken my advise to seek psychiatric help so why should I take her advise to stop consulting actual medical professionals for my actual medical problems?

This latest contretemps started after dinner when her partner was trying to convince me I needed to learn the mathematical formula for calculating the slope of my back yard in order to use my neighbor's free irrigation water this Spring. My neighbor has offered year after year, but not to help with the actual process of setting this up. He says I need a small pump with a hose connected to it and, voila, I will be able to water my backyard for free too. I'm the kind of woman who is neither mechanically inclined nor interested in learning the why of certain things. The how will suffice for me. But I also have lower back problems due to working like a hod carrier when I was younger with untreated scoliosis as the starting handicap. Then in my fifties, while helping train polo ponies, I had my first bad fall in a lifetime of riding horses and landed flat on my tailbone on frozen ground. I ended up with almost a year of sciatica. It doesn't really matter why I now avoid doing certain things by myself, but the issue Sunday night wasn't about my personal labor, it was about my inability to grasp the concept of barometric pressure (the weight of air?) to calculate the slope of my yard. I simply know the slope of my yard is sufficient to accomplish this task-- it's a slightly greater slope than my neighbor's yard and no pumping is necessary for him to turn his yard into a pond on irrigation day every week of Summer. I don't need to know the mathematical formula to calculate the precise degree of slope. I don't need to know the weight of air. I need a man or mechanically inclined woman to help me with certain tasks. I just not that handy. I know when I need a handyman. (The reason I don't have my own water rights is my crazy mother's decision decades ago to give up her water rights. Once given up they cannot be restored. Use it or lose it applies to many things including water rights.)

This particular conversation gave me an instant migraine. I think math is tedious. I kept telling him to stop trying to teach me something I didn't need or want to know. But he's a retired physics professor and took my unwillingness to really try to learn it as a challenge. He just wouldn't give up. Finally I pushed myself away from the table to go in search of my migraine medicine. I was a bit frantic since the pills only work if you can take them at first sign of a migraine. I couldn't find them and settled for an 800 mg prescription Ibuprofen which is great for back pain, but a poor substitute for Midrin which I now have discovered has been taken off the market once again. Motherfucker!

The subject of my headache began a conversation about my history with headaches and my upcoming appointment for a neurological evaluation. There isn't a single member of my family who didn't die of either a massive heart attack (which left them instantly dead) or the slow and horrible death of vascular dementia. Sadly for me, it's the men who get the quick death of the heart attack and the women who all end up shitting their pants and wandering around the locked ward or a nursing home muttering obscenities and drooling for ten years. My plan is to get a baseline reading on brain health and then do a follow up every couple of years. I plan to take my life before I get to the shitting my pants and drooling stage, but it's a tricky bit of timing. Wait too long and it's too late to make any decisions.

My girlfriend thinks doctors kill you. She asks me why I need a neurological evaluation. Why test for a future that may not happen? Maybe I'll be the first member of either side of my family that doesn't succumb to the heart's attack or the brain's little bleeds and slow demolition. It's a very long shot, but I'm willing to imagine that I could be the only member of my crazy family to eventually get some unrelated illness that kills me. But you have to admit that we all eventually die, and it's often an unpleasant process, so why not plan ahead? There are many adventures I'm up for, but vascular dementia isn't one of them. She says, "Why have the evaluation? Why not just do what you're planning? Skip the tests and jump to conclusions." I'm damn near out of my chair trying very hard to keep my tone even and not slap her when I ask, "Why should I kill myself now, when I seem to still have my wits about me?!?" She says, "You seem to assume the outcome, why not skip the tests?" She has a grin on her face and seems to be suppressing laughter. "Why is this funny to you?" "It isn't funny, but..."

And since we've made this leap, I verbally pat myself on the back for having the good sense to make plans for my corpse. I've donated my body to the Anatomy/Medical School to use as it needs. Then, when the body's done being useful or most immature of male med students are through getting their jollies by scaring Sorority girls with the odd disembodied hand or foot, what's left gets cremated and disposed of and my name gets added to a marble wall in the Hospital's garden thanking those of us who donate for our contribution to learning. No funeral, no cost, no muss, no fuss. I'm not even in favor of memorial services, though you can't stop people from talking trash about you living or dead. I'm singularly unsentimental about death. I detach quickly. Once any body is dead, I cease to have any interest in it or fondness for it. What I have instead is memory, fond or not.

I think most of the rituals of death are insane and should be avoided. Especially the kind where the dying asks someone to take their ashes and sprinkle them over the Swiss Alps in the month of May or some nonsense like that. I think agreeing to do such a thing and then keeping the ashes on your dresser in a cardboard box for ten years because not to make the trip to the Swiss Alps in May is disrespectful of the wishes of the dead is the very definition of crazy. If you recognize yourself in this rant, I could be talking about you.

Teetering on the Brink of Depression

2011-01-19T12:49:00.003-07:00

In the aftermath of the shootings in Arizona almost every person speaking out about the shootings, and trying to figure out who Jared Loughner is and why he went on that rampage of gun violence targeting a specific Congresswoman and her aids and constituents, have pronounced him a madman, a homicidal maniac, a paranoid schizophrenic, a psychotic and more, all without a single mental health professional actually speaking with him and doing a mental health assessment. And all this flinging of the crazy is done in a country with very poor access to mental health care. I did hear one woman with mental health credentials (she'd been a profiler for the FBI) call him all kinds of crazy without actually speaking with him, based solely on the tiny bits and pieces pasted together from his You Tube videos and the brief comments of a "friend" of his. Not only is that kind of pronouncement hugely unethical, it's hugely irresponsible and prejudicial. If there was already an impediment to seeking mental health care due to the stigma of a diagnosis that labels one "crazy," there is now the extra stigma of being labeled such a danger to society that we crazy people should all be incarcerated to protect the rest of you undiagnosed crazies from us diagnosed crazies. It makes those of us who have sought help for our mental health problems worry that we are now viewed by our friends and neighbors as a ticking time bomb of potential homicidal rage. But these days, who isn't? And when you look around, how many of those who seem too angry or too unstable to be out in the world are not only gun owners but packin' heat at any given moment. Does this make you all feel safer?

Since the shooting rampage in Tucson, I've heard a great deal about the rights of all to buy a fully automatic Glock and an extended ammo clip but very little about the rights of all to receive mental health counseling. In fact in these hard economic times most states are cutting budgets for mental health coverage just as we're ramping up the fear and loathing of the mentally ill.

I know from my own experience with the mental health care system that it's not easy to diagnose a specific mental illness. I have been depressed since early childhood, but my depression wasn't treated until I was in my late twenties despite two suicide attempts, one in my late teens and one in my early twenties. I was called "moody". And despite the many years of therapy, it took an internist to put me on an antidepressant in my late twenties. She was smart enough to tell me that I would always need to be on an antidepressant. In fact, the first antidepressant was so effective that it's still a great drug for me, for my specific brain chemistry, despite all the new antidepressants on the market these days. I was in my mid-forties when I was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The reason this diagnosis took so long was that my mania was seen as unlimited drive, mercurial range, access to vast energy. I was called high strung. I was compared to a race horse. My whole system was speedier than average. I was a tightly coiled spring. I was a disaster in the making. But on the way to disaster I did a lot of very interesting things. I was articulate enough to get away with almost anything. I even owned a gun. And I almost pulled the trigger on a man in a moment of exasperation with him for not leaving me alone when I asked him to. Luckily for me, and for all the annoying men to follow, I got rid of the gun and never replaced it. Where is that stylish little Browning Semi-Automatic Pistol now? Probably in the hands of someone like Jared Loughner.

Armchair Psychiatry in the Wake of Political Assassinations

2011-01-11T10:43:00.004-07:00

Everyone seems so comfortable pronouncing Jared Loughner mentally deranged. I've seen him called paranoid schizophrenic and/or psychotic yesterday on Facebook, and heard nearly every pundit on MSNBC or CNN make similar pronouncements including calling him a homicidal maniac with the sole exception of Rachel Maddow. If we can agree that anyone who commits mass murder and/or political assassinations is crazy, then we can stop calling political assassinations terrorism when the person committing mass killings with a handgun has a Middle Eastern last name.

In the sense that Jared Loughner's had problems in school, was kicked out, tried to join the military and was not allowed to do so because he'd taken drugs or was on drugs or some other vague something about Jared Loughner and drugs is another fairly common part of his mental health assessment the armchair psychiatrists out there cite as proof that he was unhinged. (Drug use as evidence of insanity would make a high percentage of young men and women officially crazy on every single day in every place in the country at one moment or another.) He was arrested for having drug paraphernalia, but the charges were dropped. I haven't heard how long ago that happened, but it's part of his history and I trust an arrest record and a courts dismissal of charges. Are they determinative of his craziness? Not in my book, but I'm just the bipolar lady living in her garage who makes little secret that she self medicates with pot and has her whole life long. But then I believe almost all of you are self-medicating with one thing or another at any given moment. And who didn't go through a period of experimenting with some kind of intoxicant that your parents might have called you crazy for (if they'd only known what you were doing) back when you were young and rebellious?

The attempted mass assassination of United States Congresswoman Giffords and murder of her staffers and constituents, with a Federal Judge as collateral damage, is horrific, unspeakable. We can only make sense of it if the angry and alienated young man who bought the gun and ammunition and went on a very targeted killing spree was insane, was a homicidal maniac. No, he was a just another angry and alienated young white man in America in a state where the crazy seems to be in overdrive and anyone can go to the local store for guns and illegal ammunition.

It's a pretty safe bet that money for routine screening for mental health problems is nonexistent in Arizona where money for life saving organ transplants has been cut from the state budget in favor of providing $500 million to private prisons. Besides that, how many angry young men in America do you know who would avail themselves of the opportunity for a voluntary mental health evaluation? I'm guessing that a lot of young men would rather lose their left nut than be diagnosed with a mental illness. But once insnared in the system and diagnosed and treated with drugs and therapy, it's almost impossible to force young men to take the drugs that would manage their illness. Men are under served by the mental health system because they can't and won't admit they have a problem that requires medicating. It's stigmatized like nothing else in this country. I bet it's easier to take being called a fag than a psychopath. This has to be part of the reason that his schools, the police and courts, and the military were not willing to make treatment mandatory after coming into contact with a young man like Jared Loughner. Either the evidence of mental illness was thought to be too flimsy to make it mandatory in any of his brushes with authorities, or we don't know anything yet. But can anyone who targets large numbers of people for killing be considered sane? Is there a family in this country of 90% gun ownership who doesn't have an angry, alienated young man who isn't talking about why he's so angry, why he feels so alone?

We know that Jared Loughner was trying to get an education. He was attending a Community College and was evenually asked to leave and prohibited from coming back. He tried to join the Military and was rejected there. I'm sure each of these rejections fueled his alienation and anger. And even if he hadn't been able to buy a gun and amunition legally, he could have bought one from a private seller at a gun show or out of someones trunk in the parking lot of Wall Mart. Guns are easier to buy than antidepressants, and cheaper when you get right down to it.

Monday Rachel Maddow held up clippings for twenty or so mass shootings by young men with handguns all over the country in the past twenty years (which was a fraction of the actual number of such stories). It's not as uncommon as it should be. I'm not as shocked as I should be. Yes, I'm filled with sorrow for the family's of the victims. I'm hoping for a good recovery for Congresswoman Giffords. I'm stunned that no amount of slaughter with a single handgun with an extended clip can make us talk sanely about gun control. We are the most heavily armed nation on the planet. This is the one area where we are number one. There are 90 guns for every 100 people in the United States. I know, for most of you that's just a ho hum statistic. That's a sickening statistic to me. Because there is no way to force anyone into a taking a psych evaluation prior to buying a gun and ammunition. I think it should be a requirement for anyone buying a gun, but I'm just the crazy lady who takes her medications and doesn't own a gun. But I'd bet money I could go to any sporting goods store and buy a Glock drive a couple of blocks to Wall Mart and buy an extended ammo clip. It would make committing suicide a lot easier. The difference between a crazy old woman and an alienated young man is, he's far more likely to kill other people before killing himself.

Bad Air Equals Big Money In Utah

2011-01-06T17:08:00.004-07:00

Salt Lake City is infamous for it's bad air in the winter. It happens every winter and it seems to me that it gets worse every year, but I'm probably getting more sensitive to it as I get older. For at least a week, probably more like two weeks we've had RED AIR ALERTS every day. This means our air is toxic to breathe. The Red Air Alert is a warning to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary. I almost always think about the poor Mail Carrier trudging through this crude with weeping red eyes and a dry hacking cough as he/she worries about slipping on ice that no amount of ice melt will melt. Day time temperatures haven't been higher than the 20s in all this time, and the combination of trapped stinking air pollution also keeps the sun from reaching the ground. It's probably crystal clear and 20 degrees warmer at the ski resorts where I (when I was still skiing or living up Emigration Canyon) could look down on the Salt Lake Valley and see nothing but a bowl of thick taupe air that looked like a dingy blanket and wished I didn't ever have to breathe it again. The local news media euphemistically calls this crud "fog." I call bullshit on that.

We are governed by Mormon businessmen whose only goal is to get rich and richer and stay that way, by any means possible. The only exception to that rule is the occasional Democratic Mayor who spends all his time (sad to say Salt Lake hasn't elected a Liberal Democratic female mayor in my lifetime -Didi Coridini doesn't count) battling the Legislature and Governor trying to improve air quality standards and put in place fines for polluters. But we are now in the very big business of courting other countries toxic and radioactive waste, and I'd bet every penny I own that we're cutting corners on safety to make money for the dickhead politicians and their business cronies who are getting very rich in this business. Our motto isn't "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to be free," or something nice like that. Oh no, our motto is: "Give us the most dangerous toxic waste no one in the rest of the world feels safe living next to and we'll dump it near our biggest city, because we don't give a shit about anything but money and the end days are near anyway, so get it while you can." The company doing this is Energy Solutions and the guy running that operation is now on the staff of our new Senator, the very awful, very corrupt, Mike Lee. I hear he also has a lobbyist for Blackwater/Xi on his staff. This guy makes Orrin Hatch look like a saint.

Dead Birds Fall From Sky AGAIN In Louisiana, 300 Miles From Arkansas Incident Days Earlier

2011-01-04T14:25:00.000-07:00

The Redwing Blackbird story just gets worse

Blackbirds Falling From the Sky

2011-01-03T19:55:00.004-07:00

The story about Blackbirds falling dead from the sky by the thousands over Beebe, Arkansas makes me very sad. Killed by trauma in mid-air. What trauma? Breathing the air over Beebe, Arkansas? Why the huge fish kill in Arkansas?

Arkansas was the biggest producer of poultry in the US when I spent a year there living in Fayetteville, not all that far from the Tyson Chicken processing plants, surrounded with all the poultry farms that fed that enormous processing plant. Maybe the Blackbirds were dying of grief at what we're doing to another breed of bird or they died from flying through the fumes of chicken shit that hover over all those factory farms, producing nothing but chickens and eggs and unbreathable air. Probably produce some pretty toxic ground water as well.

Texas TeaParty Socialist-Free Purity Pledge

2011-01-01T16:54:00.000-07:00

(This was given to me by my doctor on my last visit. Shocking to many will be the idea that a doctor might not be a GOPer. Live and learn).

I____________, do solemnly swear to uphold the principles of a socialism-free society and heretofore pledge my word that I shall strictly adhere to the following:

I will complain about the destruction of the 1st Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 1st Amendment Rights.

I will complain about the destruction of my 2nd Amendment Rights in this country, while I am duly being allowed to exercise my 2nd Amendment Rights by legally, but brazenly, brandishing unconcealed firearms in public.

I will forswear the time-honored principles of fairness, decency, and respect by screaming unintelligible platitudes regarding tyranny, Nazi-ism, and socialism at public town halls. Also:

I pledge to eliminate all government intervention in my life. I will abstain from the use of and participation in any socialist goods and services including but not limited to the following:

*     Social Security
*     Medicare/Medicaid
*     State Children's Health Insurance Programs (SCHIP)
*     US Postal Service
*     Roads and Highways
*     Air Travel (regulated by the socialist FAA)
*     The US Railway System
* Public Subways and Metro Systems
*     Public Bus and Light-rail Systems
*    Rest Areas on Highways
*    All Government-Funded Local/State Projects (e.g. see Iowa 2009 federal senate appropriations-- http//grassley.senate.gov/issues/upload/Master-Approps-73109.pdf) Public Water and Sewer Services (goodbye socialist toilet, shower, dishwasher, kitchen sink, outdoor hose!)

*     Public and State Universities and Colleges
*     Public Primary and Secondary Schools
*     Sesame Street
*     Publicly Funded Anti-Drug Use Education for Children
*     Public Museums
*     Libraries
*     Public Parks and Beaches
*   State and National Parks
*     Public Zoos
* Unemployment Insurance
*     Municipal Garbage and Recycling Services
*     Treatment at Any Hospital or Clinic That Ever Received Funding From Local, State or Federal
      Government (pretty much all of them)
*     Medical Services and Medications That Were Created or Derived From Any Government Grant
      or Research Funding (again, pretty much all of them)
*    Socialist Byproducts of Government Investment Such as Duct Tape and Velcro (Nazi-NASA
      Inventions)
*     Use of the Internets, email, and networked computers, as the DoD's ARPENET was the basis for
       subsequent computer networking.
*     Foodstuffs, Meats, Produce, and Crops that were grown with, fed with, raised with, or that
       contain inputs from crops grown with Government Subsidies.
*     Clothing made from Crops (e.g. Cotton) that were grown with or that contain inputs from
       Government Subsidies.
*   If a veteran of the government-run socialist US military, I will forgo my VA benefits and insist
     on paying for my own medical care

I will not tour socialist government buildings like the Capital in Washington, D.C,

I pledge to never take myself, my family, or my children on a tour of the following types of socialist locations, including but not limited to:

*   Smithsonian Museums such as the Air and Space Museum or Museum of American History
*   The socialist Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson Monuments.
*   The government operated Statue of Liberty
*   The Grand Canyon
*   The socialist World War II and Vietnam Veterans Memorials'
*   The government-run socialist-propaganda location know as Arlington National Cemetery
* All other public-funded socialist sites, whether in my state or in Washington, D.C.

I will urge my Member of Congress and Senators to forgo their government salary and government-provided healthcare.

I will oppose and condemn the government-funded, and therefore, socialist military of the United States of America.

I will boycott the products of socialist defense contractors such as GE, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Humana, FedEx, General Motors, Honeywell, and hundreds of other that are paid by our socialist government to produce goods for our socialist army.

I will protest socialist security departments such as the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, TSA, Department of Justice and their socialist employees.

Upon reaching eligible retirement age, I will tear up my socialist Social Security checks.

Upon reaching age 65, I will forgo Medicare and pay for my own private health insurance until I die.

SWORN ON A BIBLE AND SIGNED THIS DAY OF______________ IN THE YEAR______.

____________________                                __________________________
Signed                                                             Printed Name/Town and State

Things Have Changed

2010-12-31T15:44:00.000-07:00

I'll tell you all about it later, but for now, Happy New Year, drive carefully, and don't drive drunk!

Turns Out George Orwell and Aldous Huxley Were Both Right

2010-12-27T13:24:00.001-07:00

I'm a news junky. And I ran across four pieces of news that grabbed me by the throat and haven't let go. I'm going to post links to them and hope a few of you will read, or watch, and feel like commenting. I know I've lost most of you with this long period of neglect, but today I'm going to try to remedy that neglect. This might be a little overwhelming; it has been for me, but this is the crux of the problem we're all facing. If you can't digest this all at once, come back and read it bit by horrifying bit.

The first story to catch my attention is this one: Trauma: how we've created a nation addicted to shopping, work, drugs, and sex

The second story is: America in Decline: Why Germans Think We're Insane

The third is: 2011; A Brave New Dystopia

The fourth is a video clip of Chris Hedges : Death of the Liberal Class:

Ezra Klein Gave This To Me...

2010-12-24T20:01:00.000-07:00

...and everybody else on twitter:

Happy Holidays, darlings.
Love,
Peggy

This May Be the End Of My Blog As We Know It; But I'll Use this Real Estate for Something

2010-12-23T13:01:00.000-07:00

This is as close as I can come to Holiday Spirit:

Listen and Learn

2010-12-12T13:10:00.000-07:00

This Is a Negotiation?

2010-12-09T21:03:00.000-07:00

I have been so angry I think I nearly had the big one yesterday. My head hurt so bad I thought it was a migraine, but the pain shifted around and the muscles at the top of my spine were like throbbing concrete. So it was not a migraine.

I had a hissy fit at the Smiths Superstore. I made my girlfriend very uncomfortable. Could be I'm having strokes. I blame it on the obstructionist Republican who hold us all hostage to their greed... And a President willing to give away the revenue we'll need to keep the whole thing from collapsing because the GOPers are bluffing a bad hand. Call it. Don't fold! Why the top 2%? Why not compromise with a cool $ million? Why two years? Why not one? My inclination is to say, "fuck em'"but that's one of many reasons I'm not a politician.

I'm reacting badly (slight understatement) to the news that we're going to give another two years of Bush tax cuts to the top 2% because the Republicans believe nothing is more stimulative to the economy than billionaires increasing their stock portfolios and buying another villa in Tuscany. This is not stimulative to the economy yet, seemingly, despite every evidence to the contrary we just have to toss truth aside and eat that shit!?!. Republicans are willing to shut down the government to get their way. Please President Obama, let them do it! Let's go back to the tax rates of the Clinton Years. Then veto every single sop to billionaires that crosses your desk. You made promises. We expect you to keep them. Do not negotiate with thugs and bullies. Let's let the country actually watch them have a tantrum and try to legislate for the top 2%, for the corporatist blood suckers and bankers. Don't we all just love the bankers these days?

Please President Obama, take a quick course is the art of the negotiation. When the polls are with us, why do the opposite? Bid low for billionaires and high for poor people and the middle class. We're Democrats, remember? We voted for change. We need jobs and they don't creat them. So bring it. I know you think you got a lot in return for us, but there is so much more you didn't. You didn't get unemployment benefits for the 99ers. Bush Tax Cuts expire for everyone, we go back to Clinton tax rates when we were at our best. I realize these are not the same economic conditions. We've lived with unfunded tax cuts for the uber-rich and two unfunded wars. The Defense Department is bloated. Afghanistan is a sink hole into which we will eventually be swallowed. It might already be too late but change course. Please, Mr President. Turn left!

My internist says there is an empathy gene. If someone is a plutocrat more than likely they're missing it. There is no room for anyone else at their table. The rest of us are merely here to serve them. They don't create jobs, they make them vanish. They get richer off your misery and loss. You lose your house? Goody goody for them. More cheap real estate for them to turn into shit like derivatives and credit default swaps or other kinds of Ponzi schemes to fuck you over again and again. First goes the job, then your house, then the car, and you'll be damn lucky to have a relative to take you in. Otherwise you're homeless without a safety net. Is this the country you want to live in?

The Reading Life

2010-11-24T21:27:00.001-07:00

The BBC predicts that most people have only read 6 of the following books. You bold the books you have read and put those you started but did not finish in italics. Then tag me and other people as usual for these things...

Samantha

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (I thought this book was total shit, but read it anyway).
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I can't seem to count this evening. I get started and Marley does something naughty and I get distracted. I can only say I've been a voracious reader. But for roughly the past four years I haven't been able to read a single book. I think cataracts might have been the problem. I have just had one eye fixed and I'm getting ready to schedule the other. My request has been to be able to read without reading glasses.

Dear Sharon Davis

2010-11-19T20:00:00.001-07:00

You wrote this powerful letter to the Salt Lake Tribune:

You didn't get mad:
>when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President:
>when Vice President Dick Cheney let energy companies dictate energy policy:
>when a CIA operative got outed:
>when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us:
>when we spent $800 billion on said illegal war:
>when we tortured people:
>when the government illegally wiretapped Americans:
>when Bush rang up $5 trillion in debt:
>when we gave the filthy rich half a trillion dollars in tax breaks:
>when we had the worst eight years of job creation in decades:
>when 200,000 Americans died because they had no health insurance:
>when poor oversight caused Americans to lose $12 trillion in investments, retirement, and home values:

You finally got mad as hell when a black President decided that Americans deserve the right to see a doctor.
Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, millions of job losses, stealing tax dollars to make the rich richer, and the worst economic disaster since 1929 were all OK, but helping fellow Americans to stay healthy ...oh hell no!

Thank you Sharon Davis

Mavis Staples: Hard Times Come Again No More

2010-11-12T21:33:00.003-07:00

Hard Times, Come Again No More.

2010-11-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

Left Eye Is Done

2010-11-09T12:55:00.001-07:00

Honey I'm home. The anesthesiologist was so stingy with the versed, so no buzzy nap for me. But I love the new glasses. I'll schedule the second eye in a week or two. So, how do I look? Remember, I'd had a shower cap on at the hospital and I haven't combed my hair since they took it off. But check out these glasses. I think they're a keeper.

Sight

2010-11-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

I'm getting ready for cataract surgery Tuesday. This photo of me is how I see the world now. Everything is muted, pale, slightly blurry even with my glasses on. My cataracts have gotten so bad I can no longer read normal sized print. I can no longer drive at sunset or at night. Glare makes me blind. I can no longer walk in the late afternoon because at some point I'll have to walk west and the glare of sun hitting my eyes will blind me. I wear glasses that turn darker as the light gets brighter and corrects the maximum for cataracts, but I haven't been able to read a book in two or three years. I used to read at least one book a day, at most, three or four. Now I just can't see well enough to read at all. Things have lost their color, their vividness. The world is a paler place for me.

It's time for me to put my house in order and start spending less time watching news. This winter I will read more and work on my own writing. I will keep order in my own tiny house and worry less about the House of Representatives. We lost the house; I just assume we'll get nothing done until after the 2012 presidential election. I have lost so many things in the tiny black hole that seems to exist somewhere inside my lovely little cottage. I have to empty one space after another until I've organized things so that I can put my hands on everything I need at any given moment. I need to bring my life back into focus. If I can accomplish these things I'll probably be happier, less angry, less anxious. So, I'm making these resolutions on the brink of regaining sight.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Writers

2010-10-30T19:11:00.002-06:00

I've been asked by one of my favorite women, the writer, Kathleen Maher, to list my fifteen or twenty five favorite writers. That's a hard one for me, since I've been reading gluttonously for a very long time and I tend to have categories of writers I love, so though all the writers I love in a single category might not be my favorites, I'm not able to discard them as "lesser writers." There are writers I love who are long out of print, so will seem very obscure. There are writers I love who are loathed by others for the brutality of their honesty, which isn't always pretty, but I prefer emotional truth to pretty or popular, though popular isn't necessarily a disqualifier. I also have favorite writers who didn't write novels. But that's another post.

For some reason the first writer to pop into my head is one of the Russians, and one of those who changed the course of the novel: Dostoyevsky is my favorite of the Russians, and my favorite of his books are Crime and Punishment, The Idiot. The rest of his body of work position him as the leading edge of a group of writers to follow. They aren't an easy read, but they're worth it. Many of you would no doubt argue with me concerning my linking Dostoyevsky to this particular group of writers: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Violette LeDuc, Andre Gide... I could go on and on with this list. And to make matters worse I'm not sure I can tell you exactly why I see this grouping of writers related. I've left out a lot of writers in this group and some of them are poets.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez led me to Mikhail Bulgakov, then Isabelle Allende. Can you see how this goes? Is it starting to make sense to you? I could give the groups a name but they have a beginning much earlier and they have influenced so many others. And I leave out so many other clues as to the logic of my groupings. Or if not the logic, the emotion.

I love Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (as it was translated when I read it in the 70s) and Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy for the same reasons, though they wrote in different eras and come from very different cultures and religious traditions. I also love Gustave Flaubert for one book: Madame Bovery, perhaps the perfect novel and ground breaking in its sensitive and brutally honest examination of a woman of spirit and beauty caught in the narrow grip of her bad marriage and the constraints of her time. This is one of many books I've read over and over. The writing is perfection.

I loved Thomas Hardy. And its hard to mention Hardy without including the Bronte sisters. Great reading for a broody adolescent girl.

I love Colette much more than Anais Nin. I loved Henry Miller. I think I read everything he ever wrote and found him perhaps the greatest of his generation. He was a marvelous painter as well. I have a small set of numbered prints.

I have a love/hate relationship with Vladimir Nabokov. If you've read my memoir/fiction you will understand. I believe Lolita is "The Great American Novel," and the only really great book he wrote. but that's all it takes to make a writer a great writer. I'm sure there are those who would argue with that...

I've read all the great Southern Writers and love them all, but these are some of the women who all seem to have something in common and part of it is their emotional honesty, their sense of history, their beautiful use of language, the ground breaking nature of their work: Carson McCullers (mostly for Ballad of the Sad Cafe), Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, who only wrote one novel, but what a novel, she, the childhood friend of Truman Capote... There are so many more.

So far I think we're up to 20 or so. It's a start.

That brings my list up to the 1950s. And though it seems I might be something of a modern classicist, I assure you I'm not. But I read very little that isn't considered literature. My only literary vice is the occasional fondness for the good detective novel. But even there, I have my standards. So before you recommend Stephen King, he represents everything I hate about the horror genre. I'm not a fan of Romance, or SciFi, either, though I have read a good sampling. I did like Ray Bradbury when I was a kid. I also liked Somerset Maugham when I was a kid. I read whatever was around.

I've barely scratched the surface and barely made it in to the middle of the last century. So, to be continued...

Oh Bummer!

2010-10-22T15:27:00.007-06:00

Yesterday I got the news about my gas heater out here in the little house. It's died and can't be resuscitated.

It doesn't take much to heat this room, and since the beginning I've had more heater than I needed. First it was an Army camp stove. I got up early, stoked the fire and got back in bed. I didn't have a kitchen then so cooking was done on the flat surface of the camp stove. I could make coffee. I kept milk, butter, eggs in a cooler on the front steps. I had a chopping block and cut kindling, morning and night. I was working at Nordstrom as the manager of the Personal Shoppers. I had to look like I was a walking ad for Nordstrom at all times. If only they could have seen me in my down parka with my jammies tucked into well worn Wellingtons out chopping wood in the dark of early morning before I started the morning transformation from winter camper to fashion maven. I drove to work in a '67 Chevy short bed pickup with an extra heavy transmission with no syncromesh so I had to double clutch in and out of every gear. It was cherry. Teen aged boys always wanted to buy it. They were dismayed by the incongruity of me in it. I loved that truck.

The second incarnation in heat was a bulky oblong brown metal box with a tall silver chimney that vents at the edge of the ceiling. I'll be happy to have the silver pipe gone since it completely ruins the look of the longest wall in the house. It is the only ugly element. Good riddance. And the cheap brown metal box with a grill on top and a grill in the front occupies primo real estate on that one long wall. I'll be glad it's gone. But the getting it out, and the place it stood repaired and repainted, is another thing. I'll have to go shopping for concrete paint. I'll probably have to repaint the wall and that particular triangle of ceiling. This will begin early Monday morning and take all day. And in the end I'll have a smaller quieter wall mounted gas heater. And my bank account will be greatly depleted.

We know where all this cleaning and painting leads, don't we? And now I have no one to help me paint the whole place. Bummer. That's what happens when you offend and alienate all the men in your life. If you're a youngish woman and you're reading this, take heed. Men have their place in your life. Male friends are good to keep. Otherwise learn how to do all this shit and have the proper tools. Last time Tom was asked to paint my ceiling he turned his face on the pillow and said, "Where's your scaffolding?" Tom was the best painter I ever knew. I didn't think he was terribly funny though. I hear his eldest son is a master painter as well. Both men are musicians.

This weekend I will be moving furniture around again. It wasn't more than a month ago I moved it all for the first time in three years. But until the new heater is in, I'll have no idea what to do with the arrangement in the room. For now I need to move things away from the most crowed wall. Paintings stacked in a safe corner. My two favorite bookcases are against that wall. They are heavy and packed. I will have to unload them to muscle them into another position. Everything will have to be draped and protected. I just got my computer back.

It's supposed to start raining tomorrow and turn to snow Monday. We'll have a freezing night and I'll need to make sure the Eastern Boys get their swamp cooler winterized from the inside out. This involves making a trip to Lowes. Bummer. Better get a new hammer and a few filters for the boys furnace while I'm there getting a strip of insulation for the swamp cooler. See how easily costs multiply?

And just to crowd time a bit more, I have to empty and store hoses, turn off outside water and bring all houseplants inside. Today's the day for that because the weather's taking a sharp turn toward winter. Even if I felt full of cheerful energy this would be a lot of work. But I woke up tired. And I can't perk up. Time to quit whining and muscle through it.

I just got the property tax bill. Shorter days, longer nights. Value down, taxes up. Has to be paid by the end of November. Merry Xmas.

Shit Happens

2010-10-19T17:59:00.000-06:00

I think it all began with my computer slowing down. Then it started acting wonky in other ways. And this seemed to coincide with my body going wonky as well. I had gut pain. I can't remember exactly when this all started but I imagine it began just after that horrible hospitalization for an abscess in my colon. I don't really think the abscess was half so bad as the actual hospital stay. I'm now hospital phobic. Thanks Salt Lake Regional Medical Center. Your dreadful care has made me prefer death to another visit to your ER.

I lose time. So does my computer. I have gut pain and my computer freezes up. This panics me so I finally schedule a colonoscopy and the prep nearly kills me. I ruin clothes with that horrible purge. No one warms you that you'll shit the bed, so fast comes the liquefied contents of your colon. I strip and deposit my clothing into a hefty bag and then the trash. Oddly enough, the photo of my colon looks like a pink and perfect babies butt. And for a week after the colonoscopy my bowel seems paralyzed. This worries me. My computer seizes up. I have to force quit every time I try to tweet. Why is my computer mimicking my body?

Next comes an episode of violent illness that scares me into scheduling a complete physical that is happening in stages, so thorough is it. This illness stricks in the middle of the night. I awaken from a sound sleep at roughly 3:00 AM. It is the shits. Not to gross you out, but so violent is this bout of liquified shit that I ruin two more sets of newish jammies. And as soon as I plop myself down on the toilet I strip the fouled clothing off my body and then the vomiting starts. There is no time to find a better place to vomit since I'm still emptying my gut into the toilet, so I lean over the tub and barf. This puking and shitting goes on for eleven hours. For three days I can keep nothing down. My neighbor thinks I should go to the ER. Fat fucking chance! No way in hell! I'd rather die at home.

And as soon as I think those thoughts my computer dies. Has my Imac become a modern day Hal? I dither about what to do. Phillip, the wonderful Sitenoise, runs some diagnostic tests and at first it seems to say that there is hope. But still my computer doesn't work. It seems to be saying, "I prefer not." like my favorite Melville character, Bartleby, the Scrivener. I seem to have a too close relationship with my computer. My own projections are infecting it. How odd.

So, now I'm starting to feel better but my computer seems to have died in my place. Could death been stalking me and the computer was generous enough to go in my place? I'm about ready to believe anything. Phillip and I have consulted over my options. Seems I will have to take my big honking Imac to the Mac Store in the Gateway Mall. I have been to that Mall three times since it opened and it was one man or another that force marched me into that hell hole. I swore I'd never return. Seems that's the only authorized Mac Store. Motherfucker!

I procrastinate. To be continued with less references to shit. And I have a new wardrobe. Happy Ending (if shopping is your idea of a happy ending).

My Computer is broke!

2010-10-03T16:57:00.000-06:00

Peggy seems to have worn the thing out. Damn iMac just couldn't take the beating. It needs to go to the shop, which is a major chore in itself, before final diagnosis and decisions are made: fix it or get a new one. Just so ya'll know. Could be a couple days or a couple weeks before we get her back online.

Fifty Fucking Questions!

2010-10-01T17:31:00.000-06:00

Here's the deal with questions like this. I think maybe ten of them are worth going into detail to answer, but my answers don't interest me much, so I don't feel like giving them in much detail. I have answered lists of questions before and at one time or another I was grateful for the list because I was stumped for something to write about. I'm not stumped about what to write about, I'm just not feeling well enough to write and I have chores to do. Real work, the kind that makes you sweat and tired. I'm starting out tired. I haven't been feeling tip top.

If you're a certain kind of person, you'll probably know just what I need to make me feel better and you'll be willing to tell me. I won't take your advise, so save your breath. I got a lifetime of good advise from people who supposedly loved me and it lead me away from listening to my own body, my own mind. It lead me to ignore my intuition, to put off my pleasure to pleasure someone else. Well, fuck that my dears. I'm listening to myself. And myself tells me I don't want to answer these questions. But never let it be said I wasn't a good sport. Just remember this about me. I'm not that nice.

1.How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are? Answer: I'd feel really fucking old.

2.Which is worse, failing or never trying? Answer: Oh give me a break!

3.If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do? Answer: Is this a trick question? My life has been twice as long as I thought it would be and I've done most everything except get a book published and a movie deal for it. I didn't have a child, but that was my choice. I wasn't good at love, but I think I'm the kind of person who needs to live alone. I didn't make a lot of money because I wasn't ambitious for money; I always valued time more than money. Oh, and though I have been to Paris, I haven't lived there. But the why and how of other people and the things they do and don't do is a mystery to me.

4.When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done? Answer: I will have done more than I should have, and said less than I wanted.

5.What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world? Answer: War? Religion?

6.If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich? Answer: Riding horses, having chickens, rabbits, a sunny garden. I don't want much. I'd like to see my writing in print and on the big and/or little screen. That's as big as it gets for me.

7.Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing? Answer: Yes.

8.If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently? Answer: I probably wouldn't change a thing but the parents I had.

9.To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken? Answer: To very little degree. My life led me around by the nose.

10. Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things? Answer: I'd like to know I could do a few things right, and I don't give a shit about doing the right things. No, I have to modify that a little. I'd like to write a good enough query letter to find my way into print and then onto the big and/or little screen. I've written a number of things I'm damn sure would make good cinema or a good television series. Having to write the ad copy to sell my writing has brought me to a screeching halt. Oh did you mean some altruistic thing?

11.You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire. They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend. The criticism is distasteful and unjustified. What do you do? Answer: I'd let them finish trashing my friend then tell them she/he is my friend. Then I'd watch to see how they react.

12. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be? Answer: I give advise to no one.

13.Would you break the law to save a loved one? Answer: Yes. I'd break some laws just for fun. I'll let you figure that one out.

14.Have you ever seen insanity where you later saw creativity? Answer: I see my own insanity almost every day. It is probably why I'm creative.

15.What’s something you know you do differently than most people? Answer: I live in my garage. Do you? I didn't think so.

16.How come the things that make you happy don’t make everyone happy? Viva le differance! Answer: seems to me you answered your own question.

17.What one thing have you not done that you really want to do? What’s holding you back? Answer: See question #10

18.Are you holding onto something you need to let go of? Answer: I've always been able to turn my back and walk away from everything but my mother. I was advised by two very good therapists to get away from her and never look back, but I waited to long. Then as her only living relative, I was legally responsible for her. Now I'm just living my life day by day. Most of the time it's pretty good. I even say to myself now and then, "I love my life."

19.If you had to move to a state or country besides the one you currently live in, where would you move and why? Answer: Maybe live in France or Denmark.

20.Do you push the elevator button more than once? . Do you really believe it makes the elevator faster? Answer. Yes. No.

21.Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton? Answer I'd rather be a mostly happy person of above average intelligence.

22.Why are you, you? Answer: Nature/Lack of nurture/too much abuse and stress early on/the genes for bipolar disorder/the kind of looks that made me prey when I was young and made choosing a career modeling very seductive and easy/the shame that I made my living by my looks/marrying the wrong men/loving the wrong man.

23.Have you been the kind of friend you want as a friend? Answer: I think I'm basically a pretty shitty friend. So no, I don't think I'd want myself as a friend. I can be entertaining and fun now and then, but I don't take crap from anyone and I call bullshit on those I love. I hate most parties, I don't drink so bars no longer interest me, and I'd rather stay home so I you want to see me you have to come to me. I'm unsentimental about death. This horrifies most of my friends. But my lack of sentimentality has led me to leave my body to the U of Utah Med School when I die and to plan to have a way out if I need it. I have a friend who has told me he'll come here to be with me when I decided to take my life. I know he won't and I wouldn't want him to. No matter how many people are around the bed of the dying, we all die alone. And when we're gone life moves on, as it should.

24.Which is worse, when a good friend moves away, or losing touch with a good friend who lives right near you? Answer: Losing touch with a good friend who lives close by. I have one of those three houses away. It was her choice. I honor her decision.

25.What are you most grateful for? Answer: That I lived long enough to survive my awful parents. Knowing that my father suffered a horrible death. See what I mean when I say I'm not that nice? I'm not willing to pretend. I have no shame.

26.Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones? Answer: I'd rather keep the old memories. It's been great material. And I don't plan to have a bunch of new memories. My short term memory sucks but my recall of distant events is clear and sharp.

27. Is is possible to know the truth without challenging it first? Answer: Yes. Fire burns! Unless you're on acid. Then anything is possible.

28. Has your greatest fear ever come true? Answer: Yes. It was having to care for my mother when she became the same old bitch only demented and incontinent. She got meaner with each passing day. I became her prisoner and slave.

29.Do you remember that time 5 years ago when you were extremely upset? Does it really matter now? Answer: Which time?

30.What is your happiest childhood memory? Answer: Riding horses. What makes it so special? Answer: My parents didn't ride.

31.At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive? Answer: When I was flirting with Darkblack.

32.If not now, then when? Answer: Oh bother. I'll think about that tomorrow.

33.If you haven’t achieved it yet, what do you have to lose? Answer: Everything. Nothing.

34.Have you ever been with someone, said nothing, and walked away feeling like you just had the best conversation ever? Answer: Probably. I was probably stoned, too.

35.Why do religions that support love cause so many wars? Answer: that is the question of the ages. I'd love to take that Pulitzer Peace Prize and then the Nobel that's sure to follow, but I haven't a clue why anyone believes in a religion, let alone why they are willing to kill in its name.

36.Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil? Answer: No. And only a simpleton like George Bush talks in those terms. The axis of evil my ass. Call someone part of the axis of evil and you've got nowhere to go but to war.

37.If you just won a million dollars, would you quit your job? Answer: No, I like my job since I'm my boss. I'd give myself a raise and go to Paris.

38.Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you actually enjoy doing? Answer: With that million I won, I'd contribute to improving the economy of a window washer, a gardener, a contractor and crew to remodel both houses. And in so doing change the work I do from laborer to supervisor on my own project.

39.Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before? Answer: No. Everything changes even if it seems to stay the same.

40.When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in? Answer: A month or so ago when I was forced by this economy to get a reverse mortgage.

41.If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today? Answer: I'd be enjoying my last day alive as quietly as possible.

42.Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous? Answer: No.

43.What is the difference between being alive and truly living? Answer: I don't know but I'm truly alive.

44.When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right? Answer: I have seldom calculated risk and rewards. I've done what I felt I had to most of the time. I wasn't always right. I probably won't be in the future either.

45.If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake? Answer: Probably because we know how costly some of our mistakes have been. There are endless opportunities to make more mistakes in the future and no way to avoid them all. The constant nature of change makes it a certainty there will be new experiences where the past isn't exactly a road map for the future.

46.What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you? Answer: I'm finally doing what I would have done if I'd known I had any other options than the ones that presented themselves at the time.

47.When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing? Answer: At my last doctor appointment when I was asked to breathe this way and then that way. My lungs are clear. I have huge lungs. I don't live with the constant stress and tension I did in the days when I was living with men or in my mother's presence. So I no longer hold my breath in order to keep from feeling my real feelings.

48.What do you love? Answer: Writing, when it flows. Dreams, when I have them. Sleep, when it comes. Dogs, cats, horses, the occasional person.

49.In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday? What about the day before that? Or the day before that? Answer: Check my answer to question #39. The only certainty is change. No day is ever exactly the same as another. I might remember this day in almost every detail, but I won't remember that it was five years ago. I will probably think it was two or three years ago. Time flies when you get this old.

50.Decisions are being made right now. The question is: Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you? Answer: I do what I can to influence outcomes. For instance, I donate what I can and I vote. I sign petitions, I express my opinions. I write about the things that matter to me when I can write. I do what I can but I'm not that fucking powerful. No one person is. I make decisions every day but they won't matter much except in small ways and mostly to my cat and dog.

Upon reading through this I find I lost interest about half way through. So I haven't proof read these answers.

Stasis

2010-09-28T20:34:00.002-06:00

I should do a little research and see if this lassitude, this almost dormancy is cyclical. I have lost the will to write anything longer than a comment or tweet. Has Twitter ruined me? Perhaps. But I was cranking out posts at a rate of two a day for much of my first year on Twitter, so I can't really put this all off on Twitter. And truth be told, I'm even neglecting Twitter.

I don't feel well. It's just the same old stuff. My platelet count is down again. I'll bet my cholesterol is up again. My colon is fine for now, but knowing me and how little water I'm naturally inclined to drink, it won't be fine for long. The only time in my life as an adult I didn't eat healthy was during the worst of the time of caring for my heinous and demented mother. There came a point I just didn't have the energy for cooking, so I lived on cereal and Budget Gourmet. But those days are long past. And I've been eating healthy for five years now. I don't walk far enough or long enough, but I'm working on it. There, so much for my health.

I suspect my lassitude has more to do with political fatigue and the too fast ending of long days. I'm sensitive to short days. I need sunlight and time. Winter is coming and now I have work to do outside. I've neglected the yard this year. I haven't finished enlarging the path and patio here from the little house to the front house. I didn't realize how much Ms M did to make the front of the house look good. I hardly ever venture out front except to pick up mail or coming and going with Marley when we walk. I have set water several times to find it turned off by one of the young men in the front house. They think half an hour is plenty. Not for trees, it isn't. I haven't felt well enough to mow, but then when you hardly ever water, the lawn doesn't grow much.

I have cut the Iris, pulled vines out of trees, raked the pine needles, trimmed the mint. I will cut the Vinca from the paved paths, pull the bulbs from the beds too close to the house. I will re pot house plants getting ready to bring them inside. But what I cannot do is write. Not for the time being. I will wait for the leaves to turn and fall and then I will rake.

Little Fly

2010-09-26T13:41:00.001-06:00

The Process of Esperanza Spalding

2010-09-25T12:57:00.000-06:00

Because of You, Christine O'Donnell...

2010-09-18T16:18:00.000-06:00

I'd given up masturbation because of a lack of desire, but I'm now pledging to masturbate at least once a day as a protest of sorts. Christine O'Donnell, it's all because of you! If only you'd have claimed ice cream was the sweet sweet way to win your hoped for Senate seat, I'd be giving up ice cream instead of taking up masturbation. Maybe the calories burned during masturbation will offset the calories consumed eating ice cream.

I Suffer From A Lack of Passion...

2010-09-15T19:03:00.035-06:00

It feels like battle fatigue. I had a form of that growing up and it never quite ran away.

I look back at that sentence and my first impulse is to fix it, but that Freudian quality is just what I'm talking about. I thought it would be easier after I recovered from being my mother's caregiver, but the financial disaster her illness created for me is still (six years later) rippling out into the rest of my life. And it makes me feel like selling my jewels to keep the farm. Instead I sold the farm to keep the farm. This is the magic of the Reverse Mortgage. Next, if I can find that top hat, I might try a rabbit trick.

The book I wrote, The Narcissist, is about my nightmarish relationship with my strange mother. I thought when I finished it things would change. I now wonder if I can't write a query letter because I'm not done with the book yet. Does it need a rewrite? Why can't I write a synopsis? What's the book about again?

I felt a few moments jubilation when I thought I finally figured out the device to bring the narrative into the first person present tense, to hold the story together, to give it a focus, to keep it in the moment, to give it life. I did that last rewrite and thought I was finished. But then the next step would have been to write a query letter and a synopsis. I'd have had to pick a genre, and sell it like cereal. Is it my desire to be discovered and thus forgo all the grubby work of finding an agent and getting published? Oh fiddle de de. Am I just a dabbler?

I did have a Scarlett O'Hara moment, thinking "I'll think about that tomorrow" the last time I pondered the Query quandary and then promptly followed my bliss into a flirtation with a man I've never met (nor ever will) which temporarily revived my libido and was cause for some slightly reckless solitary celebration and that turned into the first six chapters of a new book.

Then someone talked me into joining Facebook. I wish I knew which one of you to blame for this time-sucking obsession but it's the reason I can't writing anything except the occasional comment. It isn't Twitter's fault this time. Facebook has me stalking the great news story and friending my favorite reporters. It's Facebook's fault.

At about the time I joined up, Fairlane (a man who used to scare me) asked me to contribute to a new blog, Black Magpie Theory. I kind of worshipped Fairlane from afar, years ago (how sick is that to worship a man who scares you) so my ego made me say "yes" without giving much real thought to it. (I think some version of this is what was wrong with all my relationships with men.) And then insecurity set in. And then the invitation became a meeting, and then the deadline became a reality. I couldn't meet my deadlines. Other writers (like Lisa and Tengrain) said it better, and I wasn't posting much on my blog either. You know the rest. I'm not writing.

When will the dry spell end? Your guess is as good as mine.

The Orange Man Lies

2010-09-14T10:12:00.008-06:00

I'm upset about the political gamesmanship going on, worried we might have that orange faced jackass, Boehner as the new Speaker of the House. For god's sake people, do you expect a two year fix on a financial crisis that took eight years in the making? Are we like toddlers who throw a tantrum when we don't get our Popsicle now, this instant? Barack Obama is not a magician and the economy isn't a rabbit to be pulled out of a hat. The party of No is still saying No, no matter what John Boehner claims he's now "willing to compromise" on. And if you believe Boehner is willing to compromise on taxes, you're very very gullible. Boehner's constituency is the top 2% of taxpayers. The Republicans represent those who can afford to pay a very high priced tax accountant to find ways to avoid any taxes at all and the big corporations who donate to their campaign coffers. They don't give a rats ass about the middle class or small businesses. When you hear Boehner talk about the tax breaks for the rich (set to expire soon, since they are not, nor ever were, deficit neutral) he frames it as a tax hike for "middle class businesses" and this is double speak. Letting a tax cut for the rich that was scheduled to run out due to the fact that it was never deficit neutral and so had (by law) to expire in 10 years run out is now being called a tax increase by the GOPers.

Give lower income families jobs and a tax break and they'll spend the money on goods and services that stimulate the economy. Give the rich a tax break and they'll save the money. They don't need it so why spend it. If you have the slightest doubt about this watch this clip. It breaks down the income brackets and how they fare under Republicans versus Democrats:

Glade

2010-09-12T20:27:00.017-06:00

Golden dimpling light, the short green spikes of Iris dead remain
Cut to please the neighbors before the freezing rain, October comes

And in this moment’s gesture, arm outstretched, remember longing, for it’s pain
I love my life if only for this momentary fire in the brain, a flash, and that’s enough

Can’t say I ever loved myself. I felt defective from the start.
Not good enough for anybody’s love, it was my shame.
I have been told, “You’re pretty.” What does it mean in any way that matters?
Why not the ecstasy of adolescent longing? Why not the waiting by the phone?
I hate the whipsaw of control and need. I’d rather die alone

A leap into the void without the faith that anything will hold
Crossing on the Michelangelo. Accompanied by a charming thief
I climbed the winding, narrowing streets of Rome. Accosted naked in a baking
Windblown room, I ran and never loved a man who loved me too
I spent my life retreating from desire. What makes me think that words will save me now?

A picture of a naked child, she sit and stirs the dirt, her smile just barely there, sublime.
The dog attends ears pricked and staring at the camera, he keeps them all away
The danger of the man who disappears. I look away and find a rapture
In the glade, a patch of dirt, the dog, the memory of the man, and that's enough.

©2008 Peggy Pendleton

The News Is Making Me Sick

2010-09-08T19:01:00.006-06:00

So many things are going on simultaneously that I can't focus my outrage enough to write anything but a screaming tweet now and then.

It isn't just the batshit crazy cracker "pastor" in Gainsville, Florida with a "congregation of fifty and the scheme to burn Qurans to make some kind of statement (though no one has yet been able to quite decipher it). I think I heard on one of the news programs that this snake oil salesman turned "pastor" has written a book of his own, so simple publicity is most likely his motivation. But the insanity of one church burning the sacred book of another church is as irreligious as anything I've ever heard of and I'm an old atheist. No matter that General David Patreus, the favorite General of the GOP has made a plea that this act of sacrilege should not go forward, still no GOPers have stepped forward to speak out against this moron and tell him to knock it off.

It isn't just Newt Gengrich and others on the RWNJ side of the aisle who are demagoguing the Park 51 Community Center and Mosque by calling it the "Ground Zero Mosque," which is bull shit, since there are many businesses closer to "Ground Zero" (that gaping hole in the ground) some nine years after the attacks, that are far less sacred than a church and far more insulting to the whole concept of sacredness, like a strip joint and a smattering of fast food places. The whining from the Glenn Becks and Sarah Palins of the world about how hurt we all are makes us seem like "The Land of the Emotionally Delicate, and the Home of the Xenophobic." What a bunch of ninnies!

The Brits carried on during the Blitz, which lasted a very long time and with a stiff upper lip as they fought World War II, a war far closer to home than Saudi Arabia (where our attackers came from) and the rest of the Middle East is to us. But that Saudi Arabian reality wasn't convenient for the Bush family who have business dealings with the Saudi royal family that goes back a long time, so, we went to war with Iraq instead while pretending we were serious about chasing Osama bin Ladan in Afghanistan and bankrupted our country in the process. There is much to say about this but it's only one of the many things pissing me off and putting me off writing. It's also making me physically ill.

I'm a Stranger In A Strange Land: Utah

2010-09-05T11:25:00.000-06:00

A Crazy Mother, Death and Property Taxes: My First Economic Meltdown

2010-09-01T18:54:00.001-06:00

There was a perfect storm of catastrophes ten years ago in my life. I was living alone in my house, modeling, acting, and doing a bit of production work as a stylist. My biggest client was ZCMI or Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institute (owned by the Mormon Church) a large and successful department store that ran multiple daily ads in the two Salt Lake newspapers, the occasional ad in the big glossy fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and ads on television as well as the inserts in the statements they sent out. They also provided a lot of runway work for models. They put on some of the biggest fashion shows around and I had been for several years one of their favorites. They accounted for 80% of my income. I had a great agent and was doing well enough to begin investing in the stock market. I'd been making enough money in the five years preceding 2000 to have a nice little stock portfolio. I had five credit cards with very generous limits and very low interest rates. I traveled (for work and for play). The Clinton years had been exceptionally good for me. I, like many investors, was fond of tech stocks. Then it all came crashing down.

The first catastrophic thing that happened to my happy life was the closing of ZCMI. There was no prior warning. It happened quickly, like a beheading. And it changed the opportunities for tens of thousands of people in so many different businesses in Salt Lake. It was devastating for photographers and the people working with them, the TV production people who worked on those commercial shoots. It was hard on agents and all the talent working on the shows, print ads, and TV commercials. The people who did lights and music for shows lost major accounts. Since I was a model in print, TV, and fashion shows as well as getting booked as a make-up artist and stylist, I was devastated.
A lot of the people who worked in the stores as buyers, department managers, sales staff, and custodial staff were in their forties and fifties, not yet old enough to retire but too old and too experienced to easily transition to other retail outlets without taking huge cuts in pay and jobs that didn't reflect their decades of work in the fashion industry.

Then the tech bubble burst and I began to lose money in the Stock Market. I hadn't been taking dividends out of the market but rolling them back into my investments. At first I lost that money I'd been leaving in my accounts that could have been income. Then I started losing capital and finally I pulled out of the Stock Market. Work slowed to a trickle. Bush was handed the Presidency by the Supreme Court and from that moment on my life became hell.

My mother, Maggy, went spectacularly crazy in Santa Barbara in 2000. As her only child, I was informed she was my legal responsibility. Part of her craziness was giving all her money to the guys running the scam called The Canadian Lottery. The Feds and Mounties were investigating these crimes and asked for my help in finding out the name of the person Maggy was sending her money to. I could account for only $100,000 that was taken out of her bank accounts in $25,000 chunks as cashier's checks wired to a mail drop in Canada. But at least we had documentation that her identity had been stolen along with her life savings. She'd started cashing checks from various secret bank accounts and hiding hundred dollar bills in books or behind photos or tucked in seemingly unrelated files in a file cabinet in her apartment in Santa Barbara. I only know this because after bringing my crazy, incontinent, mean mother to Salt Lake, I had to fly back to Santa Barbara, empty and clean her apartment and storage unit. I had three days to do it without lights or heat or hot water in cold and rainy weather. The utilities had been turned off before I managed to get her to Salt Lake. I spent thousands of dollars on plane tickets between here and there, as well as car rentals and all of this was done while I hobbled on a painful freshly broken ankle and foot. And during this time of getting her and most of her stuff from there to here, I lost thousands of dollars in bookings. My agent was frantic to get me working again.

Once I had her here, I had to be her full time caregiver because I couldn't afford to hire a skilled baby sitter to replace me, or a nursing home. My mother kept trying to run away, usually wearing only a skimpy sweater and not another stitch of clothing with shit dribbling down the backs of her shriveled legs. I changed all the locks, locked the gate, and held us both prisoner. I had her in my care until I was bankrupt. I was so depressed and exhausted I could no longer get out of bed. I had to lock her in my room with me, since I couldn't let her out of my sight. After four years of caring for her, I was hospitalized for two and a half weeks and she went into a nursing home.

She died almost five years ago. I'm still recovering from the financial ravages of that shit storm of misfortunes. Taking care of my mother

Now I'm taking care of the house she left me and which I can't afford to live in. And I'm not alone in this predicament given the current financial meltdown.

(the link is to my novella called: The End Of Life As We Know It)

My Twitter Friend, 42bkdodgr Wrote This. It's Exactly How I Feel

2010-08-26T11:05:00.003-06:00

Ashamed
I am ashamed by what is happening in our country.
I’m ashamed that we have a political party that has nothing to offer but fear and hate, so it creates chaos on non-issues such as “death panels” and having a “Cultural Center and Mosque near the 9/11 site”.
I’m ashamed that we have a political party that boasts it believes in the Constitution, then does everything to rip it and tear it apart; by wanting to change the First, Fourteenth, and Seventeenth amendments, because they don’t meet their ideology.
I’m ashamed that one of the purported leaders of a political party has no understanding what the First Amendment means. A person who feels she can say whatever she wants without being criticized. A person who believes if you criticize her you are infringing on her freedom of speech, yet doesn’t understand that railing against those who criticize her, she is infringing upon their First Amendment rights.
I’m ashamed that we have a political party who thinks its more important, during our worst economic times, to block or delay everything that would improve or help the lives of the American people that the President or Democrats in Congress propose.
I’m ashamed that a political party would vote NO on practically every bill, even on ideas they previously supported, only because the president has adopted them.
I’m ashamed we have a political party where its more important to make the president look bad than do what is best for the country.
I’m ashamed that we have a news network that purports itself to be “Fair and Balanced”, then does everything to demean and spread misinformation about our president, while openly supporting the Republican Party and Tea Baggers.
I’m ashamed at what has happened to the civility in this country during the last 18 months. We can thank Rush, the right wing media, especially the “Republican Fox New Network” for this.
I’m ashamed that the right wing likes to treat our president as “not one of us”, with their outrageous accusations that he wasn’t born in the USA and that he is a Muslim, when evidence proves they are wrong.
I can go on and on about what makes me feel ashamed or embarrassed about what is happening in our country, but one thing I do know, we are destroying our country from within and doing Al-Queda’s work.
I am ashamed, but still very hopeful, that Americans who truly believe in the principles of the Constitution and for what it stands will reject the fear and hate being spread, as they have done in the past, and move this country to a better tomorrow.

This was first posted at: The Political Carnival

Mercinaries: The Threat No One Is Talking About

2010-08-22T10:56:00.001-06:00

As I was watching MSNBC’s live coverage of the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq Wednesday night, I kept thinking about our troops left behind. We left 50,000 non-combat troops in Iraq to provide security for our Embassy and “other” interests.
MSNBC had some vague mention of private (for profit) contractors in their coverage last night. Mentions of private contractors are always vague. I want a policy-wonk journalist to go after this story, find out what they do and for whom and at what cost. What are we paying them to do? What have they done?
We know so little about these private contractors with huge no-bid contracts for…whom? the CIA? the State Department? the Pentagon? the Defense Department of the United States Government?
We know that the State Department uses private security forces to guard diplomats and politicians traveling in foreign countries. We know that they work for the CIA. We pay their salaries.
One of the private contractors is Xe Services LLC; that is their official name now. They used to be called Blackwater, and then Blackwater Worldwide until that name became too associated with lethal lawless cowboys, unrestrained, unregulated, uncounted, murdering civilians in Iraq.
When Blackwater became an embarrassment for the United States, Eric Prince changed the name of his private army. But Blackwater by any another name is still a lethal and uncontrolled threat.
To me, they represent the most lethal form of cancer a body politic could have. No one in our government controls them. They are not part of the government, we do not control them but we pay for them.
Wikipedia tells us that “Blackwater USA was formed in 1990 to provide training support to military and law enforcement organizations.” The part of that simple statement that takes my breath away is the “…law enforcement organizations”. I imagine by now they are everywhere.
A private army embedded in our body politic is a dangerous thing.
In a time of economic difficulties where corporations are bigger than countries and authoritarianism is on the rise, a private army training 40,000 people a year to embed our law enforcement agencies (but not playing by the same rules) is insanely dangerous to the security of our country.
Fascism with a private army is a time bomb within and it’’s ticking.

Mosque Madness

2010-08-20T14:16:00.000-06:00

Fighting Like Cats and Dogs

2010-08-18T20:01:00.001-06:00

Bob is obviously quite relaxed with Marley. They sleep together often. But when they play with each other it looks like Marley is going to kill Bob. Marley's long mouth is open wide like an Alligator and she seems to be trying to gnaw through Bob's throat. Bob's arms are either softly embracing Marley or Bob looks dead: limp on his back, legs splayed, tail relaxed. Then Marley switches her attention to taking Bob's mouth and nose into her gnawing jaws. She makes a moaning kind of vocalization. Bob occasionally squawks. I make Marley back off and Bob pounces on the obedient Doxie, doing all the same things to Marley that were done to him.

Bob will walk away like a matador, then turn with his ears back and flat, whirl and make a run at Marley. Sometimes he attacks and sometimes he just pretends to attack. It's a very engaging play. I wish I could film them.

Sanctify This!

2010-08-17T17:05:00.002-06:00

Religious freedom is supposedly the reason you descendants of the English came to this continent in the first place. It is the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.^[1]

^{And yet, the GOPers want to deny Muslims the right to build a Mosque in lower Manhatten. They want to make it a campaign issue in the upcoming mid-term elections. So we have an oportunity to talk about all religions. As an atheist I think they're all bunk, but I would, as a citizen of this country, defend your right to believe whatever bunk you want in the name of "God" and call it religion. I don't think any of you deserve tax exempt status just because you call the space you "worship" in a Church. But, I don't have the power or the right to deny you a status you claim as a religious organization. I don't want you building a Church in my neighborhood, but if you own the property and have the money to do it, you can build your Church Of The Christian Holy Mumbo Jumbo any place you want. But you Republicans want to deny this freedom to American Muslims. Notice that I said, "American Muslims?" How do you justify this bigotry and call yourselves Christian or American?}

^{White people on the political right seem to have forgotten American History. This seems to me to be a failure of our education system that so many white folks graduated from High School without learning anything about the founding of this country and the establishment of our government. Tea Partiers need a remedial course in the Constitution. The Second Amendment seems to be the only Amendment that makes sense to the far right, and yet they claim liberals want to destroy the Constitution. It's a kind of mass projection to blame your opponant or competeter of that sin which you commit. If you Christians hold any document sacred, it ought to be the document that guarantees you your religious freedom. Just remember it also gives the same rights to anyone from any culture who has become a citizen of this country the right to worship in a Church of their choosing.}

The Well Is Empty

2010-08-15T11:26:00.000-06:00

I feel I have nothing to say. If someone asks me a question about politics, I can answer it, but I can't write about it anymore. It's just as well since there are a million things that need doing in my domestic life. The yard's too big and too much for me to handle alone. I wish the boys would step up to the plate and help out a bit but it isn't going to happen. They're into sports in a big way and into their girlfriends, which is as it should be. I'm so glad to be rid of the black cloud that was the couple before the boys, so I do the minimum necessary to keep the trees alive and don't water the lawn much because I'd just have to mow more often if I kept it greened up. All my neighbors have taken out the grass on their parking strips and have zeroscaped. It's the smart thing to do, and I plan on doing it every year, but just don't get around to it. Maybe next Spring. But now it's time to get the yard and garden ready for Fall and then Winter. It will be a lot of work for the next three months. I have so many trees and none of them are on the same leaf drop schedule. It all begins with the biggest tree in my urban forest and for two months I'll be cleaning up leaves.

I worked pretty steadily on enlarging my walkway and patio space back here, around the gazebo, until it got too hot and then I moved inside and stopped doing anything as I got my Facebook addiction up to the level of my Twitter addiction. Cyrus died, Roscoe moved to Savannah, and then Bob showed up. I'm happy to have a cat again. I didn't realize how much I've missed having a cat. Now I want to get or make a big scratching pole for Bob. I'm also happy not to have to pick up fifty pounds of dog shit a week. I'm glad I no longer have the big Vet bills that taking care of Cyrus generated. He had so many health problems. And yet, there isn't a day that I don't look at Cyrus' bed area expecting him to be there and most days it feels as if he's still with us. He and Roscoe ate mass quantities of dog food. Marley and Bob are very dainty eaters in comparison. Well, Marley isn't exactly a dainty eater, but you know what I mean.

MEAN, WEAK, LAZY, STUPID: THE REAL AMERICA

2010-08-11T14:42:00.000-06:00

We're now seeing a large swath of our populous yearning for the good old days when "Mean, Weak, Lazy & Stupid were traits they shared with the guy they elected. He's their kind of guy, the sort they'd enjoy having a beer with. He's actually the Teabagger King in many ways. They were the boys who couldn't get on the football team so they became the schoolyard bullies, now grown up and still loving the power the bully believes is his birthright.

When I was in high school the bullies either ended up on the police force, the military, jail or (if they were well connected enough) a secret society like Skull and Bones or just a fraternity of drunks.

Now they have their own political party funded by men who see them as the riffraff they are and who feel utterly superior to their creation while pulling the strings and bussing in the rest of the bullies so the numbers look good for the cameras. They have many PACs and "Think Tanks" and "Religious Leaders" who validate and send them talking points delivered by a nice looking woman willing to be a tool of the fascists for fame and the money that comes with fame. The words ring like a dog whistle to the bigots and fools with guns, who never felt good enough, and now feel outrageously inferior because that black man in the White House is smarter than they are, so he can't be one of them, because they are the REAL AMERICA! THIS LAND IS THEIR LAND AND GOD GAVE IT TO THEM. YOU'RE EITHER WITH THEM OR YOU'RE THE ENEMY!

And One More Thing...

2010-08-09T23:15:00.001-06:00

Need I Say More?

2010-08-09T14:57:00.001-06:00

JEEZUS H CHRIST! PAT BUCHANAN SAID SOMETHING SMART!

2010-08-07T11:01:00.000-06:00

I swear it's true, I was taking a smoke break and watching Andrea Mitchell because Rachel Maddow was on. Then not more than a few minutes later Andrea had Pat Buchanan and Bob Shrum on in order to... I don't know, maybe balance the awesome intelligence of Rachel? I tend to try not to pay too much attention to anything Pat Buchanan says, since I end up screaming at my TV machine and scaring my dog. Nothing scares the cat..

So, this is the smart thing Pat Buchanan said: "bla bla bla...the eight years of Bush were a disaster for the economy and he shipped millions off jobs to China...bla bla bla" I put those bla bla blas in there because something stupid and racist must have either preceded or followed those words or both. But I swear on my cat Bob's life that Pat Buchanan said something smart. I think I might have given several people on Twitter and Facebook a heart attack or a stroke. Several people suggested I was dreaming again.

Last time I took a nap when I woke up gay and lesbian citizens were given back their civil rights; Prop H8 was ruled Unconstitutional! At least until some fuckwad with millions of $$$$ from the Mormon Church tries to take their civil rights away again. 'Cause that's how we roll in the land of the free, and the home of the brave. I know I was really young the first time I heard the words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,^[72] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" So here's the deal, my Creator was my heinous mother and my crazy father. It doesn't necessarily mean "God" "Unalienable Rights" means we're born with them and they can never be taken away. The word "Men" is archaic, in this sense, since women weren't considered much more than chattel at the time, but things have changed and now I can vote and own property and have all the rights and bla bla bla. And if marrying the one you love isn't in pursuit of happiness, what is? It's no guarantee of happiness. I know, I've tried it many times and failed. And I'm just sure someone is thinking some snarky thing about blow jobs or football or Jack Daniels or new shoes. But you know what I mean.

So I'm thinking, I should nap more often.

It Must Be Election Season Because the Bullshit is Knee Deep

2010-08-05T14:11:00.002-06:00

Sam Seder tells it like it is.

Shock Absorbers

2010-08-03T09:02:00.001-06:00

I have three things going for me in this long brutal recession. I'm a recluse. I don't like my fellow man much, so going out to be with my fellow man holds no attraction. And on the rare occasion that I do venture out for a meal, my favorite dining spots are the taco stands and the cheap Mexican diners. I read restaurant reviews just to gasp at what they're charging for a pork chop or a single egg Benedict. Homemade cream corn as a side dish is outrageously expensive. I know, it's amazing that anyone is serving homemade cream corn in a restaurant as a side dish, especially in Utah. So, I save a lot of money by not wanting to eat out. And I'd rather watch a movie at home lying on my bed, smoking whatever I want and drinking good iced tea. I couldn't buy a glass of really good iced Earl Grey tea out in the world, even at a tea house, if my life depended on it. I'd rather stay home.

I'm old. But I'm still continent. This means I get Social Security and Medicare but I don't need to spend anything on adult diapers. Lucky me.

The third and most important shock absorber is the house I own. Sure it has it's problems and I could pour a fortune into it. But I haven't. I never borrowed against it. I couldn't. My credit wasn't good enough since medical bills and my mother's care bankrupted me. Chapter 7. It's been five years, so I still don't have good credit and still can't borrow against it. Hell, I can't even afford to pay all my property taxes each year. Certainly never on time. I still have fairly hefty medical bills. But that which has prevented me from borrowing against my house, has saved me from losing my house and have made me a perfect candidate for a Reverse Mortgage! Any day now, I'll find out how little money it's now worth after the housing crash.

Bob's Back

2010-08-02T12:58:00.000-06:00

Bob's home. And I'm so relieved. Had I not gone all sleuthy and snoopy, I'd have never seen Bob again. And yet, Bob is already driving me crazy. Soon I'll go to Pet Smart and buy him a breakaway collar so I can send him outside again. Because already I'm wanting to strangle him. He's very funny when he and Marley are rolling around on the bed looking like they're killing each other. But when Marley goes outside, Bob turns his razor like claws and needle teeth to the fragile skin on the inside of my upper arm or my ankle, since nothing says loving like an ankle bite.

Marley is beside herself with joy. I'm beside myself with relief. Bob's just beside himself with mischief, so we're all happy.

Here is how Bob went missing: When Bob goes out he goes visiting, anyone outside working on their flower garden or sitting on their porch gets a visit from Bob. Kids playing are treated to a bit of Bob fun. So when Bob saw several people on the porch of the only house on the block that's been converted to a fourplex, Bob went calling. Thing is, these people were moving out of the front unit of the fourplex. Instead of asking around before packing Bob up with their actual belongings, they just decided to take him, "cause he was so cute and friendly." I'd never met these kids. I had no clue that anybody would be that stupid and ballsy as to take a kitten without checking around to see who might know if that kitten had a home. All my neighbors knew I was looking for Bob. All these kids would have had to do was call across the street to Mayor Kim to find out who Bob belong to. But no. They just bundled him up and drove to Rose Park, which is very far from this neighborhood.When I was a kid my parents would have said, "Rose Park is on the wrong side of the tracks," and everybody knew what that meant. But now, to me, it's just BFE. Outside my territory, too far to visit, wouldn't want to go there anyway, and, if I need to spell it out, means Bum Fuck Egypt. I should probably look this up in the Urban Dictionary, but I'm lazy and still have miles to go before I nap.

So anyway, I don't usually walk down the driveways of people I don't know, but yesterday evening I was desperate to find Bob, I was snooping around all the cars and looking into the backs of the carports when I heard a soft meow. I followed my ear, a tricky thing in and of itself, until I was looking face to face with a grey and orange tabby lying on an inside window ledge with the window open, watching me case the joint. To my longing eyes, from across the parking lot and through a screen, that softly mewing cat looked exactly like Bob. It wasn't till we were nose to nose that I realized this cat was a full grown cat of a different color. Goddammit! And as this cat and I were having a conversation a woman walked into the room and said, "Can I help you?"

I told her the story of Bob's disappearance and she took me into the laundry room, the hallway with the open door upstairs. No Bob. Bob was gone. I'd put posters up around the neighborhood. I'd gone door to door with all the neighbors, even to the woman who manages the fourplex, and no one had seen Bob after around 4:00 in the afternoon the previous day. The manager had checked the empty apartment the kids had vacated and found no kitten, but said she'd keep her eye out. But this woman was a lot more helpful. I left my phone number with her.

About an hour later I got a call from the woman in the back apartment of the fourplex and she'd called the kids who'd moved to Rose Park asking if they'd seen Bob. And yes, why yes they had. In fact they'd taken him with them. He's such a cute friendly kitten and they didn't know who owned him, so... Little motherfuckers! Fortunately they offered to bring him home. So an hour later they delivered Bob, no worse the wear from his misadventure. And now Marley is a hap hap happy wiener dog once again. Bob's napping on my printer and Marley's napping on a pillow beside my desk. Now I have to vacuum.

Bob's Gone MIA

2010-08-01T01:02:00.000-06:00

Marley is inconsolable. We went on a walk just looking for Bob. Last night was the first night Bob slept with Me and Marley. After breakfast Bob and Marley went out. Bob didn't come back. He's a sociable guy and has made the rounds of the nighbors. I'm guessing he visited someone who thought he was looking for a home. I'm hoping as soon as they open the door Bob will escape and run home where the chow is good and the play is rough and tumble. Here are a few of the latest photos of Bob & Marley wrestling.

Turns out Ginger Rogers Is Really Robert Benchley

2010-07-27T18:42:00.002-06:00

How could we have gotten it so wrong? Four grown women and a man examined that fiesty kitty and all of us concluded that he was a she. I had been waffling on the name. Why not a literary name? @PhoebeFay suggested Dorothy Parker. I almost called the Vet to have it changed on her/his records, but I didn't. It's just as well. But for now I'm thinking Robert Benchley, notorious liar, humorist, writer, actor, member of the Algonquin Round Table. Friend of Dorothy Parker.

I'll call him Bob. The House Call Vet said he's a holly terror of feistiness. The Vet had to wear his kitteh gauntlet to handle Bob. Now I want to rename Marley, but Bob plus Marley makes BobMarley, so...

Bob had terrible personal hygiene. Dirty ears. Really dirty ears. Ten days worth of ear wash and ointment dirty ears. Bob got the whole shebang of immunizations and a second round in three weeks. Worming too. Bob got wormed. The indignity of it. Then in a few short months Bob will get neutered. I don't think it's going to change Bobs personality much. He's oddly self confident for a dirty guy abandoned in someone else's garage, then passed around a couple of times before landing here.

Bob, I want to make a deal with you. Once I get your ears clean, you better step it up. Bob purrs really loud and likes to hang out around my neck. This disturbs Marley. We'll work it out.

Ginger Rogers? Is That You?

2010-07-26T17:39:00.000-06:00

The new kitteh has a third eye or a second vajaja. Check out this face! She devours the news. It's a requirement in this house. I must have well informed critters. I can't quite settle on a name for her, but Ginger Rogers is a possibility. If she turns out to be a boy or chooses to go the trans-gender route she can become Ginger Baker. She can be whatever she wants. And with those marking she might well be THE ENLIGHTENED ONE. Not that I'd entirely buy it, but maybe that's Jeebus on her forehead.

She does have dirty ears and a Vet Visit tomorrow afternoon.

Okay, so much for the face. Take a look at this form: She whirls to find that article she wanted to devour. Where's the Mother Jones? It was something by David Corn!

She seems to have sturdy legs and nice sized feet. She has pretty markings on her tail, too. All in all I think she's a lovely kitty. I've done a bit of de-cluttering to make the solarium a safe place for her, since I don't entirely trust Marly to be sensible. And yet, after 24 hours of very limited sharing of space, we have reached this weary nonchalance, this delicate detente.

This kitteh seems to have a special fondness for the reference books. Marley is faining interest in the Portuguese Dictionary. Until today she's never show the slightest interest.

Real Americans

2010-07-24T10:05:00.003-06:00

We see it every day. It's everywhere. It's us versus them. Is it race, class, gender, sexual orientation, my religion or lack of it versus yours? Is it income, accent, education, gender? Yes. It's all of these things and more. Are we polarized? Yes. More than any time since the 1960s. Only this time it's the White Right wearing teabags and holstered handguns that's taken to the streets. So I'm trying to understand the Tea Party mentality. I'm trying to understand why these poor souls are being led around by the likes of Dick Armey, Koch Industries, and the John Birch Society.

The saddest part of this polarization is the belief that the American Dream is about wealth and that it's within reach of everyone. All you have to do is come up with a good idea and put your shoulder to the wheel, and you could be the next Bill Gates. And if not, you could win the lottery. That's bullshit, but almost everybody buys it. And it's why the Teabaggers (who think of themselves as the "Real America;" Sarah Palin's America, the great, now mostly mythical, white, middle-class) are willing to give huge tax breaks to the very very rich. They believe that they too, can become filthy fucking rich, and they will want to keep their imagined someday riches all to themselves. And when they are finally really really rich, they won't give a shit about the poor elderly, or the poor immigrants, or the unemployed, or the homos. They'll think, "I got mine. If I can do it so can you, you lazy bum."

This "Real America" watches Fox News pretty much exclusively. (Utah is an example of the Real America; in every public place with a TV on, it's turned to Fox News.) They listen to the twin gods in their political universe: Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. They consider themselves religious folk even though they don't go to church much, but their Christian religion is the Real American Religion, and thou shalt have no other gods by god, or you are un-American and you don't know that Christianity is our state religion, you dangerous, socialist, ignorant, multi-lingual Nazi kike raghead beaner bastard, you. Speak English like a Real American.

They are fiercely anti-immigrant and have no idea that they are all illegal immigrants in the eyes of the few remaining Native Americans who managed to survive the internment camps, broken treaties, and genocide. These "Real Americans" are mistrustful of people who don't look like them. ( Like Native Americans for instance. They look a lot like Mexicans, those indians.) What they don't realize is that anyone who is filthy rich wouldn't give them the time of day, would see them as the great unwashed masses. These Real Americans don't realize that the Filthy Rich don't identify with them the way they identify with the Filthy Rich. It's an unrequited love. And as much as they identify with the rich, and parrot the political ideology of the rich (which they don't entirely understand) they mistrust the well-educated and don't quite realize that getting the right education at the right schools is one of the pathways toward becoming not exactly rich, but at least middle-class. The job market has contracted. Remember when the filthy rich were exporting all the tech and manufacturing jobs overseas? Those jobs are gone forever. But there are two wars still on and private contractors are probably still hiring. Too bad they're looking for linguists.

We gave the filthy rich the right to do whatever they wanted with no regulation during the reign of GWB, because he was a guy we Real Americans could imagine having a beer with, because he talked like an ignorant uneducated cracker from Texas. He wore cowboy boots. God Bless America! We're Number One! And since the Real America doesn't like to read history much, the Real America didn't realize GWB was an elite with a good education (even if he was a lazy student) from a life of incredible privilege and vast inherited wealth. He had the worlds best contacts, even if he did sound like a hick. And even if it didn't work out so well last time, they still want to do it again. Why? Because rich white people will look after us, right? Because it's us versus the un-white, right?

No, not this time either, because it's stiil just class warfare. Ask Shirley Sherrod.

Ms M's Parting Gift

2010-07-23T22:04:00.000-06:00

Ms. M is a gifted photographer. I was sure she'd find a way to make that her career. But she's chosen Industrial Design. She's moving to Savannah to pursue that dream. When she's traveled she's sent me remarkably striking photographs. I make Marly self conscious when I get out my camera. And Marly would try to drag me across the street to avoid walking across pavement that was recently sprinkled. I'd call her water phobic. But Ms M took Marly and Roscoe to one of our lovely dog parks and took this shot of Marly standing in water and looking thoughtful, but not horrified. It's now my screen saver.

How To Argue With Andrew Breitbart

2010-07-22T22:54:00.000-06:00

Stolen from Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog

We'll Miss You Roscoe

2010-07-22T10:35:00.000-06:00

Roscoe is about to embark on a great adventure. Yesterday was his last day with us. He's lived here almost all his life. He's secure and loved. We'll mourn his leaving and hope his new life will be every bit as happy as his life with us has been. Bon Voyage, Roscoe. And if you ever want to come back, just tell Ms M. We'll always be here for you.

A Cautionary Tale

2010-07-19T21:36:00.003-06:00

Whether you've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, thyroid cancer, or have never had a funky day in your life, this kind of thing can happen and does, all the time. Without advance directives you may be at the mercy of the ER and hospital, should a serious emergency arise, and you have no one present who will speak up for you to say, "She's bipolar. Here is a list of the medications she's on. Here is her psychiatrist's name, here is her primary care physician's name and number. She has a DNR" Everyone of us should carry a card that says at least this much about us. Because if you have family that feels shame or denial about your mental illness or any illness and those people can speak for you in a situation where you can't speak for yourself, their shame and denial can kill you.

I know a man who has been overseeing his elderly sister's bipolar disorder. Due to his diligence to get her the best possible psychiatric care, she was on the medication necessary to control her bipolar psychosis and other bipolar symptoms. Anyone on her cocktail of drugs might seem a bit slow on the uptake, a bit casual about disorder and mess. To a religious and disapproving sister who didn't believe her sister was psychotic, only uncooperative and lazy her sisters psychosis would seem like another kind of illness altogether. The brother was out of town when the bipolar sister had a crisis in the presence of her disapproving sister. Psychosis was misdiagnosed at the ER and her medications were not administered making her psychosis worse. She was admitted to the hospital, but not the psych ward. She was six weeks in the hospital developing strange symptom after strange symptom that eventually developed into pneumonia and then something that made them think she needed her gall bladder removed, or some other surgical procedure, and then an infection and then, death.

The man was notified of his sister's hospitalization, probably by the sister who did not believe in bipolar disorder. Because of HIPPA laws and the strange politics of family dynamics he was not given authority to intervene in any decisions about her care. He watched helplessly as his psychotic bipolar sister died inch by inch.

Her funeral came a couple of days after the funeral of Wayne, his friend, the pianist who died in a car crash after the Salt Lake Jazz Festival. I can't begin to imagine his grief. But I can imagine my own death in circumstances where I have a stroke or accident that lands me in the hospital with no family at all, and my friends are unaware that I'm in need of their help. I'm a solitary woman who seldom leaves home. But when I do, anything could happen. Life's messy like that.

When I finish this I will type up a list of my medical conditions, all medications I take on a daily basis, the names and numbers of all my doctors, the name and number of the friend to call in case of an emergency. I will keep copies on me at all times, just in case. I don't fear death, but I do fear mistreatment in a hospital if they do not know my history of bipolar disorder. I also fear mistreatment in a hospital if they do know I'm bipolar. Medical professionals are not immune from mistreating the mentally ill. I know. It happened to me in a much less serious circumstance when I was in the hospital with diverticulitis. There are people who have no compassion for the mentally ill in every ER in the country. I know, I had a roommate who worked in an ER and for most ER staff, someone who is crazy and needs emergency medical attention is seen as much less deserving of sympathy than almost anyone else. We are just a pain in the ass.

GOP Liars and the Lying Lies They Keep Telling

2010-07-16T22:47:00.001-06:00

I suspected that the economy was unraveling before the election was over, but had no idea how bad it really was until Bush, himself, the Decider in Chief, asked for Billions to bail out his buddies on Wall Street, the very guys who got the big beefy tax breaks, and the obscene bonuses for ruining the economy, just as Bush himself was heading out the door, pockets bulging. That worked well, didn't it? The Republicans seemed to have no problem bailing out Wall Street, and then blaming Obama for TARP, but when it came time to hand out a few paltry dollars as a stimulus to the economy to bail out those of us, lowly middle class taxpayers who'd lost our homes, our pensions, our life savings in the Wall Street melt down, well that was a different story.

The Republicans are still at it. They don't give a flying fuck about the middle class. They keep voting against extending unemployment benefits for those hardest hit by this deep recession, the lowly middle class. They are telling the ignorant teagaggers that unemployment benefits are a form of welfare for the lazy. Once again, they are wrong. A wage earner who has worked his or her whole life and is now unemployed due to the contraction in the job market caused by the recession, has been contributing through payroll deductions to an account that is just for this kind of event, is now being insulted on a daily basis by the GOP. Unemployment Insurance is just that. It's insurance in the event that one will be unemployed due to no fault of one's own. If you don't know this you've never punched a timeclock.

The New Black Panthers and the Old White Men

2010-07-15T23:15:00.000-06:00

The discussion centers on whether the Justice Department's civil rights division mishandled a lawsuit against members of the New Black Panther Party, which was filed weeks before the Obama administration took office. The suit was focused on the party and two of its members, who stood out front of a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008 wearing military gear. They were captured on video and were accused of trying to discourage some people from voting. One carried a nightstick.

This is an except taken from a piece in the Washington Post dated 7/14/10 and written by Krissah Thompson

It begins: A 2008 voter-intimidation case has become a political controversy for the Obama administration as conservative lawyers, politicians and commentators raise concerns that the Department of Justice has failed to protect the civil rights of white voters.

Abigail Thernstrom (a member of the Bush Civil Rights Commission) said that she did not find testimony convincing and that the facts of the case raised doubts in her mind, noting that the Black Panthers were standing in front of a majority-black precinct that had voted overwhelmingly for Democrats in previous elections -- not a prime spot for intimidating white voters.

There is nothing more disgusting to me than hearing whites complain that they are being discriminated against on the basis of race when they are attempting to deport every brown person in this country who wasn't living here a hundred years ago and has a birth certificate and passport to prove it when they're asked to show their papers to some beefy red faced jackass with a gun strapped around his bulging belly who calls himself a teapartier and a patriot. Frankly I'm ready for the uprising of all of us with some native or African DNA to deport all those racist idiots. I'm so sick of them and their fake indignation over "illegals." You are all illegals in my book. My DNA dates back three thousand years of living on this continent. Go fuck yourselves, you lilly white idiots. Go back to the Old Country wherever that is. Get a job cleaning someone's home or gardening for them. Then you can start complaining about how good things were in the USofA when you were the boss of everything.

Politics: Why I Blog

2010-07-15T13:22:00.002-06:00

When my young friends from New York were visiting in January of '08, just after I got my Imac so I could finish writing my first novel, they insisted I needed a blog. They had to explain to me what a "Blog" was. Web log? WTF? Why would I ever want to do that? What a pointless endeavor, no one would ever read it. And aside from working on a difficult manuscript, I didn't really have much to say. Or so I thought. 1,365 posts later, I have discovered my voice.

It was a political season and I am a political animal. There could not have been a better time for me to start a blog. In the beginning of that political season, I was a Hillary supporter, but as the season progressed, I became an Obama supporter. I had begun to have readers and some of them were outraged that I, a feminist, would abandon Hillary. It was our turn, as women, to put a woman in the White House and not as just First Lady, a term any feminist worth her salt should hate. We are not "Ladies" we are women. But it became clear to me that Hillary was not well served by the advise she was getting and that advise was coming from people she had chosen to run her campaign. She was making rookie mistakes, acting like she was entitled to the nomination, as if it were a coronation and she was the heir apparent. She was leaving States she'd lost without thanking her volunteers and supporters for their generous help and forgetting to congratulate the victor, her current boss. She began to seem boorish and rude to me. And I worried that if she won, she'd do the same thing as President; she'd put the same lousy advisers in positions of power, and she'd still be getting bad advise.

I'm not always sure Obama is all that well served by some of his adivser, but one person I'm positive he's getting and honest advise from is Hillary. It was a brilliant move to offer her Secretary of State. So we, the voters got a three-fer: We got Barack, we got Hillary, and as a tripple player, we got Bill Clinton, the man we quietly call on when we need some charming arm twisting done in the troublesome South.

The Death of a Local Jazz Great

2010-07-13T21:40:00.004-06:00

Wayne Christiansen was killed in a car crash on his way home from the Jazz Festival. He was a monster talent. He was a great pianist and composer. I knew him from the time Tom Burton and I lived together up Emigration Canyon. They played together for awhile. They'd played together in the 60s at The Quarter Note. It was the only bar in town where you could go almost every night and hear really good Jazz. David Harrison owned it at the time. Wayne was one of the few musicians I really liked personally. I know that sounds harsh, but harshness seems to be what I'm left with. My last encounter with Wayne was at a small club on State Street. It was a complete surprise to find him there, and I went up during a break to say Hi and to make a request. I asked him to play Round Midnight. And he did. If I were anyone else in the world I would have said, "Thank you, that was lovely." But I'm not that nice a person. I wanted the classic Round Midnight and I got a virtuoso bebop version instead. It was a great deal more than I deserved. But my reaction to it was to give him shit about overdoing the virtuosity. It was the last time I saw him.

David Harrison just called to tell me, and to ask for Tom Burton's phone number. And it shocks me how careless I've been with every man I've ever known. I no longer have a way to get in touch with Tom. But I gave him Pat Zwick's numbers (another man I've finally completely alienated with my anger). Pat will know how to get in touch with him. There will be a memorial for Wayne, and I've been told when and where to go. And then there will be The Bastille Day Reunion. I won't be able to go to either event. There are men from my past who I want to avoid and for perfectly good reasons, not just because I'm bipolar and careless with my insults. But I have been unforgivably careless of Tom's feelings and for that too, I'm sorry. To bad I won't have the chance to make amends for my past bad behavior, but any contact with people with whom I've had a long relationship and have bailed on, is another opportunity for me to be cruel and careless, or to be hurt again myself. I'm a coward when it comes to close quarters with the past. It's been too painful. And much of that pain has been self inflicted.

So, goodbye Wayne. I'm so sorry I was so awful. And I waited too long to tell you.

One Night of Missed Pills Equals Two Lost Days, So Far...

2010-07-12T11:32:00.001-06:00

It doesn't take much to topple this bipolar person from her delicate balance. I've worked very hard to achieve "normal." Normal is for me a very hard-won balancing act. I teeter here, on the balance beam of sanity, a bit wobbly but still standing. One missed dose of antidepressant and the two mood stabilizers made me stay up all night and spend yesterday watching old movies and lying in bed trying to stay out of trouble. I tried to tweet a bit, write a place holder post, and clean up my dresser, but I couldn't type. Words tumbled out like letter salad. I now think I know what it must feel like to be truly dyslexic, the brain moving like lightning, too fast for the fingers to keep up. My one little cleaning project expanded as I moved the mess on top of my dresser from one surface to another, expanding chaos rather than taming it.

Today I thought I'd be back to "normal," but I'm slow and disinclined to do anything but stay out of trouble. Monday is a day I usually grocery shop, but I'm not inclined to trust myself to stay out of trouble in a store of any kind. Shopping is potentially dangerous. And I'm not in desperate need of anything yet. I can feed myself today. I have plenty of dog food. Nobody needs a treat, so sending myself off to the treat store is just flirting with disaster. If I really want to see what shopping is all about for me, I'll clean the cupboard and fridge. I could probably feed a family of four for a month on what I have stashed away. I'll thaw something for dinner. I know from a cursory glance that I have ham steak, pork chops, rib eye steak, pot roast, ground lamb and more. In my pantry I have rice, potatoes, grits, cereal, two back-up jars of mayonnaise; what the hell do I need? I have greens for salad, cabbage for slaw. I have honey yogurt and blueberries. I will not starve.

I'd love to work outside, but the temperature is climbing toward the high 90s so I'm going to spend another day just chillin'. If my brain were in good functioning order I'd read all day, but a page of words is like trying to read word-salad. Typing is easier today, but still not as natural as it should be. I could retweet all day on twitter, but I'd have nothing original to add to the conversation, so I'll give it a break for one more day. The world won't wobble off it's axis without me.

Oops

2010-07-11T19:03:00.002-06:00

Today it's Sunday. There. Now I'm anchored.
Last night I missed a dose and now it's like an acid trip, almost.
Last time I looked at the clock last night it was 4:00 AM
It was the most important dose. The Sinequan would knock me out eventually
It wasn't on board. I take two 800 mg Neurontin every night along with the Sinequan
Then the half a Lisinopril and the double dose of Loveistatin to keep my veins open and unclogged
And finally the rhythm keeper! Flecainide! It keeps my heart beating in my dreams. I took none of it.

I can barely type. I just came in from trimming the Virginia Creeper along the sliding gate and fence at the very back. It's where I hide. It's how I get in and out in my mommy mobile.
Invisible on the streets of Salt Lake
It's where I store my bricks and future gate.
It's where one Aspen's dying. I'm watering now.

I took a 25 mg Sinequan and an extra Neurontin this morning or rather early afternoon. I'm coping. I'm staying in and out of sight.

The charming, somewhat glamorous boy and girl returned late today. They've been traveling. There will be parties ahead.

Dartmouth stayed home and worked like a Cholo with borrowed power tools, cords hanging out
the dining room window. Screen removed. Always barefoot. Suntanned barefoot beautiful boy.
I avoid the front of the house and so the weeds grow,
The lawn burns, the flowers need deadheading.
I need to get the blower out. But first I'll get the dust down.

Ms M brought Roscoe over for a three day visit with overnights. We three, Roscoe, Marly and me (that's the problem with her name) watched movies and ate popcorn until the wee small hours and not once did I think about my pills. I take a handful every night. They're all lined up in morning and nighttime doses. I know better than anyone how important they are. It was an accident. I've heard it said, "There are no accidents." I don't buy that. No one would deliberately destroy the balance that keeps her on her feet, her brain working, her life from devolving into chaos when she's worked so hard to create a bit more order this year.

It's 7:00 PM and I'm taking my pills. I'll go to bed early, hopefully get up early and get things done.
I'm not oblivious to the fact that I just wrote a piece about what it's like to be bipolar and not medicated correctly. I know the dangers.

Shopping's a Symptom?

2010-07-10T09:04:00.000-06:00

Show me a woman with a real serious shopping compulsion and I'll show you a bipolar woman. If that woman's mother found her life's greatest pleasure shopping, I'll show you the closest genetic link, though there will be many in the lineage of that family. It's probably the most under-diagnosed of the mental illnesses and yet it seems everyone's bipolar these days. It's one of the few genetic illnesses with two genetic markers, which means that if there is one bipolar person in your family, there will be many more, diagnosed or not.

Compulsion (mania and psychosis) and the complete absence of compulsion (depression) are the two poles of bipolar disorder. With compulsion comes boundless energy. The joy of having both energy and the purpose of compulsion feels great and no one in a slightly manic swing will want to come back to earth. The compulsion to shop takes me when I'm transitioning into hypo-mania. That's when I have boundless energy and feel a strong sense of well being and optimism. "Money's like a river; it has to flow. Spend it and more will come." It's the "zen like" place where I have absolute faith that it will all work out and I need those Gucci high heeled boots. It would be great if I used that energy to clean my closet and scrub all the floors since I don't have enough money to quite pay all my medical bills. The impulse to shop, especially shopping without a list (for things I don't really need) should be a signal for me to check in with my therapist and see if I need an appointment with my shrink for a med check. Problem is, it feels so good. Hypo-mania is like the very best drug. This is how life is supposed to feel. I feel charming, but I'm probably a little too intense, a bit too loud for most people. It might be that's when I start thinking that my sex drive isn't dead after all. Another red flag for those with bipolar disorder is an intense and perhaps inappropriate sexual appetite that might lead to disastrous sexual encounters. Yes, encounters with an S. Yes, without protection. Yes, with much younger men. Yes, possibly married younger men. Yes, maybe married to your sister.

A lack of impulse control and a high tolerance for chaotic disorder is a another symptom of someone in the hypo-manic phase of the illness. All these things might seem to you like personality. And yes, there might be a narrow line between being a charming, flirtatious, fast-talking smarty-pants, but then if you have no boundaries at all, and you feel compelled to fuck your sister's husband, you are probably at risk of driving the bullet-train that is your "personality" off the cliff. We can be incredible drama queens. We can be very destructive and self-destructive. But then our lives have probably been quite trying, not to mention embarrassing for our families. As children (if female) we are the ones who get bullied and abused. We may be the family's scapegoat. We might be the child who is sexually abused. And as we grow into our teens we will likely become the ones who cut ourselves so we can feel something, so numbed by stress and psychic pain are we. That's not to say that every child who is bullied at school and abused at home is going to be bipolar. But a high percentage of female bipolar adults had that kind of childhood. We are the vulnerable ones, no matter how brash we may seem.

So what does this have to do with you? Bipolar disorder is under-diagnosed, and if diagnosed, often kept secret. And in the early stages of depression you do feel sick. Depression may begin with a strange fatigue, a headache that won't go away, a low grade fever that lasts for weeks. You ache all over. These symptoms have sent me to the doctor many times, and each time tests have been run and one of the things they check is my thyroid. Before any doctor diagnoses depression other things have to be ruled out. And in the testing phase, they may find a thing or two. I once had a one-time sugar spill in a urine sample. This was so perplexing to my doctor that she had a complete endocrine work up done. I was desperately hoping that it would be an endocrine problem, anything but another depression. But there is nothing wrong with my endocrine system. I do have heart problems, but they have never been mistaken for bipolar symptoms. Depression is serious. It can't be dismissed as just laziness. If you're the only one in your family who's ever been seriously depressed, it might be that other members of your family tend to be a bit on the manic side. If mania is the predominant side of bipolar disorder for those in your gene pool, chances are those folks will never be diagnosed. Because who ever thought dynamism was a bad thing? Those who mostly swing towards mania are energetic, fun in a breathless sort of way, and productive powerhouses. They are often greatly admired. And they can be mean, so woe to the depressive bipolar child who lives in a family of manics, for there will be no sympathy there. We just seem terribly lazy to the rest of our lunatic relatives.

Bipolar disorder can be managed quite well with the right drugs. But finding the right drug might take a bit of trial and error. And once the right drug is found compliance is often a problem. Few bipolar drugs are weight-neutral. I carry forty pounds of drug weight. Zoloft makes me lose weight, but I tend to get a bit manic on it. Wellbutrin can help you quit smoking but made me psychotic. Most bipolar drugs keep me from dreaming, and for me, dreaming is one of life's little miracles. So I'm willing to trade being thin for being able to time-travel in my sleep. For most women the weight gain may make compliance problematic. For men, just admitting that they have a problem that needs medication is astonishing in itself. Men experience bipolar disorder differently than women. Or at least they shop for different things like cars and boats and tools and such. Men may be violent when manic. The high of a manic stage can manifest as aggression for both men and women, but men express their aggression more often with fists, and most bipolar men think having an insatiable sex drive is the ideal anyway so what's the problem there? Inappropriate sex? Are you kidding?

I've been in a lot of group therapy for bipolar disorder and I have never seen a man in any of those groups. And it's not because they were women-only groups. Men don't seek treatment unless repeated incarcerations find them negotiating further jail time for therapy and enforced drug treatment. A lot of men would rather do jail time than admit they have a mental illness and have to take drugs that take the thrill of risky compulsions out of their lives. Because the compulsion for risky sexual behavior is a lot more fun than feeling just normal.

We still live in a time of shame when it comes to mental illness. Many of us just self-medicate to try to feel normal. We smoke cigarettes (which are a mild antidepressant) and drink too much. We smoke pot and drink too much. We do meth so we can have the energy that depression takes away, and drink too much. We will try damn near anything to feel "normal," except take an antidepressant or anti-psychotic that will stigmatize us as crazy and make us gain weight. But remember, along with a high degree of creativity we also have the highest rate of suicide for any illness. It is our leading cause of death before the age of fifty. After that we're the real experts on the illness.

The Dog House

2010-07-07T11:57:00.000-06:00

This doghouse was Roscoes. When Ms M first got him, he was an adorable puppy. But as he grew his behavior, when left alone, caused her to have to relocate often. He would tear up her stuff if left inside alone. If left outside alone he would howl and bark incessantly, driving neighbors nuts. If given half a chance he'd escape his solitude to end up chased around the neighborhood by the dog catcher. She got him a dog run and he'd just howl his outrage at being behind bars. Then she and he boyfriend at the time made Roscoe the world's sturdiest dog house. The idea was to give Roscoe shelter that was so heavy that when leashed to it by a study cord attached to the doghouse, he'd be safe and have shelter. He was never happy with this dog house. He hated being leashed to a dog house he'd never go inside. He'd still howl and carry on, attempting to drag the dog house behind him as he tried to get away from it. So moving in with me was her last chance to find a way to keep Roscoe. He was always happy here, and there was never a need to chain him to his unused doghouse. So, the doghouse has remained empty. I think of it as a warning to possible intruders that you may not see the huge dog, but he sure has a very big doghouse, so buzz off.

Marly is the only dog to show an interest in it. No, she doesn't ever go inside and curl up like a contented dog, but she does poke around it now and then.

"...His Injury Here, With Her Punishment There..."

2010-07-07T00:04:00.001-06:00

It's All In My Head

2010-07-06T11:11:00.001-06:00

I'm Bipolar. I'm crazy too. And to make matters worse, my pedophile dad was a psychologist. So, even though it was important to the family that I keep my piehole shut about what my daddy had been doing to me, my daddy was always telling me that my seething fury and the self inflicted wounds of careless "accidents" was all in my head. And it was, in the sense that I might open my mouth and spill my guts to a sympathetic stranger, and what would come out might just put my whole family in jail and me in the looney bin for life. My mother would scream, "Snap out of it!" My father would say, "It's all in your head." It never helped, and though it was all in my head, I could not snap out of it.

My dad's dad was a famous surgeon here in Salt Lake City. He was Chief of Staff of a couple of Salt Lake's finest hospitals and a high up muckymuck in the Shriners. He too was a pedophile. I found this out when he died and his elderly only daughter (another crazy woman) got all Doc's films and photos. As she and her children were watching the first of Docs carefully numbered films they were surprised to see two kids, ages ten and seven, having clumsy sex with one another. The little boy was the seven year old and he grew up to become my daddy. The little girl was the old woman watching home movies with her children. It was a little awkward. The man with the movie camera was Doc and the director was his wife, my Grandmother. And so begins the problem that would disguise my bipolar disorder with all the symptoms of an adult victim of child sexual abuse. Turns out that's not uncommon in children with bipolar disorder. Pedophiles either create their own victims or find them. But the kids with underlying bipolar disorder are often also the victims of child sexual abuse precisely because they're vulnerable.

It is rare for the bipolar child to be unscathed by other victimization. We are bullied, we are withdrawn, we are moody and sometimes full of a rage so fierce it can only be safely turned within and we are often the teens who cut ourselves or have frequent "accidents." It is also rare for the bipolar adult to be without substance abuse. We are mostly self-medicating, trying desperately to find a place within that feels "normal." If I'm describing your childhood here and you have been diagnosed as "depressed," that may just be your predominant pole in the bipolar swing. It was mine. I spent years so depressed I couldn't get out of bed. And depression almost always begins with symptoms that seem like a serious sickness. You ache all over; you feel so tired movement seems like walking through molasses; you might have a low grade fever, a headache that won't go away; you lose your apatite; you go to your doctor certain there will be a diagnosis and a pill to fix it. And eventually, after a series of expensive tests that find nothing, you'll get put on an antidepressant. And there are pills to fix your symptoms.

There are so many drugs to treat depression and the mood swings that go along with it, like the occasional psychosis. But first everything else has to be ruled out. My thyroid was almost always suspected since my eyes are prominent, or were before the upper lid began to droop. But, if after a month or so on a new drug, my symptoms aren't getting less debilitation, I probably need to try another drug. There is one that will help. And it needs to be a psychiatrist who works through that process of finding the right drug, so I can live in a place of emotional balance. It's a process of trial and error. The errors can feel like a full blown psychosis or a lobotomy. And most bipolar drugs are not weight neutral as it is so genteelly described in the inserts that come with a new drug. I gain up to forty pounds on certain antidepressants, and no amount of dieting will get rid of it. This is one of the reasons so many women won't stay on their antidepressant. Would you rather sleep for a couple of years or live your life with a bit more weight?

At the depth of a depression is a coma-like sleep that is dreamless and very difficult to come out of to eat, bathe, and then make it back to bed. Eating, bathing and walking across the room all take enormous energy when in the depths. Sorrow resides there as well as oblivion. Regret is sorrows twin. And it doesn't help to have a family member shout "Snap out of it! I don't believe in depression!" That's probably just a family member who is in the hypomanic phase of bipolar disorder and hasn't been diagnosed yet.