A Postal Service That Bites
4 hours ago
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Hard Times, Come Again No More
In memory of my friend Zelita who died this morning. And for Esther, who taught me this song. We're having some hard times, aren't we?
It's In the Bible
This is one of the smartest letters to the editor I've ever read and that includes my own. It was in last Saturdays Salt Lake Tribune. The letter speaks very eloquently for itself:
I appreciate those who quote the Bible to stave off same-sex marriage, such as Leviticus 18:22, which states it is an "abomination" to "lie with a man as one lies with a woman." I now need advice on how to follow some other Bible laws.
I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. What would be a fair price?
My neighbor insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?
Leviticus 25:44 states that I may own slaves, male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend claims that this applies to Mexicans but not to Canadians. Why can't I own Canadians?
Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus 19:27. How should they die?
I have so many more things I'm unclear on. I'm thankful, though, that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
Lynn Johnson
Salt Lake City
Monday, November 16, 2009
In the Era Post Stupak
People tell me they see my writing about the child abuse in my life, plus the grisly aftermath as "courageous" but I think of it as therapy. Once told, the story is no longer inside, it's out there, and some of the pain gets exorcised in the telling. They can post with a pseudonym or as anonymous. But telling is powerful for the teller and the reader.
I'd like to ask women to delve into their most painful past and share that story with all of us. This is no small job. But from the comments on my posts about abortion so far, that's where the real story is, it's there in the reaction to another woman's story. No one ever makes the decision to abort easily or without compelling reasons. Out of maybe forty comments I've had only one person call me a woman who would choose to murder another person for my convenience. Only one person talked to me about my committing the "ultimate sin." Only one person equated the fetus with the adult woman and said the fetus had the same right to life as I, but thought that the doctors who authorized and performed the procedure should have been jailed. That was one comment out of forty or more. So, how courageous is it to talk about the intensely personal? Is talking honestly with a therapist courageous? No one sits across my desk as I talk here and asks me questions.
If someone comes to my blog to insult and harass me, my first impulse is to try to reason with them or suggest I might not be their cup of tea. And in the end, I can shitcan their comments, or on twitter I can block their access to me. This is my free speech zone and I choose to express myself in this way. If I'm enraged by the Stupak Amendment, this is why. I can't say what it means to you, but I can warn you as one who lived my reproductive years in the era of the Comstock Laws, in the time before Roe v. Wade, what it will be like in the era post Stupak.
Statistics bore most of us, but if you want to know what it was like for women who lived in the era pre Roe v. Wade, you'll get an inkling when you read the comments from my three pieces on the subject.
I'd like to ask women to delve into their most painful past and share that story with all of us. This is no small job. But from the comments on my posts about abortion so far, that's where the real story is, it's there in the reaction to another woman's story. No one ever makes the decision to abort easily or without compelling reasons. Out of maybe forty comments I've had only one person call me a woman who would choose to murder another person for my convenience. Only one person talked to me about my committing the "ultimate sin." Only one person equated the fetus with the adult woman and said the fetus had the same right to life as I, but thought that the doctors who authorized and performed the procedure should have been jailed. That was one comment out of forty or more. So, how courageous is it to talk about the intensely personal? Is talking honestly with a therapist courageous? No one sits across my desk as I talk here and asks me questions.
If someone comes to my blog to insult and harass me, my first impulse is to try to reason with them or suggest I might not be their cup of tea. And in the end, I can shitcan their comments, or on twitter I can block their access to me. This is my free speech zone and I choose to express myself in this way. If I'm enraged by the Stupak Amendment, this is why. I can't say what it means to you, but I can warn you as one who lived my reproductive years in the era of the Comstock Laws, in the time before Roe v. Wade, what it will be like in the era post Stupak.
Statistics bore most of us, but if you want to know what it was like for women who lived in the era pre Roe v. Wade, you'll get an inkling when you read the comments from my three pieces on the subject.
Happy 45th Birthday Diana!
Diana, you fly me to the moon every time I listen to you. I type to the beat and rhythm of your exquisite phrasing. Happy Birthday! Keep doing the soulful swinging. Love You!
Friday, November 13, 2009
The Gutting
I disembowel myself and splash
My innards across the clean white page
This is where I read my past for clues.
Will I marry well, win the lottery
Write a book that sees the light of day?
Will I ever stop slashing my veins this way?
I watch the news for hope and end up
In a wail of anguished, never ending cry
How could we wish to keep the power with the few?
Will the poor just vanish, will we disappear
Could we find a way to to make a space for fair?
Must those who have so little lose all but filthy air?
Would we the richest people on the earth allow it all
To vanish on a dare?
My innards across the clean white page
This is where I read my past for clues.
Will I marry well, win the lottery
Write a book that sees the light of day?
Will I ever stop slashing my veins this way?
I watch the news for hope and end up
In a wail of anguished, never ending cry
How could we wish to keep the power with the few?
Will the poor just vanish, will we disappear
Could we find a way to to make a space for fair?
Must those who have so little lose all but filthy air?
Would we the richest people on the earth allow it all
To vanish on a dare?
Thursday, November 12, 2009
I'm the Monster Here
I wrote about my abortion because I needed to tell that story and the timing seemed right. Some of you will see me as the murderer of a person. You might think I have committed the ultimate sin. I'm sure I have, and have been sinned against. There are many details I left out of it, but in so many ways, I was a monster. I was crazy. I have always been crazy. It was a crazy time, the mid-sixties. May I remind you all that there are details in that story that might have alerted you to my carelessness and reckless behavior without apology or judgement. And yet there have been so many times and ways I tried to imagine a better ending.
By the time I was twenty-three I was clearly nuts. I was a magnet for the wrong men, every bit as damaged as I, men who wanted to manipulate and own me. I had not been loved as a child and had no idea how to love. Almost every man in my family had sexually abused me as a child. I trusted no one. I looked picture perfect but I was batshit crazy, coiled too tightly, barely able to breath. It was said of me I was high strung. That was an understatement. I worked every second to hold myself together, to appear calm and in control of myself, but I was an anxious mess. I was a monster. I aborted my only pregnancy. I knew I'd be a terrible mother. I had never been around a good mother.
I hated myself so profoundly I knew I carried a monster just like me, just like my mother, or worse, just like my father. I did not want to spend the rest of my life continuing that tradition or connected in any way to the man who impregnated me. He was delighted when I told him I was pregnant. But I was so furious at that moment because I also had to tell him he needed to get tested for a sexually transmitted disease. And in the end when we both knew that he hadn't given me syphilis, I still didn't want to have that profound connection with him.
One of the Indian women who worked in the sewing room at Satpurush asked me one day as we were all having lunch together, "Why don't you do what you're supposed to do? You're swimming against the current of your life." I was stunned by the question. I've been pondering that one all my life.
This isn't an excuse for my careless desperate foolish life, but I was emotionally damaged by it all. I was depressed and reclusive, living in a life that always seemed to put me in intimate contact with people I'd rather not have known. Nothing was planned or thought out. I was also bipolar. But if you believe in God then God has been testing me. Have I failed the test?
I don't believe in God. This in and of itself does not make me a monster. But it does let me see that the agenda of all Abrahamic religions is the subjugation of women. So this makes religious strictures completely political to me. And I set my jaw against it. I will not be chattel. I will not be dominated.
And in the end I might be liked; I do have friends. But it will be hard for a man to love me. I'll always need to live alone.
In many ways I am still my dreadful mother. I look like her, I sound like her, I have her taste in so many things and a such a bad track record with men. You probably wouldn't like me. I barely like myself.
By the time I was twenty-three I was clearly nuts. I was a magnet for the wrong men, every bit as damaged as I, men who wanted to manipulate and own me. I had not been loved as a child and had no idea how to love. Almost every man in my family had sexually abused me as a child. I trusted no one. I looked picture perfect but I was batshit crazy, coiled too tightly, barely able to breath. It was said of me I was high strung. That was an understatement. I worked every second to hold myself together, to appear calm and in control of myself, but I was an anxious mess. I was a monster. I aborted my only pregnancy. I knew I'd be a terrible mother. I had never been around a good mother.
I hated myself so profoundly I knew I carried a monster just like me, just like my mother, or worse, just like my father. I did not want to spend the rest of my life continuing that tradition or connected in any way to the man who impregnated me. He was delighted when I told him I was pregnant. But I was so furious at that moment because I also had to tell him he needed to get tested for a sexually transmitted disease. And in the end when we both knew that he hadn't given me syphilis, I still didn't want to have that profound connection with him.
One of the Indian women who worked in the sewing room at Satpurush asked me one day as we were all having lunch together, "Why don't you do what you're supposed to do? You're swimming against the current of your life." I was stunned by the question. I've been pondering that one all my life.
This isn't an excuse for my careless desperate foolish life, but I was emotionally damaged by it all. I was depressed and reclusive, living in a life that always seemed to put me in intimate contact with people I'd rather not have known. Nothing was planned or thought out. I was also bipolar. But if you believe in God then God has been testing me. Have I failed the test?
I don't believe in God. This in and of itself does not make me a monster. But it does let me see that the agenda of all Abrahamic religions is the subjugation of women. So this makes religious strictures completely political to me. And I set my jaw against it. I will not be chattel. I will not be dominated.
And in the end I might be liked; I do have friends. But it will be hard for a man to love me. I'll always need to live alone.
In many ways I am still my dreadful mother. I look like her, I sound like her, I have her taste in so many things and a such a bad track record with men. You probably wouldn't like me. I barely like myself.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Sexual Politics and The Republican Agenda for Your Reproductive Freedom
I've been avoiding writing this because it's painful. I'm old and my reproductive capacity is long past done. I have my public option. I have plain old Medicare. No Advantage Plan needed, thank you. But you have a shaky economy, a ruinous mortgage, a job that might be downsized, the fear of losing your crappy health insurance, rising interest rates on your credit cards and the knowledge that you are living beyond your means. What would an unplanned pregnancy do to your life, male or female? I don't think it's dawned on many of you that you're losing your rights day by day. And last Saturday, while many of you were given a glimmer of hope that you might someday be able to chose a public option like Medicare, your reproductive freedom was stripped from you in the Stupak Amendment. Why did it happen? Why are you silent?
I hear people claim that they are pro-life who see no cognitive dissonance in their passionate support for the death penalty. These people sound batshit crazy to me yet they claim to be Christians of one sort or another and always patriarchal and authoritarian. I'm an atheist and I care more about the poor and the homeless, the mentally ill, the hungry and often neglected children living in single parent households with incomes below the poverty line, and desperate mothers with two minimum wage jobs than most of these "Christian" people who want to force you or your sister or girlfriend or wife to carry to term an unplanned or medically disastrous pregnancy.
Republicans claim to be all about small government, yet they want to legislate and restrict your access to reproductive health care other than the birth of a child should you get pregnant. They don't want any health insurance plan to cover women's pelvic exams, or birth control, yet Viagra is all good and a birthright for all men. Oh yes, the penis is that important, but the uterus's only politically important function is housing and feeding a fetus that must be born no matter what. The Christian Right Wing of the Republican party's agenda is to control women's bodies. To think otherwise is naive and uninformed.
My mother was a pioneering second wave feminist. I paid attention to the lessons she was passing on to other women. And one of the most important lessons of that feminist generation was that you have control of your own body and that includes your uterus. Those women insisted that words are important and white men in positions of power, in the guise of religion and knowing better than you, "little lady," what's best for you, work very hard to keep you down. They use words to marginalize and ignore you. My mother's generation of feminists fought hard for the change in abortion laws that Row v Wade brought to all of us. One of the battles they fought was for equal rights in the work place. They fought for an end to sexual harassment and sexual discrimination. And all along the way white men like Rush Limbaugh called them names like Feminazis. And conservatives pushed back at every point until our progress stalled and then began to move backwards. We still only make 79 cents for every dollar a man makes for the same work.
And slowly over time I heard younger women say, "I'm all for equality for women, but I'm not a feminist." That's when you began to give away your power. You allowed feminism to become a dirty word. Well, your power's gone now. Good luck getting it back. But I have a clue for you when looking for your lost human rights. Look at the roster of old white men who make the laws that govern us all. Look at the frat house that calls itself a church. Look at the members of the Family, the C Street old boys club of powerful and rich men who think the rules don't apply to them, but only to you. That's where you'll find your lost freedom. Now do something about it. Organize, mobilize, become activists. Take your power back. Become your own community organizer, network, be proud to be called feminists.
I hear people claim that they are pro-life who see no cognitive dissonance in their passionate support for the death penalty. These people sound batshit crazy to me yet they claim to be Christians of one sort or another and always patriarchal and authoritarian. I'm an atheist and I care more about the poor and the homeless, the mentally ill, the hungry and often neglected children living in single parent households with incomes below the poverty line, and desperate mothers with two minimum wage jobs than most of these "Christian" people who want to force you or your sister or girlfriend or wife to carry to term an unplanned or medically disastrous pregnancy.
Republicans claim to be all about small government, yet they want to legislate and restrict your access to reproductive health care other than the birth of a child should you get pregnant. They don't want any health insurance plan to cover women's pelvic exams, or birth control, yet Viagra is all good and a birthright for all men. Oh yes, the penis is that important, but the uterus's only politically important function is housing and feeding a fetus that must be born no matter what. The Christian Right Wing of the Republican party's agenda is to control women's bodies. To think otherwise is naive and uninformed.
My mother was a pioneering second wave feminist. I paid attention to the lessons she was passing on to other women. And one of the most important lessons of that feminist generation was that you have control of your own body and that includes your uterus. Those women insisted that words are important and white men in positions of power, in the guise of religion and knowing better than you, "little lady," what's best for you, work very hard to keep you down. They use words to marginalize and ignore you. My mother's generation of feminists fought hard for the change in abortion laws that Row v Wade brought to all of us. One of the battles they fought was for equal rights in the work place. They fought for an end to sexual harassment and sexual discrimination. And all along the way white men like Rush Limbaugh called them names like Feminazis. And conservatives pushed back at every point until our progress stalled and then began to move backwards. We still only make 79 cents for every dollar a man makes for the same work.
And slowly over time I heard younger women say, "I'm all for equality for women, but I'm not a feminist." That's when you began to give away your power. You allowed feminism to become a dirty word. Well, your power's gone now. Good luck getting it back. But I have a clue for you when looking for your lost human rights. Look at the roster of old white men who make the laws that govern us all. Look at the frat house that calls itself a church. Look at the members of the Family, the C Street old boys club of powerful and rich men who think the rules don't apply to them, but only to you. That's where you'll find your lost freedom. Now do something about it. Organize, mobilize, become activists. Take your power back. Become your own community organizer, network, be proud to be called feminists.
My Abortion in 1968: Pre Roe V Wade
I got pregnant in 1968. I'd left the man I'd been living with in Kauai and returned to Los Angles to stay in Z's apartment. She and her mate were house-sitting and their apartment was empty. They had a shop not far from the apartment in Westwood, called Satpurush where they sold handmade beautiful Indian clothes so popular with the Rockers coming back from their visit to an Ashram and their brush with mysticism and spirituality. All the seamstresses were Indian and everyone who worked at Satpurush was a vegetarian. I became their cook.
You might think cooking vegetarian would be quite simple, but it isn't. I got up early every morning and walked to a market in the neighborhood to buy fresh produce. When I got back to the apartment I perused the cookbooks for a tasty meal to make from my fresh supplies. It took the rest of the morning to make lunch. I got better and better at this important task and liked my job, liked the little apartment a block from Westwood Blvd.
Then the man I'd left in Kuaui found me and wouldn't leave me alone. He said he was in love with me, but he scared me. I'd seen him have episodes of disassociation when I felt he was a danger to me. This isn't a story about him, so I won't elaborate on that, but here he is in my life again and I don't want to have to run away again, so I make a deal with him. His terms, my conditions. We would take one last LSD trip. And if, after that trip, I still wanted him to leave me alone, he would.
I remember bits and pieces of the trip. I didn't fear him, but I knew I wanted him to stay out of my life. I had sex with him as a way to prove that even after having sex with him I still wanted him to go. It was coerced sex but not forced. And when the acid wore off I stated my desire to continue to live alone. I wanted him to move on, find someone else. And for the most part, he did move on.
A few weeks went by and I became ill. I was so fatigued I could barely move. I was constantly nauseated. Z suggested I go to the UCLA Med Center which was walking distance from the apartment. They were very nice at the Med Center. They did a couple of tests and sent me home to await the results. I got a call the following week to come in for my test results.
It was a very nice young man in a white lab coat who I met with that day. He sat almost knee to knee with me in a small exam room. He said, "I have good news, and I have bad news. Which would you prefer first?" "I'll take the good news first." "The good news is that you're pregnant." I felt as if I'd been kicked in the gut.
"THIS IS YOUR IDEA OF GOOD NEWS??!! WHAT'S THE BAD NEWS???"
"You have a positive VDRL." I had no idea what that meant. I just looked at him, waiting for some elaboration. "A VDRL is a broad spectrum test for venereal diseases."
"So, I'm pregnant AND I HAVE A VENEREAL DISEASE?!?!! What's the good news in any of this???"
"We'll do a more specific test so we know how to treat it. In the meantime you need to be on prenatal vitamins. I'll give you a prescription for those now." He started writing on a prescription pad and I stood up. When I stood up my vision narrowed down to tiny points of light off in the distance. It was much like looking through the wrong end of binoculars only more extreme. I had no peripheral vision at all. I saw only the tiny vista off in the distance with no sense of anything on either side of me from here to there. It was all just darkness and then that bit of far off light where meaningless movement happened.
I was taken by the hand and let to the psych department. I had tunnel vision. I was seated beside the desk of an overweight middle aged woman with short hair. She said, "What seems to be the problem?" And I have never heard those words since that I don't get angry. I screamed, "I took acid with a man I'm trying to get rid of, I'm now pregnant and I have a venereal disease and tunnel vision you stupid cow! What seems to be the problem? I'm talking to a person who has no idea of anything that matters. Why the fuck did they put me here? You can't possibly understand anything! You think you have answers? THERE ARE NO ANSWERS! I WILL KILL MYSELF. I WILL NOT GIVE BIRTH TO THIS MONSTER!"
I really did feel as if my body had been invaded by a creature intent on killing me. And they did find a psychiatrist I could talk to. I told him I'd kill myself if I were forced to carry this pregnancy to term. I told him about my childhood sexual abuse and fear that no one could protect a child from either being a victim of sexual abuse or keep a child from growing up to be an abuser. I told him there was no way to find a nice man who wouldn't turn into a monster. And he believed me.
But abortion was not legal in 1968. Only in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother, would the State allow a woman to get a safe legal abortion. Three doctors had to examine me and agree that I was serious about my intention to kill myself. I had to find the man who impregnated me to inform him he needed to get tested for venereal disease. Then the medical board of examiners would rule on my case and get back to me. Three wise men would decide my fate.
The impregnator did not have VD. I am one of a miniscule number of women who has a false positive on a VDRL, the broad spectrum test given routinely to women suspected of being pregnant. I was tested more specifically and tested clean. However none of this made the slightest difference to me. I felt like I had an invader growing inside of me and the violent morning sickness only further confirmed my feelings. I hated myself and the little monster growing inside of me.
If the three wise men did not make their decision before the end of my first trimester I would be forced to carry to term or kill myself. I would not carry anything inside my body to term. I was making plans to kill myself. Let me count the ways, there are so many possibilities.
In the end, at the last possible moment, they let me have my legal abortion. It took place in the University Hospital. I was admitted the day before the procedure. My roommate was a woman in her forties who was having a biopsy of a tumor on her clitoris. We spent a lot of time talking. I was reading J. Krishnamurti's Commentaries on Living. She was reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. We had a lot to talk about.
The next day she and I went to our respective surgeries: she early in the morning on the second day, I later in the afternoon. We both came out of our anesthesia sobbing. I with relief, she with fear as she waited for the biopsy results. By the time I was getting ready to leave the hospital the next day she got her results. No cancer. And we both sobbed again our relief. We hugged each other, and then I left. I've never forgotten her. Women understand these things. Men it seems, do not.
So now we have the Stupak Amendment. And now we are back where we were pre Roe V Wade. It is men who want this kind of control over women's bodies, women's choices. It is men who want to prohibit women the freedom men enjoy. We can't get our birth-control pills covered by insurance, but they get their viagra covered. It's very important to men that they can have a hard penis so they can impregnate if they want. But our ability to prevent pregnancy, or terminate pregnancy is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and a challenge to male authority and domination. So according to these Christian men, these powerful law making men, women should not have reproductive freedom of choice, the choice to prevent pregnancy or the choice to abort an unintended pregnancy should one occur. I'm starting to hate most men again.
You might think cooking vegetarian would be quite simple, but it isn't. I got up early every morning and walked to a market in the neighborhood to buy fresh produce. When I got back to the apartment I perused the cookbooks for a tasty meal to make from my fresh supplies. It took the rest of the morning to make lunch. I got better and better at this important task and liked my job, liked the little apartment a block from Westwood Blvd.
Then the man I'd left in Kuaui found me and wouldn't leave me alone. He said he was in love with me, but he scared me. I'd seen him have episodes of disassociation when I felt he was a danger to me. This isn't a story about him, so I won't elaborate on that, but here he is in my life again and I don't want to have to run away again, so I make a deal with him. His terms, my conditions. We would take one last LSD trip. And if, after that trip, I still wanted him to leave me alone, he would.
I remember bits and pieces of the trip. I didn't fear him, but I knew I wanted him to stay out of my life. I had sex with him as a way to prove that even after having sex with him I still wanted him to go. It was coerced sex but not forced. And when the acid wore off I stated my desire to continue to live alone. I wanted him to move on, find someone else. And for the most part, he did move on.
A few weeks went by and I became ill. I was so fatigued I could barely move. I was constantly nauseated. Z suggested I go to the UCLA Med Center which was walking distance from the apartment. They were very nice at the Med Center. They did a couple of tests and sent me home to await the results. I got a call the following week to come in for my test results.
It was a very nice young man in a white lab coat who I met with that day. He sat almost knee to knee with me in a small exam room. He said, "I have good news, and I have bad news. Which would you prefer first?" "I'll take the good news first." "The good news is that you're pregnant." I felt as if I'd been kicked in the gut.
"THIS IS YOUR IDEA OF GOOD NEWS??!! WHAT'S THE BAD NEWS???"
"You have a positive VDRL." I had no idea what that meant. I just looked at him, waiting for some elaboration. "A VDRL is a broad spectrum test for venereal diseases."
"So, I'm pregnant AND I HAVE A VENEREAL DISEASE?!?!! What's the good news in any of this???"
"We'll do a more specific test so we know how to treat it. In the meantime you need to be on prenatal vitamins. I'll give you a prescription for those now." He started writing on a prescription pad and I stood up. When I stood up my vision narrowed down to tiny points of light off in the distance. It was much like looking through the wrong end of binoculars only more extreme. I had no peripheral vision at all. I saw only the tiny vista off in the distance with no sense of anything on either side of me from here to there. It was all just darkness and then that bit of far off light where meaningless movement happened.
I was taken by the hand and let to the psych department. I had tunnel vision. I was seated beside the desk of an overweight middle aged woman with short hair. She said, "What seems to be the problem?" And I have never heard those words since that I don't get angry. I screamed, "I took acid with a man I'm trying to get rid of, I'm now pregnant and I have a venereal disease and tunnel vision you stupid cow! What seems to be the problem? I'm talking to a person who has no idea of anything that matters. Why the fuck did they put me here? You can't possibly understand anything! You think you have answers? THERE ARE NO ANSWERS! I WILL KILL MYSELF. I WILL NOT GIVE BIRTH TO THIS MONSTER!"
I really did feel as if my body had been invaded by a creature intent on killing me. And they did find a psychiatrist I could talk to. I told him I'd kill myself if I were forced to carry this pregnancy to term. I told him about my childhood sexual abuse and fear that no one could protect a child from either being a victim of sexual abuse or keep a child from growing up to be an abuser. I told him there was no way to find a nice man who wouldn't turn into a monster. And he believed me.
But abortion was not legal in 1968. Only in cases of rape, incest, or the life of the mother, would the State allow a woman to get a safe legal abortion. Three doctors had to examine me and agree that I was serious about my intention to kill myself. I had to find the man who impregnated me to inform him he needed to get tested for venereal disease. Then the medical board of examiners would rule on my case and get back to me. Three wise men would decide my fate.
The impregnator did not have VD. I am one of a miniscule number of women who has a false positive on a VDRL, the broad spectrum test given routinely to women suspected of being pregnant. I was tested more specifically and tested clean. However none of this made the slightest difference to me. I felt like I had an invader growing inside of me and the violent morning sickness only further confirmed my feelings. I hated myself and the little monster growing inside of me.
If the three wise men did not make their decision before the end of my first trimester I would be forced to carry to term or kill myself. I would not carry anything inside my body to term. I was making plans to kill myself. Let me count the ways, there are so many possibilities.
In the end, at the last possible moment, they let me have my legal abortion. It took place in the University Hospital. I was admitted the day before the procedure. My roommate was a woman in her forties who was having a biopsy of a tumor on her clitoris. We spent a lot of time talking. I was reading J. Krishnamurti's Commentaries on Living. She was reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. We had a lot to talk about.
The next day she and I went to our respective surgeries: she early in the morning on the second day, I later in the afternoon. We both came out of our anesthesia sobbing. I with relief, she with fear as she waited for the biopsy results. By the time I was getting ready to leave the hospital the next day she got her results. No cancer. And we both sobbed again our relief. We hugged each other, and then I left. I've never forgotten her. Women understand these things. Men it seems, do not.
So now we have the Stupak Amendment. And now we are back where we were pre Roe V Wade. It is men who want this kind of control over women's bodies, women's choices. It is men who want to prohibit women the freedom men enjoy. We can't get our birth-control pills covered by insurance, but they get their viagra covered. It's very important to men that they can have a hard penis so they can impregnate if they want. But our ability to prevent pregnancy, or terminate pregnancy is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and a challenge to male authority and domination. So according to these Christian men, these powerful law making men, women should not have reproductive freedom of choice, the choice to prevent pregnancy or the choice to abort an unintended pregnancy should one occur. I'm starting to hate most men again.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Why So Secretive C Street?
The Family has long been a secretive organization.[22][23] It maintains no public website and conducts no public fundraising activities.
Prominent political figures have insisted that secrecy and/or privacy are essential to the Family's operation. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan said about the Family, "I wish I could say more about it, but it's working precisely because it is private."[24]
At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, President George H.W. Bush praised Doug Coe for what he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy.”[4]
In 2009, Chris Halverson, son of Fellowship co-founder Richard C. Halverson, said that a culture of secrecy is essential to their mission: "If you talked about it, you would destroy that fellowship."[1]
From the 1930s to the 1960s it was organized as a more traditional religious association. In 1966, Fellowship founder Abraham Vereide became concerned about his organization's growing publicity and declared in a letter that it was time to “submerge the institutional image of [the Family].”[25] Author Jeff Sharlet describes this shift in operation:
Thereafter, the Fellowship would avoid at all costs any appearance of an organization... Business would be conducted on the letterhead of public men, who would testify that Fellowship initiatives were their own. Finances would be more ‘man-to-man,’ which is to say, off the books.[26]
In 1975, a member of the Family's inner circle wrote to the group's chief South African member, that their political initiatives
...have always been misunderstood by 'outsiders.' As a result of very bitter experiences, therefore, we have learned never to commit to paper any discussions or negotiations that are taking place. There is no such thing as a 'confidential' memorandum, and leakage always seems to occur. Thus, I would urge you not to put on paper anything relating to any of the work that you are doing...[unless] you know the recipient well enough to put at the top of the page 'PLEASE DESTROY AFTER READING.'
The recipient made copies of this memo for other Family members in Africa, one of which survives.[27][28]
In 1974, after several Watergate conspirators had joined the Family, an LA Times columnist discouraged further inquiries into Washington's "underground prayer movement", i.e. the Fellowship: “They genuinely avoid publicity...they shun it.”[29]
In 2002, Doug Coe denied that the Fellowship sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast, and a Fellowship employeed said, "there is no such thing as the Fellowship."[14]
Former Republican Senator William Armstrong said the group has “made a fetish of being invisible.”[30]
In the 1960s, when the organization first went "underground," the Fellowship began distributing, to involved members of Congress, confidential memos which stressed that “the group, as such, never takes any formal action, but individuals who participate in the group through their initiative have made possible the activities mentioned.”[31]
Family Member and Senator Sam Brownback describes Family members' method of operation: “Typically, one person grows desirous of pursuing an action”—-a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—-“and the others pull in behind.” [32] Indeed, Brownback has often joined with fellow Family members in pursuing legislation. For example, in 1999 he joined together with fellow Family members, Senators Strom Thurmond and Don Nickles to demand a criminal investigation of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and in 2005 Brownback joined with Family member Sen. Tom Coburn to promote the Houses of Worship Act.[33]
C Street "Family"
Rachel Maddow runs down the list for us of C-Street family members who also voted for Bart Stupak’s anti-abortion amendment yesterday. Nothing like having what amounts to a secretive religious cult making health care policy for women in the United States.
Now I want to know. Who are these men who plan to run the world and where are they planted in the government? I think this is one of the most disturbing things I've ever heard. A right wing religious and misogynistic cult is pulling the strings of governmental power. This amounts to a shadow government. And they don't have my interests in mind.
| Name | Position | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| Sam Brownback[1][80] | Sen. (R-KS) | Chair of Senate Values Action Team |
| James Inhofe[1][80] | Sen. (R-OK) | |
| Jim DeMint[1][80] | Sen. (R-SC) | Chairman of Steering Committee |
| Chuck Grassley[80] | Sen. (R-IA) | Former Chairman of Finance Committee |
| Richard Lugar[4] | Sen. (R-IN) | Former Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee |
| John Ensign[1][80] | Sen. (R-NV) | Involved in sex scandal |
| Tom Coburn[1][80] | Sen. (R-OK) | |
| Mark Pryor[1][80] | Sen. (D-AR) | |
| Bill Nelson[1][80] | Sen. (D-FL) | |
| John Thune[80] | Sen. (R-SD) | |
| Mike Enzi[80] | Sen. (R-WY) | |
| Joe Pitts[1][80] | Rep. (R-PA) | Chair of House Values Action Team; Member Committees on Energy & Commerce, Sec. & Coop in Europe |
| Todd Tiahrt[81] | Rep. (R-KS) | |
| Frank Wolf[24] | Rep. (R-VA) | Member of House Appropriations Panel[1] |
| Zach Wamp[1][24] | Rep. (R-TN) | |
| Mike McIntyre[24] | Rep.(D-NC) | |
| Bart Stupak[1] | Rep. (D-MI) | Author of the Stupak Amendment for the "Affordable Health Care for America Act" that would ban federal funding for abortions. |
| Michael F. Doyle[1] | Rep. (D-PA) | |
| Heath Shuler[1] | Rep.(D-NC) | |
| Jerry Moran[1] | Rep. (R-KA) |
[edit] Members currently serving as state governors
| Name | Position | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| Mark Sanford[68] | Gov. (R-SC) | Involved in sex scandal |
[edit] Current Family members formerly serving in the executive branch
| Name | Position | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| John Ashcroft[82] | Attorney General | AG under G.W. Bush; Also Sen. (R-MO), Member CNP |
| Dan Quayle[83] | Vice President | Also former Sen. (R-IN) |
| James Baker[4] | Secretary of State | Served under G.H.W. Bush |
| Robert "Bud" McFarlane[84] | National Security Adviser | Iran-Contra conspirator; served under Reagan |
| Ed Meese[85] | Attorney General | Served under Reagan; also Member CNP |
| Charles Colson[86] | Special Counsel | Watergate conspirator; served under Nixon |
| Melvin Laird[24] | Secretary of Defense | Persuaded Ford to Pardon Nixon[24] |
[edit] Current Family members formerly in the US Congress
| Name | Position | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| Don Nickles[33] | Sen. (R-OK) | Also Member Council for National Policy |
| Mark Hatfield[4] | Sen. (R-OR) | Chairman of Appropriations Committee |
| Pete Domenici[80] | Sen. (R-NM) | |
| Dan Coats[82] | Sen. (R-IN) | Promoted Faith-Based Initiatives |
| Chip Pickering[68] | Rep. (R-MS) | Involved in sex scandal |
| Tony P. Hall[87] | Rep. (D-OH) | Also UN ambassador for hunger issues under G.W. Bush |
[edit] Current Family members formerly in the US military
| Name | Rank | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| John W. Vessey[4] | Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff | |
| David C. Jones[88] | Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff | Also member Council on Foreign Relations |
[edit] Historical members
The following Family members are all deceased.
| Name | Position | Notoriety |
|---|---|---|
| Richard C. Halverson[1] | US Senate chaplain | "[O]ne of the first to join the Fellowship under found Abraham Vereide in the 1950s."[1] |
| Richard Nixon[84] | US President | Joined Family after presidency[84] |
| Gerald R. Ford[89] | US President | Pardoned Richard Nixon; also Member CFR |
| Strom Thurmond[24] | Sen. (R-SC) | opponent of civil rights |
| Herman Talmadge[24] | Sen. (D-GA) | opponent of civil rights |
| John C. Stennis[4] | Sen. (D-MS) | opponent of civil rights |
| Absalom Willis Robertson[24] | Sen. (D-VA) | Father of Pat Robertson |
| Arthur F. Burns[89] | Chief of Federal Reserve | Served under Nixon |
| Frank Carlson[90] | Sen. (R-KS) | Kingmaker for Eisenhower |
| Harold K. Johnson[91] | Gen., Chief of Staff of the Army |
[edit] Property holdings
The Family owns many properties.
[edit] Fellowship House
(133 C Street SE, Washington, DC. Three-story brick 7,914-square-foot (735.2 m2) rowhouse.)
Known as the "C Street Center" or "Fellowship House," this 1890 townhouse, located behind the Madison Annex of the Library of Congress and near the United States Capitol, has 12 bedrooms, nine bathrooms, five living rooms, four dining rooms, three offices, a kitchen, and a small "chapel".[14]
Rooms are rented to United States Senators and members of Congress who stay there as resident members of the Fellowship, reportedly paying $600 a month in room and board.[14][61]
The house is also the locale for:
- The Family's Wednesday prayer breakfasts for United States Senators, which has been attended by Senators Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, John Ensign and Susan Collins
- A Tuesday night dinner for members of Congress and other Fellowship associates.
- An annual Ambassador Luncheon.[92] The 2006 event was attended by ambassadors from Turkey, Macedonia, Pakistan, Jordan, Algeria, Armenia, Egypt, Belarus, Mongolia, Latvia, and Moldova.
The property is exempt from real property taxes because it is classified as a "special purpose" use. District of Columbia law exempts from taxation "buildings belonging to religious corporations or societies primarily and regularly used for religious worship, study, training, and missionary activities" and "buildings belonging to organizations which are charged with the administration, coordination, or unification of activities, locally or otherwise, of institutions or organizations entitled to exemption."
Formerly used as a convent for nearby St. Peter's Catholic Church, 133 C Street was the headquarters of Ralph Nader's Congress Watch in the 1970s.[93] In 1980, the building was purchased by Youth with a Mission, Washington, D.C., Inc. (also known as Youth with a Mission National Christian Center, Inc.) YWAM took a note from Alexandro Palau in the principal amount of $448,873.33 to purchase the property. A 1981 modification of the note was signed by Fellowship member Ron Boehme in his capacity as President of YWAM, Washington, D.C. and witnessed by Michael Davidson as its secretary.
Asked about YWAM in 2009, Richard Carver, a retired Air Force general and the President of the Fellowship Foundation, told the Washington Post that his Fellowship group is affiliated with the house, but that he has never heard of Youth With a Mission of Washington, DC, and that he did not have a phone number for it. Carver later said that he had spoken with someone who "at one time was involved with the house" and had "heard secondhand" that the organization that runs the house is "subscribing to the no-comment."[61]
[edit] The Woodmont enclave
The Fellowship owns a number of properties, including the estate known as the Cedars (Doubleday Mansion) located at 2301 North Uhle Street (2145 24th Street North) in the Woodmont neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia. This property, which was purchased by the Fellowship in 1978, includes two additional residences known as the "well house" and "carriage house," the latter of which is used by Doug Coe. The Cedars was determined to be a "place of worship" by the Zoning Administrator in 1976.[94]
Coe has described Cedars as a place "committed to the care of the underprivileged, even though it looks very wealthy." He noted that people might say, "Why don't you sell a chandelier and help poor people?" Answering his own question, Coe said, "The people who come here have tremendous influence over kids." Private Fellowship documents indicate that Cedars was purchased so that "people throughout the world who carry heavy responsibilities could meet in Washington to think together, plan together and pray together about personal and public problems and opportunities."[14] The Cedars hosts a prayer breakfast for foreign ambassadors on Tuesday morning.
In March 1990, YWAM (which also owns the C Street Center) purchased a nearby property located at 2200 24th Street North for $580,000.[95] The property, now known as Potomac Point, is used as a women's dormitory. Ownership of Potomac Point was transferred to the C Street Center on May 6, 1992, and again to the Fellowship Foundation on October 25, 2002. Potomac Point had been owned by Doug Coe's son, Timothy, who sold the property to his parents on November 30, 1989, for $580,000.
A second property, known as Ivanwald, located at 2224 24th Street North and assessed at $916,000, is used as a men's dormitory by the Fellowship. This property was purchased by Jerome A. Lewis and Co. in 1986, and sold to the Wilberforce Foundation in 1987. In 2007, the Wilberforce Foundation transferred Ivanwald to the Fellowship Foundation for $1 million. Jerome A. Lewis is a trustee emeritus of the Trinity Forum and the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Petro-Lewis Corporation.[96]
At one time, Doug Coe and his wife, Janice, owned nearby 2560 North 23rd Road, which they sold to Congressman Tony P. Hall (D-OH) and his wife on September 22, 1987, for $100,000.[97] Hall donated $20,000 to the Fellowship Foundation on September 4, 2002,[98], $1,500 to the Wilberforce Foundation,[99] and $1,000 to the Jonathan Coe Memorial of Annapolis, Maryland during the 2001 campaign cycle.[100]
The residence located at 2244 24th Street North, and assessed at $1,458,800, is owned by Merle Morgan, whose wife, Edita, is a director of the Fellowship.[101] It also is identified as the offices of the Fellowship Foundation and Morgan Bros. Corp. (d/b/a Capitol Publishing). Fellow Fellowship director and member Fred Heyn and his wife own 2206 24th Street North.
LeRoy Rooker, the one-time treasurer of the Fellowship and former Director of the Family Policy Compliance Office at the U.S. Department of Education, and his wife own 2222 24th Street North.[102]
Arthur Lindsley, a Senior Fellow at the C.S. Lewis Institute owns 2226 24th Street North.[103]
[edit] Cedar Point Farm
According to White House records dating from 1978, President Jimmy Carter traveled to Cedar Point Farm by Marine helicopter on November 12, 1978, to attend a Fellowship prayer and discussion group.[48] President Carter placed a call to Menachim Begin while at Cedar Point Farm.[48] The White House records reflect that Cedar Point Farm was owned by Harold Hughes, a former Senator from Iowa and the President of the Fellowship Foundation.[48] Cedar Point Farm was later used by the Wilberforce Foundation.
[edit] Other Family properties
- "Southeast White House", located at 2909 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, which is used by various community-based organizations.[104] This property is assessed at $736,310 for 2009 tax year.[105]
- "19th Street House," a two-story, brick apartment building located at 859 19th Street NE,[1] in the Trinidad neighborhood of northeast Washington, D.C., which is assessed at $358,250 for the 2009 tax year.[106] The 19th Street Center is used for afterschool activities.
- Mount Oak Estates, Annapolis, Maryland. One residential property, formerly owned by Timothy Coe, was sold to Wilberforce Foundation, Inc. for $1.1 million. A second residence is owned by David and Alden Coe and a third is owned by Fellowship associate Marty Sherman. Another nearby property, 1701 Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard, is owned by the Fellowship Foundation.
- Until 1994, the Fellowship operated from the "Fellowship House", a large estate located at 2817 Woodland Drive in Washington, D.C., which was sold to the Ourisman family for more than $2.5 million.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Tomatoes
Within a couple of months of our leaving Salt Lake and my starting work in Santa Barbara my mother, Maggy, called to announce her arrival time at the Santa Barbara Airport. She'd been waiting for an invitation, but this was a good time for her. She'd be staying for a week. Every time I sucked in breath to object she just kept on talking and once she'd given me the time of her arrival she hung up. I stood there with the phone to my ear and my mouth hanging open. Charlie gave me an ominous look and went back to reading the paper.
It was a weeklong nightmare of tension, barely disguised hostility, and passive aggression. I tried to referee, to be diplomatic. But she was at her worst. Charlie began to find excuses to leave when she and I were there. When I went to work, she drove down the canyon with me, criticizing my driving and the horribly dangerous road I had to travel. I gnashed my teeth and slowed down.
When she thought it should be lunchtime she would come and camp outside my office until I could leave with her. Then, after lunch she wanted to shop with me. I was, after all, the personal shopper, whose poster-sized photo graced every entrance of the store and whose photograph was in every ad placed in the News Press. I was supposed to tour her through the store and introduce her to everyone like she was visiting royalty. It was the hardest I ever had to work at that job. At the end of that week I collapsed into a stress-induced coma.
When she left I got sick. It took Charlie and me two weeks to recover and get back to normal. When we were finally able to talk about the visit (without Charlie's attack and my reflexive defense) we agreed that we'd better be prepared for her with some limits, some ground-rules, because she'd do whatever she could get away with. We even wrote them down.
1. Maggy may not come for an uninvited visit more than once a year.
2. When visiting, she must sleep in the downstairs guest bedroom, so that when she gets up at five a.m., she can read the paper, or a book, without waking us. (The oak plank flooring of the upper level creaked if you shifted from hip to hip while sleeping on the futon. It boomed like a drum if you walked, even barefoot).
3. She may not criticize or rearrange the contents of drawers or cupboards, nor ask permission to do so.
4. If she requires a garlic free environment, she will have to stay in a motel when visiting. If she chooses to stay where garlic is used in cooking, she may not complain about the horror of its odor.
Two months later we came home to this message on the answering machine. "Hi, sorry you aren't there. I have a job interview in Santa Barbara in a week. Here's the flight information. See you soon." Charlie and I argued for that entire week. He was furious. I was terrified.
That visit was the first time I knew my future with Charlie was nearing its end. She was more awful than I'd even thought possible--and I knew her well. She aggressively ignored our rules for compatible house guests. She insisted on sleeping upstairs on the futon. She got up at four thirty, instead of her usual five, and made coffee. Then she thumped her way into the upstairs bathroom where she flushed the toilet at least two or three times, before thumping her way back to the kitchen for coffee. She slammed cupboard doors. She slammed the fridge door. She stomped down the stairs, slamming the front door behind her on her way down the drive to check for the paper. Twice she did this. When we finally gave up and got out of bed, her first words to Charlie were, "You sure do have shitty paper delivery." To which he did not respond. She said it again, as if he hadn't heard her.
"I heard you the first time, Maggy."
"Why didn't you respond?"
"It wasn't a question and required no response." He took his coffee and what he could gather up of the ravaged paper out to the patio, quietly closing the door behind him.
I tried to keep her away from the house and in town. I took her to my favorite restaurants. She was impressed that I was well known, greeted by owners, taken to a good table ahead of people waiting in line. Other diners smiled at me, other waiters came to our table to say hi and chitchat. Maggy said, "You must over-tip."
Finally it was Sunday and I didn't have to work. I started planning a way to get her out of the house, so we could have some peace, maybe figure out a way to survive this visit. "How would you like to take my car and get familiar with Santa Barbara? You can do anything you want. Check out the address of the place where you're going to interview. See if it's somewhere interesting."
"That's a good idea. Let's get ready."
"I want to stay here. I have a lot to do today to get ready for my workweek. Charlie and I have some social plans during the week we need to work out. You go ahead. Maybe there'll be a movie playing in town you might want too see."
"Trying to get rid of me, huh? Ok, I can take a hint. I'll call before I come back to see if it's safe."
"Thanks." I handed her the keys and went back to bed.
Charlie had been working with our closest neighbor to clear brush, hoping to save both houses when the fire came. We were at the end of seven years of drought with no end in sight. Charlie's house was pretty well protected, but there was a huge eucalyptus forest, large stands of bay trees, Pacific Madrones with their naked red trunks just down the steep slope from the house which sat atop a knoll. We had old twisted oak stands. Charlie's property boundary bordered on National Park forested land. Charlie's neighbor's place was a thicket of dry brush too close to the house. It would explode in a fire. Our house was stucco and had a tile roof. It was surrounded with rough stonework patio. His neighbor's house was wood shingles and crowded with shade trees. It was serious work. And fire was a certainty. It was when, not if there'd be a fire. So their day would start early and it would be backbreaking. I was going to change our bed, do the laundry, make soup and placate Charlie when he took a lunch break. Due to the nature of the work, he would not be cheery at lunch anyway, but he was going to be especially surly today.
I decided on a huge pot of clam chowder, hoping that there would be some left for early in the week. While I was cooking, a friend of Charlie's, who grew organic tomatoes for the farmer's market, came by with a couple of bushels of fresh picked tomatoes for us. He asked how things were going, and when I told him, he offered to hang around and help with the brush clearing and the mother taming. I invited him to eat with us, but warned him that my mother was unpredictable.
"I'm known for charming the most difficult mothers."
"Good luck, you're going to need it with her." He left the house following the whine of chainsaws. I got ready to make tomato sauce.
Before two-thirty, Maggy was back with a sack of cleaning equipment. When I asked her what she was planning to clean she said, "I wanted to take a shower and the upstairs bathroom doesn't have one. But the mold and soap scum downstairs makes me sick, so I'm going to clean the shower."
I added extra garlic to the red sauce simmering on the stove in the kitchen. By the time she got the downstairs bathroom clean enough for her high standards and had taken her shower, the guys were coming in for a break. I had four beers out of the fridge and ready to open as they walked in the patio door to the kitchen. Mac, the tomato guy, and Jason the hunk across the road who worked for the corrections department as a counselor for the really hard cases, all came in filthy and grateful for the beer. My mother watched and listened from the dinning room table where she pretended to read a magazine.
Mac went to the sauce and took a sip from the spoon on the stove. He made all the appropriate umm, aahh, sounds. I was washing a few of the biggest tomatoes to serve as a side dish with the clam chowder for lunch. Charlie walked over to the remaining basket and selected a tomato. He ran it under the tap, sprinkled a little salt on it and ate it in two or three bites, juice dripping his chin. I felt my mouth fill with saliva and did the same. It was wonderful. They were like the tomatoes I always grew--juicy and full of acid, rich with flavor, tender of skin and warm, just hours from the vine.
Maggy could stand it no more. She slapped the magazine down on the table and walked into the kitchen. She watched me finish wiping juice off my chin and said, "I'm a real, honest to god, connoisseur of tomatoes. Why don't you amateurs make way for a real pro?"
Charlie gave me a look I could only take as a warning. When she moved toward the basket to make her selection, I held my breath. Jason had heard stories from Charlie about Maggy and held back, in the doorway. Mac was the only one in the room who looked fearless and frankly delighted. He beamed at his basket of freshly picked tomatoes, exuding pride from every pore.
Maggy handled them as if she were searching for the one worthy of her attention. She smelled several and rejected them, wrinkling her nose in disgust. At last she made her selection. She held it as if it were a glass of red wine, up to the light, like it might shine through. Then she rinsed it and carefully dried it on a clean dishtowel. She held it to her nose and inhaled deeply. "It doesn't smell like a tomato."
I refused to make eye contact with Charlie--could feel him looking at me, could feel him sending me the message, "You better put a muzzle on her, now!" I kept my eyes on Mac, who, despite this elaborate set-up for a gratuitous put-down, still looked hopeful.
When she was sure the moment was right she leaned over the sink and bit into what looked like a perfect, vine-ripened specimen of an organic tomato. With juice dripping from her chin, she wrinkled up her nose, and spat her mouthful into the sink. Mac looked absolutely stricken. His face was pale, his mouth slightly open, eyes full of disbelief. Her final words were, after rinsing and wiping her mouth, "It tastes just like horse-shit smells. What did you use for fertilizer, fresh horse-shit?"
"No, I used all-organic mulch."
"Horse-shit's organic."
It was a weeklong nightmare of tension, barely disguised hostility, and passive aggression. I tried to referee, to be diplomatic. But she was at her worst. Charlie began to find excuses to leave when she and I were there. When I went to work, she drove down the canyon with me, criticizing my driving and the horribly dangerous road I had to travel. I gnashed my teeth and slowed down.
When she thought it should be lunchtime she would come and camp outside my office until I could leave with her. Then, after lunch she wanted to shop with me. I was, after all, the personal shopper, whose poster-sized photo graced every entrance of the store and whose photograph was in every ad placed in the News Press. I was supposed to tour her through the store and introduce her to everyone like she was visiting royalty. It was the hardest I ever had to work at that job. At the end of that week I collapsed into a stress-induced coma.
When she left I got sick. It took Charlie and me two weeks to recover and get back to normal. When we were finally able to talk about the visit (without Charlie's attack and my reflexive defense) we agreed that we'd better be prepared for her with some limits, some ground-rules, because she'd do whatever she could get away with. We even wrote them down.
1. Maggy may not come for an uninvited visit more than once a year.
2. When visiting, she must sleep in the downstairs guest bedroom, so that when she gets up at five a.m., she can read the paper, or a book, without waking us. (The oak plank flooring of the upper level creaked if you shifted from hip to hip while sleeping on the futon. It boomed like a drum if you walked, even barefoot).
3. She may not criticize or rearrange the contents of drawers or cupboards, nor ask permission to do so.
4. If she requires a garlic free environment, she will have to stay in a motel when visiting. If she chooses to stay where garlic is used in cooking, she may not complain about the horror of its odor.
Two months later we came home to this message on the answering machine. "Hi, sorry you aren't there. I have a job interview in Santa Barbara in a week. Here's the flight information. See you soon." Charlie and I argued for that entire week. He was furious. I was terrified.
That visit was the first time I knew my future with Charlie was nearing its end. She was more awful than I'd even thought possible--and I knew her well. She aggressively ignored our rules for compatible house guests. She insisted on sleeping upstairs on the futon. She got up at four thirty, instead of her usual five, and made coffee. Then she thumped her way into the upstairs bathroom where she flushed the toilet at least two or three times, before thumping her way back to the kitchen for coffee. She slammed cupboard doors. She slammed the fridge door. She stomped down the stairs, slamming the front door behind her on her way down the drive to check for the paper. Twice she did this. When we finally gave up and got out of bed, her first words to Charlie were, "You sure do have shitty paper delivery." To which he did not respond. She said it again, as if he hadn't heard her.
"I heard you the first time, Maggy."
"Why didn't you respond?"
"It wasn't a question and required no response." He took his coffee and what he could gather up of the ravaged paper out to the patio, quietly closing the door behind him.
I tried to keep her away from the house and in town. I took her to my favorite restaurants. She was impressed that I was well known, greeted by owners, taken to a good table ahead of people waiting in line. Other diners smiled at me, other waiters came to our table to say hi and chitchat. Maggy said, "You must over-tip."
Finally it was Sunday and I didn't have to work. I started planning a way to get her out of the house, so we could have some peace, maybe figure out a way to survive this visit. "How would you like to take my car and get familiar with Santa Barbara? You can do anything you want. Check out the address of the place where you're going to interview. See if it's somewhere interesting."
"That's a good idea. Let's get ready."
"I want to stay here. I have a lot to do today to get ready for my workweek. Charlie and I have some social plans during the week we need to work out. You go ahead. Maybe there'll be a movie playing in town you might want too see."
"Trying to get rid of me, huh? Ok, I can take a hint. I'll call before I come back to see if it's safe."
"Thanks." I handed her the keys and went back to bed.
Charlie had been working with our closest neighbor to clear brush, hoping to save both houses when the fire came. We were at the end of seven years of drought with no end in sight. Charlie's house was pretty well protected, but there was a huge eucalyptus forest, large stands of bay trees, Pacific Madrones with their naked red trunks just down the steep slope from the house which sat atop a knoll. We had old twisted oak stands. Charlie's property boundary bordered on National Park forested land. Charlie's neighbor's place was a thicket of dry brush too close to the house. It would explode in a fire. Our house was stucco and had a tile roof. It was surrounded with rough stonework patio. His neighbor's house was wood shingles and crowded with shade trees. It was serious work. And fire was a certainty. It was when, not if there'd be a fire. So their day would start early and it would be backbreaking. I was going to change our bed, do the laundry, make soup and placate Charlie when he took a lunch break. Due to the nature of the work, he would not be cheery at lunch anyway, but he was going to be especially surly today.
I decided on a huge pot of clam chowder, hoping that there would be some left for early in the week. While I was cooking, a friend of Charlie's, who grew organic tomatoes for the farmer's market, came by with a couple of bushels of fresh picked tomatoes for us. He asked how things were going, and when I told him, he offered to hang around and help with the brush clearing and the mother taming. I invited him to eat with us, but warned him that my mother was unpredictable.
"I'm known for charming the most difficult mothers."
"Good luck, you're going to need it with her." He left the house following the whine of chainsaws. I got ready to make tomato sauce.
Before two-thirty, Maggy was back with a sack of cleaning equipment. When I asked her what she was planning to clean she said, "I wanted to take a shower and the upstairs bathroom doesn't have one. But the mold and soap scum downstairs makes me sick, so I'm going to clean the shower."
I added extra garlic to the red sauce simmering on the stove in the kitchen. By the time she got the downstairs bathroom clean enough for her high standards and had taken her shower, the guys were coming in for a break. I had four beers out of the fridge and ready to open as they walked in the patio door to the kitchen. Mac, the tomato guy, and Jason the hunk across the road who worked for the corrections department as a counselor for the really hard cases, all came in filthy and grateful for the beer. My mother watched and listened from the dinning room table where she pretended to read a magazine.
Mac went to the sauce and took a sip from the spoon on the stove. He made all the appropriate umm, aahh, sounds. I was washing a few of the biggest tomatoes to serve as a side dish with the clam chowder for lunch. Charlie walked over to the remaining basket and selected a tomato. He ran it under the tap, sprinkled a little salt on it and ate it in two or three bites, juice dripping his chin. I felt my mouth fill with saliva and did the same. It was wonderful. They were like the tomatoes I always grew--juicy and full of acid, rich with flavor, tender of skin and warm, just hours from the vine.
Maggy could stand it no more. She slapped the magazine down on the table and walked into the kitchen. She watched me finish wiping juice off my chin and said, "I'm a real, honest to god, connoisseur of tomatoes. Why don't you amateurs make way for a real pro?"
Charlie gave me a look I could only take as a warning. When she moved toward the basket to make her selection, I held my breath. Jason had heard stories from Charlie about Maggy and held back, in the doorway. Mac was the only one in the room who looked fearless and frankly delighted. He beamed at his basket of freshly picked tomatoes, exuding pride from every pore.
Maggy handled them as if she were searching for the one worthy of her attention. She smelled several and rejected them, wrinkling her nose in disgust. At last she made her selection. She held it as if it were a glass of red wine, up to the light, like it might shine through. Then she rinsed it and carefully dried it on a clean dishtowel. She held it to her nose and inhaled deeply. "It doesn't smell like a tomato."
I refused to make eye contact with Charlie--could feel him looking at me, could feel him sending me the message, "You better put a muzzle on her, now!" I kept my eyes on Mac, who, despite this elaborate set-up for a gratuitous put-down, still looked hopeful.
When she was sure the moment was right she leaned over the sink and bit into what looked like a perfect, vine-ripened specimen of an organic tomato. With juice dripping from her chin, she wrinkled up her nose, and spat her mouthful into the sink. Mac looked absolutely stricken. His face was pale, his mouth slightly open, eyes full of disbelief. Her final words were, after rinsing and wiping her mouth, "It tastes just like horse-shit smells. What did you use for fertilizer, fresh horse-shit?"
"No, I used all-organic mulch."
"Horse-shit's organic."
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Schmatta
I first went to New York for fashion week when I was nineteen. I'd married my boss, the fashion coordinator and buyer for the designer department in a fine specialty story. I went as the store model, as well as the wife of the man with the best taste in women's clothes in Salt Lake City. The specialty store was Makoff's. Sam and Richard Makoff were the brothers who owned the store. I worked there at the height of it's popularity. This made me Salt Lake's top model. I know, that doesn't sound like much, but it was great training and took me to New York and LA for fashion week at least twice a year. The years were 1961 to 1964. When we were in New York we went to shows and then to the showrooms. I was given samples by the salesmen. We were treated to tickets to plays, the opera, ballet. We were taken to lunch. The world was our oyster. I knew the Garment District, felt comfortable there. I loved New York.When we went to LA we stayed at the home of Rudi Gernreich's boyfriend. We saw Peggy Moffitt and Rudi at his showroom. More samples for me. I preferred the New York Shows to California's casualness, but LA certainly had it's charms.
Nothing has brought back that past to me more powerfully than this documentary. It's not just that it was one of the most vivid parts of my late teens and early twenties, but I loved the men and women who worked in the Rag Trade. I loved every part of it. But what I was not aware of was the way the Rag Trade is an example of what went wrong in American. Watch this documentary and see how Wall Street ruined us and the garment industry was the canary in the coal mine of vanishing industries and disappearing middle class.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Fritz LaRue, World Traveler, Had A Very Nice Funeral
I hate funerals. I have made certain I will not have one and no one can change my arrangements. I donated my body to the University of Utah Medical School. I've told all my friends that they would do well to outlive me since I will not attend their funerals, but the truth is I will have to attend a couple of them in the not too distant future, and it's killing me. These are gloomy times for me right now.
But yesterday I went to a funeral. It was the funeral of a Chihuahua. My New York friends, Rachel and David, were in New York working. Rachel's 14 year old, world traveled Chihuahua curmudgeon, the Chihuahua who went Fashion Week in Paris, Fritz LaRue, was staying with Rachel's mother, my long time friend Esther. So it was on Esther's watch that Fritz LaRue died. He'd had a great time while Rachel was working in New York these last few months. Esther took him with her to the ranch a couple of weeks ago where he spent a last wonderful week. Then, just after returning to Salt Lake, he started breathing noisily. He was dead the next morning. His trachea had collapsed. So to my way of thinking, Fritz LaRue died a very good death. His suffering was minimal and short. He didn't spend his last hours in a hospital. I envy any creature that dies suddenly. My mother's death took an excruciating seven years from diagnosis to death. Four or five of those years she was with me. The reason I'm unclear of the length of time she was in my care was the excruciating quality of the time. It was the worst thing I've ever been through, and believe me when I tell you, I've been through some very bad times. So quick is how I want to go.
Fritz had a lovely funeral, small and nondenominational. There was no mention of god or heaven at all. He's buried in the front yard of Rachel and David's Salt Lake home, and a native plum tree has been planted on his grave. The grave is marked with sandstone and river rocks. There were tears and there was laughter. We toasted Fritz LaRue with a drink made from 2 parts fresh homemade Concord grape juice, 1 part club soda, with a jigger of St Germain. I'd never tasted St Germain before (a French liqueur made from elderflowers). As an ingredient in this drink, it was perfection. So here's to one good funeral for the old curmudgeon, Fritz LaRue.
But yesterday I went to a funeral. It was the funeral of a Chihuahua. My New York friends, Rachel and David, were in New York working. Rachel's 14 year old, world traveled Chihuahua curmudgeon, the Chihuahua who went Fashion Week in Paris, Fritz LaRue, was staying with Rachel's mother, my long time friend Esther. So it was on Esther's watch that Fritz LaRue died. He'd had a great time while Rachel was working in New York these last few months. Esther took him with her to the ranch a couple of weeks ago where he spent a last wonderful week. Then, just after returning to Salt Lake, he started breathing noisily. He was dead the next morning. His trachea had collapsed. So to my way of thinking, Fritz LaRue died a very good death. His suffering was minimal and short. He didn't spend his last hours in a hospital. I envy any creature that dies suddenly. My mother's death took an excruciating seven years from diagnosis to death. Four or five of those years she was with me. The reason I'm unclear of the length of time she was in my care was the excruciating quality of the time. It was the worst thing I've ever been through, and believe me when I tell you, I've been through some very bad times. So quick is how I want to go.
Fritz had a lovely funeral, small and nondenominational. There was no mention of god or heaven at all. He's buried in the front yard of Rachel and David's Salt Lake home, and a native plum tree has been planted on his grave. The grave is marked with sandstone and river rocks. There were tears and there was laughter. We toasted Fritz LaRue with a drink made from 2 parts fresh homemade Concord grape juice, 1 part club soda, with a jigger of St Germain. I'd never tasted St Germain before (a French liqueur made from elderflowers). As an ingredient in this drink, it was perfection. So here's to one good funeral for the old curmudgeon, Fritz LaRue.
Monday, November 2, 2009
It's Awards Season
I've been given an award for my blogging when I've become the world's laziest blogger. But I love prizes and I'm very honored that TheMom of The Attentive Aphorist still thinks of me this way and gives me this award to say so. Smooch! darling. You're the best.
Economic Support for Mental Health Facilities Falls As Local Governments Make Budget Cuts
I've written about my great mental healthcare facility called Valley Mental Health. Both my psychiatrist and my therapist work there. It's a beautiful building and contains many programs to both treat and educate those over 50 with serious mental health issues. There is a computer lab, large rooms for group therapy, and an incredibly good staff. In Utah like most states there are not enough rooms for inpatient treatment for those in extreme crisis, but Valley Mental Health offers all day care as an alternative to hospitalization for those suffering a temporary crisis.
Last month there were two articles in the Salt Lake Tribune about the budget cuts that will be affecting the staffing and services offered at Valley Mental Health. They are devastating cuts. I've called to see if my psychiatrist and therapist will still be there, and yes, they will, but it will be harder to get in to see them since they'll be taking on more patients as other professional staff will be laid off. Before the cuts it took two months to get an appointment with my psychiatrist. I have my therapists cell phone number so I can talk through a mini crisis over the phone. But these cuts will drastically effect so many just coming into the system or who live in assisted living facilities but come to Valley Mental Health for group therapy. This will effect the money for transportation for these patients as well as cut the staff of facilitators who run the group therapy sessions. It's going to be a rough winter for the mentally ill seniors who depend on Valley Mental health.
Last month there were two articles in the Salt Lake Tribune about the budget cuts that will be affecting the staffing and services offered at Valley Mental Health. They are devastating cuts. I've called to see if my psychiatrist and therapist will still be there, and yes, they will, but it will be harder to get in to see them since they'll be taking on more patients as other professional staff will be laid off. Before the cuts it took two months to get an appointment with my psychiatrist. I have my therapists cell phone number so I can talk through a mini crisis over the phone. But these cuts will drastically effect so many just coming into the system or who live in assisted living facilities but come to Valley Mental Health for group therapy. This will effect the money for transportation for these patients as well as cut the staff of facilitators who run the group therapy sessions. It's going to be a rough winter for the mentally ill seniors who depend on Valley Mental health.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
From Blogging to Twitter
There are moments in life that change everything, and people who are the catalyst for such change. Phillip is one of those people for me. David and Rachel are another two.
In late 2007 I was working on writing fiction on my old desktop computer. I couldn't get my computer to do the things I wanted it to, so my friend Larry, a retired philosophy professor at Portland State, put me in touch with his favorite student and friend Phillip, the man who understands all things having to do with computers and the internet.
Phillip worked with me for awhile trying to get my old computer to do what I need it to do and finally insisted I get an Imac. He said it was the best computer for a writer. He told me it's a more intuitive technology and more suited to the kind of work I was doing. He found the best deal for me and I bought the Imac and had it shipped to him. He set it up for me, loading it with every program I could ever want or need, plus a large collection of great movies. Then he shipped it to me and talked me through the set up. He is and always will be my Administrator.
During early January of 2008 my New York friends, Rachel and David, were in town for a visit and dropped by. They were delighted with my new computer and decided I must blog. I didn't know what a blog was. It was explained to me and within minutes I was a blogger.
It was the beginning of the political season and the field of candidates for the Presidential election was narrowing. I have always been a political junkie, so politics was what I blogged about. And low and behold I gained a small but growing following.
Now almost two years later I have a blog archive of 1,473 posts on Utah Savage plus six other blogs I manage and contribute to. I have a Netvibes account. I post my photo albums to my Picasa web album. I've received twenty two awards from other bloggers. I learned what a meme is. I became a blogging fool in the space of two years. I became a member of a blogging community. It was one of the other bloggers in my circle who first discovered Twitter. I took to it like a duck to water and before you know it I was neglecting my friends and ignoring my blog.
Now when I get up in the morning the first thing I do is tap the space key on my computer as I pass it on the way to the bathroom. And Twitter is the first place I go once I've let the dogs out and have my first cup of coffee in my hand. I have spent as much as ten hours at a time on Twitter and I've all but stopped visiting my blogging buddies unless I spot them on twitter. Time speeds by. It took two years to gain a following of a hundred other bloggers. It has taken only a few short months to gain a following of over 1,000 on twitter. Now I seldom see my blogging buddies on Twitter. They have not been bitten by the twitter bug. But I'm a full blown twitteraholic.
In late 2007 I was working on writing fiction on my old desktop computer. I couldn't get my computer to do the things I wanted it to, so my friend Larry, a retired philosophy professor at Portland State, put me in touch with his favorite student and friend Phillip, the man who understands all things having to do with computers and the internet.
Phillip worked with me for awhile trying to get my old computer to do what I need it to do and finally insisted I get an Imac. He said it was the best computer for a writer. He told me it's a more intuitive technology and more suited to the kind of work I was doing. He found the best deal for me and I bought the Imac and had it shipped to him. He set it up for me, loading it with every program I could ever want or need, plus a large collection of great movies. Then he shipped it to me and talked me through the set up. He is and always will be my Administrator.
During early January of 2008 my New York friends, Rachel and David, were in town for a visit and dropped by. They were delighted with my new computer and decided I must blog. I didn't know what a blog was. It was explained to me and within minutes I was a blogger.
It was the beginning of the political season and the field of candidates for the Presidential election was narrowing. I have always been a political junkie, so politics was what I blogged about. And low and behold I gained a small but growing following.
Now almost two years later I have a blog archive of 1,473 posts on Utah Savage plus six other blogs I manage and contribute to. I have a Netvibes account. I post my photo albums to my Picasa web album. I've received twenty two awards from other bloggers. I learned what a meme is. I became a blogging fool in the space of two years. I became a member of a blogging community. It was one of the other bloggers in my circle who first discovered Twitter. I took to it like a duck to water and before you know it I was neglecting my friends and ignoring my blog.
Now when I get up in the morning the first thing I do is tap the space key on my computer as I pass it on the way to the bathroom. And Twitter is the first place I go once I've let the dogs out and have my first cup of coffee in my hand. I have spent as much as ten hours at a time on Twitter and I've all but stopped visiting my blogging buddies unless I spot them on twitter. Time speeds by. It took two years to gain a following of a hundred other bloggers. It has taken only a few short months to gain a following of over 1,000 on twitter. Now I seldom see my blogging buddies on Twitter. They have not been bitten by the twitter bug. But I'm a full blown twitteraholic.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Still Life
My alarm wakes me up this morning with loud static instead of Morning Edition on NPR. It jolts me out of a dream of my own appalling ineptness as a parent. I go to the grocery store for the usual things: milk, eggs, toilet paper, nail polish. When I get to the grocery checker she says, “ We’re having a special on babies today, two for the price of one.”
I say, “Great, I’ll take two.”
"Boys or girls?”
“Can I have one of each?”
“Sure,” she says and reaches for the phone, and I hear over the intercom, “One of each, check stand seven.” A bagger brings two plump, bald babies in disposable diapers, lays them one at a time on newspaper, and wraps them like flowers, heads emerging from the unfolded end, wobbly, like large blooms on slender stems. The two of them fit snugly in one paper grocery bag, and the bagger offers to help me to my car. I decline the help, like I always do, and head to my car, bag of babies grasped to my chest and plastic bag of other stuff hanging from my left arm, keys in that hand. I open the trunk of my car, sling the plastic bag in, and then very carefully set the paper bag of babies next to the tire well, so it won’t fall over. Then I slam the trunk shut just like I always do. When I get home, I unpack the babies and put them on the kitchen floor. Pour milk in one bowl and cat kibble in another, and then I go to work.
I come out of this dream relieved to be awake even with the static. I have a headache and I’m sweating. I’m sluggish and shaky.
I’m the new receptionist at a chic and busy, upscale beauty salon. I'm brainless and sullen all day. Slightly paranoid and lazy in a resentful sort of way. I even annoy myself. Halfway through my shift at the front desk of the salon today I get nauseated. It’s Friday. The last day of the first week at this new job. Part of my job is to look chic and upscale. Well-coiffed and well-dressed. Another part of my job is to clean up after everyone else, so I sweep hair and do laundry in my Ellen Tracy silk suit and Donna Karan three inch heels. This is not where I thought I’d be at forty- eight. Living alone in a carriage house with two cats. My God, how pathetic.
Both phones are ringing, and a fiftyish blonde in a taupe silk skirt and silk jersey T-shirt with lots of tasteful silver jewelry, sits in a chair, scowling at me across a too short distance from my face. Her stylist has kept her waiting for the past half hour. He seems to be having some trouble finishing the perm he started two hours ago. That doesn’t bode well for the tastefully aging blonde or the permee, I think to myself while flashing her a truly sympathetic smile. She makes eye contact and then stares unbelievingly at her watch. She seems to have transferred her annoyance from me to her offending watch.
I can’t get away from the phones long enough to check the supply of clean towels and capes. I notice, as I pass one of the many walls of mirrors, that my lipstick has faded to the bruised blue pink of my lips natural hue, matching in tone the deepening circles under my eyes. I need to make more coffee. I need a cigarette and a nap. The perky blonde shampoo girl is getting surly. She washes coffee cups, aggressively banging them around in the sink, so I’ll notice she’s doing my job. Torpor sets in. Deliveries of hair care products are made, but the manager left and forgot to leave checks. I want to sleep, dreamlessly.
A pimply, pudgy, sweet faced high school boy comes in and asks for Miss Torkleson’s order. I know nothing about Miss Torkleson’s order. I try to ask the stylists closest to my desk if they know anything about her order, but no one can hear over the noise of hair-dryers and Light Jazz. Eventually I find out no one knows who she is, or what the hell she ordered, or where it might be. It takes me ten full minutes to cover the entire space of the salon looking for clues to the mysterious Miss Torkleson and her missing special order. When I return to the front desk, the peach fuzzed boy stands to the left of my desk by the ringing phones, shuffling from foot to foot. Two teenage models enter the salon laughing companionable. They smile at me and say “Judy, Hi!” as they pass my desk, not even glancing at the boy turning pink beside me. I sit and look up at him trying to formulate the right question. I ask him if he can give me any more clues about her or what she ordered.
He says, “I think it ends in O and R.”
“What ends in O and R?”
“The name of the stuff she ordered.”
I think to myself, 'Great, that’s a big help since no product I can think of ends in O and half of them end in R' as both phones light up and start bleating. While I’m trying to fit the two women on the phones into the packed schedules of the stylists they want, he stands there, beet red and rocking gently from side to side.
When I get off the phones I say to him, “Are you sure you have the right salon?”
“This is Milano’s isn’t it?”
I ask him if he works for Miss Torkleson, and he says, “No, I’m a student.” As if that isn’t perfectly obvious - - he’s only fifteen or sixteen, at the most.
“Where does Miss Torkleson work? Can you call her?”
“She’s my teacher at Ellsworth High School. Can I borrow a phone book to look up the number?”
My God! Who does this teacher think she is, the Queen of France? He finds the phone number, dials it, and asks for Miss Torkleson. They put him on hold. The color in his face deepens by the second as he stands there, phone clamped to his ear, knuckles whitening around the receiver. After three or four minutes he hangs up and looks up the phone number again.
I look at him and ask, “What happened?”
“They hung up on me.” He dials again. He seems to be trying to hide his irritation and discomfort, but his eyes roll up in an involuntary and universal expression of disgust. He’s starting to sweat. I smile. I hope I appear sympathetic.
I haven’t said aloud any of the nasty things I’m thinking about his teacher, but I grow increasingly pissed off that some prissy bitch high school teacher would abuse her power and authority — would be such a perfect jerk as to send this poor, blushing, pimply, pubescent boy to Boy Hell to pick up some unknown beauty potion for her highness’s hair in the middle of a school day. What gall! I hope her damned hair falls out strand by stringy strand. My every gesture tortures him. Poor little shit — the whites of his eyes are beginning to show above his lower lids alarmingly. I write a brief note to his teacher suggesting that she call and tell us exactly what her order is, and when she'll be coming in to pick it up. He leaves shaking his head in disbelief. Thank god this day's almost over.
I stop at the Smith’s near the salon on my way home to pick-up cat food and coffee and a gallon of milk. It’s 2:45 when I leave the store. I’m trying to get my cats to give up baby-food lamb. Since we moved, traumatically, cross-country, a little over a month ago, I improved the quality of their diets to help them cope with the stress. Now I can’t get them to give up the Gerber’s Pureed Lamb. Often Fanny sniffs her bowl of cat food and slowly walks away. Phoebe will stand there for a while shifting her dirty looks from her bowl to me before she covers the bowl with the dish towel I keep under their bowls, as if hers contains a stinking turd.
I’m puzzled when I unlock my front door and my neighbor's cat, Handsome, greets me. He’s a large cream-colored tom with orange tipped ears and blue eyes that cross when he gets close to Phoebe. He spends a lot of time stalking Phoebe so he can jump on her back and bite her. If he can slip past me, he swaggers into the house like he owns the place. I kicked him out when I left for work. My two stayed in. At least that’s what I thought. Now Handsome is in, and the girls are out. What the hell! Is Handsome more talented than I thought?
Once he dashes out I notice my backgammon set is open and the pieces strewn across the floor. And I think to myself, how the hell did that cat get the case open— it latches like an old Samsonite train case. My eyes drift up to the window above the kitchen sink, and I notice two small colored glass bottles lying on their sides at odd angles on the sill. A third and larger bottle is gone, presumably in the sink. The grey stone pestle hangs on the edge of the sill and looks like a wilting erection. I guess Handsome tried to get out the window. Poor guy. Trapped in the house. And then the hair rises on my arms, and muscles tighten along the back of my neck. Something isn’t right here.
I find myself standing there, just inside the threshold of my house, tote and plastic grocery bag slung over my shoulder, keys in my hand, my heart pounding wildly. Nothing moves but my eyes. They drift from the windowsill to the antique hutch against the west wall of the kitchen. Two doors on the upper left side, above the flour bin, hang by one hinge each. The flour bin is all the way open. Wow, Handsome. You must have been really upset, I tell myself. It doesn’t work. I can’t quite buy it. I look back to the window, expecting to see the screen missing, but it’s not. Then I see that the Ball jar I keep my poker change in is sitting in the center of the pie shelf. Last time I played poker, which was three weeks ago, I put it on the top shelf above the flour bin and closed the door, which at the time had two hinges. It’s not possible Handsome did this. I want to cut and run.
I force myself to turn my head toward the bed, which is partially screened from the rest of the living space by an old mammoth armoire. All the photographs and paintings are still on the wall behind my bed. The closet doors are open. And then in a panic my focus pulls back to the typing table, and I’m momentarily confused to see my computer still sitting there where it was this morning. Maybe it was just the cat.
I breathe and take a couple of steps into the room. Then I see the underwear. It’s all over the floor around the bed. Not the socks, they’re still in the bottom drawer of the little three-drawer chest beside the armoire. That drawer is pulled out about an inch and a half. The next drawer up contains cotton bikinis and tank tops. It’s halfway out and nothing seems to be wrong there. It’s just a tangle of faded cotton panties and T-shirts like always, but the top drawer is all the way open and empty, and all my silk bras, thongs, panties, tap-pants, teddies, slips and strapless bustiers are on the floor and spread all over. A small black velvet coin purse with a silver clasp is open and in the middle of the bed surrounded by my set of round Tarot cards, which were in a round basket with a lid at the back of my closet
The two drawers at the bottom of the armoire are open. They contain all the prints from my photography classes. They're almost exclusively figure study, black-and-white nudes. All female.
One framed photo has been removed from the west wall above the window beside my bed and left in the deep sill of the window. It’s a female torso reclining on her side with her back to the camera. The knee of the top leg is bent and rolled forward in a stretch, which exposes the interior upper thigh of the other leg. It’s a high contrast print, very starkly black and white. Strong light from a window falls precisely on a barely visible tuft of pubic hair. My mother thinks this photograph is obscene.
I notice something else on the bed. The long flat pouch Charlie insisted I carry my passport and large bills in when we went to Costa Rica. I grab it and feel the passport without having to look inside. I clutch it to my stomach as I head for the phone. That’s when I dial 911.
The woman on the line says it might be quite a wait, since my situation isn’t life threatening, and the intruder is gone. She tells me not to clean up the mess until after the police look at it.
Fanny and Phoebe show up while I’m waiting for the police to arrive. They enter cautiously. They roam the house sniffing everything as if nothing were familiar. Eventually Fanny heads for the daybed and Phoebe perches on the bedroom windowsill. I pace for a while noticing more disturbance. My typing chair has been moved and there are huge shoe prints on it. Everything on top of the Armoire has been opened and dumped. I move from there to the solarium, take the two steps down and stand there in the warmth of late afternoon sun. The mattress on the daybed is slightly askew, but Fanny doesn’t seem to mind. She is snuggled into the pillows at the shady end by the west wall, which is redwood. I turn left into the bathroom and see that all the drawers have been opened and the boxes and cosmetics bags have been opened and emptied. Jewelry lies scattered on the top bookcase shelf between the toilet and the sink cabinet. There are two rings and an earring on the floor. I kneel down and start searching the floor. There is nothing else but hair, the odd bit of cat litter, and dust bunnies. I head for the closet to check for my camera.
It’s not where I left it, but it’s there, out of the case, lenses scattered on a bureau top. Film cans opened, but all the film seems to be there. I examine the camera carefully. I have a roll loaded with six shots left, so I start roaming around the house taking pictures. Load another roll of Kodak 35 millimeter, 24 exposures, 400 ASA, and start really looking at things one small frame at a time. There is dust on every surface. In the sink, along with a broken bottle, there are food scraps. Some toast crumbs and four sections of orange rind.
When Officer Crowley arrives the cats split, fast. One of the first things he does is tell me how traumatic a break-in is. He talks to me about the burglary being like rape, a violation. There will be emotional repercussions. Officer Crowley says to me, “Don’t let the man who broke into your house,”-- (and went through my underwear drawer, scattering flowered silk bras and panties like petals across the floor at the foot of my bed)---“make you change the way you live your life.”
We know it was a man because of the size of his footprints on that typing chair. He left handprints here and there on dusty surfaces. I wonder what Officer Crowley thinks of my housekeeping. Dusting is obviously not a high priority for me.
He asks me if I’ve only noticed what isn’t missing, and I’m so grateful for the fact that the burglar didn’t smash and destroy everything, didn’t shit in the middle of my bed, didn’t leave a threatening note, I can’t focus on what might be gone. He didn’t take my computer or TV, VCR, or camera. They seem obvious targets for theft. He even left credit cards. I keep telling myself how lucky I am. I keep trying to focus on the positive. I keep wanting this to be a victimless crime.
Officer Crowley is gentle and patient. He seems a very sensitive man. Not at all my stereotype of a cop. He has a round head with short blond hair, and a round gut. The rest of him is blunt and muscled--short, stocky, solid looking legs. But his voice is soft as if it rises from the great bulk of that belly. I like Officer Crowley. I don’t want him to leave.
He stays for about forty-five minutes. Says it looked to be a random break-in--someone looking for cash or drugs. He says I’ll probably never get robbed again. He says it convincingly, as though we all have our allotted burglaries assigned at birth, and now I’ve finally had mine. Whew! Then he tells me I should get a new door with better security locks and a dog wouldn’t be a bad idea either. He suggests bars for the windows. As he’s leaving, he says a photographer will be by later to take pictures of the gouge marks in the door where the burglar forced the deadbolt. I’m sorry to see him go.
Officer Crowley told me the cats might be traumatized and need tranquilizers. Hah! It’s getting dark now and my youngest cat, Phoebe, has brought into the house proudly dangling from her jaws, a live moth the size of a healthy sparrow. She drops the stunned creature by my chair and smiles up at me. She’s carried it like a prize bird dog would—undamaged. It sits poised on the carpet, and then Phoebe reaches out one paw, claws retracted, and gives it a little tap. The moth rises and heads for the green gloaming of the solarium. Phoebe sits, still smiling, and watches its flight. It flies low like an overloaded B-52, clears the four-foot height of my yucca tree and crashes into the glass wall. I see a smudge of dust from where it hit the glass. Phoebe looks back at me and then trots off to the solarium to investigate. I know what her plan is. She’s slowly going to torment the moth, making it last as long as possible. When it seems finely lifeless she’ll walk away, disgusted and bored.
Fanny sleeps like a cat in a coma, curled into the pillows on the day bed. She doesn’t even look the second time Phoebe falls from the ceiling of the solarium. The first time she fell we both investigated, now we try to ignore her. Fanny naps and I pace. Phoebe climbs the redwood beams supporting the big glass panels of the solarium’s walls and ceiling. As she gets near the top of the beam she tries to reach the frantic moth with one extended paw, claws outstretched, taking swipes at it, as it hovers against the glass sky. Its wings beat fast; my heart seems to beat to the same frantic rhythm.
There’s nowhere to go but down. The racket Phoebe makes when she lands on the tile floor amongst the dust pan, the half empty bag of kitty litter and the broom is alarming. There’s a momentary silence and then the broom falls over punctuating the quiet with a sound like a hard slap as the wooden handle hits the tile. Phoebe leaps straight up three feet. Then walks sedately on tippy-toes to the toilet for a drink.
When she begins her next assault I decide to intercede on the moth’s behalf. I stand on the daybed and try to capture it in my cupped hands, but I swear I hear a sound that could only be a moth screaming, and it dives for the glass wall that faces the garden and the fence along the alley.
I can still hear the moth bashing its wings against something hard. I can feel the tattering of wings, smell the dust. It lies still for a moment. The moon shines through the glass roof of the solarium creating pools of cold light. I think about light and the moth, the smudged window, the disheveled day-bed, Fanny is a pool of black in the corner, the apple tree a pale ghost in the moonlight through the glass. I look through the lens.
I say, “Great, I’ll take two.”
"Boys or girls?”
“Can I have one of each?”
“Sure,” she says and reaches for the phone, and I hear over the intercom, “One of each, check stand seven.” A bagger brings two plump, bald babies in disposable diapers, lays them one at a time on newspaper, and wraps them like flowers, heads emerging from the unfolded end, wobbly, like large blooms on slender stems. The two of them fit snugly in one paper grocery bag, and the bagger offers to help me to my car. I decline the help, like I always do, and head to my car, bag of babies grasped to my chest and plastic bag of other stuff hanging from my left arm, keys in that hand. I open the trunk of my car, sling the plastic bag in, and then very carefully set the paper bag of babies next to the tire well, so it won’t fall over. Then I slam the trunk shut just like I always do. When I get home, I unpack the babies and put them on the kitchen floor. Pour milk in one bowl and cat kibble in another, and then I go to work.
I come out of this dream relieved to be awake even with the static. I have a headache and I’m sweating. I’m sluggish and shaky.
I’m the new receptionist at a chic and busy, upscale beauty salon. I'm brainless and sullen all day. Slightly paranoid and lazy in a resentful sort of way. I even annoy myself. Halfway through my shift at the front desk of the salon today I get nauseated. It’s Friday. The last day of the first week at this new job. Part of my job is to look chic and upscale. Well-coiffed and well-dressed. Another part of my job is to clean up after everyone else, so I sweep hair and do laundry in my Ellen Tracy silk suit and Donna Karan three inch heels. This is not where I thought I’d be at forty- eight. Living alone in a carriage house with two cats. My God, how pathetic.
Both phones are ringing, and a fiftyish blonde in a taupe silk skirt and silk jersey T-shirt with lots of tasteful silver jewelry, sits in a chair, scowling at me across a too short distance from my face. Her stylist has kept her waiting for the past half hour. He seems to be having some trouble finishing the perm he started two hours ago. That doesn’t bode well for the tastefully aging blonde or the permee, I think to myself while flashing her a truly sympathetic smile. She makes eye contact and then stares unbelievingly at her watch. She seems to have transferred her annoyance from me to her offending watch.
I can’t get away from the phones long enough to check the supply of clean towels and capes. I notice, as I pass one of the many walls of mirrors, that my lipstick has faded to the bruised blue pink of my lips natural hue, matching in tone the deepening circles under my eyes. I need to make more coffee. I need a cigarette and a nap. The perky blonde shampoo girl is getting surly. She washes coffee cups, aggressively banging them around in the sink, so I’ll notice she’s doing my job. Torpor sets in. Deliveries of hair care products are made, but the manager left and forgot to leave checks. I want to sleep, dreamlessly.
A pimply, pudgy, sweet faced high school boy comes in and asks for Miss Torkleson’s order. I know nothing about Miss Torkleson’s order. I try to ask the stylists closest to my desk if they know anything about her order, but no one can hear over the noise of hair-dryers and Light Jazz. Eventually I find out no one knows who she is, or what the hell she ordered, or where it might be. It takes me ten full minutes to cover the entire space of the salon looking for clues to the mysterious Miss Torkleson and her missing special order. When I return to the front desk, the peach fuzzed boy stands to the left of my desk by the ringing phones, shuffling from foot to foot. Two teenage models enter the salon laughing companionable. They smile at me and say “Judy, Hi!” as they pass my desk, not even glancing at the boy turning pink beside me. I sit and look up at him trying to formulate the right question. I ask him if he can give me any more clues about her or what she ordered.
He says, “I think it ends in O and R.”
“What ends in O and R?”
“The name of the stuff she ordered.”
I think to myself, 'Great, that’s a big help since no product I can think of ends in O and half of them end in R' as both phones light up and start bleating. While I’m trying to fit the two women on the phones into the packed schedules of the stylists they want, he stands there, beet red and rocking gently from side to side.
When I get off the phones I say to him, “Are you sure you have the right salon?”
“This is Milano’s isn’t it?”
I ask him if he works for Miss Torkleson, and he says, “No, I’m a student.” As if that isn’t perfectly obvious - - he’s only fifteen or sixteen, at the most.
“Where does Miss Torkleson work? Can you call her?”
“She’s my teacher at Ellsworth High School. Can I borrow a phone book to look up the number?”
My God! Who does this teacher think she is, the Queen of France? He finds the phone number, dials it, and asks for Miss Torkleson. They put him on hold. The color in his face deepens by the second as he stands there, phone clamped to his ear, knuckles whitening around the receiver. After three or four minutes he hangs up and looks up the phone number again.
I look at him and ask, “What happened?”
“They hung up on me.” He dials again. He seems to be trying to hide his irritation and discomfort, but his eyes roll up in an involuntary and universal expression of disgust. He’s starting to sweat. I smile. I hope I appear sympathetic.
I haven’t said aloud any of the nasty things I’m thinking about his teacher, but I grow increasingly pissed off that some prissy bitch high school teacher would abuse her power and authority — would be such a perfect jerk as to send this poor, blushing, pimply, pubescent boy to Boy Hell to pick up some unknown beauty potion for her highness’s hair in the middle of a school day. What gall! I hope her damned hair falls out strand by stringy strand. My every gesture tortures him. Poor little shit — the whites of his eyes are beginning to show above his lower lids alarmingly. I write a brief note to his teacher suggesting that she call and tell us exactly what her order is, and when she'll be coming in to pick it up. He leaves shaking his head in disbelief. Thank god this day's almost over.
I stop at the Smith’s near the salon on my way home to pick-up cat food and coffee and a gallon of milk. It’s 2:45 when I leave the store. I’m trying to get my cats to give up baby-food lamb. Since we moved, traumatically, cross-country, a little over a month ago, I improved the quality of their diets to help them cope with the stress. Now I can’t get them to give up the Gerber’s Pureed Lamb. Often Fanny sniffs her bowl of cat food and slowly walks away. Phoebe will stand there for a while shifting her dirty looks from her bowl to me before she covers the bowl with the dish towel I keep under their bowls, as if hers contains a stinking turd.
I’m puzzled when I unlock my front door and my neighbor's cat, Handsome, greets me. He’s a large cream-colored tom with orange tipped ears and blue eyes that cross when he gets close to Phoebe. He spends a lot of time stalking Phoebe so he can jump on her back and bite her. If he can slip past me, he swaggers into the house like he owns the place. I kicked him out when I left for work. My two stayed in. At least that’s what I thought. Now Handsome is in, and the girls are out. What the hell! Is Handsome more talented than I thought?
Once he dashes out I notice my backgammon set is open and the pieces strewn across the floor. And I think to myself, how the hell did that cat get the case open— it latches like an old Samsonite train case. My eyes drift up to the window above the kitchen sink, and I notice two small colored glass bottles lying on their sides at odd angles on the sill. A third and larger bottle is gone, presumably in the sink. The grey stone pestle hangs on the edge of the sill and looks like a wilting erection. I guess Handsome tried to get out the window. Poor guy. Trapped in the house. And then the hair rises on my arms, and muscles tighten along the back of my neck. Something isn’t right here.
I find myself standing there, just inside the threshold of my house, tote and plastic grocery bag slung over my shoulder, keys in my hand, my heart pounding wildly. Nothing moves but my eyes. They drift from the windowsill to the antique hutch against the west wall of the kitchen. Two doors on the upper left side, above the flour bin, hang by one hinge each. The flour bin is all the way open. Wow, Handsome. You must have been really upset, I tell myself. It doesn’t work. I can’t quite buy it. I look back to the window, expecting to see the screen missing, but it’s not. Then I see that the Ball jar I keep my poker change in is sitting in the center of the pie shelf. Last time I played poker, which was three weeks ago, I put it on the top shelf above the flour bin and closed the door, which at the time had two hinges. It’s not possible Handsome did this. I want to cut and run.
I force myself to turn my head toward the bed, which is partially screened from the rest of the living space by an old mammoth armoire. All the photographs and paintings are still on the wall behind my bed. The closet doors are open. And then in a panic my focus pulls back to the typing table, and I’m momentarily confused to see my computer still sitting there where it was this morning. Maybe it was just the cat.
I breathe and take a couple of steps into the room. Then I see the underwear. It’s all over the floor around the bed. Not the socks, they’re still in the bottom drawer of the little three-drawer chest beside the armoire. That drawer is pulled out about an inch and a half. The next drawer up contains cotton bikinis and tank tops. It’s halfway out and nothing seems to be wrong there. It’s just a tangle of faded cotton panties and T-shirts like always, but the top drawer is all the way open and empty, and all my silk bras, thongs, panties, tap-pants, teddies, slips and strapless bustiers are on the floor and spread all over. A small black velvet coin purse with a silver clasp is open and in the middle of the bed surrounded by my set of round Tarot cards, which were in a round basket with a lid at the back of my closet
The two drawers at the bottom of the armoire are open. They contain all the prints from my photography classes. They're almost exclusively figure study, black-and-white nudes. All female.
One framed photo has been removed from the west wall above the window beside my bed and left in the deep sill of the window. It’s a female torso reclining on her side with her back to the camera. The knee of the top leg is bent and rolled forward in a stretch, which exposes the interior upper thigh of the other leg. It’s a high contrast print, very starkly black and white. Strong light from a window falls precisely on a barely visible tuft of pubic hair. My mother thinks this photograph is obscene.
I notice something else on the bed. The long flat pouch Charlie insisted I carry my passport and large bills in when we went to Costa Rica. I grab it and feel the passport without having to look inside. I clutch it to my stomach as I head for the phone. That’s when I dial 911.
The woman on the line says it might be quite a wait, since my situation isn’t life threatening, and the intruder is gone. She tells me not to clean up the mess until after the police look at it.
Fanny and Phoebe show up while I’m waiting for the police to arrive. They enter cautiously. They roam the house sniffing everything as if nothing were familiar. Eventually Fanny heads for the daybed and Phoebe perches on the bedroom windowsill. I pace for a while noticing more disturbance. My typing chair has been moved and there are huge shoe prints on it. Everything on top of the Armoire has been opened and dumped. I move from there to the solarium, take the two steps down and stand there in the warmth of late afternoon sun. The mattress on the daybed is slightly askew, but Fanny doesn’t seem to mind. She is snuggled into the pillows at the shady end by the west wall, which is redwood. I turn left into the bathroom and see that all the drawers have been opened and the boxes and cosmetics bags have been opened and emptied. Jewelry lies scattered on the top bookcase shelf between the toilet and the sink cabinet. There are two rings and an earring on the floor. I kneel down and start searching the floor. There is nothing else but hair, the odd bit of cat litter, and dust bunnies. I head for the closet to check for my camera.
It’s not where I left it, but it’s there, out of the case, lenses scattered on a bureau top. Film cans opened, but all the film seems to be there. I examine the camera carefully. I have a roll loaded with six shots left, so I start roaming around the house taking pictures. Load another roll of Kodak 35 millimeter, 24 exposures, 400 ASA, and start really looking at things one small frame at a time. There is dust on every surface. In the sink, along with a broken bottle, there are food scraps. Some toast crumbs and four sections of orange rind.
When Officer Crowley arrives the cats split, fast. One of the first things he does is tell me how traumatic a break-in is. He talks to me about the burglary being like rape, a violation. There will be emotional repercussions. Officer Crowley says to me, “Don’t let the man who broke into your house,”-- (and went through my underwear drawer, scattering flowered silk bras and panties like petals across the floor at the foot of my bed)---“make you change the way you live your life.”
We know it was a man because of the size of his footprints on that typing chair. He left handprints here and there on dusty surfaces. I wonder what Officer Crowley thinks of my housekeeping. Dusting is obviously not a high priority for me.
He asks me if I’ve only noticed what isn’t missing, and I’m so grateful for the fact that the burglar didn’t smash and destroy everything, didn’t shit in the middle of my bed, didn’t leave a threatening note, I can’t focus on what might be gone. He didn’t take my computer or TV, VCR, or camera. They seem obvious targets for theft. He even left credit cards. I keep telling myself how lucky I am. I keep trying to focus on the positive. I keep wanting this to be a victimless crime.
Officer Crowley is gentle and patient. He seems a very sensitive man. Not at all my stereotype of a cop. He has a round head with short blond hair, and a round gut. The rest of him is blunt and muscled--short, stocky, solid looking legs. But his voice is soft as if it rises from the great bulk of that belly. I like Officer Crowley. I don’t want him to leave.
He stays for about forty-five minutes. Says it looked to be a random break-in--someone looking for cash or drugs. He says I’ll probably never get robbed again. He says it convincingly, as though we all have our allotted burglaries assigned at birth, and now I’ve finally had mine. Whew! Then he tells me I should get a new door with better security locks and a dog wouldn’t be a bad idea either. He suggests bars for the windows. As he’s leaving, he says a photographer will be by later to take pictures of the gouge marks in the door where the burglar forced the deadbolt. I’m sorry to see him go.
Officer Crowley told me the cats might be traumatized and need tranquilizers. Hah! It’s getting dark now and my youngest cat, Phoebe, has brought into the house proudly dangling from her jaws, a live moth the size of a healthy sparrow. She drops the stunned creature by my chair and smiles up at me. She’s carried it like a prize bird dog would—undamaged. It sits poised on the carpet, and then Phoebe reaches out one paw, claws retracted, and gives it a little tap. The moth rises and heads for the green gloaming of the solarium. Phoebe sits, still smiling, and watches its flight. It flies low like an overloaded B-52, clears the four-foot height of my yucca tree and crashes into the glass wall. I see a smudge of dust from where it hit the glass. Phoebe looks back at me and then trots off to the solarium to investigate. I know what her plan is. She’s slowly going to torment the moth, making it last as long as possible. When it seems finely lifeless she’ll walk away, disgusted and bored.
Fanny sleeps like a cat in a coma, curled into the pillows on the day bed. She doesn’t even look the second time Phoebe falls from the ceiling of the solarium. The first time she fell we both investigated, now we try to ignore her. Fanny naps and I pace. Phoebe climbs the redwood beams supporting the big glass panels of the solarium’s walls and ceiling. As she gets near the top of the beam she tries to reach the frantic moth with one extended paw, claws outstretched, taking swipes at it, as it hovers against the glass sky. Its wings beat fast; my heart seems to beat to the same frantic rhythm.
There’s nowhere to go but down. The racket Phoebe makes when she lands on the tile floor amongst the dust pan, the half empty bag of kitty litter and the broom is alarming. There’s a momentary silence and then the broom falls over punctuating the quiet with a sound like a hard slap as the wooden handle hits the tile. Phoebe leaps straight up three feet. Then walks sedately on tippy-toes to the toilet for a drink.
When she begins her next assault I decide to intercede on the moth’s behalf. I stand on the daybed and try to capture it in my cupped hands, but I swear I hear a sound that could only be a moth screaming, and it dives for the glass wall that faces the garden and the fence along the alley.
I can still hear the moth bashing its wings against something hard. I can feel the tattering of wings, smell the dust. It lies still for a moment. The moon shines through the glass roof of the solarium creating pools of cold light. I think about light and the moth, the smudged window, the disheveled day-bed, Fanny is a pool of black in the corner, the apple tree a pale ghost in the moonlight through the glass. I look through the lens.
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