Trauma in an Insane World

So yes, the world is broken. We have fallen from the Garden. But this is just a reflection of our own broken relations. Instead of obsessing over the fallen state of the world, it is incumbent upon each of us to take universal responsibility by looking within. It is only from that internal place of healing and strength that we will find the cure for what ails the world.

Zhiwa Woodbury, from Healing Our Trauma Together in an Insane World

When my Lyft pulled up to the intersection near the school where I work, a line of cars blocked the view, but it wasn't hard to see how many police cars were parked alongside the building. I got out of the car and walked toward the corner, my heart beginning to race. Yellow tape blocked the perimeter of the school, and traffic was being diverted. It was Valentine's Day and the one-year anniversary of the Parkland shooting. I spoke to a bystander who told me that there had been a shooting outside the school. It's a Jewish school and synagogue. You don't need to know much more than that to feel dread. I was allowed to go into the school in a private entrance and faced a sort of controlled chaos that I won't soon forget. This is what happened. A self-identified transgendered woman (I am loathe to write that out, but it has context as for the next few hours we spoke of "him," and "the guy" and evidently those hunkered down in the identity wars claim that it's a sign of persecution) had roamed about the school for nearly an hour, surveying it and taking photos and videos with a sophisticated camera. This alarmed the armed security guard, for obvious reasons. It's a Jewish school. All of this was monitored inside by women in the office who can see everything through security cameras. The security guard asked the woman to stop taking photos. They "got into it." The women inside called the police. They called the police several times. The guard went inside the locked gate, an open vestibule that protects the inner, also locked door. We don't know what was going on inside the guard's mind, but eventually he pulled his gun out of the holster  (live-streamed by the woman who, it turns out, is a You Tuber) and cradled the gun, insisting that the woman stop filming the school. We don't know what prompted him to, but he shot the gun toward the sidewalk where it evidently ricocheted and hit the woman in the leg. All of this is on the woman's live stream with narration, including constant profanity. Eventually, the police came. They arrested the security guard and took the woman to the hospital who walked out with what is called "a graze." Meanwhile, back in the school we spent the remaining periods talking through the drama and calming the girls. It was intense. Later, we learned that the woman has a history of provoking incident at government facilities. She claims to be protecting the 1st Amendment. She does all of this live and streams it o YouTube. The language. You Tube. Live-stream. Transgender. Self-identified. Hate. The guard has been charged with committing assault with a deadly weapon.

I know what I think. I think it's insane to carry a gun. I think the belief that you are protecting yourself with a gun is dumb. I think it's unfortunate that the security guard felt he had to fire it. I think it's insane to believe that the YouTubers identity as a transgendered woman should be an issue in this story -- on any side. I think it's terrible to walk around a Jewish school in Los Angeles and live-stream the recording. I think YouTubers are sick and disturbed people, their vocation useless. I think it's horrible that the LAPD didn't respond more quickly and that the security guard felt so much pressure to shoot. I think it's terrible that school shootings and hate crimes are so prevalent, our minds naturally go toward them at the slightest provocation. I think that you couldn't possibly make this shit up, and if you do, you are disturbed.

With all that in mind, I read this amazing article today about trauma and environmental catastrophe.

There is so much good in the world.

Gun Rage

inside jacket of Rebecca Traister's book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger

I'm enraged this morning, waking to the news that a 28 year old ex-Marine with "possible PTSD" opened fire on a group of college kids in a popular bar and grill in Thousand Oaks, a suburb of Los Angeles. He killed twelve people, including a sheriff and then himself. Many people are injured, and there's a been a call for blood donations. I don't know what to do with my anger this morning and will use this space to express it.

My rage is not directed toward the obvious target but rather toward those who persist in believing in their right to bear arms, in their right to use violence to protect themselves from the boogeyman lurking in their neighborhoods, in their right to be "good people" with guns, in their right to collect guns and place them in special locked boxes or cases, in their right to use them for "sport," in their clamor for their own "liberty." I believe that justifying owning and using guns like the Glock this man used in this point in time, November of 2018, is outrageous, that those who do are complicit in perpetuating the myth of safety in arms and the myth that owning a gun confers liberty. I believe that these people are complicit in the deaths of tens of thousands of people a year in our country. I am enraged enough to believe that these people -- men AND women --  are equally as complicit as the gun men (because, let's face it, it's MEN who do this shit) because they contribute to the myth of violence being the answer to conflict. I believe that every single person who owns guns -- for sport, for pleasure, for safety -- because they can, should acknowledge their complicity and step up and do something about it.

Me, I'm going to donate some of my blood -- boiling at this point.
















#fuckguns

Russian Bots

So, I’ve got an interesting twist on yesterday’s post. This morning I learned that the man who had wished for me to be “sterilized” when I stated my antipathy to guns (I actually called for them to be melted. I was emotional) on a friend’s thread on Facebook, was actually not a man at all. I had joked to another commenter also insulted that he might not even be a person, but, rather, a Russian bot. Reader, I don’t know what the hell a Russian bot is, but we use language like this now. Willy nilly. Apparently, someone was impersonating my friend’s friend — was it a hack job or a Russian bot?

What is going on?

The world is ugly and the people are sad. Piles of dead children are growing.

Someone from Russia tried to reach me yesterday. There’s a screenshot of the number.

What is going on?

Take Away the Oceans and the Stars

Guadalupe Valley, Mexico
Bruma Winery

But let’s keep our sympathies where they belong — with the powerful and the armed. With those who feel threatened in the face of the most toothless efforts to hold back the bloodshed and those who believe scary monster stories about their guns being taken away. Let’s face it, it would be easier to take away the ocean or the stars.

from Please Don't Get Murdered at School Today, by Kimberly Harrington 

Yesterday, I engaged in a long and sometimes over-wrought yet reasonable discussion with a gun enthusiast that went to high school with me in the last century. He gave me the usual arguments -- the Second Amendment, his rights, his love of hunting, his responsible gun use, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Love of nature, the eradication of deer pests. He put words in my mouth (my tiny little mother mind mouth™), insisted that I didn't understand hunting because I was a coastal elite.  I thought hmmm in my coastal elite way and stayed polite with an edge of defensiveness. He ranted a bit about sanctuary cities, said he knew a family who had lost a relative to a murderous illegal immigrant. He digressed, as did I. He was sick to death of his rights being threatened. I pointed out that he was "winning," essentially -- that he had the backing of federal law, however loosely interpreted, as well as the efforts of the most powerful lobby the country has ever known. I asked him how many guns he'd need to hunt deer for food, keep deer contained (this being an example of the responsible use of guns) and to protect his family.

He answered, 11, for a family of five. Shotguns were in there, as were rifles, I think, and a couple of pistols. I questioned his fear. He said he feared very little and neither should you.

I felt sick to death the rest of the evening and deleted the conversation.






Today, when I expressed my horror at what happened in Florida, when I gave in and said, Fuck guns, melt them all down, get rid of them, I was told to go get sterilized by another person, someone whom I don't know. I clicked on his Facebook page and saw that he was an older white man, somewhat puffy, surrounded by children. God was mentioned several times on his public page, as were fostering children, and sobriety was a common theme. He frequently used the word pussy in a derogatory way.

Sigh.

Aside from the growing piles of dead children, what breaks my heart is my own children's cynicism regarding these school shootings. Perhaps it's a way to defuse their own emotions, to dissociate from their own terror and confusion that this is where we are as a country. Both of my sons state that it'll never change, that there's no point to any of it, that there will always be guns and always be shootings and death and blood and people who justify guns and shootings and death and blood as part of being free.

Today at a Florida high school

Guns and Grizzly Bears and Jesus, Oh My!

Bear, looking into a Connecticut school classroom

GUNS and GRIZZLY BEARS!

Have ya'll been watching the shitshow on C-Span? Who knew we'd be living in these times, a kind of Monty Python meets Dante with an overlay of Caligula? For you readers outside of the Disunited States of America, congressional hearings of Drumpf's cabinet appointees are underway. So far we've heard all kinds of interesting stuff from the Band of Billionaires that Drumpf has elected to run his government. Yesterday, I heard Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name, but I can't help it), Education Secretary-Elect, talk about the issue of guns in schools as best left to the states, her example being the great state of Wyoming where its population of three hundred children in public school warrants guns to defend from grizzly bears. The question about guns was asked by Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat from Connecticut, a state where an entire class of first graders was gunned down by a white disaffected young man whose mother was a legal gun enthusiast.

JESUS!

Speaking of, while it wasn't brought up at the hearing, Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name but I can't help it) is also on the record as saying that schools need more Jesus. She and her ilk are on a mission, apparently, with their "school choice" and "voucher" programs. Evidently, these programs are part of a larger plan to bring greater Kingdom gain. I know that the buzzwords of school choice and vouchers simplify a complex problem that good minds have been working on for as long as our planet has been spinning round the sun (or perhaps only for the last 6,000 to 10,000 years that the earth has been around, according to creationists whom Betsy Ross DeVos has embraced), but forgive me if I don't trust in Jesus guiding billionaires to fix public education, especially Betsy Ross DeVos who appears to know very little about public education or even about what it means to need a public education.

Reader, do you know what IDEA is? No worries if you don't, because your proposed Education Secretary, Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name but I can't help it) doesn't either. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensures that all children with disabilities are entitled to a free appropriate public education to meet their unique needs and prepare them for further education, employment and independent living. When questioned by Senator Tim Kaine about IDEA, she was either woefully uninformed or screwing around with us. Given the rictus on her face, I'm thinking both.

Between her ignorance or dismissal of education and disability law and Attorney General Elect Jim Sessions' statements about children with disabilities being the bane of the public school system -- well -- JESUS CHRIST! -- maybe those are words that she does know and understand?

Anyhoo.



I'd like Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name but I can't help it) to know that the public school system, however flawed, afforded my daughter Sophie nearly two decades of inclusion in our community, stimulation, both academic and social, and an alternative to sitting at home or in a nursing institution, wasting away, like many people with disabilities did, even in my lifetime.

I'd like the woman to know that the only reason Sophie's education was ensured was federal law, and that, even so, individuals and school districts will break the law or work around the law which makes me believe that without the law, we cannot be assured that our children will be guaranteed a public education despite their disabilities. I do not believe that Jesus ensured my daughter's public education.

I'd like Betsy Ross DeVos (not her real name but I can't help it) to see this picture of Sophie that I took yesterday. It was her first day back at her public high school in over five weeks. She was so happy to be back. Honestly. She had a GREAT DAY.

So what can we do about this, outside of downing shots of frozen vodka and watching reruns of Monty Python skits or praying to Jesus to step in?

We can resist.

Here's a way:

Many Senators have already expressed doubts about DeVos’ fitness to run the education department. Let’s drive those doubts home. EVEN IF YOU'VE ALREADY CALLED ABOUT DEVOS, CALL AGAIN 

DC callers will be directed to Lamar Alexander, chair of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Here are the numbers of all the HELP committee members -- a fairly star-studded group as senators go -- that you can also call. If you see one of your senator's names on this list, weigh in!

HELP Committee
Chair Lamar Alexander (R, TN)
202 224 4944

Ranking Member Patty Murray (D,WA)
202 224 2621

Mike Enzi (R, WY)
202 224 3424

Bernie Sanders (I, VT)
202 224-5141

Richard Burr (R, NC)
202 224-3154

Bob Casey (D, PA)
202 224-6324

Johnny Isakson (R, GA)
202 224-3643

Al Franken (D, MN)
202 224-5641

Rand Paul (R, KY)
202-224-4343.

Michael Bennet D, CO
202-224-5852

Susan Collins (R, ME)
(202) 224-2523

Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI)
(202) 224-2921

Bill Cassidy (R, LA)
(202) 224-5824

Tammy Baldwin (D, WI)
(715) 832-8424

Todd Young (R, IN)
(202) 224-5623

Chris Murphy (D, CT)
(202) 224-4041

Orrin Hatch (R, UT)
(202) 224-5251

Elizabeth Warren (D, MA)
202-224-4543

Pat Roberts (R, KS)
(202) 224-4774

Tim Kaine (D, VA)
(202) 224-4024

Lisa Murkowski (R, AK)
(202) 224-6665

Maggie Hassan (D, NH)
(202) 224-3324

Tim Scott (R, SC)
(202) 224-6121

**For more Daily Action alerts, text the word "DAILY" to 228466 today!**

And if you would like to contact your Senator without signing up, you can just call (844) 241-1141 to be connected.

Disarm

Channel Islands, California

My wife has been killed by a machine which should never have come into the hands of any human being. It is called a firearm. It makes the blackest of all human wishes come true at once, at a distance: that something die.

There is evil for you.

We cannot get rid of mankind's fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true.

I give you a holy word: DISARM.

Kurt Vonnegut, Deadeye Dick

Righteous Talk

Lots of righteous talk -- I'm guilty of it, too. I "unjoined" a lobbying group (that I've contributed very little otherwise) working to make cannabis accessible to all states because many of the congressmen and women, as well as senators that the group has to lobby are recipients of NRA largesse. I just can't do it with good conscience. I can hardly stand to look at the mothers of children with seizure disorders standing next to these men, thanking them for their support. I don't want to collude anymore. I love living in a democracy, having a vote and making my voice heard. I'm going to use it to support only those people who pledge to make gun laws stricter and who do not accept one penny from the National Rifle Organization.

I'm going to resist cynicism and risk righteousness.

Here's a guide to who gets what in Congress.

My Alto Voice in the Choir

Oh, America...you sad, gunslinging whorehouse...Ah freedom.

                                                    Jeff F.


I have no interest in those of you who like to collect, carry, protect yourself with and otherwise support the narrow interpretation of the Second Amendment.  Your exultation in your conceal and carry status or your photos of your gleaming gun cabinets are nails in the coffins of all the people who've died these last few weeks, culminating in the fourteen deaths yesterday of people who work with the developmentally disabled. Like Sophie. Yes, I'm making an emotional decision. You've made your decision, a decision that I believe is immoral and cowardly and based on nothing but fear and craven impulse. I have no interest in speaking with you nor in living alongside you.

I have nothing to add to this bit that Mary Moon at Bless Our Hearts wrote in her inimitable style and would only add that I refuse to listen to anyone, ever again, justify their lack of support for extremely strict gun laws.

What sort of guns did those gunmen, still on the loose, use today to calmly murder fourteen (at last count) people at a center for developmental disabilities in San Bernardino?
I don't know. But I can tell you this- the guns, whatever kind they were, were manufactured for one purpose and one purpose only and that is for the murder of human beings. Many human beings. As quickly as possible.

At this point, I don't give a shit what these crazy white men (it's always crazy white men, isn't it?) have or had as a motive to make them do what they did. I don't CARE if they needed mental health care that they were unable to get. I don't care what their religion was or their social or non-social lifestyle was. I don't care what video games they played or what their neighbors thought of them.
All I care about is that they were able to get these guns, these weapons of evil intent and the ammunition to go in them and use them to kill innocent people.
And of course it's always "innocent" people. School children, people in church, people in movies, people seeking health care services, people at an awards ceremony at a center for people with developmental disabilities.
Look- anyone who would do what these men do is mentally ill. That's a given. Whether they are teenagers who want to kill their fellow students or grown men who want to gun down abortion providers- they are sick.
That is not at question.
But here's what is- what sort of deep sickness has infected us as a nation which would allow this direct cause and effect to still be legal? What is it about us as a society which makes us hesitate for even a second before outlawing these sorts of weapons? What has happened to us as a species that would allow this to happen over and over again?
I don't even care if the second amendment DOES protect the rights of people to buy these guns (and I don't think for a second that it does). Let's amend the damn amendment. Because our babies are being killed.
And we are the laughing stock of the world.

So how do we do it? How do we, as a nation, say no more? 
Look- I'm at the point where I'd let the government declare martial law and send agents to every house in the nation to collect these guns. Which, of course, would lead to civil war and unbelievable bloodshed because that would prove to the gun insanists (yes, I made that word up) that the very thing they've been yelling about as a defense for owning guns has finally come true.
Nothing is going to happen overnight. It just isn't. This is a problem and a horror that may take decades before we see some results. Is that a reason not to begin the process? To outlaw these guns?
The horror and evil of slavery wasn't solved in a day. Hell, we're still suffering the consequences.
BUT IT HAS TO BEGIN SOMEWHERE!
And this absolutely undeniably psychotic love affair with guns that a certain segment of American society has must be stemmed. The finger has to be stuck in the dike, no matter how huge the force behind it threatens to be. And no jokes allowed- this ain't funny.

I'm preaching to the choir here. I know that. But let me remind you- don't vote for anyone who wavers or waffles on gun control. Just don't. Stand up and let's begin to start the process of getting these guns out of the hands of the insane. And no one in this whole world really believes that background checks really work. We have to just stop selling them. And even, dare I say? Making them?

Driving Around the Shitty Thoughts

So, two college shootings today already. Maybe as we plan for Henry's college, we should boycott those schools that are in states with loose gun restrictions? I read somewhere that a group in Australia was calling for a boycott of tourists to the United States because of our embarrassing servitude to the NRA. Was that real news or something from The Onion?

Of course, I'm under no delusion that it makes much of a difference but it'd be good for the spirit to align oneself with people whose moral choices are similar, who wish the NRA would dry up or all its members come to their senses, buy a nice bit of land in some godforsaken part of a godforsaken state (Texas, maybe?) and set up all the shooting targets and End of Days scenario sets they please. They could start a Re-enactment sort of club like the Renaissance Fair and hunker down in their homes with their guns, waiting for invaders so they can practice protecting their kids. They could even set up camps with fake schools and teachers and principals, have a lockdown and re-enact those drills I've been reading about where kindergartners have to be really, really quiet and pile into their cubbyholes during lockdown drills.

I said on Facebook that from now on I'm going to get all my news from The Onion because it makes me feel sane. Here's what I read today that cracked me up. 

Care-giving, Drugs and Guns: Part 4,590,234

That happened this weekend. I sat in front of some fancy cameras while my old college friend, Sophie Sartain, a renowned documentarian, shot a short piece for PBS about caregivers. You might remember Sophie's documentary Mimi and Dona, about Sophie's aunt and grandmother that I wrote about a while back. Click on the title and read a bit about it, watch the clip and then mark your calendar for the PBS showing on November 15th.

The film spotlights the challenges of aging caregivers of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities—some 4.6 million Americans, 75% of whom live at home with family—and details the ripple effects of Dona's disability on three generations of a Texas family.

Can I tell you that while I am most appreciative of a spotlight, particularly when it has to do with advocacy for long-term caregivers of the disabled, I hate the spotlight, the camera and all of the jazz that goes with it. No matter the seriousness of the topic or how well I might articulate my feelings and ideas, a bad picture or one in which I look too -- well -- too, sends me spinning, and I want to run for the hills with poetry. I take these caregiving issues very seriously, but humor me when I ask you to pray to your god that when my little segment appears on the PBS special, I've remembered to hold my chin down, but not too far down, and that my mouth is busy talking, eluding my jowls' resting pose. Because, you know, it's all about me.

That also happened this weekend. I took Oliver and his friend to Malibu. Henry didn't come because he is otherwise always occupied with seventeen year-old activities, and none of these include hanging out with your little brother and your mother. Sophie didn't come because she was having a particularly difficult day dealing with drug withdrawal. She stayed at home and dozed off and on all day with Saint Mirtha. The THC is helping, ya'll, and I think we're through the worst of it. She's not having nearly as many seizures as she had the first four days, and the hives have disappeared as well. Damn that Vimpat and the pharmaceutical clusterfuck it rode in on. During this whole shebang, I tried to get a refill of Sophie's Diastat (an emergency medication of rectal Valium) because her old one had expired (we haven't had to use Diastat in the nearly two years she's been on CBD), but The Powers That Be (namely the insurance company, the federal government, and the pharmacy) couldn't get their crap together, and I'M STILL WAITING FOR THE STUFF. The Earnest Pharmacist Who Just Graduated From Pharmacy School told me over the Consultation Counter very earnestly, It's a controlled substance, ma'am. I'm really sorry. I won't belabor the details -- you've heard it all from me countless times. I found it exquisitely ironic, though, that I am jumping through hoops and making numerous phone calls involving Famous Neurologists at Famous Hospitals, Private Insurers, The Federal Drug Administration, etcetera, etcetera yet haven't made headway to get this refill of a life-saving medication that my daughter possibly needs. Let's not belabor the marijuana part here, either. What if it were a gun dispensary? I imagine I could pick up a military grade weapon and then walk home and order me some ammunition online to protect my family from invaders as we live and work and travel in the big shitty, no problem. My right to do so is protected by The 2nd Amendment. My point is, of course, NOT that we need to lift all regulations and make government (of the people, by the people, for the people) the villain. My point is that there is more difficulty in getting a shitty benzodiazepine prescribed for my daughter's seizures by her physician than there is for me to get a gun and some ammo.

Anyhoo.

Oh, yeah. Malibu.

It was divine.

Reader, how was your weekend?

Fear, Carry and Conceal

Tucson, Arizona, 2011; photograph by Paolo Pellegrin
via The New York Review of Books

I have several friends, particularly in the medical marijuana community, who are ardent Christians and political conservatives or libertarians. Their beliefs in many regards are antithetical to my own, despite the fact that we share much in common, namely our children with seizure disorders. A couple of years ago, I had to disengage from one member of this community when he derided the anguished cries of the father of the UCSB shooter for stricter gun laws. This person then derided me, called me a coward and declared that it was people like himself that had to protect lazy people like me. It's too easy, I think, to call a person like this insane or stupid or even to feel scared as shit that they're carrying guns around.

Lately, I've noticed on Facebook that a number of these people -- my friends -- are posting quite exuberantly about gun shopping, about applying for gun licenses and carry and conceal permits. The comments that follow these status updates are enthusiastic, even down to the emoticons of guns and happy faces. Their reasoning is generally along the lines of protection, that carrying a gun will protect them and their family. The other day, I sat on my front lawn with Sophie and a guy who was going to do a little work on my house. He, too, is an ardent gun enthusiast and spoke openly about the need to protect oneself from bad people, to arm oneself and learn to shoot well, in the event of a home invasion or a threat to my children or myself.

I might just be a dumb-ass, but I am not afraid.

I really don't understand what everyone is so afraid of, why they think concealing a sophisticated piece of killing technology is nifty and what sort of statistics they've seen that I haven't regarding defensive gun use in the home or out at the movie theater or in a grocery store or child's school.

To be frank, the only caveat to my lack of fear is -- well -- you. You with your glib photos of guns, your cocky aims to protect yourself and your children from dark forces, your conceal and carry ardency, your deep cynicism and paradoxical blind faith in -- what? In what lies your faith? Please enlighten me.


I've been mulling these things the last few days, inarticulate and struggling to understand, repelled and repulsed and uncomfortable. I didn't want to resort to sarcasm, to scorn or contempt -- I like these people, feel bonded to them, even devoted. Yet, distance. My brain's wrappings -- they're undone. I don't understand. In one of those amazing instances of synchronicity, tonight I read the brilliant Marilynn Robinson's long essay on faith and guns and fear in The New York Review of Books.  I hope that it will provoke some response, that I will. I'm not afraid and have nothing to carry or conceal.

I couldn't call it a day without replacing those raptor-headed women on the previous post with these lovely children

Home from camp for less than 24 hours, Oliver was already outside in our yard, watering the lemons and vegetables. We have a serious drought going on, if you hadn't heard, and we're obeying water restrictions. That's why our lawn looks so awful. I wish I could enlist someone to do a complete overhaul of our front and back yards -- make them drought resistant. Maybe we'll do it ourselves in a grand, homeschool-style effort this fall.

Henry and I went to see the movie Boyhood the other evening and then took a bunch of photos on the top of the Arclight Cinemas parking garage. The glorious sunset helped to mitigate the obliteration I felt watching the film. It was incredibly beautiful and interesting, and I haven't gotten around to writing a three-line movie review, but I will. Here's what the sky looked like:

And here's Henry's hand in the sky:

I'm going to miss those boys. They're leaving tomorrow for a trip to my parents' house in Atlanta and then onward to Hilton Head Island. We've been joking all night on when they might catch sight of a person carrying a gun -- legally -- in either state. Good Lord. I will join them for a few days next week, but this house is going to be quiiiiiiiiieeeeettttt, for sure.

Anthropocrow

American Crow by John James Audubon

Some days call for crows, their diabolical hop across the street, their strident harping at one another. The other day I could swear two of them, hanging at the end of the neighbor's driveway, were arguing. I thought I heard a derisory remark about the new Georgia gun law from the smart one, the one who sits up in the tree all day long, translating to the others. The others are always bewildered, screaming about this house or that, about the cat who looks more like a dog at the corner. The others are paranoid, feel threatened, exercise their liberties by stealing nuts from the old man in the gray house's tree, dash them onto the pavement, stoop down and pick at the pieces, like bits of brain. The smart one had enough at one point, it seemed to me. He flew down more like a bat out of hell, driving the others apart with his scream.

Culling

I had to do some culling on my Facebook page this afternoon when a spirited debate got ugly. Can I tell you that I love the back and forth of argument, the challenge of it? I know a lot of you deplore this kind of thing and are much better than me at monitoring the type situation that any fool could see was going to get out of hand. I, on the other hand, have a bit of the fly attracted to shit kind of temperament, and unless it affects me really, really personally, I get a charge taking on anyone. Humor me! My life is often made up of dealing with minutia when it isn't, so when given the chance to sharpen the old tongue -- well -- I leap (backwards on the evolutionary scale, maybe). This exchange was about gun control, though, so the person with whom I was arguing (a self-professed orthodox Christian, I can't help but add) naturally went down the path of liberty and freedom and protection, and somewhere in his poorly executed argument (where he called me intelligent but sadly foolish, a sheeple) assured me that, if necessary, his brave and courageous people would protect mine as we ran away, cowards.

Anywho.

I loved that photo of sheep culling for many reasons, the paramount one being that we really do run in herds, don't we?

Here's a poem, too:

Sheep

The first four leaders had broken knees

The four old dams had broken knees

The flock would start to run, then freeze

The first four leaders had broken knees

‘Why is the flock so docile?’ asked the hawk.

‘Yes, why is the flock so docile,’ laughed the dog,

‘The shepherd’s mallet is in his hand,

The shepherd’s hand is on the land,

The flock will start to run, then freeze—

The four old dams have broken knees,’

The dog explained.

The hawk exclaimed:

‘The shepherd leads an easy life!’

‘I know, I know,’ cried the shepherd’s wife,

‘He dresses me out in a narrow skirt

and leaves me home to clean his dirt.

Whenever I try to run, I freeze—

All the old dams have broken knees.’

‘Well, I’m so glad he doesn’t dare

to bring his breaking power to bear

on me,’ said the hawk, flying into the sun;

while the dog warned, in his dog run:

‘Hawk—the shepherd has bought a gun!’

‘Why is the hawk so docile?’ asked the flock,

‘He fell to the ground in a feathery breeze;

He lies in a dumb lump under the trees,

We believe we’d rather have broken knees

Than lose our blood and suddenly freeze

Like him.’

But the oldest dam gave her leg a lick,

And said, ‘Some die slow and some die quick,

A few run away and the rest crawl,

But the shepherd never dies at all—

Damn his soul.

I’d will my wool to the shepherd’s wife

If she could change the shepherd’s life,

But I myself would bring him low

If only, only I knew how.’

Judy Grahn, via Poetry Foundation

We the people

That's the last bit of sangria that I drank just up the street and around the corner from my house this evening. I sat at a large booth by myself and drank it, along with some mussels, french fries and a grilled artichoke whose leaves I smeared in aioli.

I wish you'd been there.

I've gone all day without sitting here. I've been looking at the jacaranda trees whose purple flowers hang in grape-like clusters. People love to complain about them -- their rotten smell, the mess they make, the sticky layer of them on the sidewalks -- but I think they're fine. I could drink that purple, roll in it naked and glorious. And no, that's not the sangria talking. It's just me, making purple prose.

Oliver and I are exploring the American Revolution, the Constitution of these United States, the amendments to the constitution, all that we the people. To tell you the truth, reviewing it all makes me a little sad. Such glorious ideals, such purple prose, such disconnection from what we have and know today. Money and influence, the triumph of oligarchy -- it seems, in many ways, that the whole democratic "experiment" has gone to shit. I don't even know how to explain these things to Oliver other than to convey that there's much for his generation to do. I have to bite my tongue not to say what I feel, which is more often than not, we're f**ked. 

I hesitated to do so (because it's so de rigeur to be tired of people's postings on social media), but I posted a link on Facebook to an article from the Washington Post that I read  -- an article where Mr. Martinez, the father of one of the victims of Sunday's murder spree in Santa Barbara, angrily denounced politicians and the NRA for their collusion in refusing to pass more stringent gun laws. Martinez was glorious in his grief and righteousness, and I hope that given his military service and criminal justice background, he might knock some sense into these craven people. I feel compelled to join him, to curse and rail at anyone, anyone, who claims owning guns like the ones used by this young man is part of the liberty we are entitled to as citizens of the United States. The misogyny, the mental health debate, the disaffection of our youth --yeah, these are all part of it, but this gun bullshit has got to stop. As Henry said when he heard that my home state of Georgia had passed laws allowing guns into most public places, Sometimes I hate this country, mom. We the people are stupid.

What are ya'll thinking about? Drinking? Posting? Fire them at me -- just not with guns.

Homeland Security Resolution, The Mad Hatter, Medical Marijuana, Guns, Vanity, Gay Teletubbies and Some Appropriate Cursing

So, it turns out that one of my wonderful readers and commenters works for Homeland Security, and she confessed to scrolling through my blog yesterday on her time off -- hence, the mystery is solved.

Dang nabbit. I was feeling all self-important.

Today, though, I am going to be photographed with Sophie for a newspaper article about medical marijuana in California. Late last night I confessed to another extreme parent who was on the East Coast (up with her child way, way past midnight) that I was terrified to be photographed lest I look bad or horrors upon horrors -- heavy. I hate that word, by the way, and have forced myself to say it. My friend S, despite the grueling nature of her day, her night, her life, actually, sent me the following photo of what I should wear:

That's called The Mad Hatter Costume. I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair. My friend also typed that she wished she had the wherewithal to be more publicly outrageous than she is, and that made me laugh hard as well. Given the circumstances, I wish that I were, too. The truth is that while I'm happy to be interviewed, happy to tell our story, fired up to advocate and help others who need this information, there's a certain part of me that's as pissed off as one can imagine -- or maybe not just pissed off but freaked out, overcome by absurdity. I'm angry that it took nineteen years to stop Sophie's seizures despite this plant being available -- with evidence that it might very well help. Let's call off the Jesus stuff and the miracles and the feeling all joyous and happy now that Sophie's seizures are reduced dramatically. I'm angry about the clusterfuckery that is the American healthcare system -- angry that people opposed reforming it, angry that it's still entirely inequitable, angry at the buffoons in my home state of Georgia who think it's oh so American to carry a concealed weapon around wherever you please but good golly miss molly not the evil weed! I'm angry that my friend from Wisconsin had to work her fanny off to get the almighty lawmakers to pass a bill -- last night! -- making it easier to get CBD for children like her daughter who has had seizures for a decade, part of her brain removed and countless meds poured down her throat yet my friends here in Los Angeles can suck on pot lollipops at hipster restaurants. And yes, I thinnk marijuana should be legal for even recreational use.  I'm angry that I'm nervous we might not have a steady supply of Charlotte's Web, that I'll have to grovel for it. I'm angry with Big Pharma, with The Man, with capitalism, with the Tea Bag Party and the damn libertarian ship it floated in on, with The Way Things Work. I'm angry with my anger. And I'm angry that seizures are so vicious, that they've damaged not only my daughter's brain and her quality of life but our family -- my sons, my husband, me.

Hell, I'm angry that I'm not still thin, too.






Well, damn this whole shebang. And my own vanity.

I'm wearing this:

Just wondering

So, I listened to the POTUS this morning while sitting in my car in my driveway. He was speaking at a press conference about those starving prisoners of Guantanamo and what to do, what to do. I don't really understand why this is such a problem for some -- the holding of hundreds of men prisoner in a dank place somewhere in Cuba without charging them with a crime for years and years and years -- and then I know why this is a problem. It's because we live in a country where it's more like do as I say than do as I do, a country where torture became legal and basic rights of due process were suspended because you don't mess with the United States, where even the most reasonable of the conservative justified crimes of war, absolving them and those who perpetrated them -- look, how cute the last POTUS looks with his new grandbaby! -- where those in power, backed by the inane, let drop the most basic of gun control objectives in the name of our Second Amendment rights and where, I'd say, fear rules the day. What if the Chechnyian American boy and his brother had opened fire at the Boston Marathon with machine guns legally obtained and killed scores of people that morning instead of packing pressure cookers with nails and metal and then setting them off as bombs? Would they have been charged with owning Weapons of Mass Destruction?  Would the entire city of Boston been shut down as the  National Guard roamed the streets searching for the killers? Would the NRA have come out and said People kill people, not guns! And would the politicians and the people that prop them up have bemoaned the lack of proper mental health treatment in this country in lieu of just removing or making more difficult the ability to buy and use Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Just wondering.

God Willing and the Creek Don't Rise

What my mother always told me**

I went to see Dr. Jin last night and felt a tiny bit better when I went to bed last night, but I'm still feeling like sh**t this morning. Maybe I'll feel better as the day goes by.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

Oliver might have a good day at school, today.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

Sophie might not have any big seizures this evening while we eat dinner.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

Someone will appear on my doorstep with a quart of chicken noodle soup and say that they're here to take care of everything for me today.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

The gun nut advocates will back down and decide that owning a big ass gun and thousands of rounds of ammunition will not protect them from intruders or having their liberty stolen by the government.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

The state of Mississippi won't close the last clinic where women have some semblance of reproductive freedom.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

**Put on a little lipstick. You'll feel better.

God willing and the creek don't rise.

Lincoln, Medical Marijuana and Gun Control

This morning, I announced at the breakfast table as The Husband took the plastic wrap off the newspaper and separated the wheat from the chaff as he does every morning in a nearly ritualistic manner, In the second week of the New Year I'm going to visit a medical marijuana place and buy Sophie some liquid marijuana.

Oliver, wearing The Husband's reading glasses, pounded his fist on the table and said, Do it! Just do it right now, woman!

I said, I will! During the second week of the New Year!

Oliver said, NO! NOW! Like Lincoln said NOW!

The Husband said, NOW! Like Obama should do something NOW about gun control. NOW! (I should add that The Husband is a sharp shooter from Switzerland, where every man is issued a gun and ammunition but where gun control is of the strictest order and where healthcare is equal and whose people have been listed as some of the most content and happy in the world but whose snow and cold makes me hesitant to just up and move).

On the eve of Christmas Eve, I'm thinking NOW.

Joan of Arc, Drug Mules, and Guns

Joan of Arc at Prayer, John Everett Millais, 1865

Some say that Joan of Arc, or Saint Joan, received her visions directly from God. Others say that Joan of Arc might have had temporal lobe epilepsy and with it came the intense and revelatory hallucinations that directed and guided her to save her people. I don't know, but I imagine that in every way, Joan of Arc was guided by Love, a godly Love -- something divine and certainly other-directed. I was thinking about Joan of Arc and her visions and her epilepsy while I was taking a shower this morning. I was also thinking about the little card I got in the mail the other day along with the letter to Anthem Blue Cross from The Neurologist. The card was a discount card from the manufacturer of clobazam, the drug that The Friend Who Loves Jane Austen recently ferried across the great Canadian-American border for me. The letter is part of a larger grievance against Anthem to add the drug to Sophie's covered formulary so that it's affordable. The little card gives the user a $50 discount monthly up to a year for the drug, and I wondered whether the drug manufacturer thought itself kindly or cooperative in making this gesture. I thought how the nearly $1,000/month price it charges in the United States compared to the $63/month price it charges in Canada suggested that only the proverbial 1% could afford the drug. The rest of us are supposed to be grateful for the discount. When I stepped out of the shower, the aroma of the gingerbread cake I'd put into the oven wafted through the steam in the bathroom, and as I toweled off, I thought of Joan and her visions and her epilepsy and her zeal. I thought of the families, again, in Newtown, one of whom is dear to me, and I thought of the people who have rushed, with zeal and fear, to buy up guns much like the ones used to slaughter little children, before they are, perhaps, out of reach.

Guns, I thought, for the free and the brave.

Quelle rackette, Joan of Arc might have said, as she climbed on her horse and drew her sword, her eyes directed outward, her brain's marvelous mapping obedient to the Divine.