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

Dandelion Wishes

So, yeah. Now we have not one but TWO misogynists sitting on the Supreme Court and ONE misogynistic sexual predator directing the whole shebang along with 51 sycophants in the Senate, minus one woman from Alaska.

How very charming for us, no?

I've got family members who support Trump and Kavanaugh. We can barely talk at all now, and I don't know what to do about this. I welcome all tips.

You should read this:

Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.

It's from this article, titled The Cruelty is the Point.

Still angry, moving on.

Sophie is currently getting her second round of IVIG infusions. She had two hellacious weeks after the first (probably unrelated) and has been perking up in the last week. I haven't given an update because I'm generally so stressed out about her and me and all the usual crap that I just don't want to exacerbate it by -- well -- sharing it. It's too much, Reader. Way, way too much.

I'm not going to be teaching the senior citizens any more because the company that hired me thought I'd be willing to drive all over southern California to do so. When I say drive all over, I mean ALL OVER. Like there might be mornings where I'd be driving three hours for a one hour class. On top of all of that is Sophie and her erratic schedule and life. Her care IS my job. Sigh. I will miss that crabby woman, though, and the soft-spoken woman who worked in the cotton fields of Texas. I need work. Freelance work. Suggestions welcome.

Saint Mirtha cut Sophie's hair really short, and she looks a bit like a dandelion. I close my eyes and make a wish and blow.

Poetry with Senior Citizens

How's that for soothing? The steam from my coffee cup literally swirling up and out and can't you smell those peaches and the pears are buttery and the sun, always the sun. The calm certainly belies the simmering rage I feel, especially tonight after seeing the POSPOTUS give one of his inimitable rally speeches, this time in the great state of Mississippi, where he mocked Dr. Ford. The backdrop was a bunch of hooting and hollering white men and women who, I suppose, are his base and never was there a better word to describe them.

We need to turn this thing around.

Here's something else to soothe our souls. I'm teaching a couple of creative writing classes to senior citizens. They are lovely men and mostly women in a couple of assisted living homes here in Los Angeles, and I got the job by applying through one of those newfangled job search engines. I won't be putting either of my two boys through college or putting in an adapted bathroom for Sophie with my pay, but I already really like doing it. The group that I've seen twice is particularly fragile -- both physically and cognitively -- but they can be inspired to tell the most vivid stories. I am always the first, one woman began, her words unfurling to describe her early childhood days in the cotton fields of Texas, plowing and picking. Another woman opens one eye and glares at me. I've got NOTHING to tell you, she says and closes her eye. She's so hostile that I sort of love her. She also told me at the end of the class (she contributed nothing) that's a pretty dress, and I said thank you. I recited Joy Harjo and played a Native American water song. A man in a Dodgers cap whose chin lay on his chest while he gently snored through the entire first class was lively in the second one. When prompted to write about someone in your life who is important he chose his son and said He always does the right thing and organized this whole thing when there was all this darkness and trouble. 

The stories. Everyone has a story.

Except for that POS that is running ruining our country. I know I'm not supposed to wish harm on any living being but damn. And the people who support him? The word scratch. The word eye. The word out.


#smashthepatriarchy



Here's a poem.

All the Difficult Hours and Minutes

All the difficult hours and minutes 

are like salted plums in a jar. 

Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves, 

they mutter something the color of  sharkfins to the glass. 

Just so, calamity turns toward calmness. 

First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.

Jane Hirshfield

Burn It All Down

Rage.

That's what we feel.

Rage.

I wish I could find a photo of my eighteen year old self, the innocent self that attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who pledged a sorority, who attended fraternity parties, who got drunk only a few times, but one time in particular at a party and afterward when a boy whose family name emblazoned a dormitory took me back to his dorm room and when I felt woozy (I had never been drunk) and said so, he told me to sit down on the bed lie down you'll feel better and then with lie simultaneously put his very large hand at the top of my stomach, just below my chest I think it's called the solar plexus and pushed me backward but I knew in that moment, I knew his hand, and even as I looked up into his nostrils so wide, so long I knew what was happening and my head cleared and I struggled up his hand there and sat up and stood up and walked out the door and ran down the stairs and out of the dorm and on to mine. I don't remember if I told anyone about that, then. I was a little bit drunk. Maybe he really wanted to help me. 

I went to college with lots of Kavanaughs. 1981-1985. The parties, the garbage cans filled with Hawaiian Punch and grain alcohol. The ancient black man who tended bar, at the "cocktail" parties and called every girl Miss and her date's last name, his voice soft as he handed out gin and tonics. The rumor of girls pulling trains. Girls who woke up and had forgotten what happened the night before. The smell of piss and stale beer in the hallways of the fraternity houses in the morning. The boys in one fraternity who hung tampons from their Christmas tree in the entrance of their "house," just at the bottom of the winding staircase where girls and boys far wilder than I disappeared. The secret societies where the most privileged boys belonged, along with professors and alumni, the Castle and the Lodge, their arcane rituals. The parties there where lines of cocaine were sniffed up with dollar bills, where girls' boyfriends had nicknames like "The Doctor," the wink wink of dealers, the wall-crawling thumping of music and ecstasy-fueled camaraderie. The teeth grinding afterward. I knew all of it, participated in little of it, was usually sober, my own boyfriend and his friends drinkers but never all that. There are always choices to be made. I watched it. All rich. All white. The Daddies. The privilege. The entitlement. The racism. Yes, the racism. Antebellum parties with blackface. The laughter. No integration in the sororities and fraternities despite attempts. My grandmama would never pay for my membership if we let black girls in, I read on a slip of paper when we canvassed for reactions. I could never live in the same room with a black girl, another.

I don't think the men on either side really get it, do they. And the women on one side, yes there are sides, yes there are tribes and that is not the real danger. The women on that side who just don't can't won't get it. So much hurt and darkness and once they were little boys and yet, still.

As much as we've been taught otherwise, I say burn the whole thing down. 

#FamiliesBelongTogether

Venice Blvd.
Los Angeles, California
June 20, 2018

Do you remember as a child getting separated from your mother in a public place? I was with my mother shopping one day and probably in a world of my own, in my head, day-dreaming as she walked through aisles of clothes racks. I can't have been more than six or seven and perhaps even younger. At some point I grabbed the hand hanging in my view and looked up simultaneously, thinking it was my mother. Except it was not. It was a stranger. I remember that moment of terror -- only a moment because the woman whose hand I'd grabbed looked kindly at me, and my own mother was in sight -- like it was yesterday. A moment of terror. At being separated from my mother.


Is there anything else to do but think about, agitate about, write about and above all, ACT ABOUT these children separated from their parents at the United States border. Despite the POSPOTUS' rescinding of the policy he and his henchman initiated and the band of thugs who have carried it out, it's unclear whether hundreds, if not thousands of these babies and children will ever be reunited with their parents.

Babies in tents.

Where are the girls?

I'm making all the POS folks who supported this policy irrelevant in my mind. I'm not responding to their inane, inhumane arguments.  Those who believe America to be a Christian nation. The vile human who made a joke about a child with Down Syndrome being separated from parents. I'm brushing them away.  Those who compare the people of Mexico and Central America to vermin. Be gone.

And those who invoke the great peace leaders of the world and admonish us not to be angry, that it's all about love -- step aside. The great peace leaders were plenty angry, and they used their anger in constructive ways to bring peace. You step aside, too, or step up.

Here are some things we can do:

What You Can Do Right Now to Help Immigrant Families Separated at the Border

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

The Backs of the Disabled and Those of Us Who Shirk Work*

This is the beginning of my Shirking Work days
March 8, 1996

So last night I was doing exactly what I shouldn't have been doing, which was scrolling through emails and Facebook. I was already in an agitated state over the National Prayer Breakfast and some un-bloggable things, but when I read the following article from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), I thought I might combust.

I'm going to cut and paste the entire thing in red because it deserves the coverage, especially to those of you who put us in this position and who might be reading here:

Eliminate Supplemental Security Income Benefits for Disabled Children

Billions of Dollars	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026	2017-2021	2017-2026
Change in Mandatory Outlays	0	-10	-11	-11	-11	-12	-12	-11	-13	-13	-42	-104
Change in Discretionary Spending	0	-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	-1	-4	-9

This option would take effect in October 2017.

The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides cash assistance to people who are disabled, aged, or both and who have low income and few assets. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 15 percent of SSI recipients in 2016 will be disabled children under age 18, receiving an average monthly benefit of $664. Those children must have marked and severe functional limitations and usually must live in a household with low income and few assets.

This option would eliminate SSI benefits for disabled children. CBO estimates that making that change would reduce mandatory spending by $104 billion through 2026. Also, because annual discretionary appropriations cover SSI’s administrative costs, this option would generate $9 billion in discretionary savings over the same period so long as total appropriations were adjusted accordingly.

One rationale for this option is that providing SSI benefits to children may discourage their parents from working. Unlike Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a welfare program that aims to help families achieve self-sufficiency, SSI imposes no work requirements on parents and does not explicitly limit how long they may receive benefits as long as the child remains medically and financially eligible. Furthermore, SSI benefits decrease by 50 cents for each additional dollar parents earn above a certain threshold, depending on household size and other factors. (For example, in calendar year 2016, for a single parent with one child who is disabled and with no other income, SSI benefits are generally reduced after the parent earns more than $1,551 per month.) Those program traits create a disincentive for parents to increase work and thereby boost earnings.

Another rationale for this option is that, rather than provide a cash benefit to parents without ensuring that they spend the money on their disabled children, policymakers could choose to support those children in other ways. For example, states could receive grants to make an integrated suite of educational, medical, and social services available to disabled children and their families. To the extent that funds that would have been used to provide SSI benefits for children were instead used for a new program or to increase the resources of other existing programs, federal savings from this option would be correspondingly reduced.

A rationale against this option is that this program serves a disadvantaged group. SSI is the only federal income support program geared toward families with disabled children, and SSI benefits reduce child poverty rates. Families with disabled children are typically more susceptible to economic hardship than other families because of both direct and indirect costs associated with children’s disabilities. (Direct costs can include additional out-of-pocket health care expenses, spending on adaptive equipment, and behavioral and educational services. Indirect costs for the parents of disabled children can include lost productivity and negative health effects.)

I'm calling out not just Drumpflanders, but Republicans, because literally the second you can, you go for the jugular. I don't give a flying foo-foo about reaching across the aisle or even trying to understand why the sick, the disabled and the most vulnerable bear the brunt of your political machinations, even as your precious corporations are allowed to poison our air and water, exploit workers, avoid taxes, make war and billions and billions of dollars in profits for an ever-shrinking group of people. 

Am I enraged? I am.

First of all, the rationale for "this option" is that providing SSI benefits to children may discourage their parents from working. Sophie gets a bit more than $640 a month in SSI benefits. This proposal would eliminate that benefit. As you know, I have been shirking work for more than two decades and would have to go out and get a real job. 

Even the rationale "against" that option is ridiculously simplistic, stripping everything but economics, the bottom line and the commodification of our children.

The Nazis came first for the disabled. Did you know that? This isn't rhetoric.

Let's say this doesn't happen. What you've done, Drumpflanders and Republicans, is inject the most intense panic and worry, on top of everything else that we have to deal with, into our bodies. Sit with that. You are indecent, immoral human beings if you support this.








*This is a clarification. I am grateful for the SSI money that Sophie receives every single month and use it to pay for unreimbursed medicine, therapies, clothing and incidentals for her. We receive that amount, thanks to a federal waiver that has deemed her care "institutional" -- meaning were I not to care for her at home, she would be institutionalized. In addition to SSI, Sophie qualifies for IHSS or In Home Supportive Services. I am paid minimum wage to care for her at home. I have no idea whether these funds will also go by the wayside, along with the Affordable Care Act. In addition to the entitlement programs, my parents help me by sending me money to help with childcare. They are in a position to do so, and I am beyond grateful and at once cognizant of how privileged I am. I manage to get freelance writing and editing work, as well as have my book salon and other entrepreneurial things. So, what I'm saying, is that I am panicked about the Repubs removing all these safety nets, and I am a fortunate person, at least for now. I worry about the long term future, though, and how I will continue to do what I do. It would be unethical and immoral of me not to use my talents and ability to articulate these things and to advocate for the tens of thousands of families less fortunate than mine. So that's what I'll continue to do. 

Fycompa, Blue Person Syndrome and Homicidal Ideation

So, I didn't tell ya'll about the conversation I had with The Neurologist the other day when I took Sophie to a routine appointment there. We talked about arranging an ambulatory EEG, and somewhere in the discussion I asked her what the new drugs in the pipeline were looking like. I asked her about that drug that makes your lips blue and she laughed, ruefully. It's obviously a hard sell, she said. I still remember the titters that followed a discussion of this drug, Potiga, by an eminent Neurologist From the East Coast at last June's Epilepsy Pipeline Conference. They made me sick. That side effect is called Blue Person Syndrome. I'm not making this up. If you're one of those folks who believe in Science As It's Practiced in The Greatest Country On Earth, read about it here. If you're like me and believe yourself to be a part of a lifelong Monty Python skit, take my word and read on.

Anyhoo.

Evidently, there's another drug that The Neurologist is going to try on a few patients. It's called Fycompa. Some of you long-time readers or epilepsy drug enthusiasts might remember that I wrote about this drug a few years ago when it was newly approved by the Almighty FDA. In fact, it was over two years ago that I wrote that post. Please click on it and read it, particularly the end because -- well -- because I told you to.

Are you finished?

Remember that I wrote that in 2012. Sophie was 17. Back then,The Pediatric Neurologist and I batted around the idea of trying it for a bit, but I just couldn't do it. It had become my philosophy to decline all new drugs for Sophie's seizures unless Jesus Himself offered it to us. Cannabis was not even a twinkle in the eye of -- well -- no one I knew back then.

Are you still with me?

So yesterday, February 10th, 2015, The Neurologist brought Fycompa up but also shared with me that THEY (always capitalize the word THEY when you're referring to The Medical Powers That Be, The FDA, The CDC, etc.) have learned that the drug can cause homicidal ideation or rage. Before we start wondering how, exactly, THEY figured that out, let's look at the website for the drug (the banner at the top of the website is reproduced above without the words because apparently THEY don't like you copying THEIR pictures). If you did your due diligence, my post from 2012 highlighted the following side effects of Fycompa:

The drug does have some known adverse effects associated with this drug. The most common ones are anxiety, confusion, imbalance, double vision, dizziness, gastrointestinal distress or nausea, imbalance – some of which may lead to falls on some occasions, and increased weight. The effects of Perampanel on tasks involving alertness and vigilance, such as driving, were additive to the effects of alcohol itself. Multiple doses of Perampanel increased levels of anger, confusion, and depression, particularly when taken with alcohol. Fycompa may lead to euphoria and other similar feelings in some patients. Thus, the drug will be scheduled in the United States. Final labeling and information is not yet available.

As you can see, euphoria is enlarged by me because it's sort of an operative word. 

Now go back and look at the Fycompa website today and notice the new BLACK BOX warning:

WARNING: SERIOUS PSYCHIATRIC AND BEHAVIORAL REACTIONS

• Serious or life-threatening psychiatric and behavioral adverse reactions including aggression, hostility, irritability, anger, and homicidal ideation and threats have been reported in patients taking FYCOMPA
• These reactions occurred in patients with and without prior psychiatric history, prior aggressive behavior, or concomitant use of medications associated with hostility and aggression
• Advise patients and caregivers to contact a healthcare provider immediately if any of these reactions or changes in mood, behavior, or personality that are not typical for the patient are observed while taking FYCOMPA or after discontinuing FYCOMPA
• Closely monitor patients particularly during the titration period and at higher doses
• FYCOMPA should be reduced if these symptoms occur and should be discontinued immediately if symptoms are severe or are worsening

Keep reading about suicidal ideation which THEY make pains to attribute also to epilepsy itself. The cynic in me or maybe just the batshit crazy person in me believes that THEY are covering their asses. Basically, epilepsy and depression are roommates, so if you up and kill yourself one day while on Fycompa, I imagine THEY will point out that you might have anyway, without the drug.  Notice as well that this drug is a Schedule III drug and remember that it is being prescribed for children and adults aged 12 and up. Remember that Marijuana is a Schedule I drug and that many in The Neurology World have denied many children who suffer from refractory epilepsy their blessing to try it and are only slowly coming round to even calling for studies, and that's only because families like mine are on the train that's left the station and THEY are trying to catch up.

But I digress.

My other favorite statement on the website is this: Anyone considering prescribing FYCOMPA or any other AED must balance the risk of suicidal thoughts or behavior with the risk of untreated illness.

Fycompa basically went -- in two years -- from being a drug that can cause Euphoria And Other Similar Feelings to one that can cause a person taking it to fly into a murderous rage. Oh, and you can take the drug if you're twelve years old.

You'd know what was up, basically, if I decided to try this drug on Sophie. Go ahead and kill me now, I'd say as I gazed into her big, dark eyes.

I can't count the number of times over the last couple of weeks I've read the words of citizen scientists, of scientists, of doctors and journalists and mommies and daddies and presidents and Oprahs and Willy Wonka himself blathering on about their trust in THE DATA AND THE EXPERTS.

What's my point? I think you know it. This is my experience, and I'd venture to say that it's tens of thousands of other people's as well. These are the facts. This is the world I interface with every single day and have done so for two decades, and it's insane.