#GOPocrisy

I found this statement on social media and thought it interesting and important enough to put it up here.

I'd love for any of my conservative readers to respond. I know ya'll are out there. You can stay Anonymous, and I promise I won't argue with you. I'd just love to know what you really think or if you're thinking at all. Please answer the question and respond to what I've posted. I don't want to hear about what a crook Hillary is or was or what sorts of shenanigans Bill was accused of and for which he was impeached. I'm interested in your response to 45's shenanigans and gross misconduct. I want to know exactly what you want, how you believe and why you're supporting or refusing to acknowledge what's going on.

Civility is encouraged, although I don't censor language. Good people really do want to know why we find ourselves in this particularly weird reality.

Imagine this scenario:

Hillary Clinton is president. We learn that she has deep ties to Putin. She puts unqualified billionaires in cabinet posts. She puts her daughter Chelsea in a position of influence in the West Wing. Chelsea's husband is her chief advisor. She refuses to release any tax returns, she blocks access to the visitor logs in the White House, and Bill refuses to live in the White House so our tax dollars are spent keeping him safe in Chappaqua. Hillary spends almost every weekend lounging in a resort.

In an interview, she names the wrong country she bombed while bragging about the chocolate cake she was eating while she ordered said bombing. I could go on and on. The point is that the outrage, the outcries, the screaming by Republicans would be heard around the world and impeachment proceedings would already be underway.

By the way, this is not about political party affiliation at all.

Let's face it, if Hillary--or any woman candidate--had five children from three husbands she would never have survived the primary.

This is simply, #GOPocrisy.

On On Being

I woke up yesterday morning to a long, kind email from a stranger who claimed to have read my writing on Krista Tippett's On Being website. I didn't know what she was talking about. Then I got a notice that someone had tweeted something I said, or should I say I got a tweet? I have a twitter account (is that how you say it?), but I have used it maybe four times. I have no idea what I'm doing reading or writing tweets. Or twittering. And then someone liked -- or is it favorited? -- that tweet. Or is it twitter? Oh, twat! In any case, I eventually made my way to the On Being site and saw that a post I wrote years ago was their featured blog post for the day and that they'd also posted many photos from my blog and the Extreme Parenting Video Project. My name was right on there, as was my picture and a little bio. A link to the ebook was there, too.

I'll make a long story short. I had no idea why all of this was published. I never received any word from the site that they were publishing my work, and here's the clincher: I have no memory of submitting anything to them. I wrote the editor and explained that while I was thrilled and honored to be featured, it felt weird to have not been contacted beforehand.

The internets are strange and wild, indeed.

The editor got back to me with an apology for their oversight in not contacting me. Evidently, I had submitted the piece, but I'm not sure when. Have I gone mad? Again, I have no recollection of doing so, and the piece was written in 2012, well before we embarked on the cannabis odyssey.

 The On Being website and recorded interviews are some of my favorite things generated online, and I have often felt that Krista Tippet might have the best job in the universe. So, wow. I'm honored and grateful to be included on the site.

You can read it here.

Feel free to tweet and twat and twank about it, too.

Realm of Caring Newsletter

It's the last day of the year, and in lieu of the usual lists and hearkenings back and rueful confessions and regrets and moans and groans and hopeful looking forwards, I'm going to leave the link to the Realm of Caring's most recent newsletter. Most of you who come by here (thank you!) daily know that the Realm of Caring is the non-profit organization that has been instrumental in educating the public about the positive effects of cannabis, particularly for those children who have refractory epilepsy. What you might not know is that there is a fairly sizeable group of people (in addition to those with conservative "values," the government's anti-drug zealotry, the medical world's obduracy or those who are just plain ignorant) who not only object to cannabis for the usual reasons, but who object to and accuse the people from Realm of Caring, including the Stanley Brothers (who grow and produce Charlotte's Web), Paige Figi (Charlotte's mother) and even little Charlotte herself, as charlatans.

They've all been subject to negative and venomous remarks, to untruthful accusations, to hate mail, to harrassment and even death threats. Yes, even little girls get death threats when their mother is working tirelessly to get medicine to other children like her own. I think the only way to counteract the naysayers, the crazies and the angry is to provide the truth of one's own experience, and our truth is that Realm of Caring has been nothing but supportive and professional in its dealing with us and that their "dealings" are nothing like the usual business of epilepsy. I mean that. Of course, there's also the fact that Sophie has dramatically fewer seizures going into 2015 and is on nearly 50% less medication than she was going into 2014, all due to Charlotte's Web and Realm of Caring. Despite its prodigious capacity, my imagination stops short at expressing what this year might have looked like if Sophie hadn't tried Charlotte's Web.

Here's the link to the newsletter, filled with exciting news and infographics as well as interesting articles that will educate you about what's going on legislatively. Oh, and there's a blog post included written by yours truly -- an incredible honor for me!

Highlights and Updates From the Realm of Caring 

Tumblr -- and there's no "e"

If you're bored, check out my Tumblr account -- I'm having such a good time putting things up there. I highly recommend opening one and using that space for all those photos and quotes and videos and such that you might want to remember. It's simple to do so and easy to streamline, maybe a time suck but maybe not. You can follow as many or as few people as you'd like. I'm not really using it as social media per se -- more as a place to curate things that I like or things that inspire me or things that amuse me. I'm probably woefully out of date and touch with this, but I don't care.

Here's the link to mine: www.elizabethaquino.tumblr.com

On Being a Pariah On Facebook and the Ice-Bucket Challenge

At this point, if you don't know about the ice-bucket challenge that is circulating on social media, you are either living under the proverbial rock or you're just very, very lucky. I was "challenged" quite early on and declined to dump the water over my head, not because I'm afraid to get cold or because I'm a hater or a spoiler, but because there was something about the whole thing that got on my nerves. I wondered if it was my own ego getting in the way of having fun along with millions of other people, many of them my own friends and family, including my sons. I wondered if it was jealousy, because I've been trying to raise money and awareness for epilepsy causes for the last two decades and, most recently, for medical marijuana. I figured it might have to do with my general dislike and growing mistrust of the non-profit world, its ties to pharmaceutical companies, the vast amounts of money being exchanged with ever dwindling amounts directed toward real research and cure. I wondered if it was just my own crotchety contrariness. Maybe it was all of those things or none of them, just that weird instinctual feeling that I am hard-pressed to articulate.

In any case, I watched a few of the videos, pretended to enjoy a few more and then quit clicking. Then I read this, posted by a friend, a survivor of breast cancer and, evidently, a fellow ice-bucket challenge pariah. It's a statement by the Breast Cancer Action Group who has also admirably argued against the whole pink ribbon campaign, arguing that the vast marketing machine that these "campaigns" fuel works against research and cure.

We are approaching illness and healthcare assbackwards if we continue to determine which diseases get critical research and support dollars based on the appeal and fun factor of their fundraising campaigns! This is a mad way to confront illness and disease. In this new world of philanthropy by popularity contest, the future looks very scary. Only diseases lucky enough to be the beneficiary of a viral, “fun” campaign will capture public attention and funding. Savvy marketing, motivated self-starters, random acts of kindness will determine who gives a toss about people dying and the disease or illness they are dying from.This haphazard approach to healthcare and research funding isn’t the solution. No single life-threatening illness is more deserving than another. But all this wonderful generosity from a caring public willing to embrace the cause of the day serves as another nail in the coffin of a different kind of solution to illness, disease and ill-health—a solution that requires government funds, public money not private giving, that ensures people everywhere are able to access quality healthcare; that makes decisions about the allocation of research dollars based not on cyclical fads or randomly successful, social media campaigns but on evidence-based needs and outcomes.The #IceBucketChallenge is well-intentioned and has raised a lot of money for the ALS Association. But this disease-by-disease popularity contest approach to funding research is not a sustainable way to confront illness and disease and pushes responsibility for public health onto the private sector. This takes us in the wrong direction. We all deserve better.

Thank you, Yvonne, for turning me on to this, for helping me to figure out just why I couldn't do the "challenge" and for educating me about breast cancer and efforts to treat and cure it.

You know, some people are going to read this and think, at best, that I am a Debbie Downer and very short-sighted. At worst, they'll think I'm arrogant and just putting people down that choose to do the challenge. Even my sons gave me a hard time. But that's ok. I get it -- I get both points of view.

For the record, I made a donation to ALS, a horrific disease that has claimed the lives of several people I know and love. I sure hope they figure out how to cure it soon, and I hope we as a culture and a country can move toward more communal values -- maybe more lasting and comprehensive than filming ourselves dumping ice-water over our heads or buying pink Kitchen-Aid mixers.

Friendship, Drinking, Teenagers and Healing

Last night I walked around the corner and met two girlfriends for happy hour. I had the above drink -- some spicy concoction of ginger beer, vodka and lime juice. I had two of those -- a rare second drink kind of evening. We also ordered food -- mussels, french fries, arugula salad with fennel and parmesan, a grilled artichoke with aioli and some seared tuna with a sesame crust and shaved raw zucchini. We sat and talked about the daily grind -- what it's all for, whether it's mid-life crises -- and speaking of, why the hell are we not in menopause, yet? We talked  about our children, The Teenagers, about social media and sexting and their curiosity about our own teenage and college years. When does all that start? my friend with younger children asked my other friend and me. We told her that it starts now, the curiosity, the questions. I told her that earlier that day at Target, as I perused the aisles with my older son who recently got his driver's permit and now believes himself to be mature, asked me, When's the last time you got drunk, Mom? He's been asking me questions like this a lot, lately, out of earshot of his younger brother but enough to make me realize that it's happening, he's getting older and curious and what I say is as important now as it's ever going to be. You know, Henry, I said, sometimes your questions are a little too personal, and I want to say that it's none of your business, but I actually haven't gotten drunk in so many years that I've forgotten. I was never a person who drank enough to get drunk. Maybe I had too much to drink in college every now and then, but the feeling the next day was horrible enough that I never really kept at it. I see that he literally digests what I say and chews on it. My friends and I agreed that it's more difficult today to be a teenager with social media, with the threat of complete and irrevocable exposure hanging over you. We agreed, too, that our children are so much more open with us than we were with our parents and that that's a good thing. We discussed our boys and the #YesAllWomen campaign, how nervous it all makes us. We agreed that the relative boldness and ease of young women today compared to when we were young was both positive and a tad scary. We agreed that our boys are both dopey and clever. We laughed a lot. After a few days of horrible news and attendant anxiety, much of it self-inflicted, I'd venture to say it was a healing night for me, that I'm somewhat righted -- shored up.

Onward, as one of my writing teachers used to say. Onward.