Snow Pictures

Sidewalk

                                                     Me

The joys of being young.

More here.

Quote of the Week

A little snow, tumbled about, anon becomes a mountain.-
William Shakespeare, King John (1598), Act III, scene 4, line 176.

More than Conversational Snow

I could have pushed the ruler in two or three more inches, but that would have ruined the effect. Snowfall thus far is around 14 inches.

Early Saturday Video

In real life it was timing
Nothing more than a ball of dust
And the truth was shining
Heavy with the weight of the ice

We got home
Just in the nick of time

Three hours later
Everything was white

I'm not going out tonight

Three hours later
Everything was white

I'm not going out tonight

Next thing I was stranded
With nothing more than
The shoes on my feet

So it seemed we had landed
The wrong side of the street

All in the back yard
The houses flurried by

And three hours
Everything was white

I'm not going out tonight

Class 3 Kill Storm!

The Ultimate Sacrifice

I'm over here today.

Quote of the Week

"In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals"- Mahatma Gandhi

MLK's Legacy in Rear View Mirror

Monday we will celebrate anew the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr, which always provides us a fresh opportunity to look at race relations. I write today in anticipation of the federal holiday to avoid the pile-on of blog posts and columns set to be submitted in a couple of days. It's a struggle to come up with original content in the forty-eight years since MLK's tragic assassination in Memphis. As I often do, I'll write about my personal experiences close to the source.

I'd like to pursue a different angle, that being the city of my birth and primary upbringing. The demographics of Birmingham, Alabama, have changed considerably since the days of Civil Rights. Though the city has recently showed a few tentative beginning stages of gentrification, that development is currently isolated to a few blocks in downtown. On a drive back from the airport over the holidays, I observed how much of the city is still blighted by years of poverty and gloom. Birmingham proper grows poorer and blacker by the day.

Shortly before the merging of several highways ignobly referred to by natives as malfunction junction lies the heart of downtown. The multi-purpose arena known as the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center is showing its age. Built in 1976, four years before my birth, a look from the interstate shows what forty years of wear and tear will do. In my childhood, I was taken there on field trips to see the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. This was at the dawn of the suburbs, where white wealth and population continued to stream over Red Mountain in a torrent.

Dr. King spoke quite a bit about a very real War on Poverty towards the end of his life. If he had lived, what would he have said about white flight? In his time, white liberals were beginning to flood out of the District of Columbia into Northern Virginia. That retreat would only continue over the decades. Census data shows that the population of the District sharply declined until very recently. Washington, DC, is not Birmingham (nor can the two be fairly compared), but there are observable trends in place between them.

Though we may be uniform in our belief that integration and Civil Rights was a success, dissenting voices did exist. It may be instructive to know what Malcolm X said about King's Birmingham Campaign, fifty-three years in our past. In his 1963 message to the Grassroots, the Nation of Islam leader goes aggressively after King and King's strategy.

As soon as King failed in Birmingham, Negroes took to the streets. King got out and went out to California to a big rally and raised about -- I don't know how many thousands of dollars.

And as Negroes of national stature began to attack each other, they began to lose their control of the Negro masses. And Negroes was [sic] out there in the streets. They was [sic] talking about [how] we was [sic] going to march on Washington. By the way, right at that time Birmingham had exploded, and the Negroes in Birmingham -- remember, they also exploded. They began to stab the crackers in the back and bust them up 'side their head -- yes, they did. 

The critique here is harsh and unrepentant. King is showed to be counterfeit, a mere fundraiser. Malcolm's "Negroes of national stature" continued the lamentable trend. Birmingham's history post Civil Rights is a Greek tragedy of the highest stature. Corruption, wasteful spending, and mutual race baiting have left the city paralyzed. It has only been in the past several years that something akin to a revitalization has broken ground and kept moving forward. In building a new stadium, the city has attracted the return of the local minor league baseball team and has modernized the airport after years of neglect.

This is real progress, but arrives too late. The southern suburbs now hold most of the revenue and the power. African-American families are now the ones leaving Birmingham for whiter pastures. If only this sad story were relegated to one city with a troubled past, but it is woefully commonplace. This is the story of America in the late 20th and early 21st Century. We should rightly pause to reflect the flurry of organization and activity designed to establish equality among the races.

Dr. King told us that the hard work isn't done. Here's the rub. It likely never will be.

Saturday Video

In 1814 we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
Took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we met the bloody British in the town of New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin'.
There wasn't as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

We looked down the river and we see'd the British come.
And there must have been a hundred of 'em beatin' on the drum.
They stepped so high and they made the bugles ring.
We stood by our cotton bales and didn't say a thing.

Old Hickory said we could take 'em by surprise
If we didn't fire our muskets 'til we looked 'em in the eye
Held our fire 'til we see'd their faces well.
Then we opened up with squirrel guns and really gave 'em ...well

Yeah, they ran through the briers and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go.
Ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

We fired our cannon 'til the barrel melted down.
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round.
We filled his head with cannon balls, powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind.

Yeah, they ran through the briers and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go.
Ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch 'em
Down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Getting Spoiled in Victory

The University of Alabama claims 16 National Championships as of last night. I'm glad to have been a part of five of them in my lifetime.

Tell Me Why

Sailing heart-ships thru broken harbors 

Out on the waves in the night 

Still the searcher must ride the dark horse 

Racing alone in his fright. 

Tell me why, tell me why 

Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself, 

When you're old enough to repay 

but young enough to sell? 

Tell me lies later, come and see me 

I'll be around for a while. 

I am lonely but you can free me 

All in the way that you smile 

Tell me why, tell me why 

Is it hard to make arrangements with yourself, 

When you're old enough to repay 

but young enough to sell? 

Tell me why, tell me why 

Tell me why, tell me why

Is Religion Motivated by Guilt Trip?

The cynic rejects organized religion because of the perceived damage it creates to the believer. The atheist believes in no higher power, no higher authority. The atheist may observe nothing, but the cynic observes everything.

Certain biblical narratives in the life of Jesus could be said to invoke guilt to enforce belief. Matthew 23 speaks harshly to the keeper of God’s word, the scribes and the Pharisees. In modern parlance, we might deem the entire chapter and all forty verses as one extended rant. It is unclear whether this message should apply to the common person, but its inclusion in the text has been variously applied to everyone over the centuries.

Jesus’ anger builds to a fiery crescendo, a warning of apocalypse and eternal damnation. Like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, the punishment is vocal and descriptive.

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.

Should we fall to our knees in terror? Some of us will take these words as an admonishment to avoid hypocrisy in their own lives, but others will think the punishment too harsh. How we take the message depends on our conception of obedience to God. More individualistic faiths downplay this passage. The response of Liberal Friends and self-identified liberals might well be: Who are you to tell me what to believe?

A healthy skepticism is often a good thing. Converts to Quakerism are routinely attracted to a faith where no person speaks for everyone. Yet, I find many more have never quite gotten over their childhood scoldings by frustrated parents. Some have never outgrown their rebellious adolescence and early adult life.

The definition of guilt depends, of course, on context and on the individual. The words of Jesus or any authoritative voice can be by turns threatening, gently admonishing, and even constructive. Where we are along life’s journey and our internal responses to external stimulus dictate what we hear and what we ignore. For me, there are times where I don’t want to be reminded of the times I let my basic selfishness overtake my best intentions. I’m doing the best I can, I might protest.

Is it guilt that makes me claim I am being falsely accused or unjustly persecuted? I better get right with God, or I know where I’m going. Or, at least, that’s what some believe. I never was much of a believer in the benefit of hellfire and damnation. Liberal faiths discard the above scriptural passage altogether or downplay the venom.

In Luke, harsh Jesus appears again.

One day Jesus said to his disciples, "There will always be temptations to sin, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting! It would be better to be thrown into the sea with a millstone hung around your neck than to cause one of these little ones to fall into sin.”

As I’ve noted before a time or two, Abraham Lincoln used this passage to great effect in his second Inaugural Address. In that context, he was addressing a destructive fratricidal war that tore not only a country apart, but the Religious Society of Friends. We may not have recovered from the strife and discord yet.

Guilt has its place, but not when it exists only to make someone else miserable. That approach isn’t corrective. It’s childish. If we consider ourselves Christians, we seek to be made in Jesus’ image, not to be chronically unhappy. Everyone knows a person who has been wounded by faith perverted, by the pettiness of human failure. Quakerism promises a freedom from the unhelpful and unnecessary, not the end of life lessons for right living. This is where some go wrong, very wrong.

Living the life requires that we keep our spiritual muscles supple. We only gain strength through exertion and constant focus. Protesting unfair treatment or largely imagined grievances weakens us. As we are forgiven, so we should forgive ourselves and begin again. The idealist in us wants to believe in the concept of adulthood as a goal to be reached, an apex to be scaled. In reality, maturity is often what people run from, not run towards.

I write to you today with no guilty conscience. My demons are inside me, not in a smoldering cauldron or, as we are taught, cast into a herd of pigs. Who am I to tell you what to do? May you be in a receptive mindframe, neither defensive nor reactive, ready to practice active listening. If a little healthy guilt trip now and again works for you, so be it. I wouldn’t live my life in fear of always doing something wrong. Doesn’t that interfere with our freedom of choice?

Quote of the Week

The good people of this world are very far from being satisfied with each other and my arms are the best peacemakers.-Samuel Colt

Saturday Video

What I like about you
You hold me tight
Tell me I'm the only one
Wanna come over tonight, yeah

Keep on whispering in my ear
Tell me all the things that I wanna hear
'Cause it's true
That's what I like about you

What I like about you
You really know how to dance
When you go up, down, jump around
Think about true romance, yeah

Keep on whispering in my ear
Tell me all the things that I wanna hear
'Cause it's true

That's what I like about you
That's what I like about you
That's what I like about you

Wow
Hey

What I like about you
You keep me warm at night
Never wanna let you go
Know you make me feel all right, yeah

Keep on whispering in my ear
Tell me all the things that I wanna hear
'Cause it's true
That's what I like about you
That's what…

The Nuance of Gun Control

I’ve written numerous times about my disability. Some have encouraged me to be less open about it, some have applauded my courage. I’m often ambivalent upon which side to favor. Plainly put, I have bipolar disorder, draw a small monthly payment, and above all, have guaranteed government health insurance. As I read the legal language of President Obama’s executive order, it appears to me that everyone on federal Social Security disability for mental illness will be flagged as potentially dangerous. We are not the same, but to the unknowing, it is easy to stigmatize.

What has been put in force overreaches a little, but not in the way conservative commentators have said. It effectively disqualifies me from purchasing a sawed-off shotgun or a semi-automatic weapon, not that I ever would. It, in fact, disqualifies me from owning any gun. I believe in gun control, but to treat all people with mental illness the same is not fair. Most of us are not violent and will never be violent. Our own worst enemy is usually ourselves, and those of us who grab deadly weapons to address invisible grievances are in the minority.

Former U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy has spoken about his own bipolar disorder and history of addiction. Occasionally erratic behavior aside, when he stepped down from the House, a prominent voice for our cause was lost. I wonder how he feels about being summarily disqualified in a very different way based on the worst fears of society. Before I stoke the fires of righteous indignation, the oldest trope in the book, I want to entertain a very different reality. It is not a stretch to go a step further. Effectively, everyone who has mental illness is now prohibited for owning and possessing any gun or guns. They are now treated like convicted felons, who lose their right to gun ownership and to vote upon conviction.

Whether this is right or wrong is something that we as a country have to decide. I’m not a gun owner, nor do I feel any need to be. Earlier in my life, like so many men, I learned to shoot and hunt. I never really took to the pastime, to be honest. If I even owned a handgun for personal protection, I want to stress that I'd give it up now and not complain too loudly. That proves how committed I am to a non-violent world, not that I don’t trust myself and my illness. If we take away guns, unlike the NRA slogan, the only people who might own them are violent, thoroughly insane offenders with a death wish and a desire to kill.

History is full of assassins with substantial mental health issues. But most of us suffer in private, feeling no desire to engage with the outside world, afraid to be lumped in with the ultra-violent or pitied for all the wrong reasons. A distinction needs to be made and constantly reinforced. It is fashionable to talk about the obsession and compulsion of America, the acts of the delusional and psychotic. In truth, the issue is much more nuanced.

Our real problem is a lack of adequate doctors and a lack of robust mental health treatment. The stigma of mental illness has subsided, but a lack of access to care and medications is part of the problem. Another part of the problem is a failure to intercede in the lives of the suffering. It may not be a popular sentiment, but I pity the workplace shooter while condemning his or her acts. That may be a stretch for us, because our primary tendency might be to bury our heads in the sand and play pretend.

An assault weapons ban and a closing of loopholes is a good first step, but it doesn’t go far enough. If we were committed to stopping random acts of violence, we would do the hard work of identifying every individual with homicidal tendencies. That’s not so easy, is it? Or maybe it is. I say again, as I have said many times before, this is why we can’t be hands-off and live without fear.

Mental illness runs in families and dysfunction is more common than we would like to admit. We can’t just leave it up to laws and government, we have to step in ourselves. That’s the only way to make this new order work. If we thought of each other as part of the same family, we wouldn’t need government to be our keeper.

Feelin' Alright

Feelin' Alright (Click to Hear)

Seems I've got to have a change of scene
'Cause every night I have the strangest dreams
Imprisoned by the way it could have been
Left here on my own or so it seems

I've got to leave before I start to scream
But someone's locked the door and took the key

You feelin' alright? I'm not feelin' too good myself
Well, you feelin' alright? I'm not feelin' too good myself

Well, say, you sure took me for one big ride
And even now I sit and wonder why
That when I think of you I start to cry
I just can't waste my time, I must keep dry

Gotta stop believin' in all your lies
'Cause there's too much to do before I die
Don't get too lost in all I say
Though at the time I really felt that way

But that was then, now it's today;
I can't get off so I'm here to stay

Till someone comes along and takes my place
With a different name and, yes, a different face

Christmas Update

I'm slowly easing back into regular posting. I'll be silent once again starting Wednesday, in observance of Christmas and New Year's. Like so many of us long-suffering writers, I've had to balance the work I do for free with the work I do for pay. Anyone who has blogged as long as I have (ten years, really?) has no shortage of free work, which I have done to further my publication name, even as I receive no financial compensation for my time and effort.

That said, I'm about to start a job where I will blog for pay. Unlike this forum, I don't choose the topics and the company I work for has primary rights to my content. It won't be featured here. Writers need good editors and editors need good writers, but the two are often mutually exclusive. I'm not blunt enough to poke holes through someone's baby but others most assuredly are.

Writing is a discipline that attracts many dilettantes and those who feel that it is somehow easy. In fact, writing is an intense challenge, and it requires hours of effort and lots of time devoted to revision. Like figure skating, it seems effortless when performed live, but this disguises the diligent work ethic that separates the average from the exceptional.

The internet has been my salvation and simultaneously the bane of my existence. It has forced me into narrower and narrower interest groups and the isolating esoteria of those spaces. I'm not feeling particularly religious or spiritual at the moment, nor do I feel it my current place to be Jimmy Carter to the liberal unwashed masses. I am nominally the man who gets it among feminists who are my contemporaries. Once I believed I was a voice in the wilderness, now I see how similar I am to others and how we have jumped aboard the same bandwagon and talking points simultaneously.

I continue to push myself off of my haunches as long as I have strength in my body. Young enough to be restless and unsatisfied, I'm growing into middle age slowly and steadily. I've been living in DC eight years now and am contemplating a lifetime in the nation's capital. Already I've seen great changes and I expect to see more. Every time I return home to Alabama I count the buildings that have changed owners and the vast new construction projects underway. Someone is making money, but it's not me or anyone that I know.

Christmas meant more to me when I was a child and I suppose that's true for most of us. If I had children of my own, I might be able to get a contact high from their enthusiasm. I paradoxically want my entire family around me at holidays. Since when did I become a believer in nostalgia and cease being the gritty realist? I'll make sure it won't happen again. I am on one coast, sister number one is on the other, and sister number two will never leave the South.

We're a pretty normal family that way. The teenage chip on my shoulder has departed. Fish and visitors still stink in three days, but can be forgiven under the circumstances. And even with the petty bickering that consumed whole years of my life, I wouldn't have it otherwise. I wish the best to you and your family, or the family you have adopted for your very own. The holidays can be a dose of depression to those without or with the huge silent tension that becomes open conflict.

May you get what you want, but be able to separate the genuinely helpful from the momentarily distracting. Merry Christmas. We're going to need it. 2016 is an election year.

Late Saturday Video

10.15 on a Saturday night
And the tap drips
Under the strip light

And I'm sitting
In the kitchen sink
And the tap drips
Drip, drip, drip

Waiting for the
Telephone to ring
And I'm wondering
Where she's been

And I'm crying
For yesterday
And the tap drips
Drip, drip, drip

Quote of the Week

A comment upon the lone wolf shooters that have terrorized our country.

"You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? [turns around to look behind him] Well, then who the hell else are you talking- You talking to me? Well, I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? Oh yeah? Huh? 'kay. [whips out his gun again] Huh?"- Travis Bickell from Taxi Driver.

Metro, the Culture of Dysfunction, and the Women Who Suffer

When I first entered feminist spaces, I encountered a huge supply of outrage and indignation regarding street harassment and other cases of men behaving badly. My immediate reaction was a compelling need to prove that I wasn’t that way. No one was debating that, but my male privilege was showing. I’m a large man who has rarely been propositioned inappropriately by complete strangers. It took me a while to realize that these stinging accusations had nothing really to do with me and everything to do with me.

Women, I have learned, can either shrug off these kinds of transgressions or get very angry. This situation reduced a friend of mine to tears, at which point she was strongly encouraged to formally report the crime. A security guard, aware of the situation, boarded the bus immediately following the verbal harassment. I should add that the driver had an outstanding warrant for rape, in addition. The man had been reported before, but I take it that many women would rather forget than prosecute or press charges. The security guard wanted to make sure this didn’t happen again.

It’s another black eye for Metro, whose shortcomings are profiled in the latest edition of Washingtonian magazine. The once revered public transportation system here in the nation’s capital has fallen on rough times in the past decade and a half. Filling openings for drivers has been difficult, meaning that problem employees are retained when they ought to be fired. This is not, as I said, an isolated incident. Women are subjected to such conduct on a regular basis, and that they soldier past it without growing bitter or angry is a testament to their own inner strength.

To quote from the aforementioned article, which focuses mostly on Metro’s command center,

It’s a self-reinforcing problem. Metro hasn’t been able to improve the ROCC [Rail-Operations Control Center] culture because it’s so beholden to the current personnel—yet the current personnel are a big part of the staff shortage. Despite a concerted effort to recruit and train new hires, Metro added just three controllers between 2011 and 2015, the FTA says.

As is often the case, a persistently dysfunctional culture shows itself plainly in ways that Metro tries to downplay. To return to the story of my friend, a security guard, aware of the driver’s indiscretions, almost forced her to press charges. It would be easy to assume that this reflects only a flawed system in one major US city, but it also shines light upon the plight of women. As is evidenced by the Bill Cosby allegations, women can be coerced to stay silent for years, well past the statute of limitations. And even within however many years the statue protects them, it takes a persistent number and severity of offense before successful prosecution can be all but ensured.

Meanwhile, management focused on making sure employees wore their uniforms correctly and used Metro-issued microwaves to cook food instead of their own. “Things are falling apart and you’re worried about a microwave oven,” Johnson says. “I mean, it was just dumb.” Accountability for day-to-day repairs had all but vanished:

“Consciously or subconsciously, everyone at Metro knows they’ve got a job for life,” he says, “unless they sit there and smoke crack in the middle of the platform.”

Critiques like these have been used to speak out boldly against unions. Metro’s employees have the right to bargain collectively, but it shouldn’t shield them from accountability, either. Color me disgusted at the whole sordid affair. My friend burst into tears at the brazenness of an indecent request that I will not justify by spelling out directly in this forum. It will take more than civic outrage and one story to change the lay of the land.

These days, I’ve come to terms with the kind of vulnerability women face, but I don’t want my sympathy to be confused or decried as insincere. When informed of the latest offense, I’ve recognized how jaded I’ve become, somewhere between the indignation of an activist and the fatalism of an old soul. This story is about the gaps in between these polar extremes and the problem that remains. It is everyone’s problem.

Isolation

People say we got it made
Don't they know we're so afraid
Isolation

We're afraid to be alone
Everybody's got to have a home
Isolation

Just a boy and a little girl
Trying to change the whole wide world
Isolation

The world is just a little town
Everybody trying to put us down
I - i - i - i - i - isolation
               
I don't expect you to understand
After you've caused so much pain
But then again you're not to blame
                 
You're just a human
A victim of the insane

We're afraid of everyone
Afraid of the sun
Isolation

The sun will never disappear
But the world may not have many years
Isolation

Quote of the Week

Kindness is a mark of faith, and whoever has not kindness has not faith.-Muhammad

Saturday Video

Let's have bizarre celebrations
Let's forget who forget what forget where
We'll have bizarre celebrations
I play the Satyr in Cyprus, you're the bride being stripped bare, bare

Let's pretend we don't exist
Let's pretend we're in Antarctica
(x2)

Let's have bizarre celebrations
Let's forget when forget what forget how
We'll have bizarre celebrations
We'll play Tristan and Izolde but make sure I see white sail, sails

Let's pretend we don't exist
Let's pretend we're in Antarctica
(x2)

Maybe I'll never die, I'll just keep growing younger with you
And you'll grow younger too
Now it seems too lovely to be true
But I know the best things always do

Let's pretend we don't exist
Let's pretend we're in Antarctica
(x8)

Loopholes Exploited in Health Care Coverage

It was only $5.37, but it was the principle of the thing.

A cluster of recent hospitalizations and Emergency Room visits has resulted in my being sent four separate bills for a variety of services rendered. A routine EKG was performed each time, a test that is relatively cheap by American health care standards. I know from my bill that it costs $15 for five minutes of monitoring the heart. I have found, much to my annoyance, that it takes another five minutes to painfully pick electrodes off of my body hair. Such is life.

I'm federally disabled and rely upon Medicare as my primary coverage. Medicare is sound insurance, but as some may know, it doesn't cover everything, every expense. I use Washington, DC's Medicaid program to cover the remainder of my expenses. Usually this arrangement is not problematic, but I find increasingly that hospital administrators are discovering ways around it. For example, some enterprising soul decided to outsource EKG payments to Michigan, where Medicaid cannot be charged because it is out-of-state.

It must make sense on paper, but it's not fair to those of us who subsist uncomfortably on monthly disability payments. They are designed to thrust one into the workforce, not for long term dependence. In my case, the latter has to suffice. I have never been able to hold a job for long and the shame has been terrible. Our system doesn't treat every case individually and perhaps doing so is impossible, but I nevertheless encourage reformers to take into account my story. It is not the only one.

No act designed for Affordable Care doesn't fray at the seams with enough time. As healthcare costs continue to soar, I fear that other hospital centers will use this precedent to wiggle through the loopholes. From the perspective of those who accept Medicaid, they always claim that the paperwork is extreme, the bureaucracy excessive, and the payments slow to arrive. This may be true, but what we may need is to cut through the clutter.

Medicare for all is not a bad aim. It is accepted almost everywhere, except in the field of mental health and psychiatry, but that is another story for another post. And rest assured I am thankful for the sacrifices and toil of the American taxpayer. They keep my head afloat, not totally dependent upon others for every penny. Medicaid, of course, is a different story. Red State governors continue to refuse Federal dollars to expand their programs. I'm glad, once again, that I live in a blue bubble.

As I peer from my bedroom window each morning, I see the cops pulling over speeders down a busy stretch of roadway. You'd think people would learn eventually. Every ticket paid goes towards my care and keeps my dental bills minimal. I'm not ungrateful, though I'd much rather be one of the faceless, nameless men in a business suit and professional clothes headed to work downtown. And I'm not alone, trapped in a body and a brain that has betrayed me. I'm educated, yes, but poor.

Government cannot be reset to a time before the New Deal, before the Great Society. We may never be a nation that embraces democratic socialism. But we can and should embrace looking out for those of us who are less fortunate. I don't wallow in my limitations. Instead, I ask for a leg up and usually don't complain. I don't believe that the world owes me anything, but I do believe that I have a right to add my voice into the discourse. Doing so is uniquely American, wouldn't you agree?

Another Notice

I am trying to rest up this week in anticipation of flying home for Thanksgiving. Starting Saturday and lasting through Thanksgiving Day, I will probably not be posting.

My parents are getting older and I find myself halfway through my thirties. They are a link to my past, and still relatively young, young enough to not be crippled with illness and physical limitations. My twenties were a navel-gazing time of selfishness, but your priorities change with time. The balance of power seems much more equal now, possibly because I live twelve hours drive away from them.

There will be more to come, but I've suffered with four hospitalizations in five months and my body is suffering from exhaustion. My progress is measured in weeks, rather than days. The brain takes a long time to recover from trauma.

Quote of the Week

I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.-Alice Paul

Saturday Video

I'm not like them
But I can pretend

The sun is gone
But I have a light

The day is done
And I'm having fun

I think I'm dumb
Maybe just happy

I think I'm just happy
I think I'm just happy
I think I'm just happy

My heart is broke
But I have some glue

Help me inhale
And mend it with you

We'll float around
And hang out on clouds
Then we'll come down
And have a hangover

Have a hangover
Have a hangover
Have a hangover

Skin the sun
Fall asleep
Wish away
Soul is cheap

Lesson learned
Wish me luck
Soothe the burn
Wake me up

I'm not like them
But I can pretend

The sun is gone
But I have a light

The day is done
And I'm having fun
I think I'm dumb
Maybe just happy

I think I'm just happy
I think I'm just happy
I think I'm just happy
I think I'm dumb

When A Man Takes Paternity Leave

I should begin by saying that I rent space on the opposite end of the pharmacy counter. With multiple ailments and disabilities, I have no choice but to take my medications in a compliant fashion. But I say this only as a means of introduction to a much more interesting topic.

When a man takes paternity leave, outside of professional sports and testosterone circles, we Americans applaud. We're becoming civilized like the rest of the world, we say. But the rest of American society must change, too. Our attitudes and expectations must be reformed. The system would buckle under the pressure if all men participated. Below is what I mean.

The way it has always been is not designed for men to take off the way women have since time immemorial. I've suffered because my hard working and entirely competent pharmacist has taken paternity leave. For over a month, everyone has been short-changed. The men, mostly, who have filled in for him are temp workers, many of whom take little pride in their work and are dubiously competent. They wait for their next assignment elsewhere, wishing that they could be assigned somewhere permanent.

Let's not forget that a pharmacist with his or her own store makes a very generous salary, sometimes over $100,000. The temps are not so fortunate. They are paid per diem for their wages. I am not totally dismissive of their plight. A more smartly managed workplace would have designated temp workers who would know where their next assignment was coming from well ahead of schedule.

Every day I go to the pharmacy, I see a different face wearing a white coat. I can't imagine what it must be like to pick up on someone else's system and weave it in with one's own in a single day or maybe a string of days. There's something nomadic about this way of life and when there are gaps, highly inefficient, not streamlined ways have to suffice in the minds of those who plan such things.

It doesn't have to be this way. It begins by smarter action and not resting on the haunches of the past. If paternity leave remains a rarity, we collectively lose out. I admire my pharmacist for taking an option available to him, giving him a chance to bond with his newborn child and to assist his wife. We are still beholden to the notion that raising young children is women's work and that a father's place towards parenting is distant and somewhat detached.

Old habits are what we are fighting. I think the change, if we agree to make it, will come slowly and incrementally. The roles of masculinity and societal patterns are being challenged by the mere notion of paternity leave. This is what makes some men bemoan that "real" men are no longer to be found in sufficient quantities or to feel that maleness is under attack from emasculating forces. But what we are really becoming is more compassionate, even if the latest news report would have you believe otherwise.

What's Wrong and Why It Happened

I have been hospitalized three times in the past five months. My progress in healing is going to be measured in months, not weeks or days. For whatever reason, bipolar disorder struck, along with a massive period of agitation. The causes are unknown, but I was dealing with a lawsuit and a massive amount of stress that went along with it.

I can't really talk about it yet. This is an act of self-preservation along with my decision to stop blogging for a little while. My health is of paramount importance right now. I hope my manuscript for a forthcoming short story was received before I collapsed under the strain. I hope this is not something more serious.

A Notice

I have a severe physical issue and will be posting only occasionally for the next several weeks. I hope this does not disappoint. Doing the minimum is a challenge right now, and I'm fearful this is not something worse. I am worried about the outcome of testing and doctor's opinions.

The Iranian Quandary

Current events have been an enigma to me since forever. Keeping track of them is like trying to grab handfuls of flies. It’s a waste of time. The devils fly through the gaps of your fingers, rendering your action moot.

But that’s until current events become current for you, too. One of my doctors is Iranian, Persian really, but has been called back for a month for home. These are not Pro-American times in Iran, and the unrest I read about makes me wonder if she is on some imperative family errand. I wonder if her papers will be denied to her somehow, preventing her return. My worries go beyond finding another doctor.

Until now, as I have gathered, the crackdown has been mostly on the media. The regime doesn’t want publication of what it is doing by any means. My doctor is part of the group who left because of the Revolution in 1979, making this trip seem mysterious, to say the least. She is also my age, which at 35 is possible, but makes me know I am growing into an older adult. Most Persians loyal to the Shah went to California, but some of them migrated to this greater Washington, DC, area. And yet she is working on her English.

I could speculate about this topic and be no further along. She said she had no choice in the matter, which is a curious reason to cite. It speaks of intrigue but may not really say much in the long term. I’ve never had a doctor need to flee the coop with such urgency and at the last minute. Last minute decisions are rarely made with positive consequences, or even expecting them.

Maybe one of her relatives has gotten wrapped up in this mess. I’m not sure I’d feel safe as an American in Tehran right now. Death to America is once again the chat of the hour. Has it ever stopped, really? I find it hard to not want death and destruction for them, if they hate us so much. As I’ve written before, it tries my pacifism. I don’t want to surrender to what I see often as bullies.

They’ve taken away someone who provides an essential service to me. I’m not sure she will be allowed to return. I don’t think she is the source of the problem, but it is someone or something dear to her. I can pick up that much from the way she apologized for this arrangement, completely off-balance, wobbling, teetering slightly. It’s somewhat unprofessional, but forgivable.

We’re trying to keep nuclear material out of the hands of a dictatorial power. How we do it is a matter of debate. But in the meantime the people suffer as the dictators profit from the hatred they fan. And how do we break that resolve? It makes the Soviets seem meek and mild by contrast, and as someone who values my own religious freedom, it’s a temptation to say that this religion is neither free, nor religious. It’s an ideology of terror justified by blood sacrifice.

These are our current events, should we choose to accept them. This is what makes people run home out of haste. And how we deal with it is everyone’s issue.

When Material Proves Elusive

The short story I've been posting snippets on here is done. I've been submitting it to literary journals and a few winnable contests here and there. My political opinions are minimal at this point. There's not much I can say that hasn't been said better by someone else. That's when I know it's time to step aside.

I've been having a resurgence of energy, recovering fully. Instead of pacing the floor, I perform stretching activities that calm down my restless legs. My partner assists me with these and I'm grateful for her assistance. Aside from that, writing is really a chore right now. And it probably will be for a while longer. But be patient with me.

See me as a cancer patient needing rest. My body has been through a ton the past five months and it is just now putting it back together. But I still have health problems and visit a doctor at 3:30 pm today to address one of them.

Early Quote of the Week

"I live!"-The mad Roman Emperor Caligula as he was being killed.

The End or the Beginning?

Minority groups or disenfranchised groups have learned with pain that the American government, or any government so conceived, lies when it is expedient to do so. The cable television fixture Turner Classic Movies recently aired the classic 1981 documentary The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter. It was part of a series of women directors. Women who contributed to the war effort were eventually lavishly compensated for their work, but were then expected to step aside when their jobs were given to returning servicemen.

The means by which this process was done were unfair and exploitative. The filmmakers were active in righting the wrongs that never graced history books. History has been a record of men's exploits, eliminating women's contributions. Since then, it has become fashionable to bash the government for all of its failures while not taking into account its successes. But to discount the vast failures is a travesty. Women were lied to, openly. We've all been lied to, since then, in other areas, women especially.

A kind of weary wisdom says that all politicians lie. The truth bears this out. The Democrats protecting Hillary Clinton are lying to some degree or another about something, and let's admit that now even if it discounts the party line now developing around her. Fox News is lying to bring its own spin out into the open. Liberals lie, conservatives lie, and that's pretty much how it's always been. But have no fear, Democrats, this is Hillary Clinton's year, in my estimation. The GOP field is too muddled, too unsettled for long term success, almost fractured enough to rival 1976, the last brokered convention.

For all the talk about the coronation of Hillary, it is born out of the facts. But this time, I think the American people will be a bit more realistic about what government can accomplish. Hillary Clinton knows the system intimately and while she might run a bit like a monarch for anyone's comfort, something might get done this time. It will be a long time before I vote (twice!) for a charismatic outsider with a minimum of practical Washington experience.

We really want the 1990's back. The nostalgia is for music and economic prowess is equal. It amuses me to see college students with Nirvana t-shirts who were infants when Kurt Cobain was already dead and buried. Can Hillary take total credit for her husband's success? She's certainly tried, but in some respects those were were more innocent times. You could wait for your arriving party at an airport and you didn't have to take your shoes off in the process. We weren't inundated with school shootings, but, immediately prior to that, the government always had the Soviets to point to as the source of all terrible things.

Now things are so unsettled. Music is abysmal and irrelevant. And we are beginning to ask some serious questions to ourselves about the golden age of American capitalism, and whether it has gone away for good is a relevant topic. We live in a global age now, whether we can see its results clearly or with some effort. I predict we will see it with clear evidence with every passing year. We live in a more multicultural country, and it is increasingly hard to close our eyes and not see it.

We've just come through Halloween, a time where we scare ourselves, a miraculous concept to me. But it's fear we cannot control that frightens me. Do you know what scares me? War. Open conflict. The always unstable Middle East, that makes me want to forsake the pacifism I own and carpet bomb the whole stinking area. A set of problems never ending. But then I turn into a heartless ranter, and the world has enough Archie Bunkers and conspiracy theorists.

What follows next? No one knows. Is this the great American resurgence or a lasting cultural slump? Regardless of President, we are likely to have a divided Congress because we are a divided country tied between the way we want things to be and the way things are. The sooner we own the future, the better we will be. Political science and trends are no help here.

Iceberg Lettuce, Part Two

“One more tomorrow, yes?” His English was heavily accented, almost Russian. And we all smiled the smiled of the stoned and the preoccupied. It was almost like speed, but it wasn’t quite that way either. No grinding of teeth. A nice mellow, highly tested chemical that dissolves rapidly and had no need to measure weight or blood pressure, or even pulse rate. You’d swear at the end you’d had a religious experience and maybe you had. Everyone’s kid bragged about it over the school lunch table the next day.

And amid thermos and lunch boxes, the talk was the same the next day. One more day of the mystical pill. Whatever will they think of next? We didn’t much talk about what they wanted from us. It gave us a break from the hunger and the Russians and the Iranians and the fifty minutes if we wanted gasoline. You could skim it off the line if you got desperate and some of us did, but the behavior was discouraged.  The poorest among us had no such reservation. Ever tried to use mineral spirits to get petrol out of a grey flannel shirt?

And then the military brass started walking all slow-like around 2 pm. We weren’t supposed to be on the premises at school, but we knew that. We were adults and few of us had work. And all the time, they kept walking lazily with a plastic bag full of those same little blue pills. Round two, said some widow, and so we prepared for round two.  It was our last go-round with the U.S. Army and nobody was afraid to look a gift horse in the mouth, two days where we weren’t worried about being poached across the river to the next grist mill by some foreigner.

They started knocking on doors like before; pouring pills into cupped hands into small circular paper containing containers of water.  Plastic cups from all over creation. Free. We drank them down with haste, ready to begin, to learn the meaning of life, even ordinary people who never had no book learnin’ like James Franklin Jamison, the town mentally challenged individual, who you used to call the village idiot.

He was rubbing out answers and blue boxes with his elbows, which soon grew blue. I wonder what his answers said. Could they be what we were looking for all along? As it turs out, there was nowhere to go before the Minnesota border and here were in northern Michigan. Not close to nothin’ as the neighbors would say.
 
The bullhorns let us know they were leaving soon and for us to dose or forget about it. So I opened up the gate to the bridge and off they sped. As for me, I walked back to the campsite to see what everyone was doing. They kept drawing boxes and talking frantically to each other. I wish I knew that universe they inhabited.

That same man who looked cowed kept collecting everyone’s piece of paper, assuming, of course, that they weren’t quite done with it yet. He’d stayed behind for some reason. The army guys weren’t done there yet.

Jane Mansun wasn’t ready yet. She’d decided on a two-color effect and after first applying blue ballpoint pen was adding shading with a school pencil, a number two. She sucked on the end of it like a student at a multiple choice test.

Now just remember, ma’am, there are no right or wrong answers.

She ignored him and briefly stopped sucking on the graphite only to add a brief, wild mark across the page only she was capable of understanding.

There, she said. I’m done now.

You sure? he said. Yep, she said, and folded her arms. Folding her arms underneath her was always a sign she was done with whatever task at hand, but it made her look like a petulant eight-year-old.

She shot me a dirty look. Even the lesbos get to participate. Even those dykes. No one could confuse my short hair or professional sports team jersey.  I’ve been out of work, too. Even my partner is unemployed, my wife, really, which just enrages the natives even more. I don’t care anymore. I’m so used to being despised that I’m reminded of that corrupt Latin American dictator in the Woody Allen film who has been poisoned so many times he has developed an immunity.

$500 buys a lot of groceries. Our home is full of none of them with three weeks to go before new food stamps. I have a half-sister working on marriage number three with two preteen kids from marriage number one, desperate to escape like the rest of us. They make google eyes at every rescuer with a car and gas no matter how old he might be. I doubt their mother would care. It would be one less mouth to feed, nobody to clothe anymore. It’s news story waiting to happen, one more Amber Alert to interrupt everyone’s telecast or cellphone conversation.

Quote of the Week

"Like most people who have had one baby, I am an expert on anything and will tell you, unsolicited, how to raise your child"-Tina Fey

Saturday Video

Well, I don't want a thing to do with your kind
And I ain't got no time to kill on your dime
Strung up, hanging 'round
Looking like you're upside down

Well, I ain't wanting to shed no blood, that's your crime
And I ain't wanting to sling no mud, I clean it up
You ain't what I'd call a friend
I wouldn't even if I could pretend
Man, you ain't like anybody else

As night becomes the sun to rise
As dirt becomes the butterflies
As sure as though it always seems to stay the same
And I'll be waiting anxiously
And I'll be falling fast asleep
And I'll be dreaming of the day the dream died
Uh huh

No sticks, no stones could break my bones like you can
If I knew hate, I'd call it love for you, man
High up on the hill, cheaper than a dollar bill
Man, you ain't like anybody else

Should we pretend that it's the end?
Are you my curse or are you my friend?
And if we got hit to the end of the road
Will you be there to carry my load?

I'm getting it back with that terrible feeling
My vision is cracked, but it looks like it's healing
I'm getting it back like it's four in the morning
When the sun only shines as if it's giving a warning

I'm getting it back with the rest of the leap year
I'm keeping the rabbit, the bat, and the reindeer
I'm getting it out, whatever I've gotta keep in
I'm telling the truth, said it don't win with pretend
Should we pretend?
Should we pretend?
Should we pretend?

A Notice

Friends, I am not back at 100% yet, so don't expect miracles from me.

Movie review: A Nos Amors (The Many Loves)

Displays of overt feminine sexuality have been stigmatized for generations. The virgin/whore dichotomy proves tempting to many directors, male and female both. Here, our main character, Suzanne, (Sandrine Bonnaire, in her first role) plays a role as a girl who uses sex with guys to disguise her dysfunctional homelife. She is both a bit of a slut, by parlance, and a bit of a good girl. These are the words of a superior critic to me, lest I be accused of plagiarism.

French indie director Maurice Pialat had been a known quantity before filming A Nos Amores in 1983, considered by many critics to be his best. And in so doing, he launched the career of Bonnaire, a fixture on the French film scene up to the present day. She has transitioned to the role of director herself. Sill a child, but not yet a woman, in this picture she looks like a fawn rather than a mature adult.

Pialat continues the tradition, rooted in male sexual appeal, of the sexually available nubile. We could talk about the inherent fantasy of the role and its objectionable qualities, but it's much more interesting to muse on what lies beyond it. Bonnaire was only sixteen, playing the sort of sexually believable role that would never be tolerated in the United States. The many sex scenes with peers would be labeled "jailbait" today and discussed as such with those parameters first.

Are these Pialat's gendered fantasies or a warm retelling of adolescence? I would opt for the second, while not discounting the first.

But the passion Bonnaire brings to the role is worth discussing, as is the inherent youth and excitement of high school life. These are high school students, though that terminology is not used because of the country of origin. Once again, we focus on the joy and newness of that sometimes ecstatic, sometimes traumatic time in our lives. And as we do, we see it with new eyes, eyes that romanticize and stigmatize in equal terms.

God Only Knows

When I was get to writing again. These hospitalizations will get to you.

Week of Surprises

In this week of surprises, my father formally accepted me as queer. I am very happy.

A Love Letter

I've 35 today. Earlier this week I celebrated seven years in DC, the date my life changed forever. But this piece ought to be entitled "In Defense of Monogamy". I've been with my lady for six and a half years and consider ourselves married in all but formal name. I have been at time, at her own request, hesitant to put much about her up here. So she remains a ghostly presence, but has been a constant.

She is silly and gets me out of my super serious self. But she can be tough and tenacious, too. My sexual orientation is not an issue with her. All she asks for is devotion, and has it. This has been an issue with some who are not queer herself, but she is secure in her sexuality.

I know the same old curves with her, but find their familiarity endearing with me. And I welcome them being around forever, just like her. I would find asexuality too alienating, and most of us want someone to partner with for good.

Saturday Video

Hey, hey, good lookin', whatcha got cookin'
How's about cookin' somethin' up with me?

Hey, hey, sweet baby, don't you think maybe
We could find us a brand new recipe?

I got a hot rod Ford and a two dollar bill
And I know a spot right over the hill

There's soda pop and the dancin's free
If you wanna have fun come along with me

Hey, hey, good lookin', whatcha got cookin'
How's about cookin' somethin' up with me?

I'm free and ready so we can go steady
How's about savin' all your time for me?

No more lookin', I know, I've been tooken
How's about keepin' steady company?

I'm gonna throw my date book over the fence
Find me one for five or ten cents

Keep it till it's covered with age
Cause I'm writin' your name down on every page

Quote of the Week

"Of course, this artificial distinction does not strictly obtain in any particular marriage. There is an attempt to break it down. It is an honourable attempt. But our civilization is nevertheless built on that distinction, In order to break down that distinction utterly, it will be necessary to break down all the codes and restrictions and prejudices that keep women out of the great world.

It is in the great world that a man finds his sweetheart, and in that narrow little box outside of the world that he loses her. When she has left that box and gone back into the great world, a citizen and a worker, then with surprise and delight he will discover her again, and never let her go."-Floyd Dell

Saturday Video: Grieg Lyric Pieces Book VIII, Op.65 - 5. Ballad

I Try to Post This Once a Year

You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
And skip out for beer during commercials
Because the revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions

The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
Blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell
General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hog maws
Confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theater and will not star Natalie Woods
And Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle as Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner
Because the revolution will not be televised, Brother

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
Pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run
Or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
On report from 29 districts
The revolution will not be televised

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
Brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
Brothers on the instant replay

The revolution will not be right back after a message
About a white tornado, white lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom
The tiger in your tank or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised
Will not be televised, will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run brothers
The revolution will be live

Ranch Dressing, Part 2

Ranch Dressing, Part 2. Part 1 is Found Here.

Cars pulled off of roadways. Modular homes filled up without babysitters, the drug not safe for those under age 8. They watched impassively as rows upon ballpoint pen rows filled up on legal pads, and people joined together for protection, uncertain what their parents or sisters or guardians were doing out there.

I swallowed the small blue pill, expecting sleep. Instead I saw space in five dimensions, rainbow trails, ROY G. BIV and all those things I’ve half-learned in middle school chemistry. There were no videos. There was something not interactive about this medication, if it was medication, something that hearkened back to simple times. They gave us scores of charts, which we filled in like math students at some college worksheet.

Every so often, a military GI with a tommy gun opened up a door to a modular home or a real home made out of our famous red clay. What was today? What was tomorrow? Did any of it really matter? I saw everyone’s paint-by-number dreams, like a modern day Jackson Browne.  They took sheet after sheets. The Clutters looked the same. The Smiths looked the same. The Johnsons looked the same. Even the Maranpolas, the Greeks down the way looked the same as us, but theirs was in red, blood red.

It was just Crayola’s, markers and crayons and colored pencils. Nothing serious. The way the papers were collected was with deadly seriousness, as though someone had died.  They even gave it to the same guy, this little fella with fewer stars on his epaulets, who acted like he was due twice as much for duty this profane.

“One more tomorrow, yes?” And we all smiled the smiled of the stoned and the preoccupied. It was almost like speed, but it wasn’t quite that way either. No grinding of teeth. A nice mellow, highly tested chemical that dissolved rapidly and had no need to measure weight or blood pressure, or even pulse rate. You’d swear at the end you’d had a religious experience and maybe you had. You’d brag about it over the school lunch table.

And amid thermos and lunchboxes, the talk was the same the next day. One more day of the mystical pill. Whatever will they think of next? We didn’t much talk about what they wanted from us. It gave us a break from the hunger and the Russians and the Iranians and the fifty minutes if we wanted gasoline. You could skim it off the line if you got desperate and some of us did, but the behavior was discouraged, but the poorest among us had no such reservation. Ever tried to get mineral spirits out of a grey flannel shirt?

And then the military brass started walking all slow-like around 2 pm. We weren’t supposed to be at school, but we knew that. And all the time, they kept walking lolly-gag style with a plastic bag full of those same little blue pills. Round two, said some widow, and so we prepared for round two.  It was our last go-round with the U.S. Army and nobody was afraid to look a gift horse in the mouth, it was two days where we weren’t worried about being poached across the river to the next grist mill.

They started knocking on doors like before, pouring pills into cupped hands into small circular paper contains containers of water.  Plastic cups from all over creation. Free somewhere, once. They drank them down with haste, ready to begin, to learn the meaning of life, even ordinary people who never had no book learnin’ like James Franklin Jamison, the town mentally challenged individual, who you used to call the village idiot.

He was rubbing out answers and blue boxes with his elbows, which soon grew blue. I wonder what his answers said. Could they be what we were looking for all along. As it turns out, there was to go before the Minnesota border and here were in northern Michigan. Not close to nothin’ as the neighbors would say.  

The bullhorns let us know they were leaving soon and for us to dose or forget about it. So I opened up the gate to the bridge and off they sped. As for me, I walked back to the campsite to see what everyone was doing. They kept drawing boxes and talking frantically. I wish I knew that universe they inhabited individually. Was it different from mine?

Vaccination for HPV

A public service announcement from someone potentially older than you. Do you have HPV (Human Papillary Virus)? Who doesn't, you may be asking yourself? Well, just because it's highly prevalent doesn't mean that it isn't troubling and room for concern.

Having HPV has required me to take three expensive vaccines and go through two painful operating procedures. MSM (Men who have sex with men) are at particular risk, as are women who have sex with men who have sex with men. Or who live in Portland. (I made that part up.)

Get screened and catch the results earlier. If caught earlier, women and men both can get vaccines covered a full cost to your insurance. If not, look for out of pocket cost to be $170 a shot, for a series of three.

Question

Have you ever felt better telling off a smartass parent over the phone before who is resistant to technology? Me too!

New Story

So today isn't a total wash, here's a story I've been working on for the last week.

Iceberg Lettuce

Though it will deny all knowledge, the local army encampment offered local residents of the town an experimental hallucinogen. The young people were the first to partake, drawing incoherent, but at the time meaningful boxes and circles on yellow legal pads. Older residents were more wary of this experience and the forms you had to fill out to get it, but they eventually came around to it.

My partner and I were different.  Everyone knew we were living together and said nothing about it because we said nothing about it. I said nothing about the fact that he tasted like ranch salad dressing sometimes during our obligatory makeout sessions. This may have been for the fact that he was quite fond of ranch salad dressing and iceberg lettuce, but I felt he was limiting himself, dietarily speaking.

We were both too reluctant to try the suspiciously tiny blue pill. Everyone was doing it, but not us. You got two doses and two doses only. We never knew why they picked us anyway. Sure, the military was a career for many a resident of this tiny little Southern town and indeed my own partner’s father was a Vietnam Vet, but neither of these factors.

Mostly it was because there was money in it. Only a few hundred dollars a trial, but ever since the mill closed, unemployment has been high. There are no new jobs and the prospects of a better life seem grim. Pickings are slim. No one can afford to turn anything away. 12.5%, 13%, 14.5%. It ticks up all the time and keep ticketing. Everyone is hungry for something different and they want out, but not all of us can abandon this hamlet and leave it a ghost town.  

We inherited the house with live in from my grandparents when they died. I wish I knew how maintain his vegetable garden but I always keep the grass cut. When he was alive, it sported a deep green color, but not is a bright shade of red. Sometimes you have to do something different. It’s not exactly prime real estate and I remember the way he tended to bee stings, by unrolling a cigarette and affixing the tobacco with spit. It didn’t really help, but you always pretended it did.

The talk of the town was the army installation. At first you thought they’d starting camping for no good reason.

Sick and Ailing

This summer was one of the worst of my life. It required three hospitalizations and several ER visits. I had another one yesterday because my system is not yet ready for new meds. So what I'm saying is please be patient with me as I heal and recover.

Somedays I may post like my old days and some days I might not post even at all. I've got to get this under control first.

Quote of the Week

1If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.- Benjamin Franklin

Saturday Video

You think we look pretty good together
You think my shoes are made of leather
I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young but I'm just back-dated...yeah

(Substitute) Your lies for fact
(Substitute) I see right through your plastic Mac
(Substitute) I look all white but my dad was black
(Substitute) My fine-looking suit's really made out of sack

I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east and the east was facing' south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those crocodile tears are what you cry
It's a genuine problem, you won't try
To work it out at all, just pass it by...pass it by

(Substitute) Me for him
(Substitute) My coke for gin
(Substitute) You for my mum
(Substitute) At least I'll get my washin' done

I'm a substitute for another guy
I look pretty tall but my heels are high
The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young but I'm just back-dated...yeah

I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east and the east was facing' south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those crocodile tears are what you cry
It's a genuine problem, you won't try
To work it out at all, just pass it by...pass it by

(Substitute) Me for him
(Substitute) My coke for gin
(Substitute) You for my mum
(Substitute) At least I'll get my washin' done

(Substitute) Your lies for fact
(Substitute) I see right through your plastic Mac
(Substitute) I look all white but my dad was black
(Substitute) My fine-lookin' suit's really made out of sack

Josie Long - 2015 Comedy Up Late on ABC (Ep7)

Feministing, interview this woman.

Film review: More

So, reader, have you watched a film you viewed before you raised your consciousness to a higher standard of acceptable behavior, only to find you have changed, but the picture has not? More (1969), fits that category for me. I first watched it in my early twenties on an expensive $40 VHS copy, attracted more at first to the mellow Pink Floyd soundtrack to the contents contained within it, but curious to explore nonetheless.

How times have changed. I’m not sure what I find more objectionable now: the sometimes dubiously consensual sex scenes or the violent outbursts of a jealous man. This film is dominated by jealous men, if the truth is to be known, namely Dr. Wolf (Heinz Engelmann), an outwardly smiling, but ultimately sinister older man, rumored to be an ex-Nazi, living on the Spanish island of Ibiza. Wolf competes with a fellow German (Klaus Grünberg) a generation younger who pursues Wolf's kept young woman with a kind of animalistic passion that is a little frightening to watch.

Meanwhile, Wolf keeps his beautiful blonde American girl, Estelle Miller, (Mimsy Farmer, in a great performance) financed sufficiently to live a peripatetic, aimless existence simultaneously with a periodic and frequently debilitating heroin addiction. No love lost here. Throw in some good-natured but nevertheless gratuitous woman-on-woman sex scenes, plus a threesome, and one has what passed for late sixties edgy art film (nudity! real nudity!) from promising young director.

It is a film of its time and yet not of its time. It mines the territory of a genre that never promises commercial success, an addiction drama. That it made no pretenses otherwise is not really a shock. Its director, a young man born in Tehran to French parents, was trying to make a statement about hippie drug culture and its numerous excesses. It is an effort designed at self-censor, when establishment directors and square corporate executives were trying the same thing in a much less accurate manner.

Its secondary message was to say that men can be corrupted easily, their vilest impulses swayed by hard drugs, loose living. and a lack of discernible boundaries. It’s an idea with some validity but it is clumsily manipulated, turning a supposed former innocent into a hardened junkie in ninety minutes flat. We’re led to believe that the male lead (Grünberg) had recently finished his studies in mathematics and instead of being socially awkward and heavily inhibited as math majors tend to be, had cast his lot by impulsively hitching a ride from Germany to Paris. The action begins here and ends with the demise of a leading character, but I won't tell you which one.

More was Barbet Schroeder’s first foray into filmmaking, arguably his most personal one and certainly his rawest. Much is the case for anyone’s first act. He wouldn’t hit his stride until the 1990’s in Hollywood with Reversal of Fortune and Single White Female, but wouldn’t attract much critical praise until a documentary expose of infamous Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in the Seventies.

Returning to More, the male lead is vastly overshadowed by Farmer, whose histrionic performance as a supremely hot mess was a career-best. Schroeder had a knack for identifying unknown female talent. One of them, Bulle Ogier, he married. Mimsy Farmer had previously played the American B-movie circuit, the girlfriend of innumerable bikers and social malcontents. Unknown actors and actresses weary of playing second fiddle in their homeland invariably drift to Europe. The same was true in this circumstance.

Mostly the film makes me feel old, aware that my days of scouting the next party or group watering hole are long since past me. If the late sixties were merely one drug-addled orgy, count me out. It turns out that our parents were just as foolish as we were, with equally moronic slang that has dated considerably over time. Those afraid of needles and squeamish of self-destructive behavior probably should avoid the picture, but strangely the images capture a moment in time for me. I've probably watched it thirty times over the course of one lifetime, even if I never watch it again.