I’m stealing the title of J.M. Coetzee’s book because I can’t actually steal the book, or come close to writing with the intensity, intelligence, and grace of which he is capable. And my subject matter is more literal: while it’s actually been 17 months, my bad year dates back to the beginning of Mark’s illness, when it became obvious that he was seriously sick. The diagnosis of nonresectable (meaning inoperable) pancreatic cancer came in August 2009, with a life expectancy of one to two years. He died on November 27, 2010.
I haven’t really kept a diary. I’ve written tangentially about the abysmal state of the medical industrial complex, much of it gleaned from experience in emergency rooms and hospitals and chemotherapy clinics, but I haven’t documented the day to day reality that was our lives. Or unreality, whichever it is. (In one of the last group e-mails I sent out to family and friends I said, “I find it’s increasingly difficult to write these updates. It’s almost as if Mark and I are in a separate reality—I use the term ‘reality’ in all its subjectivity, although as a pragmatist I have to assign some meaning to it.”) So the question is, how does one live with one’s mortality staring him in the face? I can’t answer that question, obviously, but I can try to describe how I lived with his staring me in the face.
Before I take that leap, however, let me make a list of all the other things that happened during this bad year. In October of 2009 my younger sister killed herself after years of suffering with fibromyalgia. In November Mark and his mother had a falling out and he decided he wanted to terminate any relationship with her and he did. In January of 2010 I was finally diagnosed with CREST syndrome, an autoimmune disease that affects connective tissue and causes a lot pain in my neck and hands. In May I had a recurrence of vertigo, which I’ve had intermittently for 30 years. While in the past it’s always been the positional type, where particles in the inner ear come lose and cause you to become dizzy when you move your head too quickly from side to side, this time the dizziness was constant, no matter what position my head was in, and it lasted most of the summer, in varying degrees of intensity. The ear, nose, and throat doc thinks I may have Méniere’s disease, which is caused by fluid in the ear, as well as positional vertigo. In September our dog Sammy, who is completely deaf, almost died when one of his benign fatty cysts got infected and spread venom throughout his system. But it broke and drained and he lived. In October, our cat Mavis, who slept with us every night and provided much love and comfort, didn’t come in one afternoon and disappeared forever. During the entire 17 months I watched our dog Django, who is 14, become increasingly crippled with arthritis, wondering, “Is she going to last through the summer?” and then, “Is she going to outlast Mark?” She also has a weak bladder and has to take estrogen to keep from peeing all over the house. I’m sure I’m missing some other events, but these are the salient ones.
Thinking about all this has kept me from thinking about Mark and how I want to go about telling our story. I know I don’t want it to be another cancer lament, using words like “battle” and “valiant fight” to describe what happened over his year and a half of living, filled with much sickness but also energy, connection, and good feeling. I know I want to protect his privacy, as I did in my group e-mails, which detailed the bare facts of his illness and the course it took. But I do want to talk about how I lost a partner of 34 years slowly, and incrementally, as he withdrew into a world no one else could share despite our physical closeness and frank conversations about his dying and my living.
This is the first posting of Diary of a Bad Year, which I will continue with over the next few months, interspersed with other postings more in the vain of what I’ve been doing since I started blogging in 2009.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Friday, November 12, 2010
The Best and the Brightest (According to the Sunday New York Times Styles Section)
Synchronicity! On the very day I sat down to start writing about all the beautiful people announcing their marriages in the Sunday New York Times Styles Section I happened to read the Opinion Section where the Public Editor addressed a question from a reader that was the very same question I wanted to ask: “How do editors select which announcements to publish, and why don’t editors make a sustained effort to include different types of couples?”
OK, I only wanted to ask the first part of this question about how editors select which announcements to publish because I know better than to ask why they don’t make an effort to include other kinds of couples besides lawyers who graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and now work for Wall Street investment firms or doctors who are doing their residency at the University of Pennsylvania in gastroenterology. In the intense competition among all these power couples who want their announcements to appear in the NYT Styles Section I figured it’s the beauties over the uglies, the Harvards and Yales over the Oberlins, and the Greenwich parents over Newark who get the nod.
But lo and behold, according to the Public Editor, the criterion is none of these: it’s achievement. “The only truly fair way to select one submission over another is on the basis of achievement.” Nietzsche lives! (You have to excuse me, I’m still reading his Philosophical Biography). The elite are defined by their will to power, especially those who manage to make their way out of the herd and end up at the “top of their medical school class at Yale or Stanford,” as the Public Editor explained it.
So I decided to submit a marriage for publication that might give the Weddings /Celebrations editors pause, at least in terms of their definition of achievement, and might give the rest of us out here in the herd someone we can identify with.
“On March 20, at the lovely farm of the groom’s family in upstate New York (I guess one of the criteria for publication is that the couple has some connection to New York, but I’m really talking about anywhere in rural America) so and so and so and so married themselves with their extended family members, their intimate comrades in arms, their three dogs, two cats, and tank of tropical fish in attendance (the cattle, horse, and chickens were confined to the field). They both will retain their own names even though they are their father’s names but it’s too late to do anything about that and anyway, everybody has always known them by those names.
So and so’s parents own the local grocery store where they have kept accounts for as long as twenty years for the down and out folks in the community who live month to month on their social security or disability checks. The other so and so’s parents drove in from New Mexico where they work as farriers and create magnificent iron sculptures on the side.
The happy couple has a long employment history that includes waitressing at a swank restaurant in the neighboring town, working for the Forest Service as seasonal patrols telling people to put out their campfires during times of drought, substitute teaching in the local high school while reporting on sports for the local newspaper, writing articles for various other local newspapers about whatever they can come up with on a day’s notice, canvassing for the Service Worker’s Union, growing great garlic that they sell to the local food stores, working construction on all their neighbors’ houses so their neighbors will work construction on their house, and most recently, and thanklessly, as members of the school board even though they don’t have any kids yet and might not because as anyone with a brain can see things are getting worse, not better.
They love to tell the story of how they met. One day so and so went over to a friend’s house down the road for a visit with her/his dogs and the other so and so was also there visiting and had to run into the house when the first so and so’s dogs started barking at him/her, which kinda pissed him/her off, but he/she also kinda liked the first so and so and thought she/he had an especially nice butt. He/she started dropping by the first so and so’s house around breakfast time but she/he rarely invited him/her to eat, so they didn’t make much progress. Then he/she got up his/her gumption, however, and invited the first so and so on a real date: they went to the State Fair. But then when they got back to the first so and so’s house, where the second so and so had high hopes for a kiss, they got into an argument on the nature of inspiration and the first so and so kicked the second so and so out of her/his house. But the second so and so was tenacious, and when the first so and so started working in the fire lookout for the summer he/she went up to visit and those Desolation Peak fantasies were too much for both of them and they kissed. The rest is history.
OK, I only wanted to ask the first part of this question about how editors select which announcements to publish because I know better than to ask why they don’t make an effort to include other kinds of couples besides lawyers who graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and now work for Wall Street investment firms or doctors who are doing their residency at the University of Pennsylvania in gastroenterology. In the intense competition among all these power couples who want their announcements to appear in the NYT Styles Section I figured it’s the beauties over the uglies, the Harvards and Yales over the Oberlins, and the Greenwich parents over Newark who get the nod.
But lo and behold, according to the Public Editor, the criterion is none of these: it’s achievement. “The only truly fair way to select one submission over another is on the basis of achievement.” Nietzsche lives! (You have to excuse me, I’m still reading his Philosophical Biography). The elite are defined by their will to power, especially those who manage to make their way out of the herd and end up at the “top of their medical school class at Yale or Stanford,” as the Public Editor explained it.
So I decided to submit a marriage for publication that might give the Weddings /Celebrations editors pause, at least in terms of their definition of achievement, and might give the rest of us out here in the herd someone we can identify with.
“On March 20, at the lovely farm of the groom’s family in upstate New York (I guess one of the criteria for publication is that the couple has some connection to New York, but I’m really talking about anywhere in rural America) so and so and so and so married themselves with their extended family members, their intimate comrades in arms, their three dogs, two cats, and tank of tropical fish in attendance (the cattle, horse, and chickens were confined to the field). They both will retain their own names even though they are their father’s names but it’s too late to do anything about that and anyway, everybody has always known them by those names.
So and so’s parents own the local grocery store where they have kept accounts for as long as twenty years for the down and out folks in the community who live month to month on their social security or disability checks. The other so and so’s parents drove in from New Mexico where they work as farriers and create magnificent iron sculptures on the side.
The happy couple has a long employment history that includes waitressing at a swank restaurant in the neighboring town, working for the Forest Service as seasonal patrols telling people to put out their campfires during times of drought, substitute teaching in the local high school while reporting on sports for the local newspaper, writing articles for various other local newspapers about whatever they can come up with on a day’s notice, canvassing for the Service Worker’s Union, growing great garlic that they sell to the local food stores, working construction on all their neighbors’ houses so their neighbors will work construction on their house, and most recently, and thanklessly, as members of the school board even though they don’t have any kids yet and might not because as anyone with a brain can see things are getting worse, not better.
They love to tell the story of how they met. One day so and so went over to a friend’s house down the road for a visit with her/his dogs and the other so and so was also there visiting and had to run into the house when the first so and so’s dogs started barking at him/her, which kinda pissed him/her off, but he/she also kinda liked the first so and so and thought she/he had an especially nice butt. He/she started dropping by the first so and so’s house around breakfast time but she/he rarely invited him/her to eat, so they didn’t make much progress. Then he/she got up his/her gumption, however, and invited the first so and so on a real date: they went to the State Fair. But then when they got back to the first so and so’s house, where the second so and so had high hopes for a kiss, they got into an argument on the nature of inspiration and the first so and so kicked the second so and so out of her/his house. But the second so and so was tenacious, and when the first so and so started working in the fire lookout for the summer he/she went up to visit and those Desolation Peak fantasies were too much for both of them and they kissed. The rest is history.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Productivity
“Without productivity, life is worthless and unbearable.” This is Friedrich Nietzsche, who, remember, went completely mad (I’m reading A Philosophical Biography of Friedrich Nietzsche by Julian Young). He did get to live in posterity, both worshipped and maligned, but I wonder how things might have turned out for him if he’d spent a little less time trying to figure out the meaning of life (to be fair, he was also trying to figure out how to have a peaceful and pleasant life).
My partner Mark used to tell me that my “productivity” intimidated him. I’m not sure he meant productivity in the sense of “producing” things, like novels and magazine articles or gourmet dinners and cherry pies, but my “busyness.” Because here’s the thing. Even though I’ve almost always worked at home, setting my own schedule and creating my own agenda, I’ve also had a rule that during the day I do not sit down and read a book. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t read things during the day like information related to whatever article I’m writing, Environmental Impact Statements for whatever issue I’m dissecting, other people’s books that I’m editing, etc. But reading a novel, biography, or philosophical treatise is reserved for in the mornings with my coffee and after dinner until bed. I manage to get a lot of books read in those hours, but what in the world makes me think that there is something wrong with sometimes sitting down during the day and reading a book?
I don’t have weekends for reading books, either. Because of my self-employment I don’t really have Saturday and Sunday off. I take days off here and there, to go for a hike or ski or go to town for a movie or lunch, but there’s no designated day for lying around the house reading or watching TV, heaven forbid. Does it mean that I think life is worthless without productivity? Sort of. If productivity means using your individual talents to the best of your ability to create something that is uniquely yours or contributes to the common good or taxes your brain and body, then I’m definitely a fan of productivity. Again, according to Nietzsche: the well being of society is better promoted by everyone pursuing her own “highest good,” or becoming an “enlightened egoist.” If productivity means feeling that you have to constantly be doing something to prove your worth, then I think you’ve got a problem. Or I’ve got a problem.
This has become more obvious to me as I’ve gotten older. It’s a byproduct of having to look back instead of forward and make certain assessments about the outcome of your productivity. If an assessment of the outcome makes you say, “I never really did the things I wanted to do” or “I was never able to effect the changes I wanted” or “what I produced is a pile of shit,” then you better adopt the postmodern position immediately that all things are relative and there is no ultimate achievement or progress. That way your life can’t have been meaningless because there’s no such thing. You need to watch Casablanca again and listen to Rick when he tells Captain Renault, “Our lives don’t amount to a hill of beans.”
It was easier to live with that kind of attitude when I was younger. I have a kind of plodding personality that once I decide upon a course of action, say that of my organizing work that led to La Jicarita News, the radical rag I’ve written and edited with Mark for 15 years, I stay the course no matter how many battles we lose, no matter how many allies fall by the wayside, no matter how many nasty letters and e-mails and phones calls we get from the opposition. And there’s been plenty of that. But somehow I always manage to see as what I do is in my “self-interest” to further the “common good”
But now, as I face the fact that I’m going to retire La Jicarita News because of health issues and the fact that my energy has flagged with age, I can’t keep those nagging assessments out of my head. While I doubt that I would have ever made the choice to be a “professional” so that right about now I’d be looking at a well deserved retirement along with the rest of my baby boom cohort, I could have made other choices: committing much more time to creative writing and publishing, learning how to play the piano really well, traveling much more often to Latin America and speaking fluent Spanish (a more peaceful and pleasant life),
But I do appreciate the small changes I did effect, even if they only amount to changing someone’s life by knowing me or sharing in the work we did. And I don’t think I produced a pile of shit. I could have spent more time perfecting what I produced and been more confident about it, but I guess I had no burning desire to “prove” my self worth and leave something to posterity. So I guess I’ll muddle through this new phase in my life with the same mulish behavior that got me here, for better or worse. And maybe, just maybe, I can finish the Nietzsche biography and start that John Berger book in the middle of the day lying on the couch. Oh, what possibilities.
My partner Mark used to tell me that my “productivity” intimidated him. I’m not sure he meant productivity in the sense of “producing” things, like novels and magazine articles or gourmet dinners and cherry pies, but my “busyness.” Because here’s the thing. Even though I’ve almost always worked at home, setting my own schedule and creating my own agenda, I’ve also had a rule that during the day I do not sit down and read a book. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t read things during the day like information related to whatever article I’m writing, Environmental Impact Statements for whatever issue I’m dissecting, other people’s books that I’m editing, etc. But reading a novel, biography, or philosophical treatise is reserved for in the mornings with my coffee and after dinner until bed. I manage to get a lot of books read in those hours, but what in the world makes me think that there is something wrong with sometimes sitting down during the day and reading a book?
I don’t have weekends for reading books, either. Because of my self-employment I don’t really have Saturday and Sunday off. I take days off here and there, to go for a hike or ski or go to town for a movie or lunch, but there’s no designated day for lying around the house reading or watching TV, heaven forbid. Does it mean that I think life is worthless without productivity? Sort of. If productivity means using your individual talents to the best of your ability to create something that is uniquely yours or contributes to the common good or taxes your brain and body, then I’m definitely a fan of productivity. Again, according to Nietzsche: the well being of society is better promoted by everyone pursuing her own “highest good,” or becoming an “enlightened egoist.” If productivity means feeling that you have to constantly be doing something to prove your worth, then I think you’ve got a problem. Or I’ve got a problem.
This has become more obvious to me as I’ve gotten older. It’s a byproduct of having to look back instead of forward and make certain assessments about the outcome of your productivity. If an assessment of the outcome makes you say, “I never really did the things I wanted to do” or “I was never able to effect the changes I wanted” or “what I produced is a pile of shit,” then you better adopt the postmodern position immediately that all things are relative and there is no ultimate achievement or progress. That way your life can’t have been meaningless because there’s no such thing. You need to watch Casablanca again and listen to Rick when he tells Captain Renault, “Our lives don’t amount to a hill of beans.”
It was easier to live with that kind of attitude when I was younger. I have a kind of plodding personality that once I decide upon a course of action, say that of my organizing work that led to La Jicarita News, the radical rag I’ve written and edited with Mark for 15 years, I stay the course no matter how many battles we lose, no matter how many allies fall by the wayside, no matter how many nasty letters and e-mails and phones calls we get from the opposition. And there’s been plenty of that. But somehow I always manage to see as what I do is in my “self-interest” to further the “common good”
But now, as I face the fact that I’m going to retire La Jicarita News because of health issues and the fact that my energy has flagged with age, I can’t keep those nagging assessments out of my head. While I doubt that I would have ever made the choice to be a “professional” so that right about now I’d be looking at a well deserved retirement along with the rest of my baby boom cohort, I could have made other choices: committing much more time to creative writing and publishing, learning how to play the piano really well, traveling much more often to Latin America and speaking fluent Spanish (a more peaceful and pleasant life),
But I do appreciate the small changes I did effect, even if they only amount to changing someone’s life by knowing me or sharing in the work we did. And I don’t think I produced a pile of shit. I could have spent more time perfecting what I produced and been more confident about it, but I guess I had no burning desire to “prove” my self worth and leave something to posterity. So I guess I’ll muddle through this new phase in my life with the same mulish behavior that got me here, for better or worse. And maybe, just maybe, I can finish the Nietzsche biography and start that John Berger book in the middle of the day lying on the couch. Oh, what possibilities.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Baby Boom Regret
What follows is based on anecdotal, not empirical, evidence, at least the part about my baby boom cohort. But by the time I’m done you may want to eschew empiricism with the same abandonment we eschewed feudalism, monarchy, republicanism, and social democracy (at least those of us who think The Nation is wimpy).
My partner Mark is 62 and has pancreatic cancer. Our friend Richard is in his early sixties and had surgery for prostate cancer. Our friend Alan, who is in his fifties, lost a kidney to cancer. Gilbert, our neighbor, who in his sixties and a former Los Alamos National Laboratory subcontractor, also had kidney cancer. My friend Emma’s sister, who is fifty, has colon cancer. I am 60 and have an autoimmune condition called CREST syndrome. My brother-in-law has suffered from psoriatic rheumatism, another autoimmune disease, since his fifties. My sister was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in her late forties. The local postmistress, in her fifties, has lupus.
The list goes on and on, but what stands out about it are the predominant ages: fifties and sixties. Cancer and autoimmune diseases have been around for a long time, of course. But the frequency of their occurrence in my generation, the baby boomers, seems to me to indicate a causal relationship. Our post-World War II generation was largely bottle-fed, as the formula industry, in concert with the gynecological industry, convinced mothers (and fathers) that breast feeding was unnecessary. So our first line of defense—mother’s milk—was compromised right out of the womb (and now we know cancer causing chemicals leach from the plastic used in bottles). The formula industry, of course, was just part of the food industry in general, which proceeded to package our food for mass consumption by adding artificial colors, preservatives, and flavors made with cancer causing chemicals. The farms that produced the food also became highly industrialized as well, and the cancer causing pesticides and herbicides necessary to support that industrialization entered the food chain in massive doses.
This has all been documented in books like Silent Spring, Fast Food Nation, and Omnivore’s Dilemma, so I won’t belabor the point. Combined with an exponential increase in air pollutants, as urban areas became clogged with cars and the entire country was contaminated by energy and manufacturing development, baby boomers were clobbered from all sides. I’m afraid the environmental safeguards that were promulgated in the 1970s with the passage of government regulatory laws (the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, etc.) were too little, too late.
So what we’ve been exposed to by scientific (chemical), medical (gynecologists), and industrial (power plants) development, all in the name of progress, seems to be killing us. Whereas previously we died in massive numbers because of the lack of scientific discoveries like penicillin and medical inventions like angioplasties, now we’re dying in massive numbers (when you count the number of people who are dying not just from cancer and autoimmune diseases but industrial pollution and accidents, the number is massive) because of technological poisons. I can’t take the long view on this, that every generation has suffered its particular burdens, because this is my generation Most of our parents lived into their seventies and eighties (never exercising, drinking martinis). Many of us will not. That may not be such a bad thing, when I see the individual suffering of those kept alive by medical intervention and the burden that places on society as a whole. But we’re suffering, too, both physically and emotionally. We’ll probably be the butt of many jokes regarding our slogan—“Don’t trust anyone over 30” — and our delusions of immortality, but despite our excesses and self-indulgence, we developed a conscience and decided as adults to breast feed our babies, grow organic food, and riot for revolution. We were too preoccupied being active, political, and creative to see this coming.
My partner Mark is 62 and has pancreatic cancer. Our friend Richard is in his early sixties and had surgery for prostate cancer. Our friend Alan, who is in his fifties, lost a kidney to cancer. Gilbert, our neighbor, who in his sixties and a former Los Alamos National Laboratory subcontractor, also had kidney cancer. My friend Emma’s sister, who is fifty, has colon cancer. I am 60 and have an autoimmune condition called CREST syndrome. My brother-in-law has suffered from psoriatic rheumatism, another autoimmune disease, since his fifties. My sister was diagnosed with fibromyalgia in her late forties. The local postmistress, in her fifties, has lupus.
The list goes on and on, but what stands out about it are the predominant ages: fifties and sixties. Cancer and autoimmune diseases have been around for a long time, of course. But the frequency of their occurrence in my generation, the baby boomers, seems to me to indicate a causal relationship. Our post-World War II generation was largely bottle-fed, as the formula industry, in concert with the gynecological industry, convinced mothers (and fathers) that breast feeding was unnecessary. So our first line of defense—mother’s milk—was compromised right out of the womb (and now we know cancer causing chemicals leach from the plastic used in bottles). The formula industry, of course, was just part of the food industry in general, which proceeded to package our food for mass consumption by adding artificial colors, preservatives, and flavors made with cancer causing chemicals. The farms that produced the food also became highly industrialized as well, and the cancer causing pesticides and herbicides necessary to support that industrialization entered the food chain in massive doses.
This has all been documented in books like Silent Spring, Fast Food Nation, and Omnivore’s Dilemma, so I won’t belabor the point. Combined with an exponential increase in air pollutants, as urban areas became clogged with cars and the entire country was contaminated by energy and manufacturing development, baby boomers were clobbered from all sides. I’m afraid the environmental safeguards that were promulgated in the 1970s with the passage of government regulatory laws (the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, etc.) were too little, too late.
So what we’ve been exposed to by scientific (chemical), medical (gynecologists), and industrial (power plants) development, all in the name of progress, seems to be killing us. Whereas previously we died in massive numbers because of the lack of scientific discoveries like penicillin and medical inventions like angioplasties, now we’re dying in massive numbers (when you count the number of people who are dying not just from cancer and autoimmune diseases but industrial pollution and accidents, the number is massive) because of technological poisons. I can’t take the long view on this, that every generation has suffered its particular burdens, because this is my generation Most of our parents lived into their seventies and eighties (never exercising, drinking martinis). Many of us will not. That may not be such a bad thing, when I see the individual suffering of those kept alive by medical intervention and the burden that places on society as a whole. But we’re suffering, too, both physically and emotionally. We’ll probably be the butt of many jokes regarding our slogan—“Don’t trust anyone over 30” — and our delusions of immortality, but despite our excesses and self-indulgence, we developed a conscience and decided as adults to breast feed our babies, grow organic food, and riot for revolution. We were too preoccupied being active, political, and creative to see this coming.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
My Summer Job
I was listening to NPR the other day and there were these people describing what their summer jobs, oh so many years ago, meant to them in terms of life lessons. It seems that NPR is running a series on summer jobs and soliciting stories from all of us nobodies out in radioland. But rather than go through that process—I already know what it takes to get on NPR’s Click and Clack show, which my son did with his story about the time we were driving down from Mount Lassen and he decided to toot his horn at the slowpoke ahead of us . . . but that’s another story—I’m going to post my story here, where I don’t have to audition.
I learned to swim at the local YMCA and by the time I was 16 had my Red Cross Life Saving and Water Safety Instructor credentials under my belt. So now that I could also be legally employed, there was no question that I would try for life guarding at a pool; no bussing, waitressing, or housecleaning for me. I don’t remember how I got the job, but it was a lifeguard’s dream: a motel swimming pool in Manitou, the resort community “nestled at the foot of Pikes Peak,” where hardly anyone ever swam. The motel was owned by an older couple, who I’ll call Harvey and Helen Oakley, probably the only motel owners in town who provided a lifeguard for their guests. The motel had been in the family for a couple of generations, and apparently Harvey’s mother had run it in grand style, with evening barbecues and weekend square dances for the Midwest clientele that came back every year to enjoy the Rocky Mountains. After Harvey and Helen inherited the place, though, tourists seemed to prefer the newer motels with hot tub jacuzzies, and their old fashioned lodge, with no attendant restaurant or fancy features, was losing business.
But this meant nothing to me, at least at first, because all I had to do was show up in my bathing suit and sit out in the sun waiting for the occasional guest to take a dip. Helen never emerged from inside the motel where she smoked Camels and kept the books, but Harvey would come out periodically to check on me, apologize that there wasn’t much for me to do, I must be bored, and bring me sandwiches from the restaurant across the street.
Then Edward showed up. Edward was Harvey and Helen’s 14-year old son and was truly weird. He had pale, peaches and cream skin and jet-black hair that fell across his forehead and over his ears. He dressed only in black: black pants, black turtleneck, black fedora. I learned later that several of his bedroom walls were also painted black, while the remaining ones were covered with posters of Bela Logosi and Lon Chaney. At first Edward wouldn’t talk to me, he’d just come out and walk around the pool and look at me and act really annoyed if one of my friends was there hanging around with me. That was another perk that Harvey provided; permission to have my friends come swimming while I was on duty. I was just getting involved with one of the jet setters, what we called the older boys in high school who were the first to smoke dope and drop acid, and I was beside myself with nervousness when he began to show up at the pool to smoke cigarettes with me and laze around in the water. One day while he was there Edward showed up and jumped into the pool with all his clothes on; Harvey had to come out and apologize for his behavior, finally convincing him to get out of the water with the promise of a new guitar.
I was a kind person, even back then at the mixed-up age of 16, and I quickly befriended Edward, as I knew he desperately needed one. He used to show up at noon, after staying up late playing guitar or watching old horror movies, and Harvey would come out, lock up the pool, and send us across the street for lunch, which he paid for. Then Edward and I would play gin rummy all afternoon around the pool, waiting for guests. I finally persuaded Edward to swim without his clothes on (with trunks and a T-shirt) and I helped him practice his strokes. He’d still get pissed off when my boyfriend showed up on his way to work—he watered one of the local golf courses in the evening after everyone had left and would often take me for rides on the golf carts racing through the sprinklers—but resigned himself to going inside and bothering his parents until the boyfriend left. Then, unless I had to be home early or was going on a date, Edward and I would head back across the street to dinner.
This scenario played itself out over the course of two summers. For the second summer I got Harvey to hire all my girlfriends as maids. But also during that second summer Helen became ill and died of lung cancer. Everything quickly fell to pieces. After the funeral, Harvey took the night shift so he could drink without anyone knowing. Edward spent more and more time locked in his room with his stereo blaring, adrift at a tender age when he especially needed loving, involved parents. At the end of the summer Harvey sold the motel to a couple from Texas, who promptly fired me, having no intention of providing a lifeguard. They kept me on only long enough to teach them how to backwash the filter system, which I did every morning before opening the pool. Then, in a moment of contrition, they hired me as a maid. That lasted about a week, until one day I apparently put a bedspread on sideways, and between the time I left for the afternoon and drove home they called my mother and told her I was fired. When she told me, I immediately got back in the car, drove back to the motel, and told the Texans that if they were going to fire me they better do it to my face, which they did.
So did I learn a life lesson from this? As I said in my blog post called “Self Image,” maybe this experience helped me learn to “do what I want, say what I want, and expect results.” While I didn’t get the result of getting my job back (who wanted to be a maid anyway), I did get the satisfaction of telling someone what’s what, and knowing how to do that, my friends, is indeed worth learning.
I learned to swim at the local YMCA and by the time I was 16 had my Red Cross Life Saving and Water Safety Instructor credentials under my belt. So now that I could also be legally employed, there was no question that I would try for life guarding at a pool; no bussing, waitressing, or housecleaning for me. I don’t remember how I got the job, but it was a lifeguard’s dream: a motel swimming pool in Manitou, the resort community “nestled at the foot of Pikes Peak,” where hardly anyone ever swam. The motel was owned by an older couple, who I’ll call Harvey and Helen Oakley, probably the only motel owners in town who provided a lifeguard for their guests. The motel had been in the family for a couple of generations, and apparently Harvey’s mother had run it in grand style, with evening barbecues and weekend square dances for the Midwest clientele that came back every year to enjoy the Rocky Mountains. After Harvey and Helen inherited the place, though, tourists seemed to prefer the newer motels with hot tub jacuzzies, and their old fashioned lodge, with no attendant restaurant or fancy features, was losing business.
But this meant nothing to me, at least at first, because all I had to do was show up in my bathing suit and sit out in the sun waiting for the occasional guest to take a dip. Helen never emerged from inside the motel where she smoked Camels and kept the books, but Harvey would come out periodically to check on me, apologize that there wasn’t much for me to do, I must be bored, and bring me sandwiches from the restaurant across the street.
Then Edward showed up. Edward was Harvey and Helen’s 14-year old son and was truly weird. He had pale, peaches and cream skin and jet-black hair that fell across his forehead and over his ears. He dressed only in black: black pants, black turtleneck, black fedora. I learned later that several of his bedroom walls were also painted black, while the remaining ones were covered with posters of Bela Logosi and Lon Chaney. At first Edward wouldn’t talk to me, he’d just come out and walk around the pool and look at me and act really annoyed if one of my friends was there hanging around with me. That was another perk that Harvey provided; permission to have my friends come swimming while I was on duty. I was just getting involved with one of the jet setters, what we called the older boys in high school who were the first to smoke dope and drop acid, and I was beside myself with nervousness when he began to show up at the pool to smoke cigarettes with me and laze around in the water. One day while he was there Edward showed up and jumped into the pool with all his clothes on; Harvey had to come out and apologize for his behavior, finally convincing him to get out of the water with the promise of a new guitar.
I was a kind person, even back then at the mixed-up age of 16, and I quickly befriended Edward, as I knew he desperately needed one. He used to show up at noon, after staying up late playing guitar or watching old horror movies, and Harvey would come out, lock up the pool, and send us across the street for lunch, which he paid for. Then Edward and I would play gin rummy all afternoon around the pool, waiting for guests. I finally persuaded Edward to swim without his clothes on (with trunks and a T-shirt) and I helped him practice his strokes. He’d still get pissed off when my boyfriend showed up on his way to work—he watered one of the local golf courses in the evening after everyone had left and would often take me for rides on the golf carts racing through the sprinklers—but resigned himself to going inside and bothering his parents until the boyfriend left. Then, unless I had to be home early or was going on a date, Edward and I would head back across the street to dinner.
This scenario played itself out over the course of two summers. For the second summer I got Harvey to hire all my girlfriends as maids. But also during that second summer Helen became ill and died of lung cancer. Everything quickly fell to pieces. After the funeral, Harvey took the night shift so he could drink without anyone knowing. Edward spent more and more time locked in his room with his stereo blaring, adrift at a tender age when he especially needed loving, involved parents. At the end of the summer Harvey sold the motel to a couple from Texas, who promptly fired me, having no intention of providing a lifeguard. They kept me on only long enough to teach them how to backwash the filter system, which I did every morning before opening the pool. Then, in a moment of contrition, they hired me as a maid. That lasted about a week, until one day I apparently put a bedspread on sideways, and between the time I left for the afternoon and drove home they called my mother and told her I was fired. When she told me, I immediately got back in the car, drove back to the motel, and told the Texans that if they were going to fire me they better do it to my face, which they did.
So did I learn a life lesson from this? As I said in my blog post called “Self Image,” maybe this experience helped me learn to “do what I want, say what I want, and expect results.” While I didn’t get the result of getting my job back (who wanted to be a maid anyway), I did get the satisfaction of telling someone what’s what, and knowing how to do that, my friends, is indeed worth learning.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Funky Soul
If you don’t start dancing or break down in tears when you hear Jimmy Ruffin sing “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted” or Ben E. King doing “Stand By Me” (there’s also a heartbreaking video on YouTube of street musicians all over the world singing it) then you ain’t got any funky soul.
I know, this is ageism speaking. Who under 50 (or 60 maybe) knows who Jimmy Ruffin is (remember, this is a white girl speaking, who can never speak for the black community, who I’m sure know Jimmy Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick like they know their abc’s)? Their loss, I would say. They would say, in the person of my 29-year old son, what about Rage Against the Machine or Orishas? I happen to love Orishas—a great hip hop band from Cuba—but the rhythm and blues we grew up with came from a different place and time and evokes a different response.
When I was in fifth and sixth grade I watched American Bandstand on TV every day after school. My mother was at work, and this was my time to see the whole weird mix of acts Dick Clark brought to the stage: Stevie Wonder, Lovin’ Spoonful, Rascals, Shirelles, Bobby Rydell, Beach Boys, and Marvin Gaye. When the show was broadcast from Philadelphia, the teenagers who came to dance were all Italian kids with names like Carman, Dominick, Michael, and Loretta. I could tell by who was dancing with whom whether they were still going steady, whether they had just broken up, and whether there was any hope that they would get back together.
When I was a teenager, the music I listened to, locked in my room doing homework or lying on my bed daydreaming, came from the KOMA airwaves all the way from Oklahoma City (I was in Colorado Springs, remember). For some reason K-O-M-A had this powerful frequency that broadcast Motown, Philly soul, Memphis soul, the British invasion, and bubblegum pop all over the Rocky Mountain West to the bedrooms of fourteen- and fifteen-year olds like me, dependent on the radio to know what was going on musically. I was just starting to buy 45s, but albums were still too expensive for my measly weekly allowance. When I got my first job at sixteen—lifeguard at a motel swimming pool in Manitou Springs at $1.10 an hour— I still couldn’t afford many LPs.
But I did get to see a lot of groups at the Colorado Springs City Auditorium, like the Rascals (called the Young Rascals back then), the Beau Brummels (remember “Laugh Laugh”?), Spanky and Our Gang, and even Eric Burden and the Animals. I never wondered at the time how come these groups came to little old Colorado Springs, Colorado, for some unheard of cheap ticket price, but in retrospect I assume they played the big venues in Denver and drove the sixty miles down to the Springs for a little extra cash before flying out to Phoenix or Salt Lake City.
I was fourteen when the Beatles came to New York and played on the Ed Sullivan Show. The radio had been playing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” but I was unprepared for the thrill I felt when I saw them bouncing their heads and tapping their feet to the screams of the fourteen-year olds who were actually in the TV audience. Their musical debt to rhythm and blues was evident in this visceral response. My father always ate dinner on Sunday night on a TV tray in front of Ed Sullivan, but this time we were all there: my mother, my two sisters, and me. And when he said, “They’ll never last,” I knew he was utterly, and irrevocably, wrong because anyone who could touch my soul the way they did, the way Marvin Gaye did singing “Sexual Healing,” the way the Shirelles did singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions singing “You Must Believe Me,” Aretha Franklin singing “Prove It,” and Jimmy Ruffin singing “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted,” would last forever in the heart and mind of a fourteen-year old going on 60.
I know, this is ageism speaking. Who under 50 (or 60 maybe) knows who Jimmy Ruffin is (remember, this is a white girl speaking, who can never speak for the black community, who I’m sure know Jimmy Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick like they know their abc’s)? Their loss, I would say. They would say, in the person of my 29-year old son, what about Rage Against the Machine or Orishas? I happen to love Orishas—a great hip hop band from Cuba—but the rhythm and blues we grew up with came from a different place and time and evokes a different response.
When I was in fifth and sixth grade I watched American Bandstand on TV every day after school. My mother was at work, and this was my time to see the whole weird mix of acts Dick Clark brought to the stage: Stevie Wonder, Lovin’ Spoonful, Rascals, Shirelles, Bobby Rydell, Beach Boys, and Marvin Gaye. When the show was broadcast from Philadelphia, the teenagers who came to dance were all Italian kids with names like Carman, Dominick, Michael, and Loretta. I could tell by who was dancing with whom whether they were still going steady, whether they had just broken up, and whether there was any hope that they would get back together.
When I was a teenager, the music I listened to, locked in my room doing homework or lying on my bed daydreaming, came from the KOMA airwaves all the way from Oklahoma City (I was in Colorado Springs, remember). For some reason K-O-M-A had this powerful frequency that broadcast Motown, Philly soul, Memphis soul, the British invasion, and bubblegum pop all over the Rocky Mountain West to the bedrooms of fourteen- and fifteen-year olds like me, dependent on the radio to know what was going on musically. I was just starting to buy 45s, but albums were still too expensive for my measly weekly allowance. When I got my first job at sixteen—lifeguard at a motel swimming pool in Manitou Springs at $1.10 an hour— I still couldn’t afford many LPs.
But I did get to see a lot of groups at the Colorado Springs City Auditorium, like the Rascals (called the Young Rascals back then), the Beau Brummels (remember “Laugh Laugh”?), Spanky and Our Gang, and even Eric Burden and the Animals. I never wondered at the time how come these groups came to little old Colorado Springs, Colorado, for some unheard of cheap ticket price, but in retrospect I assume they played the big venues in Denver and drove the sixty miles down to the Springs for a little extra cash before flying out to Phoenix or Salt Lake City.
I was fourteen when the Beatles came to New York and played on the Ed Sullivan Show. The radio had been playing “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” but I was unprepared for the thrill I felt when I saw them bouncing their heads and tapping their feet to the screams of the fourteen-year olds who were actually in the TV audience. Their musical debt to rhythm and blues was evident in this visceral response. My father always ate dinner on Sunday night on a TV tray in front of Ed Sullivan, but this time we were all there: my mother, my two sisters, and me. And when he said, “They’ll never last,” I knew he was utterly, and irrevocably, wrong because anyone who could touch my soul the way they did, the way Marvin Gaye did singing “Sexual Healing,” the way the Shirelles did singing “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions singing “You Must Believe Me,” Aretha Franklin singing “Prove It,” and Jimmy Ruffin singing “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted,” would last forever in the heart and mind of a fourteen-year old going on 60.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Obfuscation
I sat down to read the local paper today and it hit me hard in the head how every story—from the health care bill to Afghanistan to the Mexican drug cartels—was only that, a story made up to obfuscate the issues that lie not so deeply buried beneath the rhetoric and lies. These issues cannot be talked about in public (language is institutionalized) because the house of cards that has been carefully crafted to keep the powers that be in power would crumble like salted crackers into the deep wounds they have inflicted upon our society. Maybe then things would change.
Let’s take a look at today’s stories, one by one: 1) health care “reform”; 2) Hilary Clinton’s meting with Felipe Calderon on stemming the flow of drugs from Mexico to the U.S.; 3) sex abuse in the Catholic church; and 4) the war in Afghanistan.
Health Care Reform
There can be no equitable health care reform until it is taken out of the hands of for profit insurance companies. During the long and excruciating “debate” on fixing the health care mess in this country a few people talked about health care as a “right,” not a privilege, like education, police and fire protection, and social security. Well duh, who pays for those rights. Society does, that’s who, through taxation for teachers, cops, firemen, and so the elderly don’t starve—just barely. In Canada, where they have nationalized health care, the cost is 10 percent of the gross domestic product. In the United States, where insurance companies cover only those who they think are healthy enough to not rack up too many hospital bills—by denying coverage for preexisting conditions—we pay 16 to 18 percent of GDP towards health care. That’s for all those folks who don’t have insurance and end up in public financed emergency rooms and hospitals, all the enormous bureaucracy that goes along with all the complicated billing, denials, referrals, and appeals that should be covered by a single payer, We the people. That’s what a society is and does: it levels the playing field by helping those who need it and by regulating those who don’t.
War on Drugs
The war on drugs was lost before it ever began. As long as drugs are illegal there will be an underground market that will stop at nothing to keep the flow of money across la frontera de los Estados Unidos y Mexico. Yes, while the drugs flow north, the dinero flows both ways: to Mexican drug lords and their hordes of couriers and into the country’s economy (the second largest money maker next to oil); and to the U.S. border guards, DEA agents, prisons, and Homeland Security. The illegal drug industry is big business over here, too. When NAFTA was implemented during Bill Clinton’s reign, making the price of tortillas sky rocket as Mexico had to import subsidized corn the U.S. was selling, destroying the local agricultural economy, how was anyone in Mexico supposed to make a living other than selling drugs or leaving for the U.S.? Hillary recently admitted that the U.S. does bear some of the responsibility for the violent deaths of thousands of Mexicans caught in the drug war crossfire because of U.S. drug consumption. When she puts up a sign in her office that says, “It’s the Mexican economy, stupid,” we may actually get somewhere.
Pedophile Priests
I can’t really talk about this one without devolving into a diatribe about the evils of organized religion (which I’ve already posted on this blog), but in an attempt to be more specific and to the point I will state the obvious: the Catholic church could go a long way towards reducing priestly pedophilia by allowing them to marry, by recognizing women priests, and forcing priests to be prosecuted for child molestation in civil courts. Let the priests marry and at least have a chance at gratifying their libidos, even if marriage itself isn’t going to entirely solve the problem of sex and/or relationships (see Marriage). And, of course, marrying a woman isn’t going to do much for the priests who prefer men (can you imagine the day the Church ever let men marry men??!!), but maybe the latent pedophiles who currently fill the priestly ranks wouldn’t be so attracted to the profession. Maybe they would be less inclined to preach their homophobia from the pulpit as a distraction from their deceit. It’s hard for me to understand why so many women want to become priests, and why they think they can deconstruct church hierarchy without abandoning the church altogether. If it’s faith and observance they’re after, why can’t they do it outside the confines of a church that has abused and ignored them since it’s inception? But you have to admire their persistence and their desire to bring down the priests who have done so much harm to so many.
The War in Afghanistan
I thought we’d already won the war in Afghanistan. Isn’t that what the neo-cons told us when they said it was time to invade Iraq? The Taliban were on the run, the Afghanis had elected a great guy who would do the U.S. bidding, and the women there could walk around town without covering their heads.Of course, a few of us on the left were not in favor of that first war in Afghanistan, either, including Susan Sontag who caught all kinds of shit in the pages of the New Yorker, and Professor Ward Churchill, who lost his job, for daring to point out that maybe we should first look at the political and economic reasons for jihad against the U.S. before we started bombing Afghanistan back into the stone age. Of course, western society thinks Afghanistan never left the stone age. So now, after more than seven years of occupation in Iraq Obama decides its time to send “our good men and women” back into Afghanistan, in greater number, because surprise, the Taliban is back (seemingly the only ones capable of providing goods and services to the poor villages in the hinterland), President Karzai is more corrupt than ever and an anathema to his people, and women are still be abused and repressed and kept out of mainstream society. I guess because we’re a postmodern society we can’t factor Afghanistan’s long and unfortunate history into any decision making process where it’s recognized that imperialist countries are never going to “save” or “liberate” it. But that’s not really the goal, is it. This poor, volatile, and oppressed country is necessary to our geopolitical goals in the Middle East (see Globalism) and that trumps everything.
So the obfuscation keeps getting written and the wars on drugs and people keep being waged.
Solution? Just what I quoted Rick Lowry saying in my “Global Dominance” post: “ . . . the embrace of the U.N., the ridiculous talk of global disarmament, the distance from Israel, the slaps at American hegemony.” Thanks, Rick, for putting it so nicely.
Let’s take a look at today’s stories, one by one: 1) health care “reform”; 2) Hilary Clinton’s meting with Felipe Calderon on stemming the flow of drugs from Mexico to the U.S.; 3) sex abuse in the Catholic church; and 4) the war in Afghanistan.
Health Care Reform
There can be no equitable health care reform until it is taken out of the hands of for profit insurance companies. During the long and excruciating “debate” on fixing the health care mess in this country a few people talked about health care as a “right,” not a privilege, like education, police and fire protection, and social security. Well duh, who pays for those rights. Society does, that’s who, through taxation for teachers, cops, firemen, and so the elderly don’t starve—just barely. In Canada, where they have nationalized health care, the cost is 10 percent of the gross domestic product. In the United States, where insurance companies cover only those who they think are healthy enough to not rack up too many hospital bills—by denying coverage for preexisting conditions—we pay 16 to 18 percent of GDP towards health care. That’s for all those folks who don’t have insurance and end up in public financed emergency rooms and hospitals, all the enormous bureaucracy that goes along with all the complicated billing, denials, referrals, and appeals that should be covered by a single payer, We the people. That’s what a society is and does: it levels the playing field by helping those who need it and by regulating those who don’t.
War on Drugs
The war on drugs was lost before it ever began. As long as drugs are illegal there will be an underground market that will stop at nothing to keep the flow of money across la frontera de los Estados Unidos y Mexico. Yes, while the drugs flow north, the dinero flows both ways: to Mexican drug lords and their hordes of couriers and into the country’s economy (the second largest money maker next to oil); and to the U.S. border guards, DEA agents, prisons, and Homeland Security. The illegal drug industry is big business over here, too. When NAFTA was implemented during Bill Clinton’s reign, making the price of tortillas sky rocket as Mexico had to import subsidized corn the U.S. was selling, destroying the local agricultural economy, how was anyone in Mexico supposed to make a living other than selling drugs or leaving for the U.S.? Hillary recently admitted that the U.S. does bear some of the responsibility for the violent deaths of thousands of Mexicans caught in the drug war crossfire because of U.S. drug consumption. When she puts up a sign in her office that says, “It’s the Mexican economy, stupid,” we may actually get somewhere.
Pedophile Priests
I can’t really talk about this one without devolving into a diatribe about the evils of organized religion (which I’ve already posted on this blog), but in an attempt to be more specific and to the point I will state the obvious: the Catholic church could go a long way towards reducing priestly pedophilia by allowing them to marry, by recognizing women priests, and forcing priests to be prosecuted for child molestation in civil courts. Let the priests marry and at least have a chance at gratifying their libidos, even if marriage itself isn’t going to entirely solve the problem of sex and/or relationships (see Marriage). And, of course, marrying a woman isn’t going to do much for the priests who prefer men (can you imagine the day the Church ever let men marry men??!!), but maybe the latent pedophiles who currently fill the priestly ranks wouldn’t be so attracted to the profession. Maybe they would be less inclined to preach their homophobia from the pulpit as a distraction from their deceit. It’s hard for me to understand why so many women want to become priests, and why they think they can deconstruct church hierarchy without abandoning the church altogether. If it’s faith and observance they’re after, why can’t they do it outside the confines of a church that has abused and ignored them since it’s inception? But you have to admire their persistence and their desire to bring down the priests who have done so much harm to so many.
The War in Afghanistan
I thought we’d already won the war in Afghanistan. Isn’t that what the neo-cons told us when they said it was time to invade Iraq? The Taliban were on the run, the Afghanis had elected a great guy who would do the U.S. bidding, and the women there could walk around town without covering their heads.Of course, a few of us on the left were not in favor of that first war in Afghanistan, either, including Susan Sontag who caught all kinds of shit in the pages of the New Yorker, and Professor Ward Churchill, who lost his job, for daring to point out that maybe we should first look at the political and economic reasons for jihad against the U.S. before we started bombing Afghanistan back into the stone age. Of course, western society thinks Afghanistan never left the stone age. So now, after more than seven years of occupation in Iraq Obama decides its time to send “our good men and women” back into Afghanistan, in greater number, because surprise, the Taliban is back (seemingly the only ones capable of providing goods and services to the poor villages in the hinterland), President Karzai is more corrupt than ever and an anathema to his people, and women are still be abused and repressed and kept out of mainstream society. I guess because we’re a postmodern society we can’t factor Afghanistan’s long and unfortunate history into any decision making process where it’s recognized that imperialist countries are never going to “save” or “liberate” it. But that’s not really the goal, is it. This poor, volatile, and oppressed country is necessary to our geopolitical goals in the Middle East (see Globalism) and that trumps everything.
So the obfuscation keeps getting written and the wars on drugs and people keep being waged.
Solution? Just what I quoted Rick Lowry saying in my “Global Dominance” post: “ . . . the embrace of the U.N., the ridiculous talk of global disarmament, the distance from Israel, the slaps at American hegemony.” Thanks, Rick, for putting it so nicely.
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