I would love to be able to answer that question but I can't afford the subscription fee to check it out. But if it is as comprehensive as they are making themselves out to be, I would dearly love to. I am putting it at the top of my wish list for when my efforts here and here and here pan out into some kind of monetary remuneration. I would love to review it on Joyread. But until then, does anybody out there have experience with it? Comments are open.
The only way to get the words out on this post is to go for it the same way I do in my journal no stopping to edit. No worrying about word choice or organization of ideas. The only way to do this is stream of consciousness and letting it all hang out clichés included. Grammar spelling punctuation must take the back seat must not intrude on getting said what needs to be said. Time sequence of events too must not be adhered to in strictness when memory is vague because if I try to get all of that right, I will use the excuse of perfectionism to censor myself to procrastinate to make excuses and once again give up. This is all about venting and not about composing a potential essay this is all about confession and laying it out there for inspection this is all about putting my action where my words have been all about doing what I have advocated. Since all three of my web sites are about integrity of mind and heart about reading and writing as a spiritual quest as well as an art about a passion that must be served in spite of all stumbling blocks in spite of all doubt in spite of any judgment against it by self or other and my confession is that I have sinned against the commandment to be dedicated to the heart of it for the joy of it to give it my all even when I don't feel much like it. And I haven't felt much like it at all for almost three months now and today it all came to a head like a pustule ready to burst in my head and heart and I snapped and I cried out to my self and the world, to my accusers--both myself and the others those bodiless voices intruding into my home, my sleep, my thoughts and my dreams--that enough is enough!
To myself: If you believe than do it if you can't follow thru than what business do you have advising others or mouthing the platitudes if that is all they be. If I had an audience here that audience would have noticed a substantial slowdown of postings to this blog and both of its companion sites after the last week of March. Less than a week after the posting of Gift or Temptation? and if so they might be forgiven for thinking that I had gotten lost in the exploration of the Great Books and/or the World Books. See Bringing Home the World On Wheels. But that would be a mistake. For the first week after acquiring them, yes, I did spend a little bit of extra time with them and some small portion of that was borrowed from my night computer sessions. But that wasn't the definitive event. In the post Gift or Temptation? I mentioned that I expected to be wracked by doubt which ever way I chose so I chose to have the books as consolation and I had no regrets for the first week. I continued apace with the revamping of Joystory, Joyread and Joywrite. I was getting pumped up to promote them as soon as the revamp was posted. I was full of hope and ambition and I was working hard. On the computer often from ten in the evening until ten in the morning except my mother-in-law's days off when I would get off by eight. Until the morning or was it afternoon or evening. No way to know as I didn’t record it in my journal. Don't remember which hour of the day the first call came but they come randomly and they come inexorably and they come any time between eight-thirty am and eight-thirty pm. The calls regarding collection of my eighteen year old defaulted student loan. And the shame burns as I write this with the expectation that it will be read by strangers who will judge me the way I have judged myself the way the voices over the wires have judged me, shamed me. But believe me you can't think anything worse about me than I have already thought about myself. And I don't want your pity and I don't want your money. This isn't about that. But just maybe just maybe you will read my story and see in it something of a parable about the very dysfunctions of our society that John Edwards is calling the Two Americas.
I went back to school in January of1985 and ten years after my high-school guidance councilor had advised me that I was not college material, that it would be better if I gave up my then five year old dream of becoming a child psychiatrist who wrote up the stories of her patients to raise the consciousness of the nation about the plight of abused children, ten years after he tells me that I would be better off applying those same interests into becoming a mother and writing stories for my kids, ten years after he wrote me off as a second class citizen, I finished my first quarter of college on the President's list. And for six quarters thereafter on the Dean's list. I was planning to apply my interest in child psychology and language into a career as a speech therapist specializing in very young children. It wasn't likely to be the kind of career path that would make me a millionaire but I wasn't interested in being rich. Never have been. I just needed to be doing something that would give me a wage while at the same time allowing me to feel I was of service to a real need and at the same time support my truest passion which was writing stories. By the spring of 87, by taking on 18+ credits per quarter, I was two credits short of completing my junior year. I fully intended to graduate the following spring. But during that summer, my husband lost his job and I learned I had the RP and was probably already legally blind. We were forced to move out of the Rogue Valley where I had been attending SOSC (now SOU) in Ashland, Oregon. And where we ended up did not have a four year school. Six months later, I started getting notices of my obligation to start paying on the two $2500 student loans I had taken out the previous year. Not long after that I was declared in default and lost my right to receive government grants and loans to continue my education and other things like help on rent or mortgages though the latter was never going to be an issue while our income remained below the poverty level as it did for most of the eighties and nineties. And whenever my husband was working where taxes were automatically withheld, our refund was confiscated every year because of our defaulted student loans (he had taken out a single $2500 loan). He claims that due to that confiscation of our refunds, we have repaid the original loans at least twice over but because of the accumulation of the interest, late fees, penalties etc my debt to the Department of Education now stands near $18,000 and is growing at more than $1 per day. I'm not sure where his stood before they started garnishing his check two years ago. But that garnishment contributes to our continued dependence on his parents though ostensibly his income brings us a bit above the poverty level. At least before Federal, State, Payroll, health and 401k withholdings. We can't afford our own place--first last month's rent, utilities and deposits. Not to mention the outfitting of a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, plus cleaning supplies and laundry facility. And the existence of my defaulted student loan and other debts puts at risk any accumulation of assets towards our eventual independence. Any bank account is subject to liens and even confiscation. As are any vehicles, any appliances, in fact any belongings including wardrobes over a certain dollar amount and even books. Without a bank account, my husband is forced to cash his paychecks in grocery stores, check cashing joints and bars (which latter are often the only thing still open after he gets off work) Without a bank account it is hard to save towards a future. Without a bank account it is hard to pay bills. Without a bank account I can't sign up for Paypal and thus cannot apply any of the potential moneymaking concepts to my websites. Without a bank account I can't be an affiliate of an online bookstore, accept advertisements, offer my services as editor. Without a bank account I can't cash non-local checks or any personal checks.
So this was the state of affairs last March when I bent my nearly three year long iron will against spending money out of my secret stash to buy those two sets of books to honor my work. I had been spared the collections phone calls for a couple months and the sting of the last one had begun to fade. I was not thinking of those phone calls when I bought the books and thus was not thinking of how handing the money over for them would affect my ability to continue telling the voice on the other end the same thing I had been telling them for years. No resources. No assets. Nothing I can do. It didn't really change anything other than the label in my own mind of that secret stash of cash. By spending it on something it had not been intended for, I had destroyed it's sacrosanct aspect, its set-aside-ness. Though my husband points out that my original intent for the money was as investment into my writing and so were the books so what's the problem? And he points out that the $74 total did not set me back any for the computer either since I have had enough to get it for several months and the only thing stopping me was my fear. Fear of getting a lemon if I went refurbished. Fear of loosing it again if the bill collectors learn of its existence. Fear of my own feelings of guilt and shame for spending money like that while still living with my in-laws. While still owing so many so much. Even tho it is intended as an investment towards gaining a source of income that would free us of this dependence. Even tho. Because of fear that I will not be able to pull it off. That I won't be able to find a way to make an income because every way involves some kind of self promotion every way involves some form of saying look at me see what I can do while holding my hand out for cash. Both aspects of which are very hard for me to handle--both the look-at-me part and the pay-me part.
Then in late March, just days after bringing home the Great Books, the phone calls started up again. It was a different agency than the one before and this one was more aggressive and more intrusive in their questions. And I was already weary of answering those same questions over and over and over and getting nothing but disrespect back. The pattern is that once told of my status as legally blind they send me paperwork that I am supposed to take into a Dr. to have signed verifying that I am 100% permanently disabled and will never work for money again. That is the standard the government uses for waiver of a student loan. But how can I claim that I will never work for money again? Even Christopher Reeves worked for money after his accident. How would I ever justify that in my own mind? How could I ask a doctor to sign off on it? Especially with the memories of the two doctors that the state had sent me to in the past. The one that diagnosed my RP which qualified me for food stamps and SSI and the one that gave me a physical when I entered the state rehab program a few months later.
Rehab. What a laugh. Here I was with just a year to go on my BA which could have made me a productive citizen in service to my fellow citizens as a speech therapist or Russian language translator, technical writer or editor, and my social worker who I will forever think of as Mr. Broccoli wanted to send me to blind school which is glorified jr high school shop and home economics courses undertaken while blindfolded if one still has any vision left. What is the point of that when (at that time) I still had good central vision correctable to almost 20/20 which could, if I followed the pattern of my mother's and her mother's disease progress, continue to allow me to read and to see and recognize faces, watch TV and much much more for another twenty to thirty years. The limitations then were about mobility and safety of self and others outside environments that I could completely control. I could not work in restaurants because of all the movement of people and objects and the often dim lighting. I could not work on assembly lines. I could not drive at all nor could I walk the streets alone after dark. The disease has progressed since then and there are more things I can't do. There are other health issues now that I am nearing fifty after two decades of spotty health care that weren't issues in my late twenties.
I wonder to this day what the point was in asking me to put on a blindfold and learn to operate a table saw and power sander to make a bookshelf. To learn to make bread and put an entire meal on the table, blindfolded. When I was at least twenty years away from needing those skills. Why would the state have been willing to spend the thousands of dollars to send me to that boarding school while being unwilling to spend the same amount--or much less if they could have helped me get access to the Pell grants and student loans again and unlock my credits--so that I could finish my degree with a useful marketable skill? Mr. Broccoli could not imagine what I could do with a degree in languages or linguistics, he said I would have to live near the U.N. for translator to be a marketable skill. He said most parents wouldn't want to entrust their small children to a half-blind speech therapist. His words weren't quite that crude but the meaning behind them was. And as for data processor or computer programmer, (also languages and both of which I'd discovered an affinity for while in college) wasn't that kind of work awfully hard on the eyes? Ditto for word processor, editor or technical writer. The joke was on him (at my expense) when later that year the Berlin wall came down and a year or so later there was a large influx of Russian immigrants into Washington State. And during that same several years, the computer monitors developed better definition and the applications developed accessibility features. The internet exploded into a voracious consumer of talent in all area related to information handling. If he still can not imagine how my talent with languages and information manipulation could have been marketed at that point--he had no business in his job, which was after all about matching his clients strengths with the labor market's needs. Or maybe I was wrong about that all along. Maybe he saw his job as moving society's embarrassments out of sight and out of mind. At any rate, I felt then and continue to feel that I could have done his job better than he did. At least I would have had compassion for my clients and tried to find creative solutions for their individual and unique needs!
I have digressed again which is what this whole rendition of the story has been one digression after another. Which is a reflection of the way the thing plays out in my mind all the time. There are so many elements to it. There are so many constrictions on choices so much hope stomped on. It seems that every time I have tried to dig myself out of the hole someone grabs the shovel from my hands just as I begin to see over the lip and smashes it against my fingers until I let go and fall back into it, reminding me that the shovel is for digging myself in deeper not for digging stair steps out. And again I do not want anyone's pity and I do not want a hand out and I do not want anything except the dignity and respect that is the birthright of every human born into this world.
So. Back to the thing about the doctors. Both times I saw a doctor at the State's request, the doctor treated me like toe-jam. The first one would not tell me the results of the tests he did because it was the state that was his client and not me and his whole demeanor as he examined me was one of contempt. The second doctor giving me the physical for the rehab program also would not discuss with me the results of the exam for the same reason tho he was not nearly as holier-than-thou in our encounters. But those experiences do not make easy to contemplate taking in a form for a doctor to fill out stating that I am and always will be incapable of working for money. The form does not say working for a living but working for money in any capacity. And to make matters worse it would cost me somewhere between $70 and $150 in co-pays for the doctor appointments and the test fees. For in our health plan I have to go thru my primary care physician (which I don't currently have) to get sent to a specialist--in this case an ophthalmologist. So that would be at least two co-pays for appointments. And then the cost of the fees for each of the tests that establish the condition of my eyes. And to add to the weight of my claim I should also have appointments with an audiologist to establish the 50% or more hearing loss. With a Psychiatrist to establish the reality of the mood disorder. And a sleep clinic to establish the sleeping disorder. For each doctor and each lab fee add twenty plus dollars to the tab. I am supposed to do this even tho it is likely to be a wild goose chase, even tho I stopped going to the doctor two years ago because my husband stopped giving me my allowance in the face of all the co-pays. So I have not had my female exams for five years. I have not been on my blood pressure meds for nineteen months. Have not been on my mood and sleep disorder meds for thirteen months. All because it was costing me not just money but hope because it was deferring my dream of becoming independent into a future so far away it might as well be never.
But the voice on the other end of the line reads from their script, playing their psychological head games--good cop bad cop; disappointed mama: shame on you; stern daddy: get used to the sound of my voice because you're going to hear it every day; voice of the taxpayer/bounty hunter, dripping scorn: you deadbeat! The voice is telling me I have two weeks to get that waiver paperwork back to them and I tell them it takes longer than that to get the appointments set up and not only that it would take several weeks if not several months to save the money to pay for them and they say borrow it. Then ten days after giving me a fourteen day deadline they call again and say times up too late you can never exercise that option again. But I know that is a lie because every collection company I've dealt with sends me that same paperwork after I inform them I am legally blind. Now they tell me they are red flagging my social security that I will never be able to draw it as long as I owe the government this money and I'm not sure if this is true or not and I'm not sure if they mean only the retirement benefits or if it is also the disability benefit’s the SSI that has several times been a stop gap when my husband was between jobs. They call my in-laws liars for saying I am unavailable to come to the phone or that I am not at home. They imply to my husband that he is a controlling and abusive spouse for screening his wife's calls. They won't identify themselves to anyone but me and refuse to leave a message so when it is a woman's voice and sweet sounding asking for me by first name only and saying it is really important, they can't take the chance that it isn't my sister calling about a family emergency since my father has been fighting cancer for eighteen months. So they bring the phone to me in mid morning pulling me out of sleep. Or to the dinner table. To my bed when I have the flu or a migraine. I hang up on them and they call back which imposes further on my in-laws because they must answer the phone and bring it back to me. They call every day for a week or more and then stop for a week or so and start up again. I cringe every time the phone rings between eight and eight. I go into anxiety attacks as soon as the phone is handed to me, sometimes full blown panic attacks. And this added to my 50% hearing loss and the way they talk so fast makes it hard to understand much of what they say and I have to ask them to repeat themselves two, three times and they as much as accuse me of being difficult, changing the subject, wasting their time. My husband says stop answering their questions for if it was just about the answers they would enter them into their records and not need to hear the story repeated ad infinitum. They are fishing for information they can use to collect a debt and you have told them the only fact they need to know: you have no resources, no income no assets. There is nothing they can do except torment you in the hopes that you will break and go into debt elsewhere to pay off this debt so they can have their take on it. It is seldom the same person three times in a row and it is a crapshoot whether they are going to be pleasant or obnoxious. I go silent and they chide me like a child. I say I have answered that question a hundred times in the past year in a weary tone and they say essentially So what you owe this eighteen thousand dollars and it isn't going to go away. Yes. Right. Like I haven't known that for eighteen years and isn't the steady rising of the amount enough of a punishment? The eighteen years of confiscated tax refunds? Where is the law that makes this harassment from them a penalty and if it is then where was I when the judge handed down the sentence?
When the calls started coming again in March I started getting off the computer sooner and sooner each morning until I was off before six. So that I would be assumed to be sound asleep by the time the call came. And just in case, I wore earplugs as I often have to do anyway as a day sleeper in a trailer park. When the calls came in the evening it would take me hours to regain my composure and the first half of my session was often very unproductive. I stopped working on creative projects and research and started filling the hours with solitaire and jigsaw puzzles, maze and logic games that would keep my mind narrowly focused or on surfing online without aim or keeping records faux research…anything to help me stop obsessing on the phone calls, the debt, money issues and all the ramifications of it.
And then in late May either the calls stopped coming or were being fielded by my in-laws. As the reprieve grew past two weeks, I started to let down my guard. I started to get interested in my creative projects again and started to tinker with them and I started to stay on the computer past six again. And I started to window shop on-line for my notebook. And I started to hope again. And then today there was another call. I had not gotten to bed until after eight and had fallen asleep with the tv on so my father-in-law called me to the phone. And whether it was the fact that I had relaxed or the fact that my inhibitions were sleep fogged or the fact that as he handed me the phone, my father-in-law said 'she says its important' and I flashed on images of my Dad back in the hospital or worse. But when she identified herself to me, I lost it. I felt myself going into a panic attack and I had had enough. No more. This is not just. This is not helpful. This is not productive for anybody. it’s a waste of my time it’s a waste of their time. It is downright abusive. I have nearly always before been polite and compliant, answering every question tho they kept me on the line for over half an hour. I understood they were just doing their job that their working conditions are often little better than sweatshops. That they work off a script. So I tried not to take it personal tho that was often hard. But I was suddenly thru with polite and compliant. I took a preemptive approach and I went ballistic on her. You pulled me out of bed for this? I have nothing new to say. But you have this eighteen thousand dollar loan and we need to talk about it, she says. I was asleep! It's after nine-thirty she says implying that anyone still in bed that late, especially anyone owing this kind of money to the government has no right to be asleep at that hour. Has she never heard of day-sleepers? I wonder tho I do not say as I am tired of saying it, realizing she could care less. Instead I say, There are no new facts on the ground here. I have no resources. Zero. Zip. Nada. I own nothing of value. There is nothing I can do. There is no need to be rude she says. And I say Some of you people have been rude to me. Meaning tho I did not say Why should rudeness go only one way. And tho I do not believe that two wrongs make a right, why should I wait until I know whether you have the good cop script or the bad cop script. The school marm script or the hick town sheriff script. The nurturing mother script or the disciplinarian patriarch script. Why should I have to take that manipulative crap off of snot nosed brats that are young enough to be my kids? But I say none of that I only say again, There is nothing I can do. Nothing. My voice going up two octaves. She says have a nice day and hangs up.
But my mind did not stop. Nor did the anxiety attack. It lasted over three hours, accompanied by chest pain, which just increases my anxiety because ever since learning that my BP was 220/120 I am never sure the chest pain is just anxiety. For hours I kept replaying the conversation and those of the past and replaying the history of all my attempts to better myself and to get a piece of the American dream. And by that I don't mean riches and fame. Just respect from self and others. And independence. Physical, financial and mental independence. But every time I reach for that dream something yanks it away and uses my very efforts as a means to keep it out of my reach.
It was four hours before I was able to sleep and then only after taking four Ibuprophen and then breaking down for the first time in months into tears and sobbing, spreading the anxiety to my cats who crowded my face, purring and nipping my nose, licking tears off my eyelashes and sticking their noses in my ears. The anxiety went into my dreams and I had a series of falling off the cliff and jerking awake scenarios with chiding voices full of contempt and chanting who do you think you are after all. Deadbeat. Thief. Moocher off family and taxpayers. And as soon as I was fully awake again after only three hours of this fitful sleep, the anxiety powered up again and continued to keep me on edge for the whole evening. I flinched every time the phone rang which averages a dozen times an evening here. Had multiple startle reactions to unexpected noises. I fought the tears thru dinner time and let them come again as I stood alone over the dishwater.
And then about nine-thirty this evening, as my time on the computer approached I remembered that I still had a few Zoloft tablets left from the 2001 prescription that I had had to withdraw from during the week the towers fell in New York when it became clear that my husband's unemployment benefits from his lost tech job, were too high for me to qualify for help from the county mental health clinic and we could not afford to pay for the three meds I was on and the careful monitoring of them which I need because of past adverse reactions. I got the idea that I could maybe put a damper on the anxiety if I took a small chip of one of those tablets. They were already broken in half from the weeks of the withdrawal and I could break those in half again to give me a 25miligram dose which was the size of the very first prescription in 99 so should be safe enough. If I could just get a grip on it to reach a level of calmness from which I could apply the various relaxation techniques to enhance the effect…if I could just get a few moments of relief from this pressure in my chest this sense that I could not get my breath…this inability to think clear coherent thoughts…but the old bottle wasn't where I had left it. And I spent the next hour searching for it, more and more frantic, punishing myself with further silent verbal abuse for being so disorganized for not putting things back where they belong. Did it fall on the floor? And then get kicked under the bed? Or become a kitty toy? Or did it fall into the pile of laundry? Or behind the stack of cardboard boxes aka bookshelves? If that last had happened I would have to wait until the next day after my husband left for work to unload the books onto the bed so I could move the boxes. So I started by lifting every item of clothing in the laundry pile and giving it a little shake. Sorting by load type while I was at it. Might as well accomplish something. I pulled shoes, slippers and water bottles, kitty toys, tissues and more dirty clothes out from under the bed. No prescription bottle. And I finally gave up and started moving my books and papers out to the computer even though I doubted I would be having a productive session and would be moving them all back in a few hours without using them. But I was going to take them with me anyway as a symbol of my intent to try, to have the tools available and to make myself available for the task. Often I have surprised myself by having a productive session in which I did some of my most interesting, most mature and meaningful work when I thought I was a complete wreck or had nothing but boring clichés to contribute to the effort. So I schlepped the stuff out, it takes several trips since the box of materials related to the various projects has gotten too heavy for me to carry. And there it was, after the first trip but not the last, there it was, the bottle--behind a notebook I grabbed up to take with me. And I found my pill splitter and split the half tab in two and took one of them. And half an hour later I clicked the game off, signed online and got busy.
During late March and early April of 2000, I spent a month writing and tweaking a single poem. That was the first time I spent more than a day or two on any one poem. Usually they come to me nearly complete, almost like automatic writing. I think that’s because I had been thinking hard about a certain theme and a phrase or two will attach itself it and won’t leave me alone. Somewhat like a phrase of music that keeps playing in your head for hours after you listened to the song. Then over the next several days or weeks or months that phrase starts to collect images, emotions, words and phrases that expand on the theme until something swells inside me and I feel like it will pop if I don’t start writing.
But this time it was different. This was also the first time I had composed a poem entirely via keyboard on the computer, watching the words flow across the screen. I wrote the first two lines for no reason except I needed two short lines to experiment with centering a poem on a page in the word processor. I was on the phone with my Dad who needed my help to figure out how to do this for a poem my Mom had written for her brother’s birthday card. I needed to go through the motions to be able to explain the steps to him. When we finished, I walked away from the computer, leaving that unsaved document sitting there. It confronted me when I came back later that night to do my journal and I started to kill the document but something stopped me. Those lines had been meaningless as I manipulated them earlier but as I looked at them now they became loaded with meaning from the spiritual path I’d been on for several years by then. So I left the document alone. It sat there unsaved for several days before I added a couple more lines. I didn’t save it until I had six or seven lines. And only then because it had started to matter to me enough that the specter of a loss of power or one of my cats stepping on the keyboard began to haunt me. It was for want of a viable title that I had not saved before. I hated to lock myself into a title too early and it bugs me for some reason to create files with throw away names. But I did that time and have many times since. (I learned the magic of renaming files in the computer’s file management window)
Tho I could have aquired this quote from a number of locations since it has proliferated on the net like lice on mice, I chose Molly Ivin's essay on Alternet to introduce two of my favorite and most depended upon news and information sources. Molly is informative while being entertaining, helping you find your sense of humor in the face of outrageous offenses to justice and truth. Alternet is an assiduous collector of articles and alerts related to the progressive aggenda. "The aide (a senior adviser to President Bush) said that guys like me were 'in It isn't new to most us that this administration holds itself above the law. But that they also hold themselve above all reality-based principles with the possible exception of gravity--that is news of the 'man bites dog' catagory. So they think that being an Empire makes them unaccountable to any authority except their own? Too bad we can't channel the spirits of Nero and Caligula and ask them How'd that work for you? Hey, did they stop requiring reading of Gibbon's Decline and Fall in the Ivy League schools? If so, my own audodidact aproach has given me a better education than any diploma could account for. But the reading of history would have little effect on those who think they are all about making it but never about being subject to it. And as Bush has been quoted saying about history, regarding future historians' take on his administration: We'll all be dead then. Ah, yes. Grab and get and guzzle with gusto for tomorrow we die. And he claims Jesus is his favorite philosopher?
what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who
'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible
reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and
empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,'
he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act
again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how
things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be
left to just study what we do." – Ron Suskind, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 17,
2004.
Bow your head in shame and repent, all ye who reap the rewards of the West's monopoly of power in the last century. For the blood of many innocents is on your hands, on the money in your pocket and the gas in your car. Even the blood shed by the hand of Saddam and his henchman who was from the start the henchman of our own leaders.
Selah. And sigh.
Take note all progressives. The Right to Privacy as a Constitutional assumption is under attack by the Right. Read Orcinus' erudite take on this. Orcinus is one of my fav blogs. Neiwert's analyis of current events is spot on. His expertise on the issues of homegrown hate and the erroding of rights and freedoms is extensive. He has been researching the agendas of those Bush considers his base for decades. It is not paranoia when the facts back up perception. Neiwert is a meticulous researcher and insiteful analyist. I have grown to trust him in the year I have been reading his blog. His posts never get stale either. They are worth reading even after the event in question is no longer in the headlines.
Read more...Refresh your memory with this compilation of quotations by polititians, officials, millitary personal, Iraqi's etc. from the months leading up to the war until recently. And then start paying close attention to the chatter comming out of the administration about Iran lately and consider.... Ready for round two anyone? Does anyone have the courage to stand up and say no?
Read more...When I walked into the library Friday, my mind was still full of the past ten days of blissful exploration in the pages of my 'new' World Book Encyclopedia. I was anxious to get my business taken care of and get back home to them. Few things could have jerked me out of that trance. I can think of exactly four: Someone placing a baby in my arms while saying 'Welcome to motherhood.' Taking possession of my very own notebook computer. A book contract with a publisher. And owning once again Britannica's Great Books set with its indispensable Syntopicon of The Great Ideas. So when I came out of the bright outside into the fluorescent lit library, my eyes blinking fitfully to adjust, I can be forgiven for thinking briefly that I must be dreaming, for right there on the very same shelf the World Book set had sat two weeks before were the distinctive spines of the Great Books.
This was one of the missing pieces of the puzzle for me. (the only other being my own notebook computer) It felt like a gift from the Universe. A blessing on the work that I had done over the past year to get my manuscripts retyped and my web pages back up. I have been itching to get back to work on what I consider to be my magnum opus. One very long novel or a series of shorter novels on the theme of The Fruits of the Spirit. Though my list of the Fruits of the Spirit is longer than the one in Galatians. More on that later. In order to resume work on that project I needed frequent access to the most important reference tool second only to dictionaries: The Syntopicon of Britannica's Great Book set. A topical index of the Great Ideas that occupied some 3000 years of Western Civilization's evolving concept of itself. An intergenerational dialog which the editors, Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler, call the Great Conversation. With that Syntopicon I would, with considerable effort, be able to reconstruct the skeleton of that project. I could get access to most of the writings in question via the library, but libraries tend to keep the Syntopicon on reference shelves.
But just ten days ago I spent $20 out of the fund that I had set aside as untouchable except for one of three things. Retrieval of our belongings in storage in San Jose--now irretrievably gone. The move into our own place--which would take me another three years, assuming the same rate of accumulation. Or a notebook computer--possibly refurbished--so I could have 24/7 access to my work and never have to leave it behind again. And--most pertinent to our circumstances--have the tool that is the most perfect fit for both my talents and my disabilities and thus could enable me to rise from this unhealthy state of dependency and sense of burden on my family and begin to contribute financially. Have Computer Will: Write, Edit, Research, Tutor, Webmistress, Consult, Type, Desk Top Publish, Enter and Manage Data Base Data, Beta Test software…
The list could go on. My talent and experience in the manipulation of information is extensive. But my various health issues prevent me using them in the typical workplace under the typical workplace conditions. I need special tools and significant control over my working environment to accommodate my severe visual impairment. I also need significant control over my schedule to accommodate transportation exigencies, joint pain, easy fatigue and a sleeping disorder that makes sustained enforcement of the typical 40 hour workweek impossible. So working from home is the best fit all around. And a computer coupled with the internet and combined with my skill set makes that a viable option.
All of this roiled in my head as I blinked my eyes and the glittering gold of the embossed spines refused to vanish. I quickly counted, confirming the set was intact. Not only intact but in mint condition. I pulled one out and checked the copyright page. The set was from the 24th printing in 1982. But every volume was pristine. In fact, about fifteen of them were still individually shrink-wrapped! And when I fanned the pages the gilded edges across the top crackled, indicating that few if any of these pages had ever been turned. Oh, the pity of it. For twenty years these books had languished on a shelf or in a box, with the riches of centuries of wit and wisdom penned (pun unintentional but apropro) between their covers--nothing but a dead weight or a knickknack to be dusted. The sign said 'Make an Offer'. The other sign regarding the more typical Friends of the Library book sale fare quoted $1 as the price for hardbacks. How could I offer less? Yet how could I justify the $54? But how could I walk away from them? I had only minutes to decide.
Either way I was set up for a marathon wrestle with second guessing? Was this a gift and a reward from the Universe in acknowledgment of the dedication to my work and talents I had evinced over the past fifteen months? Or was it a perfidious temptation to deviate from the plan, a distraction and an offering to the grasping and greedy bibliophilic genie in me that had often and often before lured me off on tangents that diverted me from tending to my work? One could argue that, at least in this case, the books had a direct bearing on my work. One could also argue that I had no right to spend money that way while my husband and I were still living with his parents. Yet the $1 per 54 volumes plus the $20 already spent on the World Book set amounted to much less than my husband spent monthly on cigarettes and designer coffee. But one can not argue that two wrongs make a right. I finally decided that if I had to live with regret either way, I would prefer to have the books as consolation even if sometimes their presence would seem a condemnation. So I made the offer and it was accepted. I said I was going to make the walk back home to get the money and my collapsible luggage cart but the librarian nixed that by offering to deliver the books to my doorstep on her way home from work. That gave me time to get home and do some juggling of things in our room to make space for a set of books that was twice the size of the World Book set that I had struggled to accommodate just ten days ago. I joked with the librarians that I was probably going to have to curtail my usual rate of check-out in order to make room and time for these two sets of books.
Update: as it turned out, the very boxes in which the Great Books were transported became jury-rigged shelving that actually increased the space for books. In the three months since I brought home the Great Books, I have increased the average of books checked out to my account from 60 to 90. It has been a long time since I actually counted them. I get that figure from the fact that I average a weekly turnover of ten books--those checked out and those returned. But more than 80% of the items I bring home are not in high demand and so they typically will renew the allotted twice for a total of three times three weeks. So that I have at any one time nine separate batches of books. This allows me to order books from the county system that I find cited in the books I am reading and have them arrive while I am still in possession of the book that referenced them.
Well, those three cardboard boxes gave me the space to accommodate an increased level of source acquisition. As for the extra time--I'm stealing that from TV (mostly a moratorium on MSM news programs, internet, and sleep accounts. Hence the great slowdown of postings here.
Last Friday on my weekly pilgrimage to the library I found on display, on the shelves set aside for the Friends of the Library Book Sale, a 1999 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia in excellent condition. There were call number labels on the spines of the volumes which had been blacked out. Evidently the set was being retired from the library's collection. The sign on top said 'Make an Offer'. It has been years since I have spent more than a couple bucks on anything for myself. I stood in front of those books and practically drooled. It was as much a nostalgia trip as anything. My parents bought us a second hand World Book set when I was about eleven. I loved it. I started trying to read them cover to cover. But I never made it more than fifty pages into the A volume before I got sidetracked by the list of related articles at the ends of major articles. And of course many of the articles in those lists had lists of their own. My favorite way to 'read' the World Book encyclopedia was to follow those trails from volume to volume. Opening book after book and leaving them spread open, layering book over book in a blossom of pages. I loved the maps of countries and states and the plants and animal photos. That set had been published before Kennedy's presidency and the pictures and maps were all black and white but it was still engrossing. This set I now stood before was full of color photos. Nearly every page sported at least one. And not only that, the covers were an eye popping cornflower blue. One of my favorite colors. Not that I would have turned down the set because I disliked the color of the covers. Hardly. But it seemed an added boon, almost an affirmation as though the books whispered to me by this sign that they were meant for me.
The timing was so providential. I had access to the World Book Online but the internet connection we have is not broadband and major graphics are time intensive to download. So my most urgent need for access to good maps was often thwarted by this limit. My time on the computer here is too precious to waste sitting here staring at a little bar-graph creeping from left to right. I have eight hours--10PM-6AM--and that time has to be split between creating and uploading HTML pages, blog posting, journaling, writing and editing essays, poems, stories, emails and all internet research related to them including news and current events as I no longer have any faith in the MSM.
I didn't dither over my decision for long. I had seen a similar set in a box on the floor directly after a Friend's sale and when I inquired about them was told they were already sold. My disappointment had haunted me into my dreams. How could I walk away from this opportunity? I couldn't and I didn't. While checking out my selections, I spoke wistfully about the set and how it conjured up childhood memories. I said that I really wanted it but would have to go back home for the money. It would mean giving up Dr. Phil and Oprah but it would be worth it. But she said that wouldn't be necessary. She would put a sold sign on the set and it would be waiting for me when I came back which would be Tuesday at the latest as I had another batch of books due that day. I agreed to this and walked home feeling as though I were floating, wondering how long Tuesday would feel like forever.
Forever arrived today. I left home at twelve-fifteen. I got back at two, having brought with me the entire set of World Book. All 22 volumes. Got 13 into the rolling backpack. Another five into the small turquoise duffle which I carried by slinging the single strap over my head and across my chest so the weight of the books rested over my shoulder blades. The last four I put in a paper bag with handles and the librarian helped me by providing a large sturdy rubber band and a piece of yarn. I had to find a way to carry the paper bag in the same hand which pulled the rollling backpack as I needed to keep one hand free to carry my cane. I rested the bag against the bar of the backpacks pull handle holding the handles of the bag and the top of the pull bar together. I was going to go like that before she fetched the yarn and rubber band. She put the rubber band around the bag and the pull bar to help hold it in place and she wrapped and knotted the yarn around the two handles so that I did not have to keep hold of it every second. This left me free to release the handles and let the bags stand alone for short breaks to flex my fingers every couple blocks. I could have left behind whatever wouldn’t fit into the backpack and got them on the next trip. But I just couldn’t bear to. Even though I knew I would not need or be able to look at all 22 volumes today or even in the next week I still wanted them home with me. I wanted to be able to know exactly how much space I needed to prepare for them. Though I could have solved that by measuring them on the shelf before I started packing them. I confess I just wanted them!
I checked out only two items that day, a paperback novel for my husband and a video for his shut-in 90-yr-old grandma. I was walking back out the door in less than fifteen minutes from walking in. So anxious I was to get home and explore the world again as I had at eleven. I felt like I was walking several inches above the ground. Less than two blocks from the library, a tall, bearded gentleman carrying a large sanded tree branch as a walking stick passed me going the opposite direction. The two of us had passed each other in reverse fashion just half an hour or less earlier when we had exchanged nods. I was debating in my mind whether to nic-name him Moses or Walt Whitman when he stopped and, taking note of my white cane, asked if I was lost. I almost laughed as I restrained myself from asking back, How could I be lost? I've got the World on wheels right here. Instead I just said, No. Thank-you, I'm fine. And he said, Oh, I just thot since I saw you going that way just a few minutes ago... But I was shaking my head as I said, I was just at the library and now I'm headed back home. And he nodded saying, I see. And we exchanged Have a nice day and continued on our ways.
I really didn’t get a chance to look closely at them until I moved out to the computer to start my session tonight. At the last second I grabbed the A volume and brought it with me and have been having a hard time keeping my hands and eyes off it.. The color photos and drawings are awesome. But I need to lay off and get busy. I just spent an hour going back and forth between my journal (where the first draft of this post took form) and looking at the pictures and glancing at the articles and just luxuriating in turning the pages and feeling the heft of the book in my hands.
Smoothing their transition back into their communities should be a given. They should never have to wait for months for health care whether mental or physical. They should never end up homeless. They should never end up jobless either. This belongs in the cost calculation of any war along with munitions, fuel, transportation of troops etc. To cut the troops loose after discharge and accept no continuing responsibility for adjusting to the impact their combat experience had on them, for acclimating them back into their community in every way, is the height of disrespect for the service they performed. Whether you support the war or not, the troops need to be supported in every way during and after their service. It is after all the most healthy thing for the community as well for homeless, jobless, stressed out or otherwise disabled vets not only cannot contribute to the overall commonweal, they often contribute to its degeneration with higher suicide and domestic violence rates, vagrancy and drinking related crimes
Read more...For some reason, while reading this article by Dahr Jamail, reporting from inside Iraq about the realities of daily life under the relentless onslaught of American bombs, I kept flashing on scenes from the various ‘Reality’ TV shows and my visceral antipathy towards them suddenly coalesced into an understanding which I could now put words to. I always have thought those shows--Fear Factor, Survivor, Amazing Race, The Apprentice--were all suppurating chancres on the face of American Culture. This because they all espouse a world-view that is antithetical to everything I value. Namely that life is all about winning some prize or reaching some goal no matter who or what values you trash on your way.
The stories always feature some or all of these values: back-stabbing, cheating, taunting of opponents, put downs of others, petty bickering anger, revenge, dirty-tricks, humiliation…among others just as noxious. Conspicuously absent are any of the values which I treasure: truth, justice, equity, fairness, humility, patience, love, compassion, peaceable resolution of conflict, valuing another as ones self, respect, dignity, mercy, cooperative spirits and so on. I always understood that it was the stark juxtaposition of these completely contradictory sets of values which caused me to cringe whenever I couldn’t avoid exposure to one of these shows.
But now I see it in a new frame which makes the whole thing seem even more inimical than before. It is this: that not only are the concepts mean spirited, but the whole thing is cloaked in a hyped up glitz and glamour and the ‘story-lines’ are scripted and choreographed and this above all--there is no reality in any of it. There never is any real danger in Fear Factor, there never is any real risk of not surviving in Survivor, the participants of Amazing Race are nothing if not rats in a maze and ditto for the Apprentices. It is all an illusion for the contestants that is used to enthrall an audience and distract them from the reality of their own lives. Like the Roman Circus they are designed to keep us from thinking about the true meaning of our lives, from feeling our own reality based fear--of losing our jobs or the roof over our head, of loosing our health without recourse to medical care, of loosing our freedoms, our dignity, our civil rights, our retirement security--from empathizing with the similar plight of others, and from noticing what atrocities are being wrought in our name in Falluja, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
My recommendation is that all reality based TV series should be required to base next years series inside Iraq to help the Bush administration show off the purported progress there. Only women willing to cover every inch of skin and hair in robes and veils need apply for these adventures. The Apprentices could design products and businesses to teach the Iraqis how to create an American style cut-throat, consumer-driven economy that turns the blood and sweat of their people into virtual dollars that are free to migrate out of Iraq and into the coffers of multi-national financiers. The Amazing race contestants can go hunting for the WMD with the treasure map that Rummy will draw for them. The Survivors can be parachuted into the desert near an oasis and supplied with small herds of sheep and goats along with a few camels to experience the Nomad lifestyle and what happens when it is disrupted by the Napalming of the oasis and the slaughtering of their herds by a helicopter gunship.
And the Fear Factor contestants can be deposited in Mosul (which is currently getting the treatment which finally subdued Falluja) where they can show those wimpy Falujans how true American-style heroes can suck it up and stay cool, calm and collected while the bombs are falling for hours and days on end, the buildings are crumbling on top of them, the sounds of the jets and helicopters roar relentlessly around the clock. They can courageously maintain their equanimity when snipers take off the face of a man attempting to cross the street and refuse to look away as that face blackens with a cloak of flies. They can sing karaoke to drown out the screams of the dying. They can show their fortitude by not running screaming into the street themselves when a missile tears through the house in which they are guests, ripping the fetus out of their pregnant hostess. They can show their high-threshold for gross-out by sitting with the bodies until they begin to melt in the dessert heat disdaining to cover their mouth and nose to ward off the stench as they watch the worms crawl in and the worms crawl out…..
But in a few years or less they may not have to go all the way to Iraq to find the reality to test themselves against and prove their American-style valor for while they have been distracted by the illusion of fear and the vicarious glee of winning the prize at the end of the maze, the trap has been set to be sprung by only the slightest of disturbances: the rights and the laws and the very assumptions upon which they were crafted which have kept them and their forbearers safe from abuse of power for most of the last two-hundred years have been eviscerated--presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law, habeas corpus, posse comitatus, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, freedom to assemble and freedom to associate, right to petition the government, right to dissent, right against unreasonable search and seizure of property, right to privacy, right to a speedy and fair trial in open court by a jury of our peers…all have been whittled down to mere shadows of their former selves.
Now that is something to strike real fear in the hearts of even the hardiest of Americans because it won’t take much of a disturbance to give the powers that crafted this trap their mandate to spring it on us. One more terrorist attack whether Al Qaeda or homegrown militia spawned. One more inner-city riot which could easily be sparked by an agent provocateur. A virulent epidemic whether nature or man made. And before you know it those helicopter gunships will be flying outside our twentieth-floor condominiums, those jets will be flying over our cities around the clock just to remind us that resistance is futile, our neighbors and colleagues will be dragged from their homes in the dark of night by masked and helmeted men and disappeared into interrogation chambers where there is only one acceptable answer even if it is a lie and in the true spirit of Survivor they will rat us out without flinching.
While our eyes have been on the chintzy prize at the end of the pseudo maze the trap has been primed and most of us will be ever so amazed when it is sprung before we can even say cheese for the Reality TV cameras which are sure to be there to document the triumph of their corporate sponsors and for the education of Americans in the reality of their status in the world as the producers and consumers of the Illusion that keeps everybody in their place, living vicarious dreams of virtual prizes and ersatz joy while the fruits of their labor in the form of their tax dollars are used to teach Iraq, and whoever else seems to ask for it, lessons in reality American style.
Dexter J. Kamilewicz the father of a son being deployed to Iraq has a passionate plea: Support our troops. Ask tough questions. Bring them home now
And by ‘support our troops’ he decidedly does not mean support the war.
Check out why.
Progressives should make this an urgent cause of their own. Star Trek from the beginning has been a forum for introducing complex social themes via intriguing plots and riviting stories. We must not let the dream die now. Not now of all times.
Read more...John Dear, a Jesuit priest and peace activist, speaks truth to power like the prophets of old when he points to the hypocracy inherent in claiming to be a Christian and follower of Jesus while "consciously siding with the culture of war, choosing the path of violence, supporting corporate greed, rampant militarism, and global domination. I see many others swept up in the raging current of patriotism. Since most of these people, beginning with the president, claim to be Christian, I am ashamed and appalled that they support war and systemic injustice, that they do it in the name of God, and that they feign fidelity to the nonviolent Jesus who gave his life resisting institutionalized injustice."
He likens them to the Pharisees who persecuted Jesus and reminds as that "...the early Christians had big words for such behavior, such lies. They were called “blasphemous, idolatrous, heretical, hypocritical and sinful.” Such words and actions were denounced as the betrayal, denial and execution of Jesus all over again in the world’s poor."
Yes. It has been typical throughout the ages for the moral majoritarians to be either the tool or the possessor of wealth and power and to manipulate the fear and self-righteousness of the populace. In order to keep the house divided against itself so that all eyes and wagging fingers are aimed away from the true source of all the misery in their lives.
Jim Wallis at Sojourners and author of God's Politics offers this vision as a platform with which the Progressives can counter the charge that they are lacking in values:
"Budgets are moral documents that reflect the values and priorities of aRead more...
family, church, organization, city, state or nation. They tell us what is most
important and valued to those making the budget.The biblical prophets frequently
spoke to rulers and kings. They spoke to 'the nations,' and it was the powerful
that were most often the target audience. Those in charge of things are the ones
called to greatest accountability.
And the prophets usually spoke for the dispossessed, widows and orphans
(read: poor single moms), the hungry, the homeless, the helpless, the least,
last and lost. They spoke to a nation's priorities."
Keep in mind that legal precidents establish a baseline applical to all future cases. The law itself does not differentiate between racial, ethnic, religious groups only the enforcers of the law make those distinctions--police, prosecutors, judges, juries. So once a precident is set that curtails the constitutional rights of an American citizen no American citizen can continue to rest assured in those rights. This is a very scary precident. It is even scarier that more American citizens are not expressing alarm about it.
Read more...‘Support the Troops’ needs to mean a whole lot more than simple cheerleading. And the cost of that support is being conspicuously left out of any estimate of actual cost of the war. We will be paying the costs of this war for at least a generation if not two when you factor in the trauma incurred by the children of the soldiers who do not come home at all or do not come home whole in body, mind or spirit.
Read more...Susan Strong urges progressives to reach out to moderate conservatives by framing the story within the familiar ‘family’ metaphor. As one big American family we are like any extended family “-fractious but in the end functional. There are people in it who aren't just like you, but they are still family and we still have to try to solve our problems together, despite our differences.”
Read more...Say what?
So said Paul O'Neil, according to Thom Hartmann who names the new power distribution favoring Corporations over ‘we the people’ and its co-opting of our representative government as a modern feudalism in which the corporations play the role of the nobles and we the people are their vassals. And even though they tended to make more, and more vigorous, use of the commons--public owned resources and public funded infrastructure--nobles tended to pay little if any taxes. This is the trend today around the globe as even those governments ostensibly in power at the request and sufferance of the people are increasingly lowering the corporate taxes and transferring the burden to the people in the form of higher taxes, depleted resources and decaying infrastructure.
The move to dramatically reduce corporate taxation has been building for years and gained a strong foothold during Reagan’s administration. But the blunt assertion that the agenda was to reduce them to as close to zero as possible had seldom been made so publicly or so clearly as when then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil said in May 2001 that there should be no corporate income tax whatsoever.
Hartman makes the case in favor of Corporate taxation just as clear and blunt:Corporations are taxed because they use public services, and are therefore expected to help pay for them - the same as citizens.
Corporations make use of a work force educated in public schools paid for with tax dollars. They use roads and highways paid for with tax dollars. They use water, sewer, and power and communications rights-of-way paid for with taxes. They demand the same protection from fire and police departments as everybody else, and enjoy the benefits of national sovereignty and the stability provided by the military and institutions like NATO and the United Nations, the same as all residents of democratic nations.
In fact, corporations are heavier users of taxpayer-provided services and institutions than are average citizens. Taxes pay for our court systems, which are most heavily used by corporations to enforce contracts. Taxes pay for our Treasury Department and other governmental institutions which maintain a stable currency essential to corporate activity. Taxes pay for our regulation of corporate activity, from assuring safety in the workplace to a pure food and drug supply to limiting toxic emissions.
Under George W. Bush, the burden of cleaning up toxic wastes produced by corporate activity has largely shifted from polluter-funded Superfund and other programs to taxpayer-funded cleanups (as he did in Texas as governor there before becoming President).
Every year, millions of cases of cancer, emphysema, neurological disorders, and other conditions caused by corporate pollution are paid for in whole or in part by government funded programs from Medicare to Medicaid to government subsidies of hospitals, universities, and research institutions funded by tax dollars through the NIH and NIMH.
70 Days of Sweat
Epic Kindle Giveaway Jan 11-13 2012
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