Lost

Am lost tonight (this morning’s wee hours) can’t get online. Been trying for an hour. For the first forty minutes the AOL dialup process couldn’t get past step 2. Was given a bit of hope when it finally broke through to step 3 and shortly thereafter to step 4: requesting network attention and I sat and stared at the connection log as it racked up 14 attempts. I had been canceling after five attempts but that little bit of hope….. Then I remembered that Dr Phil mantra that the definition of insanity is obsessively repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result. I realized that I had just spent a precious hour watching the computer endlessly repeat a behavior and getting the same unwanted response while I sat helplessly chanting (silently) ‘go, go, go’ or alternately, ‘please, please, please’. Either I or the computer must be insane. :)

I decided that I needed to find something else to do for a minimum of twenty minutes. Obviously the local dial up numbers for AOL were having some kind of problem or were down for regularly scheduled maintenance. At least I do hope that is the explanation. Besides feeling hopelessly lost while disconnected from the www, I have several things I need to take care of online which are of a more urgent nature than surfing for news and info or blogging or IM-ing or whatnot.

The first is the need to send an error report to Microsoft as something odd happened the first time I tried to go online tonight. Windows quit. The screen went black with a lot of different colored font that looked mostly like code. I caught a brief glimpse of a phrase: Windows encountered an error and must shut down. Then the screen went totally black followed by the cold boot up screen. I panicked for several moments. Until the familiar welcome screen appeared with the logos for mine and my husband’s desktops. I clicked on mine and it loaded without a glitch but once loaded it popped up with the error report message that the system has recovered from a serious error and requesting that a log of the error be sent to Microsoft. I must confess that I don’t always send those reports. Especially if I am not already online. But a ‘serious error’ at the system level does tend to send shivers up your spine. I don’t know what good is going to come of sending the report anyway. There is never a response so it is not like I am going to be learning anything helpful by doing so. Still….

Anyway the second urgent matter I need to tend to is to go online to Jackson County Library System to renew the books which are due today. I am still out of town. This time tho, there are only a few which will renew. The majority of them have had their two renewals already. A few of those I have with me. So I am going to have to make a long distance call to the library tomorrow to explain my situation. But first I need to renew the ones that will and then send an email to my husband regarding the ones that need to go back which are still on the shelves in our room. I have been doing that every Friday since I left town. And my husband has not always found and returned all of the relevant books on time.

That relates to another way I am lost tonight. I had no idea when I left town how long I would be gone. The trip was planned and executed on an emergency basis without any way of pinning down a time-frame. I had gotten the word my Dad’s liver was failing and time was short. But ’short’ covered the territory from hours to weeks. Thought they expected him to have only days of mental coherence left, he could have possibly spent weeks in a comatose state. So my plan when I left was to stay for the duration plus at least one week beyond the funeral. I left Phoenix four weeks and two days ago. It is just twenty-some hours short of four weeks since Dad died. And it is one day short of three weeks since his funeral. I am in limbo in my mind and heart. Neither place is really my home. Here is my mother’s home and there is my mother-in-law’s home. Not a good position to be in for a married woman in the last half of her fifth decade.

The whole meme of ‘lost’ for this post was inspired primarily by the ABC series, Lost, which I watched with my Mom, sister and nephew last evening. And, yes, I mean Thursday evening. They record it because it’s new timeslot on Wednesday night is past my nephew’s bedtime. I was surprised to discover that my family had been avid Lost watchers last season. Including my Dad. I would never have predicted. Anyway, it is the only show that I was hooked on last season that I am getting to watch while I am here. I missed all of the season premieres. I gave them up without a peep because most of them would not be child-friendly and many (Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal, Medium, Joan of Arcadia, Grey’s Anatomy) do not have the appropriate values frame for a mostly conservative, evangelical household. I would have expected Lost to have fit in that category too. I’m stymied as to what attracted and hooked them all to it. Especially Mom and Dad. I can see its attraction for a not yet fully indoctrinated eleven-year-old boy. And my sister has always been rather eccentric. And come to think of it, my Dad used to watch Star Trek with me why back when and seemed to enjoy it almost as much as I did, making no comment to my Mom’s frequent query as to whether he didn’t think it was sacrilegious.

The only other series this family watches every week is 7th Heaven. I used to watch it regularly too until my in-law’s switched from cable to satellite two years ago and opted not to pay the extra for the local channels. WB was the only ’local’ channel that will not come in on the regular antenna for them so I lost the ability to follow the Camden family exploits about the time Mary announced she was pregnant, Matt’s wife walked out, Lucy was just married, Simon was leaving for college a year early… Now I am completely lost while watching it.

And tonight after Lost was over, a situation developed in which I came close to loosing it. It being my composure, my precarious balance on the emotional tightrope I walk each day while here. The entire hour of the story had been riddled with interruptions because one person or another had not caught one scene or phrase etc and another would fill them in either muting or pausing the tape or talking over the dialog or occasionally rewinding. I have my Dad’s ears as well as my Mom’s eyes. (10-15% of my field of vision left and under 50% of my hearing range) So it was very frustrating. To make matters worse, I had not slept that day, having stayed on the computer most of the day. Well both my sister and her son have been diagnosed with ADD and my sister suspects that both Mom and I have it too. But if I have it, it presents quite differently for me. I hate to have my stories interrupted. I have never had a problem sitting quietly thru them. Mom never could and still doesn’t. She gets up to putter around in the kitchen during commercials. Even when someone is fast-forwarding thru them. My nephew chatters incessantly. He opines on the character’s motives, he predicts the next plot development. And he is seldom right because he has not been listening closely enough and jumps to conclusions. His Mom or Grandma then feel the need to correct him or request he calm down. But not in brief form. Unless you might be referring to a legal brief submitted to the Supreme Court. :)

Anyway. I was on edge when the story ended. And then my nephew pitched a fit when a preview for another story came on the TV. I am unclear as to whether the tape was still playing or this was in real time on one of the channels. It was apparently for a new series dealing with serial killers and the images were graphic and violent. My nephew is susceptible to nasty nightmares which images like that witnessed just before bed can trigger. He jumped up and ran out of the room crying and, in escalating volume, chanting over and over: Shut off the TV. Shut off the TV. SHUT OFF THE TV. Followed by shrill wailing and then: WHY IS THE TV STILL ON? DON’T YOU CARE I’M GONNA HAVE NIGHTMARES? WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT, ME OR THE TVEEEEEEEEEE?

My sister had apparently noticed that I was interested in that preview and so had not immediately complied with her son’s request. Myself? I had been blocking out the distractions to some degree so had not tuned into the situation in time to realize my role in it. And once I did understand, instead of immediately empathizing with the distressed child as I am wont to do, as is my well earned reputation in the family.. I felt myself becoming a distressed child on the verge of a meltdown of my own. The weeks of listening to his whining, me-first, me-NOW OR ELSE voice, his sarcastic, in-your-face back talk to his mother, I had enough. I am easily overwhelmed by sensory overload which is one of the reasons my sister suspects me of ADD too. The volume of his voice and the TV, my sister’s attempt to get his attention, my Mom’s clinking and clanking the dishes as she loaded the dishwasher…. I had to get out of there or I was going to stick my nose and mouth in where it didn’t belong. My head was bursting with phrases more typical of my Dad than myself. And the fact that I was sitting in his recliner took on an eerie significance and I felt as tho I had to get as far away from that chair and that room and that ruckus as possible or risk loosing my very sense of my self.

I went downstairs and sat in the dark watching the computer’s screen saver. And I did finally loose my composure. For the first time in nearly a week, I wept. For loss and for feeling lost. For confusion and for sensory and emotional overload. I let the tears flow for probably five minutes. And suddenly I was exceedingly weary. I decided to go to bed. I’m not sure how soon, but I slept for a time before being awakened when my sister came to bed a couple hours later. Then I got up so that I could have a session. Now that the house is silent and dark.

And I used to think that I wanted a dozen kids!!!
Well actually, I still do. But that’s another story. For another day. Or another lifetime.

Meanwhile that incident and its aftermath has fed into my current conundrum. I have been dithering about whether to stay or go for the past ten days. I’ve tried repeatedly to compile a good pro and con list for staying and another for going back. And all I get out of it is a steady flip-flop on a six to twelve hour pace. And I guess I am not going to solve it now by reiterating all the reasons for going against all the reasons for staying here. It has been well over an hour since I tried to log on. I think I will try again. And if it works get those afore mentioned tasks taken care of and then post this.

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Cleaning House, Rearranging, and Taking Out the Trash

Spent the last several hours deleting the spam comments from the posts still on the front page of Joystory. Don’t know if or when I will go into the archives to chase down the rest but since the problem didn’t really become a problem before late August, I can probably let them slide. But I had to take that step I’ve been reluctant to take: I activated the verification code on comments. I guess I haven’t minded too much when I was required to enter such codes while commenting on other blogs or claiming my mystery credits on BE, so I am hoping no legit commenters will be dissuaded by this.

While I was at it I also activated the new Blogger backlink option to track those, so far, few posts linking back to me. And I opted for comments to appear in a pop-up window. I hope this doesn’t inconvenience anyone but I am hoping that it will solve part of the issue that has kept me procrastinating on this task for weeks: when I visit my own blog comments Site Meter tracks my visits in spite of doing everything Site Meter recommended to prevent this. So my Site Meter account is registering all forty some odd page views that accumulated by my going back and forth between the front page, the comments and the delete-confirm page. I suppose I will have to reset the counter at Site Meter now. If it is possible that is to reset it to just subtract those visits and page views that I know were mine.

I don’t know. I’m finding it hard to care one way or the other. What exactly am I keeping track of and for what purpose? It seems to be nothing but a distraction from the work, which was my passion, which prompted me to start this blog one year ago next week. All this admin detail is time consuming and feels meaningless to me at this moment. But I set myself these tasks today in hopes of re-engaging myself heart and soul back into the (game? Project? Passion? ….?)

In the beginning was the word…. For me, writing, reading and thinking was the impetus and the reward. But lately all three of those have been mired in mental mud. Rough drafts too rough, too raw, too muddled, too morbid and yes, occasionally too maudlin, to impose on anybody else. Or is that missing the point of blogging in the first place? Maybe I need to relax my standards for the time being. Things being what they are right now.

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Oh Baby Mine!

Still haunted by that dream but the bright, adoring eyes of that baby and her eager arms reaching out for me has begun to override the overwhelming sense of shame and guilt and the patina of abject failure. I sense the unconditional love and the innocent expectation that it is reciprocated and the unfathomable well of forgiveness which is her heart. I don’t claim any expertise in dream interpretation but it doesn’t much imagination to see a baby in a dream as a symbol of creativity, regeneration, self-expression, self-renewal….. There is probably much more depth to plumb but that is enough to work with for now.

I believe that among other things, this dream baby was alerting me to a major pitfall before I actually stumbled into it. She was reminding me that I have been neglecting the very thing that I know from repeated experience has been the solution or at least the source of solutions to every crisis I’ve encountered in my life. In one word: Story. Writing is therapeutic and journaling and blogging have legitimate roles but they can only go so far. It is the activation of archetypes, symbols and metaphors encouraged by Story that has the most potential for healing.

Thinking along these lines, I remembered that I had just received the announcement email from NaNoWriMo that the 2005 contest was upon us and it was time to reactivate our accounts if we wished to participate this year. When I saw that the other day, my first reaction had been: I can’t do it this year. Not with everything that is going on right now. But after contemplating that dream for a few days, I took a second look at that assumption. What better way to work through raw grief than to transform it by Story.

So, as you can see in the sidebar, I’ve become an official participant of the 2005 NaNoWriMo contest. Not a contest really so much as a challenge and a community of support from fellow travelers on a quest to churn out a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. What better way to focus all this raw emotion and the swarm of agitated memories than the discipline and play of Story?

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An Exercise in Exorcism

All that sleep and yet I don’t feel rested. Sleep is full of dreams with high octane emotion and high voltage images in colors so intense they seam to sear my retinas so that the colors of waking life are grayed out, no more than a watermarked backdrop for the dramas playing out in my mind. More real than real, these dreams intrude themselves into every moment. The images haunt and the emotions harass me throughout my days and nights. I could write several pages a day for a year on the themes and intricate plots and the archetypes of those dreams of just the last ten days.

The one I woke from Wednesday afternoon still has me in its grip. The entire dream, comprising dozens of scenes, took place on the property of the Bible Chapel (the non-denominational, fundamentalist, church I was raised in) and the houses to either side of it (one which my Aunt and Uncle, as caretakers of the property, lived in for nearly forty years, the other which my husband and I lived in between 1993 and 1999--after I had stopped attending and during the slow-motion collapse of the church under doctrinal dispute which culminated in the selling of the property.)

This dream began with me setting up a crib in a small fenced in yard that existed only before 1977 when the construction of a kitchen-equipped fellowship room and Sunday school rooms began. My reasons for setting up this crib were vague but I seemed to be expecting to watch a baby for someone--something I was well known for before, during and after any events held at the church, but also family get-togethers held at my Aunt and Uncle’s house.

After setting up the crib I went inside the church building to get something. Toys or diapers or blankets or possibly the baby? Once in there the scenes of the dream shifted often and arbitrarily and all of them were a whirl of motion and color and activity. The themes of each were some mixture of looking for something, sorting collections of items, a variety of housecleaning tasks. The scenes took place in rooms in all three buildings mentioned plus the three garages on the properties and these rooms and the landscaping outside could contain objects and configurations from any time between the late fifties and late nineties mixed together.

Also present throughout were the people from my past in any way associated with any areas or eras of those properties--and they too could be as they were from any of those forty-odd years without chronological logic. Or any other logic for that matter as they could also be in two or more places or times at once. By which I mean that I could leave the presence of someone only to have them appear again in the same or another area or era, at the same or another age.

I never worked so hard and was never so exhausted in waking life as in this dream. It seemed endless. It seemed that in these few minutes of real-time that dreams are known to be limited to that I had lived (or relived) a lifetime with all of its angst compacted and focused like a laser beam.

The one figure noticeably absent from any of these scenes was my Dad. There was no sense that it was he that I was looking for or expecting to encounter either. There was possibly a sense that he was observing my quest or that the errand I was on was at his behest or that I was going to have to explain or report my activity to him. But that wasn’t clear. What became clear to my dream self near the end of the dream was that I was not going to find what I was looking for on or near this property and I needed to go elsewhere to fetch it back there.

In the final scene I was preparing to get in a car to leave when someone asked me about the baby. And it was then that I ‘remembered’ that I had put the baby down for a nap in that crib and had left it unattended as I searched. Frantic with fear and self-recrimination, I went running to the crib which was not where I had left it but was now setting in the middle of the exit driveway which ran between the church and the house in which I once lived. The crib was empty and I was nearly abject with despair.

Then someone led me to a sliding glass patio door in the side of the church which never existed in any era of waking reality. This door opened on a room which also had never existed. In this room a woman with long flowing hair sat in a rocking chair holding an infant. The baby, a girl about six months old, saw me and squirmed with exuberance and reached out for me. It was then that I realized that this baby was my own, not one that I had been watching for someone else. With that realization all the emotions of guilt and shame for abandoning her intensified.

I could not meet the eyes of the woman as she handed the baby over. But I caught a glimpse out of the side of my eyes (something I can only do in dreams now) and knew that she was full of doubt and regret at the need to release the baby back to me and a deep yearning to keep--in the sense of protecting, nurturing and taking responsibility for--her. I realized that she had no confidence in me, nor should she, and I was filled with a shame as viscous and as suffocating as quicksand.

This shame has clung to me waking and sleeping for over forty hours. Writing this has been an exercise in exorcism in hopes that clothing it in words would tame it and sharing it will diffuse some of the intensity of feeling. Hoping also that the act of confessing is in some sense taking responsibility for that baby--meaning whatever aspect of my psyche she symbolizes.

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Halfway to Far Enough

The bouquets are drooping, the edges of the flowers and leaves browning. Mom is humming hymns as she stirs hamburger in the skillet, echoes of my childhood harmonizing with the sizzle. The familiar ritual of meal preparation is necessary once again as we finished the last of the leftovers from the flood of delivered meals by Saturday (the 8th). The phone remains silent for long hours at a stretch now. I am sleeping again. Long, dream saturated sleep. After nearly three weeks of sporadic sleep with several 48 plus hour stints of no sleep at all, my body and mind are greedy for sleep and slurp it like a small child with a Popsicle on a summer afternoon.

In the last week I have gone several times with Mom on her daily walk around the block. The blocks here are not square city blocks but curvy lanes ending in cul-de-sacs. So ‘around the block’ is not quite correct either. It would be well over a mile to make a full circuit so we turn back and retrace our steps after one of us judges we are half way to far enough.

What a sight we must make--two women wielding white canes but gesturing hither and yon at this flowering bush and that leaf-turned tree. Mom warns me several yards in advance of every root-raised sidewalk slabs, every curb, every fire-hydrant and every twig that hangs down below forehead level over the sidewalk. Her RP has advanced much further than mine but tho she sees much less, she has nearly three decades more familiarity with this neighborhood than I do.

Mom spoke of Dad in the present tense three times yesterday. But I did not call her on it as I know she is neither delusional nor in denial. It is just the grooves that language wears in your mind, mapping experience. Repetition of new experience will redraw the map--in time. Grief is much like a walk in unfamiliar terrain. You put one foot in front of the other, advancing through the minutes, the hours, the days. Routines reassert themselves but they are like old maps superimposed over new territory, giving only an illusion of ’normal’ as your steps take you past missing landmarks or stumbling over unmarked obstacles. And no matter how many steps you take, you are always one step short of halfway to far enough.

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His Legacy Was Love

You can read the obit which my mother wrote for my Dad in the online version of The Longview Daily News. I don’t know how long this link will hold but when and if it dies I will republish the obit here in this post instead of linking to it. I would just do it that way now but I still haven’t learned how to post photos to my blog.
Meanwhile, now that things are (somewhat) calmer here, I am writing again and am preparing a post relating some of the past weeks events in a more coherent form then the last few posts have been.
I would like to thank those who have expressed their sympathy via comments here or email. They have been much appreciated by myself and my family. I have shared some with my sister and shared the fact of their existence with my Mom who is busy at this time with opening the dozens of cards she has been receiving by snail mail since the Tuesday after Dad’s passing. Read the obit to catch a glimmer as to where those cards are coming from. The circle of lives impacted by my parents is not negligible! This is an honorable legacy.

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Eternity Encompasses Time's Passages

Can it have been a week already? A week. Days passing in a dreamscape of memories, tears, hugs, doorbells, phone ringing, food-bearing and flower-bearing arms floating through rooms where scattered memories startle laughter or tears or both at once. Children’s chatter. Hymn-singing. Prayer circles. Photographs. Remember this? Remember when? Remember that time?

This afternoon will be the memorial service and Monday morning will be the internment. Will it get easier then? Quieter maybe….but easier? I can‘t imagine. Time. They say it will take time.

This is the poem I wrote for my parent‘s 40th anniversary:

TIME IN ETERNITY

Time was there was no we
Only you and only me
Solitary I’s enclosed, apart.

Time went far to bring us here
To where we are--our
Unitary I’s--entwined by love.

Time is now for making strong
Our fragile, time-made bonds--
Singular I’s and thou’s in synergy.

Time will be when all our we’s
Conjoin in heaven’s harmony--
Tributary we’s in eternity.

I am to read it at the service today. If I can stay composed. If my desire to honor my Dad can overcome both grief and the swarm of panic-anxiety triggers to be expected in a crowded public setting where sensory overload is immanent. If Eternity will encompass time, providing a buffer against the pain and fear and give free passage to the Voice which which Love speaks in time.

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The Prize On the Other Side

Between emotions so raw that clothing them with words is like wearing a wool sweater over a sunburn and fatigue so deep that grasping a thought is like trying to fish one of those translucent beads out of tapioca pudding with fingers clad in rubber gloves, attempting to compose a post would be counterproductive as another one sinking to the level of the previous one would not profit either me, my few readers or my blog.

Instead, I offer here a poem which I wrote about ten years ago. The controlling metaphor is fitting I think--passages from one life-stage to another, always reaching for and then being grasped by the prize on the other side. Daddy is now embraced by and embracing the Ultimate prize on the Other side:

The Prize On the Other Side
by Joy Renee

The bars, the rail that divide
Here from there.
The prize on the other side.

To climb, to reach, to grasp,
Willing it mine.
To have until eternity lapse.

The fumble, the tumble into loss.
A long falling
Towards pain, separation, life’s cost.

The arms, the rescue, tears dried.
Belonging to Love--
The prize on the other side.

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A Passing Reference

My Dad passed on at 4:40 Saturday morning. The sudden silence that suffused the space which had been assaulted for three days with the rasp of his labored breath, the gasps and groans and the choking coughs was both relief and grief. Relief inasmuch as the silence means the cessation of his suffering. And yet, this morning, now twenty-four hours later, that silence oppresses me. My heart wants nothing more than to fill it with the wails of a child no more than three, calling for her Daddy in the dark wee hours of the morning.

Forgive me if I sound maudlin. I’ve had less than twenty hours sleep in the last six days. And I miss my Daddy.

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There Are No Words…

Never have words seemed more inadequate than they do this week. The sudden reversal in my Dad’s health surprised us all in spite of the head-knowledge that it was to be expected sooner rather than later. It was Dad’s habit of defying expectations throughout his illness that led us to expect an indefinite extension of the cycle of crisis and rally. Just last Saturday, while I was on the phone with my sister catching up on the latest developments, Dad was up walking around slow and careful with his walker.
He was still speaking too. He said to Mom how he wished he could go outside to see the pumpkin. He was referring to the Pumpkin my sister’s boy has been nurturing all summer. Mom said that she wished he could see it too. But she did not offer to take him out to see it. She was sure that the excursion into the back yard, which entailed descending some stairs would just be too much for him. Seeing that Mom was not going to help grant this simple wish and knowing he no longer had the verbal competency to debate with her, he just left the room. Watching him progress down the hall towards their bedroom, Mom thought he must be heading back in to lay down as he had already be up for some time. But he came back just moments later with his straw hat on his head and wordlessly headed for the back door.
Mom followed after to assist him on the stairs. And so did my sister since a nearly blind woman with a history of sciatica should not be the primary support of a frail man steering a walker down some stairs. My sister and I had to say quick good-byes and I didn’t learn until the next day that Dad had made it safely down to the garden, where he spent the next hour or more beaming blissfully as he watched the pumpkin grow. Even this wordoholic is forced to acknowledge thatometimes words are unnecessary.

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Redirecting My Attention

Well I have been woken from the Katrina dream (nightmare?) by a competing trauma of a more personal nature. I just learned that my Dad is losing his battle with cancer. He is exhibiting signs of liver failure. I am going to be joining my family in Longview, Washington for the duration. The Hospice nurse has said he may have only days before loosing the ability to maintain alertness for communicating. But every patient is unique and he could rally again. He has surprised us all several times in the last twenty months.

So I don't know how long I am going to be separated from this computer with my 12 MB of personal files (stories, poems, essays, novels, correspondence, book reviews--the bulk of it in progress) and 100+ MB of research materials and E-books downloaded off the internet and my stuffed to the gills IE favorites. Nor do I know what kind, if any of computer and/or internet access I am going to be able to finagle. I do know that I can't expect to monopolize the phone lines in the daytime and my tactic of spending the night online as I do here will not wash either as there would be no point in going there if I'm just going to make a recluse of myself in a different household. I need to be available for those moments Dad is still able to interact.

I will be journaling, hopefully intensely, as writing is my life-line in ordinary times and the very air I breathe in times of emotional chaos as this will be. And I expect that I will be suffused with memories and bittersweet nostalgia and I've decided it will be healthier to go with it--to write it instead of fight it. So my posts here (and I do intend to post several times a week) will be mostly cobbled together from material developed in my journal.

But I am also going to do my best to continue to update the previous post with links related to the environmental impact of Katrina. I will also be following the repercussions of the current Rita hurricane. My prayers are with the people of the Gulf Coast states--the survivors of Katrina, the relief workers and government officials at every level. Of the latter, even those with whom I am angry I do not wish ill. I wish only that all can pull together for the commonweal.

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Post Katrina Environmental Impact

I've been so busy chasing links and reading stories and digesting information regarding the probable long-term environmental impact of Katrina and the reconstruction efforts that I haven't been able to compose my own post regarding any of it for several days. I still don't feel ready. My head is so swamped with facts and theory--rumors and guesses; actual announced policy from the administration (along with speculation about the true meaning behind the Orwellian words); proposed legislation from Congress; alerts from those with credentials in the field--I just don't feel competent to sort it out into anything of unique and substantive value, which is one of my benchmarks for posting.

I feel there are enough blogs out there doing a remarkable job of calling attention to current events and news and commentary with quotes and links (often to articles in the MSM which are quickly archived behind pay-per-view walls, leaving the blogosphere riddled with linkrot) that I would not be adding anything of value to the discussion by doing more of the same. But my struggle to find relevant and substantial information over the last week has shown me that this meme is not spreading through either the MSM, the EzInes (at least the free ones which are the only ones I can afford) or the blogosphere with the alacrity of many of the other Katrina related memes, though I believe it is the most important following only after providing for the immediate life-sustaining needs of the survivors.

I worry that if we don't create a tipping point of demand for responsible, transparent, accountable attention to this issue, it will soon be commandeered by the corporations, the construction contractors, the sea-food and agricultural industries and the tourist industry. And before long even Oprah would suffer distasteful repercussions if she were to frown in public at the thought of being served shrimp gumbo laced with PCBs, lead, mercury, heavy metals, petroleum, arsenic….

There are already laws in place in many states forbidding the libeling of produce on which that state's livelihood depends, laws which have been used to hush whistle blowers and lone activists with crushing financial punishment via fines, loss of jobs, blacklisting and bankrupting legal fees. Watch for such laws to be created and/or strengthened throughout the Gulf states, if not throughout the US, in the near future. The only way to preempt this attempt to preempt open discussion about this is to make such a hullabaloo now that a demand for dependable information and responsible, science-based, clean-up operations will become as unstoppable as Katrina herself.

I have yet to find anyone doing anything resembling a clearing house of information and links regarding the ramifications of the toxic content of the water saturating every surface of New Orleans and being pumped into Lake Pontchartrain from where it will wend its way to the gulf through the estuaries and be spread into the local (thus global) food chain and all the local sources of potable water. I don't have any illusions that I can provide one with my current resources, nor do I want this blog, Joystory, to be commandeered for the purpose as my intent for it is still reflected by the subtitle even though I continue to have trouble overriding my obsession with this issue in order to maintain a balance in post subjects (or in my daily life routines for that matter). But I do want to contribute to the meme stream some of what I have dug up and to put out a call for more relevant links. I am going to periodically update this post with my continuing research results and thus will put a permanent link to it in the sidebar within the next few days.

In Reviving New Orleans, a Challenge of Many Tiers I put this one first not because it is most useful but because it is one of the rare examples of a MSM source addressing the issue (and it will be easier to locate here than elsewhere in the list for removal when its link rots next week).

This is also likely to linkrot which is why I include the relevant quote here. I'm going to keep my eye on Carol Browner in hopes she continues to be vocal: Carol Browner (former EPA head under Clinton) theorized that the city proper may well become the nation's largest de facto toxic waste site: The water, so thick and toxic... is now receding while you watch in places... and I fear the sludge and dust left behind won't necessarily present itself to people as the danger we know it is.

Susie at Suburban Guerrilla alerts us to an AP report that Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the Republican chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is preparing legislation that would allow the EPA to relax or suspend its rules in the interests of expediting reconstruction.

Susie again: The Heritage Foundation, a radical-right think-tank which provides many of the talking-points for the 'conservative' pundits and professional 'experts' consulted by the media and contributes to the writing of legislation and regulations, has issued its recommendations for Katrina recovery and New Orleans reconstruction. Among them: Repeal the estate tax and copiously fund faith-based organizations. Drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, suspend environmental regulations including the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, suspend prevailing wage labor laws. (Including worker safety regulations which would allow them to subject workers now and in the future to toxic levels heretofore considered unacceptable? While curtailing their access to healthcare? And forcing them to work for substandard wages? Don't they have a name for this? Hint: it rhymes with 'rave' but it ain't no party! JR)

(Be not confused: this is a battle between the moral values of billionaires for bottomless greed versus the moral values of the commonweal. The prophets for profit are currently out-shouting the prophets for public and personal well-being. We need to find our voice and soon, before they find a way to buy or steal that too.JR)

BAGnewsNotes has some more stunning photos of the rainbow sheen spread over NO but questions the media's will to keep the toxicity of NO story alive. Not sexy enough, too difficult to research. Not photogenic enough. And someone in the comments on this post leaves behind these links, which while not directly related to Katrina have information with implications for the mind boggling complexity of the problem we are facing:
We have met the enemy...
Huge Cleanup Ahead for Kodak
Photographic Processing Hazards
Hazardous Waste From Computers
Video Display Units — Health Hazards
Cathode Ray Tubes = Hazardous Waste
U.S. Electricity Generation — Fuel Sources

(As you read those sources, consider the implications of the electronic components found in a typical household or office and multiply it by one or two hundred-thousand. Add to that the probable contents of department stores and warehouses in this major shipping nexus--all of this soaking in this water for several weeks. JR)

Solid Waste & Recycling, an online magazine, alerts us to the infamous Agricultural Landfill Site in downtown NO. Said to be on a par with Love Canal for levels of toxins, it is a toxic waste contaminated area several blocks wide, now under three feet of water, making probable the spread of the contaminates it contains.
Appended to this article are links to interactive maps of before and after the flood with directions for locating the ALS.

There is also a link to an Environmental Justice Case Study which offers a detailed history of the pollution problems at the ASL and of residents complaints and health problems.

Also provided is a link to the government site that offers details about the government's Public Health Assessment regarding the ALS. (I predict this one won't stay available for long and I hope someone with tech savvy and file storage resources can stash a linkable copy of it before it disappears down the memory hole. JR)

GIS mapping of sites likely to be sources of toxins released into water by Katrina

Amy Goodman interviews Harold Zeliger re NO Toxic Soup
I do expect Democracy Now to keep their watchful eye on this issue
Toxic Soup: The Deadly Floodwaters of New Orleans
Environmental Pollution Along the Mississippi: From the Headwater to the Delta


Kudos to T r u t h o u t which is shaping up to be a resource on this issue with several articles already and forums for discussion available.
The entire community is now a toxic waste dump
After Katrina: the toxic time bomb

From the Guardian Unlimited:
Katrina oil spills may be among worst on record
According to the Coast Guard, 6.5 million gallons of crude oil had been spilt in at least seven major incidents. This does not include the leaks from 200,000 submerged vehicles and hundreds of submerged gas stations.
Prescott links global warming to Katrina
Oil spills and lost islands add to the hurricane's toll

Cover-Up: Toxic Waters 'Will Make New Orleans Unsafe for a Decade'
Hugh Kaufman at the EPA is blowing the whistle on the administration's attempts at a cover-up already. They are suppressing the release of the test results on the water samples and deliberately preventing the collection and testing of a statistically significant number of samples.

(Let me remind those still clueless: Science and technology need facts with which to work. Facts are the foundation of knowledge and understanding and of the concomitant innovation which provides solutions to problems in the form of technology. This is the true fuel of the economy, without it the billionaires gold is so much gas, dissipating into the global finance network, trading itself for itself, buying itself with itself--one giant Ponzi scheme. In order to adequately address the toxins in NO the scientists and innovators need facts. JR)

He did the same with the cover-up of the highly toxic condition of the air in downtown Manhattan after the WTC towers fell. He was not heeded and today a large percentage of the rescue, recovery and clean-up workers are suffering various degrees of compromised lung function among other health issues, including a statistically higher than normal death rate.
Help me amply his message so that his warning cannot be marginalized by the administration or the MSM again.

Here are two more which have caught the meme from Kaufman:
Culver City News w/ a forum for commenting
Paul Krugman quotes Kaufman in the context of alerting us that the state of most if not all of the government agencies mirror that of FEMA

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Step Up, Medford (and every city in America)

Step up, Medford
According to the Sunday Mail Tribune, refugees from Hurricane
Katrina are arriving in Portland now. With so many thousands of hurricane refugees, totally displaced persons, what if every town and city community in America each provided a house, a job, and the basic necessities of life to just one family. One family who has lost everything, maybe even family members, and have nothing. Can Medford step up? Let’s do it! — D. Yates, Medford

This letter to the editor ran in the Medford Mail Tribune Medford, Oregon on Sunday September 10. This is an idea that should fly. I am proud to live in the same valley as this writer. This is my humble effort to get their excellent idea into the national meme stream.

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Shroud of Shame

Several hundred people attempting to walk out of flooded New Orleans across an intact bridge over the Mississippi were turned back at gun-point by the sheriff of the suburb on the other side of the river and later the encampment that some of them set up on a nearby overpass was purposefully destroyed by helicopter blade wind and their food and water confiscated as they were disbanded and forced to retreat and then prevented from once again congregating in groups of more than a handful or two.

This has got to be one of the most shameful outrages of the entire week of shameful outrages perpetrated by those in authority with moral compasses so off kilter that they see property, political jockeying and personal convenience as having priority even in a time of crisis when lives are in peril.

Besides the obvious evil of forcing imperiled fellow citizens back into a life-threatening situation when relative safety was just a few blocks away, there is also the jaw-dropping fact that they had a helicopter and used it this way instead of for rescue and relief efforts. The shroud of shame belongs to all those implicated in the actions of this sheriff and over the community for which he worked if they do not repudiate this callus abuse of power and prosecute them to the full extent of the law.

Read the article linked to the title of this post. The incident on the bridge is just one in a series of incidents experienced by the authors, two EMT conventioneers trapped in NO before the storm. Their efforts to get to safety were thwarted on several occasions by the actions of those in authority. The shroud of shame belongs to each and every one of us if we continue to tolerate in positions of power and leadership such inept and morally bankrupt people.

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Drown It In the Bathtub

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years," he says, "to get it
down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
~~Grover Norquist

So will the toxic tub which is now New Orleans (and soon to be much of the Gulf of Mexico coastline) be the bathtub which Norquist can finally drown the people's government in. Or will it be the tub in which we the people can finally drown the Norquist/Corporate agenda and take back our government of, by and for we the people.

In other words, will we the people buy the Norquist/Corporate/Consevative frame that the colossal failure of government to ameliorate this is the irrefutable proof that government shouldn't be in the business of ameliorating human suffering in the first place? Or will we the people finally see the corrupt heart of cold hard greed at the center of their value system and take back our government as an arm of our community?

Will we the people fall for their frame that those who get swamped by their rising tide are willfully boatless and thus it is the 'mercy' of the invisible hand of the market that they drown by reason of their irresponsibility for not climbing onto a boat by hook or by crook? Or will we the people finally see the truth that we are responsible for each other as well as our selves for we are all in the same boat?

Will we let the Norquist/Corporate/Conservate coalition commandeer the Katrina recovery and apply their market-system morality to feed their greed? Or will we finally hold the invisible hand of the market accountable for all of the creative accounting and immoral cost externalizing which created for its very foundation both the boatless and the toxic waters they drowned in last week and which the rest of the Mississippi delta and Mexican Gulf Coastlines will be bathing in for the foreseeable future?

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New Orleans must stop pumping now!

I believe that I have just found the issue on which I have something to contribute to the discussion. Both because this aspect of the Katrina catastrophe has so far been under-reported and because I have read widely across the various science disciplines involved in comprehending the scope of this potential reverberation of Katrina's havoc. The word must go out now before it is too late. They simply must not pump that water back into the lake and river untreated. My heart breaks for the further delay that will mean for the rebuilding and the return of its residents. I am not advocating a permanent abandonment of New Orleans but I am pleading that the time be taken to do it right or else we will still be tallying the death toll of Katrina into the next century.

I saw this picture or one like it early last week and immediately understood the implications--that the water flooding New Orleans is laden with toxic chemicals from the dozen or so refineries and chemical plants surrounding the city. Add to that the decomposing food from homes, restaurants, stores and warehouses, the decomposing bodies of humans and animals and the human waste (Do I need to say it?? It rhymes with 'hit and miss? Get it?) and the chemical reactions associated with decomposition of organic components and you have a recipe for huge-scale ecological disaster. Scientists are warning that if they follow through with the plan to pump the water out of the city and back into Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi, there will be a massive contamination of the lake, river, delta and Gulf ecosystem that could have untold repercussions on the entire food chain of the Gulf region.

They also warn of dislocation of dangerous animals such as water moccasins and alligators from their normal habitat into areas where they can wreak havoc on humans and domestic animals. To be more blunt, pumping that water back into the lake and river will kill the lake and river, much of the delta and huge swathes of the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the river.

Destroying the delta will remove one of the major defenses against future hurricanes as its presence acts as a buffer which sucks some of the energy out of the storm before it reaches the towns and cities. With the delta buffer eroded or gone, the storm can even continue to gain energy from the overheated shallow waters--heated now both by sun and decomposing organic matter. With the grasses and other rooted plants dead, the ocean will reclaim the soil of the delta at an ever increasing rate.

Poisoned fish eaten by birds will kill the birds or cause birth defects or fragile shells on their eggs. The toxins will permeate the soil and the groundwater and get into the crops and the grass growing where children play and into the milk they drink and the food their nursing mothers eat. And where over the globe do elements of the Gulf food chain normally get shipped? How much mayhem will these toxins do before cause and effect is even acknowledged let alone laws and regulations invoked to prevent further contamination, if by then it is even possible short of abandonment of the entire infected ecosystem for human habitation and food cultivation?

How many years? How many decades? How many generations? How many dead babies, miscarriages, birth-defects, cancer-clusters, clusters of immune deficiencies and normally rare degenerative diseases; organ failures, rashes, chronic respiratory or digestive tract distress, intransigent infertility of human and animal, neurological disorders, learning disorders--all of which and more have been associated with exposure to petro-based products, their by-products and the plethora of chemicals commonly used throughout the processing, storing and shipping of petroleum products, which would have been stored in abundance in a region whose most prominent industry was the shipping, storage and processing of oil.

Will we ever even know which chemicals and in what quantities they were released into the environment? Or will the corporations involved claim proprietary rights to secrecy? We simply must have transparency of this entire issue for without the facts, the ingenuity of science and technology can not be applied to rectify it. Science and technology without facts will go the way of the delta without rooted plants.

Pass this into the meme stream pronto! No matter where you live on the globe, this needs to matter to you. For especially if corporations use the new 'free trade' laws to force other countries to accept shipment of contaminated food product, this would have a direct effect on you and yours for decades.

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Sidetracked

Have been seriously sidetracked this past week with the news about the Katrina Catastrophe. I was reading obsessively online all night every night and occasionally watching or listening to CNN simultaneously. I could not blog about it as I could not sort out my thoughts and feelings. Besides so many were doing so magnificently well, I knew that I could add nothing substantial to the discussion. The only thing left in my head was an endless wail interspersed with incoherent rant fugues. Like I said, Nothing of value to add to the discussion.

I felt myself slipping into the same abyss as I did after the Tsunami. A look at my archives will reveal that I was posting sparsely between Xmas and Memorial Day. The truth is, that most of what is there was actually posted between late April and early June. I just set the timestamp to reflect the approximate date I had begun to compose the essay or had read the article I was quoting. At that time I had no audience so no one was the wiser but me. So this weekend when it became apparent that I was heading down that same road again, I knew I had to nip my emotional tailspin in the bud--and now!

The first step was a reinstatement of the moratorium on MSM TV news. It is the video pictures that go into my dreams with me. It is the yakking heads trying to tell me how to perceive what I am seeing that morph me into a gibbering fool. Once I had stopped watching the horror and listening to the spin. The next step was to get some serious sleep. Sleep depravation was a large part of the disintegration of psyche. This is a pattern for me. My sleep-ability is fragile at best. Add to that my proclivity to OBSESS on whatever has my attention in its grasp!

Which brings me to step three. It was time to try to sidetrack myself. I knew that the more days that I did not post to Joystory, the harder it would get. So I had to start making plans for a post. Something. Anything. Yet anything just would not do. Nothing seemed relevant. But that was my obsession talking. I have to trust that something will occur to me eventually--an insight, an encounter with a unique idea that needs seeding into the meme stream.

Meanwhile doing some webmistressing tasks would keep my hands on the tools and my mind in the game. So I turned to my sidebar which has been languishing for months. After I had messed it up somehow I lost confidence. But then a visitor surfed on and answered my plea for help. The mistress of Alice In Wonderland Or Not offered to take a look at my template. She sent me the fix and after a careful line-by-line comparison between her fix and the existing code, I saw where my mistake had been made and thereby understood the intent of the misplaced tags. There is one pitfall I won't stumble into again.

Anyway, the upshot is that I just added a lot of new links to my sidebar. And I added categories. And I alphabetized inside each category. Collecting the links took most of a session and adding them to the template took most of another. I am not finished yet. I still have more links in each category and a couple or three more categories to add.

One of those categories is links about the Katrina cleanup and relief efforts. Both resources for up to date info and for ways to help. Have been collecting these links throughout the surfing I did from day one. I posted a short list of them early on and intended to get the rest prepared for the sidebar, but then I got intimidated by how well and how prettily some of the other bloggers, not to mention the news sites, were doing similar things. But I know that reasoning doesn't wash. I am still working on that list and hope to have it in the sidebar sometime this week, barring unforeseen developments.

One thing became clear to me as my sanity stabilized the past few days. I must find a way to become part of the solution at some level. What that might be is not clear at this moment but my heart and mind are open and reaching out. I wish to find a way to offer what resources I have, but they do not seem to amount to much. They are not monetary or even physical--time, talent, skillset. That's all I can come up with right now and I don't see a way to apply any of it beyond keeping this blog alive and viable for any opportunity that might present itself.

Meanwhile, I am going to return again to the mandate I set myself to keep a balance among the number of sub themes listed in the subtitle of Joystory. One of those sub themes has been severely neglected from the beginning as it has also been neglected in my daily life and that is my continuing Spiritual Quest. The experience of this past week has taught me that one thing if nothing else--it is imperative that I maintain a balance in my life--to stay centered mentally, to attend to my physical health and to keep my skill set honed. Because those are the minimum requirements for me to be of use to self, family and community (local, national, global).

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In One Neuron and Out the Other

Don't really have anything of substance to say this morning. But I couldn't let another session go without posting again. That is no way to generate loyal returnees. But niether is blather like this.. Last night's time was taken by the Blogcritics post.. Which was essentially a cross post from here. Can't find time for generating new content. (Well there is plenty generated in my head durring the sixteen hours I am deprived of the computer. But you know what happens to that...in one neuron and out the other.) Can't find time to sleep either. Two hours yesterday and am setting myself up for less than four again today. There were special races at the track Friday so I sat with my husband's grandma so everybody could go. Am committed to doing it again today. Wasn't interested in going myself. But it might actually have been preferable to spending four hours involuntarily watching Faux news. Grandma had surfed onto it and been captivated by the scenes of the refugees. Then she forgot that she had the remote and for hours she thought I was the one choosing to stay there while I thought she was. After that, I felt like I wanted to take a bath and I don't know how much of that was from watching all those people walking in that dirty water or listening to O'Really put words into the mouths of his field 'journalists' and 'experts'. Not to mention watching the photo ops for his lowness on his royal fly by lie and cry, hug and shrug mission. . I'm so bummed. Can you tell? Sorry this is not very professional. Am so distraught over Katrina's aftermath am having trouble thinking about anything else. And later this month my Dad is going into surgery and I will probably be leaving town and all of this behind to be with my family until he is out of the hospital again. Which any writer would understand amounts to jumping off a sinking boat without a life preserver.

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Help Katrina Victims

FEMA list of Charitable Organizations
Operation Blessing
Red Cross
Salvation Army
Soldier's Angels

I harvested these links as I surfed the news about Katrina and her aftermath. I intended to get them into my sidebar before I quit this morning but I don't dare attempt it now while pressed for time and suffering eyestrain (the template HTML font on blogger is teeny) I don't want to mess up my sidebar again so soon after a kind visitor to my post Sidebar Woes, Alice from Alice In Wonderland Or Not went to all the trouble of fixing it for me. But watch for major additions to the sidebar soon.

I have a lot to add to it but I lost my confidence after messing it up awhile back. I have a lot more blogs to add to my blog roll but I want to alphebetize it first and am also thinking about splitting it up into thematic sections to make it more helpful.

Anyway. Do help the Katrina victims in any way you can.

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An Online Writer's Community

Was pleasantly surprised to find in my inbox an unsolicited invitation to join a women writer's web ring. When I used the proffered link, I found myself at a writer's community home page where the link for the web ring was found on the side bar. I soon learned that I had to join the community before I could join the webring. I was briefly disappointed, as I was sure that I had just been duped by spam to come to a site offering something for sale.

But just moments later I was reassured because registration for Today's-Woman.net is free and most of the resources of the community are also free to registered users. Registration must be to help ensure users are 18 and over so that discussion can be conducted on a mature level. And by that they don't mean X-rated either. They announce with a SafeSurf button there is adult material on the site but elsewhere they insist that pornography, profanity and incivility are not permitted. All forums are moderated to enforce site standards of conduct.

There are monthly contests for poetry and short stories. There are book reviews. And articles written by members to aid and advise them on a number of things, not the least of which relate to writing, editing and publishing. There are discussion threads, member blog hosting, member profiles w/pics, games forums where members compete for scores against other members. Commenting on other member's writings is not only encouraged it is considered a duty. I was unable to access most of these forums, as my membership must be confirmed first. I gleaned the info off the menus, the faq, the staff's page and the homepage. I am so thrilled to have found this site and hope it lives up to its bright promise.

It was founded by Rosemarie DesRochers a writer from Ontario, Canada,
author of, She is like the wind, a collection of poetry. Her husband Shawn is the webmaster. The original concept of a women's community has expanded to include men as well. Rose admits the name no longer reflects the reality.

On the face of it--literally the surface which is all I've seen so far--it appears to be a vital, growing, indispensable resource for writers who have had enough of the lonely artist's hermit life and wish to give as much as receive encouragement and communion with others who share their passion and dedication to their art. I can't wait to get involved.

I have only one problem. Rose DesRochers has beat me to the very dream I had for Joywrite when I first conceived it in 1998. But that is really more of a blessing than a problem since I do not have the resources to make it happen, not the least of which are the exceptional tech talents and web savvy of Shawn DesRochers, who also has his own techie business, Invision-Graphics.

One of the moderators is Jayel Gibson author of the fantasy series, Ancient Mirrors Chronicles.

Any writer attracted to this concept should surf on over and consider signing up.

Update: I cross posted this over at Blogcritics where I announced that I would be blogging here about my adventures at Today's-Woman.net. Well the first adventure is apparently a snag in the automatic registration. I didn't realize that I was supposed to get an almost immediate confirmation email which contains a link for activating my account. I haven't recieved it yet and according to their faq I now need to email their admin.

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