Donkey Tales, part 3

P.S. (that is, pre-script, post-script): I promise that if I feel compelled to become a political blogger after this election, I will subdivide and leave those thoughts accessible by link, but otherwise utterly ignorable and avoidable.

As I compose these “Donkey Tales,” it occurs to me to ask: Why am I not simply pro-Obama, instead of also being anti-Romney? Why do I not present my case from a standpoint of highlighting what I find right about one, versus what I find wrong about the other? Because, sometimes that’s what it’s about. You support many of your guy’s initiatives, so you want to keep him, but it’s difficult to describe what’s right about how he’s running things without mentioning how wrongly things could go in another direction. So, forgive me. I’m not trying to be a basher of people, but I do think certain policies or attitudes are worthy of a good bashing.

Today I will be bashing the fingers, and possibly other parts, of anyone who would like to legislate whether I, my daughters, or any other woman, may control our own bodies. Because it’s none of their beeswax.

Floating around our house is a bumper sticker (not currently affixed to anyone’s car) which says “Stop the War on Women,” and, in smaller print, “rock the slut vote.” Fox News insists there is no “war on women,” and I’ll admit, it’s a little hyperbolic, just as is the larger-than-necessary deal that was made of Mitt’s “binders full of women” remark.

However, if you canvass the most vocal group of right-leaning legislators these days, you’ll come away with some conflicting contentions. One would be that your “right to choose” ended when you got pregnant. Ok. So, how about the fact that the guy hoping to be VP, along with many of his friends, won’t even extend you the right to choose pregnancy or not? Because rape, you see, is “another form of conception,” and they say you’ve gotta have the baby.

I’m the worst pro-choicer you’ll ever meet, because I absolutely, absolutely detest and decry the argument that it’s just a zygote until it’s born. Nah, it’s a person. Which makes me a pretty horrible person, maybe, for allowing women the legal right to seek abortion. But that’s where I have to stand--her body, her jurisdiction.

I’ve gone into more detail on this topic elsewhere, but I’ll keep it brutal and simple here--life is far, far too complicated for you to tell other people whether or not they have to have a baby. Maybe you are wonderfully responsible, and would never get pregnant at a terrible time. If so, you’re better than most women I know, myself included. Nope. Life is too complicated, and women have to decide for themselves what they can or cannot deal with. Personally, I have been close enough to the frayed end of my emotional rope that I could have considered ending a pregnancy, and that was without the dire economic situations faced by many. Instead, I chose an expensive, not covered by my insurance, permanent fix. Not all that accessible.

I came into this world with a hair-trigger negative response to authoritarian male behavior. I don’t know why. Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I’d run off and join the Amazons rather than live under people trying to reverse women’s ease of access to (not just abortion) but birth control and low-cost healthcare services. (read: Planned Parenthood.) Sorry, buddy, that stuff’s not optional.

It will not enhance our society if we fix things so women find themselves in trouble too often. It just won’t. Ok, so maybe I can’t sway your thinking on this one (as if I could on any other point!) There’s where I stand.

Because this article expresses the main points so well, I'm appending it here.

Donkey Tales, part 2

I don’t know where to start. Fine, I pick healthcare. Ok, let’s look at this: For the first time, a president has successfully pushed through legislation that makes a strong first effort to allow reasonable healthcare access to all Americans, fair and square.

Mitt says he wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act on “day one.” And replace it with what Mitt? Mitt won’t say. Instead he says “I know what it takes to create jobs.” Because that’s what he usually says.

Maybe, if you’ve always had secure, fairly comprehensive, employment-based insurance, it will be hard to understand why I find the stance of Mitt and Paul to be quite upsetting. I could afford to buy better coverage if I wanted, but what I currently have is basically a catastrophic, high-deductible plan. It was cheaper, and I was accustomed to having, as a family, fairly crappy insurance, because that’s what was available through our business. I paid plenty out of pocket, so it didn’t seem a huge new burden to continue doing so. But here is why I have any insurance at all: Because the surgeon who excised my skin cancer more or less lied and put that it was benign. “Benign for insurance purposes,” he said. At that moment, the statement confused me. But I later realized that had he not done that, and should I change insurance, I would have a pre-existing condition and be either denied, or charged exorbitantly. I have friends who actually have or are at risk of being denied coverage for things as basic as blood pressure or ADD. IF Jeff had not qualified for Medicare, he almost certainly would have been uninsurable, and his hospitalization for med stabilization would have been absurd. (Did I mention that R&R like to make threatening noises about Medicare too?)

So, do I have a problem? Do I feel “entitled?” Should I just accept that the marketplace is a wondrous thing, Blue Cross/Blue Shield loves its clients (as long as they’re healthy,) and if one more strike gets recorded in my health book and Golden Rule drops me...well, that’s the price of life dearie?

Obamacare isn’t perfect. I would hope that tweaks could occur as necessary, as time goes on. But I don’t care what you think about “personal responsibility.” People getting shut out of the healthcare system because they have asthma is part of the “Believe in America” scenario? Really? Apparently so. I’m sorry, I do not find that acceptable.

(and if you think I'm exaggerating the problem, look some stuff up. You can start here.)

Donkey Tales, part 1.

I thought I was going to save these ruminations until after November 6. But it keeps biting at me, so I’m going to try to articulate--for myself, if for no one else--why the general elections of 2008 and 2012 have mattered to me on a scale that is a pretty new thing for me.

The truth is, there are many themes and it’s hard to pick one, lest it seem to be THE theme. And I want to be clear--this decade of U.S. political jostling is, for me, a rope of many fibers, but I can only describe one at a time.

Here is one: It IS about race. The fact that I reject race as a legitimate concept notwithstanding (please see The Journey of Man, narrated by Spencer Wells, for more info,) the notion of it exists as a bugaboo in American culture.

I remember some stuff vividly. I’m in 1st grade. There is one black girl in my class. Her name is Barbara. One day Mrs. Randall has Barbara stand in front of the class so she (Mrs. Randall) can give a short speech on how we (the rest of us) need to be kind, open-minded, and realize we’re all people regardless of skintone. I am, during this speech, acutely, empathically, aware of how much Barbara wants to disappear into the floor. It is painful. Hop, skip, jump to 5th grade. I have a friend named Michelle. We don’t live in close neighborhoods, so we’ve just bonded as buddies in certain classes, like the one where we feed bits of paper into the air conditioning unit (which Michelle has dubbed “Rosie,”) instead of doing our self-paced math cards. One day, in our large, mod, 70s “open space” classroom, Michelle and I are seated at a table with a cute redhead named Charlotte. I do not know Charlotte, but I have admired her curly red hair. Then Charlotte opens her mouth. She says, while both Michelle and I are sitting there: “I don’t like n*****s. My father told me not to associate with n*****s.” (Did I mention that my friend Michelle is black?) Cue openable floor again. I can feel that Michelle wants to disappear into it. I am 10 years old. I am stunned. In years to come, I think of all manner of fitting or inappropriate comebacks, but I am 10. I sit there in stunned silence.

More memories. I am, I don’t know, 7, 8, 9, 10. I am at my grandmother’s house in rural Virginia. The black people come and clean. Before lunch, I go into the kitchen. The black man who works in the garden is eating lunch at a small worktable. We, the family, eat a fancy sit-down lunch in the dining room. If we ring the bell (and there are several pretty bells...hard to resist ringing them when you’re 8...a young black woman peeks around the swinging door from the kitchen to see what we need. But we didn’t need anything. I just wanted to ring the bell, and no one stopped me soon enough.

But I did not grow up in rural Virginia, I only visited. In suburban Maryland in the 60s and 70s, you were aware of civil rights struggles, and socioeconomic disparities. But you also knew that they were problems to be resolved, not conditions to passively accept. So these racial “norms,” in rural Virginia, jarred me as much as Charlotte the redhead’s odious speech. I had come into this world with a glaring awareness of my unexceptionality, and I finish childhood with a certain sense that--as much as I know I’m nothing special--I LOOK like the privileged class, and I assume people will hate me for it. It is a time and place crossed with my unfortunate social awkwardness, but I assume that boys will be indifferent because I’m boring and flat-chested, teachers will ignore me because I’m not as smart as my older siblings, and non-white people will dislike me because I’m white.

I have gotten rather away from presidential elections, haven’t I? Let me try to take a short-cut back. Can you truly not sense the insidious creep of racial bigotry in the GOPs strident march right-wards? I realize there are other things--partial ownership of the party by the religious Right, lingering Cold War era paranoia about “socialism"--but I knew the racial part was there, and so did you. The photo of an empty chair hanging from a tree that some yahoo displayed in his yard in Texas, following the RNC, simply illustrated an ugly sentiment that the ugliest of humans have decided it’s now ok to bring to the party.

What do you say about this? Well, you start by saying that you are well aware this sort of ickiness does not, by a longshot, apply to all who vote Republican. And then you say--"John Sununu, you’re a moron." Of course Colin Powell did not endorse Obama because they’re both black. Also, I will be voting for Obama once again, NOT because I’m trying to correct for my lifetime of white guilt. But...and this is a big but...I am overwhelmed by the sense that substantial portions of the GOP voting block consists of white people who liked their Dick & Jane world, like their Wonder bread, and are not ok with an expanded diet that includes Ethiopian injera. Just listen to Newt Gingrich equate black people and food stamps. Then Rick Santorum does it too.

Half the staff who care, daily, for my husband Jeff (in his dementia "neighborhood" at Sunrise) are black. They are the best caregivers (all of them...all ethnicities,) I’ve ever heard of, and I cannot even think of ways to express my appreciation of them. For prominent members of the GOP to imply, in discussing the socioeconomic issues the U.S. is constantly grappling with, that there is something inherently missing in the work ethic of people who weren’t born in homes where you ring a bell at lunch, crushes my feelings on behalf of the people taking care of Jeff. And it frankly makes me want to punch those rich suits who think all “real Americans” are on their side in the face.

There is much more than I can say about this. And I end this bit here mindful, as I said, that I don’t want to give the impression that my gratitude that the current President has finally diverged from the Dick & Jane story line is why he will again get my vote, but it adds extra sparkles to it. I'm afraid though, that many Americans are still feeling a little shaken by the inexorable shift in U.S demographics. Our first non-white president, and more and more folks speaking Spanish all around...how to quell the anxiety? No matter how many times Mitt shakes the Etch-a-Sketch on his "beliefs," no matter how much he won't tell us, and no matter how many economists say his "math" doesn't work, he looks and acts the most like Father from the Dick & Jane books, and that offers at least a little comfort.

Next, I will address other parts--women’s issues, economic parity. Maybe I will begin to make sense to my mother, but it's probably just one of those things where our lenses were just forged in different glassworks.

Tiptoe through the Weltschmerz

Last night, at songwriting class, I sang & played Monster Dinner in front of Tom Paxton. It was one of those things where I didn’t have to admit that I had a song ready. I could have just sat in that room of 12 people, and let the few others who had one go. But the thing is, in the rearview mirror, would you rather say “I decided not to perform in front of Tom Paxton because I knew I’d be my crappiest,” or would you rather say, “I did it, and I was my crappiest?”

Well, if there’s one thing that’s true about me these days, it’s that I have long since given up trying to hide my abject pointlessness* from the world...I mean, hell, you might as well be honest about what you are, right? It’s not like you self-selected your genes. I guess. Maybe you did. I guess we’ll find out later. Anyway, I did it knowing full well that nerves would choke out any capacity to function, and so they did. So it was bad. Yeah, yeah, thank you very much. (*and don’t worry about the pointlessness remark. I may self-loathe just a tiny, tiny bit, but I do it with a certain fond acceptance.)

I’m taking songwriting class because it interests me greatly, but I’m beginning to laugh at my being there. Cathy Fink is a Grammy winning musician, and she heads up this 8 week course. Last night, before class got rolling, she noticed that my uke case says “Collings,” on it and, being knowledgable, she wanted to see my uke. So I got it out and let her noodle out a few notes of a caliber far beyond my reach this lifetime. She admired it. She said “two-thousand?” I said no, and gave her the actual price paid which was [not-that-much.] But the thing is...she now knows what a nice uke I have, and the level of crapitude with which I play it, and it’s a little embarrassing for someone to have that combination of facts about you.

But then again, I feel like a weirdo in The Writers’ Center, Bethesda branch, in general, so feeling weird in songwriting class is ok. The WC is housed in what looks to be an old library building. It’s full of literary journals, and just the right amount of down-at-the-heelsness, and all sorts of evidence that it’s haunted by souls, both living and dead, who are ever so much more legitimate in their right to exist there than I am. Just flip through a journal and you’re faced with a dozen 30 year olds who are being lionized for some brilliant accomplishment or other. I hate being around other writers, actually. (I had to think about whether I could use the word “other,” but I did it anyway.) I could pretend I’m worthy because I built 4 books myself, but...you know.

Tom Paxton is about to turn 75, and he has wiry, curly, stick-outy grey hair, a Gilligan cap, a Land’s End fleece pullover (in addition to other clothing,) and Harry Potter glasses. He said my song was “terrific.” He said it needed a refrain or chorus. I will write one. (Ok, he also suggested changing the line about "inviting your boss" to something more cohesive with the theme of the verse. Makes sense too.)

A couple of the guys in class did their songs. Gerry, who looks like the nerdiest example of a middle-aged engineer, did a great job with his entertaining country-style song, and David performed his song with some mean uke accompaniment. (His lyrics otoh, in the opinion of this wordsmith, need some serious editing.) His uke chops merely highlighted the preposterousness of me having custody of a Collings-made anything. Ok, yeah, so be it.

But here I am, fifty years old (almost more than 50,) with nothing else to try but what I’m trying, and I’m surely not going to pretend I’m self-actualized just to make you feel better. Thing is, Jeff’s job was to absorb and buffer my crazy, which was there in full force pre-Jeff and is back to stay, I guess. Which is why I just own it now. I think Jeff tried to help though. Apparently, he fell last night, and he got up this morning with a bruise the size and color of an large eggplant on his right hip. His carers were so concerned he’d broken it that we spent all morning in the ER at Anne Arundel Medical Center. It was not broken...just monster-bruised. It’s tricky to get a person in stage 6 Alzheimer’s through x-rays. Don’t try it sometime. He’d been sent out in an ambulance, but (as I figured) I had to drive him home to Sunrise. It went ok. His hand would hover near the door handle now and then, and I’d hit the lock button obsessive-compulsively, for good measure. Got him back. Fed him chicken, potatoes, and sweet potato pie. I think he’s pretty happy, and he’s got Tylenol on order. I assume that he was, in some intuitive way, trying to make me feel less redundant.

This weeks assignment: a song that puts a new twist on a trite topic. I should go with that Brady Bunch idea--where they incorporated Peter's awkward changing voice into their song. I'll use random mismatched chords, and sing in falsetto like Tiny Tim. That should work.