Cautionary Tale

I have long been an advocate for adoption, but I have also long been a supporter of a woman's right to choose not to have a baby. This blog on Open Salon illustrates the pitfalls of adoption and one of the many possible outcomes. 

http://open.salon.com/blog/aspasia411/2009/07/25/stressful_life

It is an even stronger case for adequate access to birth control, especially for those women most vulnerable to unwanted pregnancy: the abused, the addicted, the mentally ill. 

Adoption is not always the best option for women who become pregnant. Even the most dedicated and courageous of adoptive families sometimes find themselves walking into the nightmare of raising children who are so damaged by the lack of healthcare for the birth mother that they will never be functional and may even be dangers to society. 

This is yet another reason that it is so important for healthcare reform. Access to adequate healthcare should be available for everyone, especially the most vulnerable women. 

Into Another Dimension

I feel like I just came back from another dimension. I traveled to France in the middle part of June to attend a workshop with poet Marilyn Kallet at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts satellite site in Auvillar, France. It was a surreal experience on several levels.

First, I traveled there alone. I've never traveled alone to a foreign country before. Flying 40,000 feet up over a big ocean without your spouse can give you the willies, especially in light of the last few weeks of plane crashes and pilot deaths. I kept thinking about what my husband would do if something happened to me and what he would do with my stuff. Visions of him sitting forlornly in the middle of my huge closet made me tear up at one point. Fortunately, the guy next to me was asleep. He was a really nice man traveling with his wife and daughter. They couldn't get seats together. Unfortunately, he worked for the airline industry and was glad to explain what he thought happened to Air France 447 over the Atlantic. Catastrophic failure. No time to signal distress. I was wide awake most of the crossing. 

When I got to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, I had to make my way by train to Orly airport on the other side of Paris for a connecting flight to Toulouse. It took a bit of tentative French to make all the right connections. I haven't spoken French in France for over 20 years. I reviewed for a couple of months before I left, but when a little stressed, my mind tends to hit the pause button too much. After a while, I got pretty good at it, though. Give me a month there, and I'd start thinking in French, which is what one really needs to do in order to function well. Yes, quite a few people speak English there, especially in the big cities, but when I travel, I like to not be such a tourist. It served me well one night at dinner when I was seated with a French couple. The wife did not speak much English, and she was gracious enough to speak French slowly. Another table mate had studied French intensively before he came, so listening to him converse with the husband in French meant that I was surrounded by this beautiful language. It tilts one's world a bit when this happens. 

I was really in rarified company during the workshop. I've been writing for a long time, and I was an English professor, but the talent pool was very deep, so I was a bit uneasy about being out of my comfortable depth. I needn't have worried. Everyone was supportive and encouraging. So not only were we surrounded by French, we were deep in our own language, our private language, our inner language. We were synchronous swimmers. That doesn't always happen in writing workshops. Sometimes there are sharks. I don't think that ever happens at VCCA.

The light is different in France. The air is so clear that everything is bathed in clarity. My photos don't quite get the light, but they come close. My picture of St. Catherine's Church near the river is exquisite, and it was the first thing I saw as I walked out the door of my little rental house, or "gite" as they are called in France. I think the reason the air is so clear is because the French have dedicated themselves to alternative power sources. I saw wind turbines everywhere. One of the strangest juxtapositions was when I was driving on the interstate to Carcassonne and saw several wind farms, but one was particularly striking. It was just behind a large cathedral on a hilltop so that this ancient structure's backdrop was this modern sculptural form. Another strange pairing was the Golfech nuclear plant just down the road from Auvillar as seen from the 13th Century walls of the town. It's disconcerting to be that close to something so potentially lethal, but the French seem to be very proficient at safety. They have to be. They derive nearly 90% of their electric power from nuclear and are Europe's leading exporter of electric power. 

While I was there, I did not have the allergy symptoms I have here in East Tennessee. I'm not allergic to pollen. I'm allergic to pollutants, small particulates, dust and mold, and  I take two strong allergy medicines for my allergies, but while I was in France, I felt healthier. I felt like I was in one of those Clariten commercials, the one where a film is peeled away, and the world is suddenly, well, clearer: "Clariten clear." Our coal fired power plants don't allow for that kind of clear. 

So I am back from my sojourn to France, back to my good and loving husband, suitcase unpacked, poems to be polished, needy cat in my lap, Kleenex box nearby. And Chilhowee Mountain stands shrouded in haze to the Southeast. 

Alcohol Was Involved

I have a new post on Open Salon about our idiotic bill allowing handguns in bars. You can find it here. 

http://open.salon.com/blog/bardgirl55/2009/05/10/alcohol_was_involved

New Post on Open Salon

I have a new post on Open Salon about my experience with a ghost. Here's the link:

http://open.salon.com/blog/bardgirl55/2009/04/13/locked_in_the_attic_by_a_ghost

I'm on Salon.com

I am currently posting on Salon.com's Open Salon. The link is 

http://open.salon.com/blog/bardgirl55

We lost a good man and a good friend last week. He was brilliant, funny, caring and loving and only 57 years old. One of the most painful parts of losing him was seeing the agony on the faces of everyone else who loved him and knowing that we'll never again see his sweet face or hear his rumbling laugh. He was a big man, and his passing leaves a big hole in our lives. The very worst part of his dying, however, was that it was so preventable. 

I said he was a big man. He was big physically as well as figuratively, and Type II diabetes had insinuated itself into his life and ultimately led to his death. It's the familiar  story of not enough exercise, too much food and loads of stress. Walking once a week is not enough. That's all he would attempt, and even that became difficult in the last couple of years. Ironically, he never did drugs, not even alcohol. He thought it made him lose control of his intellect. Food was always his comfort drug of choice, but food can be just as addictive and dangerous.

At first, when he found out he had diabetes, he lost weight and tried to exercise, but I think the stress of his job finally got to him. He didn't want to be where he was. He was a thinker, a philosopher. He wanted to teach, but his father's death threw him into a world of chaos: spreadsheets, employee relations, projections and the bottom line. So he gave up. He didn't watch what he ate and tested his blood sugar just enough to see if he could eat that piece of cake or ice cream sundae after all. He gained weight and began the slow spiral downward that led to kidney problems and finally congestive heart failure and cardiac arrest. Our big hearted friend's big heart stopped, and our hearts are broken. 

Our sweet philosopher became a statistic, a cautionary tale, one we see too often here in Tennessee. It didn't have to end like this. 

Broken Arrows

I have just read a really disturbing article on Salon.com about the Quiverfull movement in the evangelical community. The premise behind the movement is that good Christians need to have as many children as possible as weapons in the fight to make Christianity the world religion. The women in this movement are essentially thought of as baby makers and subservient to God and their husbands. It is anti-feminist, patriarchal, and just damn nuts. Here's the link: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/3/14/joyce_quiverfull/?source=newsletter. Please read it. It's an eye opener. The article illustrates my growing concern that the human race is going to birth its way right out of existence if we don't choose to limit population growth. I don't believe in government involvement in family planning. We're not China, but it may come to the point where someone needs to be sure the children in these families are well taken care of and take appropriate measures if they aren't. 

The gist of the article is this: the movement itself is growing exponentially, but the toll it is taking on women is growing as well. Many are opting out after realizing the hardship it drops on the older children when the mother either breaks down or suffers illness and injury from so much childbirth and caregiver stress. If they drop out, they are, of course, shunned, made to feel like failures and sinners against God, and many lose their children in custody battles with the fathers. The few who don't lose their children then have the hardship of bringing them up as single mothers. It's a no win situation unless they can get help. Let's hope they find it. 

A Texas Travesty

I subscribe to Salon.com's newsletter. An article titled, "Texas: The State of (Mis) education" caught my eye. I read it and was absolutely appalled. Apparently, the big message provided by the abstinence only sex ed literature given to students there is that if they have premarital sex, they will die. They will get an STD, commit suicide out of shame or die outright from a disease. No info on how to prevent that (condoms can fail, you know) or realistic advice about what really happens when you choose to have sex. No, just attempt to scare 'em to death. The article goes on to say that Texas has the third highest rate of teen pregnancy in the nation. Imagine that. 

One can only hope that with this new, enlightened administration coming in, we will see sex education improved for teens, all education really. One thing President Obama said in his speech Tuesday night that gave me real hope for our children was that he wanted to see parents more involved in their children's education. Let's hope they have the good sense to realize that abstinence only misinformation does a disservice to their children. A frank talk with teenagers about their options goes a lot farther in preventing teen pregnancy than any threat or scare tactic ever could. 

Spook Stories and Poetry

I gave a talk a couple of weeks ago for one of our local  writer's organizations. I had precise notes, samples of my writing, and samples of other people's work. It was all nice and organized and should have been easy to present. As usual, I got out of sync with my notes, read a few of my poems (not the best ones), read a short short story (more about that later), and completely forgot to read the works of others that I like. Try as I might, if one thing throws me off the least little bit, I cannot find my way back. 

I was initially put into a bit of a panic because I forgot my reading glasses and had to go to the car and get my bifocal sunglasses. This would have been okay but for the fact that a transformer had blown in the area and plunged the venue where I was speaking into utter darkness save for an emergency light near the door. A standing podium was found so that I could read under the light. Fortunately, the lights came back on just as I was getting ready to read at the podium. I moved back to the lectern  at the table where I could spread out and began reading my short story, a fictionalized piece about the ghost we had at our house in Fountain City. The actual word, "ghost," comes a few paragraphs into the story. Just as the word left my mouth, the lights went out again. We had a good laugh, and I moved back to the podium near the door. The story ends with the words, "And then the lights went out." That's when the lights came back on. More laughter. The lights finally stayed on, and I muddled through the rest of the presentation. The folks were gracious and warm, but I felt totally bumfuzzled and off my stride. I wanted to end with a wonderful poem in honor of John Updike, who died recently, but I forgot. 

All this angst is really about the fact that I am terrified when speaking in front of my peers. I was a college English professor for many years and had no trouble at all teaching in front of a bunch of students. Even the first day of class was no biggie. I even managed to impress them by memorizing their names the first day. It's an easy trick really. My secret. At any rate, all my confidence and organization goes out the window in front of an audience of other writers and readers. I seem to go to "anutha zone" as Dr. John says. I think the problem is that I forget to actually follow my notes. I look up and see those expectant faces and just start to get flustered. I think the trick will be to do more speaking. Of course, I have to do more writing first. 

Sigh. 

Make-Up as a Lie

A friend of mine commented recently that women who put on make-up are liars. It was in response to a photo I had sent with a warning that I didn't have even blush on. I didn't say anything in response at the time, but it started to work on me later. I'd never thought of cosmetics in that way. To me, make-up is just like jewelry. It's ornamentation. It's the oldest form, perhaps, of human art. When aboriginal people put on colored daubs of clay, or tattooed their faces, or even ritually scarred them (something that has always given me the heebee jeebies), they are exhibiting a most personal form of art. I would imagine that personal art preceded even the cave paintings of France or Australia. 

My favorite example of this art comes from the Wodaabe people of Niger. Interestingly, it is the men who wear the elaborate make-up in order to impress the women. They take great care in applying it and smile as widely as they can to show their teeth. Healthy teeth, healthy man. They also jump into the air as high as they can. They remind me of beautiful male birds trying to impress their mates. Good call. These guys probably imitated the behavior they saw thousands of years ago. If it works for birds....

If you look at a woman's magazine these days, a great number of the ads are for cosmetics and perfume. The models wearing the make-up, unless they are of a certain age (I hate that term. What does it mean really?), are wildly colored, but the colors are artfully done, for the most part. I can hear one friend of mine howling at this now. She mostly likely thinks they look like clowns, but I like the face as canvas (someone else's, not mine. I'm of that certain age). 

Cosmetics serve a dual purpose, of course. It's also meant as a seduction tool, just like the Wodaabe men. All good students of anthropology know that primates are attracted to the color red. Red lips. Red butts in the case of some species. Which is where I draw the line when it comes to human lips. It seems these days that women think that the plumper the lips, the better. Men love plump lips. Or is it that they have that primitive response to something big and red, like butts. Just a thought. 

I'll continue to add the small bit of rouge, eye make-up and lipstick occasionally, mostly because I love a bit of color on my now pale (no sun for me!) canvas. 

A Wonderful Day

It is truly a wondrous day today. President Obama signed his first piece of legislation today, and it was the Lily Ledbetter Law. (He has signed official documents and Executive Orders, but not legislation passed by Congress.) Lily worked for Goodyear for two decades and found out through an anonymous tip that she had been making less than her male counterparts doing the same job. She filed a lawsuit and won, but her suit was overturned by a higher court, so she went to the Supreme Court. She lost. By one vote. That one vote was Justice Alito, newly appointed by Bush. That grave wrong was righted today. She won't see a penny of the $2oo,ooo she was owed, but she will have the satisfaction of knowing that all women in America, all people looking for fairness, no matter their race, gender or religion, will be able to have salaries in keeping with the real American Way. 

A change has come. A change has come. Oh, happy day. 

The Dance

I don't know how many of you saw "The Dance" last night at the Inaugural Neighborhood Ball, but it was one of the sweetest moments of a very sweet day. It was a good indicator of what kind of a man we have as President now. If you didn't see it, President Obama and First Lady, Michelle, danced to Beyonce's wonderful version of "At Last" from her movie, Cadillac Records. She was hard pressed to keep from crying during the song. A lot of that had to do with the look of utter happiness and love on the faces of the two dancers. They're warm, loving, real. 

We cannot know how our country will fare under this new leader by the experience of one day or one dance, but after seeing the love returned to this brilliant, articulate and genuinely loving man, I really do have that previously elusive feeling of Hope.  

At Last

For those who marched, sat in, fought and died to see this day may we give our gratitude and honor. Etta James sang it best: At Last.

Congratulations and many thoughts and prayers go out to our new President of the Truly United States of America, Barak Obama. 

A House in Disarray

My mother would be appalled. I have started the arduous process of dismantling her house, dismantling her very ordered life. I feel like I'm violating her memory as I violate her closets, her dresser drawers, her bedside table. There was very little out of place until I came pawing through her things looking for the bits of her I want to keep, sorting out the everyday from the buried treasures of her life. 

Her house was always clean, with everything put away out of sight. She hated anyone taking anything out and not putting it right back where it belonged. Right now, the contents of her bedroom closet are scattered on her bed to be sorted out. The contents of the kitchen drawers and cabinets are in boxes on the floor, and the china cabinet contains only those things with no sentimental value. Her beloved Christmas decorations, many of them I gave her,  lie on the dining room table or on the couch in the living room waiting to be boxed or sold. When I left this afternoon, I could almost hear her admonishing me to put it all back when I was done. 

The walls are becoming bare, bereft of the paintings I did for her or a friend had done for her. The antique clock I bought her is in the back seat of my car. So is the fern stand I got at an auction down the street. Boxes of seashells we gathered when I was little wait by the door to be loaded later. A box of kitchen gadgets, six pairs of scissors, and better knives than mine is in the very back of the car. Vintage mixing bowls and old silver pieces wait on the counter to be boxed. The quilts my grandmothers made and that kept me warm when I was a child are waiting on the "big" bed in the guest room. 

She was a very private person, really, even with me, especially with me. As she got older and more dependent, she seemed to want to withhold some of herself in order to feel there was something remaining over which she had some control. Her finances were of particular concern. Now, here I am finding bags and boxes full of old receipts, bank books, statements and forms. If I wanted, I could follow her life for the last 15 years or so. She was that thorough. The bags and boxes may be scattered around the house, but the contents of each are all in order from January to December of every year.

Because she was housebound by choice, embarrassed that someone might see her infirmities, she spent a great deal of time watching television. Her favorite station was HSN. She'd order face creams and beauty potions for skin that needed neither. Right up until near her last breath, her skin was porcelain, with a natural blush.  Only during the last moments did the color drain away and the bluish cast of cyanosis take over. I've found boxes of the produts hidden away in drawers, in the tops of closets, in the backs of cupboards. She hid them from me because I had stupidly told her she didn't need them when actually she did. She needed the friendly voice on the telephone telling her that these concoctions would bring back the dewy beauty of youth. If she was still beautiful, then she was also still young. Her infirmities would vanish, and she could go on like they never happened. She was always asking, "Who would have ever thought this would happen to me?" I seriously think that she felt she was immune to disease and disability because she was good, beautiful, and determined. 

I have collected all that bottled hope, much of it unopened, and put it out for other women to

pick over and buy. My mother would be appalled.