Gina Harris's Blog, page 30

For the birds! (reading month)

It all started when my sister noticed a new exhibit:

"Celebrating Birds of the Pacific Northwest", at the Oregon Historical Society, through November 26th, 2023

https://www.ohs.org/museum/exhibits/celebrating-birds-of-the-pacific-northwest.cfm 

It's just photos of local birds, but we like birds and we like OHS, so we were definitely going to go.

It occurred to me, though, that I might get more enjoyment out of it if I read this other book on my reading list first: 

Must-See Birds of the Pacific Northwest: 85 Unforgettable Species, Their Fascinating Lives, and How to Find Them by Sarah Swanson and Max Smith

I know that was a good selection because one of the first photos I saw was of a Green Heron -- featured in the book -- and I recognized it instantly. Previously I had not been familiar with it. 

Also common between the book and the exhibit, while being new to me, were Townsend's Warblers, Lazuli Buntings, and Tundra Swans. They are all now in the spreadsheet of local places where one might see them.

There were some gorgeous photos. One might think that the Wood Duck was over-represented; whereas each other species appears in one shot, there are three of the Wood Duck. However, they are really good pictures. One shows the bird from the back, on the water, with wings spread, and it's almost abstract.

So I do recommend the exhibit, and it goes well with that book, which is available through the Washington County Library System.

However, I am the type to get easily pulled into things. I happened to remember these two other bird books that I also ended up reading before we went to the exhibit:

Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans by John Marzluff and Tony Angell

The Thing With Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human by Noah Strycker 

The crow book is strongly grounded in neurology. That higher level of difficulty may not appeal to everyone, but Corvids are so charming that it creates a lot of appeal.

Strycker is a Eugene native, and his book is a collection of essays focusing on one trait, and one bird species used to explore it. Some of the essays are quite moving. 

While I was reading those, I remembered one other book. I did not get to read it until after we saw the exhibit, but I had already checked it out by then.

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson

Hanson is also a resident of the Pacific Northwest, though a bit further North. He explores the design and features and functions of the feather, which is quite miraculous. 

It may have been the best of the books.

I don't know how much I was thinking of these other books while at the exhibit, but they were interesting and reading them closely together does seem to help the information settle in my mind.

This is why I also watched a webinar on the electric grid and bird issues:

"Birds and Transmission: West Region Webinar" by Audubon Rockies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07yE_8imVjA

(This was less bird-centric, but relates to sustainability which is important to me.)

However, if I am going to mention bird books I have read, I really need to mention one more:

Peterson Guide to Bird Identification --- in 12 Steps by Steve N.G. Howell and Brian L. Sullivan (2018)

Normally field guides are for a specific area and the expected species, but this is going back a step before, or maybe a step forward, to help you use those field guides more effectively. 

All of which may beg the question, am I a bird watcher?

No. I do not go out looking for birds. I do look for everything when I am out and about, and I want to know what I see. Therefore, when a Wilson's Warbler appeared in our yard and I could not recognize it, we made a trip to the Audubon Society on Cornell where a big part of my motivation was finding out what that little yellow bird was. (And it worked!)

Reading about those 85, they were all ones that could be seen in Oregon, but many of them could be seen right around here. I started not wanting to forget, which is why I started adding it to a spreadsheet. I thought that maybe I should start tracking at least the ones in the spreadsheet down.

That is probably a bit less than half of them, because some would be much harder to find, but I have about 40 that should be very doable, and yet...

I can see myself becoming totally obsessive about this. I don't really need that. 

I am not going to do anything with it right away.

For another point of interest, one of the Must-See birds was the Sooty Shearwater, which has a long migratory route. I started wondering if those were the birds we saw when we were on Phillip Island for the Penguin Parade. Apparently, though, those were Short-Tailed Shearwaters, which do sometimes end up on the Oregon Coast, but less commonly.

There are ways in which the world is both big and small.

The next mourning

Getting back to CODA... the title is an acronym for child of deaf adults. These particular adults have two children, a son who is also deaf, and the protagonist, Ruby, who hears and who also loves to sing.

One of the scenes that stuck with me was the family attending a choir performance. A friend tells them that Ruby is good, and they can see other people being moved, and they can clap when they see the other people clapping, but there is so much that they miss.

It occurred to me that they could have had someone signing as an accommodation, but it felt terrible to me that they could not share this important aspect of Ruby's life.

Then, that is not completely true either. Ruby's father is a fan of rap, loving the bass lines. Later, he is able to feel the vibrations of Ruby's singing by putting his fingers along her throat, and she does sign a song for them during her Berklee audition. 

Beyond that, they are a really connected family who love and support each other, as well as annoying each other in very normal ways. As the one who can hear, Ruby has a lot of responsibility, which grates on her, but has also given her confidence and growth.

It appears to have been the right film at the right time.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/08/black-music-month-2023-serendipity.html

Incidentally, I still cry at movies pretty easily, especially with home and family topics. There isn't that feeling of being overwhelmed to the point of hysteria, but the tears are still there.

Some of my frustration with my mother had been that I felt like she never really understood me. At least that was how I perceived it. 

There has actually been a lot of increased understanding there as recently as Saturday. It does still feel like it can be hard to explain. On the plus side, most of it ends up relating more to my father, which helps with some of the guilt.

I mentioned long ago how my sisters and I tend to over-explain things. We realized once while talking together that it was because of our father. He was easily offended so we would try and make it clear that we were not blaming or insulting or anything like that, but it never worked. That was because he was so determined that nothing could ever be his fault, and he was a jerk. 

Mom was not like that, but I still never felt understood by her. Some of that was probably that we were in fact pretty different, but that had its own similarities. 

Mom obsessed about cleaning the way I do about reading. There was a level on which I thought part of the problem with her not getting me was related to her not being interested in the intellectual, but it's not that she was unintelligent either. 

Those were very different interests, but I see now some similarity in how it functioned for us. I have kind of thought (and still do) that as I gain knowledge about everything, that is how I will be able to understand and fix things. That's how I try to establish safety and comfort. 

For Mom, housekeeping was something she knew how to deal with. She could not make her husband be kind or respectful or faithful, and she had limited control over her children, but she was an amazing housekeeper. I think it gave her a similar assurance. I can't blame her for that.

I know she worried about being stupid, and about not being a good mother, so she would hear those things even if they weren't being said; the same way I heard her nagging me for having a cluttered room and being fat more than she actually said it. 

That made it hard to face the lack I felt from her; it didn't make her a bad mother, but it related to her mothering of me. Then if it did come down to the intellectual difference, what an incredible jerk I would be to hold that against her.

She would want things from me that were hard to give, and not seem to acknowledge that. A lot of that was shortly after coming home from my mission and then after college, when I was newly working and the bulk of my money was going to family needs. It felt wrong to resent it, and I wanted to help, but it was so frustrating. 

Then, I remember once she was mad I was leaving on a vacation; I filled up three yard debris containers trying to get those stupid butterfly bushes (never plant those) into some semblance of order, and it wasn't enough.

The refrain that would come up in various family arguments would be whether I needed endless thanks or praise, which again, makes it sound like I am impossible, but honestly, there weren't many thank you's or compliments. Shouldn't there have been some?

But we were not a family that did that. We didn't really even say "hello" or "goodbye" as people came and went.

I knew that Mom's philosophy was that you correct your kids, but that they should know the good stuff about themselves and you don't need to tell them that. I also knew that was pretty common, and thought about it when observing her family. 

There's a limit to what you can know watching other people -- even extended family -- but it occurred to me that there was so much evident warmth and love that maybe they didn't state those things vocally, and everyone just knew.

My problem was that I didn't know. 

There was a level at which I liked myself and didn't want to be anyone different. I don't know how that happened, but I am grateful for it. 

There was also a deep sense of there being something wrong with me that I didn't know how to fix, except by trying to fix everything for everyone else first. Then maybe I would be worthy, except not if I didn't lose weight.

That mostly came from Dad, though certainly others contributed. 

The understanding I wanted from Mom was for her to fix that.

While I can see how thank yous and compliments could feel like they would help with that, I don't know that any compliment could have been big enough.  

I know she loved me and was proud of me, even if I didn't feel it. I don't think she could have fixed that on her own, and I can make peace with that.

I understand that might sound kind of horrific, but I swear I felt a weight lift off of me when I did realize it, like maybe the compression was removed on a few vertebrae.

We are not ideal people -- certainly no one with the last name Harris is -- but I believe in healing.

I also believe that emotional intelligence is worth pursuing.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/08/more-about-my-mother.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/08/unlimited-carry-on.html

Black Music Month 2023: Final Thoughts

I can't help but feel like using that "final thoughts" is setting me up to have subsequent thoughts. 

As it is, there are things that I know I could include with this reading segment (which ended up spanning much more than a month), but I am not because I think they will go with other things better. 

Right to Rock: The Black Rock Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race by Maureen Mahon
Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll by Maureen Mahon
Rip It Up: The Black Experience in Rock 'n' Roll by Kandia Crazy Horse
Blues People: Negro Music in White America by Amiri Baraka 

First of all, let me say how much I enjoyed discovering Maureen Mahon, especially in the way it happened. I read Right to Rock (2004) which came from her student experiences, and then saw references to Black Diamond Queens (2020) and decided to read that. 

I enjoyed her writing anyway, but in that order, seeing someone still preparing for their career, and then more established, and knowing also that they are fairly young and that there could be new works coming... that was really cool. Often as I am reading something I wonder what they would think of later developments, but here there is the chance of continuing to learn.

These last four books are bound by a common thread. It would be easy to call it music snobbery, but there is more to it than that.

Chronologically, it would start with Blues People, where there is a divide between which Black people appreciate blues versus jazz, or other types of music. It is roughly a matter of highbrow or lower class. Blues can be very sexual, and so polite company might feel awkward about it, but there was an influence from what was perceived as white taste and respectability.

Moving forward, when we get into rock, then there is at times this sense that rock is for white people. Yes, white people are notorious for automatically classifying music as R&B or Hip Hop if the performers are Black, but sometimes that was reflected back at Black rockers, even though it was a craft that white people stole from Black people anyway.

Now, there is an interesting class distinction there too. Transcending race, "garage rock" requires a garage, or somewhere a beginning band can practice and play and be loud, which is easier to find when you have more space.

Then, of course (especially in Mahon's work) there is the sexism and misogyny and misogynoir that women get when they are trying to succeed in a "man's" world.

Those are not the only factors; one things that seems to be a real obstacle to acceptance is being too different from the other contemporary music. Having some similarities but putting a new spin on them can work well, but some sounds were so different they were outright rejected; a few years later they might have worked.

Often, though, race and gender were obstacles to success, or were held against musicians socially, and generally made life more difficult.

Obviously, tastes vary, and that's fine. There may still be great value in listening again, and examining that tendency to reject.

Sometimes it is racist or classist or sexist, or even all of the above.

We don't need that.

Unlimited carry-on

This one is going to be harder to explain. I may have to spread it out over multiple posts.

I think I mentioned earlier this series of dreams where my mother was gradually becoming more impaired and then disappearing, with more detail about her disappearance. They were getting progressively more horrible. That seems like pretty clear symbolism that as her dementia progresses, I get a clearer picture of that loss. 

There was recently a new dream that was much more positive. I was taking my mother back to see her family, and trying to remember my way to one aunt's apartment. This particular aunt died shortly after our last visit. Just as I remembered where to go, we got to a lobby and an elevator door opened and my aunt was there. 

I had not been worried about my aunt being dead, but I had been worried about whether Mom would recognize her and be happy to see her. They instantly embraced and were very happy and that was okay.

Yes, fairly clear symbolism there too, but this is good, and it corresponds to my beliefs, which still does not mean that event will be all happy feelings, I know.

One reason I hedged on accepting that meaning for the dream is that I was also traveling with my sisters and our father. 

Now, you can argue that my sisters and I are on this journey together, so it makes sense that they are there; not so for Dad! What was he doing there?

Another frequent dream occurrence that I don't believe I have written about is where I am trying to make my way into or home from work (and over a decade later, it is usually Intel), but I have my mother and I am trying to drag her along to my cubicle or get her situated, and it makes things harder.

She has not been my primary responsibility for a little over three years, but she was for a long time, and she still takes up a lot of my worry (and the hospice calls do come when I am working most of the time) so, yes, there is a way in which I am still carrying her with me.

I realized that my father is still always with me. I have made a lot of progress, but the impact of the years and the ways they have shaped my path are all still there.

This is why they call it baggage; it travels with you. Sometimes it is heavy.

For review, previously a lot of my baggage was this sense from before I can remember that there was something wrong with me, along with a sense of needing to try and fix everything and take care of everybody. I eventually was able to attribute that to misplaced responsibility for my father's own unhappiness with... himself, but it was always blamed on everyone else; I just took it more personally.

The way I dealt with that was trying not to feel anything, but there would be times (mostly during movies) when I could sense this deep pain, and it felt like it would just destroy me if I let it all out.

Sorting that out was important, and it has led to me feeling things more, without stuffing them down. This leaves room to feel other things.

What I am remembering now is my big frustration with my mother, from before all this, when her mind was still sharp. 

I'll feel more guilt for anything I say there, but I believe in healing, and I believe it requires truth. 

However, we have spent so much time on my father that I can wait and start with my mother next time.

Well, actually, I will probably start with a movie.

Black Music Month 2023: Other viewings

Let me start by saying that even though in last week's post I said I would probably have to give up on those last two movies for now, I was still trying to come up with strategies so I could somehow get them in this round.

It's just not going to happen.

Besides that, I got to see many cool things that I enjoyed a lot.

Slash: Raised on the Sunset Strip (2014)
Paris is Burning (1990)
Unsung: The Story of the Sylvers (2011)
Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)
Reggae in a Babylon (1978)

Actually, I didn't enjoy Reggae in a Babylon all that much. The sound quality wasn't that great, and it didn't seem to have a strong point of view. What it did have was original footage from an important time, so there is an importance to it regardless.

The others all filled different places, but I liked each of them so much!

That previous post focused on serendipity, but the factors that made that serendipity possible were my having a lot of interests and frequently checking on those disparate areas.

(Actually, I believe a big help to my "book sense" is that I will periodically look though my entire to-read list, keeping the options fresh in my mind and allowing new associations to pop up.)

Anyway, The Sylvers and Slash both came up as suggestions on Youtube because of other things I had watched. I know the algorithms frequently lead toward white supremacy. Since I am often checking on things for research rather than taste, I also get a lot of suggestions that are irrelevant (no more jazz now!). However, sometimes things work out.

Slash was just a lot of fun. It certainly gives an idea of someone who must do music, but also it shows a whole Hollywood world of his childhood that I had no idea about. There is history of the band, but it's more than that.

Unsung is a whole series of episodes about various bands, many of which seem interesting. I hope to get to more eventually, but currently I have only watched two.

I had mentioned watching the one on Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam in a different post, but I knew about it because I had kept getting prompted to watch the episode on The Sylvers, singers of (among other songs) "Boogie Fever". 

Actually, when I combined Black Music Month plus Pride Month last year, as much as I knew Sylvester's music, I did not know him. My awareness of the artists who made the music was practically nonexistent until MTV (unless my parents played their records; that is a limited group). It has been enriching to learn more about music that is often so familiar.

That was one of the most intriguing things about Summer of Soul. It was great seeing the old footage, but especially touching to see new footage of people watching the old footage. Yes, that included Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr. seeing old footage of their performance. More than that, there was someone who had attended the concert, and remembered, but also kind of didn't trust the memory. Was that real? And it was. 

That moment was just really beautiful.

Part of looking at history is tracing the path between it and the present. I have been looking back at things that are peripheral in my memory and bringing them forward. 

I remembered reading a review for Paris is Burning back in the day, and maybe even knowing there was a connection to the "Vogue" song. With the contemporary vilification of drag and seeing occasional references to Willi Ninja, it was just time to watch it.

It is easy to just have this impression of drag as garish queens. That is one cross-section, but there was so much more to it. Your drag could be military or a student, or just anything else that you wanted to try on. There was definitely a competitive aspect, and in that way I guess shows like Drag Race make sense. What stayed with me the most was the vulnerability of some of the house members that we got to know better, and then learning that they often didn't live very long. 

Paris was probably the least musical of the movies; the music was there, but not as much the point.

The points it did have were good, and ones we might be getting back to fairly soon.

More about my mother

The big resolution of the last thing that was happening with my mother (back in July) was that she was admitted to hospice.

(It was digestion related. Enough said.)

That sounds dramatic, but it initially did not seem so. She was having this one issue, and it was at a time when there were some staffing changes at the facility, and it just seemed like a good way to get her some extra attention.

Note: there may have been some denial in my reasoning, because there was another thing going on.

She was on an anticoagulant that builds up in your blood, so requires regular monitoring of the levels. That is the INR test. I had been the one taking the measurements because the pandemic had made other options unnecessarily difficult. Besides, I do finger sticks for my blood sugar all the time; it's not that different.

The INR requires a slightly larger drop of blood, about the size of a ladybug. The real test is how long it takes to clot, with the desired score being between 2 and 3. Lower than 2 means increased risk of clots, but higher than 3 means increased risk of bleeds. 

Earlier when the other issue was going on, her scores kept going back and forth. They were always out of range, but changing sides.

More recently, they settled on high, and getting higher. 

You want to avoid clots to avoid a stroke, but apparently bleeding can lead to a stroke too. The hospice nurse suggested quitting the anticoagulant and I agreed.

One of my sisters asked if we were just going to let her have a stroke then. Well, no, that wasn't it exactly. It didn't feel good.

Finally, after one of her falls (which are still not frequent, but they are more frequent), her pain was not going down. She had been on Tylenol for arthritis, but we recently added a small dose of morphine.

She is doing pretty well on that, but things were starting to feel a little dramatic. 

As we were admitting her, they said they could end up discharging her if she stabilized; that may have helped it just feel like a tool. It still brought changes. The focus is on making life comfortable, not prolonging it. That sounds reasonable, but then different medications aren't covered, and there is no more trying to diagnose... it is all logical but may not feel good.

Eventually, it was trying to explain the INR issue to my sisters that shifted my perspective. It's not about whether or not she has a stroke. Up until last month, we were able to use medication to keep her in a good range. The medication no longer doing that is the cause of her no longer taking it, not the result, but it's one more thing we don't control.

There has been the cognitive decline all along, but her physical health had remained stable. It's not anymore. That's why it feels so different.

One thing that kept us thinking we were in for the long haul was that not only was Mom physically pretty strong, but she had siblings who lived into their 90s. They were also mentally sharp. 

Okay, let's look at the family members who had dementia. 

Our mother has outlived her mother by eight years already. She is at the age when her sister died.

I am not exactly thinking it will be any day now, but I do not think she will be discharged.

That's part of why we are not planning any long or far away trips. Yes, money issues make that sensible, but it's not the only thing.

That is still not the new grief coming up. Grief over losing Mom has been present for some time, in multiple layers. There is something else too.

Related post:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2023/06/7-or-so-calls-to-get-to-know-my-life.html

Black Music Month 2023: Serendipity

One reason that I am always behind on various reading goals is that I am always juggling multiple goals. So, yes, I was working on Black music, but there are six other lists on my main tracking page and then other things come up, like books about birds.

(Because different materials tend to combine in surprising but good ways, I am okay with that, even if I periodically wish that I was 100 books or so ahead.)

My comics reading tends to be more spontaneous than planned, but there are a couple of series that I have been meaning to check out for a while and decided to get to this year. That had me thinking, well, how many volumes does the library have for Bee and PuppyCat and for Stumptown.

As I did a quick keyword search, there was this intriguing result, When Stumptown was Jumptown, A Sam Allen film. 

What is this?

It is a 45 minute film about the Portland jazz scene starting during World War II and for about 25 years after.

It is a student film, and I don't even mean a college student film. When he is talking about Century High, I was thinking he meant when he had been there, but no, he was a sophomore, and in the credits thanked a family member for doing all the driving, because he couldn't yet.

In terms of cinematic quality and editing and focus, it is not a great film. Also, Sam Allen is a little too enamored of himself as an artistic, musical, not-like-the-other-kids kid. Those are both probably age appropriate.

However, there in the first shot is the Aloha Mall! Then there are places I recognize in Beaverton, and Jimmy Mak's and Shute Park and Dick Bogle!

The movie itself is inspired by a book, Jumptown: The Golden Years of Portland Jazz, 1942 - 1957 by Robert Dietsche. I had not been familiar with him or the book, but he was a co-founder of Django Records. That name was totally familiar because the mother of one of my best friends worked there. (And I will read that book, but not this year.)

So there were all of these little flashes of recognition, which I enjoyed a lot. It is also important that someone filmed it, because we have lost of a lot of those those people since the movie release in 2005. 

It was a good find, and a surprise.

There was another surprise, though not quite as delightful.

For all of the movies and videos that I have been able to find, there are two that have been eluding me, and I just may need to put them off.

Joseph Shabalala: Music is My Life (2022)

The United States vs Billie Holiday (2021)

The issue is streaming of course. I know exactly where to find the Billie Holiday movie, but I don't have Hulu, and this is not really the time to sign up for new channels. If I do go that route, there will be other things I will want to watch, so I am not taking that lightly.

For the Joseph Shabalala movie, it may even be available for free, but my searches kept leading me to Apple TV+. I decided to sign up for the trial, and was shocked to find out that the free trial was only one week; most services give you a free month. I was just going to make sure to watch it right away, and then end the trial.

Once I completed signing up and signing in -- even though I was clicking on prompts to watch the movie to even get there -- they did not have it available.

However, they had a link to CODA (2021) which I have been wanting to see. It was really good, it gave me lots to think about, and I don't regret that.

I do think that Apple TV+ sucks the most out of all the different streaming platforms, and I do not love that business model under the best of circumstances.

Of course, CODA does not relate to Black Music Month (despite quite a bit of Motown), but it fits in with other interests. 

It will probably come up again.

Survived: First paycheck of 30

Some follow up from last Tuesday is required. A lot of people read it, and a lot of people commented. 

I hope no one is worrying too much. It felt important to write about it because I know I am not unique. If you are not in the same boat, great, but a lot of people are. Rising income inequality is going to increase that number. 

I gave up looking good long ago. I can only speak for myself, but I will speak honestly and openly. I hope it does help others.

I believe I can make this month's mortgage. It does require getting Maria's rent in, but today is her payday. We can survive that.

One thing that helps is that my last paycheck was not garnished. 

I get paid every two weeks. On the non-mortgage paycheck I have been holding back $300 so that the mortgage paycheck would go far enough. The amount being garnished is $318 per check. I held back some extra from the last check. Normally I would not need to wait for Maria's rent; that would go to groceries or utilities.

The next time the mortgage is due, both paychecks will have been garnished. Just for extra fun, it will also be a water bill month. (Most expenses are monthly, but water and garbage are every two months.)

Based on the amount being withheld and the amount granted, it will take almost thirty paychecks to pay off. That should make next Thanksgiving very exciting. (Unless one of the other creditors decides to sue me, but if they do they have to wait in line until Absolute Resolutions is done.)

Here is an example of my emotional state:

I have to inject a few times daily, and I use alcohol wipes for that. I noticed my box was getting low and had this brief upsurge of anxiety. Then I remembered...

I had more in the drawer.I can use cotton balls and alcohol.That is totally something Julie would buy for me. They are not expensive.

That is a common cycle: notice something, stress, calm back down. Not all of the answers are as easy, but we will get through this, just like we get through everything else. There surely will be some sacrifice, but that's life.

It is very fortunate that my most important hobby is learning and that our library system is so good (including their participation in Inter-Library Loan).

Two other things seem worth noting.

I do not doubt that some of the emotions on this are going to be harder because of things happening with my mother. I had gotten over this one source of pain, and now another one is coming into view. I am sure there will be more writing about that, but right now I am still getting familiar with this one.

In addition, allow me to mention that it is time for Julie's sabbatical. You will note us traveling. It may seem irresponsible. I would tell you it was already planned, but honestly, plans have changed quite a bit. That may have more to do with our mother than with finances, as spending longer times away seems like a worse idea now. 

I mean, we are always looking at being economical and efficient anyway, but this feels like extra pressure. There are a couple of overnight trips and one where we will be gone for two nights. 

The first time she had a sabbatical, we were gone for an entire month, but our situation was very different then. I did have more money, but I miss what we have lost with my mother more.

Black Music Month 2023: The Worst Part

The hardest part was listening to so many hours of free jazz; the worst part was reading two different books about the same two murders, and spending so much time in the mindset of cops.

Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls & Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations by the Detective Who Solved Both Cases by Greg Kading 

Labyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records' Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal by Randall Sullivan

Those subtitles get out of hand.

I was a little irritated with the hero cop narrative in Kading's book, which I read first. I just re-read the reviews I left for both books, and I had put a line in there about how only cops minimize the Rampart scandal. That was because as I was reading it, I kept remembering a former classmate and police officer telling me how overblown it was, and it was just a handful of bad apples. Very familiar.

Sullivan was so much worse.

To be fair, he was much more willing to admit corruption, but all of it was the fault of the increased recruitment of Black and Latinx officers (not said so nicely). That was not just the source of all the corrupt cops, but was also because they lowered the standards so they even could have officers of color. And then that liberal thinking gave them a Black chief of police!

I know the corruption of white police officers became a lot easier to find after we started having video cameras everywhere, but that doesn't make it new.

The overt racism was astonishing. It's hard to tell how much of that comes from the detective, Russell Poole, or the author, Randall Sullivan. I guess they're a good match. There is just such enormous contempt for everyone who is not white, as well as a few white people who are too friendly with those others. There are some fairly contemptible people in it too, with some pretty terrible actions, but the book just becomes a work of racism, and an ode to Poole. Multiple sections start with quotes about how great he is, though they seem to largely relate to his time at the academy, giving the impression that maybe he peaked there, and no one (except Sullivan) had anything to say after the regular evaluations.

I have two more things to say about LAbyrinth. 

It is so thoroughly steeped in dominator culture that it is absolutely perfect that in the related movie Poole is played by Johnny Depp, who had a powerful influence on abusers suing their victims and successfully exploiting power.I recently realized that I had another book by Sullivan on my reading list. It was set in Oregon and sounded interesting, but being familiar now with his writing and his racism, it can't possibly be interesting enough.

Otherwise, the conclusions of the books are pretty similar. Sullivan -- who is more likely to see weird conspiracy -- does suggest that one of the initial conflicts that played a key role in both murders may have been a setup. It's not impossible, but it doesn't really go along with the level of planning on everything else.

My overall impression from those books is yes, defund the police! The sooner the better!

But I already leaned that way.

I could leave it at that, but there were some other thoughts, and they came more into focus recently.

One of the interesting things in reading about Suge Knight and Death Row Records is that it seems that everyone eventually wanted out. Some made it out more successfully than others, but that's what they all wanted. As much as Knight could promise in terms of safety and wealth and success, those promises kept falling through, for multiple reasons.

There is a lot of violence -- some of it mind-numbingly stupid -- and that's not really a surprise. "Gangster" rap; it's right there in the title! But does it have to be that way?

That leads to the other thing I as thinking about.

I also watched Marley, a 2012 documentary about Bob Marley.

After, my sisters asked me if he were a pig. 

Well, he certainly wasn't a police officer.

They meant if he was a cheater, a not uncommon failing with professional musicians. I don't really know how to answer.

He did sleep with other women. Rita knew about them, but the other women did not always know about her. 

One of them seems to have been young, and one he started out by calling her "ugly" for having treated hair... like is this early negging? There are ways in which he isn't too likable, and he doesn't seem to have been the best father.

But also his father seduced Bob's much younger mother, and the mother of the half-sister he only found out about accidentally, and he wasn't really there for either of them.

Bob was shunned for being mixed, and then his mother moved to the States, which you would think was mainly for greater financial opportunity but it turns out there was also horrific political violence in Trenchtown. It was like gang violence, but going for elected positions rather than positions that are officially criminal. And even though he did not choose a side, just for wanting the perform a benefit concert and try and do some good he got shot.

Who am I to judge him?

He was a person. Despite a hard beginning he left an impression. He had faults (don't we all), but it is easy to forget how hard life can be, and how much we can be influenced by the world around us, often without even noticing.

So, no, I would not describe him as chaste or monogamous, but he wouldn't expect me to.

The new stress

Perhaps I should clarify that I am running at a higher stress level with my mother now, regardless. I think the events previously covered took us down a level, and I don't know how many levels we have left.

That is stress, but mainly in a way that makes me feel sad. This new one is more like sudden knots in the stomach, or an increase in breathing that seems like it might be going into a panic attack, but it doesn't get all the way there.

Brief review: In 2016 I was laid off and became my mother's full-time caregiver up when I realized she could not be safely left alone. That lasted until 2020, by which time she had lost all attachment to us and the pets and the house, and then after a very discouraging search I found a new job in 2021.

I lost a lot of ground financially during that time.

On the mortgage level, that has been resolved by a refinancing that changed the 30-year mortgage to a 40-year mortgage. That means that even though if you add up all of the payments, I have paid more than the value of the house once, but I will still have to do it three more times. 

There was no similar resolution for my commercial debt. I never got to the point where I was making enough money to pay that back. Periodically I would get offers to have the debt reduced if I would make a big payment, but that also required having money which I did not have.

I kept all the numbers in a spreadsheet, updating when I would get notifications about one of the debts being sold. I always hoped for a breakthrough, where I would be able to make some headway, but things never got better enough.

This Friday, my wages start being garnished.

For this particular stress, a big part of it is fear: how will I keep making the house payment? Or utilities? 

There are smaller things, like maybe sometimes being able to give someone a few bucks, or to order food in. It doesn't add up to enough to make payments, but it does make life better. There's going to be less of that.

I know the standard example is a daily $5 coffee or avocado toast. I spend less than that on myself, but for the record, a year's worth of $5 coffees would not equal one of the payoff amounts. Trying to cut enough to get a monthly payment... it's just not there.

I have to say, though, that a really big part of the stress initially was just the shame.

I know that is intended.

I actually did say in my job interview that if they were going to do a credit check it would not look good. They said they didn't do that, so, it's not like there were any shattered illusions. Still, my employer knows that I am a deadbeat. 

Looking over that paperwork, I feel so worthless. Loser!

I was really conscientious before. One of the debt collectors even mentioned it, back at the beginning. Eventually I just stopped answering the phone, because there was nothing new to say. I got used to not being able to pay.

Now I am still not able to pay, and yet I will be paying.

That is probably going to get worse before it gets better.

When I don't have a few bucks to give someone else, that will probably sting. I mean, I've been there lots of times, but this will be worse. 

Wanting things will be worse, but it may not be that bad. My needs are pretty simple.

When my sisters plan a trip, they will probably still take me. I like having some spending money of my own, but that's my problem. 

I could have it so much worse, and I know that, but you don't stop feeling things just for knowing that.

I am not feeling so hot.

I am trying to reject the stigma.