Elizabeth A. Havey's Blog, page 24
July 22, 2018
I BELIEVE IN REALITY, NOT IN ITS “STARS”
Television was simple and it was rare. Today, life is lived against the background of the lives of others. When you have two pair of jeans but the film personality you follow on Twitter has 52 specially made pairs, you might turn away from your “phone” and feel bad about yourself.
FINDING REALITY IN YOUR OWN LIFE
Perspective is needed in our world today, and yet we seem to be moving farther from it. What happens in the lives of the super wealthy–is not a reality that my children and my grandchildren will probably ever attain. Not that aren’t smart, good and beautiful enough to do so. But they are also WISE and their parents are WISE. Wisdom will set their reality on a line of perspective. Because life and living are real—not fantasy. We are “people” or “folks” I like to say. WE ARE NOT STARS. And truly, no one is. The definition of the society we built and hope to continue to build is democracy. WE THE PEOPLE. There are no kings and queens here. Sorry, someone in the White House.
DEFINITIONS
A star is a fixed luminous point in the night sky that is a large, remote incandescent body like the sun. That’s my view and I’m sticking to it. The other definition should be changed. People who perform in film and television are not stars. They are people. Some have talent and some do not. So okay: I don’t believe that the people who are pulled into reality television or rise up because of numbers on Twitter or some other social media are stars. They are people.
MONEY
Ann Friedman wrote recently about Kylie Jenner being on the cover of Forbes. The youngest Kardashian became an almost billionaire at the age of 21. Woo hoo. Wow, gosh oh gee. The title of Friedman’s article: KYLIE KENNER DIDN’T BUILD THAT. Oh she is so correct and Friedman underlines this by writing: ...now in our economic climate, the odds of going from rich to filthy rich are pretty good. The odds of going from rags to riches have never been slimmer!!
Since 1982, Forbes has been publishing the rankings of the richest people. In 2014 it started a “self-made” score for the millionaires and billionaires. You score 1-5 if you inherited some of your fortune. You score 6-10 if you truly made it on your own. Oprah got an absolute 10!! Jenner got a 7 and Mark Zuckerberg of FB, got an 8.
What does Friedman write: These scores are delusional. Zuckerberg, the son of a dentist and a psychiatrist raised in Westchester County NY was educated at an elite boarding school, Phillips Exeter. Jenner, raised in Calabasas, CA was only ten when the reality TV show “Keeping up with the Kardashians” debuted. The money came pouring in and incrementally increased as they renewed their reality TV contract. And then there’s Kylie’s social media following.
People actually created a GoFundMe posting on Twitter and Instagram, asking fans to send money to help Jenner push to billionaire status. The GoFundMe page has raised $2,000. Those funds could do so much good in other places. What are people thinking?
But of course, the royal Kardashians defended the entire crazy situation. Heiress Paris Hilton stated: “It’s important to remember that Kylie’s cosmetics business was built by grinding.” Friedman writes: “Sure, Jenner was born on third base, but why not talk about how quickly she crossed home plate?”
THE AMERICAN DREAM
In America today, Jenner’s journey is easy–for some. But it’s almost impossible to get off first base for most. Wages are rising faster for folks who already make a good living. And the traditional means of closing the money gap by getting a college education is now less of a guarantee.
What about the American myth of rages to riches? Pew found 1 in 5 people think that the dream is now out of reach for their family. And media has decided that it’s easier, sexier to shout out the success of Zuckerberg and Jenner than to focus on making more opportunities for folks who start out with nothing, like Oprah.
WE NEED TO CHANGE OUT FOCUS
Yes, President Obama once said of wealthy Americans, you didn’t build that. Or at least most of you didn’t. You had a leg up, a relative, an easy entrance into Harvard, the right skin color, no accent. That’s fine, Congratulations. But that should not be the ONLY American way. Bottom line, like the post I wrote last week, media coverage should feature those that became successful Americans because of their hard work, their tenacity and struggle, their bit-by-bit success. I will cheer them on every day. They will make me smile.
Want to feel good about your own personal reality? Help a family member; volunteer; work for a charity. But Kylie Jenner?? She didn’t build that, she just capitalized on what was already there.
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July 15, 2018
Good Things Happening to Our Young Adults
DACA students will study at Stritch Medical School
Despite some distractions, good things are always happening to young men and women who are in college and/or soon to graduate and move into their careers. So I’m sharing these stories to support young people who are preparing to make our world a better one.
FACES OF CHANGE… (thanks to Loyola University Chicago and their Summer Magazine)
Our Future Physicians
They were born in Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Pakistan. They grew up in Memphis, Los Angeles, Orange County, Houston, Boulder and Chicago. They learned English, excelled in classes, volunteered in their communities. And now, the first six students with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status accepted to the Stritch School of Medicine have graduated and moved on to the next state of their medical careers. BRAVO!
Stritch became the first medical school in the country to openly welcome DACA applicants in 2014. Let’s look at some stats.
This year there were 32 applicants across four classes.
At least 82% of the national pool of DACA recipients applied to Stritch in 2018;
One’third of the total DACA student population enrolled in medical schools are now at Stritch. The following students were the very start of a program that has since gained national recognition: Rosa Aramburo, Diana Andino, Johana Medias-Beck, Manuel Bernal, Ever Arias and Aaima Sayed. (Erinn Connor, reporter)
“I was so determined to get here and at times I wonder, was that me being naive? I think if anything that was a good thing, me being naive or stubborn, because it led me to Stritch. It made it all worth it.”
— Aaima Sayed
“I was at work, and remember seeing the number from Chicago and my heart was pounding. I found out I got in and cried with my coworkers. It was the first step of knowing I would be a doctor.”
— Diana Andino
“One of our school’s core strengths is its diversity, and this is seen today as our first DACA status students go forth as champions of social justice to provide care for the underserved across the country.”
Dean Steve A.N. Goldstein, MD, PhD
WEATHERING THE STORM: Forging ahead to deal with Climate Change
In the same issue: Former EPA director Gina McCarthy (the Obama administration) delivered the keynote address at Loyola’s FIFITH ANNUAL CLIMATE CHANTE CONFERENCE. Here are FIVE THINGS she stressed at the conference.
Climate change is not a partisan issue. In the past, both parties have worked together. She mentioned that Richard Nixon founded the EPA by executive order in 1970.
We are still in. The federal government may have withdrawn support of the Paris Climate Accord, but many American organizations are still working to move forward on the commitments of the Paris Climate Accord agreement. ( Like my state, California.)
We can combat many climate change-related deaths. Dr. Peter Orris of Chicago Physicians for Social Responsibility pointed out that 3.3 million annual deaths worldwide are connected to outdoor pollution. But this is fixable through diligence and government regulations.
Young people are a powerful force for change. The younger generation is driving those changes though actions like getting involved in local government, shopping at companies that support sustainability, and listening to the voices of the under-represented.
We are all climate refuges. Anthropologist Susan Crate of George Mason University reminded us that “we are all being displaced by the climate.” And that very often “wars and conflict have deep roots in climate change.” We must be vigilant, we must be prepared, and we must be available and willing to help each other through these tough times.
FINAL THOUGHT: “This is not about whether the planet is going to survive but about whether human beings survive on the planet.” Gina McCarthy, former director of the EPA
What are you doing to fight climate change for your children and grandchildren? What are you doing to support DACA and help these young people and others. We rarely know the background of someone who might be helping us with medical care, or banking or legal advice or selling us a car etc etc. The future is these young people.
P.S. As a former Chicagoan who attended Mundelein College which is now part of Loyola Chicago, a shout out to this man: SENATOR DICK DURBIN, who was thanked by the DACA students.
Sen. Durbin has been a longtime proponent of legislation that would allow DACA recipients a pathway to permanent citizenship. He has told the stories of Stritch students on the Senate floor and invited students to Washington, DC, to share their aspirations and lobby for immigration reform.
PHOTO: Loyola Magazine
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July 8, 2018
MY REPORT FROM THE FRONT
My now deceased mother, Jinni, was an awesome support when I was raising my children. We had a date to talk most nights at five o’clock or later, if she was still working and had to finish her train commute from downtown Chicago to the far southside. But we never missed.
THAT LONG PHONE CORD…
Those were the years of wall phones and though I was eager to talk to her, I sometimes wished I had a longer cord so I could multi-task: one daughter needed dictionary help, another couldn’t find her soccer uniform, the water in the pot on the stove had boiled off the Idaho potatoes.
As Jinni aged, her loving reach extended to the entire world. While I might be preparing dinner, Jinni would be telling me about starving children in Africa. (And this is no metaphor, because whatever Jinni told me, she had first hand knowledge, either from television news or the newspaper. My mother was always informed.)
LIFE TODAY
Now, more than ever, I think of how Jinni would be reacting to the separation of children from their parents. SHE WOULD BE OUT OF HER MIND. She would be watching the news 24-7. She would know more about the world and it crises than anyone.
As a young woman, Jinni made a vow to God to pray the rosary every night if she could be blessed with healthy children. She kept that promise. Up until dementia probably wiped away that pledge, she worked her rosary, and often down on her knees.
When the tragedy at the border started, I thought of my mother immediately, how upset she would be, the conversations we would have, how her rosary would get a real workout. In my days of cooking while Jinni reminded me that children were starving on the other side of the word, I had my own thoughts about the arrogance of bringing children into a world of war and peace, famine and plenty, love and hate. (In the novel I am writing, my main character struggles with similar thoughts.)
But there is always hope. Jinni knew that. My God, I wrote about her HOPE in my post It’s Time for Mom to Hand over the Checkbook, because on entering her assisted living apartment, I always found piles of envelopes indicating that Jinni WOULD save the world and its children (African, Native American, African American) until she took her last breath. My brother Bill provided Jinni with a monthly stipend—you know—just to give her a little spending money for a movie, a new sweater. We laugh to this day—most of that money went to charity. That was the Jinni way.
MY RECENT VICTORY, A VERY SMALL STEP
So since the horrific situation at the border, the separation of children, the misinformation, I have waited for my church to pray for these kids. Nothing. So yesterday before Mass, I approached the pastor, took his hands in mine and told him I had spoken to both our old pastor (in the grocery store) and the deacon about the prayers of the faithful and that as a congregation we were not praying for the children at the border. At first, he had the same explanation the other two did, he’s not in charge of writing the prayers. Okay, I said, you could say something from the altar, it’s your show.
He did mention politics and the community and I argued that angle also–WE ARE CATHOLICS. THIS IS WHAT CHRIST WOULD WANT US TO DO: welcome the children or at least pray for them.
Every year our parish builds a Habitat Home for a Latino family. I don’t see the difference, except for this breaking the law thing. Anyway, he began to melt, mentioned an interview he read about a woman who was raped, escaping from a country of outlaws. The saddest thing he told me was that I WAS THE ONLY PERSON WHO HAD EVER APPROACHED HIM ON THIS ISSUE.
I think that’s shocking. He also said he did not vote for 45, didn’t use his name, but the message was clear. We were still holding hands. He has never been the kind of pastor I would choose, he always starts his homilies with a joke and some of them have been very lame and even anti-feminism. But he seemed to get it and promised me that he would do something from the altar today. (Well don’t do it for me, do if for your God and your conscience.)
After his homily, he actually did ask the congregation to pray for children separated from their parents. Wow, first step, easy. Now give a homily next week about the family of man, about being Christ-like, loving your neighbor!! Well, I guess I can hope. And I pray, every day, every night, whenever I remember to. I tweet, I use Facebook. And I’ve written some checks. It will never be enough…
But I hope you are all doing something too. There is strength in many voices. Wow, I was the ONLY ONE who had asked him to pray for these children.
P.S. Feeling helpless? The attorneys and other folks who work for the ACLU are doing an incredible job at the border, arguing parental rights, human rights, asylum rights. SUPPORT THE ACLU Go here. Call your Congressman or Congresswoman. SPEAK OUT. This is America. These are human beings, children. Do what you can to help.
THANKS TO PINTEREST and the art work of Laura Tortolita. Mexican AmericanMexican ArtMexican FiestaLatino ArtChicano ArtChild ArtMothers …
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July 1, 2018
When The Words of Mary Oliver Help…
I Have Decided by Mary Oliver from A Thousand Mornings
I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.
Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am. Are you following me?
NOW MY WORDS
Oh I want to follow her. And I want you reading this to follow me. I won’t plead and beg. I will attempt to use civility. And yes, you can argue back through a comment. Please do.
I ask that you remember that we come from love to live on this earth; and we are charged with making it a better place. We are creatures of God. Every one of us. We are a colorful rainbow and what woman who has carried a child in her body can turn away from this–mother/child belong together?
This morning on NPR they talked about Reasonable Disagreement.
This morning Virginia Heffernan asked a question: where did we go wrong? Her answer: We went wrong when we began to utilize false arguments, whose purpose was to deceive. In easier terms, shorter terms, we went wrong when those in power lied.
And I don’t apologize for saying this again. I will say it until it stops, until all these wrongs are made right. We are founded on basic beliefs that mothers and children belong together. It is so basic, that it’s hard to believe ANYONE would think it right to purposefully separate a child from its mother. BUT WE ARE THERE. People are saying it’s pragmatic. NO! NO! Our very cells should reject this action immediately. It should make us feel dirty and defiled.
Kneeling before the American flag instead of standing is a peaceful protest (it’s harder to kneel than to stand.) But Others decided it’s treason. (Definition of treason, in case you haven’t read it lately: the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one’s country or of assisting its enemies in war; specifically: the act of levying war against the United States. How do you get there by kneeling?
Dodging taxes and military service seems like greed and cowardice. Oh it’s not at all, they now say, it’s done by smart people.
Guns designed for massacres lead to massacres. Well, they now say, regardless, we need more of them.
Bottom line: if our country is to remain free, we must follow the principles that created it. We must reject that children can be taken from their mothers; that people who protest because they have been downtrodden are committing treason and that breaking the law and not paying taxes means you’re smart.
We must must stop lying to ourselves. We must call out the liars. We must remember what it feels like to do what is right and not be told that it no longer matters. Oh it does, it does. Every cell in my body tells me that it does.
ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?
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June 24, 2018
Current Voices…For Days That Are Not Ordinary
These are not ordinary days. The sun shines, the clock ticks, but children are crying for their mothers and fathers in buildings and tents on the border of the United States of America. And to shut them up, they are being given injections of drugs. Wow. My pediatricians never prescribed a medication without evaluating my child and thus our knowing how she might respond. And in the United States, some person who is probably not medically licensed, is shooting up kids.
Margareta Larsson writes in the LA TIMES: Over 50 years ago, when I was a 14-month-old -toddler, I was involuntarily separated from my parents. I was so young that I have no memories of those 11 days in a children’s hospital. But deep down I carry the ineradicable sadness of that experience to this day.
Larsson was hospitalized at time when it was common practice in Swedish hospitals to forbid parents from visiting their sick children. Caring for the physical was believed to be all that was necessary and staff were directed to ignore emotional needs. But the charting reveals the effects: on admittance, “Margareta was lively and active who can say just two words, mama and papa.” On discharge, it was charted: “markably reserved, distrustful and anxious.”
EYE SURGERY
I went through a similar, but not as frightening an experience, when at five I had eye surgery. I wrote about it in my post FIVE DAYS BLIND. Here is my description of how I felt being without my mother in a hospital AND I KNEW WHERE SHE WAS. The children at the U.S. border do not know where Mama and Papa are. They have been abandoned. Or their parents are in jail. Or they might be dead.
I lay in that hospital bed from Monday night through Sunday. Five full days. My mother had my brothers to care for… no child visitors were allowed. She came to visit me but could do so only during visiting hours. I learned to listen for her footsteps echoing down the marble hallway. Sometimes the footsteps would end up in my room and it wasn’t my mother, but Sister Frances who worked at the hospital. I remember she brought me a box of chocolates shaped like Dutch wooden shoes. I also remember that one day MY MOTHER COULDN’T COME.
Someone had to feed me. At night things were even worse. I had to sleep on my back and to make sure I didn’t move, they put sandbags on either side of my head and they put a cardboard cuff around each elbow so that I wouldn’t reach up during my sleep and mess with my bandages.
I got through this time in my life, but my memory of those days is as clear as any in my lifetime. Children don’t forget. The children at the border will have deep and lasting scars. They will be fearful, angry. If our government fears the formation of gangs, they are contributing to that every hour these children are away from love and soft voices, hugs and tender care.
ATTACHMENT THEORY
But within medicine, thank God, someone usually comes up with a theory that will further the understanding concerning how to care for children. John Bowlby and James Robertson are credited with advancements in this area. They brought about changes in the way children were cared for in hospitals and other institutions.
Bowlby was the scientist who developed classic theories about maternal separation. Robertson focused his research on separation of mother and child due to hospital admission. Between the two of them, they derived a classic theory about the phases of ‘protest’, ‘despair’ and ‘denial’ (Bowlby called this last stage ‘detachment’) through which small children pass when isolated from their mothers for a length of time. But I’m betting that the Department of Homeland Security does not give a damn about this research. I’ll go further–they have never even heard of it. Note: Margareta Larsson also mentions in her article a scream chart. When she accessed her records, the hospital staff had recoded “my crying and their routine administration of sleeping pills.” Sound familiar?
A FEW POSITIVES
Larsson does report that during this last week thousands of mental health professionals (again God bless them) sent the Trump administration a petition saying:“To pretend that separated children do not grow up with the shrapnel of this traumatic experience embedded in their minds is to disregard everything we know about child development, the brain and trauma.” YES YES. And Larsson pleads as I do: It is not the 1950s. We now know that separating children from parents causes irreparable damage and that the passage of time renders that trauma ALL THE MORE SEVERE. A moral urgency attends the task of reuniting detained children with their parents and ending this brazen and destructive assault on migrant families.
MORE ECHOES FROM THE PAST...
Josie Levey Martin of Santa Barbara was taken from her parents during WW II. She writes: ...I am the least resilient person among my friends. I have never trusted fully–not my parents while they were alive, nor significant others who had never given me cause for distrust. “Never again” has become an empty promise.
Gene Czap of LA was raise in a displaced persons camp after WW II. He writes: I suffered the terrible pain of not being able to be held or spoken to softly as only a mother could–a pain I carry to this day. Taking kids from their parents will affect them for the rest of their lives in ways we do not know.
LAST THOUGHTS
What are you doing during this crisis? I spoke to a father and his son in the grocery store, started a conversation. Ended up mentioning the children at the border and hugging the father. We need to reach out to one another. My husband and I spoke to two clergy at our church, protesting that during the Prayers of the Faithful, the children at the border were not mentioned. REALLY?
One other thought for today. I know some of you want to believe in fake news. Opinions are rampant. But look to your heart. And listen to what people have to say. I have to share this today. From the New York Times and Maureen Dowd. Yes, of course SHE would share this, but you, Reader, need to consider it…As a former top Trump administration official recently told me, “Donald Trump is the meanest man I’ve ever met.” Oh, I believe it. Thanks for reading.
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June 18, 2018
There Is Nothing More Important–Than This
Do I remember his hugs? His kisses? Soft words in my ear? No. My dearest mother told me stories of how he loved me, was so excited to have a daughter and bragged about me. Well, you know parents, they brag at the littlest things. So was I traumatized because I lost my father at a young age?
I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go into details here. But growing up I:
was afraid of men for a long time
was extremely shy for a long time
liked staying at home more than other children in my neighborhood who had fathers.
So you see where I am going here. There are degrees, but you can traumatize a child through death, loss and separation. And it doesn’t go away in a blink. I was a fearful child. And now let’s look at what is so-called policy in the United States.
It’s a Let’s Traumatize Children policy. Let’s create political theatre and use CHILDREN as hostages. And no, the Democrats did not start the specific policy that requires that children be separated from their parents no matter their age or where they come from, at the border–that was Jeff Sessions. He was very specific as to saying this would be a deterrent. You come here and we will punish you with this dictum. And it is being implemented by Kirstjen Nielsen, head of Homeland Security and totally approved by POTUS 45.
So what do the American people think? There is nothing more important than THIS today.
ThE PEOPLE SPEAK Thanks to the LA Times.
From: Ken Levy, Los Angeles Even Dickensian Workhouses and World War II camps for the Japanese Americans, as terrible as they were, did not dare separate children from their parents. It took the malevolence of President Trump and Atty. General Jeff Sessions to accomplish this. Trump had previously asked why a drone strike against alleged terrorists was delayed to save innocent family members from being killed as well. Sessions has used the New Testament to link the law to the word of God, nothwithstanding that this family separation is a policy, not a law. As a psychotherapist, I know this type of trauma visited on children can have life-long effects. The cruelty of the Trump administration is endless. It is up to us to put a stop to this horror.
From: Ann Lander, Covina My parents were childless when they were removed from the Amsterdam ghetto and brought to a holding area. There, they waited as weekly trams and then trains brought people to the Westerbork camp and then onward to concentration camps in Poland. Families with children were separated; the children brought across the street from the holding area to a makeshift childcare center. My parents were able to escape by climbing through a small window in the attic and then crawling along a narrow wooden plank to the building next door. If my parents had children at the time, they would never have attempted such a risky act. Instead, they would have tried to get reunited in the child-care area before boarding the tram. Those other families most likely perished in gas chambers with their children. I see very little difference between those horrific days in Europe and what detained parents who only want better lives for their families are going through today, with a Bible-quoting attorney general justifying separating children from their parents. Those parents and their children are not sleeping well tonight.
From: Bob Launius, Oxnard You commit a crime in the U.S. and it is likely that you will be separated from your children. Why is the left surprised when people who travel hundreds of miles to illegally cross our border are separated from their children? To answer Bob: First, is seeking asylum because you want to protect your most precious possession, your children, a crime? And you’ve got it right in your letter–they have traveled hundreds of miles hoping, praying for help. And you wouldn’t give it to them?
From: Steve Fisher Studio City Of all the shameful, horrible things Trump and his acolytes have done, the separation of children from their parents at the border may be the worst. No child, undocumented or not, should be separated from his or her parents in such an inhumane manner, and the fact that it’s happening on a daily basis in the U.S. should make anyone with half a heart feel sick. I, for one, am ashamed to call myself an American.
From: Murtadha A. Khakoo Fullerton How much longer can we drag down the law by insisting on separating Latino parents and children who are coming as desperate units from their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S.? First, by our Constitution, we must give these people due process. Second, as a nation of immigrants, we should have empathy for the people, as it was for our own parents a generation or two ago who came here from foreign lands seeking a better life. We have shred both these mercies at the alter of racism. If these asylum seeks were from Norway, I am sure we would not be doing this.
THE PHOTO
This is a coin in a new series celebrating the unalienable rights proclaimed by Thomas Jefferson in one of our country’s most important documents. This is Lady of Liberty teaching a child to sow seeds. The sword she carries symbolizes the power to defend life, while the furrowed earth suggests the labor to sustain it.
What seeds are we sowing today? What will happen when we need more labor to work our fields and pick our fruit? Hate of the other will never create a UNITED STATES. Germany still bears the stigma of the Nazis. We must not go in any direction remotely like that.
P.S. If like me, you lost a parent at an early age, you can read about the research done to explain such a trauma here.
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June 10, 2018
Is There Something Wrong with Me?
Sorry, but I have a lot of questions. As a writer, I believe that people write essays and fiction to reach people’s MINDS, HEARTS AND SOULS. We writers call it EMPATHY. We want to touch the reader, quietly and persuasively bring the reader into our world so that at the end of a page, chapter or complete book the reader says, “Now I see.” Or, “Wow, I felt for that person.” Or, “What would I do if that were me?” And I have to add that YES, I know we read to escape also. But this book…
Book club: we read Lisa Wingate’s BEFORE WE WERE YOURS. My quick outline of the novel: Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and four younger siblings are wrenched from their family home and all that is familiar to them to be thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage. The Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents–but they quickly realize the dark truth. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, they now live in a world of danger and uncertainty.
Sound familiar? Yes. It is, because it’s 2018 and the United States of America is wrenching children from their parents at our borders.
So I’m at book club with friends and I have the first question in the discussion. I know this group, I know their politics, so I prepared an answer, basically saying that like the children in Wingate’s novel, everyone in this country and in our government from my local representative in the House to the president must be responsible for the children at the border. To go a step further, we need to try, as best we can, to be responsible for all children in our great country. Because, and I think it bares mentioning over and over, THESE ARE CHILDREN who will be permanently damaged by the trauma of separation.
What reaction did I get? Tepid. Someone actually changed the subject before we blundered on to the next question.
Am I crazy? Why read this book if you aren’t going to be touched, if you aren’t going to FEEL SOMETHING? These were women, mothers and grandmothers. Have they forgotten they have a womb?
We got through the evening, moving on to the other questions. One question caused a member to bring up Bill Clinton’s philandering (yes, he’s guilty). But I had to say it, “What about that guy in the White House?” Result: the women who I carpooled with to the meeting, said right out—“That’s enough or you will have to walk home.”
That’s enough. Let’s just go blindly on reading this novel that Wingate researched and wrote with skill and passion. Let’s just pretend that this is just STORY TELLING, you know, like a FAIRY TALE. You get to the end and everything is JUST FINE. After all, this is book club. You can drink your wine and forget reality.
But I can’t and I won’t forget—no matter how expensive the wine and well wrought the dessert. Frankly, I could care less about all of that.
I’m a writer. I know the power of the keyboard and I will use it. EMPATHY. In some ways it is our only hope.
P.S. In case you don’t know, Congress just took funding away from CHIP. What is CHIP? Children’s Health Insurance Program: June 7, 2018, House Republicans voted to cut CHIP, selling out thousands of kids in their districts. They are gambling with kids’ coverage to pay tax breaks.
And I won’t let go of this idea: the future of any country is grounded in HOW WE LOVE AND CARE FOR OUR CHILDREN.
Now the question for me is—do I go to the next book club, keep speaking out? Yes.
PS Lisa Wingate: I also hope that, in a broader sense, the story of Rill and the Foss children serves to document the lives of all the children who disappeared into Georgia Tann’s unregulated system. Only by remembering history are we reminded not to let it repeat itself. It’s important that we, ordinary people busy with the rush of every day life, remember that children are vulnerable, that on any given day, thousands of children live the uncertainty…
Photo Credit, Focus on Family
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June 3, 2018
UPDATE: Juan Romero and RFK
On June 5, 1968, Juan Romero was working at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Robert Kennedy had just won California’s Democratic Primary and was staying at that hotel. Juan Romero was seventeen, worked in the kitchen doing room service and had carried a tray to RFK’s room. The presidential candidate shook Juan’s hand.
Juan recalls: “I remember staring at him with my mouth open, and I see him shaking the hand of a waiter and then reaching out to me. I remember him grabbing my hand and he gave me a two-handed shake. He had piercing blue eyes and he looked right at you. You knew he was looking at you and not through you…I didn’t feel like I was a Mexican, and I didn’t feel like I was a busboy…I felt Iike I was right there with him.”
Later that evening, RFK gave a speech to thank everyone who had gathered to congratulate him. When Juan heard that RFK would be walking through the kitchen to avoid crowds, he waited, eager for another handshake.
STEVE LOPEZ KEEPS IN TOUCH
LA TIMES writer Steve Lopez, who wrote the first article which I blogged about previously and which you can read here, has followed up with Juan Romero over the years, flying with him to Washington DC so that Juan could go to RFK’s grave. In his piece today, he has again talked with Juan about that day when RFK was murdered.
Romero waited in the kitchen, then pushed through the crowd to shake RFK’s hand once more. At that exact moment, bullets tore into Kennedy. Romero took out the rosary he always carried and tried to press it into Kennedy’s hands. To this day, Juan Romero has been tortured by the events of that night. He wonders if Kennedy had not paused to shake his hand again if maybe Sirhan Sirhan might have missed. He still struggles with his guilt.
Lopez writes today that Romero is thinking of going back to Arlington Cemetery again. “I want to go there and just say ‘Hi’ and explain that everything is going good and I’m grateful for his involvement in my life and that I will always respect his effort for social justice. And to say that I will never forget the first time we met, and that I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for him.”
MORE OF JUAN’S MEMORIES
In the first article Lopez wrote, Juan Romero said about that horrible moment when he found himself kneeling by the dying senator: “I wanted to protect his head from the cold concrete.” Lopez also recounted in that first piece that Romero said he went to school the next day with Kennedy’s blood under his fingernails, refusing to wash it away.
WHAT IF RFK HADN’T BEEN ASSASSINATED?
Today in the LA TIMES there was also an affecting piece by Mark Kurlansky author of the book “1968:The Year that Rocked the World.” An apt title as it was Viet Nam, the assassination of Martin Luther King, RFK and the turbulent Democratic convention in Chicago, riots in the streets, a weaker candidate, Hubert Humphrey, which led to the eventual election of Richard Nixon and Watergate.
I’ll leave you with this from Kurlansky’s piece:
“No politician quite like Bobby Kennedy has come along since. Had he lived, I am almost certain the Vietnam War would have ended years, and many thousand of lives, earlier. Perhaps Jim Crow could have been attacked in such a way that African Americans today would not still be fighting for equal treatment, and even, again, the right to vote. We are still using military might and horrific violence to bend small, poor nations to our will; it has become almost a way of life for us as a nation. Gun violence is an epidemic, and there is not the political will to curb it.”
He ends his piece with this: “On that June night in 1968, I came to understand that in this country where anyone could be shot dead at any moment, our demons were deep within us. There would be no magical leaders to save us from ourselves.”
This iconic photo, taken by Boris Yaro of the Los Angeles Times and Bill Eppridge of Life Magazine, captures the horror of the moment. Kennedy was walking through the kitchen to get to his car, only to be felled by an assassin’s bullet. And there in the photo is Juan Romero, kneeling at RFK’s head.
Also: Zina Saunders for the LA TIMES
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May 29, 2018
Stop and Notice Your Life
In our world of busyness and myriad responsibilities, we can stop and smell the roses. But do we? Sometimes the chatter in our heads or on our phones blocks out true life, becomes about everything but what it should be. Not that some of our day to day isn’t important, but when we consider the limited amount of time we have on the planet, it would be better to calm swirling thoughts and focus on one thing: life. Just plain ordinary life—the breathing in and out, the desire to love and be loved. The basic reason as to why we still get up every day, why we keep on going. Life.
Poet Mary Oliver writes:
Every day I’m still looking for God and I’m still finding him everywhere,
in the dust, in the flowerbeds. Certainly in the oceans,
in the islands that lay in the distance continents of ice, countries of sand
each with its own set of creatures and God, by whatever name.
How perfect to be aboard a ship with maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
But it’s late, for all of us, and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on burning the world as we go.
WHY THIS POST...
I burned up my weekend with family and friends, with my garden, flower arrangements and a good book. In the next few days my husband and I will be doing something momentous for his health that requires a night in the hospital. Writing will take a backseat, living, loving will be everything. (And I have some good books to read!)
For my mother and a dear friend, I wrote a blog post entitled: Songs Can be Prayers. I picked the Beach Boys, GOD ONLY KNOWS, because surely my mother’s life meant everything in forming mine and so I wanted to sing out:
God only know where I’d be without you.
I also picked: “If God Made You” by FIVE FOR FIGHTING, because of this verse:
I can’t say what I might believe
But if God made you he’s in love with me. (That’s true of my husband also.)
But today, it’s Mary Oliver’s poetry, though truly the lyrics above are also poetry.
Oliver writes: The man who has many answers, is often found in the theatres of information where he offers, graciously, his deep findings.While the man who has only questions, to comfort himself, makes music.
LET’S MAKE MUSIC! LET’S READ POETRY!
Yes, we all need to do that, to live our lives outloud, as Anna Quindlen has said, to make our own music. So today, in the blur and craziness of our current world-climate, stop. Ask yourself: what does life mean to me? How am I living it, cherishing it, expanding it? Am I able to sit with myself, inside my mind and contemplate the most precious gift, my life? Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it whatever. It’s an action that needs to happen. It’s the one my husband and I have been focussing on. If one definition of prayer is a request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship, then certainly in your life today, I hope you will either see, hear or feel one.
I HAVE DECIDED by Mary Oliver
I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not taking a vacation.
Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.
Are you following me?
Poems taken from A THOUSAND MORNINGS Mary Oliver, 2012
photo by Me.
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May 20, 2018
Being Female: Myths, Realities, and #ME TOO
As a fatherless child, my encounters with men created different echoes in my life. Oh, I had the most loving family one could ever ask for, but there were few men around. Because my father died when I was 3, I knew from the get-go that women could work and care for themselves. I had five maiden aunts, all wonderfully educated and working, a grandmother who was very skilled in the home arts–and a mother who from my earliest memories was either typing insurance policies in our dining room, or downtown at her secretarial position in Chicago. She was supporting us.
My heroes in my early days were Cinderella, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Fairly normal. I read lots of books about queens (thus my Anglophile future).
I do have two loving brothers, one younger, one older. They were and are amazing, and in my youth, having brothers helped me understand that males and females are different–in some ways.
But men? My neighborhood friends had fathers. But I was often eager to go home when they drove in their driveways around five o’clock.
GRADE SCHOOL Here we go again. All my teachers were women. I went to the local Catholic school, my teachers from Kindergarten to third grade all nuns. Was I curious? Yes. Did I want to dispel some myths, what the boys said: they don’t have breasts or hair. They never learned how to run. They don’t care that they don’t have fun. Well, I watched them closely, figured out that they did have hair and breasts and liked to laugh. And the boys in my classes? They spent a lot of time getting into trouble with the nuns. There is probably some Freudian reason for that, and I’m not embarrassed to admit this stuff, as Stephen Colbert is always referencing his Catholic education on The Late Show!
HIGH SCHOOL All girls and more nuns. Now the fun begins. Because teen girls talk about everything–which is good. They ask each other questions about periods, cramps, sex and sexual urges. If you could find a truly close and understanding girlfriend, you could confess things to her, things you couldn’t tell your parents or a sibling as you might be grounded.
And I’ll never understand how the following two events occurred at my high school. You cannot raise young women in a vacuum. The myth thing again. They will call you out on it every time.
A youngish priest took over our religion class. Just once, my junior year. He launched into a diatribe about masturbation. It was fire and brimstone–this GUY telling a roomful of females how to treat their bodies. Obviously, it still bothers me to this day. And the clincher? He inferred that he had masturbated. When the class ended, we ran out of the room. Reality? Yes. But there are ways to handle any situation, and in the time I was living in, the atmosphere I was exposed to–in retrospect it felt like scare tactics. Maybe my school wanted all of us to join the convent, hide those breasts. (Nuns eventually moved to wearing ordinary clothing. A good thing.)
In senior year, at a time when some young women were going from school to marriage, we were invited to the auditorium to listen to a speaker–a local gynecologist (MALE, of course), accompanied by his wife for support. They had some chart up on the stage. Truly, I don’t think I learned a thing from them. And during the question period, more than one girl had the guts to ask what 69 was. He continually refused to answer. Well, it had to be something good.
COLLEGE Things started to improve. Male and female teachers. A male college on the same campus. (The schools were on the northside of Chicago, so we lived in an urban environment that provided us with theaters, the lake, sports and of course bars.) But freshmen year contained a pivotal moment. In a required English class, Mr. Paul O’Dea asked us to write an essay: What do you like about being a woman?
The class proved to be an awakening. After reading everyone’s assignment, he stood at the podium and upbraided us. It was truly myth-dispelling.
We didn’t get it. We didn’t understand the POWER we had, the FUTURES we could create, the POSITIONS we could have in the work place. And if we didn’t SEE that, we would never succeed.
O’Dea wanted us to wake up NOW, grab what was due to us and in the process, break some rules. We were on the verge, the tipping point–so damn it–why weren’t we seeing that?
THE PRESENT So here I am–wide open to ideas, opinionated, educated, proud of the two women and the man my husband and I have raised. Each day I learn valuable lessons. I learned to grab what was mine, to hold on tight and I still do that. Yes, many women have succeeded far beyond me, and many are still struggling. As a former Maternity Nurse, my eyes seek out information about women’s health and a recent revelation in the LA TIMES has me angry. So I will share.
A gynecologist at the University of Southern California (USC) performed gynecological exams OUTSIDE the boundaries of what is clinical and acceptable. He did this for many years and continued to keep his position. Read about it here. That and the case of the doctor, in prison now, who abused young gymnasts during physical training–reveals that myths still persist. That women can still be tricked, lied to and maybe even confused about their bodies. (Mothers, this might be a good time to again talk to your daughters about boundaries. I mean, if a gynecologist, in front of a nurse, takes liberties, we still have a way to go.)
SOME HELP After this situation at USC, I think reading again about what a gynecological exam entails would be a good idea, especially if you have a young daughter or granddaughter who might have questions. The exam could be a necessity for many reasons, one being to check for HPV. (I remember a friend of mine calling me when her babysitter revealed she had HPV. She was afraid to tell her parents and didn’t know what to do.) Knowledge before the exam can allay fears. And a young woman or teen should always have a nurse or chaperone with them. Here’s the article.
#Me Too Information is power. All of us grew up with some myths or lies that made the very process of becoming a difficult task. With more knowledge and openness, we now understand more clearly why some women have mental health issues from trauma related to sex. Across the globe, there are still women scorned for wanting to love someone else despite the fact they have been assigned a husband–and often when they are not even menstruating. I so admire Malala Yousafzai who after being shot by the Taliban has dedicated her life to helping young women and girls get an education. She and the women who now stand up and reveal what they have suffered at the hands of men, are myth breakers who stand for reality–even though it is painful for them every day.
Being female comes with responsibility. We need to guide, aid and support women. We owe that to all our sisters.
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