Dominoes

I have mentioned that I have interrupted sleep. Sometimes it is worse and sometimes I think that I have solved it and sometimes I have almost solved it. I used to sleep like the dead. Julie could tell you about the time she came home after I was in bed and had forgotten her key and couldn't wake me up with the doorbell and pounding on the door and pounding on the window over my head and calling from the neighborhood 7-11. I have always had to get up in the night to pee, but I would be asleep again before my head hit the pillow.

Well, those days are long gone. I injured my left foot about four years ago and ignored the injury (a result of my own ethnic background [Colonial descendant]and our stiff upper lip and ignore the pain stupidity) until it was so bad that I couldn't walk more than absolutely necessary for over two years and while that was going on my previously injured back flared up for lack of exercise. The other things that happened because of lack of exercise were the onset of a mild case of type 2 diabetes (increased the number of night time visits to the loo), restless legs syndrome, insomnia, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. To this we add the unrelated fact that I had congenital paradoxical turbinates which meant that my sinuses tend to get clogged. I had surgery, but it only fixed it so far and the ENT doesn't want to go back because it could make things worse.

Here we are. I use a CPAP machine for the apnea. But my sinuses get clogged and I feel like I'm being smothered and so wake up. I get up to pee and have to take the mask of my CPAP off and put it back on, which wakes me completely even if my sinuses aren't clogged. I found that taking a quarter of a percocet and two coral calcium pills handles the restless legs most of the time, so that now I only have a bout once a month or less, rather than the three times a night it was before. For a little over a week I have been on Sanctura, which reduces the bathroom visits from eight a night to two. I have recently acquired a facial sauna which fills my sinuses with steam and when I add oil of eucalyptus it can clear them out in 15 minutes (five to heat up and 10 to use) instead of the 45 minutes it used to take. And, I don't have to use Sinus Buster, a good product but since it is pure capsaicin pepper extract, painful, any longer. I can't use decongestents, because of my blood pressure.

Where I stand right now is, I have solved everything except the sinuses, and they are not as bad as they were. Sometimes I get a good night's sleep. Last night was not one. I was up three times with sinuses and had trouble getting back to sleep each time. So, this morning I slept in until 10, which is the time I usually take my Sanctura. I have to take it at least two hours after eating and at least one hour before eating. If I had gone down and had breakfast at 10, I would have needed to wait until noon to take my pill, but then I would have been off for the 10 p.m. pill and . . . If I had gone down and fed the Hooligans, I would not have been able to resist eating myself, since I woke up very hungry. So, I stayed upstairs, took my pill, and read blogs until 11. Which meant the Hooligans ate late (usual for all three of us is 7:30). And so when I was feeding them Merry got impatient and jumped down off the counter and landed on my right foot, scratching it.
And the dominoes go: injure left foot, live sedentary life for four years, develop sleeping problems, solve some sleeping problems but not all, lose sleep because of sinuses, sleep late, delay breakfast so I can take my pill, delay feeding cats so I can delay my own breakfast, get scratched on my right foot by starving tomcat.

Let The Wookie Win

Gina at Just Another Day posted about playing games with her grandfather, who always had to win, even when the opponent was a child, and not wanting to do that to her child, and I was thinking that I knew the answer to her problem, when I read further and discovered that she didn't have the problem I thought she had. The problem she didn't have, the one I know the answer to, is "how do you let a child know the glory of really winning and not cheat so that he can?"

The reason that I know the answer to that is that when I was 12 and Forrest was seven, we moved to El Paso and in the beginning we didn't know any kids but each other. While my mother was unpacking, she sent us outside to play croquet. Except that I was so much better than Forrest that he didn't stand a chance of winning and he got tired of losing, so he started cheating. I wasn't having any of that! I stopped playing with him, which led to him crying and complaining and that led to Mama telling me that for God's sake couldn't I just play with him so she could get some work done and me saying that I wouldn't play with a cheat and that led to my poor mother declaring that she didn't care if he did cheat, she had to get the kitchen unpacked if we were going to have dinner that night and I could just go back out there and "keep him out of my hair, damn it!"

I went back out there and he continued to cheat and I couldn't wouldn't stand for that, so I hit him over the head with my mallet and knocked him out and scared the wadden out of Mama and me.

Years later, when I read Between Parent and Child by Haim Ginott I really paid attention when he said that when adults or older children play games with children, the way to give them a chance to actually win was to handicap the adult/older child! That way, everyone has a fair chance, the younger child knows about the handicap and understands why and so isn't being condescended to and all is well.

Well, when Richard was four I taught him to play chess. Part of the problem was that I didn't really know how to play chess., I learned the moves in college and by the time you're in college no one wants to play with someone who doesn't know what she is doing, so all I ever did learn was the moves. I started out with Richard having all of his pieces and me having only half of my pieces. As he began to win games, I gave myself pieces back, starting with pawns and leading to the queen.

And before he was six he could beat me every time we played, which he still can. The problem was that he would beat me with the play called "Fool's Mate"! Time after time, he would lure me into Fool's Mate.

Anybody know how to allow a mother to win once in a while without cheating?

On the Street Where I Live

I decided that I would show you what it is like on my hillside. Here is my external staircase -- the one Br'er Bear still sometimes uses to get to Cope Park. As you can see, Mother Nature provides my garden. I think the picture was taken in early June, when all of the sweet rocket was in bloom.

I also get Queen Anne's lace, goat's beard, dandelions (and since my garden is wilderness I can just enjoy it and not have to worry about my lawn), thimble berries, and wild buttercup. One year we had a guerilla gardener and I had a yellow tulip.

The picture on the right was taken a few winters ago, as you can tell (the winter part) from the bare trees. Actually, these pictures were taken about half a block apart. This is one of my favorite rain outfits -- the bright colors cheer me up and the hat makes me feel like a fisher person, of which we have many around here, both sport and commercial. As a matter of fact, my daughter-in-law has just been out fishing this week and so I came home Thursday to find both salmon and halibut in my refrigerator. I have frozen about half of it and will still eat fish almost daily this coming week. Tonight I finished off some king crab a friend gave me. I miss the California produce, but the Alaskan fish is wonderful. My mother used to feed me salmon every time I visited her in California. Can you believe? Paying gawd-awful prices for something I get free and much fresher! I told her if she ever came to Juneau I would buy her a peach. Since she has heard me say that you could stone martyrs with the peaches you get in Alaska, she decided I meant it when I said that I would prefer her tuna and noodle casserole and some fresh produce.

Being Led Astray By Gail Jennings

Gail Jennings was my first college roommate. We both had these odd backgrounds -- I had spent the last two years of high school living with my great-aunt, and her father had died the year before at the age of 90 (as I remember, he was up mending the roof and fell off, which impressed the hell out of me). I was studying Arabic and she was studying Russian. And you should have listened to us as we practiced our pronunciation at the same time! My, the unusual sounds that came from that room late at night.

We hit it off immediately. I'm sure, that if she were to tell you about those days, I was the one who led her astray, but since the things I suggested we do (sneak break into one of the men's dorms [which happened to be locked] before dawn to watch the sunrise from the roof [above the eighth story] because we started too late to get up in the hills in time, for instance) just seemed like good ideas to me. It was the stuff that seemed like good ideas to Gail that I'm talking about.

You need a little background here. We were entering freshmen in the fall of 1960. The prior spring, the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) hearings had been held in San Francisco and the Daily Californian had written some stories about them, and about students being washed down the stairs by fire hoses when they went to demonstrate, that caused the powers that be to object. In those days, the University stood in loco parentis to students, and the regents simply started censoring the paper. At which point, the editorial staff printed the "We Quit" issue (printing copies of the front page on their shirts as well), walked off, and started their own paper, the Independent Californian. (On the masthead: Valid Student Journalism.) At that point, Gail and I joined the staff of the new paper, becoming cub reporters caught up in the movement. We may have been the only students to join at this point; we were certainly the only ones I can remember who didn't have We Quit shirts. The IC only lasted three weeks. We had to find stories, write them, edit them, put the paper to bed, and get up and sell the paper the next day. While it was exciting for Gail and me, the older students were having problems trying to do all this and study for mid-terms and the ROTC members (translation, all the men, since it was mandatory at that time) were getting told that they would never get security clearance if they continued (and who knew if someday you might want it?). So, our editor, Dan Silver, called us together and we closed. Had a party at his apartment afterwards, and many of us either went back to or, like me, joined the Daily Californian.

As I said, mid-terms were upon us. One night Gail and I were studying late, mangling the sounds of Russian and Arabic at each other, and we got goofy. You know how you do, pulling an all-nighter. Gail wrote a story about how I married Dan Silver (on whom I had such a crush -- he was brilliant! 19, the editor of the paper, and a senior majoring in my very own major, anthropology) and we had 26 kids named after famous anthropologists and mythical beings (my personal favorites, named 17, 18, and 19 because they were born during the years I had severe post-partum depression and so only numbered them) and taught in one of the temporary buildings (quonset huts put up during WWII and still there the last time I looked in the 70s) on the Berkeley campus. She even illustrated it, and one picture I remember showed Dan and me taking the kids to school in a buckboard pulled by four battered VW bugs and . . . It was really very funny. But then -- she decided she was going to mail it to Dan. Panic! I was able to talk her out of it only by allowing her to mail him something. We were eating stick pretzels and I decided she could mail him a pretzel.


Thus was born The Independent Pretzel (Valid Student Nourishment). We published on post cards. All issues had the masthead. The first issue had one pretzel taped on. On the fourth, they spelled out H I. We kept it up, adding one a day, until the post cards were full. Two days before we ran out of room, the Pelican (the UC Berkeley humor magazine) came out with a brief mention that "Dan Silver has been receiving obscene pretzels in the mail." I was sitting waiting for class to begin when I read that. Of course, that night we had to fill the beak of the Pelican's pelican statue with pretzels. (No, I don't know who the guy is but that is the very Pelican's pelican itself! In front of the building that housed the magazine offices.)

The night that we mailed the third pretzel, we just continued walking and talking until we realized that it was 4 a.m., we were way beyond our 10 p.m. lock out, the street we were on was absolutely empty, and there was a police car pulling up. The officer wanted to know where we had been at that time of night and Gail told him we had been visiting my aunt (who lived in another town, for pity's sake!) and when he asked for her address, she gave Dan Silver's! I was standing there picturing this policeman knocking on Dan's door at 4 a.m. with us in tow and trying to figure out how I was going to explain this to a young man who may have known only vaguely who we were, when Gail got the same mental image I was getting and blurted out, " I lied! It's just a big lie! We've just been walking and talking. Her aunt lives in Modesto!" So, of course then the officer wanted to know why Gail had felt compelled to lie to him. "I was afraid you'd think we were prostitutes, being out this late." Laugh! I thought that poor cop would pee his pants! It turns out, as you may already know, that prostitutes don't walk empty streets at 4 a.m.

On another of our all-night walks, we were rescued from thugs in a car by garbage collectors and rode their route with them for two hours, until we arrived at our dorm. Two of the nicest men I've ever met, perfectly happy to take us with them to safety. And how it frustrated those idiots in the car, who kept circling and circling just sure we'd get out of the truck and they could grab us!

We used to study at the Kroeber Anthropology Library. At the foot of the circular staircase, there was a sarcophagus. (Not too much like this one. I lucked out with the pelican; couldn't expect the same fortune twice.) One night Gail decided to find out what it felt like to lay on top of it, so down the stairs we went and up the tomb she went, at which point she realized that there were a couple of male grad students at the top of the stairs looking down at her. Off she rolled, and I did not try that, thank you anyway.

The next night on the way over we took a detour to the roof of one of the more historic buildings and while there, we threw a length of board into Strawberry Creek. (No, I won't tell you why we did these things because I don't know why we did these things. I don't think I ever knew why we did these things.) Then we went down and Gail fished it out (she had the most amazing collection of souvenirs from expeditions like this). So, there we were in the library, Gail carrying this dripping piece of wood, and I looked down and said, "That's not the same board, it's covered in algae." and she answered, "I have an uncle named Algie" and of course we both got a fit of the giggles and people looked up and I heard a male voice say, "My God! That's the girl I was telling you about, the one who was laying on the sarcophagus last night!" I have never been back to that library since.

This poster is titled "Women Walking Over the World" which is exactly what Gail and I were. I think that we lived our friendship on our feet. So many of the memories I have of her are of late or all night walks. Walks where we solved the problems of the world, and where I learned how very differently someone who is very much like me can think and see the world. One of our early all-night walks through Berkeley neighborhoods brought us to an area with oddly shaped trees that for some reason made Gail think of Morlocks, something that would not have occurred to me, but which I could see once she had pointed it out.

(In those days, women's dorms were locked at 10 p.m. and if you were not in, you were "locked out" which could lead to expulsion. How odd that it never occurred to anyone that when a woman was locked out she might then spend the night elsewhere! Gale and I lived in one building of a complex that had the dining hall in another, so we just walked all night, turning up for breakfast as though we had come from our room. Since we were good students, never caught doing the things we did, and didn't boy around, no one ever thought to check and see where we were coming from.)

We hiked in the hills around the UC Berkeley campus and strolled through Bay Area towns and meandered through parks and zoos and museums. We explored the nooks and crannies of the campus buildings, discovering such arcane treasures as a large globe marked with the Confederate States and peppered with shot. We were university students at a time when only very rich students had cars and we went everywhere. If we needed to, we took buses. And then we walked some more.

One bright spring Saturday towards the end of our freshman year, we took a bus to San Francisco prepared to walk across the Golden Gate to Sausalito. The wind was blowing wildly, causing the bridge to sway. As we crossed we sang the Tom Lehrer version of My Darling Clementine, giving great power and drama to the refrain:
Clementine, can't you tell, from the howls of me
This love of mine comes to you from the bowels of me?
which seemed absolutely delightful to us, particularly when we punctuated it with wolf howls. When we reached the center of the bridge, we poured the small bottle of wine we had brought along for the purpose as a libation into the bay, followed by a cigarette. We had intended to drop that lit, but the wind was blowing too hard for me to keep a match going.

We quite fell in love with Sausalito, which in 1961 was all art galleries, book stores, coffee houses, and house boats clustered around the bay. I fell in love with it enough to go into the local newspaper and see if they were hiring for the summer. Since I had received a byline on my very first piece for the Daily Californian, I was sure I was up to it. The editor was a very nice gentleman who managed to turn me down without making me feel stupid for just dropping in and applying on a whim.

We only roomed together for one semester. We had been unable to get into a campus dorm, but lived in University approved housing. (As women students, we were not easily allowed to live out of University approved housing at any age, as I discovered when I returned to school at 23, with two babies.) Towards the end of the semester, there was a fire in the house, and although no one was hurt and nothing was destroyed, the fire department closed it and we were unable to find housing together in the spring. Gail found a room in campus housing and I moved into the Baptist Student Center, which sounds odd for a nice little atheist girl, but wasn't when you realized that the BSC didn't have lock out! After that, Gail had to sneak in and out, but since I didn't, we could return to my place and Nanette (my roommate) was always willing to let Gail sleep on the floor.

From then on, at least four days a week, and often seven, we would meet early in the morning and walk up above the town to watch the sunrise together. One morning when I was walking to pick up Gail a cop stopped his patrol car and asked if he could take my picture to show his wife, since she didn't believe him that at exactly 4:13 every morning he passed this young girl walking along and singing ("If I Had a Hammer" as I recall). He posed me so we could see the clock on the campanile, to verify the time, and then he shared his thermos of coffee with me. Often after that, his wife would pack something for him to share with me when we met. As I think of that, a couple of things amaze me. One that a police officer was out patrolling alone. The other that his wife's reaction to our becoming friends was to pack me coffee and muffins! What an innocent time that was.


I've already told you about the morning that we got a late start and couldn't make it up the hill in time, and so broke into one of the men's eight story dorms so we could watch the sunrise from the roof; we were a touch concerned that we might meet some student on his way to the bathroom and so be caught, but the adventure passed without a hitch.

One fine night at the very end of our freshman year, I had news to impart to Gail. I had managed a major rite of passage that evening, and so we denuded a church flower garden and used the blooms to decorate the car of the young gentleman involved. Wayne Alley was appropriately amused and pleased by my tribute.

And the next spring, we both dropped out and became beatnik/hippies. I moved to San Francisco to starve in an attic and write the great American novel (neither of which I did) and Gale went to Europe. I know we maintained contact for a while, because I remember writing to her when I got my divorce. I think she was back in California by then. I went back to school and graduated, then went to College of Notre Dame and earned my Montessori certificate, moved to Fairbanks and taught. Eventually, I took my maiden name back. What Gail did, I don't know.

We were supposed to graduate in 1964; I actually did in '68. I don't know if Gail ever went back or if she went back, where and when she graduated. I've changed my last name since we lost contact, she may have done so as well. How do you find someone when there are so many unknown variables? When Julie found Kate for me, she knew the high school she attended and the last name she had when she was there. But, I don't remember what high school Gail went to.

Holla Back

When I was about 21, I was walking in San Francisco and a really frightening looking man, obviously drunk (I could smell it) yelled at a young woman walking about half a block in front of me, "Hey, baby, how about a good f**k?" She shrank into herself, embarrassed that anyone could think she deserved that (I know how she felt, because women have all felt that way in that circumstance. As though it were our fault.) I have no idea how it happened, but the next thing, I was walking beside her with my arm around her shoulders, facing down the offensive person, and saying, "You weren't capable of a good f**k the best day of your life."

On a different subject, which I will bring together shortly, I promise. I hate to admit it (no, I don't. I revel in admitting it. I thrive on being unique and unusual and so I love to admit anything that will fill out my image in your mind and allow you to appreciate the full wonder that is me), but I'm a bit of a purist. I think that a phone should be a phone. It should ring without my having to learn how to make it ring the way I want it to. It should allow me to talk to people. That's it. (I resisted the answering machine, as well, and now I love mine, so just accept this as Maya's Granny being older and resisting change.) I have seen no use for having a camera in a phone, it has seemed to me rather like having a duck in a box of cat litter -- barely related if you really strain the concept, but dufus level dumb. At last! A use for cameras in cell phones that I can get behind! Not only that, but something to do when strangers men (let's admit it, the folks who do this are men) make sexual comments and disgusting noises at you on the street and you don't have my brass.

Women Expose Street Harassment by Elana Fiske on Alternet.org

Next time a stranger comments on your breasts in public, just shoot him -- with a camera, such as the one built into your cell phone.

This is the unorthodox advice of Holla Back NYC, a blog-cum-grass-roots movement that uses digital technology to combat street harassment. They urge women not only to take a photo when men hassle or insult them in public, but to make the photo public on hollabacknyc.com

***

Such grassroots action is vital, because street harassment is a very difficult crime to deal with by law, says Marty Langelan, author of Back Off: How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers. "Most cities do not even have ordinances that would make it a misdemeanor, and even in cities that do, such as Washington [D.C.] ... police won't make an arrest unless they witness the behavior and consider it threatening. But [police] are [most often] males with guns, and not much is threatening to them."

Women, on the other hand, may feel threatened even by statements that seem to be compliments -- because they may be the precursor to more lewd or injurious conduct. (Indeed, Langelan urges women to be cautious about photographing harassers who seem at all violent.)

"Most of the guys I've spoken with can't believe that the problem is really that big a deal," adds Katie Runyan, 23, who founded Holla Back D.C., a group with whom Langelan plans to work. "They seem to believe that it's a mild annoyance or that it only happens once in a while. This proves to me exactly why this site needs to be created."

Snap, Crackle, and Pow

I was over visiting Ally Bean at Crazy Dust In My Coffee and she was talking about the fact that Rice Krispies are now out in an organic form and supplied a link to an article about why they make the sounds they make. There was a quote there to the effect that getting grants to study the noises made by breakfast cereal is a touch difficult, which amused me. And then, the two things, Ally's post and the silly quote got me to remembering . . .

When I was three of* or four my mother sent away (probably with box tops) and got a pattern and made me a Pop doll. And the very first time I took it outside to play, an eight year old boy grabbed it away from me and wouldn't give it back.

So, I knocked him down and sat on his chest and beat his head against the ground. Which just goes to show that Maya's Granny has her darker side.

* Three of four? For a moment there, I sounded like a Borg! Which might be appropriate, since I acted like one!

Reynolds Unwrapped

Sometimes It's Worth Turning On

Miss Marple
I was watching PBS Mystery -- Miss Marple, The Murder At the Vicarage. Miss Marple has been knocked down and so is on a cane. The police inspector, who has not met her before, isn't sure how to take the help she is giving him (is she right? is she nuts?) and he says, "I don't know whether to buy her a box of chocs or kick her stick out from under her."

Smallville
In junior high and high school, I was a big Superman fan. Loved Lois and Clark when it was on TV. But, somehow I had never watched Smallville, although my brother Forrest has not only recommended it, but when I was in California for two months last summer lent me the DVDs, which I then didn't watch. So, this weekend I watched one of the shows from the first season.

It is actually very good. Not what I expected -- no cape and tights, no flying. He isn't going around being Superboy. Full of inside jokes like Clark Kent has a crush on Lana Lang, who is dating somebody else. Lex Luthor seems to be a good guy at this point and claims Clark as his best friend. Clark makes a comment about not knowing what he wants to do when he grows up, but he knows he doesn't want to put on a suit everyday and fly around.

The best part was at the end when Clark told his father that the kid who had been the sort-of-villain that week, having the superpowers transferred to him for a short time, "didn't get the most important gift I did. You and mom as parents."

How about that! The writers of Smallville recognize that how a kid turns out may depend on how his parents raise him! How cool is that?

Labor Day

One morning in 1948 my father got up, shaved, got dressed and ready to go to work. By noon, he was dead of tetanus. He had been going to work for several days with swollen lymph nodes and in pain.

He was working for Bethlehem Steel, in Antioch, California. He had stepped on a rusty nail at work and been given a tetanus booster that day. The doctor who saw him at the hospital wrote cerebral hemorrhage on his death certificate. The only reason we ever knew the truth was that his body was shipped to Modesto, my parents' home town. My Great-aunt Julie had been friends with the mortician since they had gone to school together. He called her and told her that "this boy's death certificate is wrong. The company is trying to cover this up." In 1948, the company owned the town and the doctor. Protecting the company from a lawsuit for dispensing out-of-date tetanus booster came before serving the powerless widow who paid your bill.

When people hear this story, they can't understand why on earth a man who was that sick would get up and try to go to work. Or how a company could own a town, control a physician in private practice. And the reason that they can't understand it is labor unions. It is because of labor unions that when you and I are sick, we can stay home and our families don't have to make do without that day's income. In 1948 people didn't get "paid for not working". There were no sick days. There was no health insurance. There was only the simple, stark reality of a day's pay for a day's work. It is only because of labor unions that towns in the United States are rarely owned so openly by corporations these days.

Today, when you celebrate Labor Day in whatever way you do, be grateful for labor unions. When you barbecue for your relatives or go to that sale or just take a picnic to the park with your kids, remember that all of the benefits you and I have as workers are due to the work and persistence of labor unions.

They didn't just make changes for their members, but for all of us. I have never belonged to a union and yet I have all of the benefits that they have fought for. And none of the benefits that I have were given without their struggle.

The Man in The White Coat

We were living in Puerto Rico when, a couple of weeks before my tenth birthday, my brother Forrest came along as I was bent over, butt in the air, scrubbing out the tub while still naked from my bath. What four-year old can resist an invitation like that? One mischievous kick, and I had a chipped incisor. Which led to dental x-rays, which led to the discovery that although that was my only permanent left central incisor, I had three sets of lateral incisors and canines on that side. So, one sunny day my dad dropped me off at the dentist to have two extra teeth cut out of my gums and one pulled while he went on to work. When he came back he said he could hear me screaming two blocks away. It turns out novocaine intensifies the pain for me and the dentist didn't believe that it still hurt (who believed little girls in 1952?) until I tore the shirt off his back and scratched him until he bled. His solution had been to tie me in the chair and remove the teeth. Can you wonder that I became afraid of dental needles? And, oh yes. We later discovered that he had removed an extra tooth and so the simple cap became a bridge.

Fast forward to 1975. I had just moved from Fairbanks, Alaska to Stockton, California. Bridges in those days lasted about ten years and my most recent one needed to be replaced. I explained to my mother's dentist that I was deathly afraid of needles and that since all of the teeth involved in the bridge were already root canalled (no nerves left, therefore no pain possible) I would do without a shot. He agreed. And then the sumbitch came up with his hand behind his back and got me in the roof of the mouth. Bad plan. I projectile vomited and became so hysterical that he had to call my mother 45 minutes later to come and get me because it was obvious I wasn't going to be driving that day.

The next week I went back to have the work done. The nurse tried to direct me to the chair and I refused. The dentist came in and said he understood I wouldn't get in the chair until we had talked.

"You," I said, "may be the man in the white coat, but I am the woman with the green dollar bills. And unless you promise that you will never come near me with a needle again, I'm going to take them to some other dentist."

"Lady," he answered, "I wouldn't give you a shot to save my first born son."

Somewhere between ten and 33 I had figured it out: when I hire someone to help me, their status doesn't matter, they are still the hired help. I still remember those two dentists, and if they are alive, I promise they remember me.

Br'er Bear Comes Down the Hill

Br'er Bear lived on Mount Roberts, overlooking the Gastineau Channel and downtown Juneau. He went up the hill and ate berries, and he went down the hill and ate salmon. And sometimes he went right into town and ate out of the dumpsters behind restaurants. So, one Thursday evening (although, since Br'er Bear is a bear, he didn't know that it was Thursday), when he had been munching away at the last of the berries on the mountain, he decided to wander on down the mountain and see if there were any interesting snacks laying about in town.

Well, Br'er Bear headed on down the mountain side, ambling through the woods, taking his time. In fact, he took so much time ambling this way and that way, that by the time he got to the hillside above Basin Road it was already 7:30. Now, the interesting thing about coming down to Basin Road is that the last part of the hillside is a wooden staircase. As Br'er Bear was approaching the stairs, he could hear a person coming up the staircase. "Oh, dear," thought Br'er Bear, "A person. Now, what was it my Mama told me about people? Oh, that's right; they get nervous if they are surprised. Make noise." So, Br'er Bear went rustle, rustle, rustle in the bushes so that the person on the stairs would know he was there and not be surprised.

And it was a good thing he did, too. He sat still in the bushes and rustled and rustled and a voice said, "Br'er Bear, I hear you there. Hold it a minute while I get my key out of my pocket and open my door. Now give me one more minute to get these groceries into the house. There we are." And Br'er Bear almost started back down the hill, but then he saw a small grey cat come out onto the porch, look up at the bushes where he sat, and run right back into the house. And then the person closed the door, and as Br'er Bear strolled down the staircase, he could see Maya's Granny looking out the window at him.

This story happened a few years ago, and the small grey cat was Missy. And since then, Juneau has passed a law to protect bears, and restaurants now have bear-proof dumpsters.

Ask For What You Want

We have been receiving over 200% of normal rainfall since mid-June; and a very heavy downpour the last 24 hours. All six of the waterfalls on Mount Juneau are running full. Along with several from Mount Roberts, all of them terminate in Gold Creek, which runs through Cope Park. At any rate, all of the creeks in my neck of the woods are engorged these days. So, yesterday morning when the Care-A-Van driver picked me up he mentioned that he had taken a break at Cope Park (only one block down hill from my apartment, but since there is no elevator on the mountainside, about a 12 block walk or drive around) and the creek was running heavy laden and really lovely.

And so, remembering that I am supposed to be taking good care of myself, I said, "Would you have time to drive me down to look?" And he checked his schedule, and he did! It was only a few blocks out of our way from apartment to office, but we took 15 minutes and went and walked in the rain beside the rapids and allowed the sound of cascading water and the beauty of the setting to sooth our souls and set us both on the path to a day of being centered. And I was all day.

This Body

has carried me for 64 years
through laughter and tears
given birth to two babies
attracted its full share of men
climbed hills and swum laps
dug gardens and weeded the lawn
painted rooms and cooked meals
danced -- alone, with a partner, in a group
run for sheer pleasure
skipped, hopped, jumped
done my bidding time and again
walked for hours, slept soundly

how odd that only now
when moving sometimes hurts
when sleep is often interrupted
when stamina is low --
only now do I
appreciate it.

An Idea I Can Get Behind

So, I was over visiting Livingston I Presume where I was directed to Garrison Keillor's Modest Proposal in which he suggests that since the GOP has created this situation wherein our country's young are being sent to die in a war we don't believe in, are leaving college incredibly in debt, and face being the generation to pay off the national debt we are building up by fighting an unnecessary war at the same time we enact tax cuts for the very rich, we pay that debt off by allowing no more medical care for card carrying Republicans, and allow them faith based care only.

I would like to expand this idea. The GOP has decided that they don't trust science. They don't want my grandchild to learn about evolution or have accurate sex education, they don't believe that man contributes to global warming, they don't want us to know what poisons are in our food and air or any of a number of other things. They only trust "sound science" which is their code for pseudo-science that they agree with.

So, let them live without any of the benefits of the reality based world that they have such contempt for. Turn off their health care. Turn off their lights. Turn off their television and phone. Let them walk or go horse back where ever they need to go. Let them make all their clothes by hand -- starting with tending the sheep and picking the cotton. Let them swim across the Atlantic and then walk to Iraq and replace our troops with their own bodies, using the sticks and rocks that were the only armaments available before someone experimented with reality based science. Let them plant their crops by poking a stick in the ground and dropping in a seed or two. Let them go hungry if they can't figure it out.

They want a theocracy? Let them go live in one. Iran comes to mind. Or, we could set up a preserve somewhere and allow them to go face a witch hunt.

Patriot Guard Riders

You have heard of the Westboro Baptist Church's cruel demonstrations at military funerals, carrying signs about how the American tolerance of homosexuality is causing God to turn his back on us and the deaths of American soldiers is divine retribution. These people are jackals. They have no problem intruding their hate filled agenda on the grief of families and dishonoring our nation's dead.

It turns out that, although the Bush administration has chosen to ignore this, there is a group which has turned out to defend the families. This group is the Patriot Guard Riders, a growing coalition of veterans' motorcycle clubs, American Legion and other veterans' groups, and now, apparently, members of the peace movement. One of the incredible things about the Patriot Guard is that it has no political agenda. It is composed of liberals and conservatives. It exists for one purpose -- to defend the fallen during their last time of need.

Read more about them in Supporting the Troops by William Rivers Pitt

Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address spoke pointedly of caring "for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan," of the solemn responsibility held by this nation to those who served and died in her service. A plaque outside the Veterans Administration building in Washington, DC, bears these exact words. It is a motto, a mantra, and today, an utterly unfulfilled promise.
Consider the following.
The Bush administration's most recent budget framework includes $910 million in cuts to the Veterans Administration. 2,615 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and yet efforts to double the death benefit for soldiers killed in active duty have been forcefully resisted by the White House. Pay raises for soldiers have been capped. The tax-cut mantra of the White House has not trickled down far enough to assist the troops on the line; soldiers fighting overseas and soldiers deployed for extended periods have not been deemed worthy of even minimal tax relief, while billions of dollars in tax cuts are gifted to the wealthiest among us.
Nearly 20,000 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq, but must wait nearly six months before being seen by a VA hospital. The prescription co-pay costs for veterans were doubled in Bush's proposed 2005 budget. His 2004 proposed budget would have eviscerated funding for the education of military children. The White House formally opposed allowing National Guard and Reserve members access to the Pentagon's health care program. Perhaps worst of all, the White House quietly attempted to cut combat pay for all soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, but this measure was quickly scrapped after it became public.
This from the man whose staged photo-ops with serving soldiers have become the stuff of lore. This from the man whose defenders denounce critics with the line, "Why don't you support the troops?" This from an administration filled with officials who, almost to a man, had other priorities when they were called to serve.

***
"Caring for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan," said Lincoln. The government isn't doing it; this administration, in particular, seems all too willing to create new veterans while dispensing with the systems of care that tend to them after their service is concluded. Men like Hannah, and the riders of the Patriot Guard, have taken matters into their own hands. They stand for the families of the fallen, they raise funds for disabled veterans and their families, and they do so for one simple reason.
They support the troops.

Follow the link and read the entire article. It begins by acknowledging that this administration has pretty well turned its back on the fallen, living and dead, moves to the behavior of the Westboro Baptist Church, and then delivers us to the hope that is the Patriot Guard Riders. Although I am angry at Bush and the WBC, I find that the story of the Guard is such that it inspires both admiration and hope in my heart. I was unable to read it with dry eyes.

August 29 in History

Here is a mild coincidence of things that have interested me in my life. At one time I intended to be an archeologist, and South America was the area which interested me most. I was fascinated by the story of Atahualpa when I was in high school. I am also a fan of the Beatles. On this date in history:
1533
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The last Incan king, Atahualpa, was murdered on orders of Spanish conqueror Francisco Pizarro. Pizarro used the Spanish law to justify declaring war on the Inca, steal their gold and silver, and bring their lands into the Spanish Empire: Atahualpa had refused to convert to Christianity. And here we are again, with a leader who is determined on empire, using an excuse to attack another country, take control of its oil, and remove the leader, who just happens not to be Christian. Once again, a more technological nation defeats one with inferior armaments.


1966
Some things you wish wouldn't have changed.
The Beatles performed at Candle Stick Park in San Francisco, their last public concert. I won tickets by calling in to a radio station and identifying Elinor Rigby the day after it was released. Went with friends who brought green brownies. (Luckily the driver didn't eat any, since on the way back it seemed to me that the Golden Gate Bridge was dancing like a python and turning all sorts of colors. Not frightening, but it might have made driving difficult.) The audience was shouting so loud that we couldn't hear any of the music -- and it later turned out that the Beatles had learned not to waste effort on American concert audiences, and were not actually bothering to sing.

Poo

The father was sitting and reading his paper when his five year old daughter asked him, "Daddy, where does poo come from?"

Startled that she should ask such a question so young, he still thought about it so he could frame an answer that would explain it to her. Finally, he said, "Honey, you remember we had breakfast this morning? Well, after we eat food, our bodies take all of the good things, the vitamins, the energy, the calcium, the protein, all the things our bodies need. Then, what's left, the part we can't use and even that might hurt us, well our bodies send that out of our bums and it is poo."

The little girl looked stunned for a moment, and then asked in a trembling voice, "And Tigger?"

The Three of Us

You've seen this picture before, Julie is about a week old and Richard is two. She was 5 pounds, 3 ounces when she was born, but she lost weight initially (I've been told most babies do) and here she is back up to an even 5 pounds. I had been to court for my divorce on the morning of December 30, 1965. In the afternoon I was being readmitted to UC Berkeley, and that night I checked in to the hospital and Julie was born the next morning. Three weeks later, I was back on campus. Life was certainly busy.



This was the same Christmas that Julie got the box from Richard; we are visiting my parents. You can see some of the toys they received -- there were lots more. Just as I had been the ultimate oney-oney, my kids were the first of their generation. They had the grandparents and great-grandparents and aunt and uncle all to themselves for the first few years. Actually, Forrest's daughter Carey came along not long after this, but for this time, they were it and they got all the gifts. (I remember that when I was little -- almost all the gifts under the tree were for me, and to this day a fully loaded Christmas tree makes me feel like it's all mine. Even a tree in someone else's house with nothing under it for me can make me feel special and good.) I was still going to Berkeley at this point.


Here we are in front of the Fairbanks Public Library. Notice that it is a log building. We lived half a block away, also in a log building. I was working as a Montessori teacher at the time. This is the library that a group of Montessori moms was coming out of one Saturday and heard Julie call across the street to her best friend, "You don't either have to be a virgin to get married, Amy Desrocher! My mom said she wasn't." Alaska being Alaska, that made my reputation. The moms thought it was wonderful to know that I was human. There were a couple of things about living in that house. One, it had once belonged to a very famous lady of the night. It was on the corner and all of the corner houses were on the same party line. Three times in two weeks we had accidents at that corner and all three times all four houses tried to call 911 at the same time.

Here we are in California, in San Francisco on the beach. In the background you can see The Cliff House and Sutros Baths. Richard was 23 and Julie 21 here and this picture was taken by Julie's father the weekend he came to California and Julie met him for the first time since she was a few months old. For the first time that he had known she was his. Not that I didn't tell him, once Kate had figured it out, but I did it indirectly and it took him 18 years to figure it out. Doesn't speak hint, not Michael. At this time, Richard had moved back in and Julie had moved to San Francisco to finish college and Missy was a kitten.
And this was taken in Juneau about seven years ago when Julie and Maya came up to visit. This is pretty much how we all still look, except I've got more white in my hair than I did then -- although in this picture it looks whiter than it was. Richard still has a beard. He started wearing one when he was in his early 20s and still looked 15 and we have all grown used to him in it. I don't have any idea what he looks like without it now; I might not recognize him if he shaved it off. This is the last time the three of us were together. That doesn't seem possible, all those years when the three of us were always together, and now we never are. Plane fare from California to Alaska is a bit steep and vacations have just never worked out for Richard and Kathy and me to all go down at the same time. And for Julie, Ted, and Maya it is equally expensive. I wish they would move up, but I don't hope for it, since Julie and Ted are big city folk and like a warmer climate.

Sunday Meme

So, Julie tagged me. Haven't done a meme before, but this certainly gives me something for Sunday, leaving a couple at least started "in the can" which is a good thing this week, as school started here last week and I will be over at the high school recruiting for Teens In Action, and probably fairly tired in the evenings. And not at my desk over lunch, either.

1. Things that scare me:
George W. Bush
Religious fanatics
People who actually believe that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11

2. People who make me laugh:
Julie
Richard
Stephen Colbert
Jon Stewart
Lewis Black
Mark Twain

3. Things I hate the most:
George W. Bush
Politics and the way they work
People who harm children

4. Things I don't understand:
People who don't reflect on their experience
Bigotry of any kind
Hubris

5. Things I'm doing right now:
Drinking grapefruit juice
Blogging
Rubbing Pippin's belly with my toes while he wraps himself around my left foot and purrs

6. Things I want to do before I die:
Write a lot more
Publish
Travel a lot more

7. Things I can do:
Teach anything I can learn
Learn a very wide range of things
Write so that people laugh and cry when I want them to

8. Things I can't do:
Sing well
Draw at all
Dive

10. Things I think you should listen to:
Children when they tell you there is a bear in the yard or a black widow spider on the stairs*
Your conscience
Bird song
Waterfalls
The surf
Whatever makes you laugh really hard

11. Things you should never listen to:
Discouraging words
Hate filled talk
People who don't know you're there

12. Things I'd like to learn:
To draw
To sing
To whistle

13. Favorite foods:
Thanh Long crab
Bing cherries
Watermelon
Jamaican jerk pork
Ripe peaches
Grilled salmon
Mongolian barbecue
Pomegranates
Persimmons

14. Beverages I drink regularly:
Coffee
Pepsi
Grapefruit and pomegranate juice
Hot and Spicy V-8

15. Shows I watched as a kid:
I Love Lucy
Captain Video and his Video Rangers
Hopalong Cassidy
The Lone Ranger
The Cisco Kid (Listened to)

16. People I'm tagging (to do this meme):
Kate
Ted
Pseu

* My sister, Loretta, once told our nephew Elzie to go out and play when he reported a bear in the yard, and then when she went out to hang the wash discovered that there was one, along with her five children and our brother Chuck's four and she had to chase it away with a transitor radio because she didn't know how to shoot the rifle; I once said "Yes, Dear" to Richard when he told me there was a black widow on the stairs and sent him down those stairs to go outside and play and then went down them myself and saw that was one.

Sexualizing Children

Nature has given us definite cues as to sexual maturity. This child is obviously not there yet. She has a flat little girl chest, short limbs, a look of innocence and asexuality. The signals she sends out are for protection.




This woman obviously is mature. Her body signals that she is fertile, she is desirable, she is ripe. She has breasts, pubic hair, and the lines of her body are longer. Her body sends signals to attract a man so that she can start a family.




This woman is obviously built to pillow grandchildren on her breast. Her fertility is unquestioned, but it is in the past. She is no longer sending out signals to young men. Indeed, the signals she is sending may include the prosperity of her husband or the group.



So what happens when you dress the little girl as a sexual being and the grown woman as a child? You confuse the messages they are sending to the world


This is supremely dangerous. We no longer live in small familiar groups, but in large anonymous populations. Many anthropologists believe that this is the reason for wearing clothes in tropical climates, to reduce the sexual signals that occur when strangers meet. (Nudists do not find the bodies of their family members enticing, only of strangers.) So, adults dress to reduce the signals, and there are cultures where adults dress and children run around naked. No one gets confused about who is sexually mature and who isn't. When children start wearing clothes, usually because of the climate; sometimes because of the size of the society, there is nothing provocative about their clothing. When a girl reaches maturity, the society has ways for her to dress to signal that. It may be a flower behind her ear or pierced ears or low cut dresses or floor length dresses. Whatever it is, it is different than little girls wear. The society is careful to guard little girls against inappropriate sexual interest.

But, what we do is a double whammy. Not only do we sexualize children's clothing, but we then dress sexually mature women in children's clothing, which begins to sexualize the non-sexual clothing of children. We are setting ourselves up for trouble, as this article on CommonDreams.org No Escaping Sexualization of Young Girls by Rosa Brooks makes clear.

In our hyper-commercialized consumerist society, there's virtually no escaping the relentless sexualization of younger and younger children. My 26-month-old daughter didn't emerge from the womb clamoring for a seashell bikini like Princess Ariel's but now that she's savvy enough to notice who's prancing around on her pull-ups, she wants in on the bikini thing. And my 4-year-old wasn't born demanding lip gloss and nail polish, but when a little girl at nursery school showed up with her Hello Kitty makeup kit, she was hooked.

In a culture in which the sexualization of childhood is big business and — mainstream mega-corporations such as Disney earn billions by marketing sexy products to children too young to understand their significance, is it any wonder that pedophiles feel emboldened to claim that they shouldn't be ostracized for wanting sex with children? On an Internet bulletin board, one self-avowed "girl lover" offered a critique of this week's New York Times series on pedophilia: "They fail, of course, to mention the hypocrisy of Hollywood selling little girls to millions of people in a highly sexualized way." I hate to say it, but the pedophiles have a point here.

There are plenty of good reasons to worry about children and sex. But if we want to get to the heart of the problem, we should obsess a little less about whether the neighbor down the block is a dangerous pedophile — and we should worry a whole lot more about good old-fashioned American capitalism, which is busy serving our children up to pedophiles on a corporate platter.

Yes, they will sell anything. Your health. Your future. Your child.

Friday Cat Blogging

Missy & Abe
Missy was my cat for 18 1/2 years. She was a small creature, five pounds at her largest, four and a half towards the end of her life. Abe was her best animal friend in her later years. An Irish wolfhound, Abe's head was as big as Missy. (In the background you can see parts of Abe's mistress, my friend Zinna.) As you can see, Missy and Abe got on very well, for all the size differential. This was partly because Missy had been raised around Julie's dog Samantha, who was the most gentle and accepting dog in the world, and partly because Abe was, like so many larger breeds of animals, a gentle creature himself. He was big, what did he need to prove to anyone? And Missy was a cat, what did she need to prove to anyone?

Missy and Abe both liked porcupines and tried to make friends with them. The difference was that when Abe would approach one, the porcupine would turn his tail toward Abe, Abe would do the dog greeting and try to sniff under the tail, and he would invariably get quills in his nose; he may have been one of those dogs who get addicted to something in the quills or maybe he just never learned. Abe never saw a porcupine he didn't try to sniff. Going for a walk with Zinna and Abe was a never ending adventure, with Zinna and me being vigilant and pulling him back before he could, once again, get quilled. Missy, on the other hand, never got quilled because as she would approach, they would turn their backs on her and she would circle to touch noses and so she never touched them and never needed to learn that they were sharp.

As Missy aged, she slowed down and slept a lot. When she first woke up she moved slowly, carefully, allowing her joints to warm up before she put much stress on them. Except the time six weeks before she died, when she was sleeping on my breast as I sat in my recliner. Suddenly, she was up and gone and by the time I could turn around to see what was happening, all that was left of the mouse was its tail. Such a good little predator, she was.

These days both Missy and Abe have been gone for a few years. But I still miss them. Having the Hooligans is lovely, and they make me laugh with their young antics, but sometimes I want my little, quiet, comfortable Missy.

Scare Tactics, Yet Again

So, we got up on Wednesday morning and what, other than election results in Alaska, greeted us as we read our morning paper? The latest study claiming that, as SFGate.com phrased it, "Early Death Only a Belt Hole Away". How does that feel, for all of us who are fat and all of us who love somebody who is fat?

I've been reading these studies for decades, at first with a sucker's personal interest and eventually with a critical mind. Let's think about this. The conventional wisdom is that obesity leads to an early death. We have more obese people today than ever before in the history of the human race -- not only are there more fat people, but individuals are fatter than ever before. And we can see, from the falling life expectancy that fat kills. Except that, life expectancy isn't falling. While obesity has overtaken up to 60 percent of the population, life expectancy has gone from 49 to 77 years. An increase of 57 percent.

As I read the article, I noticed a couple of things. And, shall we be surprised by what I noticed? First off, the study is being touted by the Obesity Society. Heard of them? Well, they aren't a society of the obese. No, they are a group of professionals in the field of obesity management. In other words, folk who pocket part of the $33 billion per annum paid out by people like me in the hope that they will get thin. Secondly, it is being challenged by a number of professionals who don't profit from this population, including Dr. Glenn Gaesser, the obesity expert who wrote "Big Fat Lies", a debunking of many of the myths around weight; Dr. Gaesser says that the study is "just adding to the obesity hysteria".

So, I looked a little further and found this Campos: Weight Study's Data Tortured by Paul Campos

Paul Campos is the author of The Obesity Myth, and in writing his article went to the New England Journal of Medicine and actually read the study. Here is part of what he has to say about it.

This, at last, produced a (modest) increase in mortality risk associated with "overweight," thus allowing the authors to draw their conclusion that "overweight is associated with an increased risk of death."

But notice how this result was produced. Since the "overweight" people in the study still had the lowest death risk, even after the authors tossed out 70 percent of their subject pool by limiting their analysis to never-smokers, the study found "overweight" associated with an increased risk of death only among a particular subgroup: people who had been "overweight" at age 50, but were at a "normal weight" when they later entered the study.

In other words, what the study really found is that, for middle-aged "overweight" people, weight loss increases the risk of death significantly! (This, by the way, is a very common finding in studies of this sort).

The authors, needless to say, fail to note this awkward fact, which does not merely contradict, but actually inverts, the public health message their study is intended to bolster. Will journalists covering the study manage to figure this out on their own? Fat chance.

Are you seeing what I'm seeing? That, if people who are currently 50 or over and are overweight believe this "study" and lose weight, they will actually increase their risk of death significantly. And that the authors of the study obviously know that (in order to explain away the fact that their own results showed fat people living longer than thin ones, they had to decide that the thin ones were dying of smoking related causes and so eliminated 70 percent of their original subjects whether their deaths were smoking related or not) and still publicize their results in a way that endangers fat people. And although our society is significantly biased against fat people and doesn't hesitate to heap scorn upon us, this is not being done because of that. No, it is being done for the same reason that the tobacco companies hid their research that tobacco was both deadly and addictive for 50 years and marketed to children. The same reason the diet industry ignores the research that shows that one of the major causes of weight gain is dieting and continues to sell diet products and services, knowing the result will be an increase in weight in 98 percent of their customers. Where there is a profit to be made, it is really not important that you might make people worse or kill them. And if you have to convince children to smoke or constantly redefine overweight downward to replace your lost customer base, well that's what you do. Nothing personal, you understand, just business.

Sometimes They Sing

Tuesday was the Alaska primary elections. I'm amazed -- it may be for the first time in my life, but everything turned out the way I wanted it to! I can't remember a time when hardly anything did that, talk about all of it!

The best thing was with the Republican primary: our current governor, Frank Murkowski, LOST! Unless you live in Alaska, you can't imagine how great that is. The man was a US Senator for 22 years and is a Republican governor in a red state where there is exactly one (count them, 1) liberal district in the entire state! He was trounced! He can't run in November unless he decides to pull a Lieberman, so he can't win. Tuesday morning a friend told me she hadn't decided yet how to vote, since she was registered undeclared she could vote for any party she wanted, and was thinking of going Republican to vote against him so he couldn't run, or maybe to vote for him so he would be the competition for the Democrat we want to win (Tony Knowles), since Murkowski's popularity is so low right now, or to go Dem and vote for Tony. Murkowski is soooo bad! He appointed his daughter to fill his US Senate seat when he was elected Governor. He wanted to buy a jet with Homeland Security funds, the Legislature (GOP majority) said no, so he bought it on a line of credit, on a technicality allowed in the state constitution! Then, he used it in questionable ways, like to pick him up from vacation trips. He canceled the Longevity Bonus, a Social Security supplement the state had provided for it's seniors because the cost of living is so high in Alaska that many people, even people who were born here, even Alaska Natives, have had to move outside when they retire. When he cut off the funds for this, he said it would cause no hardship because elders who needed it could qualify for food stamps and rent assistance! As though people of that generation would apply for such a thing after having supported themselves for their entire lives! As though there was no difference between receiving money that everyone over 65 received and having to prove that you are poor! (Am I growing indignant? Can you tell by the exclamation marks?) He cut off revenue sharing to communities, causing untold hardship to small bush villages which suddenly could not afford to pay any full time staff or insure themselves. He was negotiating a deal for a gas pipeline with BP-Exxon that would have frozen taxes on them at a level below the standard oil producing state/country level for 40 years! He has appointed a man who wants to close down the state ferry system (we have many communities in Southeastern Alaska that are not on the road system, some islands, some with any possible road way in avalanche country) as the head of it, his appointee has messed with the schedules so badly that it is losing money and people dependent on it can't get where they need to be without taking extra time for travel, and he is pushing to build a road out of Juneau that will end, not at a town that is connected to the roads, but at a ferry terminal in the middle of nowhere! If that doesn't make sense to you, consider that the road will connect a number of private mine and logging sites to Juneau and make it much more profitable for them to operate. So, good bye Frank Murkowski. You will not be missed by anyone but the crony capitalists you really worked for.

The Democratic candidate will be Tony Knowles, who was governor for two terms (we have term limits, and after two you have to take one off) and did a good job of it. Enough so that he was re-elected in this red state. The Democratic candidate for Lt. Governor is a man I've eaten breakfast with, Ethan Berkowitz, who is one of the good guys. (This is a small state as far as population goes; many of us know folks who might be considered important and out of our league in other places.)

And we defeated the big money cruise lines and passed Proposition 2, which, among other things of benefit to the state, will enforce stronger controls on the sewage they can dump in Alaskan waters. Despite the fact that they pumped over a million dollars into their campaign to defeat it, and we only spent $7,000!

We passed Proposition 1, which limits campaign contributions.

So, don't know what will happen in November, but today is a good day and I will bask in it.

Happy HomeMy Solid Foundation on Wheels

Here is a picture of my father holding me in front of my first home. The car is as big as the trailer. You can see that there are two sections -- one end was the living room. The couch let down into a bed and that's where my parents slept. The other section was the kitchen and the cushions on the benches and the table let down to make a second bed. That was my bed, and when Forrest was born, he slept with me. There wasn't enough room to open a door inside, so there was a curtain between the two rooms, which meant I fell asleep at night to the sound of my parents talking. When they had taken a book out of the library or received a Book of the Month Club selection that they both wanted to read, they would take turns reading aloud. Many a night I fell asleep to the sounds of them reading to each other. If the book was funny, they would both laugh which I just loved.

The other thing about this trailer is that it was bigger on the inside than on the outside. It had to have been, because it was so full of love and laughter and warmth and cheer that nothing as small as that trailer looks to be from the outside could have possibly contained it. My parents had this incredible romance. The first time they met, my father went home and woke up his mother and told her he had met the woman he was going to marry. My father had been divorced, and my mother was worried that her father wouldn't let them get married once he knew, so during the last month of my mother's senior year of high school, my father hired a pilot to fly them to Carson City, Nevada where they were married.

The day after Pearl Harbor my father tried to enlist. Because he had flat feet and was deaf in one ear, no branch of the service would take him and he tried them all. Since he couldn't serve in the military, he and my mother moved to Oakland and he worked in the shipyards building war ships. Between the hulls. The noise there was so bad that he lost the hearing in his other ear, but he never complained about it. It was simply what he did during the war. After that, he wore hearing aids, and in those days they were huge. The speaker sat in his shirt pocket, there were very visible ear pieces in both ears, and wires ran under his shirt to the speaker and to the two large batteries that filled his back pants' pockets. They weren't very good, either. He couldn't talk to more than two people at a time and really hear what they were saying. Background noise could drown out voices. It made it awkward for him to make friends at work and my mother says he was often lonely because of it. He had always been a very gregarious person, and to be unable to communicate easily had to have been very hard.

I was born not quite five months after Pearl Harbor, and my parents were living in an apartment at the time. As soon as the war was over, we moved into the trailer and traveled from one end of California to the other. My father, who had started out as a musician, was now in construction and whenever the mood struck him, we would move so he could work on some other project. If they were building it in California in the late 40s, my father may well have worked on it.

Years later, I would meet people who had known my father and they would tell me that when he entered a room it was like the sun came out from behind a cloud. Suddenly, the room was full of warmth and light. That he made them feel important when he listened to them. That he made them laugh. I remember him climbing into the very highest branches of the conifer in my grandmother's front yard and calling down that it would be perfect if only there was a pool table. And he loved to put a bobby pin inside a cigarette and when he smoked it the ash would cling to the bobby pin and he would ignore it and people would be hovering around with an ashtray waiting for the ash to fall, which it never did. He sang me songs like Mairze Doatz and Three Liddle Fiddies (about three fish who swam and swam all over the dam) and Hot Sot Ralston on a Rilara (I haven't a clue what this was about, but it involved deep voices and shoulder motions) and all of those silly word play songs of the 30s and 40s.

One thing about having a very small home, my mother could clean it in a very short time, and then she had hours while my father was at work alone with me. She taught me all the nursery rhymes and took me to the park and played with me. I was the center of the universe, and I knew it. Except for when I was getting my clothes torn or dirty, it was almost impossible for me to displease my mother. She would put me on the handle bars of her bike and we would go all over.

We had lived in 26 towns by the time I was six; my parents intended to settle down and get a house when I started school. But before that happened, my father stepped on a rusty nail and got tetanus and died. I have lived in all sorts of places since. Had a real bed in my own bedroom with a real door. I was never as rich as when we lived in that trailer and I slept on the kitchen table. I learned very early that things don't matter, but people do. The most important thing you can give your child is love, both for the child and for the other parent.

When people see the picture of our home, they think we were poor. And when they hear that my father died, they feel sorry for me. But, there was never a child who got a better start in life than I did. And if I had to choose between six years with my father and a lifetime with any other, I would choose those six years.

Julie Victorious

This happened one Christmas and the toys they had opened were spread all over the house. Just like the cliche! Ignored the toys and fought over the box!

This is one of my favorite recorded memories. Richard was four and Julie two. You can see that he has size and strength on her. He's barely trying to keep that box away from her. She, on the other hand, has determination. Notice how calm his face is, notice how strained what you can see of her face is. He's holding on with one hand, she's pulling with both. She wants it more than he does, there is no question about that. And so, it is not in the least surprising that she gets it.

And do we see content on her face now that she has it? Perhaps, but also the determination to keep it. She fought for it, it's hers! She is getting it away as fast as she can. Later, my sister gave her a ride in it, but I don't know what Julie thought she was going to do with it when she went after it.

And one thing that hasn't changed from that day to this -- Julie goes after the things she wants with all of her heart and all of her strength and the odds just don't matter. She hangs in there and she achieves.