Gonna Take More Than Coffee to Fix This

        up close, the pod of a milkweed.  photo taken just the other day.  all rights reserved.


Dear V.A. Doc,

     My dad has Lewey Body Dementia.  I have a traumatic brain injury caused by a man who thought he could smoke pot and drive.  We are currently sharing a brain.  That you had to repeat yourself to us is not an entirely unusual circumstance.  Please find out how to hide your irritation from your patients before we come see you again in six month-- if Dad is still alive at that time.  You can probably look it up on the Internet.

                                       No Love,

                                        the irritated (and apparently irritating) brain damaged woman

Happy Solstice, and thoughts on Christmas

   
                         Happy Solstice to those of us who celebrate the changing of the seasons.

Original is stored safely on my hard drive and several other places.  All rights reserved.

I've been watching with some amusement the two plus camps of people involved in the so-called War on Christmas now for several years.  Quite frankly, I don't care if a store employee says "Merry Christmas " or "Happy Holidays" to me in accordance with the instructions of their employer.  I have the option of patronizing or boycotting a store in accordance with my wishes if I so choose.  I remember some folks expressing outrage at the "Happy Holidays" greeting being offered at places of business instead of "Merry Christmas."  Now on FOX news there is outrage of a different sort.  Although some businesses are returning to "Merry Christmas" as the greeting of choice, I've heard at least one commentator wanting to know if the person delivering the salutation "really means it."  In other words, if that person is not saved, the good wishes are meaningless or unacceptable.  Arrrrgh.

On a personal level, if someone says "Merry Christmas" to me, that does not diminish or threaten my personhood in any manner.  The individual who is wishing me a "Merry Christmas," whether a friend or retail worker, is not hoping that I get shot up in a parking lot, maimed by roving bands of atheists out to do violence, or tortured by an English teacher for substandard sentence structure.  I do not require validation of my beliefs or my unbeliefs.  And I would much rather those who do celebrate Christmas-- whether as a Christian or in a secular manner-- simply wish me a Merry Christmas.  I would hope that they don't get bent if I wish them a Happy Solstice in reply.  And if they do, well there is nothing for that.  I will continue to be who I am.  Part of the risk of allowing freedom of speech is that any of us are bound to run into some that offends our sensibilities, or perhaps deeply disturbs our inner cores.  While allowing freedom of speech in public discourse is a risky endeavor, curtailing freedom of speech in the public arena is worse.  I'm willing to risk being offended in order to continue to be able to express my self in the manner to which I as an American have become quite accustomed.  I love having freedom of speech.  I will not willingly give it up.

Once we get into public schools and public spaces, the issue gets a bit more complicated.  Public schools ideally should not be sponsoring nor even be giving the appearance of sponsoring prayer or specific religious viewpoints.  Even among Christians, there are specific doctrinal differences.  And so when the question of allowing things like teachers to witness about their beliefs to a captive audience of kids, the question must arise of "What are these people telling my kids and why do I think it's okay for them to do so even in the name of Christianity?"  Parents get to address religious questions with their children.  Even the most Christian of Christian teachers in a public school system don't.  The other problem with school employees getting tangled up with religious affairs on school property has to do more with the nature of kids.  Kids bully other kids.  Kids mock other kids for not believing as they do.  This mocking worsens when there is someone of authority endorsing religion in the public school classroom.  The magazine put out by Barry Lynn's outfit, Americans United, tells about things that have happened to kids in public schools who are not Christians.  I remember myself in sixth grade having a classmate whose parents were atheists.  She was being brought up in an atheist household.  The rest of us were aghast to discover that this girl did not cotton to any creation myths.  We were believers in Genesis because our parents were.  This girl was not.  We kept asking her about God, insisting in our own juvenile ways that there must be a First Cause.  She consistently countered our arguments with evolutionary science.  We were a small class in a small school.  The bullying did not happen there.  But it has in other places as late as the year 2011.

I believe that my tax money should not go toward the erection or maintenance of any sort of religious stuff on government or public property.  Nativity scenes-- forget about it.  Let churches display them on church property if they wish.  I don't want a nativity scene gracing City Hall.  Even if other religions are represented along side the nativity scene, I don't want any of that stuff at my City Hall either.  I live in my town.  My tax dollars should not go toward any of that sort of thing, period.  I do not want to live in a town that refers to itself as Christian.  I want to live in a regular town whose mayor has the sense to know that religion should be a private matter and that displays of religious expression (such as a Nativity scene) is best done on property held by religious individuals or congregations.

Furthermore, I believe the government should get out of the marriage business.  Let those who marry in religious settings call themselves married.  Let those who marry in front of a judge call themselves partnered.  Both the marriage and the partnership should come with the same legal rights, protections, and responsibilities.  Each religious body-- just as they do today-- can decide who they wish to marry or not marry in accordance with their religious beliefs and traditions.  A judge would not get to do so.  Any two competent adults who present themselves to a judge should be granted a civil partnership, once state requirements for the license are met.  To those who dislike the idea of two non-heterosexual people living together and loving each other, I offer the old famous re-joiner: Don't care for gay marriage?  Then don't marry one.  And let me endeavor to put to rest the idea that if gay civil partnerships and gay marriages are allowed, that people will be stampeding in with their sheep, goats, and cows.  The sheep in Schoharie County have much more to fear from their heterosexual owners than from a random non-heterosexual individual who is currently denied the dignity of public recognition of their love.  The laws on the books which currently make beastiality a crime will still exist when non-heterosexual partnerships and marriages are allowed throughout the land.  

Anyone else having any thoughts?

sapphoq is itching for a coffee

A Murder of Crows - Volume 30

I have been railing against the United Nations for a long time now, for a host of reasons, but to narrow it down to the most basic, I would have to say that the real issues are simple. Wrapping your head around it is also pretty simple, unless you really don’t want to and then it is another story. The UN is a collection of all the countries that are recognized by the UN and for the most part every country has a say in how the UN does its daily work. The bulk of the UN is made up of dictators, despots, communists and fascist regimes to the tune of well over 80% of its membership, and of the other 20% that is left over there are less than a handful of countries that aren’t basically socialist and leaning towards the despotism through democracy that a lot of the other regimes are. In and of itself that is NOT a recipe for a free exchange of ideas in a free society. There is no real “togetherness” unless by “together” you mean the 80 plus percent of the United Nations that generally oppresses the people held slaves by birthplace.

Now more over when you scratch the surface a little deeper you have nothing more than the makings of that wonderful New World Order that Progressives have been clamoring for forever. The despot nations suck the marrow out of the bones of the capitalist societies that maintain a certain level of liberty, while undermining the liberty itself until they can drag them down with them. The United States not only houses the United Nations, but it also does most of the funding of the United Nations, and those that assume that we should because we are the most powerful or the “luckiest” of all these nations is way off base. It’s like an entity taking your money away from you so that they can fund your neighbor’s property, the whole time your neighbor’s agenda is purely to kill YOU. Some people would think that is just great but the chances are pretty good that you would not. This of course is why seriously oppressive nations like Iran get “sanctions” put on them when they do evil stuff, while at the same time so does Israel for simply defending itself.

Now of course the United Nations is a wholly progressive arm of globalism which means that a lot of the “unreported” stuff that it does is completely within the norms of what Progressives do, while at the same time completely and utterly evil. Lately the news {if you read actual news services} has been talking about how the United Nations itself was running a slavery and sex trafficking business out of Bosnia, pretty much the whole time America was fighting the war for them. You can read about it here rather than having my own words bungle it all up. This is actually an old story, as parts of the world that are a lot more a sensitive to these types of atrocities, and those that blame anything the UN does as “America” and imperialism were belting these stories out like crazy back in 2002. Now it has finally started cracking legitimate news sources here and is being buried by mainstream ones. On the other hand what is “mainstream” these days as most people get their news from Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert?

I on the other hand have taken a much different slant on the whole issue at hand with the United Nations. When the United States has a Democrat in the Whitehouse we inevitably head down the path of Progressive UN politics and for the worst every time. First and foremost aside from Truman, who was close personal friends with a particular Jewish man from school, the Democratic Party in this country has always been a landing spot for anti-Semites. Clinton spent an inordinate amount of time sending his people over to Israel to interfere with their election process and in the end had gotten Ehud Barak elected over there. While this was going on the wholesale slaughter of innocent people in Rwanda which had started under his predecessor, but really hit its stride when in 1994, 580,000 machetes were being imported into Rwanda expressly for the genocide. Everyone knew it, the United Nations ignored it, but they were right on board with the Israeli elections and the breaking down of the Israeli nation. Later on the same flawed logic was used when America was thrown into the Bosnian civil war {and as someone who works with refugees of Bosnia, don’t tell me about the Serbians, it was mostly Bosnians killing Bosnians} because unlike the African nations these people being slaughtered were white. Another trait of the Progressive left is racism, and the United Nations is always on board with that as well.

Further on down the road we watched the United Nations force America into the conflict in Kosovo, for the same reasoning. White people being killed by Serbians who for the most part were defending their own land, and the United Nations, the news media and our president at the time spun it differently. It was an all out assault to demonstrate that the United Nations at will could assist in the theft of land from one body of people and give it to another, and with the Democrat we had in the Whitehouse it was played perfectly. The Albanians that stole the Serbian land, went on to basically give it to Albania, which is a trend as long as a dictatorship is involved. Nobody really goes on and on about the Democratic values of the nation of Serbia but it is a far cry from that of Albania, and in the end the UN almost always sides with the more oppressive people. We see this going on with Israel now, as the horribly oppressed Palestinians {oppressed by any and all governance that THEY impose upon themselves from Arafat to Hamas} seem to get all of the attention of the United Nations and Israel gets ll of the sanctions. Why you might ask? Well again the United Nations has no issue with land being conquered as long as despotism reins in the newly conquered land.

Now as the typical Progressive left line is that Israel is the conqueror, that is ok for them. There is no historical acknowledgement that Israel re-conquered land that even the Romans allowed them to govern themselves with an overseer. Factually speaking the Israelis stood on that land almost a millennium before Mohammed was born, and the Muslim faith was created. The Palestinian name is a spinoff of the people who were at odds with the Jews back in the beginning known as the Philistines, but there is NO similarity between the two cultures as the religion of peace had completed its own genocidal ways on the Philistines, as it had the Byzantines and every other culture in the region, except the Jews, who rose again and took back their land and installed a quasi-democracy with European socialist leanings. What do you expect they escaped European oppression after all?

This brings me to another great lie that the United Nations and their friend in the media and the hard Progressive left bring to you on a day to day basis. Jordan and all of that land that was stolen from .. you guessed it if you have been paying attention, the Palestinians. Never a once does the UN, the media, the President {Democrat or Republican to be fair} or anyone else, save a few that are called “radicals” or “liars” ever bring up the stolen Palestinian land east of the Israeli border, and that is because there are two factors that blaming the Jordanian theft wouldn’t solve. The first is that whole oppression problem as the United Nations and the despots that run it are sick and tired of a democracy sitting there in the middle east, and secondly that whole Jew problem. To the Progressive left there has always been a “Jew Problem” and regardless of whether you follow history or not every left wing dictator has sooner or later gone after wiping out the Jews. From Hitler to Stalin to even all of the dictators that preceded those two {because I am not afraid to say that it is in the cultural nature of those people and not just pleasant “accidents” of who they elect to lead them} because it is an easy face to apply to the beginning phases of the cultural warfare that all dictators need to survive.

Now as the United Nations play its games. It has a Progressive left President in Barack Obama to arm its psychopathic ways. The United Nations spouts class envy, mostly at the United States who fuels its very existence. The president agrees with everything that they say and it is always just a waiting game with them. Sooner or later with the right combination of celebrities, causes, reeducation and most of all time, they always get into a better position to fundamentally transform the world. You need to remember that the next time Angelina Jolie whines to a camera about how Darfur is out of control, then she sits down with the other UN ambassadors and eats lobster dinners paid for by American taxes, and not a single thing gets done to stop the genocide. You remember that the next time Barack Obama stands in front of a podium and talks about “the rich” not paying its fair share, despite the fact that the richest 1% of America pays 37% of the taxes and has 19% of the income while the bottom 50% has 13% of the income and pays 3% of the taxes. Remember where that talk ALWAYS starts and ends. The Jews have all the money and we need to take it back. It’s been a winning proposition to all Progressive left causes throughout history and it sickens me when the very people who cheered along the hate and class envy act like they didn’t see it coming in the end. ;8o)

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All writings Copyright © 2010 & Beyond The Crows Nest

Taking the "Fun" Out of Dysfunctional

To my first half-sister, I remember you when you were a baby. You had a little sky blue dress and a head full of brown hair. You were cute. And I loved you. When you were seven and I was seventeen, I was torn from the life I knew with you and our mother and your dad/my step-dad. It was the second beating and far worse than the first one. Our mother and your dad/my step-dad had shown up at the church I'd been attending drunk. Our mother dragged me out of the church on my knees, flung me down the steps. The people in the church began praying, loudly storming the gates of their heaven on my behalf. I could hear the church people as I was being forced into the car. The beating began in the car. Our mother sure could pack a punch. At home the beating continued. I can still hear our mother saying to your dad/my step-dad, "Hit her, T. Hit her." as she handed him the umbrella she had retrieved from the hallway. She was exhausted and needed him to continue the beating for her. The lights went on in the neighbors' house and just as quickly extinguished. My screams were that loud. The next morning, an elder of the church took the only meaningful action that anyone there that night had. He called my father.

My dad called me the next morning. It was a Monday. My dad begged me to come live with him. I said yes. The second beating had been much worse than the first. (I had the scars on my knees for years after). After the first beating, I comforted myself with the mistaken belief that this wouldn't happen again. But it did happen again. And so, right after our mother left for work I began to pack in secret. Over the course of the next three days, I took as much of my stuff out of the house as I could.

During that time, I lost track of you in my memory. In my memory, I cannot bring forth any accounting of your whereabouts. I'm pretty sure that you were left sleeping at home when our mother and my step-dad left the house in a drunken rage. Your grandparents lived upstairs so you would have been safe enough. Were you sleeping downstairs or upstairs? My guess is that you were sleeping downstairs. I was sleeping upstairs in your uncle's bedroom while he was in prison. Did you wake up during any of the commotion? Did you sleep right through it, or pretend to sleep right through it afraid that you would be next? Did you tell yourself that I was bad, that I deserved it?

You told me once-- many years later-- that you have no memories of your own childhood until senior year in high school. You remember being thrown down the cellar steps because you were refusing to practice the piano. You told me that you had thought that was "normal." I don't know what you went through after I left the household. I had to leave for my own safety. Did you become the target that I had been? I had a fantasy about rescuing you for several years after I had to leave. During my visits through the end of your high school years, you didn't seem to want rescuing. You did write me once about going to a concert and taking your first acid trip. I don't remember what I wrote back to you. I do know your letter shook me to the core and that I did write back. I had found recovery from my own addiction at that time. Your letter scared me. You were only fourteen. I was twenty-four.

There was your first wedding. I decided not to attend. I didn't feel that I would be safe there. Years later, there was my wedding. You and my other half-sister met for the first time. You are ten years younger than I am. She is twenty-five years younger-- my dad and his third wife's child. You don't know each other. You aren't related to each other. I don't know what happened at my wedding. Both of you were bridesmaids. You hated each other. Both our mother and my father indicated to me separately that neither of you wanted a copy of the picture that the photographer took of the three of us.

Your dad/my step-dad got older. He had a heart attack. I went to see him at the hospital. He thought he was going to die. In that hospital bed, he made amends to me. He didn't die then but the amends stuck. (Our mother to this day will not admit to our history). Years passed. Your dad/my step-dad had Addison's, developed Parkinson's. Began failing. He died. Our mother called me on the telephone two weeks after he was buried to tell me. (I found out later that she had "allegedly" called my aunt directly after he had died and told my aunt that she had told me). I was left out of the obituary that the on-line volunteers found for me later. I signed the on-line guest-book. I live, dammit. Your dad/my step-dad was important to me and I miss him. He wasn't my dad and can never be my dad. But he was my step-dad. And you are still one of my half-sisters.

You got married again, had a couple of kids, moved far away. Made something of yourself in your community. The last time I saw you was at Gramma's funeral, holding your little boy in your arms. You shunned me, ignored me. I needed my dad, demanded that he come to the funeral. After all, he had known Gramma and had loved her too. Perhaps that was the reason for our mother not telling me about your dad's/my step-dad's death, I don't know. I can only guess.

I talked with our mother on the phone on Monday. It was a polite but nice conversation. I do not need her to acknowledge our history together. Through the years, hope changes and my hope had changed. Our mother and I have been like two women waiting for a bus, seeking some sort of conversation and perhaps a tiny connection. And on Monday, I thought whatever healing was able to happen between us had. I misjudged her sense of vindictiveness, her need for revenge.

On Tuesday your second husband died. On Thursday, our mother called our aunt and asked her to tell me that your second husband had died. By Thursday it was too late to arrange for a plane. I scoured the internet for your address so I could send you a bereavement card. I did not find out the arrangements until last night-- courtesy of the internet once again. I looked up your address on Google Earth, saw your home and your neighborhood. Flew past the place you work, the downtown stores, the bay. It was not by my will that I am absent from the viewing today and the funeral tomorrow. All of those things are not really for the dead. We do those things for the living, for those left behind. I would have liked to have been there for you and for your kids. But we have become strangers. (Our mother sure knows how to take the "fun" out of dysfunctional). I am crying on the inside.

Tomorrow I will send you the card I got for you. It is the proper thing to do. My dad says it is and my husband concurs. I wish for you comfort from your family, friends, community. I hope your children will make it, grow up to be compassionate human beings and without any history of the traumas that you and I have both experienced separately. It is many years later, little half-sister. You are a grown woman with a family of your own and a dead husband. I am much older than seventeen now and you are much older than seven. I was not able to rescue you and for that I am truly sorry. Goodbye little sister.

sapphoq on life

One Less Lunatic

On September 9, 2001 I was down in a basement doing finances for the place I was working at and doing quite a bit of cursing. My assistant ran down the stairs. She began furiously knocking at the office door. This action was in direct contradiction to my wishes to be left alone while I cursed and swore at the numbers before me.

"What?"

"Television...plane...crash..!" Nothing ever excited my assistant but whatever it was had rendered her practically incoherent. Somewhat annoyed, I got up and followed as she plowed back upstairs and into the living room. Smoke filled the television screen. "A plane ran into the Twin Towers," my assistant said, pointing. A second plane then crashed and the Towers were collapsing. "Oh shit," my assistant said.

I passed the rest of that day in an anxiety-ridden fog. I was afraid that the bombers would get Albany next. I stayed overtime that day, waiting for each of my people to return home from day programs across the Capital Region. I was horrified to discover that at one of those programs, the staff turned on the television and watched the horror all day, practically ignoring the developmentally disabled folks they were there to provide a service to. Had I known, I would have gone to pick up my two people who attended that program and brought them to the safety of their home. As it was, I waited until every last van had left the driveway. I stayed for dinner that night. I had to know that every single one of my people was safe.

One of my people in the days to follow became obsessed with the television reports. Another had nightmares. I pulled the plug on the television and announced that it was "broken." The horror receded. The television "got fixed." Life went on.

I went to the gym almost daily. I watched for reports of the dead, searching for the names of folks I knew in the City. The stock market plummeted. The economy began its' free fall souring. I wished fervently that we had gone in and bombed Iran like crazy people back when the students took over the American Embassy instead of trying to "negotiate" with terrorists. Perhaps if we had, 9/11 wouldn't have happened. I declared this to anyone who would listen. (I still believe that today). Life went on.

Wars came. Politicians got elected. People got killed. Our airports now had security checks. Some folks didn't like that. I figured those people in the airplanes on 9/11 would have welcomed the inconvenience of long lines and airport employees with dampened senses of humor if it would have kept them alive. I had my car accident, got my own brain injury. I went cross-country by myself for three weeks in order to retrieve "pieces of my soul" from places I'd never been. During that time, I discovered that there was no security on the trains.

Our country got crazy with religion. More people died. More politicians got voted in and voted out. I was in a chat group on the web that Sunday night when someone said that Osama was finally dead. One of the moderators attempted to keep the chat group on task. That wasn't going to happen. "This is big," I typed. I myself was a mod of that group but suddenly I didn't care about our stated purpose.

Some things I don't understand. In response to hearing about Castro's editorial about how we were "wrong" for killing Osama in front of his family (no, I haven't read the piece yet. It is on my list for another post) my instant retort was, "Screw that." He didn't give a shit about the families of all the people that he had arranged to be killed. I don't give a shit about him dieing in front of his family. Go ahead and call that unchristian of me if you like. I am not a christian anyways and so I really don't care. And I don't understand how the Pakistani government could not have known that Osama was in their midst. I heard that something like 81 Pakistanis were killed a day or two later for their troubles.

Yes, there is one less lunatic alive in a world full of lunatics. My dad says there will be more bombings over here as a retaliation-- smaller targets. And more people will die.

To the people who make decisions about who we may bomb, lets get some balls shall we? Pull our troops out and bring on the nukes, I say. Any bastards who dare to bomb us ought to be nuked out of existence along with their families and friends and countries of origin.

radical bloodthirsty sapphoq