Month: April 2006

  • ME/ICD-CFS flareup

    When I write about brainfog, sometimes I wonder if the word conveys any
    comprehensible meaning.  When I write through the fog, from within
    the sensorimotor deficits, I wonder if I’m conveying anything
    comprehensible at all.  When I posted the entry yesterday about
    the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, I knew it wasn’t what I wanted it
    to be, what I would have made of it if I had been more capable.  I
    copied and pasted long passages that I otherwise would have digested
    and summarized, with just a few brief quotes.

    It always helps me accept my own deficits when I read about how badly
    the disorder disables some other people.  It is a rare and
    extremely bad day when I cannot use a keyboard at all.  Even when
    I can’t pour a glass of water without spilling it, or put wood into the
    stove without burning myself, or can’t listen to the sound of my son’s
    voice or the radio without wincing in pain, I can usually type. 
    Of course, sometimes after I write through the fog, I go back later and
    feel acute embarrassment over what I’ve produced.

    Greyfox tells me that even on my worst day I do better than a lot of
    people can do on their best days.  I don’t know about that; it
    seems to me that a lot of people don’t try very hard.  If what
    Greyfox says is true, it’s something else for which I am grateful,
    besides life itself, and the crazy relapsing /remitting course of this
    disease that brings me good days sometimes.

    Of all the many and protean symptoms of this disorder, it is the
    brainfog I mention most often here.  I suppose that is partially
    because it is the symptom with the most direct bearing on my
    blogging.  It is also the only excuse or explanation I have for
    those sometimes lengthy periods of time when I am unable to do readings
    at KaiOaty’s site.  I suppose that sometimes I could “read”
    through the fog just as I write through it here, but it is a matter of
    quality control and professional standards.  I don’t want to do
    less than my best for my clients.

    I am distressed at the amount of work that has piled up since the last
    time I felt up to major housecleaning.  What is even more
    distressing is that occasionally I find in the clutter something, such
    as a mail-order request for a reading I’d forgotten I had received, or
    an unpaid bill I can’t recall seeing before, or a letter I should have
    answered weeks ago. 

    Then there is my jewelry-making work.  I look at my materials,
    visualize designs and imagine putting them together, but I have learned
    to wait for the flareup to end.  If I don’t wait, I end up
    frustrated and often waste things in the process.  If I wait, the
    inspiration evaporates.

    If I weren’t so brainfoggy, I might not have interposed those last two
    paragraphs after getting off the track of what I had started to say
    about the fog.  I intended to mention a few of the other symptoms,
    ones I seldom mention because… what’s the point?  Well, the
    point is once in a while full disclosure feels good, and maybe my
    sharing my experience will help someone else somehow.

    I seem to be losing my voice today, going from deep and froggy to high
    and squeaky and back again until it fades out altogether.  As
    usual, my throat is sore and I have swollen lymph
    nodes in my neck and armpits.  My neck feels weak, too weak to
    hold up my heavy head without strain.  The neck muscles burn and
    the head feels tender, hot and thick.   Any muscles I use
    tend to spasm.  That would
    be painful if I did not know that pain is a message I don’t have to
    listen to.  I switch off the alarm signal and listen to the
    subtler messages beneath that.

    Muscles in my back, neck, forearms and hands are hot, inflamed from
    being used to keep me sitting erect working at this keyboard.  A
    muscle in my left thigh is spasming rhythmically for reasons it isn’t
    revealing–probably wants to go dancing.   If I forget to drag
    over a stool and climb up to the high shelf instead of standing tiptoe
    to reach it, or if I just point my toes and stretch, a muscle at the inner edge of my arch goes into spasm and
    pulls my foot into an odd-looking and uncomfortable C.  The
    message from that C is the same as the one I used to get from neck and
    shoulder muscles before I learned to use a rake or other tool to reach
    under the bed instead of sticking my arm under there.

    Ever since Saturday’s trip to town, my blood sugar has been in the
    tank.  I have been hungry, feeling weak and in need of food, but
    when I eat I feel sick  I have to eat anyway, little bitty meals
    of protein every couple of hours to stabilize the blood sugar.  If
    I forget to eat and let the blood sugar get too low, there’s danger of
    losing control and going on a mindless carbohydrate binge.  Then I
    not only feel sick, I feel stupid, weak, self-destructive and ashamed.

    If I take my nutritional supplements, I don’t have such ravenous sugar
    cravings, but when the fog is at its thickest, I often don’t think to
    take the empty-stomach meds until I have eaten, then I have to wait a
    couple of hours, then have to wait another hour after taking the pills
    before I can eat and by then my blood sugar is tanking again.

    Oh well, I’ve gone on and on long enough on this subject.  If you want to know more, read this. 
    I am going to get something to eat, drink a glass of water, 
    carefully put another chunk of wood in the stove, crawl under the
    covers, lean my head back on a pillow propped against the wall, and
    read a book until I’m too tired to turn pages.

    Tomorrow
    is 4/20.  Will I be celebrating?  Well, yeah, in a way. 
    I will be celebrating my abstinence.  What I specifically and emphatically do NOT
    need, under the present circumstances, is an even more severe case of
    the raging munchies, or any more spaciness.

  • one hundred years ago

    The Great


    San Francisco


    Cover-Up

    Have you had enough of the media
    coverage of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906? 
    NPR has been flooded with it today.  When I started working on
    this entry a few days ago, there hadn’t been much mention in mainstream
    media.

    This month’s Smithsonian Magazine
    has an article about the man who saved the U.S. Mint (more on that
    below), and I have a thirty-five-year-old volume of Reader’s Digest
    Condensed Books with their version of The San Francisco Earthquake by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts.

    Those references gave me some targeted search terms with which to
    explore what is available online, and that’s what I did earlier this
    week.  Then the brain fog moved in and I spent a couple of days
    gathering links and images and trying to focus on putting something
    together to post.

    One of the first things I learned was that official documents underreported deaths
    from the quake and fire by over six hundred percent.  The official
    death toll released in 1907 by the city Board of Supervisors was
    478.  Librarian Gladys Hansen, now curator of the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco,
    undertook a search of death records in the 1960s, in response to
    requests from genealogists for a list of names of earthquake
    victims.  Her search of official records soon surpassed the
    officially reported number.  Finally, she stopped at 3,000,
    knowing that there were more whose names will never be known.

    In the aftermath of the quake, victims in several parts of the city
    were not counted.  Nobody recorded deaths in Chinatown, nor in the
    area South of Market Street.  James Dalessandro has said, “On Sixth
    Street between Mission and Howard, four hotels with about 1,000 people
    in them pancaked into each other.” 

    One of many possible reasons theorized for the under-reporting is that
    business and political leaders in the City wanted to minimize in the
    mind of the rest of the country the seriousness of earthquake danger in
    order to avoid discouraging outside investment for rebuilding. 
    This was also the most credible reason for the widespread lie at the
    time, that the earthquake had done little damage, and it was the
    subsequent fire that had destroyed the city.

    PLAN FOR NEW CHINATOWN



    The big fire has obliterated Chinatown from San Francisco forever. Mayor
    Schmitz informed Chief of Police Dinan that all of the Chinese now in the
    city would be collected and placed in Fontana’s warehouses, near Fort Mason
    [Van Ness Ave. and Bay St.], and that the new Chinatown would be located at
    Hunter’s point, on the southern extremity of the county on the bay shore. It
    is several miles distant from the old Chinatown. All Chinese who have left
    the city, and who return later, will be concentrated at the new points.

    All of the Chinese at present in this city will be gathered together in
    tents in the block bounded by Octavia, Franklin, Chestnut and Fort Mason
    Streets.

    San Francisco Chronicle
    April 25, 1906

    The news story above and other news clips below are from sfmuseum.org.

    U.S. Army General Frederick Funston
    deserves as much credit as the earthquake and fire for the destruction
    of San Francisco.  Below is an excerpt from a booklet by a man named Lafler published in the aftermath of the quake.

    During the morning of
    Friday, the 20th of April, sundry citizens whose achievements will hereinafter
    be recounted in detail, put out the fire between Van Ness Avenue and Russian
    Hill. South of Green Street all had been burned. North of Green Street there
    was no fire. Came then the extraordinary dynamiting of the Viavi Building on
    Van Ness Avenue near Green Street, the force of which explosion cast burning
    rafters far and wide over the section free from fire. The conflagration thus
    begun, driven by a gale from the west, swept up over the Hyde Street Hill with
    inconceivable fury, destroying fifty square blocks of buildings where previously
    there had been no fire.

    Lafler”s booklet concludes:
    A striking contrast between what was achieved with the aid of the military and
    what loss resulted through military opposition is furnished, respectively, by the
    Globe Mills, at the foot of Montgomery Street, and A.P. Hotaling & Co.,
    Wholesale Liquors, 431 Jackson Street. As is well known, the only structures
    used for business purposes that stood unharmed in the entire district north of
    Market are the Montgomery Block, the Appraisers’ Building, the Jackson Street
    Sub-station of the Postoffice, and the block bounded by Montgomery,
    Jackson, Sansome and Washington Streets, in which is the liquor-
    warehouse of A.P. Hotaling & Co.

    The Appraisers’ Building stands, of course, because it was occupied not by
    citizens over whom the military assumed authority, and who would have been
    driven forth that the building, might burn, but by officials of the United States
    Government, over whom no authority was assumed, and whom, on the
    contrary, the military did everything in its power to aid. As a consequence, the
    windows were manned by men with buckets; the roof was kept clear of blazing
    brands, and the building was saved without difficulty, though, on Wednesday,
    when all the fronting buildings on the south side of Washington Street burned to
    the ground the wind blew the flames directly toward the structure. The
    Postoffice Sub-station was saved in similar manner. It is the only
    building standing in its block, the flames having destroyed both the building
    touching it at the right and that at the left. The military, of course, made no
    effort to drive out government officials, and with water, brought in buckets
    from the pool that had formed in the excavation for the new custom house one
    block distant, the building was saved. The credit for the saving of the
    Montgomery Building, on three sides of which were streets, and on the fourth a
    blank wall, seems to belong to     Captain Cook, now
    Chief Cook    , a fireman.

    But as for the entire block in which is the warehouse of A. P. Hotaling & Co.,
    it seems to have been saved principally by the efforts of this firm.

    The military, contrary to its nature in other parts of the city, was here
    susceptible to reason, and granted permission to the manager of the firm to
    remain with his men. It even permitted him to remove from the warehouse on
    Thursday over one thousand barrels of whisky which were placed under guard
    in the excavation to the east of the Appraisers’ Building. The employees of this
    firm were further permitted to bring from the pool in this excavation four or
    five 60-gallon puncheons of water and distribute them along the front of
    the block. They were also permitted to employ a hundred men who stood guard
    upon the roof. and At other exposed places when the fire crept up from the
    north on Friday afternoon, and who then successfully fought it back. The value
    to the firm of A. P. Hotaling & Co. of the favors they received at the hands of
    the military may be faintly suggested by the fact that the establishments of other
    liquor dealers in the same block were looted of
    their valuable contents as were restaurants and saloons in the Montgomery
    Block not destroyed by fire, while the firm of A. P. Hotaling & Co. lost
    nothing.

    In striking contrast with the case of A. P. Hotaling & Co., in which the
    military exercised the most unusual good sense and wisdom is that of the Globe
    Mills, at the foot of Montgomery Street. Mr. W. E. Keller, President of the
    Company, after relating his unsuccessful efforts to obtain assistance for the
    protection of his property from General Funston, the mayor, or the fire
    department, stated as follows:

    “We believed our building to be entirely fireproof. It is protected on the west
    and south by Telegraph Hill. The roof was metal, the walls of brick, and the
    window casings were of metal also. The doors were of iron, very heavy. Within
    the building were twelve fire extinguishers, and a salt water tank, of unlimited
    capacity, connects with the bay. The building stands apart, and virtually the
    only inflammable material was the 10,000 barrels of flour and 4,500 tons of
    wheat which it contained. Wheat, though it makes a very hot and fierce fire, is
    difficult to ignite, as fire started on its surface is easily smothered, and flour is
    also not easily ignited. For the reason that we believed the building could not
    burn, we carried no insurance. On Friday afternoon, as the flames approached,
    we got together ten of our men, and were confident of success in saving the
    mill. At four o’clock in the afternoon, soldiers appeared and ordered us out,
    threatening to shoot us if we did not go. Arguments and explanations were of
    no avail. We were ordered to go or be shot. We left the building, and late at
    night, after being exposed for many hours to the heat of burning lumber yards
    to the north and east, windows in the east front at length broke, and bins of
    wheat thus directly exposed to the heat, were ignited. There is of course no
    doubt whatever that one man could have saved the structure had he been
    permitted to remain. Our loss was $220,000.00.”

    Charles K field wrote this verse which has become an immortal part of San Francisco folklore:
    If, as some say, God spanked the town
    For being over frisky,
    Why did He burn the Churches down
    And save Hotaling’s Whisky?

    Some of those charged with protecting citizens’ property from looters, members of the U.S.Army and California National Guard, became looters themselves.

    HARVEST TIME FOR THE TRAMPS



    To the hobos and tramps that infest San Francisco in large numbers
    throughout the year the earthquake came as a forerunner of a time of plenty.
    Amid the general destitution which the country at large is doing its utmost
    to relieve the tramps are passing themselves off as sufferers of the
    disaster, and in consequence, they are living much better than they usually
    fare. They do not even have to beg for food; it is given them cheerfully,
    for rather than let one needy person suffer, the committee in charge of the
    relief work is willing to take chances of feeding a hundred of the unworthy.

    About the water front where men are being impressed to unload trucks they
    have made themselves scarce, but in the unburned district west of Van Ness
    they have established rendevous in vacant houses and empty lots. Some of
    them have managed to secure blankets, which they have used in erecting tents
    and they spend their time laying up provisions against the time when the
    stores will begin to charge for them. One of the more notorious members of
    the fraternity, known on the water front as “Shifty Bill,” expressed himself
    to the effect that it was better than spending the winter in the County
    Jail.

    An influx of tramps from all parts of the United States may be expected, and
    it is partly to check this onrush that the lines are being drawn so tightly
    in regard to entrance to the city.

    San Francisco Chronicle
    April 26, 1906


    The area around the U.S. Mint turned
    into a shanty town and some of the first businesses to reopen in San
    Francisco after the fire were operating in tents clustered around the
    Mint building.  Frank Leach, night supervisor at the Mint, had
    mobilized his crew and saved the building from the fire. 
    Afterwards, he arranged for two pipelines to be run from the mint’s
    artesian well for the use of survivors.  For a while it was the
    only water source within the burned-out area and was the reason that
    the shanty town formed there.

    Class and race prejudice were two issues that
    surfaced in this story from the San Francisco “Call.” Many of the wealthy considered
    refugee camps to be “hotbeds of socialism,” and wanted them removed as quickly as
    possible from their neighborhoods. This story is also of interest because it contains one of
    the few references in the earthquake literature to African American victims of the
    disaster.

    JEWELED WOMAN LEADS REFUGEES.

    Adorned with Diamonds, She Protests Removal from Lafayette Square.


    The refugees of Lafayette Square held a mass meeting last night to protest against the plan
    of the relief committee to remove them to the ground on Thirteenth and Fourteenth avenues,
    where it is proposed to build houses for them. The result of the meeting was the
    appointment of a committee to wait on the Park Commission and request the further use of
    the square.


    The meeting was led by Mrs. J.W. Scott, one of the refugees of the camps who lives in
    Tent 1, Section G. Mrs. Scott was well—almost handsomely attired. In her ears
    sparkled brilliant diamonds, at her throat was a valuable diamond sunburst, and rich gems
    sparkled on her white hands. Mrs. Scott in opening the meeting, spoke in part as follows:

    The Park Commissioners voted that no cottages should be built in Lafayette square on the
    plea that it is windy and suggesting the removal of the campers to Thirteenth and
    Fourteenth avenues, near the Presidio. Such an act will be an eternal disgrace as well as a
    hellish punishment for the deserving ones who have become reconciled to the conditions as
    they were existing. There is but one reason why the people of Lafayette square should be
    singled out for removal, and that is the objection of certain people of wealth to their
    presence.


    Which ought to be the first consideration, the whims of the rich or the absolute
    requirements of the unfortunate? By right the poor refugees have just as much claim on the
    property of the city as the people in mansions. The money that is being used was
    subscribed by outsiders for the benefit of the deserving who were burned out and could not
    pay heavy rents. My advice to you all is to stick together until the insult and wrong to us
    have been rectified. Imagine being sent to Fourteenth avenue. One line of cars only going
    near there and no transferring. This means $1.20 per week for the carfare for one. Who in
    the present dilemma can pay it? How can men and women get to work in any reasonable
    time?


    Rather than submit to be treated as deported beings by the self-constituted
    dispensers of other peoples money it will be advisable to take all chances of cold and
    sickness by remaining in tents where we are.

    Speeches were also made by L.H. Cooper, A.W. Belcher and J.W. Scott.


    A committee composed of Mrs. J.W. Scott, J.W. Scott and L.H. Cooper was appointed to
    go before the Park Commission today and protest against their removal.


    During the meeting some one in the crowd suggested that a colored man, named Rufus
    Jones, a camp dweller at Lafayette Square, be added to the committee. At this suggestion
    Mrs. Scott rebelled and called out “no.” Some one called out, “Race prejudice should not to
    be considered.” Mrs. Scott, however, carried her way, and the committee was not
    increased.

    San Francisco Call
    September 27, 1906

    QUAKE VICTIMS MAKE
    THREATS


    Refugees Call Phelan, Pollack and Dr. Devine Traitors,

    and Talk of Tar and Feathers


    SAN FRANCISCO, Cal., Friday.—James D. Phelan, chairman of the Relief
    Committee; Allan Pollock, member of the same committee, and Dr.
    Edward T. Devine, at the head of the Red Cross Association and President
    Roosevelt’s special representative in the local relief work, are attacked as
    traitors in a     printed circular, copies of which are scattered in the streets
    and refugee camps. The resignation of Dr. Devine is demanded, and it is
    intimated that unless Phelan and Pollack sever their connection with the
    Finance Committee they will be tarred and feathered. The documents are
    signed “The Committee of the Whole,” an organization of refugees, of
    which Joseph M. Clark, who lives in tent No. 703, Jefferson square, is
    secretary. He denies all knowledge of the circular, but states that its tone is
    to mild to suit him.

    Phelan says Clark came to him on Friday and attempted to sell out the
    Committee of the Whole, and later tried to blackmail Phelan. His clerk,
    who saw Clark at Relief Headquarters, asserts that the man came there
    twice before he was permitted to enter Phelan’s office.

    “The circular is true,” Clark said when seen. “These men should be forced
    to resign. But the statements contained in it are not strong enough for us.
    In a few days we shall issue an eight page pamphlet that will be such a
    broadside that even Roosevelt, at Oyster Bay, will sit up and take notice of
    it.

    “I admit going to see Phelan, but did not go there to sell information
    concerning the meetings of the Committee of the Whole. On the contrary, I
    went there for transportation East for my wife.”

    Associated with Clark in the committee is Alva Udell, an attorney. He has
    petitioned President Roosevelt, Secretary of War Taft and others high in
    authority to remove the ration funds from the custody of the Finance
    Committee and place them in the hands of the refugees. These petitions,
    some of which contained violent attacks on the Finance Committee, were
    referred to the Finance Committee by the President and the Secretary of
    War.

    Two cars containing shoes and wearing apparel for sufferers in this city
    have been lost en route from Chicago according to Colonel Peppy, chief of
    the Relief Board. Colonel Peppy stated yesterday that the consignment was
    started from Chicago over a month ago and that no record of it was
    obtainable from the railroad company which had been unable to locate it.

    New York Evening Telegram
    July 20, 1906

    I had more newsclips:  a story about some twitchy soldiers who shot a horse, and The Wisdom of the Dogs, that I intended to copy here, but I couldn’t make those links work for me today.

    I’ve been fighting the fog enough for today.  I’m outta here,
    gonna go find something easy to eat and then go to bed with some
    unchallenging reading material.

  • Ribbons Revisited

    Brrrrr… Happy Easter.  When I woke this morning, I thought the
    wood stove had gone out.  It hadn’t.  The house was cold
    because overnight the temp dropped to near zero.  That’s
    Fahrenheit, not some sissy freezing-point Zero Celsius, but ‘waaay
    below freezing, around minus fifteen C.  I have been trying to
    poke up the fire and encourage a little warmth without stoking up
    something so hot I’ll regret it after the solar heat builds up in
    here.  Aaaahh, springtime in Alaska!

    I had to park in a puddle when I got home from town yesterday because
    the driveway is all puddle.  Good thing I don’t have to go
    anywhere today, because my tires are now frozen into about six inches
    of ice.  Yep, it’s breakup.  The ground around here still has
    a deep cover of crusty snowpack, but once I got past Nancy Lake, the lower
    end of the valley was snow-free.

    After my recent post on awareness ribbons,
    I had thought I really should respond to the comments that mentioned
    the amount of “research” that went into it.  It wasn’t my
    research.  Although I did have to go into the source code for the
    page and do some editing, the list came from the catalog on a website
    that sells those ribbons.  Someone did have a sound
    business/financial motivation for compiling that list.  My OCD
    isn’t that extreme, or maybe it just doesn’t extend in that direction.

    While I’m on the subject, I might as well respond to some other comments.

    Colors are help us remind us how much is need to
    help others. Do you know  any child that has died before its time? Do
    you have a friend that mother has died from breast cancer? If you only
    two of these colors that has affected anyone you know, would you
    donate? Of course you would. No no I dont think its wise to have mental
    illness ribbons.Then people will run from you. Tho estimated 300
    million people are on medication from bi-polar to anti-depressant. And
    just think there is only 500 [million] people in the United States. Its a still a
    stigma among us. (Shaking my head) I hope enough can get the messege
    out its the norm now with most of the population on medication.  lol
    lol lol——this is a fact…go figure
    Posted 4/14/2006 at 2:57 AM by Vanida_Angel

    I disagree with that on several counts.  The writer’s assumption
    that I “of course” would donate to a cause because I saw a colored
    ribbon on someone’s lapel or hat is totally mistaken.  I’d even be
    willing to bet that for once I would be in the majority on that
    issue.  Many of those “awareness” causes aren’t seeking
    donations, anyway.  Those that do sometimes sell the ribbons or give one
    in return for making a donation, as the VFW does with their Buddy Poppy.

    Many
    other causes are just seeking to draw attention to something they see
    as an issue that needs more attention.  I think it is clear that
    the ribbon craze has now gotten so far out of hand that unless it’s
    something as distinctive as the puzzle design for autism, the rainbow
    for gay – lesbian – bisexual – transgender pride (And how long do you suppose it
    will be before other causes take up that rainbow?), or the yellow, lime
    green, orange, aqua and hot pink (yecch!) for myelodysplastic syndrome,
    there are so many different causes being represented by a single color
    (and a few causes such as drug abuse and fibromyalgia represented by a
    selection of different colors) that wearing a ribbon becomes
    meaningless.

    If
    I were not so strongly of the opinion that wearing almost any of these
    ribbons is the next thing to pointless, I would take vehement exception
    to the statement that it isn’t, “wise to have mental
    illness ribbons.”  Very few causes are more in need of a shot of
    public awareness.  If those of us with brain disorders and
    emotional problems don’t go public so that the “public” comes to
    realize how many of us there are and how well the majority of us are
    coping with our illness, we have no hope of removing the stigma. 
    That’s why I write openly here about my obsessive-compulsive disorder
    and hypomania, even if it does occasionally draw a well-intentioned but
    ill-informed comment to the effect that I am not really crazy. 
    Believe it, people, I’m nuts.  Not that it’s a bad thing….

    This other comment pointed out another of my mental disorders, ADD – I
    had let the ribbon thing distract me from what I had intended to blog
    about that day:

    Damn, I never knew there were so many meanings for
    the colored ribbons. I was curious to hear further thoughts from you on
    the problem of violence against children in Alaska.
    Posted 4/14/2006 at 4:37 PM by sequoianorcal

    The factors behind the high rates of violence and sex crimes
    against women and children in Alaska include drug abuse and addiction,
    poverty, racism and cultural differences, and even the climate. 
    The state is proposing to pump hundreds of millions of dollars, about half a billion, into
    increased jail time for convicted sex offenders and a complex extended
    supervision program once they are back on the streets. 

    This is going to have a negligible effect on the statistics because
    relatively few of the offenders are convicted repeat offenders, and
    having a parolee check in more often with his P.O. isn’t really going
    to prevent recidivism.  The legislature apparently isn’t even
    considering treatment programs or preventative measures.  They are
    also ignoring the fact that the existing jails and the ones in the
    planning and construction stages now are inadequate to house the
    convicts we already have.

    Our climate, with the long dark winters that foster depression all by
    themselves, without even factoring in the seasonal unemployment in
    communities where almost all the work is in summertime, leads to people
    taking out their fears and frustrations on other people. 
    Traditionally, it’s usually the bigger and stronger ones taking it out
    on the smaller and weaker ones.  Guys beat their wives and/or kids
    and the women take it out on the kids.  Prosecuting the abusive
    out-of-work parents can end up harming the children more than it helps
    anyone.  Summer rolls around and instead of going to work Mom and
    Dad are sitting in jail.  If they weren’t sentenced to jail, those
    families whose problems started with a lack of work and too little
    money are struggling to pay fines, court costs and lawyer’s fees. 
    In Alaska, even public defenders have to be reimbursed when the
    defendant becomes able to pay.

    Many of the children who end up in the juvenile justice system or
    foster care come from homes where the adults are addicts.  Mostly
    it’s alcohol, but an increasing number of kids are being found
    neglected and abused in and around the meth labs being
    busted.   There are already laws on the books that cover all
    of that, but the cops say they can’t adequately cover the scope of the
    problem.  It is not even being addressed at its roots. 

    When judges sentence people to “treatment” it usually means they have
    to carry a sheet of paper to AA or NA meetings for six weeks and get
    them signed.  The papers get folded up and put into the collection
    basket and the meeting chairperson who counts the donations also signs
    the papers and passes them back around.  Very few of those people
    who are forced into the programs by the courts stay in the programs
    after they’ve completed the court-mandated weeks.  Of those who
    do, many don’t manage to stop using.  Twelve-step programs don’t
    address the neurochemical bases of addiction at all and for many people
    don’t supply the kind of  psychological and emotional support they
    need.  They work best for the people who are most likely to be
    able to stop using on their own without any program.

    Racism and culture:  The average rape victim here is an Alaskan
    Native woman and is drunk at the time of the rape.  The average
    rapist is a white male, drunk at the time of the offense.  Much of
    the behavior that the white majority culture terms “child sexual
    abuse,” when it happens among the Inuit and Inupiat, is normal to their
    culture.

    These are complex social issues that would be most effectively dealt
    with by public health and social service agencies, not by
    legislatures.  In Alaska, the legislature has cut funding for
    social services and public health and starved some programs totally out
    of existence.  Putting someone in jail for hurting a child stops
    him from hurting that child for at least as long as he remains in
    jail.  It doesn’t stop him from hurting someone else in jail, and
    it doesn’t give him the self-awareness and self-control needed to
    transcend the behavior.  It doesn’t keep the child from being hurt
    emotionally and physically once that kid ends up in the system, and it
    doesn’t even begin to stop the cycle of child abuse as the abused child
    grows up to be an abuser.  And that’s just about all I have to say
    about that… for now.

  • Birds

    The new weekly_Photo_Challenge is hosted by wolf_dreams. 
    For once, I don’t have a gazillion photos from which to choose. 
    Birds don’t often hold still to wait for me to go get my camera, and
    when I’m out there with the camera they make themselves
    scarce.   I don’t have a long lens for my digital to catch
    them on the wing.  This is what I have:


    A digitally-zoomed shot of a bald eagle in the top of a spruce tree, caught through a window.


    A raptor too high overhead for me to tell if it was eagle, hawk or harrier.


    duck?  loon?


    see above

  • Easter Finery

    I
    have no plans to go anywhere on Easter this year, and if I do go
    anywhere I won’t dress up.  When I was a little girl, Easter
    always meant getting new clothes and dressing up.  It wouldn’t
    have been so bad if it hadn’t been for the Easter bonnets. 

    I don’t wear hats.  When I wear a bandana over my hair, I tie it
    at the back of my neck.  High collars, and bonnets tied under my
    chin, are uncomfortable.  That’s an understatement.  When I
    was a kid, I hated them.  When I got old enough to choose for
    myself, I stopped wearing them.

    As
    I looked through old photographs today, sorting out these Easter pics
    and a few other kid photos that could be cropped down to head shots for
    profile pics, I recognized the one at right as an Easter photo by the
    basket at my feet, but for a while I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t
    all done up in the usual inhumane monkey suit.

    I think I figured it out.  When I was about this age, three years
    old, my mother went into the hospital for a hysterectomy.  I’ll
    assume it was Daddy who saw to the traditional basket of holiday eggs
    and took my picture.  The hairdo also looks like something he
    would have arranged.  Relatively speaking, I look happy and
    comfortable there…

    …as
    opposed to this one, a year later.  My mother’s friend Audrey
    Walker crocheted the dress and hat.  The dress wasn’t starched and
    I liked it.  I remember wanting to wear my crocheted dress after
    Easter and not being allowed to because it was so fragile, always
    getting snagged on some protuberant part of the environment. 

    I was never easy on clothes.  Now that my clothes all come from
    dumpsters or from the bag sale bargain days at thrift shops, I feel a
    sense of relief when I see little flaws or stains on my “new” clothes,
    because I don’t have to worry about ruining a garment that’s already
    spoiled.

    The dress was okay.  That does not apply to the bonnets that went
    with the crocheted dresses.  Not only did they have those ribbons
    under my chin choking me, the hats themselves were stiffened with sugar
    syrup.  Regular laundry starch wasn’t stiff enough for the
    purpose, so the hats had an abrasive feel and a slight glittery effect
    from sugar crystals.  I was forbidden to lick or suck on my hats.

    I
    remember my glee one Easter when I came running to see why my mother
    had screamed, and found that ants had gotten into the hatbox on a high
    shelf where my bonnet had been stored since the previous Easter. 
    They had eaten enough of that hat that I never had to wear it again.

    Audrey made me a new one, pineapple pattern to match the new
    dress.  This dress was not as okay as the previous one. 
    Those dangling pineapple furbelows tickled me with every step I
    took.  Likewise, the fancy little points on the sleeves kept me
    fidgeting and suppressing yips and whimpers in church.

    Maybe
    all that fidgeting helped persuade Mama and Audrey that another
    crocheted Easter dress wasn’t appropriate.  Anyhow, the next
    Easter I had this ruffled organdy dress and a straw bonnet.  From
    the look on my face, I’d guess that I was ordered to smile.

    I don’t remember anything specific about this Easter that I was six,
    nor do I recall exactly when the ants got my bonnet.  I have some
    memories of chocolate bunnies and molded sugar “picture eggs” with
    little paper scenes set up inside them and a peephole in one end.

    I recall, too, the preparations for more than one Easter, though I
    can’t tie any of them to a particular year.  Mama would get out
    several old teacups with cracks or broken handles and mix dye tablets
    with hot water and vinegar.  I’d write names or draw designs on
    eggs with a clear wax crayon, set the eggs into a twisted wire holder,
    and dip them in the dye cups.  Doug and I reenacted that ritual a
    few times when he was small.

    The
    Easter I remember best was the one when I was seven, the first one
    after my father’s death.  That this is the one I recall most
    clearly tends to validate what I have been learning about traumatic
    learning, the way memories are imprinted most strongly in times of
    trauma.  That Easter there were no new clothes.  Mama and I
    spent it in Sacramento with my Uncle Scotty, Aunt Ella, and cousins Don
    and Nancy.  We had an Easter egg hunt that turned into a hilarious
    tumult of giggles and screams when I realized that Donny was going
    around behind me, hiding eggs in places where I had already looked.

    Not every year after that, but a few times, there would be a new dress
    for Easter.  If there was ever another Easter bonnet, it wasn’t
    photographed, and I don’t recall any.  By the time I was eleven, I
    was allowed more of a voice in the choice of my clothing and I had
    things I could wear on more than just a single occasion.  I would
    still be wearing the dress in the last pic on the right after I was married,
    until it became stained with blood when my husband punched me in the
    nose.  But that’s another story, isn’t it?

  • What color is your ribbon?

    It all started with a song about a man getting out of prison, who told his girl to tie a yellow ribbon
    around the old oak tree if she still wanted him.  Now there are
    ribbons of all colors and they have become known by the generic term,
    “awareness ribbons.” 

    In
    Alaska right now, where we have the highest rates in the U.S. for rape
    and child abuse, and a child is statistically three times as likely
    to be beaten or sexually abused as the national average, people are
    wearing green ribbons so that they can feel as if they’re doing
    something about that.

    Our legislature, ignoring all the
    socio-economic and public health issues that contribute to sexual abuse,
    is debating a new law that will increase penalties and require more
    strict supervision for convicted offenders.  Greyfox and I had discussed it and shared our mutual disgust at these
    boneheaded reactions, and I was going to blog about that today. 

    I
    was looking online for an image of a little green ribbon, and found more than I was looking for.
     
    Red = Aids/HIV, substance abuse (includes inhalants), MADD,
    DARE, Epidermolysis Bullosa, love, heart disease, supraventricular tachycardia,Wolff-Parkinson-White
    Syndrome (WPW), Pro-life, hypertension, EvansSyndrome

    Orange =
    Hunger, leukemia, cultural diversity and racial tolerance, feral cats,
    motorcyclist safety,  self injury,
    Agent Orange exposure, reflex sympathetic dystrophy

    Yellow =
    Prisoner support, support our troops, POW/MIA, suicide prevention,
    adoptive parents, spina biffida, missing children (amber alert),
    endometriosis, sarcoma, bladder cancer, liverdisease and liver cancer,
    hydrocephalus or hydrocephaly, hope in general, boycott Aruba (hope for
    Natalee)

    Green = Tissue and organ donation, depression, bipolar disorder, mental health or illness, eye
    injuries, Tourette’s Syndrome, bone marrow transplants and donation,
    Fanconi’s Syndrome, worker and driving safety, rape and sexual assault,
    Von Hippel-Lindau, glaucoma, missing children, leukemia, environment,
    Fibrodysplasia Ossificans, kidney cancer or kidney disease, neural tube
    defects, Mitochondrial Disease, growth and rebuilding, Progressiva,
    Cerebral Palsy, Save Darfur, Stem Cell Research

    Blue (Navy) =
    Child abuse prevention, spiritual awareness, arthritis, free speech,
    crime victims rights, water quality, colon cancer, Dysautonomia,
    hystiocytosis, Erb’s Palsy, Ankylosing Spondylitis, domestic violence,
    water safety (flooding, drowning and accidents),Acute Respiratory
    Distress Syndrome (ARDS), dystonia, interstitial cystitis, brachial
    plexus injury, Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,
    Alopecia, Reyes Syndrome, education, Steven Johnson Syndrome, short
    bowel syndrome, Myositis, Leukodystrophy, Hurricane Support, police
    officers lost in the lineof duty (AKA, the Thin Blue Line)
     
    Purple
    = Domestic violence, religious tolerance, animal abuse, the victims of
    9/11 (includes police and firefighters), pancreatic cancer, Crohn’s
    Disease and colitis, cystic fibrosis, leimyosarcoma, macular
    degeneration, Sjogren’s Syndrome, fibromyalgia, lupus, sarcoidosis, the
    homeless, Mucolipidoses, thyroid cancer, ADD, ADHD, alzheimers, cancer
    survivor (this is a general color that anyone who has survived cancer
    can wear), Pagan pride, Arnold Chiari Malformation, children
    left unattended in cars

    White = Innocence, victims of terrorism,
    peace, right to life, diabetes, sexual assault of students, retinal
    blastoma, alzheimers, adoption, bone disease and bone cancer, anti-child
    pornography on the internet, carbon monoxide poisoning (CO
    poisoning), post partum depression, Scoliosis, Anti-stalking

    Black = Mourning, melanoma, anti-gangs, Anti-terrorism in Spain, POW-MIAs, Primary Biliary Cirrhosis, Amish support

    Brown = Anti-tobacco, colorectal cancer

    Gray = Diabetes, brain cancer, asthma and allergies

    Lime Green = Lymphoma, Lyme Disease, Sandhoff Disease

    Teal
    = Ovarian, cervical, uterine (all gynecological) cancers, food
    allergies, substance abuse, sexual assault, Myasthenia Gravis,
    Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, agoraphobia, panic or stress disorders
    (includes PTSD)

    Turquoise = Native American reparations

    Burgundy = Hospice care, multiple myeloma, cesarean sections, headaches and
    migraines, adhesions, thrombophilia and other coagualtion or blood
    factor disorders, meningitis, polio survivor 

    Periwinkle = Eating disorders, pulmonary hypertension, stomach cancer, GERD, IBS

    Pink = Breast Cancer, Birth Parents, cleft palate

    Pale Yellow = Spina biffida

    Peach = Uterine Cancer, Endometrial Cancer

    Light Green = Pelvic Pain (chronic), Celiac Disease

    Light
    Blue = Prostate cancer, mens health, thyroid disease, lymphedema,
    Addison’s Disease, Trisomy 18, Velo-Cardio Facial Syndrome,
    hyperaldosteronism, scleroderma, Behcets Disease, Graves Disease,
    Shprintzen Syndrome

    Lavender = All cancers (general cancer awareness), epilepsy, hypokalemic periodic paralysis, rett syndrome, foster care

    Pearl = lung cancer and lung disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Mesothelioma, Emphysema

    Silver
    = Children with physical or learning disabilities, Parkinson’s Disease,
    any diseases or disorders of the brain including strokes, elderly abuse

    Gold = Childhood Cancer, COPD, Embryonal Rhabdomyosarcoma

    Clear = Lung cancer (also clear with gold border) and lung disease

    Light Baby Pink and Blue = Pregnancy and infant loss, SIDS, Male breast cancer

    Red and White = Head and neck cancer, aplastic anemia, Squamous Cell Carcinoma

    Red and Yellow = Hepatitis C

    Red, White and Blue = Patriotism, 9/11 victims, fireworks safety

    Red and Blue with a Heart = Congenital Heart Defects (also red, blue and red stripes)

    Blue and Yellow = Down Syndrome, designated drivers (The Hero Campaign)

    Purple Ribbon with a Red rose = Cystic Fibrosis

    Purple and Green = Hospice And Pallative Care

    Purple and Blue = Pediatric Stroke

    Purple and Yellow = Chemical Injury, autoimmune hepatitis

    Puzzle Ribbon = Autism

    Prism = Multiple Sclerosis (MS)

    Orchid and Orange = psoriasis

    Lime Green and Aqua = adult stem cell donor

    Teal And  Pink  = Hereditary Breast Cancer or a combo ribbon for gynecological and breast cancers

    Black  and  Pink = Bone Marrow Donor, loss of a daughter

    Black  and Lt. Blue = Loss of a son

    Black and White = Carcinoid Syndrome Cancer (zebra stripes) and anti-racism

    Black, White And Black (three stripes) = Vaccine danger

    Gold and Black = Platelet donor

    Gold and Silver = Hearing Disorders

    Ivory, Burgundy and Ivory = Oral, head and neck cancer

    Yellow, Lime Green, Orange, Aqua, Hot Pink= Myelodysplastic Syndrome

    Orange, Green, Blue, Purple, Yellow = STD awareness

    Red White and Red (3 stripes) = Leukemia and Lymphoma

    BTW:  I have seen on
    several sites that Xangans are having trouble uploading images. 
    Mine upload, but on the “edit HTML” page, the width is set at
    “0″.  I set it to the width I want, and the pics are there.

  • This is just a warmup.

    While cleaning things up yesterday at KaiOaty, I noticed that some of
    the FAQs need updating, expansion and revision.  Most conspicuous
    among them is the “Love” FAQ.   That one started out as a
    Xeroxed sheet when I was still doing my work primarily by mail. 
    When I was setting up KaiOaty, I expanded it with quotes I found online
    and links.  Now it needs reworking yet again.

    I now have all the info on the neurobioelectrochemical facts of life and romantic love from Helen Fisher’s book, Why We Love.  Then there is A General Theory of Love
    by Lewis, Amini and Lannon, which goes beyond romance into culture,
    psychology and philosophy.  Recently, I  have even found
    material relevant to the subject in Debra Niehoff’s The Biology of Violence : How Understanding the Brain, Behavior and Environment Can Break the Vicious Circle of Aggression and Unlock The Genius Within
    by Daniel Janik.  Digesting and condensing all that material into
    something that some poor schmuck (or schmuckette) in love (or wanting
    to be in love) will be willing to read, looks like a big job.

    Not enough of this information is online.  I would like to be able
    to link to it, or at least copy-and-paste some passages.  While
    I’m on that subject of what I would like to do, I would like to be able
    to afford full subscriptions to AAAS online and other scientific
    journals.  I have the free registrations and basic free email
    services that get me abstracts of articles.  Those abstracts are
    no more than little teasers.  They always leave me wanting more,
    just like news headlines. 

    I’d be lost in ignorance without public libraries.  Our local librarian is a jewel.  When I found Unlock the Genius Within
    in our borough-wide system’s catalog, with one copy at a library down
    in Palmer, and asked her to get it for me through inter-library loan,
    she ordered a new copy for our library and reserved it for me. 

    So much is being discovered now in that field of
    neurobioelectrochemistry, that I can’t hope to keep up with the
    advances, but I trail along reading the laypersons’ popularizations as
    they are published.  I suppose, since I think that more of it
    should be online, I should help put some of it here.  So I read,
    then I write, then I read more, then I revise and update (or notice
    that I need to revise and update but am too busy reading to get it
    done).

    Well, that did it.  I’m through with the mental warmup, the
    neurons are humming, and I can get to work now, right after
    breakfast.  There was something restful, now that I’m looking back
    on it, about that recent brainfoggy period.  Not that I’m eager to
    have the fog move in again.  It has its disadvantages, too.

  • housework of a sort

    I spent most of today doing a tedious job that I had been neglecting
    for a year and a half.  I now have all the readings on KaiOaty
    indexed.  The index is about twice as long as it was this morning
    when I started.  I would like to be able to say that it feels good
    to get it done, but that wouldn’t quite be true.  I felt a moment
    of triumph when it was all done, and that moment passed quickly.

    I know that my feelings today are associated with my OCD
    (obsessive-compulsive disorder, and if I didn’t have it I probably
    wouldn’t feel it necessary to spell it out).  I didn’t want to do
    the job, but this morning I felt I should be doing something productive
    while I waited for my brain to wake up, so I started on that. 
    Then, once I got going, it was hard to stop.

    I took advantage of my lunch break to break free from the indexing and
    get a reading done, then as soon as I finished that I went back and
    finished up the index.  I was sorta on a roll with it, rolling
    like a rock downhill.  I didn’t enjoy the work, and now I’m not
    enjoying having gotten it done because I’m pissed off over being
    compulsive about shit like this.  Being crazy just drives me nuts.

  • If you spit in the ocean…

    …are you just pissing into the wind?

    What impact does a drop in a bucket have?

    It’s issues such at that with which I have had to contend, and that I have had to transcend, for as long as I can remember.

    “A drop in a bucket,” was my mother’s favorite phrase for something
    insignificant.  She used it to justify small wasteful or destructive acts, and to
    discourage protests such as consumer boycotts.  Having noticed how
    quickly our bathroom sink with the leaky faucet would overflow if I put
    in the plug, I had, I thought, sufficient cause to ignore Mama’s
    attempts to mininmize the impact of each drop in the proverbial bucket.

    In the 1960s, I was one of many young people dressed in recycled
    clothing who raised our voices in anti-war protests.  When our
    troops withdrew from Vietnam, not understanding politics and not being
    privy to the halls of power, many of us thought we had succeded. 
    Ever fewer and fewer of us continued wearing patched recycled clothes,
    eating organic produce, diapering our babies in rags, and riding
    bicycles, in an attempt to save the oceans and the earth.

    We knew what we were doing then, even though our elders perceived it as
    nothing more than drug-crazed rebellion.  Oh, yes, it was all of
    that:  rebellious and often fueled by drugs, but it was
    more.  It was an idealistic attempt to retard or reverse the damage that
    farsighted people such as Jacques Cousteau and Rachel Carson had told
    us would eventually make the planet unfit for life.  We agreed amongst
    ourselves that a worthy cause was worth some right action even if that
    was not the easy way.

    The line between right and wrong is no longer as clear to me as it used
    to be.  I have become intimately acquainted with the law of
    unintended consequences.  I have also reached the conclusion that
    “right action,” whatever that may be, does not need a worthy cause to
    make it right.  These days I am inclined to do what feels right,
    even if there is no perceptible effect for it to be the cause of.  I am losing my attachment to results.

    I’m not headed anywhere with this idea right now, but I may revisit it,
    revise it, review it or expand on it at some later date.  It’s
    just something that popped into my mind recently.

    Here’s another idea that came to me when I heard someone (in a song, I think) suggest that something was, “not meant to be.”

    If you really mean it, then it is meant to be.

    The lead story in today’s Anchorage Daily News is a grabber:

    Two generations ago, students in Nanwalek had
    to lick the schoolhouse floor when they spoke Sugt’stun like their
    parents. Now the village’s last fluent speakers are asking the school’s
    help to save their dying Native language.

    Nanwalek parents and elders want the Kenai
    Peninsula Borough School District to make Sugt’stun part of their core
    curriculum, with academic credit for a high school course. Nanwalek
    even has a certified teacher eager to teach the language, which is
    spoken statewide by fewer than 100 people, most of them elderly.

    “Kenai Peninsula is the Sugpiaq homeland. We
    are the last band of survivors of the Sugpiaq people,” former bilingual
    aide Sally Ash told the School Board last week. “We consider it an
    insult that we have no say about how our village school is run.”

    But school officials — citing budget cuts,
    new federal rules and Nanwalek’s low achievement test scores — say
    they have to concentrate on basic offerings like English and math.
    Earlier this winter, they suggested Nanwalek’s students who want a
    language credit take an online Spanish course instead.

    more at adn.com

  • The new weekly_Photo_Challenge, hosted by Ladyblue1, is “Candid Camera.”

    I have a new shot:


    …and a bunch of older ones, of my most frequent “model,” Doug.

    too busy to walk the dog

    PlayStation trance

    fascinatin’ museum exhibit

    assembling the computer desk

    ..and the spaghetti aftermath

    untitled

    He’s not my only victim subject.

    This is his friend Matt
    :

    Most of the candid shots I have of Greyfox were acts of vengeance, back
    before he stopped drinking — shots of him passed out, or dancing naked
    on top of his car in the driveway, and such.  This is one of my
    favorites from more recent times:

    The glossy black object on his left shoulder is a cat, the late great Pidney.