Month: October 2005

  • Chapter 9 – War (cont.)
    Click here for previous chapters

    We struggled on through another winter in that house in San Rafael. Out in the world Vice-President Agnew resigned amidst scandal to be replaced by Gerald Ford, and Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army), a tiny group of terrorists bent on extracting $6 million worth of food for the poor from her wealthy father and exchanging her for SLA members who were in jail. By the time I turned 35, Jane had been gone for a month of her second summer visit to Oregon, and I was beginning to plan a daring attempt to ramp up my life. My country’s involvement in the Vietnam War had officially ended, and my own battle was about to shift gears.

    fall, fall
    to the bottom of grief
    at the end of weeping
    there is sleep

    sleep with the hand of god
    beneath your head
    and wake to know it is
    your own

    (end of chapter)

    Deep Thought: “”The tiger can’t change his spots. No, wait, he did! Good for him!”
    Today I am grateful for: Antifreeze
    Guess the Movie: “I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.”
    Vietnam Study, Casting Doubts, Remains Secret
    by Scott Shane
    WASHINGTON – The National Security Agency (N.S.A.) has kept secret since 2001 a finding by an agency historian that during the Tonkin Gulf episode, which helped precipitate the Vietnam War, N.S.A. officers deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes, two people familiar with the historian’s work say. (Rest of article here.)

  • Chapter 9 – War (cont.)
    Click here for previous chapters

    I have so few records from this time. It kind of all blurs together – school, the children, near poverty, drinking. Besides going to school, I must have been still working at some kind of job, because a letter mentions earning $375/month. In the summer of 1973 that I turned 34, Jane spent her first of two summers in Oregon with my parents who were overjoyed to have her, something I can now totally understand as a grandmother myself. It must have also been a sign of my gradual decline in coping.

    That fall Jane began her third year of grade school and Josh began kindergarten. So we were all in school. I have no memory of how I paid for it. And it was some time during that winter that I fell into a brief romance with one of the musicians we had lived with in that big house in San Anselmo when we first moved to Marin. For the third and last time in my life, I became pregnant. Consulting a counselor at the College, I was encouraged to have a therapeutic abortion, which had just become legal in California late the year before (Roe vs. Wade had passed a few months later in January 1973). I went to the local hospital alone and came home alone the same day. I told almost no one, not even the father, who was soon gone from my life. I carried this secret for the next 11 years until it became the main item in a recovery fifh step with a sponsor in a sunny back yard in Oregon in early 1985. It was a great sadness and that is all I have to say. (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: “ “It’s easy to sit there and say you’d like to have more money. And I guess that’s what I like about it. It’s easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money. “
    Today I am grateful for: Giving birth to a perfect daughter 40 years ago today
    Guess the Movie: “ It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and… this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video’s a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember… and I need to remember… Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.”
    If You Believe in What You Are Doing, Give Me Your Stiffest Sentence. If You Don’t, Then Resign
    by Cindy Sheehan
    “If you believe in what you are doing, give me your stiffest sentence. If you don’t, then resign.”
    – Gandhi
    Yesterday, started off with a “bang” when we went to Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath in the section where the Iraq War dead are buried. In our group yesterday morning were 3 other members of Gold Star Families for Peace. Juan Torres was with us and his son, Juan, was murdered in Afghanistan. (Rest of article here.)

  • Chapter 9 – War (cont.)
    Click here for previous chapters

    My mother retired that winter after 12 years as children’s librarian at the Corvallis, Oregon Library. Though I didn’t know it, my father had begun his long journey through Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease that would eventually kill him and was busy with the many beautiful little wood carvings he would leave behind. And my 90-year-old grandfather was given a huge birthday party at his retirement home nearby. In an effort to rise from my ashes, I turned away from drugs and back to drinking and was prescribed antidepressants for the first time in my life. I began to attend classes at the College of Marin, in one of which I found out I still had an IQ of 140, the same as when my father tested it in my childhood. A month before I turned 33, the Watergate Hotel was broken into, setting the stage for a national drama that would last two years and result in the only presidential resignation in the history of our country. Coincidentally, only this year, 33 years later, was the identity of Deep Throat (the informant who helped break the story) revealed.

    That fall of 1972, as Jane started second grade in San Rafael, we had to take in a succession of roommates to make ends meet. We watched mesmerized by the events of the Munich Olympics when Arab commandos killed 11 Israeli athletes. At last, in January 1973, there was an official ceasefire in the Vietnam war, but it would be another two years before the last Americans pulled out and the last American soldier died. (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: “I guess of all my uncles, I liked Uncle Cave Man the best. We called him Uncle Cave Man because he lived in a cave and because sometimes he’d eat one of us. Later on we found out he was a bear. “
    Today I am grateful for: Questions and answers
    Guess the Movie: “There once was a time in this business when I had the eyes of the whole world! But that wasn’t good enough for them, oh no! They had to have the ears of the whole world too. So they opened their big mouths and out came talk. Talk! TALK!”
    Secret MoD poll: Iraqis Support Attacks on British Troops
    by Sean Rayment
    Millions of Iraqis believe that suicide attacks against British troops are justified, a secret military poll commissioned by senior officers has revealed.
    The poll, undertaken for the Ministry of Defence and seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows that up to 65 per cent of Iraqi citizens support attacks and fewer than one per cent think Allied military involvement is helping to improve security in their country. (Rest of article here.)

  • Chapter 9 – War (cont.)
    Click here for previous chapters

    And I fell in love. This time he was a flaxen-haired, slender, Minnesota Scandinavian Lutheran, Saab-driving, conscientious objector who had a job as janitor custodian for the Ali Akbar Khan School of Music right there in San Rafael and who played the sarod to top it all off and lived at the school.

    It was a time of longing, shattering losses, and a slide towards the dark. John Lennon released Imagine that fall, and I imagined too much. This last California love affair was cruel. It took only six months to run its course. The Indian music was always woven through it, the walks in Deer Park, the poems he became. And in the end, when I was too sick from addiction for him to watch, he walked away up the little path from my front door to the street and out of my life. The distress was incurable, unbearable, electrocuting. Hope was getting shorter in duration. (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: “If you’re in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at some guys, throw one of those little baby-type pumpkins. Maybe it’ll make everyone think of how crazy war is, and while they’re thinking, you can throw a real grenade. “
    Today I am grateful for: Animal magnetism
    Guess the Movie: “Is there any risk of brain damage?” “Well, technically speaking, the operation is brain damage, but on a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you’ll miss.” Answer, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004. Winner: Silverthorn.
    On the Occasion of the 2,000th U.S. Troop Death in Iraq, Gold Star and Military Families Mourn and Speak Out: ‘Bring Them Home Now’
    Available for Interview: Families of Deployed and Fallen Soldiers from Iraq War
    WASHINGTON – October 21- On the eve of the next horrific milestone, the 2,000th troop death in Iraq, families with loved ones who are serving in Iraq, families whose loved ones were killed in Iraq and families whose loved ones may deploy or re-deploy are calling on the Bush Administration, Congress and decision-makers at all levels to honor the fallen and prevent future deaths by ending the occupation of Iraq, bringing our troops home now and taking care of them when they get here. (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 8:04 pm
    + = Fabulous Fall.
    - = Backache.

  • Chapter 9 – War (cont.)
    Click here for previous chapters

    Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin overdosed that winter (Jim Morrison would follow by July), while I agonized in my personal life over where it was heading. I attended group therapy at the Marin County Hospital, which got me nowhere except a crush on the male therapist. While I was busy crashing and burning, my mother in Oregon was receiving honors and awards for being a “woman of achievement” and “citizen of the year” in her community where she was the children’s librarian. As for the war,18-year-olds who were dying in Vietnam were finally given the right to vote in the spring of 1971. And within a few miles of me, the ferocious and beautiful Angela Davis was being held in the county jail as a civil rights political prisoner.

    We made a final Marin County move that summer, when I was 32, to San Rafael where we inhabited the bottom floor of a big house with a large front yard space and a small back yard. Our first upstairs neighbors were a couple of guys, one of whom was the photographer who took this photo by a front window and used our pantry space for a darkroom. I got a job at a rehab center helping clients find employment as they left treatment. For a short time, two of them rented our front room and through them I began to take amphetamines, eventually going alone to a dealer’s house for the first and only time in my life to buy some. (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: “I don’t say that the bird is “good” or the bat is “bad.” But I will say this: at least the bird is less nude. “
    Today I am grateful for: Anesthesia when necessary
    Guess the Movie: “You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste.” Answer: The Silence of the Lambs, 1991. Winner: Eliminate_the_Impossible.
    Kucinich Uses Resolution Of Inquiry To Demand Documents From White House Group That Developed Strategy To “Sell” War To The Public And Press
    Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) today introduced a Resolution of Inquiry to demand the White House turn over all white papers, minutes, notes, emails or other communications kept by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG). (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 8:17 pm
    + = Incredible fall day in Portland, Oregon – breathlessly euphoric.
    - = Politics as usual.

  • Chapter 9 – War (cont.)
    Click here for previous chapters

    Somehow during those hot months I made the transition from nutrition worker to volunteer at the Marin County Economic Opportunity Council Multi-Service Center and by fall its only paid worker. I was kind of like a lab experiment. If I could make it out of poverty, it would symbolize everything they were trying to do. So we had this building in
    the middle of San Anselmo where we had meetings and free clothes and manned a resource phone line. We even had a big town meeting to organize the community. Behind the scenes, I had a boyfriend named Nation who wore lavender-tinted sunglasses, drove a Jaguar, had the same long blond hair I did, and dealt cocaine (which neither he nor I used) out of a
    very nice apartment. I met him when he came to check out the community center one day. And I began to drink more. (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: “I bet the sparrow looks at the parrot and thinks, yes, you can talk, but listen to yourself! “
    Today I am grateful for: Not being anemic presently
    Guess the Movie: “I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Colosseum. Then, I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things. I’m gonna build airfields, I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…” Answer: It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946. Winner: ShirlRavenlock.
    Nixon’s Vietnam-Era Defense Chief Calls for Iraq Exit Plan
    by Bryan Bender
    WASHINGTON
    – The defense secretary who served under President Richard M. Nixon
    during the Vietnam War is warning that the United States is repeating
    in Iraq some of the mistakes that led to public disillusionment and
    ultimate defeat in Vietnam, including the impression that there is no
    clear goal for victory or a detailed, well-described plan to bring US
    troops home. (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 8:30 pm
    + = Thank you xangans who are following along with me while I try to write my story – it helps me keep going.
    - = Diagnosed with osteopenia recently – better start doing tai chi.

  • Chapter 9 – War (cont.)
    Click here for previous chapters

    That spring the National Guard mowed down four students at Kent State. We celebrated Josh’s second birthday in May and my parents flew down from Oregon for a visit when a few months later I arrived at age 31 with hope that things were going to improve. It was exciting and scary to live alone with my kids again. I waded through grieving both their fathers that summer. To this day, something in me has never recovered from not being able to keep either one of them. It was a shining yellow summer mixed with a lot of crying and a little bit of shouting. There were men who came and went quickly in my life, like comets. Out in the world the war killed more Americans and conscientious objector status was legally created. The Equal Rights Amendment passed the Senate and House of Representatives (but in all these years has never had the ratification necessary to become a formal amendment to the Constitution). Women were gathering strength side by side with civil rights and the anti-war movement – and on Hill 805 in the mountains west of Hue, 11 young members of Delta Company died forever.(to be continued)

    Deep Thought: “When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I thought, Ya-hoo! We’re rich! But it turned out to be something different.”
    Today I am grateful for: Anything ancient
    Guess the Movie: “My lord, I think… I think your book is right. ‘The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped’ and on this ocean the Bedu go where they please and strike where they please. This is the way the Bedu have always fought. You’re famed throughout the world for fighting in this way and this is the way you should fight now!” Answer: Lawrence of Arabia, 1962.
    UN Official: US Troops ‘Starving’ Iraqi Civilians
    GENEVA – A United Nations human rights investigator on Friday accused U.S. and British forces in Iraq of breaching international law by depriving civilians of food and water in besieged cities as they try to flush out militants. (Rest of article here.)

  • Chapter 9 – War (cont.)
    Click here for previous chapters

    With my two babies, I made a brief visit to my parents in Oregon, returning in time to feel the Santa Rosa earthquakes shake the Bay Area in October. We were still living in San Anselmo with our little rock band household and I was having a harder time dealing with being a lonely single parent. Jane turned four that fall just as Jack Kerouac bled to death of alcoholism in a Florida hospital. In November, dozens of American Indian students symbolically occupied Alcatraz in the same week as 250,000 war protestors marched on Washington, and the following month the Altamont rock festival signified the violent opposite of what Woodstock had been less than half a year before.

    Finally, as paying bills and getting along became unmanageable, our little community disintegrated and somehow the three of us parachuted into a tiny house up the road in the little community of Fairfax by ourselves. It was here that I began to stumble back to work, taking a job as a home extension agent, visiting poor families and helping them plan nutritious meals. I had to take some training, of course, and then I was on my own. It was so stressful to be trying to rejoin the work force while keeping my children on track that I developed a massive muscle spasm in my neck for which I was prescribed valium, becoming immediately addicted to the euphoria that came with the relief from pain. (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: “If I come back as an animal in my next lifetime, I hope it’s some type of parasite, because this is the part where I take it easy!”
    Today I am grateful for: Anatomy
    Guess the Movie: “And that’s the hardest part. Today everything is different; there’s no action… have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food – right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody… get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.” Answer: Goodfellas, 1990. Winner: CanadianNational.
    If Not Miers, Who?
    by Katha Pollitt
    Dear Karl Rove,
    I understand you’re getting a lot of flak over the nomination of Harriet Miers to that pesky slot on the Supreme Court. Just in case it doesn’t work out, I would like to propose another candidate: me. I realize my name might not be on your short list, since this is a new ambition of mine, and I haven’t had time to organize a big shmoozy campaign like some people I could mention. It was actually the Miers nomination that gave me the idea–some people thought, Why her?, but I thought, Why not me? To save time in case you have to move quickly, I’ve prepared a list of reasons I would be the perfect person to refute the kinds of nasty, rude, unfair arguments being made by Ms. Miers’s opponents. I think you will see I have all her strengths, and then some! (Rest of article here.)

  • After nine plus months, I’ve finally finished another chapter of my life story (this time from age 30-35), which was the main reason I came to Xanga in the first place a few years ago – to push myself to complete the project. Three main reasons for trying to do this were: to leave something behiind for future curious family members (my own parents left nothing to my disappointment), to keep my creative chops up, and to come full circle in my life about who I am and where I came from. My process is to gather all the papers, photos, diaries, letters, etc. I can find into scrapbook form and, using that material, to write. This chapter was kind of hard to write because things were getting worse in my life (which would continue for a full 15 years) before they would get better. Anyway….

    Chapter Nine
    (Click here for previous chapters)

    War

    “and it’s 1,2,3 what are we fightin’ for? don’t ask me i don’t give a damn, next stop is Vietnam, and it’s 5,6,7 open up the pearly gates. Well there ain’t no time to wonder why…WHOOPEE we’re all gunna die.” (Country Joe McDonald – Woodstock, July 1969)

    Between 1961 and 1975, ten percent of the population of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos died. Of the three million American soldiers who went to war there, 153,329 came home seriously wounded and 58,869 did not come home at all. The history of this war should be so deeply carved into my country’s conscience that it would never take this course again – and yet, as I write now in 2005, it has.

    In 1969, as I turned 30, the war lay at the halfway mark like a scarlet backdrop to all our lives. The resistance movement was steadily growing and each day brought roller coaster news. In the same month as the high of Woodstock came the low of the Manson murders in California. The Chicago conspiracy trial of Tom Hayden, Bobby Seale, Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and others for inciting anti-war protests began that September. (to be continued)

    Deep Thought: “Somebody told me how frightening it was how much topsoil we are losing each year, but I told that story around the campfire and nobody got scared.”
    Today I am grateful for: All acts of amnesty
    Guess the Movie: “No! I will not hide in the fruit cellar! Ha! You think I’m fruity, huh? I’m staying right here. This is my room and noone will drag me out of it, least of all my big, bold son!” Answer: Psycho, 1960. Winner: rnbow.
    Bush Plan Shows U.S. Is Not Ready for Deadly Flu
    by Gardiner Harris
    WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 – A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation’s history. (Rest of article here.)
    End of Day: 8:11 pm
    + = Sunny yellow fall day.
    - = What is up with all the heartbreak in the world?

  • WEDNESDAY MOVIE

    The Constant Gardener

    Better late than never. Just wanted to throw this note in before I hit the rack for the night. Was out to the multiplex for the first time in awhile this week to see this adaptation of a John Le Carre novel set in Kenya. I’m a Ralph Fiennes fan (that’s pronounced Rafe Fines, donchaknow) and it had good reviews, but I’ll have to say I was a teeny bit disappointed. Once again, we are reminded that Africa is pretty much a huge, messy, corrupt, whirling dervish of a place with no hope in sight any time soon. Fiennes plays a Good Guy British diplomat with a fondness for plants, who is married to a passionately political wife (Rachel Weisz) but doesn’t know the half of the intrigue she’s up to. Right off, we find out she’s been brutally murdered on a trip to Kenya to meddle in multinational corporation sinister politics, so a lot of the story is in flashback. It’s not a new plot – poverty-stricken Africans being taken advantage of by evil, greedy outsiders. The filming is very hand-held, jerky and bright and loud. It’s almost annoying at times, and yet somehow hypnotic. Fiennes really hauls you through the eye of the needle with him. He is able to show the development of an essentially sane, calm person into a man obsessed with solving his wife’s murder. It’s a competent film, B+ I guess I’d say, but somehow it never made me care.

    Deep Thought: “When I went for my first job interview, I guess I was pretty confident, because I told the guy who was interviewing me he was fired. I didn’t get the job, but that isn’t what bothered me. What bothered me was I found out a few months later that that guy was still working there. Hey, man, I fired you!”
    Today I am grateful for: Alice in Wonderland
    Guess the Movie: “September 28th, 1997. It is exactly 11am. At the funfair, near the ghost train, the marshmallow twister is twisting. Meanwhile, on a bench in Villette Square, Félix Lerbier learns there are more links in his brain than atoms in the universe. Meanwhile, at the Sacré Coeur, the nuns are practising their backhand. The temperature is 24°C, humidity 70%, atmospheric pressure 999 millibars.” Answer: Amelie, 2001. Winner: tearsign.
    Christian Soldier on the High Court
    by Molly Ivins
    AUSTIN, Texas — Uh-oh. Now we are in trouble. Doesn’t take much to read the tea leaves on the Harriet Miers nomination. First, it’s Bunker Time at the White House. Miers’ chief qualification for this job is loyalty to George W. Bush and the team. What the nomination means in larger terms for both law and society is the fifth vote on the court to overturn Roe v. Wade. (Rest of article here.)