October 15, 2005

• 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)

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  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.)

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