Regrets? I’ve Had A Few

 

Events of the times are shutting me down.  For nearly three years now I have been spilling my story like a dental patient on nitrous oxide.  My not-so-easy childhood, my adventures as an adolescent and a young adult, my heartbreaks and heartaches.  I have tried to describe the most satisfying element, motherhood without creating toothaches and nausea for my readers.

I’ve bared my soul and gone where very few of you would dream of going. My writing, when it is applied to my memoirs, has been described as raw, brave, disturbing, authentic, disarming, and foolish.  But it is my story.  It is who I am.

The process of blogging my life has been enlightening and cathartic.  I have sorted through those things for which I blamed myself when, in fact, they were not within my power to control.  I’ve opened wounds I didn’t know were there and closed the ones I had refused to even acknowledge – until I started writing.

I’m not sure exactly what is happening to me now, but it feels as if I’ve said everything I have to say about myself and my life.  The rest has yet to happen.  It is rather sobering to think an entire life to date can be examined and documented in so short a time. 

Amid the technical frustrations provided by my blogging site of choice, I find myself disinterested in writing, unable to concentrate on the words of my blogging community and almost devoid of any creative ideas.  There are other places to blog, you say?  Yes, I know.  I have two of them. 

I believe I have succumb to sensory overload.  Too much information, not enough time to really process it, and a sense of unfamiliar helplessness have flooded my muse’s engine. I sit and play mindless computer games to pass the time while I busy my mind with worry about the world, the country, the state, the city, my neighborhood and, of course, my child.

Looking forward, something that has always propelled me through my eventful life, now only foretells more struggle, more pain, more worry.  And so I look back.

No Regrets

These are the things I’ve done in life that I will never regret, no matter how far off the rails the things around me skid:

• Being born
• Embracing education and owning my intelligence
• Staying my course, albeit with more than a few detours
• Having a son
• Nurturing seven dogs to the point of spoiling them rotten
• Rejecting the stifling, repressive and controlling tenets of not only my birth religion, but all religions
• Working hard enough to achieve what I though were relevant and honorable goals
• Taking care of the one and only body I will ever have
• Quitting smoking at age 28 and never, ever returning to the habit
• Rejecting alcohol and drugs as a means to escape reality

Regrets

These are the things it took me all my years to learn.  How I wish I could have come equipped at birth with this knowledge :

• Declining my admission to the University of Pennsylvania graduate school of psychology
• Marrying too young and too soon after meeting the groom
• Buying into the myth of the American Dream
• Equating success with acquisition of things and titles
• Suppressing my true feelings out of fear of losing things and titles
• Spending too freely and saving too sparingly
• Not having more children
• Wasting my time trying to control everything and everyone around me

I once believed, like the title of an old song, the best is yet to come.  Now, I just don’t know.  Oh, I will expound on the buffoonery of our esteemed politicians and commiserate with my writing friends over the silliness of humankind.  Something has already happened while I was writing this post that will probably spawn another post for the right-leaning readers to throw up all over.  It’s what I do,   But somewhere along the way, my heart stopped participating.

Will WWIII Be Started Online?

 

Loose Lips Sink Ships, a variation of a poster slogan used during World War Two, seems extremely relevant today, albeit in a different sense.

Back then it was a reminder to Americans to watch what they say to avoid giving away strategic war secrets to the enemy.  The “enemy” was more likely to be an individual stranger who, upon hearing some errant comment, would tip off the opponents and thwart the American plan.

In 2012, the “enemy” has very different characteristics. 

For one thing, the “enemy” is fluid, unpredictable, and sometimes illogical.

As U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton has been pointing out, the United States was hugely instrumental in liberating the people of Libya.  That, however, has failed to impress the anti-American elements who might have used the YouTube trailer of a blasphemous schlock film -- produced by some guy who allegedly duped the actors into participating and whose motives are still very much a mystery--as an excuse or a cover for a previously-planned guerrilla attack on the American embassy in Benghazi. U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods died in that assault, according to the State Department.

As a result of the irresponsible content of a low-budget film that deliberately mocks Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, protesters are airing their anti-American anger in Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

So, very much like the last century’s Viet Cong, “the enemy” does not wear a uniform or dog tags, is not led by a military hierarchy, and is a mixture of surreptitious plots by organized interests and spontaneous eruptions of ordinary citizens.

A second characteristic of “the enemy” in the Information Age is instant access to communications.  Instead of armies acting upon a formal declaration of war we have a relative handful of individuals, in effect, pulling the trigger with the stroke of the Enter key on a keyboard.  One American of dubious origin and allegiance now has the ability to not only leak national secrets but also to strike the match that ignites the entire Middle East.

With everybody exercising their freedom of speech, without concern for consequences, to the billions of the world’s electronically-connected people, it is not a stretch at all to foresee a conflagration of global proportions caused by one shady ex-convict with multiple aliases who is high on hate. 

What hath technology wrought?

Michelle…Our Belle

 

Sont des mots qui vont tres bien ensemble  -- The Beatles

Our elegant, statuesque, brainy First Lady knocked ‘em dead last night.  I’m still not clear if she was using the prompter or if she was speaking extemporaneously, but one thing I am sure of is she spoke from her lovely heart.

Gee Whiz…I love that guy – Carla Thomas

I had a conversation with a friend this morning about how anyone could have ever referred to Mrs. Obama as an “Angry Black Woman.”  This woman isn’t angry.  She is in love.  She is in love with her husband, thank goodness, but she is also in love with this country.  To fail to see that is to fail to open one’s eyes and ears.

Michelle Obama is in love with her daughters, her oft-stated raison d'être. Her priorities are well-ordered and well-known.  Money?  I’m sure she thinks it’s nice to have it, but it does not seem to rank all that high on her list.  What does rank high are things we all care about (or should): health, family and other people.

There were people watching who actually zeroed in on her manicure and wondered on Twitter what the brand and shade were.  Really?  On the news this morning, I heard someone speculate that her shoes were from J. Crew!

But while the vapid were judging her wardrobe, I was moved to tears by her words and her delivery of words like these:

“Well, today, after so many struggles and triumphs and moments that have tested my husband in ways I never could have imagined, I have seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are – it reveals who you are.”

One of the words that appeared most in her speech was “opportunity.”  To me, that one word is the linchpin of the American Dream we have heard so much about these past few weeks.  Most Americans don’t expect to get something for nothing, contrary to the beliefs of so many on the right.  Most Americans simply want a fair shot at achieving that dream.  They want a real opportunity to work hard and pull themselves and their families up into a decent life.

Ann Romney, in my opinion, also did an exemplary job at delivering her address at the RNC.  As a woman – a woman who is always looking for and acknowledging other women who excel – I was proud to hear myself think that Ann Romney speaks with authority and conviction.  In fact, she does so far better than her husband, the candidate.   I simply didn’t believe the words she spoke as much as I believed Michelle’s.

Whichever way this election turns out, these men who would be President in 2013 both have powerful campaigners in their life partners.  They are both smart.  They are both great mothers.  They are both beautiful.

In these times when money-grubbing television executives prefer to make millionaires out of truly angry black women by exploiting their loud, obnoxious, street-based antics – NeNe Leakes of The Real Housewives of Atlanta comes immediately to mind – it is gratifying and pride-inducing to see a black woman from humble beginnings work and choose her way to a true role model for women of any and all colors and creeds. 

I am woman watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin' arms across the land
But I'm still an embryo
With a long long way to go
Until I make my brother understand – Helen Reddy

We Need You Again, FDR

 

They were far from rich.  They were factory workers, secretaries and postal clerks.  They scraped together the down-payment to buy a $7,000 duplex in 1949, proud as can be to be homeowners.  They were my family and they adored-- literally adored-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

My mom and her brother were children of the Great Depression.  To this day my mother boasts about how far my grandmother could stretch a dollar.  They ate potatoes six ways to Sunday.  Boiled, roasted, peeled, baked, soup, and salad.

The New Deal saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans who managed to outlive the Depression. It restored dignity to people who would sooner die than stand in soup lines or beg for crusts of bread.  It restored the American economy to normal levels. And it reformed the U.S. financial system to prevent anything like the Great Depression from happening again.

I wonder if today any of the people who are crowing about wanting to take our country back have given any thought to FDR and his programs.  I am willing to bet they all have ancestors who directly benefitted from New Deal programs; some still are.  That was a whole lot of government, doing a whole lot of thinking and planning and working in order to get our crippled nation back on its feet and on track to the prosperity many of us enjoyed in the ensuing decades.

Based on the following YouTube video, it appears that among FDR’s formidable talents was prescience.  Listen to him:

Hmmmm.  The more things change the more they stay the same, eh?

Ryan is a Smooth, Charismatic Liar

As Paul Ryan strolled confidently to the podium Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention, my thoughts jumped immediately back to 2004.  I had the exact same thought when now-President Barack Obama opened his mouth and uttered his first line from his Democratic National Convention keynote address that year.

“He certainly LOOKS the part.”

Ryan’s speech was well-crafted and well-delivered – just like Obama’s was eight long years ago.  Ryan has an easy-to-hear cadence to his delivery – just like Obama does when he is working from a script. 

But there was a big difference in the two young politicians and their approach to the opportunity they enjoyed. 

Obama chose to inspire a more unified country.

“There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.”  Now, true, Obama’s speech was not an acceptance speech; Ryan’s was.  Perhaps it is tradition for the keynote to be lofty, more of a view from a higher altitude.  But whatever Obama chose to include in his remarks as true were, well, true.

Not so the appealing Mr. Ryan.  In an article on today’s Salon.com by Alex Seitz-Wald, Paul Ryan: The definitive fact-check , the writer lists nine different instances of Paul Ryan telling a bald-faced lie. 

The closing of the GM plant in Janesville, WI, his hometown?  Yes, it closed, but it closed in 2008, before Obama even took office.

I remember sitting bolt upright last night as I listened to Ryan slyly tried to attribute the downgrading of the country’s credit rating by Standard and Poors to Obama’s “failed policies.”  I didn’t have to read it anywhere;  I remembered how the Republicans in Congress held the country’s debt ceiling hostage – and so did Standard and Poor's.

Ryan said he and Romney would create 12 million jobs if voted into office.  Yeah?  Raise your hand if you believe that to be even possible.

Ryan: “We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak.” 

Oh really?  Then why do the majority of your proposed spending cuts involve programs designed to aid the poor, Mr. Ryan? 

I spent quite a bit of my life in Wisconsin.  I went to Ripon College for four years, graduated and took a management training job at A. O. Smith Corporation in Milwaukee.  I lived there five more years.  I met dozens of Wisconsinites who were good and honorable people.  My husband-at-the-time was executive-assistant to Milwaukee’s mayor Henry W. Maier for many years, so politicians were not unknown to us.

While in college I became friends with young men and women from all over the state of Wisconsin, most of whom were Republicans (or at least their parents were. Civil rights and Vietnam changed a lot of my classmates’ political views forever,)  Paul Ryan would have been a BMOC at Ripon, had he been there at the time. There were many Paul Ryan types on campus and they were my friends.  Good-looking, athletic and bright was a winning combination there, too.

Paul Ryan has done an injustice to all the good people in Wisconsin by resorting to out and out lies in order to cajole voters away from President Obama.  The Wisconsinites I know, many of whom I love, are not deceitful.  They are not so ambitious that they would purposely spread falsehoods about other good and honorable people, just to foster their own agendas.

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney ought to be ashamed of themselves.

This Sure as Hell is Not the Country I was Led to Expect

 

Sometimes I half expect to wake up from a looooooooong sleep, one that featured a dream lasting for decades.  No nightmare I have ever had can hold a candle to the daymares the world faces on a daily basis.

Remember that scene from the movie Private Benjamin (1980), when the adorable Goldie Hawn, surrounded by circumstances far beyond her abilities to cope with, told her Captain:

Judy Benjamin: I think they sent me to the wrong place.
Capt. Lewis: Uh-huh.
Judy Benjamin: See, I did join the army, but I joined a *different* army. I joined the one with the condos and the private rooms?

When I was growing up, my world was very small – small town, small family, small parochial school – and I was surrounded by a lot of people with small aspirations.  But my imagination was huge.

I imagined that people in the rest of the world were hearing the same lessons I was learning about brotherly love.  When asked by someone what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answer always included some form of “I want to help people.”  You see, that’s what I thought we were put here to do.

As my world grew, so did my expectations of life.  I thought it was quite remarkable, the things human beings were accomplishing in the 20th century.  From horses to horse-power.  From riding in cars to flying among the clouds.  From clunky manual typewriters to sleek portable computers.  From operators asking “Number, please?” to one phone for every person to carry in a pocket.

I marveled at the complex minds that worked together to create such magic in such a short time.  I believed corporations like the one I chose to build a career within were run by some of the finest minds in the world, and I couldn’t wait to finish school so I could get in there and mingle with those powerful minds.

The light started dimming on that vision not too long after I fulfilled my goal of joining a high-powered nationally known corporation as a college recruit.  It was gradual, that dimming.  I held onto my idealism for dear life, probably because I wanted to be in on the action.  I wanted to be in the midst of all these brains working together “for the greater good.”

But the realities of human foibles became too vivid to ignore.  There were people in high places who were quick to do low-down acts of disinginuity.  There were people in positions of power who were far out of their depths and terrified of being found out.  So they lied and cheated and stepped all over the very people upon whose backs they had climbed.

My dream of helping people went up the same chimney as my belief that most people are inherently good…and smart.  I was astounded by the number of certifiably dumb people I encountered in my day-to-day life in the corporate cauldron.

I started paying attention to politics in more than a peripheral way when I was in my thirties.  Based on the civics classes I took in high school, I came to believe the United States of America had the best system of government in the world.  I actually believed we were a democracy and that my vote was equal to every other American’s vote.  Why else would so many people in the South be willing to die just for the right to cast a ballot?  I was passionately liberal, still believing it was our human inclination to adopt the Three Musketeers’ motto:  All for one and one for all.

By the time I was in my mid-thirties, I was forced to send that vision up the chimney with the other smoky ideals I had. I paid 16.5% interest on a mortgage.  I burned a quarter tank of gas waiting in blocks-long lines to buy gas, thanks to a foreign-policy-induced “shortage” of gasoline.

In my forties I heard increasingly more rhetoric from conservative neighbors who said “I’ve got mine.  Let them get their own.” Reaganomics.  Trickle-down.

Similar to Private Benjamin, I think I landed on the wrong planet.  I was brought up to believe in a country that was a melting pot.  We were the country that had a giant green torch-holding lady in the New York harbor who stood there to welcome all comers – even those who might have arrived on the Amistad.

I was taught that the key to success in any endeavor is the ability to compromise.  And the people around me in my childhood told me to fight hard for what I believe, but that the majority rules, so if you are on the losing side, you must stand behind the winning leader and support him.

Tonight I watched and heard the governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, deliver a rousing stump-speech of a keynote address at the Republican National Convention. “We are not afraid.  We are taking our country back.”

From whom? 

Where am I?

Hoof In Mouth Disease Just Might Save the Nation

 

Ah, Todd Akins.  You are such an intellectual lightweight, I’m not even sure you understand what a favor you have done to the Obama campaign.

     Candidate for U. S. Senator Todd Akin,( r.,) stood at Paul Ryan’s side as Ryan announced his controversial budget plan for the nation

Last year, the “misspeaking” Todd Akin joined with GOP vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as two of the original co-sponsors of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act.” Among other things,this bill sought to differentiate between “forcible rape” and “statutory rape.”  Although that language was eventually removed from H.R. 3, thanks to public outrage, it changed nothing about what we know about Akin and Ryan and their desire to redefine the meaning of rape. 

Mr. Akin’s ridiculous statement on a recent Missouri news program that again indicated a distinction in his addled mind between any old rape and a “legitimate” one.  He went on to say that rape should be punished, but the punishment should be the rapist’s and not the child’s, should s/he somehow thwart his bizarre theory that the female reproductive process can tell the difference between intercourse by force and intercourse by consent.

In other words, the hapless woman should only have access to government-paid abortions if she can prove she was raped by physical force.  Otherwise, I guess the woman is supposed to carry the fetus to term whether she wants to or not. 

That 12-year-old down the block who was impregnated by her 21 year-old brother?  Tough.  According to Akin and Ryan, she shouldn’t have been fooling around, she should know better and she must carry the resulting child to term no matter what harm it may do to her physical or emotional well-being.

Todd Akin can cry, recant, plead and dissemble all he wants, but even the most conservative women in the GOP will have to see him and their party’s Presidential ticket for what they are:  Warriors against the rights of women to determine their own reproductive futures.

Akin is no male version of Mrs. Malaprop.  What word could he have possibly been going for when his mouth accidentally said “legitimate?”  Unfortunate?  I doubt it.

Akin is done for, but Paul Ryan’s problems have only just begun.  American women are wising up every time one of these “gaffes” occurs.  Even the most conservative mother in the country should not want her young daughter to be forced to deliver a baby at age 13 after being taken advantage of by an older relative.  Would Akin and Ryan call that consensual sex?  Is that circumstance any less violent to the health and well-being of the victim?

This position isn’t just conservative; it is downright ignorant.  Akin said it, he meant it, and he will pay for it.  But if the women on the right continue to close their eyes to the real intent of these anti-abortion positions – to exercise unreasonable control over all women’s reproductive issues – and they allow themselves to be bamboozled into voting against their own reproductive rights, this nation will take a giant step back into the 1950s. 

I don’t want to go there.