Am working on polishing the first draft ...
of our convention center proposal while in the background my radio is carrying a remote broadcast of the Stop The War demonstrations taking place in San Francisco. Feels strange to not be a part of the action. Not sure whether I'm beginning to withdraw from age, or, whether somewhere deep inside I've given up on the effort as useless? I've noticed that I'm beginning to flip the remote away from newscasts when the war is shown. The list of pundits that I avoid is growing so that -- unlike earlier times when I felt a strong need to hear from both sides -- this is no longer true. My senses have crystalized into a single view of reality, and I've become a part of the polarized state of the union. The outrage is beginning to fade -- a bad sign - and in its place is a growing sense of futility. Is this what others are experiencing? Isn't this what breeds apathy? Maybe these are the danger signs that need to be recognized and resisted. If I begin to lose my sense of urgency, it will mean that I will also begin to squander whatever influence I've acquired that helps to shape the opinions of others.
There's a presidential campaign and election to be lived through over the coming months , perhaps the most important in my long lifetime. The possible outcome is frightening to me, since the recent election in my state. I was so sure that George Bush could not be elected, or, that my state would ever be governed by Arnold Schwarzennegger! Found myself staring in disbelief yesterday while watching him speak of the amending of the constitution so that those not born in this country can aspire to the presidency. His examples, "...look at the fine work of former Secretary of State, Madelyn Albright and Kissinger!" To watch him speak those words with the awareness of what this weightlifter has already managed to achieve gave me chills!
This continuing public adulation of image combined with the monopolization of the world media, encourages the "empty suit" system of running the world. The extension from the image of handsome movie star that launched Ronald Reagan and now includes Arnold may suggest the simplistic way we may be choosing our future leaders. It's like the pretty blonde as the dominant prototype for the most desirable of women. It suggests a system that encourages the dominance of handsome charismatic male (movie star?) that is the most acceptable to a homogenized and dumbed-down society that can then be manipulated by a Corp-ocracy (or is this a word?).
I'm reminded that -- of all of the presidential candidates who appeared at the California Democratic Convention last summer -- John Edwards was the most handsome and least impressive. He was actually booed by the delegates as he defended the US's invasion of Iraq. After seeing him there, I watched him in the months that followed in disbelief, as he rose higher and higher as the potential Democratic nominee, and saw him sharpen his "acceptibility" while improving his delivery and "nice guy" image until he is now seen as a possible vice-presidential nominee along with John Kerry. "He's turned out to be a fine campaigner," say the pundits. I heard little in his speeches that would justify his ascendence to the highest office in the land and the world. And I am reminded (after spending some years in speech-writing that placed words in the mouths of leaders), that those carefully crafted campaign speeches were the products of others who fine tuned every thought he and others expressed. I'm influenced by the thought that -- as an obvious intellectual and man of principle -- John Kerry's speeches will have been, if not actually written, are necessarily endorsed and approved by him, personally. I'm certain that, when possible, he is his own chief writer.
John Edwards honed his generic speech so that it needed little change as he moved from state to state and crowd to crowd. It was an all-purpose speech built upon Democratic universals primarily created by Howard Dean. May I add that John Kerry also wisely borrowed generously from the same source. All owed candidate Dean an enormous debt for the shaping of the Democratic response to the Repubican administration's choice of directions for the future of the country.
I remember sitting in awe as John Kerry appeared before Congress in protest of the Vietnam War many years ago. Hoped that one day he would be precisely where he is -- on the threshold of the White House. His Lincoln-esque appearance is surely helpful to his candidacy, and I am certainly hopeful that he will be our next president -- but this is again the yielding to "image," is it not? He happens to share the monogram of JFK (a subliminal clue) and is clearly an intellectual and a man of deep moral courage. It took months for me to fully appreciate this over the obvious daring and strong conviction shown by Howard Dean -- a commitment to those things that I hold non-negotiable. I'm one of those who wavered between the "Anyone but Bush" movement and a strong pull toward Dean. At this point I'm completely satisfied with Kerry as nominee and will give it my all, but I'd feel a lot better if I didn't have the feeling down deep that the entire process may some day be turned over to Central Casting!
While I'm continuing to do the online things like signing petitions, emailing my representatives, sending small checks to support those who are closest to the centers of power -- I'm feeling less effective. This all feels too easy, somehow. Will probably shut down this keyboard and join with others tomorrow in the continuing street actions. Guess I really do need to be in the middle of those marches in order to recapture the fervor, a sure cure for growing apathy. That's contagious, and can't be simulated by sitting comfortably in front of my television set or sending off emails from the solitude and safety of my den. The confirmation that I'm not alone has to be reinforced by live action from time to time -- if only as a frame of reference for those times when I can't join with others of like mind.
Today I'm experiencing some guilt at not being among my compatriots on the streets of San Francisco. Pretty evident, wouldn't you say?
Friday, March 19, 2004
Met yesterday with Jennifer ...
to go over the Convention Center and gather what background information we might need for the writing of the proposal for the Chamber. Learned a lot. Our major competition appears to be Clear Channel, the media giant that now owns and operates Bill Graham Presents (out of San Francisco). They've approached the city with an offer to take over this venue for the purpose of presenting WWF (WorldWide Wrestling!). Can't think of a more perverse use of a public facility in a city with little history of supporting its cultural heritage or colorful history. I shudder to even consider such use of this valuable facility. But we will persist. In the interest of that we met with a member of the city council to seek his support and to ask some pertinent questions re the city budget. Good meeting, but disconcerting since he seems to see nothing wrong with the city's at least considering leasing the place out to some outside entity as long as the city could climb out from under the continuing losses incurred by the Center through under utilization. We will have considerable work to do to turn this kind of thinking around.
Afterward, with Dorian quietly at home with her cats and working happily on an afghan, I attended a meeting of a fascinating group that was brought together to do some planning for a panel discussion to be presented to the public on the history and effects upon Japanese-American, African-Americans, and Italian and German immigrants who were abused or interned during World War II. This was the first time within my experience that I've had the chance to compare notes in this kind of diverse group. It was a rare privilege, and in looking around that room -- it was clear that these "chosen" people were aware of how important these explorations can be.
I'm sure that the conversations about that period of shame has been talked about over the decades, but mostly within our individual racial communities. To have the opportunity to break the silence and share the feelings of confused Americans, and simultaneously "inside outsiders." We are surely both, even after years of citizenship by birth (in most cases) and accomplishment. There's something schizophrenic about it. It's crazy-making to feel so much a part of the whole, by right, and therefore participants in making the laws that govern us -- while at the same time being the "outsiders" without the chance to ever truly come "inside."
The personal disclosures we experienced yesterday ran counter to Asian culture, I believe. The natural reticence of the Japanese would run counter to these kinds of exchanges. The three women had lived in Richmond for most of their lives and were a part of a community that was both Christian and agricultural -- operating nurserys throughout the area. The conversation was slow in getting started with lots of words and little information. However, before we ended the the session, the interactions were warm and open and begged more time for developing deeper. After all, we came together as strangers for the most part, and the period we were re-entering had been painful and better forgotten -- at least until now.
There were two men at the table, both Italian, and both historians (as was one of the Japanese women, a doctoral candidate from the university). It was such a privilege to come together (this is a project related to the development of the Rosie The Riveter Memorial Park), since I can see little reason for it to have happened under any other circumstances. Learned a lot.
New insights: At some point in our young history as a nation, it became more important to be white Americans than to retain ethnic identity. Have no idea when that happened, though I can recall some time ago, hearing an interview of two Cuban men who said that it was a revelation -- after arriving in the US to find that -- where they were "Cuban" in their own nation, upon arrival on our shores one became a "White Cuban" while the other became a "Black Cuban." Their lives separated at the point of entry and their potential opportunities to enter the mainstream was dictated by their skin color.
The two men (Italians) and their German counterparts -- spoke yesterday of simply melting into the mainstream at war's end, while -- for reasons of our physical differences -- both Japanese and African-Americans remained outside. White privilege continues to heavily impact what happens to lives within our borders. That has changed little over time, sadly.
Will tell you more about it, but now I must leave to pick up Dorian from NIAD and hear about her block printing pieces that will be in the next exhibit in their gallery. She left home excited and anticipating a fine day. For that I'm grateful.
But meanwhile, I do want to share more about yesterday's exploratory meeting and about the plans to extend and develop this conversation to include the greater community.
That shameful period in our nation's history needs to be re-visited in order to (maybe) raise our consciousness about the fate of those being held at Guantanamo Bay under similar circumstances. Bringing today's sensibilities (post Civil Rights Revolution) to yesterday's abuses is urgently needed in these troubled times.
It feels that way... .
to go over the Convention Center and gather what background information we might need for the writing of the proposal for the Chamber. Learned a lot. Our major competition appears to be Clear Channel, the media giant that now owns and operates Bill Graham Presents (out of San Francisco). They've approached the city with an offer to take over this venue for the purpose of presenting WWF (WorldWide Wrestling!). Can't think of a more perverse use of a public facility in a city with little history of supporting its cultural heritage or colorful history. I shudder to even consider such use of this valuable facility. But we will persist. In the interest of that we met with a member of the city council to seek his support and to ask some pertinent questions re the city budget. Good meeting, but disconcerting since he seems to see nothing wrong with the city's at least considering leasing the place out to some outside entity as long as the city could climb out from under the continuing losses incurred by the Center through under utilization. We will have considerable work to do to turn this kind of thinking around.
Afterward, with Dorian quietly at home with her cats and working happily on an afghan, I attended a meeting of a fascinating group that was brought together to do some planning for a panel discussion to be presented to the public on the history and effects upon Japanese-American, African-Americans, and Italian and German immigrants who were abused or interned during World War II. This was the first time within my experience that I've had the chance to compare notes in this kind of diverse group. It was a rare privilege, and in looking around that room -- it was clear that these "chosen" people were aware of how important these explorations can be.
I'm sure that the conversations about that period of shame has been talked about over the decades, but mostly within our individual racial communities. To have the opportunity to break the silence and share the feelings of confused Americans, and simultaneously "inside outsiders." We are surely both, even after years of citizenship by birth (in most cases) and accomplishment. There's something schizophrenic about it. It's crazy-making to feel so much a part of the whole, by right, and therefore participants in making the laws that govern us -- while at the same time being the "outsiders" without the chance to ever truly come "inside."
The personal disclosures we experienced yesterday ran counter to Asian culture, I believe. The natural reticence of the Japanese would run counter to these kinds of exchanges. The three women had lived in Richmond for most of their lives and were a part of a community that was both Christian and agricultural -- operating nurserys throughout the area. The conversation was slow in getting started with lots of words and little information. However, before we ended the the session, the interactions were warm and open and begged more time for developing deeper. After all, we came together as strangers for the most part, and the period we were re-entering had been painful and better forgotten -- at least until now.
There were two men at the table, both Italian, and both historians (as was one of the Japanese women, a doctoral candidate from the university). It was such a privilege to come together (this is a project related to the development of the Rosie The Riveter Memorial Park), since I can see little reason for it to have happened under any other circumstances. Learned a lot.
New insights: At some point in our young history as a nation, it became more important to be white Americans than to retain ethnic identity. Have no idea when that happened, though I can recall some time ago, hearing an interview of two Cuban men who said that it was a revelation -- after arriving in the US to find that -- where they were "Cuban" in their own nation, upon arrival on our shores one became a "White Cuban" while the other became a "Black Cuban." Their lives separated at the point of entry and their potential opportunities to enter the mainstream was dictated by their skin color.
The two men (Italians) and their German counterparts -- spoke yesterday of simply melting into the mainstream at war's end, while -- for reasons of our physical differences -- both Japanese and African-Americans remained outside. White privilege continues to heavily impact what happens to lives within our borders. That has changed little over time, sadly.
Will tell you more about it, but now I must leave to pick up Dorian from NIAD and hear about her block printing pieces that will be in the next exhibit in their gallery. She left home excited and anticipating a fine day. For that I'm grateful.
But meanwhile, I do want to share more about yesterday's exploratory meeting and about the plans to extend and develop this conversation to include the greater community.
That shameful period in our nation's history needs to be re-visited in order to (maybe) raise our consciousness about the fate of those being held at Guantanamo Bay under similar circumstances. Bringing today's sensibilities (post Civil Rights Revolution) to yesterday's abuses is urgently needed in these troubled times.
It feels that way... .
Thursday, March 18, 2004
My friend, Barbara Cottman Becnel,
the remarkable woman who is the executive director of Neighborhood House, the 45 year-old social program in North Richmond -- but more importantly -- the woman who has managed to arrange the nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize to a man sitting on San Quentin's Death Row. That would be Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the Crips in Los Angeles. But I've spoken of this before and suggested that you look up his web site (Tookie's Corner).
"Redemption," the film that was shown at Sundance is about to be released in mid-April. It will be shown on FX, but before that date the Sixty Minutes segment will be shown on CBS-TV. I believe the date of the release of the Sixty Minutes piece is April 4th, but I'm not certain of that (will post the dates before this weekend).
Tennyrate, Barbara finally has a copy of the film in her hand and has asked me to help her to arrange a couple of pre-screenings here in the Bay Area -- between the dates of the Sixty Minutes piece and the actual television release. It will be invitational to a selected audience. Could be used as a way to support the work of the anti-death penalty groups. There is growing interest here in a call for a moratorium. Jennifer and I will work on that this weekend. Will probably try for the Oakland Museum (James Moore) theater, if it is free for at least one evening. If you're in the area, you might like to stop in. Another possibility will be Geoffrey's, the club in Oakland that is owned by a cousin (remember Dorothy's recent 90th birthday party?).
It's something to think about; a distraction from the things that are not resolvable at home. That's often the way things get worked out for me. Set them aside, take on something totally different -- and in some oblique way -- the knots are unraveled and solutions pop out in full blown. It's kind of a Zen thing. But you can't cheat. The technique demands that one give up all thoughts of the knotty problem, replace it with something achievable, and -- voila!
So tomorrow I'll meet with Barbara and begin the process. Dorian is working on a "rainstorm" at NIAD (working in tempera, I believe) and an eagle, I believe. There is another exhibit soon and she's doing a series of wood block prints and several paintings (including the "Psychedelic Cat" and her "Rainstorm." That's tomorrow. On Saturday she will do basketball, we will bring her friend Chris home with her for the weekend (he is actually more severely handicapped but with a very different set of abilities. He is literate where she is not -- though he has some physical disabilities that make it necessary that he wear a helmet at all times when out of doors. They have a really compatible relationship that is best described by the fact that when she keeps her journal, it is dictated to Chris who does the writing for them both. This means that he is trusted with her most intimate thoughts. And, no, she's not in love with Chris. He's her friend. She's quite clear about that. They've been friends for about 17 years.
His father and stepmother live about 90 miles away in Willits on the North Coast. He lives in the Clausen House community and has a job in the mailroom at the Kaiser Building in Oakland. He is relatively independent and the two of them have much in common. Chris has spent the past two weekends with us, and will be back on Saturday after basketball practice.
I'll need to be sure to have something to work on or I'll soon begin to resent being confined by the needs of not only my own daughter, but the additional responsibility of picking up and delivering Chris as well.
These next few weeks will begin to cement my immediate future, if I'm not careful. Holding all of this in balance without losing my own sense of independence will be tricky. Keeping track of when I'm working for her welfare and when I'm working for my own will be a real challenge. Thankfully, I have friends and professionals to draw upon for guidance, and enough things of interest to hold off dispair.
Find myself wondering -- if someone with as many contacts to draw upon -- after years of working in the political realm -- if I am so deeply effected by these draconian budget cuts, how in the world are people without these resources managing these days? And, I find myself wondering when someone in that world of powerful people will utter the dreaded word, "Depression?" The economic system has come unraveled, and we keep inventing new words to describe the state in which we find ourselves. With this unprecedented deficit, wars galore, terrorism to contain, a deteriorating system of public education, a decaying infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.), a runaway pharmaceutical system and fewer and fewer able to afford health care, retirement systems collapsing, corporate fraud rampant... .For those of us who can remember the Thirties (and I was surely aware), there is a sense of deja vu that causes some sleepless nights. The only difference may be the language we're using to describe this system of self-imposed destruction we find ourselves caught up in.
On my darkest days, I cannot see the corrections coming in time to relieve what Dorian and I are facing in the short term. In the long term, the only answer seems to be to work hard to unseat the present administration. Have been asked to host one of the MoveOn's community meetings. Will do that. Those are being held in selected bookstores throughout the country. My assignment is Barnes & Nobel in Walnut Creek. This is in relation to a book that's being released -- which means that I must find the time to read the book, first.
I'm off to check out the instructions and locate the book. Meanwhile ... life goes on.
the remarkable woman who is the executive director of Neighborhood House, the 45 year-old social program in North Richmond -- but more importantly -- the woman who has managed to arrange the nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize to a man sitting on San Quentin's Death Row. That would be Stanley "Tookie" Williams, co-founder of the Crips in Los Angeles. But I've spoken of this before and suggested that you look up his web site (Tookie's Corner).
"Redemption," the film that was shown at Sundance is about to be released in mid-April. It will be shown on FX, but before that date the Sixty Minutes segment will be shown on CBS-TV. I believe the date of the release of the Sixty Minutes piece is April 4th, but I'm not certain of that (will post the dates before this weekend).
Tennyrate, Barbara finally has a copy of the film in her hand and has asked me to help her to arrange a couple of pre-screenings here in the Bay Area -- between the dates of the Sixty Minutes piece and the actual television release. It will be invitational to a selected audience. Could be used as a way to support the work of the anti-death penalty groups. There is growing interest here in a call for a moratorium. Jennifer and I will work on that this weekend. Will probably try for the Oakland Museum (James Moore) theater, if it is free for at least one evening. If you're in the area, you might like to stop in. Another possibility will be Geoffrey's, the club in Oakland that is owned by a cousin (remember Dorothy's recent 90th birthday party?).
It's something to think about; a distraction from the things that are not resolvable at home. That's often the way things get worked out for me. Set them aside, take on something totally different -- and in some oblique way -- the knots are unraveled and solutions pop out in full blown. It's kind of a Zen thing. But you can't cheat. The technique demands that one give up all thoughts of the knotty problem, replace it with something achievable, and -- voila!
So tomorrow I'll meet with Barbara and begin the process. Dorian is working on a "rainstorm" at NIAD (working in tempera, I believe) and an eagle, I believe. There is another exhibit soon and she's doing a series of wood block prints and several paintings (including the "Psychedelic Cat" and her "Rainstorm." That's tomorrow. On Saturday she will do basketball, we will bring her friend Chris home with her for the weekend (he is actually more severely handicapped but with a very different set of abilities. He is literate where she is not -- though he has some physical disabilities that make it necessary that he wear a helmet at all times when out of doors. They have a really compatible relationship that is best described by the fact that when she keeps her journal, it is dictated to Chris who does the writing for them both. This means that he is trusted with her most intimate thoughts. And, no, she's not in love with Chris. He's her friend. She's quite clear about that. They've been friends for about 17 years.
His father and stepmother live about 90 miles away in Willits on the North Coast. He lives in the Clausen House community and has a job in the mailroom at the Kaiser Building in Oakland. He is relatively independent and the two of them have much in common. Chris has spent the past two weekends with us, and will be back on Saturday after basketball practice.
I'll need to be sure to have something to work on or I'll soon begin to resent being confined by the needs of not only my own daughter, but the additional responsibility of picking up and delivering Chris as well.
These next few weeks will begin to cement my immediate future, if I'm not careful. Holding all of this in balance without losing my own sense of independence will be tricky. Keeping track of when I'm working for her welfare and when I'm working for my own will be a real challenge. Thankfully, I have friends and professionals to draw upon for guidance, and enough things of interest to hold off dispair.
Find myself wondering -- if someone with as many contacts to draw upon -- after years of working in the political realm -- if I am so deeply effected by these draconian budget cuts, how in the world are people without these resources managing these days? And, I find myself wondering when someone in that world of powerful people will utter the dreaded word, "Depression?" The economic system has come unraveled, and we keep inventing new words to describe the state in which we find ourselves. With this unprecedented deficit, wars galore, terrorism to contain, a deteriorating system of public education, a decaying infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.), a runaway pharmaceutical system and fewer and fewer able to afford health care, retirement systems collapsing, corporate fraud rampant... .For those of us who can remember the Thirties (and I was surely aware), there is a sense of deja vu that causes some sleepless nights. The only difference may be the language we're using to describe this system of self-imposed destruction we find ourselves caught up in.
On my darkest days, I cannot see the corrections coming in time to relieve what Dorian and I are facing in the short term. In the long term, the only answer seems to be to work hard to unseat the present administration. Have been asked to host one of the MoveOn's community meetings. Will do that. Those are being held in selected bookstores throughout the country. My assignment is Barnes & Nobel in Walnut Creek. This is in relation to a book that's being released -- which means that I must find the time to read the book, first.
I'm off to check out the instructions and locate the book. Meanwhile ... life goes on.
Busy, busy!
Dorian and I visited a local sheltered workshop on Monday. There were 92 clients sitting at work tables in a huge warehouse, doing piece work. I marvel at how accurately her antennae registers what are often feelings identical to mine. In some strange way, she "reads" me, and responds appropriately to what she picks up. My instant unguarded response was to the quiet in the room. Should have been comforting, and a strong indication of contentment of those working so diligently at those tables. Instead, I could feel myself tighten up and silently polish up my smile a bit. It was not something I was particularly aware of at the time, but in retrospect, it was there.
We were on a guided tour with the director of the program, a lovely woman who obviously had been prepared by Dorian's social worker well. She was welcoming and gave us room to roam at will. Dorrie discovered an old acquaintance from Clausen House and -- after some hesitation and not well-hidden distress (tears were very near) -- she was in deep conversation with Ed.
Then came the resistance. It was not to be ignored. The rush of tears and the obvious not-yet-voiced-or-understood intention to scuttle this plan before it went too far! She was not having any of this. Not sure where it was coming from, but some of the feeling (from the few words that I could overhear as she and the director talked) were related to her sense of being curbed, reined in, infantalized, loss of independence. It was all garbeled and disjointed, but I could hear it. Coming home to live with me -- even temporarily -- was hard for her to deal with, but Mom was too nice to rail against, but she was "Mom!"
I left her deep in conversation with the director while I left to sit in the car and give her the space to vent. She came out about ten minutes later with face red and blotchy from crying, a tell-tale packet of tissues in her hand, and the director's business card with the promise to call when she'd made her decision about this job. We drove home in silence. She'd managed me very well. I was totally disarmed and wondering where I'd gone wrong?
Yesterday, after a talk with her social worker, I felt a little less lost. Began to realize that most of the plans I'm making will serve me far better than they'll serve her. I need her in a safe setting for my own sake. In the best of all worlds, I'd have her living just a few acres away in a lovely senior housing complex where I can be supportive (and controlling!). How crazy! She would be in a world where everyone would be elderly and there would be no one from her social group with whom to interact.
It's also true that -- in that world of the brain-damaged and retarded -- people operate at a level where needs often overwhelm the ability to give. As a relatively high-functioning handicapped individual, she has as hard a time navigating that world as she has that of "normal" people. The world is simply not designed for Dorrie... . But then I knew that. It may just be that having her on her own all these years has blinded me to the fragility of her existence and of her hunger for understanding.
So, I'm again at a loss. We are living together. It's been little more than a month now, and -- except for her two days a week at NIAD (National Institute for Arts & Disabilities) studios, and two weekends when we've picked up her friend, Chris, to be our houseguest -- little has happened for her. We've not yet given notice to her rental agency and we have yet to go to her apartment to pack up and move things. That may have to do with my secret hope that we're turn up a place to move them to. The total disruption of my small condo is hard to accept since it will (hopefully) be temporary. Is that selfishness? Am I holding out for fate to intervene in some way so that I can keep my space in the world as sanctuary?
But it isn't just that. I'm sensing the same resistance in her. She wants to be on her own, for whatever that may mean. I want and need her to be safe. She has little understanding of what "safe" is, I think. Without the intellectual ability to understand the concept, how can she protect herself? And having that ability, how can I not demand the right to protect her from herself?
She can only think about finding her way back to independence (after 16 years of being essentially on her own), and I keep trying to find the balance between helping her to retain what she can of that -- while distracting myself with the work with Jennifer and the excitement of new projects.
Yesterday I drove her to Oakland to meet with her teacher for the afternoon. Today she is at home while I meet with Jennifer to look over the Convention Center facility -- then to meet for lunch with a council member of the Finance Committee to talk about the proposal we're preparing for the Chamber of Commerce. Tonight we'll attend the symphony. Tomorrow I have an interview with a student from Laney Community College for a taped interview about the union movements of World War II. On Saturday Dorian has Special Olympics basketball practice in preparation for the tournament next weekend. That should be enough distraction for both of us, and the indecision will carryover into next week.
Meanwhile, I'll be working on a MoveOn project that involves hosting a meeting at the Walnut Creek Barnes & Noble -- time uncertain. The calendar remains almost as full as it was when I was working with the State, but the volunteerism doesn't meet my need for earning a salary again. That's what the Convention Center project should produce. Will know more about that in the next few days. So far, so good.
Life does go on... .
Dorian and I visited a local sheltered workshop on Monday. There were 92 clients sitting at work tables in a huge warehouse, doing piece work. I marvel at how accurately her antennae registers what are often feelings identical to mine. In some strange way, she "reads" me, and responds appropriately to what she picks up. My instant unguarded response was to the quiet in the room. Should have been comforting, and a strong indication of contentment of those working so diligently at those tables. Instead, I could feel myself tighten up and silently polish up my smile a bit. It was not something I was particularly aware of at the time, but in retrospect, it was there.
We were on a guided tour with the director of the program, a lovely woman who obviously had been prepared by Dorian's social worker well. She was welcoming and gave us room to roam at will. Dorrie discovered an old acquaintance from Clausen House and -- after some hesitation and not well-hidden distress (tears were very near) -- she was in deep conversation with Ed.
Then came the resistance. It was not to be ignored. The rush of tears and the obvious not-yet-voiced-or-understood intention to scuttle this plan before it went too far! She was not having any of this. Not sure where it was coming from, but some of the feeling (from the few words that I could overhear as she and the director talked) were related to her sense of being curbed, reined in, infantalized, loss of independence. It was all garbeled and disjointed, but I could hear it. Coming home to live with me -- even temporarily -- was hard for her to deal with, but Mom was too nice to rail against, but she was "Mom!"
I left her deep in conversation with the director while I left to sit in the car and give her the space to vent. She came out about ten minutes later with face red and blotchy from crying, a tell-tale packet of tissues in her hand, and the director's business card with the promise to call when she'd made her decision about this job. We drove home in silence. She'd managed me very well. I was totally disarmed and wondering where I'd gone wrong?
Yesterday, after a talk with her social worker, I felt a little less lost. Began to realize that most of the plans I'm making will serve me far better than they'll serve her. I need her in a safe setting for my own sake. In the best of all worlds, I'd have her living just a few acres away in a lovely senior housing complex where I can be supportive (and controlling!). How crazy! She would be in a world where everyone would be elderly and there would be no one from her social group with whom to interact.
It's also true that -- in that world of the brain-damaged and retarded -- people operate at a level where needs often overwhelm the ability to give. As a relatively high-functioning handicapped individual, she has as hard a time navigating that world as she has that of "normal" people. The world is simply not designed for Dorrie... . But then I knew that. It may just be that having her on her own all these years has blinded me to the fragility of her existence and of her hunger for understanding.
So, I'm again at a loss. We are living together. It's been little more than a month now, and -- except for her two days a week at NIAD (National Institute for Arts & Disabilities) studios, and two weekends when we've picked up her friend, Chris, to be our houseguest -- little has happened for her. We've not yet given notice to her rental agency and we have yet to go to her apartment to pack up and move things. That may have to do with my secret hope that we're turn up a place to move them to. The total disruption of my small condo is hard to accept since it will (hopefully) be temporary. Is that selfishness? Am I holding out for fate to intervene in some way so that I can keep my space in the world as sanctuary?
But it isn't just that. I'm sensing the same resistance in her. She wants to be on her own, for whatever that may mean. I want and need her to be safe. She has little understanding of what "safe" is, I think. Without the intellectual ability to understand the concept, how can she protect herself? And having that ability, how can I not demand the right to protect her from herself?
She can only think about finding her way back to independence (after 16 years of being essentially on her own), and I keep trying to find the balance between helping her to retain what she can of that -- while distracting myself with the work with Jennifer and the excitement of new projects.
Yesterday I drove her to Oakland to meet with her teacher for the afternoon. Today she is at home while I meet with Jennifer to look over the Convention Center facility -- then to meet for lunch with a council member of the Finance Committee to talk about the proposal we're preparing for the Chamber of Commerce. Tonight we'll attend the symphony. Tomorrow I have an interview with a student from Laney Community College for a taped interview about the union movements of World War II. On Saturday Dorian has Special Olympics basketball practice in preparation for the tournament next weekend. That should be enough distraction for both of us, and the indecision will carryover into next week.
Meanwhile, I'll be working on a MoveOn project that involves hosting a meeting at the Walnut Creek Barnes & Noble -- time uncertain. The calendar remains almost as full as it was when I was working with the State, but the volunteerism doesn't meet my need for earning a salary again. That's what the Convention Center project should produce. Will know more about that in the next few days. So far, so good.
Life does go on... .
Saturday, March 13, 2004
If you don't have a grandchild of your own,
beg, borrow, or steal one from a friend or neighbor. When the Lion King comes to where you are, choose a Saturday matinee when the theater is filled with wide-eyed children. That's the way to see this magnificent production! Felt the years drop away at the raising of the curtain on Scene 1. Julie Taymor's genius has created a spectacle unlike anything ever seen in the history of the theater. We were all spellbound for the full 3 hours of pure magic.
Must have been a performing artist in some former life. "The smell of the grease paint, the roar of the crowd" are more compelling to me in these later years than ever before. To be able to facilitate that kind of magic is such a gift. Drove by the convention center on the way back from the BART station, and imagined it filled with the young and the young in heart -- experiencing the kind of afternoon we'd had this afternoon. And it wouldn't have to be "Broadway," but theater of the kind that this area is capable of producing or sponsoring.
Will call Jennifer later and talk spectacle and magic and drama, music, dance, and all of the wonder that I felt tapped into this afternoon.
It was impossible to stay with the fear (terrorism) and panic that crept into my consciousness this morning. That was all cleared out by the sheer joy and color and love of a shared experience in that beautiful old art deco theater. Maybe those things are totally incompatible -- fear and that kind of wonder.
Also recalled a comment made by one of the presenters at the recent California Arts Council conference I attended a few weeks ago. "When asked to create a list of those things most essential to creating and maintaining community, the lists include jobs, affordable housing, education, crime reduction, etc., but rarely do "the arts" appear in the top ten." Then she added, "but everything on the list is arts related in some way." How true. In one way or another, there's a component of art somewhere.
I'm fairly sure that every dollar saved by the school district by cutting out arts, athletics, libraries, will be expended through increased police budgets. We must feed the souls of children or their childhood will suffer a short circuit of some sort along the way.
This old kid got a shot of adrenalin in some places that I thought were atrophied! And I find that I'm about as turned on by this new direction (away from politics) as anyone can be. It's clear that doors are still opening and that there is still much newness to experience. The teachers are out there, and I'm beginning to accept the notion that I might be one of 'em!
beg, borrow, or steal one from a friend or neighbor. When the Lion King comes to where you are, choose a Saturday matinee when the theater is filled with wide-eyed children. That's the way to see this magnificent production! Felt the years drop away at the raising of the curtain on Scene 1. Julie Taymor's genius has created a spectacle unlike anything ever seen in the history of the theater. We were all spellbound for the full 3 hours of pure magic.
Must have been a performing artist in some former life. "The smell of the grease paint, the roar of the crowd" are more compelling to me in these later years than ever before. To be able to facilitate that kind of magic is such a gift. Drove by the convention center on the way back from the BART station, and imagined it filled with the young and the young in heart -- experiencing the kind of afternoon we'd had this afternoon. And it wouldn't have to be "Broadway," but theater of the kind that this area is capable of producing or sponsoring.
Will call Jennifer later and talk spectacle and magic and drama, music, dance, and all of the wonder that I felt tapped into this afternoon.
It was impossible to stay with the fear (terrorism) and panic that crept into my consciousness this morning. That was all cleared out by the sheer joy and color and love of a shared experience in that beautiful old art deco theater. Maybe those things are totally incompatible -- fear and that kind of wonder.
Also recalled a comment made by one of the presenters at the recent California Arts Council conference I attended a few weeks ago. "When asked to create a list of those things most essential to creating and maintaining community, the lists include jobs, affordable housing, education, crime reduction, etc., but rarely do "the arts" appear in the top ten." Then she added, "but everything on the list is arts related in some way." How true. In one way or another, there's a component of art somewhere.
I'm fairly sure that every dollar saved by the school district by cutting out arts, athletics, libraries, will be expended through increased police budgets. We must feed the souls of children or their childhood will suffer a short circuit of some sort along the way.
This old kid got a shot of adrenalin in some places that I thought were atrophied! And I find that I'm about as turned on by this new direction (away from politics) as anyone can be. It's clear that doors are still opening and that there is still much newness to experience. The teachers are out there, and I'm beginning to accept the notion that I might be one of 'em!
After several days of running down the list ...
of available apartment possibilities (all in vain), Saturday is back and Dorian is off at basketball practice for Special Olympics. Stopped just long enough to say that today is our Lion King day in San Francisco. Am leaving to pick up my little granddaughters for the trip across the bay and the great adventure of live theater as seen through the eyes of six and eight year old aspiring dancers. That should take care of all of the residual garbage that's cursed the past couple of weeks of uncertainty.
Must admit that I woke in the night thinking about the bombing of the train stations in Madrid and had a moment of panic as I thought about crossing under the bay on BART with the kids... . It's always just under the surface these days, the danger of life in our times. Caught the news this morning and a clip of our fearless leader making his boastful macho verbal jabs at the terrorists, and wondered if this idiot has enough sense to be fearful? He came off like a kid poking a wasp nest with a stick, or, a fool pouring gasoline on kindling -- to get a light for his cigarette! How did we come to this? To even consider that we are in danger of being bombed off the floor of the bay seems incomprehensible, but is it? Will surely think of it as we leave ground surface and move under water today. Hope the pot of gold (Lion King) at the end of the rainbow is enough to create sufficient calm so that I won't pass along the fear to the kids.
Living in the shadow of the Chevron/Texaco refinery caused some concern in the first few days after 9-11, because it was the nearest prime target for sabotage. Since that time I suppose I, like most, have gotten used to the danger in the shadows -- and gone about the business of creating my own reality. The fear has a way of being refreshed from time to time, and today brings another spasm... .
Impotency that rises from having no clear ways to respond to the danger threatens to paralyze me. The only response that makes any sense if that which we can do only in the aggregate. Allowing myself to believe that we'll all do the right thing come November, and sweep the present administration out of office seems far fetched. Realizing that there are few responses that one can apply as a single being, and that letting that truth surface too frequently adds to the feeling of helplessness. I'll have to trust that there are enough rational folks who see the real perils, and that we'll come together to change the course of history. Would that we could "out source" this president and get back to the business of creating and re-creating the democracy as our founding fathers intended; each generation in its time.
Meanwhile I'll just send another little check to MoveOn, sign another petition to my representatives before leaving for San Francisco, and trust that others are out there doing the same, each time with a silent prayer that we're not acting alone... We'll just have to trust that there are enough of us leaning in the direction of constructive change -- and that, together, we will prevail. I believe that.
But for now -- there's The Lion King and the excitement of a trip to San Francisco to enjoy, before picking up Dorian and another weekend of checking out ads and making plans -- and feeling uncertain about the future ... .
of available apartment possibilities (all in vain), Saturday is back and Dorian is off at basketball practice for Special Olympics. Stopped just long enough to say that today is our Lion King day in San Francisco. Am leaving to pick up my little granddaughters for the trip across the bay and the great adventure of live theater as seen through the eyes of six and eight year old aspiring dancers. That should take care of all of the residual garbage that's cursed the past couple of weeks of uncertainty.
Must admit that I woke in the night thinking about the bombing of the train stations in Madrid and had a moment of panic as I thought about crossing under the bay on BART with the kids... . It's always just under the surface these days, the danger of life in our times. Caught the news this morning and a clip of our fearless leader making his boastful macho verbal jabs at the terrorists, and wondered if this idiot has enough sense to be fearful? He came off like a kid poking a wasp nest with a stick, or, a fool pouring gasoline on kindling -- to get a light for his cigarette! How did we come to this? To even consider that we are in danger of being bombed off the floor of the bay seems incomprehensible, but is it? Will surely think of it as we leave ground surface and move under water today. Hope the pot of gold (Lion King) at the end of the rainbow is enough to create sufficient calm so that I won't pass along the fear to the kids.
Living in the shadow of the Chevron/Texaco refinery caused some concern in the first few days after 9-11, because it was the nearest prime target for sabotage. Since that time I suppose I, like most, have gotten used to the danger in the shadows -- and gone about the business of creating my own reality. The fear has a way of being refreshed from time to time, and today brings another spasm... .
Impotency that rises from having no clear ways to respond to the danger threatens to paralyze me. The only response that makes any sense if that which we can do only in the aggregate. Allowing myself to believe that we'll all do the right thing come November, and sweep the present administration out of office seems far fetched. Realizing that there are few responses that one can apply as a single being, and that letting that truth surface too frequently adds to the feeling of helplessness. I'll have to trust that there are enough rational folks who see the real perils, and that we'll come together to change the course of history. Would that we could "out source" this president and get back to the business of creating and re-creating the democracy as our founding fathers intended; each generation in its time.
Meanwhile I'll just send another little check to MoveOn, sign another petition to my representatives before leaving for San Francisco, and trust that others are out there doing the same, each time with a silent prayer that we're not acting alone... We'll just have to trust that there are enough of us leaning in the direction of constructive change -- and that, together, we will prevail. I believe that.
But for now -- there's The Lion King and the excitement of a trip to San Francisco to enjoy, before picking up Dorian and another weekend of checking out ads and making plans -- and feeling uncertain about the future ... .
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Met this morning with a member of Richmond city council, and later with the president of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce. Decided that -- in light of the total breakdown in the financial structure of this city ($35,000 million deficit), an environment of utter chaos has been created -- out of which will come opportunity!
I have joined in partnership with my friend, Jennifer Ross, in her consulting firm, "In Face Consulting." Together we've proposed to take over the Convention Center in the heart of the civic center, and bring it to life in service to the community and to produce much-needed revenue. Learned that the Chamber already has a proposal before the council to do just that, but even after a year of negotiations -- they've gotten nowhere. Today the president and I opened up a conversation that should end with a contract for Jennifer and me to manage the convention center and pull together the arts community (National Arts & Disabilities, wonderful Richmond Arts Center, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, etc.) into one entity.
Yesterday's newspapers carried the news that -- as the first school district in the state of California -- ours has eliminated all sports, arts programming, closed all libraries, and cut out counselors. That makes the convention center and its assets an extremely important engine for creating or re-creating community and making up for the losses our young people will suffer.
Tonight I will attend one of four community meetings where the mayor and council will lay out the budget deficits for the citizens, and take comment. On Thursday, I will tour the assets (as well as the convention center) as preparation for several days of proposal writing for the Chamber to consider. They would be the fiscal agents and rent the facility from the city, while About Face Consulting will create programs, build calendars, work out budgets, do booking and leasing for conventions and seminars, etc. We will operate masters classes in various of the performing arts, and people such programs from the broad range of contacts we both have in the arts community.
Those recent informal pot luck dinners in Berkeley lofts; the visit to Joanna and Zaccho Dancer Theatre, lead us to today's developments. Among that group you'll find Carlos (manager of the Yerba Buena Cultural Center in South of Market in S.F.) and Zellerbach on the Berkeley campus; David who manages the Herbst Theater - also in S.F.; plus friends who are involved in the very troubled Alice Arts Center in downtown Oakland. All are ready to work with us in creating another venue for the artists they bring to town (at their expense). We would involve such artists in both performances (when appropriate and affordable) and as Q&A's for young people of the area weekend matinee sessions. Exciting stuff!
Next week we'll begin to put pen to paper (Jennifer is grants writer and financial wizard while I'm the "visionary" and the "bringing-people-together-person"). We'll meet the following week with the inner core of the Chamber and the members of the city's finance sub-committee of the council.
This feels terrific.
Now, I'm off to look at an apartment for Dorian in a nearby complex -- within walking distance to my condo.
Hold good thoughts!
Betty Lloyd Webber
I have joined in partnership with my friend, Jennifer Ross, in her consulting firm, "In Face Consulting." Together we've proposed to take over the Convention Center in the heart of the civic center, and bring it to life in service to the community and to produce much-needed revenue. Learned that the Chamber already has a proposal before the council to do just that, but even after a year of negotiations -- they've gotten nowhere. Today the president and I opened up a conversation that should end with a contract for Jennifer and me to manage the convention center and pull together the arts community (National Arts & Disabilities, wonderful Richmond Arts Center, East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, etc.) into one entity.
Yesterday's newspapers carried the news that -- as the first school district in the state of California -- ours has eliminated all sports, arts programming, closed all libraries, and cut out counselors. That makes the convention center and its assets an extremely important engine for creating or re-creating community and making up for the losses our young people will suffer.
Tonight I will attend one of four community meetings where the mayor and council will lay out the budget deficits for the citizens, and take comment. On Thursday, I will tour the assets (as well as the convention center) as preparation for several days of proposal writing for the Chamber to consider. They would be the fiscal agents and rent the facility from the city, while About Face Consulting will create programs, build calendars, work out budgets, do booking and leasing for conventions and seminars, etc. We will operate masters classes in various of the performing arts, and people such programs from the broad range of contacts we both have in the arts community.
Those recent informal pot luck dinners in Berkeley lofts; the visit to Joanna and Zaccho Dancer Theatre, lead us to today's developments. Among that group you'll find Carlos (manager of the Yerba Buena Cultural Center in South of Market in S.F.) and Zellerbach on the Berkeley campus; David who manages the Herbst Theater - also in S.F.; plus friends who are involved in the very troubled Alice Arts Center in downtown Oakland. All are ready to work with us in creating another venue for the artists they bring to town (at their expense). We would involve such artists in both performances (when appropriate and affordable) and as Q&A's for young people of the area weekend matinee sessions. Exciting stuff!
Next week we'll begin to put pen to paper (Jennifer is grants writer and financial wizard while I'm the "visionary" and the "bringing-people-together-person"). We'll meet the following week with the inner core of the Chamber and the members of the city's finance sub-committee of the council.
This feels terrific.
Now, I'm off to look at an apartment for Dorian in a nearby complex -- within walking distance to my condo.
Hold good thoughts!
Betty Lloyd Webber
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Life goes on ... .
Spent last 48 hours looking into day programs, 30-day notice for moving, checking out truckers, places where donations of household items are wanted, (whatever will we do with 13 umbrellas?), hauling 15 years accumulation of junk ... It's gonna be a long spring of readjustments. So far, so good. Not too much resistance to date.
First program (just a few blocks away) turned out to be unsuitable. Population is at a very different level of functioning -- below her by far. That may prove to be a problem I've not given enough thought to. Her social worker has weighed in and she's someone whose counsel I value. Have arranged to visit another that she's recommended on Tuesday of next week. There is a web site, and it looks promising.
It would be so easy to just give in to the temptation to keep her here with me over the next few years and then let the chips fall where they may. Unfair to David and Bob, though. I owe it to them to complete my role in her (their) life by continuing to prepare her for my taking leave of the planet to fulfill my role in this universal recycling process called "Life!"
Which reminds me of one of those attitudes I've exhibited over time -- an attitude that tends to alienate me from many in the community of professionals who work with the mentally disabled. I am unalterably opposed to allowing my daughter to bear children. Felt so strongly about it that I arranged to have that possibility eliminated when she was in her early twenties. Sterilization is not legal in my state, and required finding a sympathetic physician who would perform the necessary surgical procedure. Have never regretted that decision. We prepared her with as much honesty as she could understand and it went well. It was done only after she'd been allowed (by the institution) to become pregnant while in their care -- and been aborted without my knowledge or consent. She was an adult, so neither was required. Nonetheless, had she not very innocently reported the fact to me -- I'd have never known. I bitterly resented not being able to be with her for comfort at what must have been a frightening and confusing time. She was in her fourth month, I believe.
When confronted, staff explained to me that the legal reason why she could not be sterilized had to do with her inability to give informed consent. She was not considered capable of signing her name under the law, but was capable of giving birth and parenting my grandchild. There is a young woman in Dorian's disabled community who has now given birth to three children, and is "caring for them." Such a tragedy... .
When I see films like "Forest Gump" and "I am Sam" and others of that genre, I am furious! They romanticize this population to their detriment. Allowing parenthood to the mentally disabled doesn't take into account that the custodial responsibility is therefore extended to the next generation. No one thinks about what it means for the siblings of the disabled when the parents have passed away. This heavy load will die with me. Had I not eliminated this complication, my sons would have their freedoms and those of their children limited both financially and psychologically. The movies end far short of doing those important projections, therefore leaving much that is critical to the story unresolved. The emotionality such stories produce mis-inform audiences and add to the problems that families face over the generations. I hope that I've guaranteed Dorian enough goodwill and caring by not placing her brothers in the position of having to bear the considerable weight of her existence throughout their own lives. I think that I've allowed enough room for them to love her by not having their lives restricted prematurely.
Interesting fact: Dolls never worked with Dorrie. Other little girls use them as a way of role-playing their way through their childhood. "Let's pretend" was beyond Dorian. This requires abstract ability. She brought her babies to me to be dressed and fed. That's what mommy's do, right? Given her very limited ability to project herself into the future, there was no way for her to imagine herself in the role of mother. She's come to that late in life through caring for her two cats. Now, she's "mother" and I'm "grandmother" to Speedy and Gracie. Have you any idea what it would have been like had she been allowed to give birth to a child? She would have brought it (rightly) to me. I'm the "mother." Or, it would have been taken from her -- given her inability to parent. The irony of being allowed to give birth while being considered incapable of "informed consent" is shocking to me.
On the other hand, we have a healthy young woman whose body is strong and capable of reproduction but whose mind is hopelessly damaged ... do you deny sexual expression? I say not; another departure from the view of the professionals, though that is changing in this time of sexual freedom. Keeping that all in balance has been a real challenge. We have a lot of growing to do, as a society, but there are signs that all is not lost. I do meet some truly enlightened souls along the way, and it helps. My views aren't as shocking as they once were, and I run into an occasional parent who says a silent "amen."
I'm off to pick her up at her arts program (Tuesdays and Thursdays, all day) and I'm late.
Tango still mostly in the mind, but coming up fast... .
Spent last 48 hours looking into day programs, 30-day notice for moving, checking out truckers, places where donations of household items are wanted, (whatever will we do with 13 umbrellas?), hauling 15 years accumulation of junk ... It's gonna be a long spring of readjustments. So far, so good. Not too much resistance to date.
First program (just a few blocks away) turned out to be unsuitable. Population is at a very different level of functioning -- below her by far. That may prove to be a problem I've not given enough thought to. Her social worker has weighed in and she's someone whose counsel I value. Have arranged to visit another that she's recommended on Tuesday of next week. There is a web site, and it looks promising.
It would be so easy to just give in to the temptation to keep her here with me over the next few years and then let the chips fall where they may. Unfair to David and Bob, though. I owe it to them to complete my role in her (their) life by continuing to prepare her for my taking leave of the planet to fulfill my role in this universal recycling process called "Life!"
Which reminds me of one of those attitudes I've exhibited over time -- an attitude that tends to alienate me from many in the community of professionals who work with the mentally disabled. I am unalterably opposed to allowing my daughter to bear children. Felt so strongly about it that I arranged to have that possibility eliminated when she was in her early twenties. Sterilization is not legal in my state, and required finding a sympathetic physician who would perform the necessary surgical procedure. Have never regretted that decision. We prepared her with as much honesty as she could understand and it went well. It was done only after she'd been allowed (by the institution) to become pregnant while in their care -- and been aborted without my knowledge or consent. She was an adult, so neither was required. Nonetheless, had she not very innocently reported the fact to me -- I'd have never known. I bitterly resented not being able to be with her for comfort at what must have been a frightening and confusing time. She was in her fourth month, I believe.
When confronted, staff explained to me that the legal reason why she could not be sterilized had to do with her inability to give informed consent. She was not considered capable of signing her name under the law, but was capable of giving birth and parenting my grandchild. There is a young woman in Dorian's disabled community who has now given birth to three children, and is "caring for them." Such a tragedy... .
When I see films like "Forest Gump" and "I am Sam" and others of that genre, I am furious! They romanticize this population to their detriment. Allowing parenthood to the mentally disabled doesn't take into account that the custodial responsibility is therefore extended to the next generation. No one thinks about what it means for the siblings of the disabled when the parents have passed away. This heavy load will die with me. Had I not eliminated this complication, my sons would have their freedoms and those of their children limited both financially and psychologically. The movies end far short of doing those important projections, therefore leaving much that is critical to the story unresolved. The emotionality such stories produce mis-inform audiences and add to the problems that families face over the generations. I hope that I've guaranteed Dorian enough goodwill and caring by not placing her brothers in the position of having to bear the considerable weight of her existence throughout their own lives. I think that I've allowed enough room for them to love her by not having their lives restricted prematurely.
Interesting fact: Dolls never worked with Dorrie. Other little girls use them as a way of role-playing their way through their childhood. "Let's pretend" was beyond Dorian. This requires abstract ability. She brought her babies to me to be dressed and fed. That's what mommy's do, right? Given her very limited ability to project herself into the future, there was no way for her to imagine herself in the role of mother. She's come to that late in life through caring for her two cats. Now, she's "mother" and I'm "grandmother" to Speedy and Gracie. Have you any idea what it would have been like had she been allowed to give birth to a child? She would have brought it (rightly) to me. I'm the "mother." Or, it would have been taken from her -- given her inability to parent. The irony of being allowed to give birth while being considered incapable of "informed consent" is shocking to me.
On the other hand, we have a healthy young woman whose body is strong and capable of reproduction but whose mind is hopelessly damaged ... do you deny sexual expression? I say not; another departure from the view of the professionals, though that is changing in this time of sexual freedom. Keeping that all in balance has been a real challenge. We have a lot of growing to do, as a society, but there are signs that all is not lost. I do meet some truly enlightened souls along the way, and it helps. My views aren't as shocking as they once were, and I run into an occasional parent who says a silent "amen."
I'm off to pick her up at her arts program (Tuesdays and Thursdays, all day) and I'm late.
Tango still mostly in the mind, but coming up fast... .
Saturday, March 06, 2004
It's hard to believe that almost an entire week has passed... since I last wrote
Last time I remember exhaling was some time on Sunday night, after the Academy Awards had ended (dull show...glamorous, but dull!). Dropped off to sleep only to be rudely thrust from my bed in the dead of night by another of those shrill calls from the blackness. Dorian in crisis. Nothing to be done but to slip my sweats over my peejays and into my car for the fast and furious drive down I-80 to Oakland. Can hardly recall precisely what the problem was except that it involved Kyle (her strange young man) and impending doom of one kind or another. Not unusual these days, but frustrating. The situation escalates with each day -- and fear for her safety escalates right along with it.
By staff decision, she was moved out into the community about 15 years ago -- after spending the earlier years in at St. Vincents in Santa Barbaba. She then returned to the Bay Area where she worked her way through a really exemplary program here in Oakland. This meant starting out in a very nice (safe) sheltered community setting near the shores of Lake Merritt, in a district of fine old large homes that had been in transition for some years -- from affluent to working class. 'Clausen House' consisted of a number of homes purchased within walking distance of the original old house -- the beautiful old historic family home of Justice Earl Warren -- cheerfully painted yellow and surrounded by mature landscaping and huge redwood trees. Within a six block area a cluster of beautifully restored homes had become Clausen House, each a group home holding 8-10 clients with a house manager. All were nestled into a fine lake front community of old homes and quality apartment buildings.
In time, the institution bought a four-story apartment building very close by that would make it possible for clients -- higher-functioning -- to live in pairs with staff on site. Wonderful plan that thrived during the early years when adequate funding was in place and endowments and fundraising teams of parents and benefactors were hard at work in support, year-round. This was another of the model programs that has been decimated by budget cuts over the years, and is presently facing even more -- unless private moneys can be raised with some consistency.
Ultimately, as the years passed and client pairs were adequately aculturated to community living, they were moved out into an independent living program that would continue support with job coaches, teachers, social workers, etc., thru entitlements for the mentally retarded under the Lanterman Act. Dorian progressed through all of the stages over time, and her final stop -- about 15 years ago was into her very own apartment directly across the street from the original old Earl Warren Home. Couldn't have asked for more. She had been travel-trained and moved around town on public transportation -- took BART when necessary -- enjoyed supportive-employment through a series of little jobs that gave her a sense of real independence. She handled her own finances with budgetary help and managed (with a handy little calculator) to maintain her own checking account and pay her own bills. What a success story.
Over time, due to budget cuts -- three of the six beautiful homes from the complex were sold off and resources consolidated. There had to be critical staff cutbacks and -- for those who remained -- cuts in staff time. The program began to be shaped by shrinking resources rather than by the needs of those being served. These are fine people doing remarkable work on behalf of this population. Those who moved Dorian toward that limited independence gradually began to turnover so that she rarely had the same social worker more than a few months before they'd leave. By this time the support system that made it possible her to be living on her own has all but evaporated, and (it's my sense that) there are few left who have any recollection of why she's "out there" or just how to respond to her needs. Along with staff changes, necessarily, went institutional memory. I'm afraid that I've refused every indication along the way -- that this was a failing system. Simply couldn't face moving her away from even this frail system and into something even less familiar and more threatening to her limited understanding of the world. My answer was to move closer into her life (as close as I dared to without threatening her independence) and to be less trusting of those who were working with her. I've surely added to the problem by encouraging her independence and making her a fairly strong woman who knows how to get her needs met -- come hell or high water! However, I see a tendency in the teachers now assigned to her (now many years younger than she), to deal with her in relation to her behavior rather than to her pathology. She's not easy, except for me, I think. We still have a remarkable relationship, more friend than parent. It feels like a successful and necessary transition to me. Problem is that new and changing staff isn't any longer meeting a pretty little girl, but an often obstinate middle-aged woman with a mind of her own!
Which brings us to now.
Where once there was full coverage, staff time hours now goes from 9:00-5:00 with weekends off. Kyle "lives" at the apartment building -- about 4 blocks away from Dorian's place. He is a serious alcoholic with a history of drug abuse. He is paranoid-schizophrenic, with no retardation that I can see. He is pathologically controlling, clever, appears relatively "normal" to the casual observer. To Dorian this is Brad Pitt, personified. In the world she lives in, he is the highest-functioning male around. Since her intellectual-functioning comes as the result of congenital brain-damage, she has a spread of anywhere from 4 years to age-level on test scores. She has moments of clarity that are astounding. She has an impressive vocabulary. However, for the most part she functions in retarded range. She has not yet hit a learning plateau, and still goes on learning and growing, though she can't live long enough to ever be "normal." Her abstract ability is clinically far below normal so "what ifs" are beyond her. She has no way to weigh consequences, but is beginning to approach that ability in some small ways. This means that she's developing some new fears that her deficits tend to cloud over, leaving her wary without understanding why much of the time.
The one place where we've been fortunate of late is that Dorian was assigned a terrific therapist who's been calling on her weekly and counseling by phone on an as-needed basis. What a lovely person! But the last round of budget cuts eliminated Carol from our lives about a month ago. She and Dorian were making great progress, and I had the feeling that this professional could read my daughter in ways that had never happened before. She was also a tremendous support to me, and over time, we'd become quite a team. Losing her has been traumatic to me -- and in time -- I'm sure that I'll see the effects in Dorrie as well.
All of that background was carefully laid as prelude to telling you that Kyle's alcoholism has progressed to the point where insomnia has become a real problem. With staff leaving at five o'clock each day -- he's free to roam the streets. He lived with Dorian for some time before I learned of the seriousness of his illness. In time, he became threatening to her was moved out and transferred to the more sheltered apartment house form of the program. I was relieved. It was clear that Dorian was obsessive about him and that he was being smothered by her demands for his full attention at all times. Must have been terribly hard for him. They do not have compatible neuroses, clearly. Having him live a few blocks away would allow him to be away from her smothering attention at least some of the time.
What I didn't know was that his insomnia created situations where he would arrive at her place very late at night, well past midnight. He kept his stash there. He would spend his nights drinking and playing video games in silence until dawn. The upshot of that is that her inner clock has been reversed to the extent that -- unless interrupted -- she sleeps soundly until 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, making it impossible to have any kind of constructive day life. She feeds and clothes him to the best of her ability to do so. She buys him beer and liquor when he demands it. He drinks what little money he has then steals hers. She washes his clothes and spends her entire existence waiting for him to pay attention to her. Her visits home have become rare unless I'm insistent. All of the space that I purposely left for her (to grow toward eventual independence), he has absorbed. I've learned that I unwittingly left a vacuum that he's filled. Where I often left her questions unanswered, he supplied them all. She takes her cues from him. She's begun to emulate his every move and bad habit. For a time, she dressed only in black. Lost a job because of shoplifting an item (that he wanted). He'd walk to work with her and then hang out all day waiting for her to get off. Her (supported) employer, PetFood Express, simply couldn't deal with it and let her go. I soon began to smell tobacco smoke on her breath and to suspect that he was teaching her to drink along with him, though I've not seen her under the influence, except for New Year's Eve. His influence started showing up in her speech with phrases and words popping up that I didn't know she had ever heard. Her therapist explained that she was showing all of the signs of a rebellious teen. The day came when she let fall the fact that they'd been hanging out in a pool hall in a questionable downtown community. That, I think I squashed -- as far as I know.
I started shamelessly competing with him, but he cleverly picked up the game and his control of her increased. For a long time he was winning. Eventually, he began to sleep around among the women-clients, and life became harder for her. He became abusive as he found other desparately lonely women in their community. All were also severely handicapped women.
I began to fear for her ever more as the months passed. She is now on sedation but her meds ($10/100 in November) are now $300. Her living conditions are no longer tolerable, but I've been reluctant to pick her up and move her out of an environment that has held her for 20 years. It will mean having to reconstruct her entire social structure. She's known no other setting since she was a 19 year-old. It will mean travel-training and trying to build a new life for her without Kyle. There are few choices left. Her physical safety is at risk. That social safety net you've heard about has, indeed, disappeared, and Dorrie is only one of the many casualities.
So, on Sunday night I brought her home. Returned her on Monday at her insistence (and against my better judgement), only to find myself responding to another middle-of-the-night call early on Tuesday morning (2:30 am) because she'd had another encounter with him and was hysterical. Brought her home this time, complete with her two cats in carriers and more than a day's change in clothing. She began to sound as if she'd reached some level of real understanding of the ghastly situation she was in -- though it would pass -- but I made the firm decision that we will finally close her apartment, give 30 days notice -- and that she will live with me until we find some answers.
Have spent this week sharing my bedroom. She's here with her cats and a growing wariness that she's losing her independence (she speaks of it in those terms), but I'm seeing little reason to not follow through. My condo is small for two. Will have to give up my little office that will now become a second bedroom. Will look for a program for the retarded -- the California Foundation for Autism is only a few blocks away. Have had some contact with the organization through my work for the State. Am planning to take her there next week to explore the possibility of her volunteering for a while -- at least it will give her a place to begin to construct a new social set among her peers. She may even know some of those clients through her Special Olympics participation over the years. It's worth a try. Have talked with her social worker at the Regional Center of the East Bay (her agency) who will surely be of help in our transition and is fully supportive of our decision to move her here. Unfortunately, we'll be moving her from one county system to another.
With any luck, this transition period will be relatively brief. She needs to be on her own just as soon as we can arrange it. Saving up "first and last and cleaning deposit" will take a while. This time I may want to revert to a group living situation for her, but that would be a backward step, I know. She knows what it's like to be on her own and won't easily accept what she will see as regression. She'll know. I want to honor that, and I know that there is danger that I will infantalize her if this doesn't turn over pretty quickly.
What I'm thinking is that -- to move out of her home of 15 years and a total community -- will be of such powerful disruption in her life -- that I'd like to keep her with me here while she begins to rebuild her new environment and social structure. I can't see her trying to do that while living in totally new surroundings. When that's in place (or at least when it's taken root), we can begin to look for housing that isn't too far away. One day she'll live here in my condo (when I'm no longer around) so having her in this general area makes sense and some important continuity.
Today? Dropped her off in Berkeley to basketball practice for Special Olympics. She then will take BART to her place in Oakland where she wants to work on her apartment and "pick up some things." Loosely translated, "...will try to reach Kyle and see if he can come over." We've pre-arranged that I will pick her up between four and four-thirty. Will drive her to and from her place and her programs and return her home with me each evening while we figure out how to get her apartment ready for the move and her possessions packed in here someplace ... . Arrggghhh!!!!!
But you know what? Given this horrendous week of changes, I still managed to vote (as did Dorrie); to get to a potluck dinner with my friend, Jennifer, and the Arts bunch in their Berkeley loft on Monday night (before all hell broke loose!), and then -- on Tuesday -- the two of us strolled for two hours through the brilliant Romare Bearden exhibit at the S.F. Museum of Modern Art. Life stops just about there, though.
And -- I've found my tango teacher, despite all.
Last time I remember exhaling was some time on Sunday night, after the Academy Awards had ended (dull show...glamorous, but dull!). Dropped off to sleep only to be rudely thrust from my bed in the dead of night by another of those shrill calls from the blackness. Dorian in crisis. Nothing to be done but to slip my sweats over my peejays and into my car for the fast and furious drive down I-80 to Oakland. Can hardly recall precisely what the problem was except that it involved Kyle (her strange young man) and impending doom of one kind or another. Not unusual these days, but frustrating. The situation escalates with each day -- and fear for her safety escalates right along with it.
By staff decision, she was moved out into the community about 15 years ago -- after spending the earlier years in at St. Vincents in Santa Barbaba. She then returned to the Bay Area where she worked her way through a really exemplary program here in Oakland. This meant starting out in a very nice (safe) sheltered community setting near the shores of Lake Merritt, in a district of fine old large homes that had been in transition for some years -- from affluent to working class. 'Clausen House' consisted of a number of homes purchased within walking distance of the original old house -- the beautiful old historic family home of Justice Earl Warren -- cheerfully painted yellow and surrounded by mature landscaping and huge redwood trees. Within a six block area a cluster of beautifully restored homes had become Clausen House, each a group home holding 8-10 clients with a house manager. All were nestled into a fine lake front community of old homes and quality apartment buildings.
In time, the institution bought a four-story apartment building very close by that would make it possible for clients -- higher-functioning -- to live in pairs with staff on site. Wonderful plan that thrived during the early years when adequate funding was in place and endowments and fundraising teams of parents and benefactors were hard at work in support, year-round. This was another of the model programs that has been decimated by budget cuts over the years, and is presently facing even more -- unless private moneys can be raised with some consistency.
Ultimately, as the years passed and client pairs were adequately aculturated to community living, they were moved out into an independent living program that would continue support with job coaches, teachers, social workers, etc., thru entitlements for the mentally retarded under the Lanterman Act. Dorian progressed through all of the stages over time, and her final stop -- about 15 years ago was into her very own apartment directly across the street from the original old Earl Warren Home. Couldn't have asked for more. She had been travel-trained and moved around town on public transportation -- took BART when necessary -- enjoyed supportive-employment through a series of little jobs that gave her a sense of real independence. She handled her own finances with budgetary help and managed (with a handy little calculator) to maintain her own checking account and pay her own bills. What a success story.
Over time, due to budget cuts -- three of the six beautiful homes from the complex were sold off and resources consolidated. There had to be critical staff cutbacks and -- for those who remained -- cuts in staff time. The program began to be shaped by shrinking resources rather than by the needs of those being served. These are fine people doing remarkable work on behalf of this population. Those who moved Dorian toward that limited independence gradually began to turnover so that she rarely had the same social worker more than a few months before they'd leave. By this time the support system that made it possible her to be living on her own has all but evaporated, and (it's my sense that) there are few left who have any recollection of why she's "out there" or just how to respond to her needs. Along with staff changes, necessarily, went institutional memory. I'm afraid that I've refused every indication along the way -- that this was a failing system. Simply couldn't face moving her away from even this frail system and into something even less familiar and more threatening to her limited understanding of the world. My answer was to move closer into her life (as close as I dared to without threatening her independence) and to be less trusting of those who were working with her. I've surely added to the problem by encouraging her independence and making her a fairly strong woman who knows how to get her needs met -- come hell or high water! However, I see a tendency in the teachers now assigned to her (now many years younger than she), to deal with her in relation to her behavior rather than to her pathology. She's not easy, except for me, I think. We still have a remarkable relationship, more friend than parent. It feels like a successful and necessary transition to me. Problem is that new and changing staff isn't any longer meeting a pretty little girl, but an often obstinate middle-aged woman with a mind of her own!
Which brings us to now.
Where once there was full coverage, staff time hours now goes from 9:00-5:00 with weekends off. Kyle "lives" at the apartment building -- about 4 blocks away from Dorian's place. He is a serious alcoholic with a history of drug abuse. He is paranoid-schizophrenic, with no retardation that I can see. He is pathologically controlling, clever, appears relatively "normal" to the casual observer. To Dorian this is Brad Pitt, personified. In the world she lives in, he is the highest-functioning male around. Since her intellectual-functioning comes as the result of congenital brain-damage, she has a spread of anywhere from 4 years to age-level on test scores. She has moments of clarity that are astounding. She has an impressive vocabulary. However, for the most part she functions in retarded range. She has not yet hit a learning plateau, and still goes on learning and growing, though she can't live long enough to ever be "normal." Her abstract ability is clinically far below normal so "what ifs" are beyond her. She has no way to weigh consequences, but is beginning to approach that ability in some small ways. This means that she's developing some new fears that her deficits tend to cloud over, leaving her wary without understanding why much of the time.
The one place where we've been fortunate of late is that Dorian was assigned a terrific therapist who's been calling on her weekly and counseling by phone on an as-needed basis. What a lovely person! But the last round of budget cuts eliminated Carol from our lives about a month ago. She and Dorian were making great progress, and I had the feeling that this professional could read my daughter in ways that had never happened before. She was also a tremendous support to me, and over time, we'd become quite a team. Losing her has been traumatic to me -- and in time -- I'm sure that I'll see the effects in Dorrie as well.
All of that background was carefully laid as prelude to telling you that Kyle's alcoholism has progressed to the point where insomnia has become a real problem. With staff leaving at five o'clock each day -- he's free to roam the streets. He lived with Dorian for some time before I learned of the seriousness of his illness. In time, he became threatening to her was moved out and transferred to the more sheltered apartment house form of the program. I was relieved. It was clear that Dorian was obsessive about him and that he was being smothered by her demands for his full attention at all times. Must have been terribly hard for him. They do not have compatible neuroses, clearly. Having him live a few blocks away would allow him to be away from her smothering attention at least some of the time.
What I didn't know was that his insomnia created situations where he would arrive at her place very late at night, well past midnight. He kept his stash there. He would spend his nights drinking and playing video games in silence until dawn. The upshot of that is that her inner clock has been reversed to the extent that -- unless interrupted -- she sleeps soundly until 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, making it impossible to have any kind of constructive day life. She feeds and clothes him to the best of her ability to do so. She buys him beer and liquor when he demands it. He drinks what little money he has then steals hers. She washes his clothes and spends her entire existence waiting for him to pay attention to her. Her visits home have become rare unless I'm insistent. All of the space that I purposely left for her (to grow toward eventual independence), he has absorbed. I've learned that I unwittingly left a vacuum that he's filled. Where I often left her questions unanswered, he supplied them all. She takes her cues from him. She's begun to emulate his every move and bad habit. For a time, she dressed only in black. Lost a job because of shoplifting an item (that he wanted). He'd walk to work with her and then hang out all day waiting for her to get off. Her (supported) employer, PetFood Express, simply couldn't deal with it and let her go. I soon began to smell tobacco smoke on her breath and to suspect that he was teaching her to drink along with him, though I've not seen her under the influence, except for New Year's Eve. His influence started showing up in her speech with phrases and words popping up that I didn't know she had ever heard. Her therapist explained that she was showing all of the signs of a rebellious teen. The day came when she let fall the fact that they'd been hanging out in a pool hall in a questionable downtown community. That, I think I squashed -- as far as I know.
I started shamelessly competing with him, but he cleverly picked up the game and his control of her increased. For a long time he was winning. Eventually, he began to sleep around among the women-clients, and life became harder for her. He became abusive as he found other desparately lonely women in their community. All were also severely handicapped women.
I began to fear for her ever more as the months passed. She is now on sedation but her meds ($10/100 in November) are now $300. Her living conditions are no longer tolerable, but I've been reluctant to pick her up and move her out of an environment that has held her for 20 years. It will mean having to reconstruct her entire social structure. She's known no other setting since she was a 19 year-old. It will mean travel-training and trying to build a new life for her without Kyle. There are few choices left. Her physical safety is at risk. That social safety net you've heard about has, indeed, disappeared, and Dorrie is only one of the many casualities.
So, on Sunday night I brought her home. Returned her on Monday at her insistence (and against my better judgement), only to find myself responding to another middle-of-the-night call early on Tuesday morning (2:30 am) because she'd had another encounter with him and was hysterical. Brought her home this time, complete with her two cats in carriers and more than a day's change in clothing. She began to sound as if she'd reached some level of real understanding of the ghastly situation she was in -- though it would pass -- but I made the firm decision that we will finally close her apartment, give 30 days notice -- and that she will live with me until we find some answers.
Have spent this week sharing my bedroom. She's here with her cats and a growing wariness that she's losing her independence (she speaks of it in those terms), but I'm seeing little reason to not follow through. My condo is small for two. Will have to give up my little office that will now become a second bedroom. Will look for a program for the retarded -- the California Foundation for Autism is only a few blocks away. Have had some contact with the organization through my work for the State. Am planning to take her there next week to explore the possibility of her volunteering for a while -- at least it will give her a place to begin to construct a new social set among her peers. She may even know some of those clients through her Special Olympics participation over the years. It's worth a try. Have talked with her social worker at the Regional Center of the East Bay (her agency) who will surely be of help in our transition and is fully supportive of our decision to move her here. Unfortunately, we'll be moving her from one county system to another.
With any luck, this transition period will be relatively brief. She needs to be on her own just as soon as we can arrange it. Saving up "first and last and cleaning deposit" will take a while. This time I may want to revert to a group living situation for her, but that would be a backward step, I know. She knows what it's like to be on her own and won't easily accept what she will see as regression. She'll know. I want to honor that, and I know that there is danger that I will infantalize her if this doesn't turn over pretty quickly.
What I'm thinking is that -- to move out of her home of 15 years and a total community -- will be of such powerful disruption in her life -- that I'd like to keep her with me here while she begins to rebuild her new environment and social structure. I can't see her trying to do that while living in totally new surroundings. When that's in place (or at least when it's taken root), we can begin to look for housing that isn't too far away. One day she'll live here in my condo (when I'm no longer around) so having her in this general area makes sense and some important continuity.
Today? Dropped her off in Berkeley to basketball practice for Special Olympics. She then will take BART to her place in Oakland where she wants to work on her apartment and "pick up some things." Loosely translated, "...will try to reach Kyle and see if he can come over." We've pre-arranged that I will pick her up between four and four-thirty. Will drive her to and from her place and her programs and return her home with me each evening while we figure out how to get her apartment ready for the move and her possessions packed in here someplace ... . Arrggghhh!!!!!
But you know what? Given this horrendous week of changes, I still managed to vote (as did Dorrie); to get to a potluck dinner with my friend, Jennifer, and the Arts bunch in their Berkeley loft on Monday night (before all hell broke loose!), and then -- on Tuesday -- the two of us strolled for two hours through the brilliant Romare Bearden exhibit at the S.F. Museum of Modern Art. Life stops just about there, though.
And -- I've found my tango teacher, despite all.
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Dinner last night for 90 year-old family member, Dorothy Reid Pete, was wonderful ...
The room was filled with well-wishers and family members from far and wide. It was held in a marvelous downtown Oakland multi-floored club facility owned by one of her sons, Geoffrey, and another political activist figure in the extended family. Geoffrey and I come together rarely since we are of different generations, but I'm always aware of his movements around town. Dorothy is someone whose age is close to that of my late sister, Marjorie. She's been the quiet strength to the surviving members of her large family of siblings (13) for many years. These are folks related through Mel (my first spouse). As the elders die off and the family contracts -- I feel less and less related to all those unfamiliar young faces who've been taking our places. Wish I knew more about them. I'm guessing that they'd like to know more about us, too. This may be more important than I realized; a truth that I've aged into.
Learned that Dennis, one of Dorothy's sons who lives elsewhere in the country, had discovered my blog and has been reading this journal for a while. He'd followed the link from cousin Doug's page (California Black Pioneers). Realized that I'd lost the awareness that anyone but a few friends were reading these pages (really intended for my kids and theirs), and felt so pleased to learn that the counter over there on the side held some family members as well as any other friends and/or friendly strangers who happen upon them by accident. Nice. Now if only I could get someone to begin to gather together a catalog of the email addresses of other kin ... If there are any cousins out there reading this, do let me know by email that you've visited. I can then forward any new pages, automatically, I'm told.
Experienced a strange contradiction when I arrived back home last night:
Climbed into bed and flipped on the TV to CSpan to find Michael Dyson ranting in his hyperbolic cadence from a stage filled with African-American leaders (economists, social scientists, journalists, educators, etc.) in a program out of Los Angeles hosted by Tavis Smiley. There sat the usual suspects as represented by Prof. Cornell West, Journalist Stanley Crouch, CNN Financial Consultant Valerie Coleman, Ayana Vanzandt, etc. This was the second annual (I believe) conference on the Status of the Black Family.
Probably because I'd just come from an event filled with love and admiration for a most-deserving family elder, but for whatever reason, I found myself unable to stay with the program. Watched the debate for about 30 minutes and tuned out. Lay in bed in the dark wondering why I felt so turned off by what I saw as a kind of negative "rant" that tended to reinforce all of the stereotypical bad impressions that have held us captive for generations. Where did the differences lie? I wasn't sure.
Surely all of the pain of the human experience was present in our lives. There was the tragedy of Rick -- duplicated more often than we might wish. There was the collapse of Mel's formerly successful business adventure. Surely we'd seen the usual number of unanticipated pregnancies and job losses and substance abuse that plagued others. There sat Dorothy's grandson, Noonie, in a wheelchair for life as the result of a gunshot wound. But Noonie was "dancing" and exuberant in his praise of his grandmother and of what she'd done for him through the legacy of love he'd known through his father. All of the drama being lived out in inner cities everywhere was present in that beautifully decorated banquet room -- with dozens and dozens of long-stemmed red roses at every table -- and with the expression of Dorothy's wish that there be no birthday presents -- only donations to the Hunger Project of her Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church.
Here were all of the strong women who had survived our mates -- as with any other racial group -- but probably with losses experienced much earlier in our lives due to the higher mortality rate of black males. There were four Reid (widowed) sisters at my table; sisters of Dorothy. There were some younger members missing from the party, but not many, and for a variety of reasons -- some of which might illustrate the tragedies being expressed from the dais there at the L.A. church and being beamed to us by CSpan.
But that's only one side of the picture. Such programs are dramatically one-sided, I believe. To the extent that we create our own reality, what was missing was the fact that the music (last night) was being made by a terrific professional jazz trio headed by a family member; that the venue where we were gathered was owned and operated by another family member; that what we'd all achieved may have been far more important that what we'd survived. And that society may have simply reinforced the negative by constantly holding up the mirror of our deficits before us, and impeding our way toward solutions that may be far more visible were we not blinded by the spectre of failure that even we have bought into.
I found myself dropping off to sleep feeling warmed by a beautiful evening of familial love and pride yet frustrated by my inability to bring that into alignment with the too-loud and apparently irresolvable conflicted picture of the Black Family as described by the Tavis Smiley conference. Conflicting truths? Maybe. But I know that we've surely not escaped the problems being confronted throughout the Black World. It is also true that something precious and powerful has withstood much of the trauma that has destroyed others. In this, we're probably not unlike those who survived a long history of systemic abuse and benign neglect, but -- if true -- we've also inherited a powerful will to learn and move on.
If there's a failure to be recognized before it's too late for our youngsters, it is in the passing on of the legacy of power that lives within and motivates our families. There is a collective wisdom that is moving through us from the days of the Civil War to the present time, and our youngsters need to know how we, the elders, have survived through it all. Even more important is the fact that there is no predicter of the future than the record of the past. Dorothy in her quiet strength represents that past magnificently!
And, I'm hoping that this journal is a contribution toward that end ... .
The room was filled with well-wishers and family members from far and wide. It was held in a marvelous downtown Oakland multi-floored club facility owned by one of her sons, Geoffrey, and another political activist figure in the extended family. Geoffrey and I come together rarely since we are of different generations, but I'm always aware of his movements around town. Dorothy is someone whose age is close to that of my late sister, Marjorie. She's been the quiet strength to the surviving members of her large family of siblings (13) for many years. These are folks related through Mel (my first spouse). As the elders die off and the family contracts -- I feel less and less related to all those unfamiliar young faces who've been taking our places. Wish I knew more about them. I'm guessing that they'd like to know more about us, too. This may be more important than I realized; a truth that I've aged into.
Learned that Dennis, one of Dorothy's sons who lives elsewhere in the country, had discovered my blog and has been reading this journal for a while. He'd followed the link from cousin Doug's page (California Black Pioneers). Realized that I'd lost the awareness that anyone but a few friends were reading these pages (really intended for my kids and theirs), and felt so pleased to learn that the counter over there on the side held some family members as well as any other friends and/or friendly strangers who happen upon them by accident. Nice. Now if only I could get someone to begin to gather together a catalog of the email addresses of other kin ... If there are any cousins out there reading this, do let me know by email that you've visited. I can then forward any new pages, automatically, I'm told.
Experienced a strange contradiction when I arrived back home last night:
Climbed into bed and flipped on the TV to CSpan to find Michael Dyson ranting in his hyperbolic cadence from a stage filled with African-American leaders (economists, social scientists, journalists, educators, etc.) in a program out of Los Angeles hosted by Tavis Smiley. There sat the usual suspects as represented by Prof. Cornell West, Journalist Stanley Crouch, CNN Financial Consultant Valerie Coleman, Ayana Vanzandt, etc. This was the second annual (I believe) conference on the Status of the Black Family.
Probably because I'd just come from an event filled with love and admiration for a most-deserving family elder, but for whatever reason, I found myself unable to stay with the program. Watched the debate for about 30 minutes and tuned out. Lay in bed in the dark wondering why I felt so turned off by what I saw as a kind of negative "rant" that tended to reinforce all of the stereotypical bad impressions that have held us captive for generations. Where did the differences lie? I wasn't sure.
Surely all of the pain of the human experience was present in our lives. There was the tragedy of Rick -- duplicated more often than we might wish. There was the collapse of Mel's formerly successful business adventure. Surely we'd seen the usual number of unanticipated pregnancies and job losses and substance abuse that plagued others. There sat Dorothy's grandson, Noonie, in a wheelchair for life as the result of a gunshot wound. But Noonie was "dancing" and exuberant in his praise of his grandmother and of what she'd done for him through the legacy of love he'd known through his father. All of the drama being lived out in inner cities everywhere was present in that beautifully decorated banquet room -- with dozens and dozens of long-stemmed red roses at every table -- and with the expression of Dorothy's wish that there be no birthday presents -- only donations to the Hunger Project of her Lakeshore Avenue Baptist Church.
Here were all of the strong women who had survived our mates -- as with any other racial group -- but probably with losses experienced much earlier in our lives due to the higher mortality rate of black males. There were four Reid (widowed) sisters at my table; sisters of Dorothy. There were some younger members missing from the party, but not many, and for a variety of reasons -- some of which might illustrate the tragedies being expressed from the dais there at the L.A. church and being beamed to us by CSpan.
But that's only one side of the picture. Such programs are dramatically one-sided, I believe. To the extent that we create our own reality, what was missing was the fact that the music (last night) was being made by a terrific professional jazz trio headed by a family member; that the venue where we were gathered was owned and operated by another family member; that what we'd all achieved may have been far more important that what we'd survived. And that society may have simply reinforced the negative by constantly holding up the mirror of our deficits before us, and impeding our way toward solutions that may be far more visible were we not blinded by the spectre of failure that even we have bought into.
I found myself dropping off to sleep feeling warmed by a beautiful evening of familial love and pride yet frustrated by my inability to bring that into alignment with the too-loud and apparently irresolvable conflicted picture of the Black Family as described by the Tavis Smiley conference. Conflicting truths? Maybe. But I know that we've surely not escaped the problems being confronted throughout the Black World. It is also true that something precious and powerful has withstood much of the trauma that has destroyed others. In this, we're probably not unlike those who survived a long history of systemic abuse and benign neglect, but -- if true -- we've also inherited a powerful will to learn and move on.
If there's a failure to be recognized before it's too late for our youngsters, it is in the passing on of the legacy of power that lives within and motivates our families. There is a collective wisdom that is moving through us from the days of the Civil War to the present time, and our youngsters need to know how we, the elders, have survived through it all. Even more important is the fact that there is no predicter of the future than the record of the past. Dorothy in her quiet strength represents that past magnificently!
And, I'm hoping that this journal is a contribution toward that end ... .
Saturday, February 28, 2004
On Monday the 23rd (while I was crashing) ...
the 60 Minutes crew complete with Ed Bradley arrived in town to put together their piece on Death Row inmate, Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Regretfully, I missed the entire adventure and -- was only dimly aware of having done so. That's either a sign of incipient Alzheimers, or, my life is so full so much of the time that an occasional missed adventure is relatively meaningless. I hope it's the latter (grin).
Between sneezes (have about decided that what's going on here is spring allergy and possibly not a cold at all), I managed to remember that Bradley was due in town and that I had a commitment to my friend, Barbara, to help out. Tried to reach her several times but -- except for once when she answered her cell phone with "...can't talk right now, I'm in the middle of patching in a call from Ed Bradley with Stan at San Quentin. I'll call you right back." Heard nothing more from her for 3 days, but guessed that she was totally absorbed by the 60 Minutes production crew -- and that we'd probably not connect until the big stuff was over. I was right.
We didn't meet up again until Thursday morning (they'd packed up and left early that day) and talked endlessly about all of it. Everything had gone extremely well. Ed B. and Stan had several conversations by telephone (access to death row inmates by the press is still limited). There had been photo ops and interviews with children who had been working from Stan's books written from behind bars. There was a class at a San Francisco middle school that was very much aware of his work and of his Nobel Prize nomination. Barbara was ecstatic with what had been accomplished.
I'd missed a Saturday press conference with the anti-death penalty forces, plus all of the activity around the 60 Minutes production. That segment will be aired on April 4th (I believe). That's a week prior to the showing of "Redemption" on FX Channel on cable. Watch the TV guide.
Meanwhile, Jennifer and I drove over yesterday to the Yerba Buena Cultural Center in San Francisco for a theater presentation of Joanna Haigood's (Zaccho Dance Theatre) "Ghost Architecture." What a remarkable piece! I'll not try to describe the show here, its complexity defies any attempt at doing that, but telling you something about Joanna, herself, may provide some insight into some of the character of at least one of the artists who inhabits my life:
Profile: JOANNA HAIGOOD, choreographer, relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area from New York in 1979 and co-founded Zaccho Dance Theatre. Her creative work focuses on making dances that use natural, architectural and cultural environments as a point of departure for movement exploration and narrative. Haigood's works involve in-depth research into the history and the character of sites and typically integrates aerial flight and suspension as a way of expanding the dancers' spatial and dynamic range. Her work has been commissioned by leading arts presenters both nationally and internationally. Among them are the National Black Arts Festival, Festival d'Avignon and Festival d'Arles in France, the Exploratorium Museum, Capp Street Project, Dancing in the Streets, the Walker Art Center and the Tryon Center for Visual Art. Her choreography had also been commissioned by Alonzo King's LINES Contemporary Ballet and Axis Dance Company and is in the repertory of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. Ms. Haigood has received many distinguished fellowships for her work as a choreographer and director, most notably from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the W.A. Gerbode Foundation, the Irvine Foundation and Meet the Composer. She has also been honored with the 1989 Bay Guardian Local Discovery (GOLDIE) Award, with three Isadora Duncan Dance Awards for performance and visual design and with the 1999 Cal Arts/Alpert Award in recognition of her contribution to the field of dance. Ms. Haigood has taught aerial and contemporary dance forms for 25 years and has had the pleasure of being an artist in Residence at the Center National De Danse Contemporaine and the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in France; the Laban Centre in England, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Spelman College in Atlanta, Stanford University and the Exploratorium Museum.
This is from yesterday's program notes. Why is it important? Because I serve on both Joanna's board as well at that of the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. Those two interests are merging in an exciting project for which the EBCPA recently received a planning grant. Joanna is an aerialist/dancer. She studied with the Flying Wallenda's earlier in her life and has morphed the two artistic disciplines in the most interesting ways. Her development of site-specific pieces also fits into this new venture that will bring them together.
As I've shared earlier, I'm very much involved in the new urban national park dedicated to Rosie the Riveter. A part of that new park's features is one of the Victory ships, the Red Oak, that was constructed in and launched from the Richmond Shipyard #3 during World War II. The Red Oak is now owned by the city of Richmond (having been donated by the Navy) and is harbored on the shoreline within the park limits. It is being lovingly restored by some of the veterans who either helped to build her, or, served in the Pacific under her flags.
Joanna's work will involve the development a 3-4 year project that will create community interest by her research of the war years its effects upon the area; the people stories of the wartime home front; working with school children to create curriculum relevant to the city's history and of their parents' and grandparents' migration to the coast from deep in the rural South. It will culminate at some point -- probably related to the park's opening festivities -- in a spectacular aerial show high in the rigging of the Red Oak Victory that will be choreographed by Joanna and executed by her company.
It will be reminiscent of "Invisible Wings," a show performed at Fort Point in San Francisco and repeated at Jacob's Pillow some years ago, and of a show at Red Hook, New York, that Zaccho performed to rave reviews by the New York Sunday Times (a half-page!). That show was staged against the huge silos that mark the place, in space. This is all huge and exciting to think about. I feel honored to be even peripherally involved in such an endeavor.
Hope this gives some sense of the scope of the work and that I can keep you informed as we progress through the stages of development.
At the moment, the Red Oak still sits in the harbor undergoing rust-removal and spiffing up by loving hands. Met last week with the team that is designing a set of 6-8 graceful 35' signs in the shape of a ship's bow as it cuts through the water. These will mark the location of the new memorial park (they're really imaginative), visible from a distance. Early in April I'll meet in a two-day charrette with others to continue the master planning with the National Park Service folks -- none of whom are really aware of the fine arts part of my vision -- and Joanna.
So much to do. So little time... .
Guess the work goes on. It's the salaries that do not. This needs some work!
the 60 Minutes crew complete with Ed Bradley arrived in town to put together their piece on Death Row inmate, Stanley "Tookie" Williams. Regretfully, I missed the entire adventure and -- was only dimly aware of having done so. That's either a sign of incipient Alzheimers, or, my life is so full so much of the time that an occasional missed adventure is relatively meaningless. I hope it's the latter (grin).
Between sneezes (have about decided that what's going on here is spring allergy and possibly not a cold at all), I managed to remember that Bradley was due in town and that I had a commitment to my friend, Barbara, to help out. Tried to reach her several times but -- except for once when she answered her cell phone with "...can't talk right now, I'm in the middle of patching in a call from Ed Bradley with Stan at San Quentin. I'll call you right back." Heard nothing more from her for 3 days, but guessed that she was totally absorbed by the 60 Minutes production crew -- and that we'd probably not connect until the big stuff was over. I was right.
We didn't meet up again until Thursday morning (they'd packed up and left early that day) and talked endlessly about all of it. Everything had gone extremely well. Ed B. and Stan had several conversations by telephone (access to death row inmates by the press is still limited). There had been photo ops and interviews with children who had been working from Stan's books written from behind bars. There was a class at a San Francisco middle school that was very much aware of his work and of his Nobel Prize nomination. Barbara was ecstatic with what had been accomplished.
I'd missed a Saturday press conference with the anti-death penalty forces, plus all of the activity around the 60 Minutes production. That segment will be aired on April 4th (I believe). That's a week prior to the showing of "Redemption" on FX Channel on cable. Watch the TV guide.
Meanwhile, Jennifer and I drove over yesterday to the Yerba Buena Cultural Center in San Francisco for a theater presentation of Joanna Haigood's (Zaccho Dance Theatre) "Ghost Architecture." What a remarkable piece! I'll not try to describe the show here, its complexity defies any attempt at doing that, but telling you something about Joanna, herself, may provide some insight into some of the character of at least one of the artists who inhabits my life:
Profile: JOANNA HAIGOOD, choreographer, relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area from New York in 1979 and co-founded Zaccho Dance Theatre. Her creative work focuses on making dances that use natural, architectural and cultural environments as a point of departure for movement exploration and narrative. Haigood's works involve in-depth research into the history and the character of sites and typically integrates aerial flight and suspension as a way of expanding the dancers' spatial and dynamic range. Her work has been commissioned by leading arts presenters both nationally and internationally. Among them are the National Black Arts Festival, Festival d'Avignon and Festival d'Arles in France, the Exploratorium Museum, Capp Street Project, Dancing in the Streets, the Walker Art Center and the Tryon Center for Visual Art. Her choreography had also been commissioned by Alonzo King's LINES Contemporary Ballet and Axis Dance Company and is in the repertory of the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago. Ms. Haigood has received many distinguished fellowships for her work as a choreographer and director, most notably from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the W.A. Gerbode Foundation, the Irvine Foundation and Meet the Composer. She has also been honored with the 1989 Bay Guardian Local Discovery (GOLDIE) Award, with three Isadora Duncan Dance Awards for performance and visual design and with the 1999 Cal Arts/Alpert Award in recognition of her contribution to the field of dance. Ms. Haigood has taught aerial and contemporary dance forms for 25 years and has had the pleasure of being an artist in Residence at the Center National De Danse Contemporaine and the Centre National des Arts du Cirque in France; the Laban Centre in England, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Spelman College in Atlanta, Stanford University and the Exploratorium Museum.
This is from yesterday's program notes. Why is it important? Because I serve on both Joanna's board as well at that of the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. Those two interests are merging in an exciting project for which the EBCPA recently received a planning grant. Joanna is an aerialist/dancer. She studied with the Flying Wallenda's earlier in her life and has morphed the two artistic disciplines in the most interesting ways. Her development of site-specific pieces also fits into this new venture that will bring them together.
As I've shared earlier, I'm very much involved in the new urban national park dedicated to Rosie the Riveter. A part of that new park's features is one of the Victory ships, the Red Oak, that was constructed in and launched from the Richmond Shipyard #3 during World War II. The Red Oak is now owned by the city of Richmond (having been donated by the Navy) and is harbored on the shoreline within the park limits. It is being lovingly restored by some of the veterans who either helped to build her, or, served in the Pacific under her flags.
Joanna's work will involve the development a 3-4 year project that will create community interest by her research of the war years its effects upon the area; the people stories of the wartime home front; working with school children to create curriculum relevant to the city's history and of their parents' and grandparents' migration to the coast from deep in the rural South. It will culminate at some point -- probably related to the park's opening festivities -- in a spectacular aerial show high in the rigging of the Red Oak Victory that will be choreographed by Joanna and executed by her company.
It will be reminiscent of "Invisible Wings," a show performed at Fort Point in San Francisco and repeated at Jacob's Pillow some years ago, and of a show at Red Hook, New York, that Zaccho performed to rave reviews by the New York Sunday Times (a half-page!). That show was staged against the huge silos that mark the place, in space. This is all huge and exciting to think about. I feel honored to be even peripherally involved in such an endeavor.
Hope this gives some sense of the scope of the work and that I can keep you informed as we progress through the stages of development.
At the moment, the Red Oak still sits in the harbor undergoing rust-removal and spiffing up by loving hands. Met last week with the team that is designing a set of 6-8 graceful 35' signs in the shape of a ship's bow as it cuts through the water. These will mark the location of the new memorial park (they're really imaginative), visible from a distance. Early in April I'll meet in a two-day charrette with others to continue the master planning with the National Park Service folks -- none of whom are really aware of the fine arts part of my vision -- and Joanna.
So much to do. So little time... .
Guess the work goes on. It's the salaries that do not. This needs some work!
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
There is little more humbling than the attack of the common cold ...
Nothing. For the past few days I've been sniveling and sneezing and feeling put upon and miserable and -- so glad to be alone with no other human around to be brave for. Pure unadulterated crap! I don't do "ill" terribly well.
Came in from the theater on Sunday evening, kicked off my shoes and climbed into bed fully clothed and just pulled the covers over my head! Woke up on Monday morning with a scratchy throat, no voice, and little of anything else -- except a head that seemed to have swollen at least one-third -- with crud dripping from every opening... .
Spent the last two days listening to the rain beating down on the roof, grateful to have no place to have to be. Maybe the way to beat a cold is to simply give in to it and be glad you can do it without anyone to bear witness.
Today has been a combination of blustery rainstorms and occasional power outrages. But I'm feeling less growly and more Betty, and tomorrow there is lunch with Sharon at Salute on the shoreline with the panorama of San Francisco Bay to look out upon. There are warnings of high tides and huge waves today, with flooding expected up-country, but what we in the Bay Area experience as extreme weather is child's play to other parts of the country. I love it most of the time. Huge thunder clouds are rarely warnings of danger, but simply lend drama to the skys. There are rarely more than 3 days at a time of rough weather, and the sun generally manages to brighten things considerably between showers -- a few minutes at a time. Tomorrow will be an ideal day for lunch on the marina. With promises of more rain, the skies should be awesome!
I'm feeling good enough to attend a scheduled meeting (later today) of the Design Team for the redevelopment of the Macdonald Avenue corridor -- a mayoral appointment not connected with my job with the State. This is a project that I'm hoping will lead to the creation of an African American-oriented Arts & Entertainment District in the old abandoned downtown of Richmond. Been dreaming about that for several years, and -- after "seeding" the idea around town -- I'm now hearing it echo back from other voices. With any luck at all, it will be one of those ideas whose time has come and no one will know the genesis of it. That's the best outcome of good work. Learned a long time ago that the sign of good leadership is that when best executed, is virtually invisible.
The heart of this city has a number of lovely old brick buildings that were abandoned over 30 years ago when the redevelopment agency walked away from the "old town" parts and created a new shopping center some miles away on the far edge boundary adjacent to the city of Pinole. At this point, Pinole has created its own generic cookie-cutter shopping center to connect with that of Richmond, and much of the commercial life of this city has slowly oozed over the line. With cities largely dependent upon permitting fees, property and sales taxes to feed their general funds, the loss of sales taxes is a serious thing. It is all the more so in these days of state budget cuts. To have abandoned the central core of the city to crime and poverty is something I have a hard time comprehending.
No one seems to be willing to place a dollar figure on what it is costing to not redevelop those buildings; costs in lives lost, grafitti, loss of tax revenue, civic image and pride -- all casualties to the abandonment as a commercial center. The city would do well to give those buildings away to anyone with the financial wherewithall to rehabilitate them, and to thereby renew the life of the inner city for all to enjoy.
Have been working on that for some time now, and am beginning to be heard -- by everyone but the redevelopment agency, that is. Haven't figured out that piece yet, but I'm working on it... .
Nothing. For the past few days I've been sniveling and sneezing and feeling put upon and miserable and -- so glad to be alone with no other human around to be brave for. Pure unadulterated crap! I don't do "ill" terribly well.
Came in from the theater on Sunday evening, kicked off my shoes and climbed into bed fully clothed and just pulled the covers over my head! Woke up on Monday morning with a scratchy throat, no voice, and little of anything else -- except a head that seemed to have swollen at least one-third -- with crud dripping from every opening... .
Spent the last two days listening to the rain beating down on the roof, grateful to have no place to have to be. Maybe the way to beat a cold is to simply give in to it and be glad you can do it without anyone to bear witness.
Today has been a combination of blustery rainstorms and occasional power outrages. But I'm feeling less growly and more Betty, and tomorrow there is lunch with Sharon at Salute on the shoreline with the panorama of San Francisco Bay to look out upon. There are warnings of high tides and huge waves today, with flooding expected up-country, but what we in the Bay Area experience as extreme weather is child's play to other parts of the country. I love it most of the time. Huge thunder clouds are rarely warnings of danger, but simply lend drama to the skys. There are rarely more than 3 days at a time of rough weather, and the sun generally manages to brighten things considerably between showers -- a few minutes at a time. Tomorrow will be an ideal day for lunch on the marina. With promises of more rain, the skies should be awesome!
I'm feeling good enough to attend a scheduled meeting (later today) of the Design Team for the redevelopment of the Macdonald Avenue corridor -- a mayoral appointment not connected with my job with the State. This is a project that I'm hoping will lead to the creation of an African American-oriented Arts & Entertainment District in the old abandoned downtown of Richmond. Been dreaming about that for several years, and -- after "seeding" the idea around town -- I'm now hearing it echo back from other voices. With any luck at all, it will be one of those ideas whose time has come and no one will know the genesis of it. That's the best outcome of good work. Learned a long time ago that the sign of good leadership is that when best executed, is virtually invisible.
The heart of this city has a number of lovely old brick buildings that were abandoned over 30 years ago when the redevelopment agency walked away from the "old town" parts and created a new shopping center some miles away on the far edge boundary adjacent to the city of Pinole. At this point, Pinole has created its own generic cookie-cutter shopping center to connect with that of Richmond, and much of the commercial life of this city has slowly oozed over the line. With cities largely dependent upon permitting fees, property and sales taxes to feed their general funds, the loss of sales taxes is a serious thing. It is all the more so in these days of state budget cuts. To have abandoned the central core of the city to crime and poverty is something I have a hard time comprehending.
No one seems to be willing to place a dollar figure on what it is costing to not redevelop those buildings; costs in lives lost, grafitti, loss of tax revenue, civic image and pride -- all casualties to the abandonment as a commercial center. The city would do well to give those buildings away to anyone with the financial wherewithall to rehabilitate them, and to thereby renew the life of the inner city for all to enjoy.
Have been working on that for some time now, and am beginning to be heard -- by everyone but the redevelopment agency, that is. Haven't figured out that piece yet, but I'm working on it... .
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Had plans to write extensively today ...
It's another rainy Sunday and the best of times to do just that. However, the phone rang a few minutes ago with an invitation to attend a Berkeley Rep performance of "Yellowman" preceded by dinner at Giovanni's. Can't imagine anything better. Life does have a way of livening up the empty spaces, doesn't it?
Last night Bob and Jenny arrived at Dorian's dinner party with an advance copy of an upcoming HBO special on the life of the award-winning African American (she would prefer "Black") actor, Beah Richards. What a documentary! It is moving. She is dynamic and brilliantly "human," and I could hardly bear for it to end. Jenny's brother participated in its production as an editor -- this allowed him to share it with us prior to airing on this Wednesday (I believe. Check the listings). You must see this extraordinary film. The last two minutes -- after the emotional roller-coaster of the earlier parts -- will lift you beyond reason!
There is much to say about this, but not now. There is barely time to shower, dress, and drive in to meet friends for this evening's performance.
Later ... .
It's another rainy Sunday and the best of times to do just that. However, the phone rang a few minutes ago with an invitation to attend a Berkeley Rep performance of "Yellowman" preceded by dinner at Giovanni's. Can't imagine anything better. Life does have a way of livening up the empty spaces, doesn't it?
Last night Bob and Jenny arrived at Dorian's dinner party with an advance copy of an upcoming HBO special on the life of the award-winning African American (she would prefer "Black") actor, Beah Richards. What a documentary! It is moving. She is dynamic and brilliantly "human," and I could hardly bear for it to end. Jenny's brother participated in its production as an editor -- this allowed him to share it with us prior to airing on this Wednesday (I believe. Check the listings). You must see this extraordinary film. The last two minutes -- after the emotional roller-coaster of the earlier parts -- will lift you beyond reason!
There is much to say about this, but not now. There is barely time to shower, dress, and drive in to meet friends for this evening's performance.
Later ... .
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Musing about the men who so influenced my life for so many years ...
has provided a new lens through which to see them. Maybe -- because I now have such an extensive range of experience -- given all the years of living that have softened memories, there is little that can be defined in black and white terms. The "greys" feel so much more right. Comparisons are inadequate measures of almost anything.
Did I love Mel? Yes, and deeply felt as only a romantic 19 year-old can. He was everything I needed within the limits of what my inadequate experience would have demanded. To measure that love against the mature relationship Bill offered to a 50 year-old mother of four who had lived so many more experiences would be unfair. But by the time I married Bill, most of the "first times" had been used up in my first marriage to Mel. There would never again be a first childbirth, our first home, etc. But there were many new experiences of an entirely different order and not yet lived. These were beyond my expectations at the time and would be later shared with Bill -- and were.
I married Mel at a time when total reliance on my father's wisdom was waning. Dad was by now far less mysterious and was beginning to develop flaws that I'd never been able to see during those years when I needed him to be all things against a world I wasn't quite ready to take on. Forgiveness of one's parents for just about anything comes with the advent of one's own parenting. In addition, moving from a father's hand to husband's was the path to leaving home at the time, with few alternatives. College was hardly a practical choice for a young woman -- unless she couldn't find a good husband. How times have changed! A woman's fulfillment was in finding her place as wife and mother, in that order, and my acceptance of those terms fit the mold of the times precisely. I can blame no one for my later frustration when this choice proved to be inadequate to the demands of my expanding personal universe.
No one told me how much growth comes with the creation of life. Each of my children -- in their varying strengths provided views into "being" that I'd never have guessed were there. Yes, even Dorian, with her obvious deficits -- pushed me to my limits over and over again. And, I wasn't simply learning about her, but about myself through her. There is no greater source of "knowing" than the experience of motherhood. Wish I'd known that earlier. That emerged through life with Mel and the sharing of parenting, for good or ill. Nothing in my life with Bill compared with this. This is the debt that I owe to my children. In many ways, they ushered me into my own deeper self, and they still do.
If you can imagine, after years of being a suburban homemaker and mother of four, I would find myself in a failed marriage and beginning a totally different life -- unrelated to anything that has gone before.
Entered a summer seminar on mid-life career changes and met someone who had just taken a position at the University of California as chief administrator. One evening after class he asked if I'd consider interviewing as his assistant on a research project. My very naive answer was, "...I'm not sure I can do that, but would be willing to work for you for two weeks without pay to see if I'd like to." Three months later I was not only an employee of UC Berkeley, but was romantically involved with the principal investigator of the project! Within a year I was married to a Dr. William F. Soskin, PhD., psychologist of note.
I'm not sure that being single was ever an option for me. Didn't know it at the time, but the thought of not being in a relationship was still not quite normal. I was still being externally defined in relation to the male in my life. Without that, I had no idea just who I was. That was to come much later.
But now it's time to pick Dorian up for the weekend. Today's her birthday, and I have a cake to bake. Everybody will be home for a celebratory dinner!
Photo: Married to Bill by dear friend and mentor, Rev. Aron Gilmartin, Unitarian-Universalist pastor of the Diablo Valley UU Church in Walnut Creek, California (1975).
Friday, February 20, 2004
The continuing drama at San Francisco's city hall heightens my anxiety and stirs painful memories of Rick's death. I won't linger on the implications of a parent outliving her young. This has happened to countless others, and brings up the natural feelings of regret and the guilt of survival for each of us, I'm certain.
But maybe this is a chapter on mortality as much as it's a chapter about the loss of my son -- and what sense I've been able to make of it as one without a belief in divine intervention:
It was a day of changes. I'd decided to sell the home in El Cerrito. I'd bought it ten years before in order to accommodate mother's last days. Dad died at 95 in 1987. Mother survived him by six years, to the age of 101. Eventually, she'd passed on and the cost of maintaining "a house that could accommodate the Christmas tree," could no longer be justified. I'm sure that I wasn't alone in this. Many parents continue the myth of being the center of the universe long after it's appropriate to do so.
I'd located a one-bedroom condo in Richmond's Hilltop Village, and was in the process of crating up all the "stuff" that would go to storage when the call came. It was Rick's landlord. "Mrs. Soskin, we haven't seen your son for three weeks, and there is growing concern among his neighbors that ...". My heart stopped for a fraction of a second, and I could hardly catch my breath.
Called my niece, Gail, who lived reasonably close by -- and David (by now hysterical) in Berkeley to relay the news, knowing that I couldn't drive across town to learn the truth. They immediately dropped everything and took over. David still does "'s'ponsible" very well. I sat and waited with a growing feeling of numbness, my body magically preparing to protect itself against what was sure to come.
The phone pierced the silence with a shrill ring and the landlord's voice on the line with, "...I'm so sorry, Mrs. Soskin." I screamed! David hadn't reached me yet. He'd opted to drive to tell me in person rather than to speak those fateful words by phone knowing that I was alone. When he did arrive, we called Bobby, together. David's words now engraved on my brain, "...it's over, Mom. It's over." How difficult, even now, to admit that embedded in the horror and pain of grief lurked the feeling of relief. He was right. It was over.
This wasn't new. There was a familiarity about this strange mixture of feelings. It was a reminder that in 1987 and within three short months, the key men in my life had all passed away. My father first of all, then Mel (my first husband and children's father), then Bill -- the man I'd married at 50 after the first marriage ended. I was at first devastated with grief. I'd been at the foot of my father's bed at the hospital when I heard his last breath being expelled. Bill lay in a coma for months before the end came. Mel died after years of living as an amputee -- living death for a former athlete. I'd experienced his death as merciful. They'd all died in that brief period.
Imagine my surprise to find that, only a few months later, right behind the grief lay the exultation of emancipation. I'd had no sense of my individuality, my womanness. As it is with many women in my age group, I'd been consistently defined by the men I'd loved for an entire lifetime, and without question. I don't think that I'd yet decided whether feminism was a step up or down, and my life as "part of a whole" seemed destined to be.
How many months I lived in that space of silent joyful/sadness I'm not sure. It wasn't something to be talked about. But springing out into the world with new horizons and unfamiliar mountains to climb became all-consuming. Having married at a very young 19, I'd experienced being child, daughter, wife, mother, but had skipped over "woman," without any idea of just what meant, or awareness that I'd not lived out that essential part of myself; nor had I missed her. Tapping into new capacities in myself drowned out the eulogies in a flurry of activities and interests. The need to maximize the second half of life moved to the top of my priorities, and I sensed a new sense of purpose and preciousness of time -- made the more urgent by the loss of those I'd loved and lost.
Rick had been dead on his bathroom floor for three weeks when his body was found. He'd died of cirrhosis from years of alcoholism. He'd died alone. His death followed that of his lover, Gordon, by no more than a year. His death had been one of the longest acts of suicide imaginable; a slow inescapable descent into the hell of self destruction. David was right. Rick's life had never really started. A bright potential had been snuffed out years before for a variety of reasons -- some beyond my understanding. Some not. I'll never know how much I contributed to that despite all the love invested. None of us can ever know that, and it's probably just as well.
But the mystery would deepen in days to come.
Both Bob and David had a sense of having reached Rick a few months before his death, at a time when he was hospitalized in crisis. His blood pressure had risen to dangerous levels and though close to death, he'd survived for the moment. Both younger brothers had spent time visiting with him in the hospital. Bob's approaching wedding (only two weeks later) held excitement for us all. Bob believed that Rick had every intention of participating with us, and that they'd connected meaningfully after a long period of separation. Bob lives on the Monterey Peninsula and has for many years, so their lives rarely crossed at that time. Though we didn't give it words, I suspect that we each knew that he'd not live much longer.
Knowing doesn't soften the shock or finality of death at all. Nor do the lost lives of those who went before. Each loss is all-consuming. Experience does little to prepare one for losing a loved one though, as we age, there is some movement toward the acceptance of one's own ending. A child cannot imagine non-existence. I can. Maturity may be measured by just when we accept the fact that we must die as all beings do, and the emphasis begins to center on just how well we are using and have used the privilege of life. A friend said to me on the occasion of my mother's death, "...remember, Betty, no life is complete without a death." He'll never know how important those words would become in my own struggle with the acceptance of my own mortality. Being all used up before the end, has become a driving force -- an obsession. The growing sense of urgency has added spice to my days and lightness to my step in this most recent decade when life has become more precious than ever before.
Just stopped long enough to scan through the binder that holds the records of Rick's last days and read through the descriptions of the strange events that gave a date certain for his last hours. Will copy them here if only to reinforce the experience and remind myself (and you) of how wondrous is the capacity of the human mind to skip across the limitations of time and space when the need is great enough and openness undisputed.
More later.
But maybe this is a chapter on mortality as much as it's a chapter about the loss of my son -- and what sense I've been able to make of it as one without a belief in divine intervention:
It was a day of changes. I'd decided to sell the home in El Cerrito. I'd bought it ten years before in order to accommodate mother's last days. Dad died at 95 in 1987. Mother survived him by six years, to the age of 101. Eventually, she'd passed on and the cost of maintaining "a house that could accommodate the Christmas tree," could no longer be justified. I'm sure that I wasn't alone in this. Many parents continue the myth of being the center of the universe long after it's appropriate to do so.
I'd located a one-bedroom condo in Richmond's Hilltop Village, and was in the process of crating up all the "stuff" that would go to storage when the call came. It was Rick's landlord. "Mrs. Soskin, we haven't seen your son for three weeks, and there is growing concern among his neighbors that ...". My heart stopped for a fraction of a second, and I could hardly catch my breath.
Called my niece, Gail, who lived reasonably close by -- and David (by now hysterical) in Berkeley to relay the news, knowing that I couldn't drive across town to learn the truth. They immediately dropped everything and took over. David still does "'s'ponsible" very well. I sat and waited with a growing feeling of numbness, my body magically preparing to protect itself against what was sure to come.
The phone pierced the silence with a shrill ring and the landlord's voice on the line with, "...I'm so sorry, Mrs. Soskin." I screamed! David hadn't reached me yet. He'd opted to drive to tell me in person rather than to speak those fateful words by phone knowing that I was alone. When he did arrive, we called Bobby, together. David's words now engraved on my brain, "...it's over, Mom. It's over." How difficult, even now, to admit that embedded in the horror and pain of grief lurked the feeling of relief. He was right. It was over.
This wasn't new. There was a familiarity about this strange mixture of feelings. It was a reminder that in 1987 and within three short months, the key men in my life had all passed away. My father first of all, then Mel (my first husband and children's father), then Bill -- the man I'd married at 50 after the first marriage ended. I was at first devastated with grief. I'd been at the foot of my father's bed at the hospital when I heard his last breath being expelled. Bill lay in a coma for months before the end came. Mel died after years of living as an amputee -- living death for a former athlete. I'd experienced his death as merciful. They'd all died in that brief period.
Imagine my surprise to find that, only a few months later, right behind the grief lay the exultation of emancipation. I'd had no sense of my individuality, my womanness. As it is with many women in my age group, I'd been consistently defined by the men I'd loved for an entire lifetime, and without question. I don't think that I'd yet decided whether feminism was a step up or down, and my life as "part of a whole" seemed destined to be.
How many months I lived in that space of silent joyful/sadness I'm not sure. It wasn't something to be talked about. But springing out into the world with new horizons and unfamiliar mountains to climb became all-consuming. Having married at a very young 19, I'd experienced being child, daughter, wife, mother, but had skipped over "woman," without any idea of just what meant, or awareness that I'd not lived out that essential part of myself; nor had I missed her. Tapping into new capacities in myself drowned out the eulogies in a flurry of activities and interests. The need to maximize the second half of life moved to the top of my priorities, and I sensed a new sense of purpose and preciousness of time -- made the more urgent by the loss of those I'd loved and lost.
Rick had been dead on his bathroom floor for three weeks when his body was found. He'd died of cirrhosis from years of alcoholism. He'd died alone. His death followed that of his lover, Gordon, by no more than a year. His death had been one of the longest acts of suicide imaginable; a slow inescapable descent into the hell of self destruction. David was right. Rick's life had never really started. A bright potential had been snuffed out years before for a variety of reasons -- some beyond my understanding. Some not. I'll never know how much I contributed to that despite all the love invested. None of us can ever know that, and it's probably just as well.
But the mystery would deepen in days to come.
Both Bob and David had a sense of having reached Rick a few months before his death, at a time when he was hospitalized in crisis. His blood pressure had risen to dangerous levels and though close to death, he'd survived for the moment. Both younger brothers had spent time visiting with him in the hospital. Bob's approaching wedding (only two weeks later) held excitement for us all. Bob believed that Rick had every intention of participating with us, and that they'd connected meaningfully after a long period of separation. Bob lives on the Monterey Peninsula and has for many years, so their lives rarely crossed at that time. Though we didn't give it words, I suspect that we each knew that he'd not live much longer.
Knowing doesn't soften the shock or finality of death at all. Nor do the lost lives of those who went before. Each loss is all-consuming. Experience does little to prepare one for losing a loved one though, as we age, there is some movement toward the acceptance of one's own ending. A child cannot imagine non-existence. I can. Maturity may be measured by just when we accept the fact that we must die as all beings do, and the emphasis begins to center on just how well we are using and have used the privilege of life. A friend said to me on the occasion of my mother's death, "...remember, Betty, no life is complete without a death." He'll never know how important those words would become in my own struggle with the acceptance of my own mortality. Being all used up before the end, has become a driving force -- an obsession. The growing sense of urgency has added spice to my days and lightness to my step in this most recent decade when life has become more precious than ever before.
Just stopped long enough to scan through the binder that holds the records of Rick's last days and read through the descriptions of the strange events that gave a date certain for his last hours. Will copy them here if only to reinforce the experience and remind myself (and you) of how wondrous is the capacity of the human mind to skip across the limitations of time and space when the need is great enough and openness undisputed.
More later.
Monday, February 16, 2004
The plight of all those hopeful Gays and Lesbians ...
camping out at San Francisco's city hall (thought of them as the heavy rains pelted down during the night) in the hope of getting married today ... . Thought of Rick, and wept in the night.
Rick's homosexuality was obvious from infancy (as I look back). I recall reading an article in Parents Magazine when he was about five. Something about testes that fail to drop by a certain age, or glandular development that might be delayed -- not sure what it was, but whatever caused my questioning, I made an appointment with our pediatrician to talk about what I suspected. She was shocked by my questions and let me know it. "This is simply a gentle child. You Americans are so strange. In Europe we allow our men to be gentle without suspecting homosexuality. In America it is different." She continued, "children don't choose gender until they reach puberty and it is impossible to tell anything until that choice is made."
I continued, "but if a child is continually having his/her gender questioned, isn't that choice somewhat prejudiced?" She didn't answer me. I figured that this information was suspect and that my "gentle child" was gay and that it was okay with me. One can't share life with a youngster for his five earliest years and not be smitten for life. My biggest problem would surely be to protect him from his "testerostonous" father!
I remember (very athletic) Mel -- on the occasion of about the tenth time Kenny Allen (around the corner toughie) sent Rick home bloodied and bent-- decided to teach Rick to defend himself. Perfectly ordinary thing for a Dad to do, right? Wrong. I knew that this was a gentle child who would never make it against the strength of a bully like Kenny! This ritual went on for weeks. Mel would kneel with both hands held out before him for Rick to punch his little fists into. First left, then right, then crossover, then upper-cut ... made me nervous to watch this futile game day after day.
Some time later Rick came home from play -- nose bloodied, chin scratched, tears of humiliation and fear of facing his dad mixing with outrage! I ran to gather him up for comforting before Mel could get to him -- but it was too late. Mel popped out of the kitchen with, "...why didn't you hit him like I taught you?" Poor little Rick, "...but he wouldn't hold his hands up!"
There was no male killer instinct in my child, and there never would be. He loved dolls and math, in that order. Built his first crystal set for radio reception when he was eight. Taught himself algebra with books from the library when he was in 6th grade because he needed it for a science project he was working on. This was a special child. He was bright, a linear thinker, sharp, and far more feminine than masculine in some important ways. And he'd been so since he came into my life at only a few months of age.
When he was in third grade I attended a teacher-parent conference and was told that Rick was a good student but that he was often seen "passing notes with another little sissy boy." At about the same time, my mother-in-law visited the house and noticed Rick washing dishes. Her warning, "...Betty you mustn't let that boy do those kinds of things...". But the pediatrician had told me years before that boys needed to play with dolls and do household chores just as girls did because "...they grow up to be parents just as girls do." An early feminist? At least she was partly right, but just a little twisted in her diagnosis.
The part that stuck was the part about there being a choice at puberty. I tried very hard to keep open and accepting so as not to effect that "choice." (If there was the slightest possibility that she was right.) Never allowed myself to hint that I knew, at least until it was so obvious that Mel and I were unable to discuss his homosexuality at all. We never did, though I heard Mel call him a sissy in anger -- but only once. Their's was a love/hate relationship that tore them both apart for years.
Poor Rick! His alcoholism was his only out from the misery. He was -- first of all -- an adopted child in a family that later produced three more biological children. He was an only child until he was five, then Bobby and in quick succession, David. He suffered the agony of being the only black child in that suburban school where he was scorned. He was Black and Gay. He was a lost soul.
After a tumultous and painful adolescence, at twenty-one he moved into town from Walnut Creek, into his first apartment. He was on his own. The call came, the one I'd expected all our lives. "Mom, can you come to dinner next Wednesday? Dress your prettiest. It's something special." When I arrived that evening, a young woman was waiting in the livingroom with Rick. He introduced us, and announced that he had something terribly important to tell me. It was at that moment that he told me about Ron, a handsome (white) man in his early thirties and owner of a kind of "Sharper Image" store in San Francisco. "He wants me to move in with him as his roommate, Mom." "And will you," asked I? "But you don't understand, Mom." "Yes, I do," says I. The young woman (obviously here for moral support) enters the conversations at this point with, "yes, she does, Rick." "You've always known, haven't you" says Rick? "Yes."
We left to join Ron at a fine restaurant where he announced that he and Rick were planning a trip to Amsterdam soon, and that he'd not wanted to take off without our family knowing about their relationship. Ron's family lived in Connecticutt -- a place they would visit on the return trip from Europe. I felt relieved and grateful that we'd together crossed some threshold that freed us all. We'd all come out, that evening.
But all that's left of that relationship are a few shares of Ford Company stock, given to Rick as a Christmas present years ago. The documents have been in my safe deposit box for all these years, a box I thought I'd closed out long ago when I moved. He had a key and had placed them there in a sober moment, I guess. I knew nothing of them until recently when they appeared in my name in an announcement of unclaimed property from the State of California. Have sent in proof of ownership and one day soon they'll arrive, the last vestige of a lost life... .
camping out at San Francisco's city hall (thought of them as the heavy rains pelted down during the night) in the hope of getting married today ... . Thought of Rick, and wept in the night.
Rick's homosexuality was obvious from infancy (as I look back). I recall reading an article in Parents Magazine when he was about five. Something about testes that fail to drop by a certain age, or glandular development that might be delayed -- not sure what it was, but whatever caused my questioning, I made an appointment with our pediatrician to talk about what I suspected. She was shocked by my questions and let me know it. "This is simply a gentle child. You Americans are so strange. In Europe we allow our men to be gentle without suspecting homosexuality. In America it is different." She continued, "children don't choose gender until they reach puberty and it is impossible to tell anything until that choice is made."
I continued, "but if a child is continually having his/her gender questioned, isn't that choice somewhat prejudiced?" She didn't answer me. I figured that this information was suspect and that my "gentle child" was gay and that it was okay with me. One can't share life with a youngster for his five earliest years and not be smitten for life. My biggest problem would surely be to protect him from his "testerostonous" father!
I remember (very athletic) Mel -- on the occasion of about the tenth time Kenny Allen (around the corner toughie) sent Rick home bloodied and bent-- decided to teach Rick to defend himself. Perfectly ordinary thing for a Dad to do, right? Wrong. I knew that this was a gentle child who would never make it against the strength of a bully like Kenny! This ritual went on for weeks. Mel would kneel with both hands held out before him for Rick to punch his little fists into. First left, then right, then crossover, then upper-cut ... made me nervous to watch this futile game day after day.
Some time later Rick came home from play -- nose bloodied, chin scratched, tears of humiliation and fear of facing his dad mixing with outrage! I ran to gather him up for comforting before Mel could get to him -- but it was too late. Mel popped out of the kitchen with, "...why didn't you hit him like I taught you?" Poor little Rick, "...but he wouldn't hold his hands up!"
There was no male killer instinct in my child, and there never would be. He loved dolls and math, in that order. Built his first crystal set for radio reception when he was eight. Taught himself algebra with books from the library when he was in 6th grade because he needed it for a science project he was working on. This was a special child. He was bright, a linear thinker, sharp, and far more feminine than masculine in some important ways. And he'd been so since he came into my life at only a few months of age.
When he was in third grade I attended a teacher-parent conference and was told that Rick was a good student but that he was often seen "passing notes with another little sissy boy." At about the same time, my mother-in-law visited the house and noticed Rick washing dishes. Her warning, "...Betty you mustn't let that boy do those kinds of things...". But the pediatrician had told me years before that boys needed to play with dolls and do household chores just as girls did because "...they grow up to be parents just as girls do." An early feminist? At least she was partly right, but just a little twisted in her diagnosis.
The part that stuck was the part about there being a choice at puberty. I tried very hard to keep open and accepting so as not to effect that "choice." (If there was the slightest possibility that she was right.) Never allowed myself to hint that I knew, at least until it was so obvious that Mel and I were unable to discuss his homosexuality at all. We never did, though I heard Mel call him a sissy in anger -- but only once. Their's was a love/hate relationship that tore them both apart for years.
Poor Rick! His alcoholism was his only out from the misery. He was -- first of all -- an adopted child in a family that later produced three more biological children. He was an only child until he was five, then Bobby and in quick succession, David. He suffered the agony of being the only black child in that suburban school where he was scorned. He was Black and Gay. He was a lost soul.
After a tumultous and painful adolescence, at twenty-one he moved into town from Walnut Creek, into his first apartment. He was on his own. The call came, the one I'd expected all our lives. "Mom, can you come to dinner next Wednesday? Dress your prettiest. It's something special." When I arrived that evening, a young woman was waiting in the livingroom with Rick. He introduced us, and announced that he had something terribly important to tell me. It was at that moment that he told me about Ron, a handsome (white) man in his early thirties and owner of a kind of "Sharper Image" store in San Francisco. "He wants me to move in with him as his roommate, Mom." "And will you," asked I? "But you don't understand, Mom." "Yes, I do," says I. The young woman (obviously here for moral support) enters the conversations at this point with, "yes, she does, Rick." "You've always known, haven't you" says Rick? "Yes."
We left to join Ron at a fine restaurant where he announced that he and Rick were planning a trip to Amsterdam soon, and that he'd not wanted to take off without our family knowing about their relationship. Ron's family lived in Connecticutt -- a place they would visit on the return trip from Europe. I felt relieved and grateful that we'd together crossed some threshold that freed us all. We'd all come out, that evening.
But all that's left of that relationship are a few shares of Ford Company stock, given to Rick as a Christmas present years ago. The documents have been in my safe deposit box for all these years, a box I thought I'd closed out long ago when I moved. He had a key and had placed them there in a sober moment, I guess. I knew nothing of them until recently when they appeared in my name in an announcement of unclaimed property from the State of California. Have sent in proof of ownership and one day soon they'll arrive, the last vestige of a lost life... .
Saturday, February 14, 2004
Leisure doesn't play well today ...
It's Saturday and I'm finding that a Saturday that isn't preceded by a busy week holds little meaning.
Read The Nation cover to cover, and gave due diligence to the pundits on the Left and decided that I need to locate a new base for political activities and soon. Came to the conclusion that -- for good reason -- the Democrats have clearly come together in the hope of unseating the Bush presidency by supporting the "electable" John Kerry. S'okay. I can live with that, though I find myself hoping that Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean will remain in the race through to the end in order to provide a ballast on the Left that may keep Kerry from doing the "Centrist" thing by moving to the perceived middle after the primaries are over. Clinton with the help of Dick Morris moved to the right of Nixon when running for his second term, and the temptation will be great for Kerry to do likewise. His positions were far more conservative at the beginning of the primaries than in the more recent past. It wasn't until he adopted Dean's far more feisty anti-Iraq Bush policies that Kerry's fortunes began to change. Becoming more critical of Bush's stance on both economic issues and foreign policy turned the tide for him. Were Kucinich and Dean to remove themselves from the race prematurely, I fear a pulling back on his part. By liberalizing his views, he's given a political home to a brand new constituency -- one that will quickly disintegrate if there are signs of that kind of "Clintonism." That would mean a far closer and more perilous fight for the presidency against a powerfully-financed George Bush.
Am finding MoveOn and People for the American Way essential to my ability to track events. I've come to trust a host of sources; George Soros, the Guardian, The Nation, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, and (yes) the Berkeley Daily Planet for local stuff, adds a sense of being part of something larger than myself these days. This is new, and largely made possible by the Internet. Having access to CSpan and the cable coverage of city, county, and state governance is making a difference in campaigns and the way we've come to use political power. Never have ordinary citizens had the tools to move governments in quite this way. We've magnified power of the electorate a thousandfold through technology. Hope enough of us are aware of that and are using it wisely. Eli Parisher and MoveOn have surely changed access and provided the means by which we can bring accountability into the equation, raise funds, and have our voices heard in an effective way.
And -- today is Valentine's Day. Noticed on the last pages of The Nation a column of personal ads. I'm aware that many folks my age read the obituaries with the same interest. Sometimes read the personals for entertainment value, and for what little vicarious thrill there is in seeing bold and sophisticated men and women with enough daring to say precisely what they want for the entire world to see. Smart! Not sure that I could ever do that, but I did see one ad by "a professional man (mid-eighties, it said) who lives on the east coast and is seeking companionship," sounded mildly interesting. "Has home in New York and summer place ...". Now if that had been "lives on the west coast with a summer home on Tiburon or Belvedere," who knows. Maybe would have answered it. Felt daring just thinking about it. Nah, he'd probably be a Republican anyway.
It did stir memories of living in relationship and brought up some nostalgia for times past. Guess I've kept myself too busy to have regrets about living singly, but -- maybe it's just the effects of February 14th. Remembered with a grin of the Valentine's Day that I baked a heart-shaped meatloaf for Bill. He told that story for years, and embellished it with descriptions of sprigs of parsley placed strategically to suggest God knows what! He always made me sound clever and Noel Coward witty in the telling. It's also true that it takes an awful lot of "busy" to re-direct all that sexual energy elsewhere -- and an equal amount of self-delusion to convince oneself that none of that matters. It does.
I'm thinking that I may need to re-think the entire notion of romantic love, and embrace a broader definition of just what that is, and just how that might be achieved. I may have more time on this planet than previously thought, and updating my conception of just how that time might be spent may need consideration (grinning wickedly!).
Now, back to those tango lessons ... .
It's Saturday and I'm finding that a Saturday that isn't preceded by a busy week holds little meaning.
Read The Nation cover to cover, and gave due diligence to the pundits on the Left and decided that I need to locate a new base for political activities and soon. Came to the conclusion that -- for good reason -- the Democrats have clearly come together in the hope of unseating the Bush presidency by supporting the "electable" John Kerry. S'okay. I can live with that, though I find myself hoping that Dennis Kucinich and Howard Dean will remain in the race through to the end in order to provide a ballast on the Left that may keep Kerry from doing the "Centrist" thing by moving to the perceived middle after the primaries are over. Clinton with the help of Dick Morris moved to the right of Nixon when running for his second term, and the temptation will be great for Kerry to do likewise. His positions were far more conservative at the beginning of the primaries than in the more recent past. It wasn't until he adopted Dean's far more feisty anti-Iraq Bush policies that Kerry's fortunes began to change. Becoming more critical of Bush's stance on both economic issues and foreign policy turned the tide for him. Were Kucinich and Dean to remove themselves from the race prematurely, I fear a pulling back on his part. By liberalizing his views, he's given a political home to a brand new constituency -- one that will quickly disintegrate if there are signs of that kind of "Clintonism." That would mean a far closer and more perilous fight for the presidency against a powerfully-financed George Bush.
Am finding MoveOn and People for the American Way essential to my ability to track events. I've come to trust a host of sources; George Soros, the Guardian, The Nation, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, and (yes) the Berkeley Daily Planet for local stuff, adds a sense of being part of something larger than myself these days. This is new, and largely made possible by the Internet. Having access to CSpan and the cable coverage of city, county, and state governance is making a difference in campaigns and the way we've come to use political power. Never have ordinary citizens had the tools to move governments in quite this way. We've magnified power of the electorate a thousandfold through technology. Hope enough of us are aware of that and are using it wisely. Eli Parisher and MoveOn have surely changed access and provided the means by which we can bring accountability into the equation, raise funds, and have our voices heard in an effective way.
And -- today is Valentine's Day. Noticed on the last pages of The Nation a column of personal ads. I'm aware that many folks my age read the obituaries with the same interest. Sometimes read the personals for entertainment value, and for what little vicarious thrill there is in seeing bold and sophisticated men and women with enough daring to say precisely what they want for the entire world to see. Smart! Not sure that I could ever do that, but I did see one ad by "a professional man (mid-eighties, it said) who lives on the east coast and is seeking companionship," sounded mildly interesting. "Has home in New York and summer place ...". Now if that had been "lives on the west coast with a summer home on Tiburon or Belvedere," who knows. Maybe would have answered it. Felt daring just thinking about it. Nah, he'd probably be a Republican anyway.
It did stir memories of living in relationship and brought up some nostalgia for times past. Guess I've kept myself too busy to have regrets about living singly, but -- maybe it's just the effects of February 14th. Remembered with a grin of the Valentine's Day that I baked a heart-shaped meatloaf for Bill. He told that story for years, and embellished it with descriptions of sprigs of parsley placed strategically to suggest God knows what! He always made me sound clever and Noel Coward witty in the telling. It's also true that it takes an awful lot of "busy" to re-direct all that sexual energy elsewhere -- and an equal amount of self-delusion to convince oneself that none of that matters. It does.
I'm thinking that I may need to re-think the entire notion of romantic love, and embrace a broader definition of just what that is, and just how that might be achieved. I may have more time on this planet than previously thought, and updating my conception of just how that time might be spent may need consideration (grinning wickedly!).
Now, back to those tango lessons ... .
Friday, February 13, 2004
Though little has changed and the future is still "dimly lit," yet ... .
I woke to a more hopeful day today.
Dinner with Marilyn Langlois and her Jasper was productive and found some new friends who may prove to be very helpful in getting the school open and running again this fall. I'm always buoyed by contact with other productive people, and the Goode's (husband from the legal staff of now-deposed Governor Gray Davis, and wife, Erica, a physician) proved to be wonderfully warm and innovative and shows all the signs of becoming good friends in the future. Became reacquainted with Maury, about my age and a recent widower. Met him a week ago and enjoyed good conversations with him and with Marilyn. There's a brightness of eye and animation in body that announces the presence of the Goodes in a room -- I've sensed it before in others who've come into my life in the past. Chemistry? I liked them and Maury, and of course, the Langlois. Jennifer Ross, grants writer and dear friend, and Melita Sims, principal and adminstrator of the school, completed the group. We agreed to come together for a celebration exactly one year from last night -- assuming that we will have by then breathed new life into the Barbara Alexander Academy.
With my stockinged feet resting on the warm body of the family Newfoundland (whose favorite place during meals is under the dining-room table), we shared a wonderful feast and a wealth of goodwill. Good wine, good food, good company, and a great project to worry into being, plus a spectacular view of the night sky over the San Francisco Bay from Point Richmond. Can life be better? Hardly.
Home about ten thirty to the sound of a telephone and the plaintive voice of Dorian who was not scheduled to be picked up until this morning ... .
Still feeling well-fed in both soul and body, it didn't feel like too much of an imposition to climb back into my car and drive to Oakland to gather her up. She was grateful to see me (Kyle was rarely mentioned) and chatted happily all the way home. (Okay, so some of it was complaints about him, but with something added -- a growing recognition of his considerable flaws, with a matching impatience with his inability to change.) But, either I was in too good a mood to have my paper hat displaced, or, she is actually feeling it better to be with me tonight in a place of safety than at home, alone. Either way, we arrived back at my apartment pleased with ourselves despite the late hour. We even did some giggling before falling asleep, always a good sign.
This morning she rose with the expectation of going to NIAD. After a fleeting complaint about feeling a cold coming on, there was no resistance and a sense of anticipation for what she would create today. We're making progress.
Having the time to re-think just how she and I will move into the future is a luxury that I didn't anticipate. There are some programs I'd like to look into and will do so over what might be a short window of opportunity -- until Kyle figures out how to seduce her back into his control. How weird that I find myself in a competition for her affection. How healthy can that be? Feel uncomfortable even typing the words ...
I must be careful to make some corrections in the balances in my own life -- now that my work life has been interrupted. Will have to make a real effort to resist the temptation to bury myself in satisfying her needs and neglecting my own. That would be so easy. So justifiable since she is so impaired. My sons and my grandchildren need me as well, and maybe most of all -- I need myself. The choices don't seem to get any easier as experience mounts. If that were not true, this last stretch would be a breeze, wouldn't it?
Bill used to rise every morning at five o'clock to meditate. For the entire ten years that we were married, this was his practice. "Need this for focus," he'd say. It's a thought...may be a way to get in touch with that being who lives behind my eyes and directs my every move.
If ever there was a time ... .
I woke to a more hopeful day today.
Dinner with Marilyn Langlois and her Jasper was productive and found some new friends who may prove to be very helpful in getting the school open and running again this fall. I'm always buoyed by contact with other productive people, and the Goode's (husband from the legal staff of now-deposed Governor Gray Davis, and wife, Erica, a physician) proved to be wonderfully warm and innovative and shows all the signs of becoming good friends in the future. Became reacquainted with Maury, about my age and a recent widower. Met him a week ago and enjoyed good conversations with him and with Marilyn. There's a brightness of eye and animation in body that announces the presence of the Goodes in a room -- I've sensed it before in others who've come into my life in the past. Chemistry? I liked them and Maury, and of course, the Langlois. Jennifer Ross, grants writer and dear friend, and Melita Sims, principal and adminstrator of the school, completed the group. We agreed to come together for a celebration exactly one year from last night -- assuming that we will have by then breathed new life into the Barbara Alexander Academy.
With my stockinged feet resting on the warm body of the family Newfoundland (whose favorite place during meals is under the dining-room table), we shared a wonderful feast and a wealth of goodwill. Good wine, good food, good company, and a great project to worry into being, plus a spectacular view of the night sky over the San Francisco Bay from Point Richmond. Can life be better? Hardly.
Home about ten thirty to the sound of a telephone and the plaintive voice of Dorian who was not scheduled to be picked up until this morning ... .
Still feeling well-fed in both soul and body, it didn't feel like too much of an imposition to climb back into my car and drive to Oakland to gather her up. She was grateful to see me (Kyle was rarely mentioned) and chatted happily all the way home. (Okay, so some of it was complaints about him, but with something added -- a growing recognition of his considerable flaws, with a matching impatience with his inability to change.) But, either I was in too good a mood to have my paper hat displaced, or, she is actually feeling it better to be with me tonight in a place of safety than at home, alone. Either way, we arrived back at my apartment pleased with ourselves despite the late hour. We even did some giggling before falling asleep, always a good sign.
This morning she rose with the expectation of going to NIAD. After a fleeting complaint about feeling a cold coming on, there was no resistance and a sense of anticipation for what she would create today. We're making progress.
Having the time to re-think just how she and I will move into the future is a luxury that I didn't anticipate. There are some programs I'd like to look into and will do so over what might be a short window of opportunity -- until Kyle figures out how to seduce her back into his control. How weird that I find myself in a competition for her affection. How healthy can that be? Feel uncomfortable even typing the words ...
I must be careful to make some corrections in the balances in my own life -- now that my work life has been interrupted. Will have to make a real effort to resist the temptation to bury myself in satisfying her needs and neglecting my own. That would be so easy. So justifiable since she is so impaired. My sons and my grandchildren need me as well, and maybe most of all -- I need myself. The choices don't seem to get any easier as experience mounts. If that were not true, this last stretch would be a breeze, wouldn't it?
Bill used to rise every morning at five o'clock to meditate. For the entire ten years that we were married, this was his practice. "Need this for focus," he'd say. It's a thought...may be a way to get in touch with that being who lives behind my eyes and directs my every move.
If ever there was a time ... .
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