Forget Christmas Carols

 

Oops, published out of date blog posts

 Working on my mobile phone to update this blog, I accidentally posted old entries that I thought I had deleted or unpublished today, which then got sent to my mailing list.

I suppose my Faithful Readers will get to see what a traumatized, grieving person I was a few years ago. I am grateful that at least some of that trauma has been resolved.

At any rate, apologies!

What Else Can I Write?

 What else can I write for these times? 2016 has recycled and the dumpster has begun to unload again. 

Faithful Readers, I am 65 years old, having lived more or less on borrowed time since my thirties. I have had 3 near-death experiences. I lived through three years of chemotherapy for lupus that took everything to get through. I managed to avoid Covid, but the stress of those years aged me, as it did everyone I know. I now have two heart conditions and work every day to stay well so that I can stay on this earth. 

But I have never, ever lived through years like this.

I was born into the Eisenhower administration. I clearly remember JFK's assassination, though I was only four. My uncle served in the Vietnam war and came back with profound PTSD. I remember the first moon landing, the Watergate hearings, Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon. I remember Jimmy Carter losing to Ronald Reagan, and the profound sense I had then that nothing was going to be the same. I lived through the Bush presidencies, the Clinton presidency, rejoiced when Barack Obama was elected, practically threw up when the buffoon, Trump, was elected, and felt deep gratitude for Biden's presidency.

Now Trump the Buffoon inches towards being sworn into office. Not a madman, really: a malignant buffoon, but someone clearly tailor-made, in his unfortunate cognitive decline, for manipulation by other malignant forces.

No one knows what will happen, or even what is happening now. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has promised to protect this state. I am grateful I do not live somewhere else. 

I think the continued challenge for these times is to not throw myself into fear and despair, even though that seems a luxury right now. I plan to never listen to the Orange Reptilian honk away--even as I know I must keep aware of the news and of budding menace. I pray my family is safe, and my loved ones (I really want to say I don't care about the MAGA ones, but I do, even as I'd rather not hear from them again).

Right now, my hope is that I live to see this clown taken down once and for all, via the Midterm Elections first. We erased the idiots once from the White House, and despite Trump's bluster, I still think he will never become a dictator. 

I am grateful I chose to try and find conscious gratitude for the Biden administration. I did not fear dying in a nuclear war then. I did not feel a constantly knotted-up stomach. I had to search out what the man was doing for the country, because it was All Trump, All The Time, in the media. That he had to end his campaign was a tragedy. There were forces around him, too. Harris had racism, misogyny, apathy, and the MAGA need for "bread and circuses" against her. We lost, and the world lost, too--though some don't know it yet.

Tonight the moon is full; the annual flowers in my planters are dying. I planted three tomato plants; we ate tomatoes all summer until we got sick of them. I harvested seven pumpkins (with a last one still on the vine). I have three pounds of seeds from sunflower heads, five pounds of popcorn, and maybe a half-pound of scarlet runner beans. Broccoli is going into planters this week. Harvesting it all was a moment of quiet and centering for me. Learning to dry seeds and corn felt primal to me. Perhaps the skills will prove useful.

What will things be like as the old year ends and the new year begins? One last Christmas for the Bidens in the White House. The next Christmas, Melania might buy some tinsel at CVS and drape it on a coatrack in the Oval Office. 

I have had many, many times in my life where I felt no hope whatsoever: and yet hope was there. Even as the world slides into shadow, literally and figuratively, it is important to find something bright to grasp. It seems an essential search right now for any ray of light.

To MAGAs

 To MAGAs:

I see you. I see your asinine posts thanking your version of God that the convicted rapist/felon/con/grifter/reptile Donald J. Trump was elected. I see you thanking your plaster, hollow-eyed version of Baby Jesus. I see you in your delusion that he's going to Make America Great Again. I see you crowing about owning the libs.

Here's a message for you: Trump hates you. You think you've "owned the libs?" Trump owns YOU.

If you voted for Donald Trump, you share in every evil thing he stands for. You stand in the shadow of a convicted rapist, a felon, a con who laughs about what a bunch of idiots you are. You think Trump the God will protect you when your Medicare is slashed, when your Social Security dwindles to nothing, when the price of food skyrockets because there's no one to harvest it. You're not exempt. You'll suffer like the rest of us. And Trump and his toadies won't care, because they care nothing for you.

Btw: there are some branches of theology that theorize Jesus Christ was disabled. There are some texts that describe him as crippled, bald, short (under five feet tall), but with a compelling gaze. You would spit on a person like this: an unattractive man with disabilites, with brown skin, someone who was a refugee from violence. You would put him in a detention camp, guaranteed. 

As for the rest of us: I don't know the answers, yet. Maybe there are no answers. But we're good at gathering strength when the chips are down. 

For as long as I have the right to free speech, I will use it. I hope my fellow writers do, too. Yes, we're scared: so is every writer who lives under oppression. But we rise, as we have, and as we must.

Update, And All the Changes

First: I will be updating this blog more frequently, I hope, and I have also joined with the modern era and opened a substack. I will be adding a link to this on my blog's page as well. I hope to update it as well as this.

My substack may very well be more "public" than this blog, which has felt very internal and diary-like. Here is the substack link. You can subscribe if you wish, or not:

Joan McMillan's substack

Faithful Readers, I know it has been some time since I have posted. I have been in a long recuperation from the experience with my heart last August. Further tests have shown that I have an enlarged heart along with coronary artery spasms. I never thought I would be on multiple heart medications, but here I am. I am on both time-released nitroglycerin and "regular" nitroglycerin. Curiously, I hope that if I am to ever have a fatal heart attack, that I just drop like a stone and never come back. 

Oddly, the people who most stridently in denial about me having lupus, and how much it debilitated me, have offered me kindness and wishes for good health after learning about my cardiac event. And still, some think it is a kind of affront, as if I am to live forever. Get used to it, folks: that day will come for me, too, and I am not afraid.

I have PTSD from the experience, I tire easily, and hot weather affects me much more in my mid-sixties than ever. There are days I am sometimes in such pain, it feels like someone is shooting electric shocks through my body. These are days that happen every few weeks, thankfully, but they are horrific. There are medications but they dull my mind--a tradeoff. 

Can I get my health back? I'm trying. I will not leave the earth until I know for sure that my grandchildren will be okay. That is all I want now. And to finish a couple of quilts, and of course still write. Everything else is gravy, as Raymond Carter wrote. 

I'm turning from this short update to watch the third day of the Democratic National Convention. Someone said that these last few weeks have been the most stressful ten years of their lives! We are living history--hopefully one of the best histories. We have a chance to put the Orange Lizard and his ear-bandage-diaper-wearing-specimen-cup-holding-insurrection-making followers back in their holes. 

Life can be better. We can rise to the occasion. Vote as if your life depends on it, as if the life of the world depends on it, because it does.

Closing Chapter

Faithful readers, I believe I am seeing my dying process on the horizon--hopefully a far one, but today it seems very near. 

I have been diagnosed with three very serious concurrent heart conditions, two of which could be fatal with little or no warning. One reason I am alive right now is because I have taken very good care of myself over the last couple of decades. I believe, however, that my daughter's death literally broke my heart. Right now I am lucky to be alive, for many reasons, but everyone's luck runs out eventually.

My heart conditions are congenital and were not detected in full until I ended up in the hospital in August 2023 with an evolving heart attack. A coronary angiogram at the time showed that I have zero plaque in my coronary arteries, something greatly in my favor. I have a good cardiologist and his staff is wonderful. However, this new twilight zone carries with it the sense that I have become a near-transparent ghost on the shore of the Styx. Everything feels grey in the Cardiology medical office. It does not seem like a place of healing. My heart medications, though manageable, are a reminder that something has gone terribly wrong.

It's true that no one can ever predict one's natural lifespan. My great-grandmother Maria lived most of her life with one of my conditions and passed away at 98--perhaps later, as it was rumored she shaved a couple of years off her age! A certain vanity runs in the family. It's possible I can stabilize, and I hold to that belief. The worsening of my heart problems has greatly raised the bar for a stroke or heart attack. I muse that I would rather have a heart attack and keep my mental functioning, even with the debility (which could be overcome) and PTSD afterwards. It would be merciful after all I have gone through if I just dropped like a stone and popped straightaway into the afterlife. I'm starting to have more friends and family over there than here: this is to be expected as one ages. It would be a relief to just succumb to this process. But I have vowed to stay here for as long as I can, to make sure all of my grandchildren are safe.

I am not afraid of death and am slowly beginning to be at peace with my fate. Fearful that my loved ones will forget to grant my dying wish--to receive the Last Rites, the final sacrament of my childhood faith--I will be asking the local priest for it soon. It has evolved from a before-death ritual to a healing, life affirming ritual, so I feel it's appropriate.

A stroke terrifies me: to lose my language, my ability to walk, to move freely: tempting to ask one of my doctor or nurse friends well in advance if they would be willing to load up a syringe of morphine if it happens and send me packing. But how can I ask another human being to do that for me? It is unconscionable. I will not willingly choose my own death and leave that as both my legacy and in the DNA of future generations. I will let the tide go out on its own.

I have not done everything as a writer (so far, at least) that I wanted to do in this life, and I am at peace with that. I did more than some, less than others, and also have come to see that the narcissism, the competition, the disappointment over a perceived lack of recognition, the warring between writers, the haves vs. the perceived have-nots: these are mirages. I think it's a worthy path to pursue the mirage and reap whatever you can from it. But it's still a mirage.

What matters is the act of creation: so what if you reach three people or three million with your writing? So what if your magnum opus unexpectedly appears on the cheap-paperback stand in a 7/11 (yes, they had those back then) as one of my professors in college did? Heck, that's more than many writers get: who cares if someone picks up a cherry Slurpee along with your magnum opus? My first dance performance with my former troupe was between the salad bar and the extra-seating area in a Round Table pizza place in San Jose (the owners, curiously, hosted bellydance shows monthly). It was a blast, and a very treasured memory.

I hope the afterlife, when I get there, is what I have heard described in near-death experiences. I believe I have seen it before, in dreams and my own NDEs. I hope to know everything about the universe, the historical events of this world which were never recorded, to meet up with my relatives and all the people who loved me and whom I loved in return. If there is indeed nothing and the jig is up when my body ceases to function--well, I won't know that. I'll just go out like a candle. That is the serenity of accepting mortality, though it's something I have to work for over and over these days.

The Bhagavad-Gita says that "The soul is neither born, nor does it ever die; nor having once existed, does it ever cease to be. The soul is without birth, eternal, immortal, and ageless. It is not destroyed when the body is destroyed." I believe this.

Until that time comes, I do hope to be back here in this small corner of the Internet, hopefully to say I am doing better. I know I will keep writing until I physically and mentally cannot. As I said at the beginning of this entry, I see my death on the horizon; perhaps it will wait, perhaps not. But the culmination of the positive things I have done in this life concentrate to one point now: I walked on this earth for a few decades, and soon I will be gone. And this is what is. My only sorrow is that for some, my death will bring about grief and pain. I wish there was some way not to have that happen.

I hope those who come here, those who knew me when, and those who know me now. remember me as a person who was wholly and completely human. I made terrible mistakes and have tried, to the best of my ability, to remedy and make amends for them. I was at war with myself most of my life, and I pulled people into that war. That is my greatest regret. I hope that I made up my transgressions. And I hope at least some people think of the good things I have done during this gift of an incarnation. I know the good cannot outweigh the bad. But perhaps there is some good to remember me by.

Let's hope I am back to write more, but if not: Om shanti. Blessed Be. And so it is. Amen.

Every Story Must End

Faithful Readers, I have again been away--partially for the happy reason that I am on the second draft of my romantic comedy (more of a "dramady"). I am proud of this book, even if it never sees the light of day. by being published.

The other reason is that on August 28th, I went to the emergency room at the local hospital, thinking I was having an asthma attack. I have had asthma for many years, not very well controlled despite a daily steroid inhaler. During the CZU fire a couple of years back, my lungs took a hit from smoke inhalation, from which they have never really recovered. Smoke and artificial fragrances set asthma off now almost immediately. On August 28th, while at an appointment, I was exposed to the most vile, oily, toxic air freshener (the plug-in-the-wall kind) in a revolting vanilla fragrance. It could be smelled strongly even down the street. I apologized and left the appointment immediately, very stressed, though I did not indicate that to her.

The ensuing asthma attack (or so I thought) was quite intense--shortness of breath, pain in my lungs (or so I thought), and gasping for breath. Because my symptoms were so acute, I was brought into our local hospital's urgent care section, which is staffed by physician's assistants. The physician's assistant came in and listened to my lungs, said they were clear-sounding (not unusual for me), and ordered a breathing treatment based on my symptoms. A breathing treatment consists of a bronchodilator, delivered in a fine mist and inhaled over a period of time in the ER.

The physician's assistant listened to my lungs again before the respiratory therapist came in with the set-up for the breathing treatment. She paused and said, "I'm going to listen to your heart for a minute." She listened and listened, and when the nurse came in with the breathing treatment, she said, "Don't give her that."

Everything happened quite quickly (and calmly) then. She sent me for a blood draw, then an EKG. Usually when I have had an EKG, they declare it normal, and that's that. The guy who did the EKG left quickly with it, and soon after, I found myself in a wheelchair, being taken into the "Emergency" side of the ER.

And then, Faithful Readers, so many medical folks started working on me that it was nearly like the iconic A Night at the Opera scene where people start crowding into Groucho's stateroom. One person set up an IV port in the crook of my right arm (unfortunately they messed it up at first and blood shot across the room). Someone put a blood pressure cuff on my left arm, I was put on oxygen, and hooked up to a heart monitor with more electrodes than I have ever seen--they felt like they were everywhere. I began to sweat like I'd been running a marathon. My thoughts ran to "This is one hell of an asthma attack." The medical personnel were quite calm, talking to each other, drawing blood yet again, and trussing me up like a Thanksgiving turkey with tubes and wires.

I had literally no idea what was going on until a nurse gave me aspirin and administered the "clotbuster" medication. I did not feel fear, exactly, just reflected that I really, really did not want to be having a stroke, that I did not want to die like my sister did, of a massive stroke that instantly killed her. I did not want my loved ones to be traumatized by another, sudden death.

Then one fellow, who had been scrutinizing my heart monitor, turned to me and said, "So you came in thinking you were having an asthma attack?" I nodded and he said, "Your cardiac enzymes are elevated."

I had no idea what he meant. I figured enzymes were some benign thing, like the type they put in laundry detergent. I did not have time to inquire about that because the fellow said, "We need to do a CAT scan to see if you have a blood clot in your heart."

Somehow, I was not panicking. The calm atmosphere of the room helped. It was explained that cardiac enzymes are usually undetectable in bloodwork. It is only when the heart muscle is becoming injured or dying that these enzymes are released, in particular one called troponin. And what was causing my heart to release cardiac enzymes? 

I was in the middle of an evolving heart attack. The fellow further told me that he was glad I did not have a breathing treatment because (drum roll), there was a real possibility I would have gone into cardiac arrest.

Yes, Faithful Readers, I would have, in sum, more than likely dropped dead, my stressed heart unable to withstand the medication in the breathing treatment.

They admitted me and I was taken to the CAT scan room (loads of fun getting unhooked from everything, having the test, and then getting hooked back up). There was no blood clot in my heart, for which I was extraordinarily grateful.

Meantime, the pain on the left side of my chest was worsening. I felt like someone had leveled a blunt, ice-cold pole and popped it into my left-side chest, hard. They asked me to describe the pain--I said it felt like there was a large circle of pain on the left side of my chest, surrounded by coldness (that was the weirdest sensation of all). There was pressure on the left side, also. A doctor who works with my primary care physician came in and began to watch my heart monitor. She told me to tell her when my chest pain increased. When it happened, she gave me a nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue, and the pain and pressure went away.

This process went on and on: I would feel a rise in the pressure and pain, she would watch the monitor, then give me a nitroglycerin pill. Sometimes the pain would not stop with one nitroglycerin; I ended up needing three tablets a couple of times. Once, when she stepped out of the room, I felt the pain and pressure start, but wondered if it was enough to call her back in the room. She walked in, looked at the heart monitor, then as if reading my mind, said "Please don't wait to see if it's bad enough."

I wonder if they had, at some point, given something to relax me because the next thing I remember was being taken to the Cardiac Care Unit (comparable to an ICU, but with specialized equipment for cardiac patients). The nurse was a courteous young man who helped me get comfortable, as much as I could, and I fell asleep. I was beyond exhausted. I was sweating, still mostly in my street clothes except for a hospital gown, and famished (they gave me a turkey sandwich and an apple juice).

A cardiologist came in the next morning and discussed my condition. He said he would do a cardiac catheterization (where a catheter is threaded through a major artery into the heart, and dye is injected into the heart so the coronary arteries can be visualized). I suddenly remembered that I'd had this procedure years ago, when my chronic illness (lupus) was first diagnosed, and I was put on heart medication for a long period of time. Somehow that condition stabilized, but I do not remember what happened. I don't even remember what the condition was (it was thirty+ years ago, for one thing).

The cardiologist explained that the procedure was different from many years ago. Instead of putting the catheter into the femoral artery (a really creepy procedure), they thread a thin catheter into the radial artery of the wrist and into the heart. The cardiologist further explained the risks of the procedure, that he could do things like a coronary bypass through the catheter, etc. He was a kind and courteous man.

I was wheeled into the catheterization lab--and talk about state of the art! Stainless steel everywhere, and very disorienting, with reflections like a funhouse mirror. I was not allowed to watch the procedure; they put up a kind of shield.

Turns out my coronary arteries were free of plaque that would indicate clogged arteries. It was discovered that I have a slightly enlarged heart, that a small section of one coronary artery is inside the heart muscle, not on top of it. The other condition is spasms of my coronary arteries, which causes the chest pain. It can be a dangerous condition: if the spasm goes on too long, or compresses the buried section of artery too much or too long, I can have a heart attack.

I'm now, once again, wandering in the strange, almost afterlife-like, world of the chronically ill. I now have a cardiologist, who has put me on time-release nitroglycerin, so that I do not have to use the "rescue" nitroglycerin tablets. This dilates the coronary arteries and reduces the amount of work my heart has to do. I am also on statins (cholesterol medication). My cholesterol was a bit high, and my cardiologist wants it below 100, all to support my heart and keep it working so hard.

Lupus (which I have had now for 30 years) could very well be the culprit, but I will not know until a few more tests are run.

In sum, I am profoundly ill, even though I do feel much better after a few months of recovery, mild exercise, eating a heart-healthy diet (as much as I can), and taking all my medications properly. I am not afraid to die. I AM afraid of leaving people I love behind, and hurting them by my going. I have no desire to plunge people into those year+ grieving periods that seem to happen more and more these days. 

Every day now is precious, even though I must confess that I am not always using my days well, and would like to change that. I could live for many, many years and hope I do. But I am mortal and at some point, my story and my journey must end. Every day of my life since 1993 has been bought with more tremendous effort than I have ever let on. It has been a worthy price to remain on this planet.

I often say that the death of my precious daughter broke my heart, and turns out it did. I believe in an afterlife, and I hope that I will be reunited with my loved ones.

But not now, and hopefully not for many years.

What Sinead Did

Yesterday I revisited a video of a Saturday Night Live performance which I found bizarre and scandalous when it first came out: Sinead O'Connor's acapella performance of Bob Marley's "War," where she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II at the end, saying, "Fight the real enemy."

I had not seen this video in many years. It shows Sinead looking like an ambassador from the future, with her shaved head (not so unusual now), her beautiful white dress which made her look like an acolyte, her astounding voice...and her courage to shed her unique light on the abuse which so many, many of us who grew up in the Catholic Church experienced. She was mocked, vilified, treated with the worst disrespect because she dared to speak what so many could not, because no one wanted to hear.

I wonder how many people know that a teenage Sinead O'Connor was sent to one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries in Ireland, a Church-run, prison-like environment for (perceived) "throwaway" and "wayward" girls and women. You can read about her experience here:

https://www.her.ie/celeb/sinead-oconnor-reveals-how-her-time-in-a-magdalene-laundry-as-a-teenager-affected-her-26994

She knew. She experienced it all firsthand. She knew people who had suffered, and whose suffering was ignored by the very institution which should have been a refuge. The picture of the Pope she tore up had been displayed in her childhood home, and represented, for her, lies and abuse inside and outside her home.

When I watched the infamous video last night, I burst into tears at the end. It is cruel and unfortunate that this talented, outspoken woman has been mocked so much in her career. I cannot imagine the strength it has taken to get through all the difficulties in her life, including the recent death of one of her children, and still keep singing. 

 

 

These Luminescent Days

 I decided to start working more on this blog, which has been something of a lifeline for me since 2005, when I started it.

Right now, despite being vaxxed and with all my boosters as well, I am still isolating a great deal. I expect my life may be like this for a very long time, maybe years. My lungs, already compromised with asthma, were damaged in the Santa Cruz fires a couple of years ago. I have ended up in the ER twice this year with asthma and have had two fungal infections in my lungs over the last couple of months, a side effect of the steroid inhaler I use every day now. Any respiratory infection is dangerous for me, but Covid is a great risk, still. I sit at home, write, work in the garden, do yoga, take Zoom classes when I can, and participate in some outside things (I'm currently helping to take care of two very cute chickens at my granddaughter's former elementary school). I wonder if I will ever be able to go to a museum, a concert, a movie. I wear N95 masks also despite the expense. It's worth it to me not to get any respiratory infection at all. I am healthier all around for it.

I have neglected to tell my readers that my 33 year old daughter (whom I call "Kat" in this blog) died suddenly in March 2021. I think of her as a casualty of the pandemic, someone left vulnerable because the people who loved her could not physically be with her. I talked to her on the phone, on chat, etc., but it was not the same as seeing her in person. She had a late-term miscarriage in February 2021; less than a month later, she was gone, the circumstances of her death unresolved.

I do not remember much about the six months after her death. A friend of the family bought crypts in a beautiful part of a local cemetery, side by side because after my death, my cremains will rest beside her (yes, it's weird to look at my resting-place, but very Buddhist). But she remains uninterred due to family conflicts. I have made a shrine for her ashes in my writing room, which I no longer use for that purpose. I've made her shrine as beautiful as possible, and remember the many good things about the last years she was alive, when she so often had radiant health and sobriety, and truly was a mother to her children. She and I always talked deeply about so many things, and I feel I lost not just my daughter, but my best friend. 

During my journey through this incomprehensible grief, I have read a book I've turned to in many  challenging situations, Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor. I will end this entry with a quote from the book:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Strange Days

 Dear Readers, it was a long summer for my family. My granddaughters, all three, are back in their various schools. Thistle is in eighth grade, something I find hard to believe. I am cleaning and putting old toys into storage, all the while reflecting in the "just yesterday" manner. 

Today I watched kids emerge from the school Thistle attends--enthusiastic, cute kids doing the ordinary things, riding bikes home, talking to friends, parents chatting. There is the hope that we have come through a phase of the pandemic where life can feel a little bit more engaged, especially in terms of being connected with school. Last year, picking up or dropping off Thistle felt like just sending her into a nice edifice called a "school," for I could not enter due to Covid protocols. The school still has safety protocols and many children and parents are masked, but the school is holding more events now and I feel relatively safe about going to some of them. Thistle has had all her vaccinations and boosters, as have I. To top it all off, the weather in Santa Cruz from Spring onwards has felt much more normal. 

Still, I can't help but feel that this touch of normalcy is simply a reprieve.

At It Again

 I haven't been posting much since a tragic and unexpected death happened in my immediate family last year. It never ceases to amaze me that it is possible to begin to live again after such an overwhelming event. In many ways, I will never be the same. We are never the same after traumatic events, of course: to a greater or lesser extent, the old self dies and a new self is reborn. But I felt a bit more "in the world" today.

The Font of Grace

Some of my readers know that my family and I have experienced an enormous personal tragedy. It is too hard to write about and may always be. I can only say that the quote by Aeschylus (quoted in a time of national crisis by Bobby Kennedy) applies to my personal life and the life of my family right now:

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain, which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Blogger Is Ending Email Subscriptions For All Blogs

 My Dear Readers:

I have a few email subscribers and want to let you all know that Blogger is ending direct email subscriptions as of July 30th, 2021. This means that Blogger will no longer automatically email my blog posts whenever I publish one.

There are a few options to keep getting updates to The Strega’s Story. The simplest is to go on my Authory page and subscribe to my newsletter. The “Authory” link is just below my contact form on this blog, in the right-hand column, and I am providing it here as well:

Joan McMillan’s Authory Page

The subscription form is down in the right-hand corner of the page.

You will then be added to my newsletter, which will automatically contain my latest blog posts (exactly as the current email subscriptions, just through a subscription on another site). Authory automatically receives my blog posts and then emails them to subscribers.

You can also check out my other writing on Authory. Just FYI: my published creative writing will also be added to my Authory site from time to time, and you may receive these as well in the newsletter. I update these things very slowly, as I have to scan and otherwise retrieve my published work from the ether.

Authory is committed to not spamming, so hopefully there will be no problems with that.

You can also follow me on twitter (the link is in the all-important right column on this blog). I will try to update blog posts on twitter regularly.

If the above options don’t work, there are other ways to continue to get updates to this blog. One is via an RSS reader (there is a link to this in the right-hand column of this blog, beneath the “Subscribe to My BlogBlog”). Click “subscribe in a reader.” This will take you to the Feedburner site. There you can choose a feed reader and subscribe to this blog’s updates. Notifications of new blog posts will then be emailed to you.

*Note: Do NOT use the email subscription option. I’ve kept it “live” so as to get this out to my subscribers, but the service itself will be deactivated tomorrow.*

I tried all of the feed reader services offered on the Feedburner link, and discovered the following:

NetVibes and Feedly were the most responsive in terms of loading up the feed from this blog. Feedly was easiest, NetVibes a little challenging.

MyYahoo kept having trouble loading the feed, and many of the feed reader links are broken or inactive. Your best bet if you want to use any of the feed readers offered on the link seems to be either NetVibes or Feedly. 

Honestly, the easiest route seems to be subscribing to this blog via my Authory site. 

Questions about all this? Contact me via my contact form, or email me at poetlore@gmail.com

Wade, Immediately

Here’s another vintage photo I found while trying to stay cool in the heatwave. Here is a picture of a long-ago San Diego beach where it seems people could just park (or camp out), walk a few steps, and then wade right into the ocean!

There’s a cute vintage trailer in the foreground, btw. Never knew anyone who actually had that particular one. Note the little awnings!

Iced Tea

 It has been so hot in Santa Cruz, and the fear of fire is always there. I still plant my flowers and hope for the best. The last heat wave up north horrified me: fruit cooked on the trees and shellfish cooked in the sand.

Sequestered in my room (against the heat), I searched around for some scrapbook ideas (I like, as you can tell, vintage ads) and came across this rather fun one from the McCormick company. The give-aways back then always seemed to be good quality (this pitcher was made by the Hall company and was ceramic).

Masked: More Thoughts

 I am still wearing a mask outside except for when I have a snack with Thistle. Fridays are “special treat day” and we usually have frozen yogurt or ice cream. Generally there’s a place for us to sit in the shade. Thistle wears a mask also because she is not yet vaccinated, though will be soon. And we do go places. I’ve been committed to trying every which way to keep her engaged with other kids as well as protect her against the virus.

I’ve decided I’m not entitled to wear a mask just because I am vaccinated—and look how quickly the information about masks is changing! It’s foolish to believe Covid is simply over. There is talk of a booster because immunity does not last, suggestions about going back to wearing a mask, concerns about the delta variant. On the other hand, some experts say to just not wear masks, that we won’t need a booster, that the vaccine confers immunity against the delta variant. We know how long things like the polio vaccine confer immunity—this immunization has been around for decades. We know little about how long immunity lasts with the Covid immunization.

By the way, luck with getting the general population of people to wear masks again and accept booster shots! I am up for an MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) booster (at 62). I know very few adults who get required booster shots for anything. 

Dear readers, I have waited, too, for society to open again. I’ve been struggling to raise a child in a world that has changed so much for her. I’m realizing harsh lessons about how little control we have with so much in this world.

At the same time, I’ve come to cherish everything a great deal more.

Because I Feel Like It

 I was vaccinated in May against Covid-19. First shot: no problem, just a touch of soreness in one arm.

Second shot: I have never heard of anyone in my circle having a reaction as amazingly “robust” as mine. My fever soared to 102 degrees, my muscles felt as if someone had beaten me up with a steel bat, and I felt like a sodden pancake, unable to get up, and in the worst pain of my entire life. Plus, my arm hurt. Plus I had chills and chattering teeth so intensely that I put a washcloth between my upper and lower teeth so that I would not break them. In two days, I was better, though it took a while for all the muscle soreness to fade.

I still wear my mask out partially because my child is still unvaccinated, and also because I have not had a cold all year, nor the flu, nor any respiratory illness, and less allergy symptoms. For someone with asthma, whose lungs were damaged (even more than they were before) in the CZU fires last year (I now use a steroid inhaler on top of my rescue inhaler), this "filtered life" has been wonderful. No pneumonia! No bronchitis! No trips to the ER for breathing treatments in the middle of being sick! No lupus flare-ups from a body taxed by “ordinary” viruses! I’ll glue a mask to my face to avoid those things. With the state of my lungs now, I would love to lower my experience of respiratory illness. 

And you know what? It’s nobody’s business who, among vaccinated people, chooses to still wear a mask. I know two biologists who are still wearing them and will do so until the virus is diminished worldwide—not just in the US. Their explanation? Viruses mutate ALL THE TIME. It’s in their nature, it’s what they do to insure that they stick around. And there might be immunity from most vaccines to the variants right now, but perhaps not to one that crops up later. Here is a decent article (albeit from January 2021) on this subject:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210119-covid-19-variants-how-the-virus-will-mutate-in-the-future

Even six months later, I’m hearing too many variables about the longevity of the vaccine: it confers lifetime immunity; immunity will fade and everyone will need a booster shot (good luck getting everyone on the planet to do THAT one); it is unclear how long immunity lasts from the vaccine. Etc.

My response to people not wearing masks? I don’t care what they do. It’s none of my business. And what I do is none of theirs. 

Do I go anyplace these days? Heck, I never went anywhere before, and I am crowd-phobic anyways. Make no mistake: I plan to get back to going to museums, concerts (outdoor for now here in Santa Cruz), the Monterey Bay Aquarium, etc (I seem to gravitate towards museums and aquariums in my ‘old age,” lol). But I’ll be masking. It’s nobody’s business if someone chooses to stay home more than they did in the “before-Covid” time. Some folks have made profound life changes and have found they actually like being home more, and not rush around hither and thither. I’m one of those. The small things mean much more to me now. 

Plus, I lost ten pounds during the lockdown and have no desire to return to coffeehouse or most restaurant food. I’m going to be the weird person who eats an apple when they go to a coffeehouse to write. The two times I had a cookie outside the home, it tasted cloying because my taste buds had not had sugar in so long. Lots of changes, many of which I hope will be good for my health.

Granted, I am raising a kid and believe me, my days during the pandemic have been very full, with online school and such. And I worked my tail off on my romantic comedy, The Pleasure Palace. First draft is a couple of chapters from being done.

In other news, recently I made the decision to pay for my (hopefully very distant) cremation, and the crypt where my ashes are going to go (at the Rolls-Royce of burial sites: the Mariposa Garden at Santa Cruz Memorial Park). Figure it’s a good place for my children, friends, and relatives to visit, if ever they do. Nearly every death in my immediate family has been sudden, and cremation, etc. can be expensive. We do what we can for our loved ones, but my experience has been that the money-clock starts ticking the minute you walk into the funeral home and I have no desire to put a financial burden on my loved ones. 

It’s sobering to actually see my “final home.” I’ve cheated the Grim Reaper many, many times but realize that one day my luck is going to run out. It’s augured-in the sense that I do not have endless time to do the things I want...and while I plan and dream of travel and such, at the same time I realize how majestically absurd this life is. It is important to fill the well of the psyche up, but one day all those experiences will end. Seeing one's own resting-place is like having The Ghost of Christmas Future visit--only the spectre in this scenario has a definite hippie vibe, and the resting-place is not a grave in a desolate cemetery, but a niche in a lovely, curving brickwork wall, in a garden with a fountain, a pond, a beautiful, lush flowering cherry tree. "It all ends," says the Hippie Reaper. "What will you do with the rest of your time on this planet?"

It’s sobering on one level, and quite freeing on the other!

 I am in a retro/vintage recipe group. It's often a lot of information and pictures to wade through, but today I found a picture I might share: my favorite spice-box from my mother's kitchen, used (as far as I know) only twice a year, at Thanksgiving and Christmas! Once I saw that pumpkin on the label, it was “party time!” 

My mother was an amazing cook and though I have many of her recipes (except for stuffed artichokes), I will never be able to match her skills in the kitchen. It was a tragedy when she stopped cooking regular meals (for a host of reasons) when my father left us.

I’m especially amazed that she used commercial spices such as garlic and onion powder, and the ubiquitous “Italian seasoning.”

In the Shelter of a School

 My granddaughter Thistle graduated from elementary school a couple of days ago. The ceremony happened before the last day of school, and took place in the school garden we have tended for many years (except last summer, during Covid). It was the very first day the whole school and the parents and relatives of the graduates could be there, and was emotional in that way also. I’m vaccinated, as are many of the adults in the gathering, and it was socially distanced and outside, so I felt safe.

Not only was there the emotional impact of Thistle leaving elementary school and entering the different world of middle school, there was the deep and unexpected sadness of leaving a wonderful school that has been an oasis for us during these past seven years, some of which were simply tumultuous. I sat in the car crying for some time before gathering myself back up to say goodbye to teachers. I remarked to a friend later that no matter how positive the environment where Thistle goes next, it’s unlikely there will be the same sense of shelter as her elementary school was. Of course, with these things, sometimes it’s a matter of “giving as good as you got,” being friendly, present, and engaged with the teachers. We have been asked to visit, to work in the garden, and still be connected to the school. But it will not be the same.

I’m amazed at the swift passage of time between kindergarten and sixth grade. It seemed not as intense as when my other children were growing up: it seemed just a progression of kids through their various grades. Now some things really loom on the horizon: an empty nest again at some point, and the hope that I will be in good enough health to enjoy it. I was 48 when my nest first emptied of my youngest child. I had a little over two years as an empty-nester, and I will be 68 when I have whatever version of it comes my way. What will my life be like? 

Who knows? I can be the architect of the things I want, even with the knowledge that in time, it all falls down!

 

Mistaken Email to Subscribers

 I somehow sent an old post to my email subscribers. It was from July 2019. However, the email kind of looks like I’m talking about the current president, Joe Biden (who is, in my opinion, doing a great job and is exactly the President to help bring this country forward in many aspects).

Sorry if anyone was confused by the mail sent today. Somehow I get email in my inbox from years past in my “poetlore@gmail.com” account as well. Ah, well—technology.

Here is the July 2019 post, for anyone who wants to read it:

https://stregastories.blogspot.com/2019/07/representative-john-lewis-speaks-out.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thestregasstory+%28The+Strega%27s+Story%29

About a Teacher: Joe Rauser

 This is definitely a rough draft right now and I appreciate your forbearance, dear readers, as I work on this. I hope to polish up the rough edges and work this into a nonfiction essay.

I want to first preface this story with some information about a beloved teacher from my middle school, Chaminade Preparatory in Chatsworth, California (I would go on to graduate from Chaminade). His name was Joe Rauser and he recently passed away at the age of 82. By far, he was the finest, most compassionate teacher I have ever met, wildly engaging, devoted to bringing out the best in his students, the kind of teacher they make movies about. The outpouring of love and memories expressed on my high school’s Facebook page was astounding, but not surprising. Joe had that rare gift of presence: when he spoke to you, you were the center of a quite safe and loving attention. It is a quality I would not see again until I began to go to the Santa Cruz Zen Center and recognized it in the people I met there.

This is a story that begs to be told somewhat backwards and so I will begin with something that might shock people who went to the University of San Diego, my undergraduate college, with me:

I wish with all my heart that I had not gone to USD. My realization has always been at the back of my mind, but really emerged during the time of my teacher’s death, and it is definitely a part of this story. I always felt, even as a student, that USD was not a place I ought to be, and though there are a few people I met there whom I still consider friends, I am sure I would have met them somewhere else. As for Santa Cruz (the place I have lived for nearly forty years) my very first choice of colleges was the University of San Francisco, so it’s not implausible that I might have found my way there. Further, I believe my children, meant to be, would have come to this earth in a healthier way, certainly into a much happier family atmosphere. I would likely not have borne soul-crushing trauma that I carry to this day. And yes, this has much to do with Joe Rauser.

So, first a regret, and then an artifact. I have almost nothing from the time when I was in high school; indeed, almost nothing from my childhood at all. What I have is my class ring from Chaminade: it nearly fits my ring finger still. It’s one of those standard Jostens rings, with the Gemini birthstone, alexandrite. Alexandrites are blue in natural light, deep amethyst-purple in lamplight, a trick of wavelengths. Long before mood rings, there were alexandrites. The ring’s here, on my desk next to me, a talisman, something to show the ferryman on the way into memory’s underworld: I have this, it is mine.

So a regret, a talisman, and to begin:

When I think of Joe Rauser, I “hear” his voice first: slightly hoarse, with a subtle underlying rasp. Then I remember his height: short. I doubt he was over 5’5” And, though his later photographs show a man with snow-white hair in a Prince Valiant haircut, I remember him as he appears in the above photograph, when he was in his thirties: sandy brown hair, longish and a bit floppy (and of course, his beaming smile, and that ubiquitous corduroy jacket). Joe had a lovely wife and a son, just a toddler. A couple of years before, the Rausers had lost another son. I remember Joe mentioning that the priest baptized the baby with an eyedropper full of holy water. Many years later, when I visited with the Rausers, they told me they still thought of their son, and talked about him with each other. I know other, personal things about his life, not to be told, but emblematic of the “wounded healer.”

Most of all, I remember this: he had a heart so boundless in caring and compassion, a devotion to teaching so great, that I can find no metaphors to attach to those qualities. 

When I think of the year I met Mr. Rauser, I remember myself, too: fourteen years old, already buried in a grave of family secrets. My father had left home exactly one month after I graduated from elementary school. My mother then embarked on a mind-boggling, hedonistic life worthy of our Roman ancestors: drugs, dealing cocaine, drinking, affairs with a procession of shady men and with boys as young as sixteen. I took over caring for my brother, a toddler, and because I was fourteen and did not know how to cook anything beyond Kraft macaroni and cheese, we ate that, and Cocoa Puffs.

Trauma gorged itself on my family just a handful of years before I entered ninth grade. My grandfather, John, an actor and stuntman unable to accept his inevitable aging, hanged himself when I was nine years old. Three years after that, my beloved grandmother (long divorced from John) died a horrifying and prolonged death of uterine cancer.  Just a year and a half after that, one of my sisters had an illegal abortion—luckily for her, arranged in a hospital—which tore my family apart. In addition to the culture of violence and addiction, there was an invective to never spill a word about those things. My siblings turned to substance abuse; I turned inward, carrying trauma like a bellyful of coal, heavy and bituminous.

To top things off, less than two months after I entered ninth grade, my mother’s boyfriend beat up my older sister. She fled our home and I would not hear from her again for almost two years.

I’m surprised to find some self-consciousness, even a touch of shame, about my appearance at fourteen and how strange I, in my cicatrix of trauma, must have seemed to people. My older cousin, Denise, described how she went around school with her head down and her hair covering her face. Because Denise was the only, infrequent role model around, I decided that was a good idea, too. I saw nearly all of ninth grade through a curtain of brown hair. I had nothing to say in class, in fact did not know what I might say, because silence and invisibility were my defenses at home. I carried around my absent sister’s journals like a totem of grief; I obsessively kept one of my own (something I still do). One slight quarrel I have with Mr. Rauser and a few other faculty members was their encouragement, years later, to rip up that journal. I wanted my teachers to be proud that I had released my past. Years later, I realized how important it was to keep that record of my young self, look squarely at each shadow I had cast in the world. 

One of my teachers that year, a Marianist brother, was a sick and violent man whom I’ll call by a slant-name to his real one: Brother Henker. He resembled the Death figure from Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and targeted the boys, sadistically beating them for infractions as slight as writing their name in the wrong space on a paper. Like the Death character in the film, no one escaped him, whether by directly experiencing physical violence or witnessing it; I know people approaching their seventies who carry trauma about him to this day. One of the boys made up a story that Brother Henker had worked in a Nazi death camp prior to his career in education, something I, at fourteen, found utterly believable. Certainly the judgment now seems ridiculous and cruel, but at the time I could imagine him in a black uniform, with a silver Totenkopf decorating a black, peaked cap.

Perhaps it’s more charitable that I should pity the man for whatever abuse visited on him that made him, in turn, an abuser. At the end of his life, I was told that he made beautiful wooden toys and donated them to children. Was it a form of atonement? Was the guy a drunk (probably 3/4 of the brothers were) who had found recovery and embraced toy-making as an amends to the countless young people he terrorized? I will never know. What I do know is that there were no consequences at all for this man; despite parental complaints and even a student or two ratting him out, faculty and administration protected him in a cocoon of denial. Mercifully, Herr Henker’s class took place in the morning.

Mr. Rauser taught American History just before lunchtime (he kept his classroom open during lunch, and so my friends and I—and probably half the middle school student body—spent their time in his classroom then, too). He had, not exactly charisma, but (as I said earlier), presence. The first afternoon I walked into Mr. Rauser’s classroom, I felt a shock of recognition—some would say he was a figure from my past life, but I think it was simply a resonance, a sensitivity to a truly kind person. My ability to sense such a thing about a person had not yet been completely muted. He recognized in me a salvageable young person, someone with worth, set me up with a counselor (a patient Marianist priest I’ll call “Father Francis”), kept after me about homework, often stayed with me when my mother was over an hour late to pick me up from school. 

When I entered 10th grade, I “moved over” to the 10th-12th grade campus, some miles away, but kept in touch with Mr. Rauser. Indeed, I got to know his entire family, as he lived just a few blocks away from me, across the road from what was, back then, the Veteran’s Administration Hospital. I’d call on weekends—just enough not to wear out my welcome—and if the Rausers were home and it was okay, would walk up to their house, play with his son, talk to Mr. Rauser and his wife (who was also a teacher). They always invited me to dinner, but I—too shy to accept—always declined and then left. My mother, forced to watch my brother, complained when I headed over to the Rausers, but I still went off, cutting through a couple of vacant lots to get to their large, comfortable house.

At some point during high school (I’ve searched my memory, but can never figure out what year), Father Francis sat me down in counseling and said he noticed my depression deepening, that teachers were getting worried about me, my grades were slipping and I had begun to occasionally miss school. Teachers reported I never seemed to have a packed lunch or money to buy one in the cafeteria. I finally broke down and told him my mother had begun disappearing on weekends, leaving me to take care of my brother alone, not telling me where she was or when she might be back. Before that, she had at least been home, though preoccupied with substance abuse and men. I said I was getting frightened at night: my brother’s friends would come into my room while I tried to sleep, kneel down by my bed, make fun of me, pull my blankets off me, laugh at me when I screamed for them to go away. I told them about the increasingly frightening men coming into the house, friends of my mother and brother.

My counselor called my mother, whose response was a threat to remove me from my school. She told Father Francis that she wanted me to stop having therapy, that I was lying about all the men, the drugs, the lack of food, about being left by myself to take care of my brother. At that point, Father Francis gave up on trying to reason with her. He did tell her that leaving a teenage girl alone on weekends to care for a toddler was illegal, and at some point, her weekend “vacations” ended. Her threats proved empty: I remained in my high school and Father Francis continued as my counselor.

Soon after talking to her, Father Francis called me into his office. He said that my home life was undermining my mental health. He said teachers were more concerned about me than ever, that he wanted me to achieve my potential. Father Francis told me that I needed to leave my home immediately (note that he did not speak of calling Child Protective Services, which would have been mandatory today for someone in an educational setting: in the mid-seventies, CPS was reserved for cases far more extreme than mine. But who knows? Maybe they were going to be called, and my "rescuers" didn't want to frighten me or somehow tip my mother off).

Shocked, I said, “But where will I go? I have nowhere to go.” 

Father Francis said, “The Rausers have offered to take you in.”

I remember taking in a breath. Was the offer real? Father Francis assured me it was. Then I had questions, one after the other, spoken rapidly, and based on worry. Where would I sleep? A couch, maybe? Would I have food to eat, or would I have to somehow buy my own? Would I have to work for the Rausers, to earn my keep? How would I get to school every day?”

Patiently, Father Francis answered my questions. There was a spare room for me. The Rausers would feed me, make sure I did my homework, went to bed on time. I would be part of their family for as long as I wanted to be there. I would not have to find a job and pay them rent, or give them money for food, or anything else. They would make sure I got to school. Reassurance after reassurance, trying to help me believe in an offer that seemed completely unreal to me, like a fairytale.

Though I wanted with all my heart to jump on the offer, I said, simply, that I would think about it. I went home, struggled to put a meal together for my brother, got him ready for bed. I hugged him and gave him all his stuffed toys—he slept with a lot of them, and I had to make a sort of stuffed-toy “wall” between him and the edge of his bed. My mother came home late that night (she would, to her credit, watch my brother when I was in school).

The next day, I went to my counselor, sat down, and said, “I can’t leave my little brother.” 

Father Francis said, “You are not responsible for taking care of your brother. That’s your mother’s job, not yours. We will find a way to help keep him safe.”

Still, I feared that if I left, my little brother would somehow get hurt. My mother might just leave him alone in the house, or with one of my older brother’s druggie friends. I also knew my mother depended on my father’s child support, which would be reduced if I left. I feared my older brother and his friends could find out where the Rausers lived and hurt us. They’d hunted down my sister the night she was beaten up; she’d gone to friend’s home and asked him to drive her to a safe place. Somehow, my brother and his friends, on my mother’s orders, found my sister and her friend driving on the freeway and tried unsuccessfully to ram into the back of their car. My fears of retaliation were not unfounded.

Father Francis looked down at his desk. He said, “Look, if you change your mind, the offer is there. It’s always there. Please think about it.” I seem to recall Joe Rauser himself coming to campus to talk to me. Perhaps nobody understood that forcing my mother to be a parent wasn’t necessarily going to make her one, that the household I lived in had gone far beyond a situation of simply making someone live up to their responsibilities.

I never went to live with the Rausers. I remained friends with them, and they definitely kept an eye on me. As things grew worse in my home, I thought often of their offer, wondered if I still could go there, but never again asked. On my own, I chose a private university, well out of my means, to attend. With little to no support from my parents, I somehow graduated—but not after falling into the hands of a predator, someone I trusted and should not have, at all.

Let’s look at “what might have been,” though. Let’s say I did choose to go live with the Rausers. Let’s say somehow my brother ended up in a situation where he was cared for and happy—how, I don’t know, but let’s say it happened. Let’s say I really did pack a bag of clothes, a few books—I am sure I would not have taken much. The Rausers would have been made aware of the extent of my trauma, my serious nutritional deficiencies (I weighed 95 pounds in high school), that I never had a regular bedtime and studied only after my brother had gone to sleep. Let’s say they’d set a schedule for me, kind expectations: that I would be in bed by a certain hour, that I was given a place to do my homework, that I had reasonable chores. My meals would have been healthy, not Cocoa Puffs and macaroni and cheese from a box, and in fact, I would sit at a regular dining table while we all ate together, something that had ceased in my own family the day my father walked out the door.

 Certainly there would have been tensions—Mr. Rauser wasn’t a saint and had a notable temper, though not a toxic one—but never would I have been in danger of being thrown out or hurt. Let’s say, in sum, that I became another member of the family, a chosen daughter. It wouldn’t have been a fairy tale, realistically. But it would have been a life where I was treated with love, where perhaps my self-esteem would have risen to the point where I could actually function and not just survive. 

Here’s what I think. I would have gone to college, and afterwards, graduate school (long before I, in real life, did in my forties). I may have gone to Cal State Northridge. I might have gone to the University of San Francisco (and can imagine, in an utterly idealized way, what it could have been like to hit the town with the Rauser family, going on a ferry boat ride beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, taking an Alcatraz tour, visiting the zoo, eating clam chowder at the wharf, and having too much Ghiradelli chocolate for dessert). I would almost certainly have become a writer because I already dreamed of that and was encouraged throughout high school.

Whatever the case, I know this: I would almost certainly not have become a student at the University of San Diego. I would not have attended Mass and taken music classes from a priest who ended up being a major player in the sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic Church. I would likely had the good sense not to have gone to alcohol-infused parties with professors (something absolutely tolerated at USD, along with predatory behavior). The Rausers would have almost assuredly warned me about dicey, dangerous situations. I may never have met the friends I made at USD (or they might have come along later in life, if meant to be)—but to take a different path would have obviated much suffering for me and many others.

Reflecting on all this, I realize was not offered a fairytale but a normal life—a life where a young woman graduates high school and goes to college. The extraordinariness of this story rests squarely, first, with Joe Rauser, who recognized my worth, and then with the Rausers as a couple: teachers, not wealthy, raising a family, driving used cars, and yet willing to take on a teenager who had never lived in a circle of guidance and love. 

And for that one bright chance, the one I should have taken, I am eternally grateful.

About a Transition: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris

 Dear Readers, I can hardly believe I have not written here since October. Granted, I’ve been cleaning up after the fire—luckily the house did not burn down, though some folks I know were not as lucky. It has been a very difficult time in Santa Cruz County...though, being a strong community, we continue to pull together.

On the larger stage, I can say for myself and others that the final months of the Trump presidency have been nightmarish. Trump dug himself so far in, though, with his incitement to riot, and now his impeachment and—I am quite sure—a real trial in the Senate. Let’s hope so.

Today is Monday, January 18th. Wednesday at noon, Biden takes office and perhaps “our long national nightmare” will be over, as much as it can be over in these troubled times. I remember clearly the relief when Nixon resigned and Ford became President. I also remember the sense that our country had been hollowed out somehow, ragged at the edges, like a wound just starting to debride. We are now a wounded country: Biden and Harris have inherited a country that has been almost as if in an abusive marriage. And it takes time to heal from such things.

Our country need not be forever changed by the evils of the last four years. Yes, the ugliness of white supremacy, lunatic Q-anon supporters, etc, has been let out of the bag...there will be people who will try and act on their worst human impulses. I would not like to be in Biden and Harris’s shoes right now, taking on what they must.

But America has suffered from a pandemic before, been in horrific economic circumstances, battled for civil rights, etc. I believe with strong leadership, we can get back on track, even with the many lacerations inflicted by Donald Trump. His reckoning may very well be on its way.

So, I look forward to Wednesday, and an infusion of hope...and pray for the safety of all who will be on the inauguration platform on that day.

About a Fire

Dear Readers, it’s been difficult to get back to this blog. to write about ordinary or personal things. As many of you know, there was a wildfire in Santa Cruz County that burned thousands of acres and destroyed almost nine hundred homes. The fire did not threaten my home, but there was ash everywhere, burnt leaves, and the smell of smoke in everything. Hundreds of people lost their homes; many are still displaced. It was, and is, going to be a very difficult recovery. On top of the pandemic and the chaos in the White House and around the election—wow. And yet, as always, there is that sense of resilience, rebuilding, of the community taking care of each other, as we did in the 1989 earthquake, which caused more casualties here.

I sometimes feel as if I am walking underwater with all this, definitely a stress reaction. My sleep-cycle is off pretty much since the pandemic began and my body is paying for it, big-time. I expect I am not alone.

Friends have been reporting aches and pains, even feeling like they will get Covid. We are in a time that “tries men’s souls,” big-time. It may leave a scar on everyone who experiences this.This pandemic has destroyed lives, and it need not—because of the neglect and idiocy of our President—have been.

And now we face an election with consequences that are literally the life or death of our democracy. Over four years, this administration has shown itself to be evil, run by one of the most evil idiots imaginable. I can’t think of a worst President, now or in the future.

I believe Biden will win. I can’t NOT believe that. But this is a frightening time. I am taking inspiration from my parents and their generation, who lived through the World Wars, faced rationing and sending sons and husbands off to war. This took bravery, and true Americans (those who do not support Trump) are brave and resilient. I believe we will overcome the enemy on every level.

And so it is.

Asha Veil Memorial Sites

I have begun to work on my manuscript for my book on Asha Veil. I thought I would re-publish her memorial sites on findagrave and legacy.com:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/15790945/joanna-magdalena-veil

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.legacy.com/obituaries/santacruzsentinel/obituary.aspx%3fn=joanna-and-anina-veil&pid=19401441

Lightning Storm, Bay Area

Lightning!

Prepared For Anything

I’m finding that my subscription to the Washington Post has been very informative at this time. It’s one of the “fake-news-according-to-Trump” services, so you can rest assured it provides real news. What a looking-glass life this all has turned out to be: the opposite of what Mr. Trump says, is real.

At any rate, here is an informative opinion piece on preparing for a contested election. My dear readers, I hope contesting the election does not come to pass, but here are some actual things to do. Feeling helpless is something I push back every day.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/27/heres-how-prepare-trump-rejecting-election-results-november/

Trump Elects Biden

Photoshopped, but a gal can dream, can't she?

Wade in the Water

So beautiful...this old spiritual, sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock.

You Can't Fix Stupid

Great article on the re-opening of states:

https://www.idahostatejournal.com/coronavirus/i-will-not-die-of-stupid/article_d1a0aac9-f8be-5e93-9bcf-a2ad0ef34ea0.html

As We Go

California is opening up and many of the ignoramuses I know from the “creative” community here are not wearing masks, crowding restaurants, posting conspiracy theories, and have bitched about the “enforced isolation” as adamantly as Trump supporters.

Well. now they get to return to the Petri dish. Some in the “conspiracy crowd” who work in the “personal services” sector such as salons, bodywork, etc. may likely wonder why clients are not flocking to them. I had to refuse someone this week, for legitimate reasons (my doctor wants me to refrain from things that get me in close range of people, even getting my hair trimmed). This worker has consistently posted and “liked” on Facebook statements that only fat, lazy people get the virus and the vaccine is being developed because the fatties and disabled people need it...and why should it be forced on the paragons of health?

Never heard such BS in my life and never will. These folks plaster their Facebook with images of the Buddha and hollow statements about compassion. Where is the compassion of wearing a mask because it might protect others? Not even a consideration with the conspiracy theorists and crazy anti-vaxxers.

Meanwhile South Korea is putting restrictions on again due to an upsurge in cases of the virus.

I think many people will die of Covid-19 by the end of the summer, and well beyond. We are committing suicide as a country by opening up. There was no safety net for too many employed people, no consideration by the government that people need more than $1200, once.
People even in my town are being mocked for wearing masks or maintaining social distancing.
Masks and social distancing may be the only defenses we have right now until (and if) a vaccine can be developed.

The selfishness of too many will take the lives of many others who try hard not to spread this virus, who comply with what needs to be done.

What a nightmare is unfolding.

Mountain Lion, trailcam

My family got me a wildlife trail-cam a couple of years ago, and we have put it up just recently, moving the location of the camera on the property til we decided that the best place for it was pointed into the clearing behind the house. 

The camera caught videos of a rat, birds, squirrels (lots of squirrels, so much that I started calling it the squirrel-cam), and a deer.

And then, not two weeks into using

this camera, the Holy Grail of trailcam pix: a mountain lion leisurely strolling through the clearing! I wonder how many times such an event has happened over the years without me knowing!