Front page Oct 4, 2002 Oct 6, 2002 Oct 7, 2002 Oct 12, 2002 Oct 14, 2002 Oct 16, 2002 Oct 25, 2002 Oct 26, 2002 Oct 27, 2002 Oct 28, 2002 Oct 29, 2002 Oct 30, 2002 Oct 31, 2002 Nov 4, 2002 Nov 6, 2002 Nov 12, 2002 Nov 13, 2002 Nov 17, 2002 Nov 18, 2002 Nov 22, 2002 Nov 25, 2002 Nov 26, 2002 Nov 27, 2002 Dec 1, 2002 Dec 7, 2002 Dec 12, 2002 Dec 18, 2002 Dec 22, 2002 Dec 25, 2002 Jan 11, 2003 Jan 14, 2003 Jan 16, 2003 Jan 18, 2003 Feb 7, 2003 Feb 17, 2003 Feb 20, 2003 Mar 3, 2003 Mar 5, 2003 Mar 10, 2003 Mar 21, 2003 Mar 24, 2003 Apr 7, 2003 Apr 24, 2003 Apr 29, 2003 May 3, 2003 May 4, 2003 May 26, 2003 Jun 5, 2003 Jun 6, 2003 Jun 9, 2003 Jun 16, 2003 Jun 17, 2003 Jun 21, 2003 Jun 28, 2003 Jul 2, 2003 Aug 3, 2003 Aug 9, 2003 Aug 14, 2003 Aug 17, 2003 Aug 21, 2003 Aug 28, 2003 Sep 2, 2003 Sep 3, 2003 Sep 17, 2003 Oct 10, 2003 Nov 3, 2003 Nov 5, 2003 Nov 23, 2003 Dec 15, 2003 Dec 24, 2003 Dec 25, 2003 Jan 1, 2004 Jan 10, 2004 Jan 19, 2004 Jan 20, 2004 Jan 24, 2004 Feb 13, 2004 Feb 25, 2004 Mar 16, 2004 Mar 31, 2004 Apr 1, 2004 Apr 14, 2004 May 2, 2004 May 21, 2004 Jun 16, 2004 Jun 20, 2004 Jul 12, 2004 Jul 19, 2004 Oct 26, 2004 Nov 3, 2004 Nov 6, 2004 Nov 14, 2004 Nov 20, 2004 Dec 6, 2004 Jan 8, 2005 Feb 4, 2005 May 17, 2005 Jul 4, 2005 Sep 5, 2005 Sep 9, 2005 Sep 24, 2005 Oct 13, 2005 Dec 14, 2005 Feb 3, 2006 Feb 24, 2006 Mar 1, 2006 Apr 11, 2006 Aug 19, 2006 Mar 14, 2007 Jan 28, 2008 May 24, 2008 Nov 1, 2008 Nov 11, 2009 Apr 8, 2010 Jun 2, 2010 Jun 21, 2010 Jun 23, 2010 Jul 4, 2010 Jul 14, 2010 Apr 1, 2011 Jun 30, 2011 Jun 27, 2012 Jan 11, 2013 Feb 11, 2013 Feb 12, 2013 Feb 13, 2013 Apr 13, 2013 Apr 14, 2013 Oct 2, 2013 Jan 30, 2016
Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Thursday, December 25, 2003
It's Christmas morning and I just lit a fire, put the dog out and made a pot of coffee. Time to get going. Food, food, food!
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
$
Good Luck to you guys in the CC. I hope you win!
Residents sue Honeywell over leaks
Advocate staff report
A group of more than 200 residents living around the Honeywell International plant on Lupine Avenue in Baton Rouge is suing the company over three chemical releases earlier this year.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday afternoon in state District Court in Baton Rouge.
The residents, who claim they suffered injuries during the releases, are asking for damages less than $75,000 per individual. The lawsuit does not have class-action status.
Reid Walker, a spokesman for New Jersey-based Honeywell, said Tuesday evening company officials couldn't comment until they received the lawsuit. As of Tuesday evening, Walker said the company had not received a copy of the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs are people who said they were affected by one or more of the three releases this year, the group's attorney William Grimley, said.
According to the lawsuit, on July 20, about 45,000 pounds of refrigerant brine and 15,000 pounds of chlorine were released. Plumes of the gases drifted over nearby neighborhoods and affected several hundred people.
Eight plant workers and some residents went to the hospital, the lawsuit said.
On July 29, a release of 2,000 pounds of antimony pentachloride, antimony trichloride and arsenic trichloride harmed area residents, the lawsuit said.
On Aug. 13, an employee caused a one-ton tank to release chemicals, including hydrogen fluoride, the lawsuit said.
Because of the releases, the plaintiffs suffered injuries, including breathing and skin problems, as well as mental anguish and fear that more releases could happen, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit claims that the reason for the releases was negligence on the part of the company and named employees.
A Honeywell employee died as a result of injuries he suffered in the July 29 release.
The releases also prompted investigations by local, state and federal officials, a review of safety procedures by company officials and temporary closure of the plant.
Good Luck to you guys in the CC. I hope you win!
Residents sue Honeywell over leaks
Advocate staff report
A group of more than 200 residents living around the Honeywell International plant on Lupine Avenue in Baton Rouge is suing the company over three chemical releases earlier this year.
The lawsuit was filed Tuesday afternoon in state District Court in Baton Rouge.
The residents, who claim they suffered injuries during the releases, are asking for damages less than $75,000 per individual. The lawsuit does not have class-action status.
Reid Walker, a spokesman for New Jersey-based Honeywell, said Tuesday evening company officials couldn't comment until they received the lawsuit. As of Tuesday evening, Walker said the company had not received a copy of the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs are people who said they were affected by one or more of the three releases this year, the group's attorney William Grimley, said.
According to the lawsuit, on July 20, about 45,000 pounds of refrigerant brine and 15,000 pounds of chlorine were released. Plumes of the gases drifted over nearby neighborhoods and affected several hundred people.
Eight plant workers and some residents went to the hospital, the lawsuit said.
On July 29, a release of 2,000 pounds of antimony pentachloride, antimony trichloride and arsenic trichloride harmed area residents, the lawsuit said.
On Aug. 13, an employee caused a one-ton tank to release chemicals, including hydrogen fluoride, the lawsuit said.
Because of the releases, the plaintiffs suffered injuries, including breathing and skin problems, as well as mental anguish and fear that more releases could happen, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit claims that the reason for the releases was negligence on the part of the company and named employees.
A Honeywell employee died as a result of injuries he suffered in the July 29 release.
The releases also prompted investigations by local, state and federal officials, a review of safety procedures by company officials and temporary closure of the plant.
Monday, December 15, 2003
*
It's all about the propaganda, Stupid!
It's all about the propaganda, Stupid!
Sunday, November 23, 2003
*
Renee
My friend rides a bus to and from work. She has a job as a waitress at a well-known eating establishment in Baton Rouge (not Hooters, the favored Republican restaurant of the bayou state.) She lives in one of the roughest parts of the city, but doesn’t complain much, and smiles at the change that jingles in her pocket and pays her bus fare every night after serving up coffee to academics, drunken high school students, and the tourist who wander in looking for authentic Louisiana cuisine.
She works with a bunch of college students who have never had to make their own way in life, twenty years younger, and they sneer at her because she needs to leave work 5 minutes early each night to catch the nine o’clock bus and not be stuck waiting for the ten thirty bus which is the next one on the route. She transfers and it probably takes her an hour and a half to arrive at her home in the Chemical Corridor of the city.
The ten thirty ride is scary for a middle aged woman at that time of night, and not safe, and to get to the earlier bus all she needs is that extra five minutes. They don’t like to punch in early; those Old Navy, Gap clad children of suburbia, working only to have extra peanuts to throw at the lecturers in the large damp auditoriums at LSU. They love to give her a hard time, driving by her in the rain, and late at night unwilling to stretch their imaginations, or to reach that point in themselves to find any empathy for someone who has seen every thing that life will never offer.
I don’t remember us being like that and I wonder if this is reflective of the way life has changed, or is it because in Baton Rouge, a Republican strong hold of the religious right, they sometimes refer to the city buses as welfare transportation and argue in letters to the editor that they shouldn’t have buses at all.
Renee
My friend rides a bus to and from work. She has a job as a waitress at a well-known eating establishment in Baton Rouge (not Hooters, the favored Republican restaurant of the bayou state.) She lives in one of the roughest parts of the city, but doesn’t complain much, and smiles at the change that jingles in her pocket and pays her bus fare every night after serving up coffee to academics, drunken high school students, and the tourist who wander in looking for authentic Louisiana cuisine.
She works with a bunch of college students who have never had to make their own way in life, twenty years younger, and they sneer at her because she needs to leave work 5 minutes early each night to catch the nine o’clock bus and not be stuck waiting for the ten thirty bus which is the next one on the route. She transfers and it probably takes her an hour and a half to arrive at her home in the Chemical Corridor of the city.
The ten thirty ride is scary for a middle aged woman at that time of night, and not safe, and to get to the earlier bus all she needs is that extra five minutes. They don’t like to punch in early; those Old Navy, Gap clad children of suburbia, working only to have extra peanuts to throw at the lecturers in the large damp auditoriums at LSU. They love to give her a hard time, driving by her in the rain, and late at night unwilling to stretch their imaginations, or to reach that point in themselves to find any empathy for someone who has seen every thing that life will never offer.
I don’t remember us being like that and I wonder if this is reflective of the way life has changed, or is it because in Baton Rouge, a Republican strong hold of the religious right, they sometimes refer to the city buses as welfare transportation and argue in letters to the editor that they shouldn’t have buses at all.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
*Reposted from an earlier dated with additions.*
REDNECK FREE ZONE (Warning this blog has been chemically treated)
Here, I am again in Arkansas and the rednecks hate me, as usual. They come after me with pit bulls, kids, and boyfriends with rebel flags on the front of their pick up trucks. They breed and breed, so I am always out numbered. They don’t attend school or have any goals other than how to produce the next batch of Meth and who sell it to, so they have lots of time on their hands. The police look the other way and I can’t even get into my drive because someone is letting their dogs run loose on my property.
I’m declaring my blog a REDNECK FREE ZONE. No rednecks are allowed anywhere on this page.
WARNING: if you tote a rebel flag, if you married your cousin, live in the south, and have bunches of kids, if you have a pit bull without a collar or a leash,
This blog has been chemically treated against all forms of rednecks and within 20 seconds your hard drive will self destruct, your sperm count will fall, and your children will marry outside of your immediate family, and will begin to seek higher education ( higher than 6th grade). Your dog will die. Your meth lab will spontaneously combust. A democrat will be elected governor of your state. The tax on beer will be placed at 50% and snuff and dip will be declared illegal and hunting season will be cancelled until further notice.
REDNECK FREE ZONE (Warning this blog has been chemically treated)
Here, I am again in Arkansas and the rednecks hate me, as usual. They come after me with pit bulls, kids, and boyfriends with rebel flags on the front of their pick up trucks. They breed and breed, so I am always out numbered. They don’t attend school or have any goals other than how to produce the next batch of Meth and who sell it to, so they have lots of time on their hands. The police look the other way and I can’t even get into my drive because someone is letting their dogs run loose on my property.
I’m declaring my blog a REDNECK FREE ZONE. No rednecks are allowed anywhere on this page.
WARNING: if you tote a rebel flag, if you married your cousin, live in the south, and have bunches of kids, if you have a pit bull without a collar or a leash,
This blog has been chemically treated against all forms of rednecks and within 20 seconds your hard drive will self destruct, your sperm count will fall, and your children will marry outside of your immediate family, and will begin to seek higher education ( higher than 6th grade). Your dog will die. Your meth lab will spontaneously combust. A democrat will be elected governor of your state. The tax on beer will be placed at 50% and snuff and dip will be declared illegal and hunting season will be cancelled until further notice.
Monday, November 03, 2003
!
If I could take all of these upcoming holidays that are on my calendar and ball them into a great big wad and throw them all into the trash then I know I’d be happier.
Maybe we'll not pretend this year and my son and I can sit on the couch and watch a marathon of Steven King movies day and eat popcorn, candy and nachos. And then do the same thing for Christmas. BAH Humbug
If I could take all of these upcoming holidays that are on my calendar and ball them into a great big wad and throw them all into the trash then I know I’d be happier.
Maybe we'll not pretend this year and my son and I can sit on the couch and watch a marathon of Steven King movies day and eat popcorn, candy and nachos. And then do the same thing for Christmas. BAH Humbug
Friday, October 10, 2003
*
The house that Eddie built
I went to my father’s retirement home yesterday, a place that he would never get to retreat to; it sits behind a veil of woods with pine trees. The wind and the clouds touched the trees directly above my head as I approached and made the whole hill rock like a serene ship on a sea of woods. My son was with me and carried a big stick to scare snakes and knock down spider webs.
My father took time off from work to build this house and then died the first month that he went to live in it. My father had to work all of his life, growing up with a widowed mother during the Great Depression. He once took a job delivering milk in glass bottles as a young teenager, and he fell out of the truck, onto a case of broken bottles and spilled milk, severing the nerves in his right hand and giving him a life long disability that he never spoke of, except to explain quietly how it happened. After this he joined the army during World War Two, anxious to serve, he hid his injury, and then finally returned home with his GI Bill in his good hand, and he got a college education, and worked to the last day of his 65th year, always dreaming of this retirement home he was going to build.
My father worked for the same two companies for over a period of 45 years; he was proud of being vested, but after his death, long before Enron, (during Reagan and the first Bush) they consolidated and re-conglomerated and made up new rules and managed to cheat my mother out of every penny of his pension, so she was never able to finish any of this and had to go to work in a near by city.
I stare at this place in wonder; standing alone for 20 years with deer, and mice, and owls, and snakes, and spiders as it’s only company; thick webs nestled in every corner of the structure, a bed of pine needles gathered at the front door; a mail box seldom used, and a road now so over grown, you have to park and hike and would never know it was there at all unless, you knew it was there.
A tornado briefly touched down on the top of the hill where his house sits and took the uppermost branches off of trees, and peeled back the siding, slightly but the shingles some how held, and it still stands alone, a solitary farmhouse built like a barn, rising from the ground like a tombstone with my father’s life written on it.
His physical grave is 500 miles from this place in the city where he worked and mostly lived, but this is the place where we gather wild flowers and cut our Christmas tree every year and still come to visit him.
I can mentally make notes of what might have been had he lived and picture the merry scene in my head of paved roads, roaring fires, black kettles, iron skillets, warm people snuggled into down mattresses and I can almost hear the echo of laughter filling the unfinished eaves and the almost attic that would have been a loft bedroom for me when I came to visit.
I climbed a work latter and sat 20 feet above the floor, on a wooden pallet, in the rafters, between the arch of the roof, in the skeleton of the building, with hard concrete beneath me. The house plans still sit in the corner of a shell of a closet space in a big brown cardboard tube, large white pages with renderings, and plans for another bigger house to be completed after this one was finished. He had planned the house long before he got the land or began work on it. He would steal away moments early in the morning drawing up his plans. I can still see how everything stopped the day he died, in the middle of boards, and 2 by 4’s, half nailed, with the hammer left where he last sat it, and the doors with rusty hinges left leaning against the walls, and now all, gathering dust and I know this is not the way he lived; he always finished everything he started.
My 17 year old son walked around in the room below me and exclaimed when he came upon a box of business cards with my father’s name, and work title, and office address, and they looked like new, still white, and black and crisp, and he ran his fingers over the imprinted words on the cards, and touched them like Braille, and held one close to his nose trying to smell it, and he smiled at me, and took out his wallet, and placed my father’s old business card in the crease of his billfold, as though it was the most important piece of paper in the world to him.
An address book sat on a counter in the kitchen by the carefully hung windows in the finished part of the house. It has a day planner with appointments and phone numbers of people dead for many years. I lie on the pallet and slowly smoked a cigarette and looked at it and turned the pages and then I watched the smoke curl up to the ceiling and I remember him and I feel safe in his house. I’ll be 40 this month and I have seen incredible brutality and violence from the men in my life since his passing. My father was never one of them.
The house that Eddie built
I went to my father’s retirement home yesterday, a place that he would never get to retreat to; it sits behind a veil of woods with pine trees. The wind and the clouds touched the trees directly above my head as I approached and made the whole hill rock like a serene ship on a sea of woods. My son was with me and carried a big stick to scare snakes and knock down spider webs.
My father took time off from work to build this house and then died the first month that he went to live in it. My father had to work all of his life, growing up with a widowed mother during the Great Depression. He once took a job delivering milk in glass bottles as a young teenager, and he fell out of the truck, onto a case of broken bottles and spilled milk, severing the nerves in his right hand and giving him a life long disability that he never spoke of, except to explain quietly how it happened. After this he joined the army during World War Two, anxious to serve, he hid his injury, and then finally returned home with his GI Bill in his good hand, and he got a college education, and worked to the last day of his 65th year, always dreaming of this retirement home he was going to build.
My father worked for the same two companies for over a period of 45 years; he was proud of being vested, but after his death, long before Enron, (during Reagan and the first Bush) they consolidated and re-conglomerated and made up new rules and managed to cheat my mother out of every penny of his pension, so she was never able to finish any of this and had to go to work in a near by city.
I stare at this place in wonder; standing alone for 20 years with deer, and mice, and owls, and snakes, and spiders as it’s only company; thick webs nestled in every corner of the structure, a bed of pine needles gathered at the front door; a mail box seldom used, and a road now so over grown, you have to park and hike and would never know it was there at all unless, you knew it was there.
A tornado briefly touched down on the top of the hill where his house sits and took the uppermost branches off of trees, and peeled back the siding, slightly but the shingles some how held, and it still stands alone, a solitary farmhouse built like a barn, rising from the ground like a tombstone with my father’s life written on it.
His physical grave is 500 miles from this place in the city where he worked and mostly lived, but this is the place where we gather wild flowers and cut our Christmas tree every year and still come to visit him.
I can mentally make notes of what might have been had he lived and picture the merry scene in my head of paved roads, roaring fires, black kettles, iron skillets, warm people snuggled into down mattresses and I can almost hear the echo of laughter filling the unfinished eaves and the almost attic that would have been a loft bedroom for me when I came to visit.
I climbed a work latter and sat 20 feet above the floor, on a wooden pallet, in the rafters, between the arch of the roof, in the skeleton of the building, with hard concrete beneath me. The house plans still sit in the corner of a shell of a closet space in a big brown cardboard tube, large white pages with renderings, and plans for another bigger house to be completed after this one was finished. He had planned the house long before he got the land or began work on it. He would steal away moments early in the morning drawing up his plans. I can still see how everything stopped the day he died, in the middle of boards, and 2 by 4’s, half nailed, with the hammer left where he last sat it, and the doors with rusty hinges left leaning against the walls, and now all, gathering dust and I know this is not the way he lived; he always finished everything he started.
My 17 year old son walked around in the room below me and exclaimed when he came upon a box of business cards with my father’s name, and work title, and office address, and they looked like new, still white, and black and crisp, and he ran his fingers over the imprinted words on the cards, and touched them like Braille, and held one close to his nose trying to smell it, and he smiled at me, and took out his wallet, and placed my father’s old business card in the crease of his billfold, as though it was the most important piece of paper in the world to him.
An address book sat on a counter in the kitchen by the carefully hung windows in the finished part of the house. It has a day planner with appointments and phone numbers of people dead for many years. I lie on the pallet and slowly smoked a cigarette and looked at it and turned the pages and then I watched the smoke curl up to the ceiling and I remember him and I feel safe in his house. I’ll be 40 this month and I have seen incredible brutality and violence from the men in my life since his passing. My father was never one of them.
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
*
Rest In Peace
I feel very pensive right now. A death anniversary passed and I didn’t realize until yesterday that it had come and gone. Rick died September the 14 almost ten years ago and I didn’t remember until I heard the Saliva song Rest in Pieces, because it reminds me of him. He was cremated in California and his mother and brother transported the ashes back via airplane and his Mom took some ashes out and holds on to them like they’re the most valuable possessions she has; the rest of him was buried, and now every time I hear that song, it reminds me of him resting in separate places.
I started observing death anniversaries because my oldest and favorite brother died the day after Thanksgiving and that made it hard for us to forget the time of his passing, and then my father died just about two weeks before Christmas. We had poinsettias instead of roses at his funeral and my family (what is left of it) is always a little blue around the holidays. I never started this time of mourning and remembrance until least November and then Rick had to go die in September, so now it starts earlier. No one in my life dies in the spring or the summer; its always the fall or winter.
(In case you think that I am a total drag, just remember that my father was 100% Irish and I grew up in Louisiana where we have jazz funerals. I intend to make khalua, again this year even though I quit drinking. Want some?)
Rest In Peace
I feel very pensive right now. A death anniversary passed and I didn’t realize until yesterday that it had come and gone. Rick died September the 14 almost ten years ago and I didn’t remember until I heard the Saliva song Rest in Pieces, because it reminds me of him. He was cremated in California and his mother and brother transported the ashes back via airplane and his Mom took some ashes out and holds on to them like they’re the most valuable possessions she has; the rest of him was buried, and now every time I hear that song, it reminds me of him resting in separate places.
I started observing death anniversaries because my oldest and favorite brother died the day after Thanksgiving and that made it hard for us to forget the time of his passing, and then my father died just about two weeks before Christmas. We had poinsettias instead of roses at his funeral and my family (what is left of it) is always a little blue around the holidays. I never started this time of mourning and remembrance until least November and then Rick had to go die in September, so now it starts earlier. No one in my life dies in the spring or the summer; its always the fall or winter.
(In case you think that I am a total drag, just remember that my father was 100% Irish and I grew up in Louisiana where we have jazz funerals. I intend to make khalua, again this year even though I quit drinking. Want some?)
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
*
We need the Clean Air Act in Baton Rouge
They're not locking down CC, like it matters.
They're not even bothering to lock down the Chemical Corridor anymore. This is the 4th incident in a month's time.
Now, I’m not harping on this, but another one? Exxon has an explosion and all my friends just happen to be in the area, sitting at their home after a ball game and eating hamburgers for Christ Sake!! No CC lockdown this time.
By MARLENE NAANES and
PENNY BROWN ROBERTS
Advocate staff writers
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/090303/new_soars001.shtml
Pipes carrying gasoline components at the ExxonMobil refinery caught fire Tuesday evening, sending a tower of flames and thick, black smoke high into the air for almost an hour.
Residents who live around the ExxonMobil Refinery said their homes vibrated after a pipeline containing gasoline components caught fire Tuesday evening. No injuries were reported.
While the fire burned Tuesday, police temporarily closed Scenic Highway between Mohican and Shelley streets and the Evangeline Street exits off Interstate 110, police spokesman Cpl. Don Kelly said.
We need the Clean Air Act in Baton Rouge
They're not locking down CC, like it matters.
They're not even bothering to lock down the Chemical Corridor anymore. This is the 4th incident in a month's time.
Now, I’m not harping on this, but another one? Exxon has an explosion and all my friends just happen to be in the area, sitting at their home after a ball game and eating hamburgers for Christ Sake!! No CC lockdown this time.
By MARLENE NAANES and
PENNY BROWN ROBERTS
Advocate staff writers
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/090303/new_soars001.shtml
Pipes carrying gasoline components at the ExxonMobil refinery caught fire Tuesday evening, sending a tower of flames and thick, black smoke high into the air for almost an hour.
Residents who live around the ExxonMobil Refinery said their homes vibrated after a pipeline containing gasoline components caught fire Tuesday evening. No injuries were reported.
While the fire burned Tuesday, police temporarily closed Scenic Highway between Mohican and Shelley streets and the Evangeline Street exits off Interstate 110, police spokesman Cpl. Don Kelly said.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
*
I used to not be like this. Anti Social
Ok here is my weird dilemma. I want to work online, I already take some classes online, and I like it here at home. I could live in front of my computer and never leave and be totally happy out here in cyber world. If I wasn’t in the boonies, then I’d have my groceries delivered, toiletries, everything. I like being alone and with people at the same time through my computer. I have absolutely, no desire to leave my home. Right now I have classes that pull me away twice a week to another city, but if I could do everything through this screen and keyboard then I would. In the real world there is traffic, cops, mean people, courts, judges, and nothing, but problems; on my computer there is information, hours of pleasurable reading, learning, chatting, and now my favorite thing to do is, looking for a job or a new field on monster.com. Something that lets me stay at home away from the public.
Part 2: Mel the Basket case.or (here I go, again, referring to myself in the 3rd person)
I am about to get put through it again. I can see it coming, another ringer. I'm going to be put before a bunch of public servants (what a name for them) and be told (again) what a worthless human piece of living matter that I am. My self esteem is already low and I know what they think of me and it's nothing personal; it's how you win your case if you're a ruthless bastard/bitch, but damn, I'd rather stay at home and not deal with it all again. A couple of ruptured disks, many attorneys and several judges, later and now you have me; someone who was once a perfectly good nurse, who used to like herself, and her profession, and who loved every patient she ever took care of, and I have become a total introvert who would rather talk to myself through my keyboard and avoid all contact with other people.
Judges (another rainy day rant)
I told my mother the other day that I know why we have a court system and judges; it’s not to administer justice or protect the constitution, or argue the separation of church and state; it’s to divide everyone into two classes of human beings; worth a shit and not worth a shit, and according to them, (the courts) most of us litter, the not worth a shit pile like so many skin bags of human refuse ready for disposal, they dispose of us in institutions, penal and otherwise, and execute us, or drug us when they get a chance to. I have spent my whole life trying to escape the not worth a shit pile (through school, work, and volunteering in the community) only to be directed back to it again every time I am unlucky enough to walk too close to a gavel.
I used to not be like this. Anti Social
Ok here is my weird dilemma. I want to work online, I already take some classes online, and I like it here at home. I could live in front of my computer and never leave and be totally happy out here in cyber world. If I wasn’t in the boonies, then I’d have my groceries delivered, toiletries, everything. I like being alone and with people at the same time through my computer. I have absolutely, no desire to leave my home. Right now I have classes that pull me away twice a week to another city, but if I could do everything through this screen and keyboard then I would. In the real world there is traffic, cops, mean people, courts, judges, and nothing, but problems; on my computer there is information, hours of pleasurable reading, learning, chatting, and now my favorite thing to do is, looking for a job or a new field on monster.com. Something that lets me stay at home away from the public.
Part 2: Mel the Basket case.or (here I go, again, referring to myself in the 3rd person)
I am about to get put through it again. I can see it coming, another ringer. I'm going to be put before a bunch of public servants (what a name for them) and be told (again) what a worthless human piece of living matter that I am. My self esteem is already low and I know what they think of me and it's nothing personal; it's how you win your case if you're a ruthless bastard/bitch, but damn, I'd rather stay at home and not deal with it all again. A couple of ruptured disks, many attorneys and several judges, later and now you have me; someone who was once a perfectly good nurse, who used to like herself, and her profession, and who loved every patient she ever took care of, and I have become a total introvert who would rather talk to myself through my keyboard and avoid all contact with other people.
Judges (another rainy day rant)
I told my mother the other day that I know why we have a court system and judges; it’s not to administer justice or protect the constitution, or argue the separation of church and state; it’s to divide everyone into two classes of human beings; worth a shit and not worth a shit, and according to them, (the courts) most of us litter, the not worth a shit pile like so many skin bags of human refuse ready for disposal, they dispose of us in institutions, penal and otherwise, and execute us, or drug us when they get a chance to. I have spent my whole life trying to escape the not worth a shit pile (through school, work, and volunteering in the community) only to be directed back to it again every time I am unlucky enough to walk too close to a gavel.
Thursday, August 28, 2003
*
My son will be 16 in a few days and everyday he looks a little bit more like his father and like my brother Alan. He is all muscles and grace and fluid movement. He climbs up on the roof and cleans out the gutters for me. I am afraid of heights. He’s not. He lifts all the heavy stuff for me and I marvel at his energy and his robust nature, so much like my father, and charming, smiling, able to coax and smooth things over and laughing in the sunlight with no need for shadows at all. I wonder if I taught him enough to survive, to thrive, to reach whatever potential he possesses.
My son will be 16 in a few days and everyday he looks a little bit more like his father and like my brother Alan. He is all muscles and grace and fluid movement. He climbs up on the roof and cleans out the gutters for me. I am afraid of heights. He’s not. He lifts all the heavy stuff for me and I marvel at his energy and his robust nature, so much like my father, and charming, smiling, able to coax and smooth things over and laughing in the sunlight with no need for shadows at all. I wonder if I taught him enough to survive, to thrive, to reach whatever potential he possesses.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
@%#&!
Never mind Honeywell, Baton Rouge, it’s just those damn Trees and Wildflowers polluting our environment again!
"According to Mayor Bobby Simpson of Baton Rouge, approximately 50 percent of the ozone in the Baton Rouge area is produced naturally by trees and other vegetation, while 40 percent comes from vehicle and industrial emissions." BR Advocate 8-21-03
Never mind Honeywell, Baton Rouge, it’s just those damn Trees and Wildflowers polluting our environment again!
"According to Mayor Bobby Simpson of Baton Rouge, approximately 50 percent of the ozone in the Baton Rouge area is produced naturally by trees and other vegetation, while 40 percent comes from vehicle and industrial emissions." BR Advocate 8-21-03
Sunday, August 17, 2003
*
Another chemical spill at Honeywell, another chemical spill, shut the plant down, and pass the chemo around; it’s another chemical spill.
2theadvocate > News > Acid spill at Honeywell plant hurts 2 workers 08/14/03
Acid spill at Honeywell plant hurts 2 workers
By NED RANDOLPH
This is the third accident at the chemical plant in just more than three weeks. Honeywell will be cited with a civil violation by State Police for failure to report Wednesday's accident in a timely manner, Trooper Johnnie Brown confirmed.
EMS was called about 11:15 a.m., an EMS spokesman said.
Honeywell has been dogged by its safety record as of late.
The company's chief executive, Nance Dicciani, said July 31 she had shut down the plant, pending an investigation of two recent spills: on July 20 and July 29.
Gee, I wish I could stand in the background and cheer everyone on; that is if anyone but the lawyers ended up with all that class action money. The poor get cancer, and the rich get, well you know what they all get; that’s right, they eventually all get cancer, too. We’ll all die in our hovels and they’ll die in their mansions, too bad they can’t take it with them like they want to.
Another chemical spill at Honeywell, another chemical spill, shut the plant down, and pass the chemo around; it’s another chemical spill.
2theadvocate > News > Acid spill at Honeywell plant hurts 2 workers 08/14/03
Acid spill at Honeywell plant hurts 2 workers
By NED RANDOLPH
This is the third accident at the chemical plant in just more than three weeks. Honeywell will be cited with a civil violation by State Police for failure to report Wednesday's accident in a timely manner, Trooper Johnnie Brown confirmed.
EMS was called about 11:15 a.m., an EMS spokesman said.
Honeywell has been dogged by its safety record as of late.
The company's chief executive, Nance Dicciani, said July 31 she had shut down the plant, pending an investigation of two recent spills: on July 20 and July 29.
Gee, I wish I could stand in the background and cheer everyone on; that is if anyone but the lawyers ended up with all that class action money. The poor get cancer, and the rich get, well you know what they all get; that’s right, they eventually all get cancer, too. We’ll all die in our hovels and they’ll die in their mansions, too bad they can’t take it with them like they want to.
Thursday, August 14, 2003
*****
Yay! Yay! Yay! I'm back! It's cured!!!!! Now, Back to work and school. Wheeeewwwwwwwww.
Yay! Yay! Yay! I'm back! It's cured!!!!! Now, Back to work and school. Wheeeewwwwwwwww.
Saturday, August 09, 2003
*****
(Let me go into what CC Lockdown is; CC stands for chemical corridor and if you live within it's bounds and there is a spill or leak at the local plants, you are told to go inside your home, turn off air conditioning, close your windows, and stop up any holes under your door, and don’t come out again until the all clear. Well, a lot of people don’t get warned (like my friend) and their homes are drafty, old, and in need of repairs, and telling people to go inside and lock their doors, reminds me of the old civil defense films of people hiding under their tables for a nuclear blast. It doesn’t help. )
CC Lockdown's continued: Taken from the classified section of today's Baton Rouge Advocate (conveniently hidden in the public notices section)
DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY - - - Department of Environmental Quality Office of Environmental Assessment Environmental Planning Division Unauthorized Emissions Reporting Procedures (LAC 33:I.3931) (OS052E) In accordance with the emergency provisions of La. R.S. 49:953(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act, which allows the Department of Environmental Quality ("Department") to use emergency procedures to establish rules, and La. R.S. 30:2011, the secretary of the Department hereby finds that imminent peril to the public welfare exists and accordingly adopts the following emergency rule, which shall be effective seven days after the date of adoption for 120 days, or until promulgation of the final rule, whichever occurs first. In the last two years, the Baton Rouge Nonattainment Area (the parishes of Ascension, East Baton Rouge, Iberville, Livingston, and West Baton Rouge) has experienced exceedances of the one-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) promulgated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). These exceedances did not occur during circumstances that typically result in excessive ozone formation and led to ozone readings the Baton Rouge area has not experienced in a decade. The ozone readings for two separate episodes in September 2002 and July 2003 were 164 parts per billion (ppb) and 174 ppb respectively, over 30 percent above the standard. Monitoring results from these exceedances indicate a high rate and efficiency of ozone production, which was limited spatially to the immediate Baton Rouge area. These ozone episodes correspond very well to the kind of episodes that have occurred in the Houston/ Galveston areas. The Texas Air Quality Study, conducted in the Houston/Galveston areas, concluded that the reactivity of the hydrocarbons was most often dominated by low molecular weight alkenes and aromatics resulting in explosive ozone formation. Air quality sampling in the Baton Rouge area also showed substantial quantities of the mentioned ozone precursors. The ozone formation experienced in the Baton Rouge area may similarly be the result of the emissions of "highly reactive" ozone precursors. The Department needs additional information regarding the emissions of these highly reactive ozone precursors to understand, predict, and prevent further exceedances of the ozone standard. Results from computer simulations based on Houston's industrial regions suggest emissions of as little as 100 pounds of light alkenes and aromatics can lead to 50 ppb or greater enhancements of ozone concentrations. Baton Rouge's type of industry (petrochemical plants and refineries) and meteorological conditions are similar enough to Houston to warrant further investigation. This information is needed immediately to monitor the remainder of the 2003 ozone season in the hopes of achieving attainment of the standard. Facilities are to continue to follow the LAC 33:I.Chapter 39 reporting protocols and, whenever possible, to utilize the new notification procedures found at http://www.deq.state.la.us/surveillance/irf/forms and http://www.deq.state.la.us/surveillance. This Emergency Rule is effective on August 12, 2003, and shall remain in effect for a maximum of 120 days or until a final rule is promulgated, whichever occurs first. For more information concerning OS052E, you may contact the Regulation Development Section at (225) 219-3550. Adopted this 5th day August, 2003. L. HALL BOHLINGER Secretary 2670385-aug 9-1t
(Let me go into what CC Lockdown is; CC stands for chemical corridor and if you live within it's bounds and there is a spill or leak at the local plants, you are told to go inside your home, turn off air conditioning, close your windows, and stop up any holes under your door, and don’t come out again until the all clear. Well, a lot of people don’t get warned (like my friend) and their homes are drafty, old, and in need of repairs, and telling people to go inside and lock their doors, reminds me of the old civil defense films of people hiding under their tables for a nuclear blast. It doesn’t help. )
CC Lockdown's continued: Taken from the classified section of today's Baton Rouge Advocate (conveniently hidden in the public notices section)
DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY - - - Department of Environmental Quality Office of Environmental Assessment Environmental Planning Division Unauthorized Emissions Reporting Procedures (LAC 33:I.3931) (OS052E) In accordance with the emergency provisions of La. R.S. 49:953(B) of the Administrative Procedure Act, which allows the Department of Environmental Quality ("Department") to use emergency procedures to establish rules, and La. R.S. 30:2011, the secretary of the Department hereby finds that imminent peril to the public welfare exists and accordingly adopts the following emergency rule, which shall be effective seven days after the date of adoption for 120 days, or until promulgation of the final rule, whichever occurs first. In the last two years, the Baton Rouge Nonattainment Area (the parishes of Ascension, East Baton Rouge, Iberville, Livingston, and West Baton Rouge) has experienced exceedances of the one-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) promulgated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). These exceedances did not occur during circumstances that typically result in excessive ozone formation and led to ozone readings the Baton Rouge area has not experienced in a decade. The ozone readings for two separate episodes in September 2002 and July 2003 were 164 parts per billion (ppb) and 174 ppb respectively, over 30 percent above the standard. Monitoring results from these exceedances indicate a high rate and efficiency of ozone production, which was limited spatially to the immediate Baton Rouge area. These ozone episodes correspond very well to the kind of episodes that have occurred in the Houston/ Galveston areas. The Texas Air Quality Study, conducted in the Houston/Galveston areas, concluded that the reactivity of the hydrocarbons was most often dominated by low molecular weight alkenes and aromatics resulting in explosive ozone formation. Air quality sampling in the Baton Rouge area also showed substantial quantities of the mentioned ozone precursors. The ozone formation experienced in the Baton Rouge area may similarly be the result of the emissions of "highly reactive" ozone precursors. The Department needs additional information regarding the emissions of these highly reactive ozone precursors to understand, predict, and prevent further exceedances of the ozone standard. Results from computer simulations based on Houston's industrial regions suggest emissions of as little as 100 pounds of light alkenes and aromatics can lead to 50 ppb or greater enhancements of ozone concentrations. Baton Rouge's type of industry (petrochemical plants and refineries) and meteorological conditions are similar enough to Houston to warrant further investigation. This information is needed immediately to monitor the remainder of the 2003 ozone season in the hopes of achieving attainment of the standard. Facilities are to continue to follow the LAC 33:I.Chapter 39 reporting protocols and, whenever possible, to utilize the new notification procedures found at http://www.deq.state.la.us/surveillance/irf/forms and http://www.deq.state.la.us/surveillance. This Emergency Rule is effective on August 12, 2003, and shall remain in effect for a maximum of 120 days or until a final rule is promulgated, whichever occurs first. For more information concerning OS052E, you may contact the Regulation Development Section at (225) 219-3550. Adopted this 5th day August, 2003. L. HALL BOHLINGER Secretary 2670385-aug 9-1t
Sunday, August 03, 2003
****
CC Lockdown's twice in one week in the same neighborhood in good old Baton Rouge
I'm still here, but I am slightly speechless at the moment, not that I've run out of things to say, it's just that I'm not ready to say what I've been thinking about a lot lately and that is about the all the CC lockdowns going on in Baton Rouge.
I have some modest nursing experience, so my family members call me and tell me when they are ill. They didn’t hear about the lock down until it was too late and they called me before they were aware of a spill and told me they had symptoms similar to strep throat; unable to swallow or breathe deeply, but with excruciating migraines and burning, red eyes, and extreme nausea. I always say go to ER, or go to a doctor, but they decided to wait, and then got the news that there was a chlorine leak. And then heard the local ER doctor on the evening news telling everyone not to bother coming in because there was nothing they could (or would?) do for them.
Then just a few days later my friend called me and said she thought it was happening again because her symptoms were getting worse and she was scared and we found out there was another spill at the same place. (Honeywell) This time it was a chemical agent called antimony pentachloride and she couldn’t open her eyes because they burned so badly, and there was nausea, vomiting, splitting headaches, and trouble breathing, again. This is disgusting and they tell people not to go the doctor. I have some friends severely affected by this and I'm worried and I don't know what to say to them.
My friends live within a couple of blocks of the latest two that occurred within a week of each other at the same plant. (They can't afford to move)
They're all getting nausea, headaches, and vomiting and the doctors in ER are refusing to treat most of the people in the community who have been exposed. Hey maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's a POOR mostly minority area and the fat cat doctors in that town don‘t like poor, uninsured, or medicaid patients. Yah think! Anyway I am aghast at how this is being handled.
Do yourself a favor and don't relocate or move to Louisiana until they get their act together. This bullshit has to stop and gutting the clean air act just for Baton Rouge ain’t a good idea.
CC Lockdown's twice in one week in the same neighborhood in good old Baton Rouge
I'm still here, but I am slightly speechless at the moment, not that I've run out of things to say, it's just that I'm not ready to say what I've been thinking about a lot lately and that is about the all the CC lockdowns going on in Baton Rouge.
I have some modest nursing experience, so my family members call me and tell me when they are ill. They didn’t hear about the lock down until it was too late and they called me before they were aware of a spill and told me they had symptoms similar to strep throat; unable to swallow or breathe deeply, but with excruciating migraines and burning, red eyes, and extreme nausea. I always say go to ER, or go to a doctor, but they decided to wait, and then got the news that there was a chlorine leak. And then heard the local ER doctor on the evening news telling everyone not to bother coming in because there was nothing they could (or would?) do for them.
Then just a few days later my friend called me and said she thought it was happening again because her symptoms were getting worse and she was scared and we found out there was another spill at the same place. (Honeywell) This time it was a chemical agent called antimony pentachloride and she couldn’t open her eyes because they burned so badly, and there was nausea, vomiting, splitting headaches, and trouble breathing, again. This is disgusting and they tell people not to go the doctor. I have some friends severely affected by this and I'm worried and I don't know what to say to them.
My friends live within a couple of blocks of the latest two that occurred within a week of each other at the same plant. (They can't afford to move)
They're all getting nausea, headaches, and vomiting and the doctors in ER are refusing to treat most of the people in the community who have been exposed. Hey maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's a POOR mostly minority area and the fat cat doctors in that town don‘t like poor, uninsured, or medicaid patients. Yah think! Anyway I am aghast at how this is being handled.
Do yourself a favor and don't relocate or move to Louisiana until they get their act together. This bullshit has to stop and gutting the clean air act just for Baton Rouge ain’t a good idea.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Saturday, June 28, 2003
`
Why I returned my Special Olympics Ribbon
I was thinking about a long time ago when I was around 18 and I volunteered to be a softball coach for the International Special Olympics. I had so much fun hanging out with the kids, too much fun, apparently, because some of the event officials kept thinking that I was one of them, and I guess I was, and people were hugging me like I was, and that freaked me out, but it was funny, and the real athletes all laughed too. I wandered over to the gymnastics competitions because I had been a gymnast in my early teen years and I sat with the athletes and talked and drank cokes and laughed; they were incredible people. At the end of the event they had a dance in the field house at LSU and the other volunteers sat in bleachers and gawked, but I like to dance, and my new friends were asking me to, so I got out, and I jitter bugged, and shimmied, and waltzed, and my mother who was an official ‘hugger’ kept getting compliments about her ‘special child’ and I did nothing to dissuade the rumor, but I did return the ribbon.
Why I returned my Special Olympics Ribbon
I was thinking about a long time ago when I was around 18 and I volunteered to be a softball coach for the International Special Olympics. I had so much fun hanging out with the kids, too much fun, apparently, because some of the event officials kept thinking that I was one of them, and I guess I was, and people were hugging me like I was, and that freaked me out, but it was funny, and the real athletes all laughed too. I wandered over to the gymnastics competitions because I had been a gymnast in my early teen years and I sat with the athletes and talked and drank cokes and laughed; they were incredible people. At the end of the event they had a dance in the field house at LSU and the other volunteers sat in bleachers and gawked, but I like to dance, and my new friends were asking me to, so I got out, and I jitter bugged, and shimmied, and waltzed, and my mother who was an official ‘hugger’ kept getting compliments about her ‘special child’ and I did nothing to dissuade the rumor, but I did return the ribbon.
Saturday, June 21, 2003
Last Call
I seem to be playing phone tag this morning, because I can’t get in touch with the people that I need to talk to and I thought about a friend of mine who spent the last hour of his life making phone calls. He was calling different people and no one was home. He left messages on answering machines, but he never got to talk to anyone. He was calling from a hospital bed. I thought about him this morning as I was pushing buttons and hearing recorded messages, and I wonder what he was thinking while he was making those last calls. His messages sounded casual, and he didn’t sound desperate, he didn’t even say he was calling from a hospital room, and he even had the presence of mind to leave a joke on one of the machines. About an hour after that last call, they found him slumped over in bed, the top pulled off his margarine, his butter knife askew, and his bread still unbuttered, and the phone on his bed, next to his head, as though he were waiting for a return call that never came.
I seem to be playing phone tag this morning, because I can’t get in touch with the people that I need to talk to and I thought about a friend of mine who spent the last hour of his life making phone calls. He was calling different people and no one was home. He left messages on answering machines, but he never got to talk to anyone. He was calling from a hospital bed. I thought about him this morning as I was pushing buttons and hearing recorded messages, and I wonder what he was thinking while he was making those last calls. His messages sounded casual, and he didn’t sound desperate, he didn’t even say he was calling from a hospital room, and he even had the presence of mind to leave a joke on one of the machines. About an hour after that last call, they found him slumped over in bed, the top pulled off his margarine, his butter knife askew, and his bread still unbuttered, and the phone on his bed, next to his head, as though he were waiting for a return call that never came.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
(Sigh)
Months later, after her death, I have flashes, like lightening quick memories of tiny moments of knowing her during one of the most difficult times of my life. I remember her friend coming over and talking to me; me sitting cross legged, my head in my hands, in the middle of my living room rug, and him telling me that she was someone that I needed to know. He said that she wasn’t judgmental; she wasn't like that, and that she was good at putting people at ease, and that I needed to meet her and talk to her. He thought that she could make me feel better. I guess I looked like I needed an anchor, a friend, someone who would listen, anyway, she did come over to visit with me.
I can’t remember what we talked about that first day. I think something about us doing laundry together, and that she had the same last name as an acquaintance of mine in another state, and we discussed whether she might be related to him, and she said that she might be second cousins or something. I’m not going to exploit our friendship, that has never been the goal of my writing, although I do exploit myself quite a bit, but I deserve it, anyway, this bugs me, because I know, several years from now, I’ll be sitting somewhere and not thinking about this and it will all come back to me, and I’ll remember her vividly, all the way down to the kind of sneakers, the gray baggy shirt that she was wearing, and how her dark hair fell in big loose ringlets, damp with sweat, and the way her eyes smiled with her, in an intense, instant, Polaroid kind of way, in one big flash of recognition, and that she was like that, like the kind of person I try to be, petal to the metal, take no prisoners, strap on your seat belt and let's go, and I guess she did befriend me, and I know that she didn’t feel sorry for me at all; she just thought I needed to get up off my ass and do something with my life. She was a dynamo, someone who was out to save the whole planet, and she took time in her busy schedule to try and save me; to help out a depressed neighbor, someone she had never met before. What a sweet person she was. I know that I was very lucky to know her and I wish that I had told her that back then.
I thought about her, again, as I was riding up the Talimena Trail in western Arkansas, to the lodge on the top of Queen Wilhelmina mountain last Sunday. I was in a silver Mustang convertible, the sunlight was dancing off the hood, illuminating beads of rain, and changing them into every color of the rainbow, like a prism, a kaleidoscope effect on the windshield, bright beams of light, almost blinding me, and blending in with the gold, tinted shade of my wire rimmed sunglasses, with the wind flying through my hair, a storm cloud chasing, but not over taking us, and my son sitting next to me, chewing bubble gum as fast as he could, and him smiling so hard, it looked like it hurt his freckled cheekbones, and then I thought about her with the same kind of wind touching every strand of her being, and I thought about my deceased father, and his black, 1955 T-bird with the red wings, and about both of us laughing, and me by his side, us sailing by on the same pavement, and then I pictured all of us together for a single precious moment of life, and forever, finally free.
Months later, after her death, I have flashes, like lightening quick memories of tiny moments of knowing her during one of the most difficult times of my life. I remember her friend coming over and talking to me; me sitting cross legged, my head in my hands, in the middle of my living room rug, and him telling me that she was someone that I needed to know. He said that she wasn’t judgmental; she wasn't like that, and that she was good at putting people at ease, and that I needed to meet her and talk to her. He thought that she could make me feel better. I guess I looked like I needed an anchor, a friend, someone who would listen, anyway, she did come over to visit with me.
I can’t remember what we talked about that first day. I think something about us doing laundry together, and that she had the same last name as an acquaintance of mine in another state, and we discussed whether she might be related to him, and she said that she might be second cousins or something. I’m not going to exploit our friendship, that has never been the goal of my writing, although I do exploit myself quite a bit, but I deserve it, anyway, this bugs me, because I know, several years from now, I’ll be sitting somewhere and not thinking about this and it will all come back to me, and I’ll remember her vividly, all the way down to the kind of sneakers, the gray baggy shirt that she was wearing, and how her dark hair fell in big loose ringlets, damp with sweat, and the way her eyes smiled with her, in an intense, instant, Polaroid kind of way, in one big flash of recognition, and that she was like that, like the kind of person I try to be, petal to the metal, take no prisoners, strap on your seat belt and let's go, and I guess she did befriend me, and I know that she didn’t feel sorry for me at all; she just thought I needed to get up off my ass and do something with my life. She was a dynamo, someone who was out to save the whole planet, and she took time in her busy schedule to try and save me; to help out a depressed neighbor, someone she had never met before. What a sweet person she was. I know that I was very lucky to know her and I wish that I had told her that back then.
I thought about her, again, as I was riding up the Talimena Trail in western Arkansas, to the lodge on the top of Queen Wilhelmina mountain last Sunday. I was in a silver Mustang convertible, the sunlight was dancing off the hood, illuminating beads of rain, and changing them into every color of the rainbow, like a prism, a kaleidoscope effect on the windshield, bright beams of light, almost blinding me, and blending in with the gold, tinted shade of my wire rimmed sunglasses, with the wind flying through my hair, a storm cloud chasing, but not over taking us, and my son sitting next to me, chewing bubble gum as fast as he could, and him smiling so hard, it looked like it hurt his freckled cheekbones, and then I thought about her with the same kind of wind touching every strand of her being, and I thought about my deceased father, and his black, 1955 T-bird with the red wings, and about both of us laughing, and me by his side, us sailing by on the same pavement, and then I pictured all of us together for a single precious moment of life, and forever, finally free.
Monday, June 16, 2003
The right to choose and welfare reform.
I am not abdicating responsibility for my self or my predicaments, but I’m not apologizing for them either. It’s just simply the way it was and is for my son and me. I once tried to argue with a young conservative republican about childhood nutrition programs using my own situation as an example. He wanted to know and I quote. “ Who is to blame? Who is at fault? And Who done you wrong?” I told him that my child was not a fault and that babies are one situation where two wrongs do make a right; a right to eat, a right to have shelter, and a right to choose, and to be able to make a decision that is not based on your lack of food or lack of shelter. You won’t find my soft and fuzzy logic in any algebra equations, or technical manuals. I think that is why men don’t understand and they continue to gut the safety nets that women like me need in order to survive and to make choices.
Monday, June 09, 2003
Drumline: Ed and Ric's version
Well we’ve had two visits from the local sheriffs, so far in two days over my son’s drumming. It was before 10 pm last night when they arrived and I just shook my head and said Ok whatever. He wasn't playing the night before, but they said they were in the neighborhood. (What ever) Now, it’s morning and Ed is practicing, again. I’m relieved as long as he is on those drums and pounding away at his teen angst, then I know that he’s not out doing drugs, getting in trouble, or doing anything except hitting cymbals as hard and as fast as he can.
I remember his dad tried to start a band. We lived in a low rent apartment, the kind where people sleep in the lobby and you hand them an old coat to use as a pillow. One of those California neighborhoods full of over grown boys (oh excuse me, I mean Men) where the sign painter is a bass player, the mail man writes songs and plays rhythm guitar, and the apartment manager sings, and if they had been teenagers then they would have a garage band (probably did), except they were all in their 20s and 30s, and too old live with their parents, so instead they had an apartment band. Anyway, they practiced on the second floor in a corner apartment of a four-story tenement. We thought people would call the cops, cause man they were loud, instead we got knocks on the door, song request, and it all usually ended in a keg party. Wish it were like that here.
Boom, boom, bam, bam, crash, crash goes my Ed: I hope someone bails us out of jail, because I will not tell him to stop.
Friday, June 06, 2003
Shoe Laces
You can study one person, and replay him, and moments with him in your mind, things that happened 20 years ago, and you realize that somehow you have memorized even his shoelaces, and the way they were tied on that one particular morning, but you can’t remember if you paid your water bill from this month. These are the tricks that my mind plays on me. And maybe the shoelaces were, frayed, dirty, and endearing, because one loop was larger than the other, and he always tied his shoelaces that way, haphazard, not paying attention engaged in conversation, adamant over something that his boss said, or something on the news that morning, and you don’t remember what it was, but you can see the three beads of sweat inching down his nose, the way one strand of hair flipped to this side or that side, as he became emphatic stressing his point, and you arguing just to take the other side so you'd have something to discuss, and the black soled tennis shoes, he wore that day stand out in your mind, (he was preparing to walk and hitchhike the 30 miles to town, to get to work, that evening/ he made it, but then he always did) and you wonder why it is important to you, to have these pictures in your head, home movies of your soul.
You remember the Amite river's brown water rushing outside your door, the early morning mist rising up obscuring the view of the other bank, the sound of splashes, and men working on some project, the current was swift and the water up, and it was a two mile hike just to get to the bridge and the highway. This was your favorite place in the world at the time, ( even though you barely had electric and the well pump was broken) and there was always a big rod and reel cast out to the middle of the river, trying your luck and hoping to eat something (anything would do), and the logs and snakes, and debris rushing by, and the way the road always flooded when it rained; if you had a car, you had to park it at the bridge, and walk through, knee to waist, deep murky, swirling water to get home, and you never minded dodging the water moccasins, they went their way and you went yours.
Thursday, June 05, 2003
Rainy days
I freak out when it rains. I used to not be like this, it always took a lot to get me upset. I’ve had guns held on me, shotguns, knives to my throat, you name it, and I’ve had it happen, and you’d never know it, to look at me, but my friends that have known me for a long time (the ones not dead or in jail), they know.
Now I hear a clap of thunder and my knees tremble, and if I’m on the road and my car hydroplanes, the least little bit, I have to pull over, and I shake, and I get panic attacks (imagine that) and don’t even mention tornado warnings, you don’t want to know.
Which is strange, because where I grew up, we used to party when the weather got bad, and we’d stand outside and watch pine and hardwoods, rock back and forth in the wind, their tops touching the ground, as the gust changed directions, and laugh when the trunks would finally crack, and land in some parking lot on top of somebody’s car, and we’d go out riding during the worst of it, mud running at the edge of bayous and canals, in and out, up and down, and the worse the weather was, the more fun we had, of course we were all drunk off our asses back then.
It’s strange that I can’t stand the weather these days, and I don’t know what happened to me, or when it started, but all of sudden there it was, a brand new neurosis, that I didn’t have before, but then again, since I am quite used to my own neurotic indulges, I just shake it off and go on. I wonder why?
Monday, May 26, 2003
Memorial Day
I think about them sometimes, the people whom I’d like to talk to, but can’t, and I can count them on my fingers, my sweethearts gone forever. I feel like I’m on the edge of precipice and looking down into a pit and I know that none of us left living are very deep anyway and then I think about death like deep water and I wonder if I’m right about that, that once it’s over you head, once you die and plunge into the pool then it doesn’t matter how deep it is, or how long you’ve been dead, just like deep water, but then maybe you swim, and you don’t sink. I think I’d like to go all the way to the bottom when it happens to me and see how deep it all is and then touch and push my way back up, coming up for air or will I? Will it feel like drowning and will I grasp desperately for life in some ghostly way, trying to grab the living, or will it be like the time that I fell in the Amite River at Magnolia Beach once when I was five, and I sunk down and I heard music, and I saw colors and it was all so pretty and pleasant until someone, a very nice someone, pulled me out, and patted my back and carried me back to camp wrapped in a blanket not really comprehending or grasping what had happened and I still think about it and I still can hear the music and see the swirling colors in my dreams, and when I close my eyes, and I hope it was like that for them, like diving in, and it’s all over your head anyway, so it doesn’t really matter, none of this does, does it?
I have this really calm quiet little place to live right now and it isn’t unpleasant to be here at all. The coffee pot purrs, my dog wags her tail, and licks my feet, and I can hear a babbling creek close by and I have no complaints, I’m not hungry, and I have a place to live, and I absolutely don’t fit in, in this place of Shotguns and Pick-up trucks (a Marketing term), having always been more of a Bohemian mix (another Marketing term), but I I’ve crafted an art out of being alone and am good at finding things to fill my days, as long as my life has some purpose, and doesn’t hurt anyone, and I achieve something, then I think that it’s OK.
Someone came by my house the other day with metal detectors and hiking stuff (I live on the edge of a camp ground and national forest) and told me our homes and street were built on top of an old Civil War era Gold Mine and I know that there’s some kind of big cavern beneath my street because it keeps caving in (that's a bitch); and all I could think of was a great big sink hole waiting to swallow me, my coffee pot, my dog, my son, and all of my possessions and everyone saying “Oh well” when it happens, because I know that people like me don’t get gold mines, we get sink holes and the insurance company refuses to cover it and then you are basically FUCKED with, no house, no coffee pot, no dog, no street, and no gold, because that’s how it’s works.
Sunday, May 04, 2003
A Rant on Food from a Louisiana Cook
I am food obsessed. I am down right weird about food. I bought 20 pounds of potatoes at the super market, and I felt like a rich girl, and I know that’s silly. I looked around in the super market parking lot, and I hoped that someone saw my son load it in the car, so they'd know we had food, and plenty of it.
I watch the stock market all day on TV with it’s huge commodities, and markets, and billions of dollars, and millions of products, produce, and I think, my freezer is full of chicken and ground meat and I feel like a big success. I love plump juicy tomatoes, sweet vidalia onions, sacks of par boiled long grain rice (I have 10 pounds) I repeat what I have, over and over in my head, before I go to sleep, like night time prayers, and I memorize every thing in my pantry, and sigh comforted that I have enough food, and nothing can really be that wrong as long as we have something to eat, and food to last, and I try to make calendars in my brain to see how long each supply would last if there were a famine, or every grocer closed at the same time, or if for some reason I couldn’t buy anymore, and it is a big deal to me. How much food I have, and how long it will last, and how many people I could feed, and whether I have enough to help out, or contribute if someone calls, or comes by, and is out of work and needs some.
Groceries are my comfort margin, and my measure of my own person wealth, isn't what is in my stock portfolio, but is if I have enough food to share, but of course, even if I can't send a care package, if someone wants to stay for dinner, we can always stretch it with water, or tomato sauce, or flour, or we could eat it over rice, or with potatoes, or you know how it is don’t you?
Even if I am worried about something like a job, or a bill that’s due, when I go to sleep all I have to do is think of my refrigerator, and what’s in it, and what food I have to prepare the next day, and if it is full then I can go to sleep, it's like counting sheep for me. I think about food so much I ought to be 500 pounds and my idea of heaven would be to eat and eat and eat and never gain weight and never run out.
My father grew up on a farm, and in a rooming house in north Louisiana during the Great Depression and he was food obsessed too, because when he was young he didn’t always get enough to eat. The only time, that I ever went hungry was after he died. I was pregnant, and people turned me down for food, and it made a huge impression on me. I decided to not have anymore children, and never to trust a man, or anyone else to provide my living, and never to go hungry, or get pregnant, again.
(I am so self sufficient, that I scare the Hell out of most men, but that's Ok, my grandmother, my Dad's Mom, Edith was the same way. She never re-married and she managed to put all five of her children through college (even the girls) on her own by working.) I think that, that rough time brought me closer to my Father, even after his death. I understood him a whole lot better and I know, I would have never known a hunger pain in my life had he lived.
Anyway, he once took me walking down gravelly, dirt roads to his family’s former homestead, past newly plowed fields, railroad tracks, and oil wells pumping (of course they didn’t discover the oil till after they evicted his widowed Mom and 4 siblings, but you’ve heard those stories before so we won’t go there) and he would point out these little houses with white picket fences and small gardens and say “That man grew the best watermelons and when I was kid we would swipe them.” (he never said steal) and sometimes, the same family was still living there, and an old black man in his 70s would come out on the porch, and say “Look it’s that Eddie B. kid. Do you remember that time my Mama caught you with the watermelon, and we hauled you back here by the scruff of your neck, and she felt so sorry for you that she fed you corn bread and collards with ham hocks? Man you was a skinny little white boy back then, and you said it was the best food you’d ever had?” and my father who was in his 60s at the time (still the kid) and could still blush, would turn beet red, and laugh, and apologize, and introduce me to them. They would shake hands and everybody would hug and then we'd have iced tea or lemonade on the porch. My Dad said a watermelon tasted sweeter if it was snitched. Then he would tell me that he was hungry as a child, and if it wasn’t for them, that some nights he would have gone to bed without food.
Back when the Waltons (the TV show about the depression era family that wouldn't take charity) was on TV, my Dad would watch it with me, and tell me that they would have been the 'Rich Folks' in town, and then he would admire the heavy oak table that they sat at, and their big house, and big front porch, and he said, he didn't understand all the talk about the Waltons, not accepting charity, and being self sufficient, because any fool could see that those folks would have had money back then. "Hell, he'd say, "Look at em. They owned a whole damn mountain. That ain't poor."
My dad always ate very quickly. He said, he couldn't help it because after his family lost the farm, his widowed mother had to open a rooming house in Ruston, Louisiana for college kids, and that he was the youngest and smallest person at the large table, and if he wanted enough to eat, then he had to eat large amounts, and he had to eat it fast, and he never took the time to say "please this' or please pass that" He'd laugh and tell me to use my boarding house manners, because when he was young all the meat would be gone in the time it took to pass the salt or pepper. One rule was observed, though and that was the elbows "Mabel, Mabel get your elbows off the table" he'd say to me. I think it was so you could fit more people at the table.
( I still have that very same rooming house table. It is sitting in my dining room. I often wonder what it would say if it could talk. It'd probably say, "Get your elbows off of me and invite some people over for dinner." I'll bet it's lonely compared to it's boarding house days.)
My father cooked a big pot beans every Saturday like clockwork and beef or pork roast on Sundays. He would cook huge amounts and even the insurance salesman or Tupperware guy was invited to have plate. He was food obsessed and I guess anyone who has been without, always is, and the driving force in life is an empty belly or the memory of one. I know it is in mine.
My son and his friends worry about labels on clothes and products (better known as the upward pull strategy), and it freaks me out, because I have never cared who made what, or what name was on it, as long as it fit, and was comfortable. He thinks that the more you pay for something the better that it is, and I try so hard to steer him away from that notion. Yet all the while I hope that he never looses his youthful naivete, at least not the way I did, and then I think about getting life insurance, and making sure that he never, ever has to worry about food, and he loves to eat and I am so glad that he has enough right now and I tell him that he should be a chef because then he'd never go hungry.. Blah, blah, blah, blehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
(Yes, I'm nuts. Maybe toasted almonds, or pecans, never peanuts, but possibly cashews. Have you ever had Cashew chicken? Yum.)
Saturday, May 03, 2003
Old Time Religion (Why I don't attend church in my home state)
When I was younger and involved in the women’s movement, I loved to pick on the Nazis. We would go to the capital with our group and lobby for some bill of the moment; sex education, equal property management, or the ERA, and the Nazis (Christian Right) would be there, too. I was the youngest of our group of women, and I felt free to observe no decorum what-so-ever, since I had declined to have a reputation to protect, I loved to dog them to hell and back and I mostly got away with it. (I still do it on the internet as much as I can)
Up and down the capital steps, into this meeting, or that meeting, catcalls, insults, and disruptions, and I was tolerated (or so I thought). Of course that may be why some people still don’t like me to this day, but anyway picking on the Klan (translation Christian Right) in Louisiana, is how I vented, and let off steam when I was a teenager. It was my favorite sport. It was how I spent my youth.
They would come by the busloads from out in the country, or else they, like me, were some of those perpetual hangers on, that you would see when any bill was being debated at the capital. I was only 15, 16, or 17, so I had lots of leeway to jeer and make fun of them.
They would arrive under the guise of Christian Right, (really KKK) bibles in hand to fight sex education, or birth control funding; and would almost always dissolve into a litany of holocaust denial, and talking about mud people, and totally forget what they came for, especially if I got a hold of them.
My fun when I was young was catching them at it, and remembering things that had been said at previous encounters, and calling them on it. I called it sport, and sometimes I think of returning to my wild younger years.
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
About Abortion (a work in progress, hopefully)
I have never told
anyone
why I feel like I do (about abortion)
or what it was like to go hungry while I was pregnant
my stomach growling with a baby in it.
begging the welfare office not to cut my food stamps
(they did anyway)
Waiting two days, three days,
I was so hungry during the first half of my pregnancy.
That I kept loosing weight for the first five months.
I remember scraping pennies from every corner of my house
to buy a box of macaroni and cheese for 24 cents.
And making it without milk or margarine
Nothing left in the cupboards
and no car to go and argue with an office of sneering strangers
Stranded without a way to leave a rural area.
Calling asking for help and being told
Too bad. (Too fucking bad)
I'll never ask anyone for anything, again.
ever.
(This was 16 years ago and I still remember it
that feeling like a punch in the gut
when every tear sucks inward and won't fall
and helpless to help yourself
There is an anger that won't ever leave no matter what you do.
It's not the emptiness of a hollow stomach that you remember
It is more like a hard, firm, fist inside of you, it fills you up,
and the fist becomes your soul, but it's not a mean one
and it isn't evil.
It stays there long after the event and it makes you determined
to be tough, fierce, mean, resolved, and most of all independent.
Determined that you will never let anyone in your life
feel like you did, even the ones that said NO,
but you know better than to ask for their help, again.)
You resolve to never ask anyone for mercy.
And then finally the only person who would help was
Your old friend from childhood
(a person misunderstood by just about everyone else,
but she understands you and your soul)
So, so, thankful to have this friend, who cares
(Renee) who makes sandwiches at a deli
She would drive 20 miles out of her way
She would sneak the day old ones home to me.
She was told to throw them away
but she’d bring home a whole bag of cellephane wrapped
sandwiches just for me.
and how good it felt to have day old barbeque
and how rich and greedy I felt
with a whole bag of whole wheat, rye, or white
ham, pastrami, and roast beef,
and just how good it tasted
and there was no limit to how many of them
I could eat in the evening
as she arrived at my house with the bag of sandwiches
meant for the dumpster
that ended up in my stomach instead.
Oh yeah,
About abortion
I’ve been determined to never be weak or needy, again
Ever.
That my son will never go hungry like I did
Ever.
I save every little bit of food
(scraps of bacon, ends of onions) in my freezer
and keep large stocks of beans and rice
just in case.
That I will never hold a crying baby in my arms
and beg them not to turn off the water
or serve an eviction notice.
That I was never liked as a human
at least not enough to reproduce
not that much, anyway.
And certainly no one
Wanted me or my offspring.
I am always hiding
this from my smiling
much doted on suburban son.
He and I were never wanted
Ever.
(so what could I assume about having, more children?)
The one lesson that I learned in life
My main fact in life
That I learned in my young adulthood
Growing up the hard way
in the southern United States
Louisiana in particular
Was if you’re
POOR
Don’t have children.
If you can help it.
Nobody wants you or them.
My poor friends have kids, now
and I try to help
People have hooked up to my electricity
I've fed entire families
Given out instructions on how to fill out
food stamp, welfare, student aid forms
(stuff I wished I'd known back then)
And you know Louisiana is like a third world country
in the US.
Tourist come and go and enjoy the atmosphere and the food
They ignore the poverty
the growing prison population,
the crime, the murder rate
and the poor kids.
And there are alot of them
in that state doing
without things that most people in this country
take for granted
like
food.
Melanie Burke Zetzer
(You know it's funny that the same people
who want you to have children
are the same ones who want to cut back on
school lunches, welfare, and food stamp programs)
I have never told
anyone
why I feel like I do (about abortion)
or what it was like to go hungry while I was pregnant
my stomach growling with a baby in it.
begging the welfare office not to cut my food stamps
(they did anyway)
Waiting two days, three days,
I was so hungry during the first half of my pregnancy.
That I kept loosing weight for the first five months.
I remember scraping pennies from every corner of my house
to buy a box of macaroni and cheese for 24 cents.
And making it without milk or margarine
Nothing left in the cupboards
and no car to go and argue with an office of sneering strangers
Stranded without a way to leave a rural area.
Calling asking for help and being told
Too bad. (Too fucking bad)
I'll never ask anyone for anything, again.
ever.
(This was 16 years ago and I still remember it
that feeling like a punch in the gut
when every tear sucks inward and won't fall
and helpless to help yourself
There is an anger that won't ever leave no matter what you do.
It's not the emptiness of a hollow stomach that you remember
It is more like a hard, firm, fist inside of you, it fills you up,
and the fist becomes your soul, but it's not a mean one
and it isn't evil.
It stays there long after the event and it makes you determined
to be tough, fierce, mean, resolved, and most of all independent.
Determined that you will never let anyone in your life
feel like you did, even the ones that said NO,
but you know better than to ask for their help, again.)
You resolve to never ask anyone for mercy.
And then finally the only person who would help was
Your old friend from childhood
(a person misunderstood by just about everyone else,
but she understands you and your soul)
So, so, thankful to have this friend, who cares
(Renee) who makes sandwiches at a deli
She would drive 20 miles out of her way
She would sneak the day old ones home to me.
She was told to throw them away
but she’d bring home a whole bag of cellephane wrapped
sandwiches just for me.
and how good it felt to have day old barbeque
and how rich and greedy I felt
with a whole bag of whole wheat, rye, or white
ham, pastrami, and roast beef,
and just how good it tasted
and there was no limit to how many of them
I could eat in the evening
as she arrived at my house with the bag of sandwiches
meant for the dumpster
that ended up in my stomach instead.
Oh yeah,
About abortion
I’ve been determined to never be weak or needy, again
Ever.
That my son will never go hungry like I did
Ever.
I save every little bit of food
(scraps of bacon, ends of onions) in my freezer
and keep large stocks of beans and rice
just in case.
That I will never hold a crying baby in my arms
and beg them not to turn off the water
or serve an eviction notice.
That I was never liked as a human
at least not enough to reproduce
not that much, anyway.
And certainly no one
Wanted me or my offspring.
I am always hiding
this from my smiling
much doted on suburban son.
He and I were never wanted
Ever.
(so what could I assume about having, more children?)
The one lesson that I learned in life
My main fact in life
That I learned in my young adulthood
Growing up the hard way
in the southern United States
Louisiana in particular
Was if you’re
POOR
Don’t have children.
If you can help it.
Nobody wants you or them.
My poor friends have kids, now
and I try to help
People have hooked up to my electricity
I've fed entire families
Given out instructions on how to fill out
food stamp, welfare, student aid forms
(stuff I wished I'd known back then)
And you know Louisiana is like a third world country
in the US.
Tourist come and go and enjoy the atmosphere and the food
They ignore the poverty
the growing prison population,
the crime, the murder rate
and the poor kids.
And there are alot of them
in that state doing
without things that most people in this country
take for granted
like
food.
Melanie Burke Zetzer
(You know it's funny that the same people
who want you to have children
are the same ones who want to cut back on
school lunches, welfare, and food stamp programs)
Thursday, April 24, 2003
(Inhale)
Stoner thought on a rainy Thursday morning.
Being at a loss for words is not something that happens to me often, yet sometimes, I am only at a loss for the right words to say at the correct time, and end up being hopelessly socially awkward, but still naive enough, and determined enough, to forge my way through, irregardless of my state of emotional well being at the time with the knowledge that one day follows after the next, and so on and even if we slow in our journey, we always reach our final destinations, and in the end, the most marvelous thing about being human is our mortality, and the comforting knowledge of generations behind us, and the generations ahead, and the smallness of each of us as individuals.
(Exhale)
Monday, April 07, 2003
Great Expectations and Iraq
Every now and then the façade crumbles, the face cracks, and you’re in the here and you’re in the now. You tolerate no amount of failure in your life; you are not allowed to burn the birthday cake, or dinner, or fail to meet even the smallest of goals.
And then something goes wrong, several things at once, and you become aware of yourself, and your environment, and life becomes achingly real again, and you feel guilty for dwelling on intellectualisms, like educational or career goals.
The carpet beneath your feet feels twice as soft, while dimly viewing television news about villagers in stone dwellings with dirt floors, and you watch women dipping water from mud puddles, while your own faucet runs clear.
Children on news channels cry for soldier fathers and mothers, and entire families are incinerated in boxy sedans with babies in their arms while trying to find safety. And then you feel guilty for feeing bad at all, but you feel guiltier for feeling good.
You dip strawberries in white chocolate, and watch it set, and the sofa cushion beneath your butt becomes twice as soft.
It’s spring and you’re planting flowers; pansies, petunias, and begonias, white, yellow, pink, and purple, just outside your door, and the dogwoods are blooming behind your house.
People are laying without limbs in makeshift hospitals, and some of those soldiers aren’t going to make it home to see their children.
You boil headless tiger shrimp with limes and hot red pepper, and you ponder friendship as the shrimp turns pink, and you meet someone new, but you fail to meet all of your personal goals, but they don’t seem so important today, and you feel guilty for feeling at all, emotional excesses, don’t really matter, as long as your roof isn’t leaking, and your cupboard is full, and life goes in spite of it at all.
You argue with your new male friend about whether it’s OK to kill snakes if they’re not bothering you, and he says, “NO, you catch them, and let them go.” and you think he’s crazy, because you always kill the poisonous ones.
And then you remember laughing at a king snake last year, sunning in your garden, oblivious of the neighborhood tomcat creeping up, and you remember shewing away the cat , and saving the snake, and then you feel guilty for ever caring about a snake.
You tell your friend (a gulf war veteran) that, yes of course, if they are poisonous, you must kill them, or they may come back, and crawl in your house some summer night. He disagrees in a slow Texas drawl, and laughs at you for arguing your point so hard.
And you laugh at yourself, and then you feel guilty for laughing, and you both go back to eating double dipped white chocolate strawberries, and watching the TV news; he watches the coverage like a hawk, and you know he can still taste the sand and dirt in his mouth, and you think about killing the king snake if he comes back to your garden this year .
Every now and then the façade crumbles, the face cracks, and you’re in the here and you’re in the now. You tolerate no amount of failure in your life; you are not allowed to burn the birthday cake, or dinner, or fail to meet even the smallest of goals.
And then something goes wrong, several things at once, and you become aware of yourself, and your environment, and life becomes achingly real again, and you feel guilty for dwelling on intellectualisms, like educational or career goals.
The carpet beneath your feet feels twice as soft, while dimly viewing television news about villagers in stone dwellings with dirt floors, and you watch women dipping water from mud puddles, while your own faucet runs clear.
Children on news channels cry for soldier fathers and mothers, and entire families are incinerated in boxy sedans with babies in their arms while trying to find safety. And then you feel guilty for feeing bad at all, but you feel guiltier for feeling good.
You dip strawberries in white chocolate, and watch it set, and the sofa cushion beneath your butt becomes twice as soft.
It’s spring and you’re planting flowers; pansies, petunias, and begonias, white, yellow, pink, and purple, just outside your door, and the dogwoods are blooming behind your house.
People are laying without limbs in makeshift hospitals, and some of those soldiers aren’t going to make it home to see their children.
You boil headless tiger shrimp with limes and hot red pepper, and you ponder friendship as the shrimp turns pink, and you meet someone new, but you fail to meet all of your personal goals, but they don’t seem so important today, and you feel guilty for feeling at all, emotional excesses, don’t really matter, as long as your roof isn’t leaking, and your cupboard is full, and life goes in spite of it at all.
You argue with your new male friend about whether it’s OK to kill snakes if they’re not bothering you, and he says, “NO, you catch them, and let them go.” and you think he’s crazy, because you always kill the poisonous ones.
And then you remember laughing at a king snake last year, sunning in your garden, oblivious of the neighborhood tomcat creeping up, and you remember shewing away the cat , and saving the snake, and then you feel guilty for ever caring about a snake.
You tell your friend (a gulf war veteran) that, yes of course, if they are poisonous, you must kill them, or they may come back, and crawl in your house some summer night. He disagrees in a slow Texas drawl, and laughs at you for arguing your point so hard.
And you laugh at yourself, and then you feel guilty for laughing, and you both go back to eating double dipped white chocolate strawberries, and watching the TV news; he watches the coverage like a hawk, and you know he can still taste the sand and dirt in his mouth, and you think about killing the king snake if he comes back to your garden this year .
Monday, March 24, 2003
RISK: The game of world domination. A RANT
Now, we have body bag totals starting to pile up. Guess it wasn’t as easy as the cable news networks tried to portray it, although they do seem giddy with anticipation, over the possibility of all the follow ups, and interviews with the family members and platoon mates.
Have you ever seen so many middle aged, white men in your life? I haven't seen that many suits in one place since the last time I was at happy hour at the bar of the local Holiday Inn. They are all standing on these large maps, and they all look like such dorks. It’s like a chess game for them, or game of Risk. Did you ever play that? You start with a map of the world and everyone gets different colored pegs. The goal is to invade and conquer as many continents as possible. We used to play it for days, when we were kids, it’s a very long game, and it seems to never end.
I think the troops all deserve our heartfelt prayers, but the problem with this media blitz, is that if these incidents become more commonplace, and the death tolls on both sides, continue to mount, they will eventually drop their coverage of families and soldiers like yesterday’s news. When this War ends, and hopefully it will, our government and media, won’t help the veterans, especially the injured ones. Just ask any of our injured veterans of previous conflicts. I’ll remember them, and try to help them, and I hope you do to.
It is shame that we can’t elect our media outlets and reporters the same way we elect (or try to) the other people who decide public and foreign policy issues. It's not a game, guys.
Here’s a description of Risk from their homepage and here’s the web address to it, if anyone is interested. Why watch it on TV when you, too can play the game of global domination, and no one gets killed in this board game.
http://boardgamecentral.com/games/risk.html
"Risk is a game of world domination, where the object is to conquer the world. To win, you must attack and defend – attacking to acquire territory, and defending to keep it from your opponents.
The game board features a map of six continents divided into 42 territories. It's a game of strategy as you battle to win by launching daring attacks, defending your territory, and moving across continents with your cunning plan! Play three variations: World Domination, Capital Risk, and Secret Mission Risk. This game will engage and challenge any player to join the ranks of world leaders!
The board game versions include dice, Risk cards, and six sets of miniature armies. The software versions feature cutting-edge artificial intelligence and stunning 3-D graphics, as well as excellent multiplayer options."
Now, we have body bag totals starting to pile up. Guess it wasn’t as easy as the cable news networks tried to portray it, although they do seem giddy with anticipation, over the possibility of all the follow ups, and interviews with the family members and platoon mates.
Have you ever seen so many middle aged, white men in your life? I haven't seen that many suits in one place since the last time I was at happy hour at the bar of the local Holiday Inn. They are all standing on these large maps, and they all look like such dorks. It’s like a chess game for them, or game of Risk. Did you ever play that? You start with a map of the world and everyone gets different colored pegs. The goal is to invade and conquer as many continents as possible. We used to play it for days, when we were kids, it’s a very long game, and it seems to never end.
I think the troops all deserve our heartfelt prayers, but the problem with this media blitz, is that if these incidents become more commonplace, and the death tolls on both sides, continue to mount, they will eventually drop their coverage of families and soldiers like yesterday’s news. When this War ends, and hopefully it will, our government and media, won’t help the veterans, especially the injured ones. Just ask any of our injured veterans of previous conflicts. I’ll remember them, and try to help them, and I hope you do to.
It is shame that we can’t elect our media outlets and reporters the same way we elect (or try to) the other people who decide public and foreign policy issues. It's not a game, guys.
Here’s a description of Risk from their homepage and here’s the web address to it, if anyone is interested. Why watch it on TV when you, too can play the game of global domination, and no one gets killed in this board game.
http://boardgamecentral.com/games/risk.html
"Risk is a game of world domination, where the object is to conquer the world. To win, you must attack and defend – attacking to acquire territory, and defending to keep it from your opponents.
The game board features a map of six continents divided into 42 territories. It's a game of strategy as you battle to win by launching daring attacks, defending your territory, and moving across continents with your cunning plan! Play three variations: World Domination, Capital Risk, and Secret Mission Risk. This game will engage and challenge any player to join the ranks of world leaders!
The board game versions include dice, Risk cards, and six sets of miniature armies. The software versions feature cutting-edge artificial intelligence and stunning 3-D graphics, as well as excellent multiplayer options."
Friday, March 21, 2003
That’s the ticket, W.
I hate this War. I hated watching the bombing's today and then listening to the smug voices of Ari Fleischer and Donald Rumsfield. It seems, according them, the military didn’t hit any civilian targets. We all know that this can’t be true.
Then I got to hear in two separately released statements that our fearless leader failed to watch the military action. He laughed it off and said that he rarely watches TV. Hours later, after finding out that he had put his foot in his mouth, yet again, our hero, changed his mind about whether he witnessed it in real time, or not and said “ Oh, wait I did watch it as it was happening.” That’s the ticket, W.
That was one of the most horrible scenes that I have ever witnessed in my life. I feel so sorry for the Iraqi people, (the real ones) especially the families and children that were hiding in basements around the city. Every prayer I‘ve got goes out to them tonight.
My heart goes out to all of our enlisted men who were simply following the orders of corporate failures who couldn‘t even run a company properly and are now busy running our military and government the same way they did their previous positions.
They called this shock and awe. I called it nausea and disgust.
Monday, March 10, 2003
The Bullshit Fairy
I want to take a minute and explain my blog process for you. This is nothing, but my own personal writing exorcism to rid myself of clutter, demons, and nice memories, too. I have many miserable things that I could write about, however I choose not to, and that may lead some to believe that I have had an easy life, trust me, I haven’t, maybe later I’ll share some of the torment, for right know I’d rather dwell on all the positive things that have happened to me along the way.
As easy as it is to write fiction it is much harder to write biography or autobiographical material; attitudes, ideas, and sentimental thoughts may creep in from time to time.
If you have an objections to the material, then don’t read it, and that is as easy as point and click.
I have to warn you that sometimes the Bullshit Fairy visits my pillow late at night and leaves a mess behind and then I have to deposit it here. He does this regularly. Maybe he’ll visit your house too.
I want to take a minute and explain my blog process for you. This is nothing, but my own personal writing exorcism to rid myself of clutter, demons, and nice memories, too. I have many miserable things that I could write about, however I choose not to, and that may lead some to believe that I have had an easy life, trust me, I haven’t, maybe later I’ll share some of the torment, for right know I’d rather dwell on all the positive things that have happened to me along the way.
As easy as it is to write fiction it is much harder to write biography or autobiographical material; attitudes, ideas, and sentimental thoughts may creep in from time to time.
If you have an objections to the material, then don’t read it, and that is as easy as point and click.
I have to warn you that sometimes the Bullshit Fairy visits my pillow late at night and leaves a mess behind and then I have to deposit it here. He does this regularly. Maybe he’ll visit your house too.
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Ash Wednesday (The Day After)
Bead Rage, Mardi Gras, and War in 2003
One thing that I witnessed this year (more than usual) was multiple acts of bead rage. Also known in city slang as “Motherfucker, he threw them beads to me” Syndrome, at which time a tug of war goes on, and the beads break in half, scattering into the street and rendering them useless for hanging on your rear view, or later storage in your attic. I mean come on people. Let the babies have the stuffed toys and if a girl has flashed her way into the biggest, bestest, ones on the float rack, then you’ve got to give them to her.
And if someone does step on your Popeye’s fried chicken meal, don't threaten to beat them up, just pick them big, fat, dirty, breast up off the street, and brush the dirt, grime, and footprints off, and continue eating, or you could choose to sterilize your chicken meal with a can of beer ( I saw this) and then you have yourself, some real drunken chicken. Why do you think we call it dirty rice, anyway?
Militaristic themes on floats may have contributed to the abundant, bead rage attacks this year, since a few full fledged battles, almost broke out, all along the parade route on Veterans Blvd in Metairie. Some were only limited skirmishes over staked out turf, (grassy medians are some of the most desirable properties in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day) with instant walls of tents, going up, and self appointed sentries, guarding coolers, lawn chairs, and sometimes demanding sexual favors to cross over their borders and into the occupied territories, and make it to the Port a Johns on the other side of the street. Occasional police actions were called when the combatants become unruly. I only saw two weapons pulled all day, when I watched a couple of drunk guys, uncock their penises, and threaten a tent settlement of women with biological terrorism on their blankets if they didn't let them pass the demilitarized zone of radical lesbians immediately.
There was the one float simply titled WAR, it was puke green, with WAR, WAR, WAR, written in big black letters all over it, like they couldn’t figure out anything witty, or clever to go with a theme of mass murder and possible Nuclear pre-emptive strikes.
Somehow murder, death, guns, bombs, and violence don’t go with Mardi Gras. We were there to try and forget about that stuff.
We were the ones dancing next to the official WAR float and singing our own patriotic protest songs. Our favorite song this year was “ WAR! War what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again. WAR! War what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.”
It was a good party (Mardi Gras always is) and the Cannabis front was out dressed with full paraphernalia and hemp regalia with some of the most popular throws being the big, green, shiny, beads shaped like Marijuana leaves (we got some.) And quite a few people sported large, green, gold, and purple, peace sign beads in the crowd, and on the floats.
Bead Rage, Mardi Gras, and War in 2003
One thing that I witnessed this year (more than usual) was multiple acts of bead rage. Also known in city slang as “Motherfucker, he threw them beads to me” Syndrome, at which time a tug of war goes on, and the beads break in half, scattering into the street and rendering them useless for hanging on your rear view, or later storage in your attic. I mean come on people. Let the babies have the stuffed toys and if a girl has flashed her way into the biggest, bestest, ones on the float rack, then you’ve got to give them to her.
And if someone does step on your Popeye’s fried chicken meal, don't threaten to beat them up, just pick them big, fat, dirty, breast up off the street, and brush the dirt, grime, and footprints off, and continue eating, or you could choose to sterilize your chicken meal with a can of beer ( I saw this) and then you have yourself, some real drunken chicken. Why do you think we call it dirty rice, anyway?
Militaristic themes on floats may have contributed to the abundant, bead rage attacks this year, since a few full fledged battles, almost broke out, all along the parade route on Veterans Blvd in Metairie. Some were only limited skirmishes over staked out turf, (grassy medians are some of the most desirable properties in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day) with instant walls of tents, going up, and self appointed sentries, guarding coolers, lawn chairs, and sometimes demanding sexual favors to cross over their borders and into the occupied territories, and make it to the Port a Johns on the other side of the street. Occasional police actions were called when the combatants become unruly. I only saw two weapons pulled all day, when I watched a couple of drunk guys, uncock their penises, and threaten a tent settlement of women with biological terrorism on their blankets if they didn't let them pass the demilitarized zone of radical lesbians immediately.
There was the one float simply titled WAR, it was puke green, with WAR, WAR, WAR, written in big black letters all over it, like they couldn’t figure out anything witty, or clever to go with a theme of mass murder and possible Nuclear pre-emptive strikes.
Somehow murder, death, guns, bombs, and violence don’t go with Mardi Gras. We were there to try and forget about that stuff.
We were the ones dancing next to the official WAR float and singing our own patriotic protest songs. Our favorite song this year was “ WAR! War what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again. WAR! War what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.”
It was a good party (Mardi Gras always is) and the Cannabis front was out dressed with full paraphernalia and hemp regalia with some of the most popular throws being the big, green, shiny, beads shaped like Marijuana leaves (we got some.) And quite a few people sported large, green, gold, and purple, peace sign beads in the crowd, and on the floats.
Monday, March 03, 2003
High! I'm in New Orleans and its the night before Mardi nGras. It just rained on our Zeus parade in Fat City and we're drinkning dauqaris in a hotel in NO. Hey ya''l wish you were here. HAHAHAHAH Lennie, Tina Mel, jacob, Joe and Renea say High. Eddie says hello. C-ya at the parades tomorrow
Thursday, February 20, 2003
( All of this is still a work in progress. Rough drafts. I thought it would be fun to work online and it is.)
My Grandmother's house on Ovid Street.
That's pronounced Oh-vid like the street in Baton Rouge that I grew up on and not Ah-vid like the poet.
I grew up in a family that was well versed in the early history of the United States of America. I spent summers and weekends with my father’s mother, our official family historian. I was 5, 6, and 7 and she was in her seventies and we would sit together in her little parlor, and read, and paint, and she would try to teach me needle point, and every night she’d let her waist length hair down and we would both brush our long hair one hundred strokes, as she talked to me about our family and the fact that we were direct descendants of a Revolutionary War soldier, Matthew Davis. I was surrounded by my family's history, old book collections and tales, her oil paintings and pastels, and every candy dish was handmade with her own homemade candy inside.
Ladies didn’t smoke or talk loudly and I was expected to read quietly, draw, paint, or do embroidery, when I visited her. I liked her books the best, and I learned about world religions; Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, early Christianity, the Jewish faith, and then philosophy, world history and poetry, and the Greeks, and of course the Revolutionary War and Benjamin Franklin (one of her favorites) It would have been the typical upbringing of a young girl from the 19th century but it was the late 1960s and 1970s. My father was left her extensive book collection after she passed away in 1972 and for many years after her death, I would exclaim with delight over a newspaper article, or poem, or column, that she had a habit of clipping out, and leaving behind in whatever book she was reading with news of her day and the popular culture, literary, and art world of her young and middle aged adulthood.
My hippie cousins were in and out frequently (returning from rock concerts, anti-war protest, or road trips, college, etc) and she held them special in her heart, because she always was a bit of a firebrand in our family, (one of many) and she loved them (every one of them) and their intellectual and artistic freedom. There was a special room for them that I was never allowed to sleep in with her most controversial works; tapestries, crazy looking quilts, and wild psychedelic paintings. My favorite was my cousin Warren, who has since passed away; was 20 years older than me, and he would appear out of nowhere with his beautiful long curly brown hair, his guitar in hand, reciting poetry, or singing a song that he had just written on the spot and dedicated to my Grandmother and me. (Children in my family are known to sew their wild oats well into their late thirties, at which time we all return to school and become engineers, doctors, or accountants, ( a few judges) and respectable citizens at rather late ages. Wild spent youthful years were bragged on and encouraged in my father's family.) I know it all sounds bipolar, but that's the way they were back then, so forgive me my momentary insanities.
My father loved Opera and Woodie Guthrie's music; he admired Will Geer, and the Longs (The disenfranchised in Louisiana liked him and his populist family;) he really thought (at the time) that Will Rogers (and we ain't talking Jr.-- bleh) was running for president, and backed him, and his left leaning platform wholeheartedly, and my father was a bit of a socialist, who loved to read, and study; he hopped trains when he was a teenager, and then he hitchhiked around the country after the war before returning to college to become a staid engineer (yeah, right). Contrary to popular belief Louisiana politics have never been really static and it might surprise some people to know that Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate of 1912, carried most of the state, especially certain parishes in northern Louisiana.
There was once a family uproar over my Grandmother (I have a picture of her with a made up face and Clara Bow lips and short vivid red hair. In it she is a gorgeous, tiny woman in a lace blouse, just beautiful like all of her paintings.) When she was in her twenties, she bobbed her hair in a moment of pique, and scandalized the entire city of Ruston, Louisiana, where she ran a rooming house for university students after her husband died. She was a young hardworking widow, considered to be wild at the time (the 1920s and 30s) and I think she would have abandoned it all and headed for Hollywood, or an artist garret in Paris, if it weren’t for her children.
Instead, she ended up in Biloxi, while her sons and nephews went to fight in WWII, and maybe that was just as good for her purposes, because she never remarried, and was rumored to have a lover in that area. After that she moved to Baton Rouge to work in civil service and had an artist studio on Chimes Street and then finally settled on Ovid Street just off Perkins Road.She loved to paint swamps; incredible oils with snakes, boats, and trees rising out of the mist that looked vaguely like people in her life. She was an awesome Grandmother. She still had beautiful legs when I knew her, and she loved to wear short skirts even in her 60s and 70s, along with her beret and artist smocks.
You could never curse, or say the word Nigger, or be racist around Edith; anything like that was met with a stony faced silence that let the speaker know that, that was considered the utmost in uncouthness and ill breeding, and God forbid if you were ever uncouth or ill bred in Edith’s presence. I think it was because after her husband died the only people who befriended and helped her were the black people in the (Rayville) community. She was a beautiful petite 25 year old woman with five young children when he died in 1922 and left her in debt with a large farm and house to care for and the busy bodies in the town labeled her as a racy widow woman and all the local good people gave her a hard time. They even suggested that she put her children in an orphanage. Edith was very stubborn and refused the sort of help that the white town council offered. It was the black farm families that came to her rescue when she needed help with anything. She always spoke so fondly of them. The bank finally foreclosed on the farm and her house and she moved to Ruston to run the rooming house. She managed to put all five of her children through college, including her girls, and she never forgot the slight that the uppities in town gave her and she never forgot who her friends were during the most difficult times of her life.
My Grandmother's house on Ovid Street.
That's pronounced Oh-vid like the street in Baton Rouge that I grew up on and not Ah-vid like the poet.
I grew up in a family that was well versed in the early history of the United States of America. I spent summers and weekends with my father’s mother, our official family historian. I was 5, 6, and 7 and she was in her seventies and we would sit together in her little parlor, and read, and paint, and she would try to teach me needle point, and every night she’d let her waist length hair down and we would both brush our long hair one hundred strokes, as she talked to me about our family and the fact that we were direct descendants of a Revolutionary War soldier, Matthew Davis. I was surrounded by my family's history, old book collections and tales, her oil paintings and pastels, and every candy dish was handmade with her own homemade candy inside.
Ladies didn’t smoke or talk loudly and I was expected to read quietly, draw, paint, or do embroidery, when I visited her. I liked her books the best, and I learned about world religions; Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, early Christianity, the Jewish faith, and then philosophy, world history and poetry, and the Greeks, and of course the Revolutionary War and Benjamin Franklin (one of her favorites) It would have been the typical upbringing of a young girl from the 19th century but it was the late 1960s and 1970s. My father was left her extensive book collection after she passed away in 1972 and for many years after her death, I would exclaim with delight over a newspaper article, or poem, or column, that she had a habit of clipping out, and leaving behind in whatever book she was reading with news of her day and the popular culture, literary, and art world of her young and middle aged adulthood.
My hippie cousins were in and out frequently (returning from rock concerts, anti-war protest, or road trips, college, etc) and she held them special in her heart, because she always was a bit of a firebrand in our family, (one of many) and she loved them (every one of them) and their intellectual and artistic freedom. There was a special room for them that I was never allowed to sleep in with her most controversial works; tapestries, crazy looking quilts, and wild psychedelic paintings. My favorite was my cousin Warren, who has since passed away; was 20 years older than me, and he would appear out of nowhere with his beautiful long curly brown hair, his guitar in hand, reciting poetry, or singing a song that he had just written on the spot and dedicated to my Grandmother and me. (Children in my family are known to sew their wild oats well into their late thirties, at which time we all return to school and become engineers, doctors, or accountants, ( a few judges) and respectable citizens at rather late ages. Wild spent youthful years were bragged on and encouraged in my father's family.) I know it all sounds bipolar, but that's the way they were back then, so forgive me my momentary insanities.
My father loved Opera and Woodie Guthrie's music; he admired Will Geer, and the Longs (The disenfranchised in Louisiana liked him and his populist family;) he really thought (at the time) that Will Rogers (and we ain't talking Jr.-- bleh) was running for president, and backed him, and his left leaning platform wholeheartedly, and my father was a bit of a socialist, who loved to read, and study; he hopped trains when he was a teenager, and then he hitchhiked around the country after the war before returning to college to become a staid engineer (yeah, right). Contrary to popular belief Louisiana politics have never been really static and it might surprise some people to know that Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate of 1912, carried most of the state, especially certain parishes in northern Louisiana.
There was once a family uproar over my Grandmother (I have a picture of her with a made up face and Clara Bow lips and short vivid red hair. In it she is a gorgeous, tiny woman in a lace blouse, just beautiful like all of her paintings.) When she was in her twenties, she bobbed her hair in a moment of pique, and scandalized the entire city of Ruston, Louisiana, where she ran a rooming house for university students after her husband died. She was a young hardworking widow, considered to be wild at the time (the 1920s and 30s) and I think she would have abandoned it all and headed for Hollywood, or an artist garret in Paris, if it weren’t for her children.
Instead, she ended up in Biloxi, while her sons and nephews went to fight in WWII, and maybe that was just as good for her purposes, because she never remarried, and was rumored to have a lover in that area. After that she moved to Baton Rouge to work in civil service and had an artist studio on Chimes Street and then finally settled on Ovid Street just off Perkins Road.She loved to paint swamps; incredible oils with snakes, boats, and trees rising out of the mist that looked vaguely like people in her life. She was an awesome Grandmother. She still had beautiful legs when I knew her, and she loved to wear short skirts even in her 60s and 70s, along with her beret and artist smocks.
You could never curse, or say the word Nigger, or be racist around Edith; anything like that was met with a stony faced silence that let the speaker know that, that was considered the utmost in uncouthness and ill breeding, and God forbid if you were ever uncouth or ill bred in Edith’s presence. I think it was because after her husband died the only people who befriended and helped her were the black people in the (Rayville) community. She was a beautiful petite 25 year old woman with five young children when he died in 1922 and left her in debt with a large farm and house to care for and the busy bodies in the town labeled her as a racy widow woman and all the local good people gave her a hard time. They even suggested that she put her children in an orphanage. Edith was very stubborn and refused the sort of help that the white town council offered. It was the black farm families that came to her rescue when she needed help with anything. She always spoke so fondly of them. The bank finally foreclosed on the farm and her house and she moved to Ruston to run the rooming house. She managed to put all five of her children through college, including her girls, and she never forgot the slight that the uppities in town gave her and she never forgot who her friends were during the most difficult times of her life.
Monday, February 17, 2003
MY Thoughts on War With Iraq
To question the ethics and morality of our leaders is not un-American, but American to the core. We have a right to do this. It is what our country is based on.
And just because you don't support military action does not mean that you don't support the individual soldiers and their families. I'd like to see them all safe at home.
(Direct Descendant of Matthew Davis, soldier in the American Revolution, Halifax, NC)
To question the ethics and morality of our leaders is not un-American, but American to the core. We have a right to do this. It is what our country is based on.
And just because you don't support military action does not mean that you don't support the individual soldiers and their families. I'd like to see them all safe at home.
(Direct Descendant of Matthew Davis, soldier in the American Revolution, Halifax, NC)
Friday, February 07, 2003
W, and The Prophecies of Nostradamus
(Warning: The Alert Level is now raised to Flaming Red)
I had a friend years ago who was a real idiot. I hope you don’t mind me calling him that, but he really was an idiot. For the purpose of this diatribe I am going to call him by the first letter of his first name which is W. I don’t want him to get busted, so I‘m not going to use his whole name.
I think the only book that W had in his house, besides the phone book, and the bible, was a book on the Prophecies of Nostradamus. He kept an assault rifle in the corner of the kitchen and lots of ammunition in his closets to help him prepare for the day when every thing fell apart. I knew him and his family as they readied themselves for the end of civilization, as we know it, back in the late 1980s. They were sure that 1987 was the year, that was going to be end of the world. I was pregnant at the time and they were my neighbors.
Every morning I had to face W in the parking lot. W was a short, middle aged, nome looking, little country guy, from way back in the swamps, he had greasy dark hair, and squinty eyes, and bad teeth, and he always wore a dirty white T-shirt. His parking space was next to mine at our apartment building and W would always be sitting on the hood of his car with his assault rifle propped up next to the front driver side tire.
When W wasn’t talking about the end of the world, he would read the want ads in Soldier of Fortune magazine out loud to anyone who would listen, and he’d talk about which job he was going to take, usually some kind of mercenary position in South America, I think. He'd exclaim loudly if he found one looking for a hit man, and who ever was walking by, (mostly me) would have to point out to him, that the one for the hit man, was probably put in there by the feds. And then he’d scratch his head and agree, and go back to reading, or he’d bring up Nostradamus and the end of the world, again.
W’d see me outside going to work or a doctor’s appointment or something, and he’d walk over and say things like, “Well Marie are you ready for it? It’s going to start with earthquakes and then everything is going to happen at once. It's going to be the war to end all wars and everyone on earth is going to die” and then he’d hold up his assault rifle and pat the barrel of it and say in a deep, gravelly, voice, “If you need protection, girl you know I’m here.“
His daughters and his wife believed it too, except they were into this religious thing and if they were outside, they’d chime in with eerily sweet little tinny voices and say odd things like, “Jesus, will come for your baby, so he won’t have to be born or die.” Everyday was going to be our last day on earth, or could be according to them, and Orson Welles, who narrated the movie about the life of Nostradamus, which they watched over and over, and talked about incessantly.
If you live in a city like Baton Rouge you get used to scenes like that. Hyper religious, republican, racist, gun nuts with assault rifles in your parking lot are all the norm in Louisiana and Texas, but W and his family were starting to get on my nerves. I was 6 months pregnant and every morning I awoke to that asshole and his brood and their apocalyptic visions complete with weapons, and descriptions of how he was going to be ready for the fall of all civilization, and he said it with such a gleam in his eyes. You know, I think W and his family were actually looking forward to it.
Finally one morning I’d had enough, so I started yelling at him “Look W, let me tell you something. I don't give a FUCK if it is the end of the whole FUCKING world as we know it. W I have had enough of this and I don't care if we are all about to die. I have to go to work, and my feet hurt, and it's going to be another hard day, and the last thing I need to wake and hear, is more about possible catastrophes. I may walk across the street and get hit by a car and die from my injuries, or I may get struck by lightening, or die suddenly from a heart attack. W what you and Nostradamus say might be true, we may all be about to die in one big bang, in earthquakes, wars, or terror attacks, but we’ll all still be the same kind of dead. It doesn’t matter if we die one by one, or whether we all die at once, because when I die it’s the end of my world, and when you die it’s the end of yours. People have been dying for millions of years, so what fucking difference does it make how you die, or how many people die along with you? You‘ll still be just as dead. W you gloat too much about fighting in wars for profit and you don't even think about who you might kill if you do answer one of those ads. W I think you and your whole family should enlist and go join the fight." I kicked the tire on W's car for emphasis, as hard as I could, and watched as his assault rifle clattered noisily down to the pavement.
W scratched his greasy gray-black hair, and pretended not to think, and jumped down off the hood of his car, and picked up his assault rifle, and cradled it, like it was a newborn, (I think he may have kissed it) and propped it up on the car, again, and went back to reading the classified ads in Soldier of Fortune. I think the idiot really wanted to be a hit man or a mercenary.
My baby was born, healthy, months later, and 1987 came and went without the fall of civilization or the massive continent jarring earthquakes, or world wars, and we moved away and I don't know if W ever answered any of those ads in Soldier of Fortune, but I haven't seen him in quite a while.
(Hey, It's Satire and yes, I know, I have a warped sense of Humor) Mel
(Warning: The Alert Level is now raised to Flaming Red)
I had a friend years ago who was a real idiot. I hope you don’t mind me calling him that, but he really was an idiot. For the purpose of this diatribe I am going to call him by the first letter of his first name which is W. I don’t want him to get busted, so I‘m not going to use his whole name.
I think the only book that W had in his house, besides the phone book, and the bible, was a book on the Prophecies of Nostradamus. He kept an assault rifle in the corner of the kitchen and lots of ammunition in his closets to help him prepare for the day when every thing fell apart. I knew him and his family as they readied themselves for the end of civilization, as we know it, back in the late 1980s. They were sure that 1987 was the year, that was going to be end of the world. I was pregnant at the time and they were my neighbors.
Every morning I had to face W in the parking lot. W was a short, middle aged, nome looking, little country guy, from way back in the swamps, he had greasy dark hair, and squinty eyes, and bad teeth, and he always wore a dirty white T-shirt. His parking space was next to mine at our apartment building and W would always be sitting on the hood of his car with his assault rifle propped up next to the front driver side tire.
When W wasn’t talking about the end of the world, he would read the want ads in Soldier of Fortune magazine out loud to anyone who would listen, and he’d talk about which job he was going to take, usually some kind of mercenary position in South America, I think. He'd exclaim loudly if he found one looking for a hit man, and who ever was walking by, (mostly me) would have to point out to him, that the one for the hit man, was probably put in there by the feds. And then he’d scratch his head and agree, and go back to reading, or he’d bring up Nostradamus and the end of the world, again.
W’d see me outside going to work or a doctor’s appointment or something, and he’d walk over and say things like, “Well Marie are you ready for it? It’s going to start with earthquakes and then everything is going to happen at once. It's going to be the war to end all wars and everyone on earth is going to die” and then he’d hold up his assault rifle and pat the barrel of it and say in a deep, gravelly, voice, “If you need protection, girl you know I’m here.“
His daughters and his wife believed it too, except they were into this religious thing and if they were outside, they’d chime in with eerily sweet little tinny voices and say odd things like, “Jesus, will come for your baby, so he won’t have to be born or die.” Everyday was going to be our last day on earth, or could be according to them, and Orson Welles, who narrated the movie about the life of Nostradamus, which they watched over and over, and talked about incessantly.
If you live in a city like Baton Rouge you get used to scenes like that. Hyper religious, republican, racist, gun nuts with assault rifles in your parking lot are all the norm in Louisiana and Texas, but W and his family were starting to get on my nerves. I was 6 months pregnant and every morning I awoke to that asshole and his brood and their apocalyptic visions complete with weapons, and descriptions of how he was going to be ready for the fall of all civilization, and he said it with such a gleam in his eyes. You know, I think W and his family were actually looking forward to it.
Finally one morning I’d had enough, so I started yelling at him “Look W, let me tell you something. I don't give a FUCK if it is the end of the whole FUCKING world as we know it. W I have had enough of this and I don't care if we are all about to die. I have to go to work, and my feet hurt, and it's going to be another hard day, and the last thing I need to wake and hear, is more about possible catastrophes. I may walk across the street and get hit by a car and die from my injuries, or I may get struck by lightening, or die suddenly from a heart attack. W what you and Nostradamus say might be true, we may all be about to die in one big bang, in earthquakes, wars, or terror attacks, but we’ll all still be the same kind of dead. It doesn’t matter if we die one by one, or whether we all die at once, because when I die it’s the end of my world, and when you die it’s the end of yours. People have been dying for millions of years, so what fucking difference does it make how you die, or how many people die along with you? You‘ll still be just as dead. W you gloat too much about fighting in wars for profit and you don't even think about who you might kill if you do answer one of those ads. W I think you and your whole family should enlist and go join the fight." I kicked the tire on W's car for emphasis, as hard as I could, and watched as his assault rifle clattered noisily down to the pavement.
W scratched his greasy gray-black hair, and pretended not to think, and jumped down off the hood of his car, and picked up his assault rifle, and cradled it, like it was a newborn, (I think he may have kissed it) and propped it up on the car, again, and went back to reading the classified ads in Soldier of Fortune. I think the idiot really wanted to be a hit man or a mercenary.
My baby was born, healthy, months later, and 1987 came and went without the fall of civilization or the massive continent jarring earthquakes, or world wars, and we moved away and I don't know if W ever answered any of those ads in Soldier of Fortune, but I haven't seen him in quite a while.
(Hey, It's Satire and yes, I know, I have a warped sense of Humor) Mel
Saturday, January 18, 2003
(A work in progress, I hope)
Amanda's house. My Grandmother's house on Bartlett Street in Baton Rouge.
I listened to my grandmother die
In short shallow breaths
Like prayers that couldn’t quite reach
The alveoli of God’s lungs
No exchange seemed to take place
Even her rosary beads
Fell like drops of blood
In crushed Kleenex at her bedside
Her big green oxygen tank
Sat next to her as holy
As Mother Mary Statute
And helped her continue
I never saw a priest or a doctor visit her
But a big smiling bald man came twice a week
With new tubing and a tank
Exchanging our prayers
For handshakes and oxygen
A signed bill
And always an introduction
Every time like the first time
She called me her favorite grandchild
A pat on the head from him
And a whole night in her arms
Made her my patron saint
And the best part
Of my childhood
Was spent heating her soup.
Amanda's house. My Grandmother's house on Bartlett Street in Baton Rouge.
I listened to my grandmother die
In short shallow breaths
Like prayers that couldn’t quite reach
The alveoli of God’s lungs
No exchange seemed to take place
Even her rosary beads
Fell like drops of blood
In crushed Kleenex at her bedside
Her big green oxygen tank
Sat next to her as holy
As Mother Mary Statute
And helped her continue
I never saw a priest or a doctor visit her
But a big smiling bald man came twice a week
With new tubing and a tank
Exchanging our prayers
For handshakes and oxygen
A signed bill
And always an introduction
Every time like the first time
She called me her favorite grandchild
A pat on the head from him
And a whole night in her arms
Made her my patron saint
And the best part
Of my childhood
Was spent heating her soup.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
The Zetzer Bowling Alley
I’ve seen a picture of it
All black and white and red
Every chair in place
The bar in the back
Every glass hangs shining
Circa 1963
I think
Opening day
His sons have it hanging on their wall
So, It’s still a favorite hang out
Stalwart sons remember and know
And understand the pride
Of their father
Gone for years
Condo parking lot for the rich
You used to be a bowling alley
You were working class
Class
At it’s utmost
And in the picture you still look accessible
To everyone
Brown wooden chairs and stools
Maroon colored plush cushions
Champagne bottles and glasses on the bar
You were
All that to young men growing up
In the alleyways
All polished, waxed, gleaming
What an example you set
Pinned to their walls now
Gone before your time
Like your owner.
I’ve seen a picture of it
All black and white and red
Every chair in place
The bar in the back
Every glass hangs shining
Circa 1963
I think
Opening day
His sons have it hanging on their wall
So, It’s still a favorite hang out
Stalwart sons remember and know
And understand the pride
Of their father
Gone for years
Condo parking lot for the rich
You used to be a bowling alley
You were working class
Class
At it’s utmost
And in the picture you still look accessible
To everyone
Brown wooden chairs and stools
Maroon colored plush cushions
Champagne bottles and glasses on the bar
You were
All that to young men growing up
In the alleyways
All polished, waxed, gleaming
What an example you set
Pinned to their walls now
Gone before your time
Like your owner.
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Getting Screwed
“I was warned about you.” He said as I walked into the overly plush, mortuary/museum type office and sat in the large overstuffed chair, my ankles barely crossed, my purse hadn’t even hit the ground beside me. “I was warned about you,” he said again, as I leaned back in the chair and adjusted my chin so that I could see him more clearly. He had that, "Now I’m dealing with a stupid woman." glaze on his face, as he adjusted his tie and I knew he wanted to straighten out the folds in his crotch and didn’t dare do it in front of me, but the intent was still there. I gave him my best “Ok, asshole so I’m a dumb bitch am I?” look and then I grimaced visibly at the games; old, old games that some men will play with women when they’re involved in a business deal with one that they consider to be a vapid airhead, which is 99.9 percent of all women with those guys with the exception of their daughters and that’s only if they’re not banging them or thinking about it.
I looked at him and said, “ So what?” I wanted to say, “Fuck you asshole.”
“It’s OK,” he said, “We’re friends” and he leaned over and pretended to look earnest. I couldn’t ever remember being real friends with him or even fuck-buddies in all the years that I‘d not known him. Trying to get a straight answer, a good deal, an honest estimation, anything that bordered on logic, or dealt in truth would have been impossible to achieve from him. This was still the old south, the good old boys with their young sons all grown up.
I hoped that the meeting would be over early, as I tuned out the standard "I'm your best friend I've known you for years spiel" that sounded more wooden and preconceived as he droned on and I wondered why he didn't give his secretary a form letter, sign it and mail out the rest of the speech in duplicate, since I could tell that he had used it many times in the past.
First you put them off guard, and then before they recover from the unexpected slight, you put them at ease, and then you deliver the TKO, which reminded me of my favorite daiquiri at the club down the street and I wondered how soon I could get in there and order one and get away from this jerk.
It's all about role playing and them owning the venue and setting the rules and placing you in what they consider your proper place which for me was, dumb witted and pregnant, or barring that, dim and effectively medicated, so that you won't be any trouble to their way of doing business and suddenly in a moment of insight; I understood how it was easily possible for Uncle Earl to rule that state from the loony bin and I thought about getting committed and running for office on 'real issues' (housing, healthcare, workplace environment, ethics, etc) which would certainly seem delusional to that piece of work in front of me, no I thought, better to not sign off on anything, beg off and go for that daquari.
I managed to extricate myself from the meeting intact and make it to the club down the street and I plopped down in a bar stool, ordered my own TKO and began talking to the guy in the seat next to me, a forty something business type, very similar in class and comportment to the one I‘d just left. I thought about a wild night of strange, but was weary from the screwing, that I’d already gotten that day, and anyway I wasn’t in there to do anything expect get a drink, and unwind. Then I noticed the grungy little, twenty something, bartender who was playing hacky sack in the kitchen behind the bar. I liked his long brown dread locked hair and his air of ease, recently smoked marijuana breath, and the way his low slung pants fit neatly around his hips and he had no qualms about adjusting himself in front of me as he caught me staring and gave me that, "knowing you want to do me," kind of coy smile.
He and I began talking, and we played a rousing game of trivial pursuit, choosing politics, as the subject matter on the bar machine; laughing as we picked the most absurd answers from the multiple choice list, knowing they were wrong, and secretly wishing that they were true. When the bar closed, he followed me out into the evening, and we agreed to meet at his apartment on Perkins road.
Later, I lay on my back on a mattress on the floor without my shirt as he leaned over and began suckling on my nipples in between pulls on a roach with a beaded feathered clip. I concentrated on the flatness of his brown belly and the subtle grind of hips and the way every muscle in his calf tensed as he grabbed my hair and rode me to the polished wood floors and we knocked over ashtrays and drinks on a night stand, laughing the whole time.
(More on Getting Screwed;
OR JUST BIDNESS AS USUAL IN LOOZIANA YA'LL
It occurs to me that perhaps I wasn’t wise in my choice of friends and choosing an attorney who built an office that looks like a reproduction of an antebellum home and dedicating it ostensibly to the working people of his state on a brass plaque in front of the entry is a little like a 19th century slave owner dedicating his plantation to the slaves that worked the land and built it, but you know that is business as usual if you’re from the deep south, and you still secretly believe that states rights is going to help your true native country to rise again.
And if you hire the football players and their families from the local university and treat them like illiterate lackeys and make them mix your cocktails in the board room and call them law clerks while trying to explain to the local media why they still sign their exam papers with an X, then who the hell was I, to expect them to conduct their business in an ethical manner.
Note: any resemblance to anyone or any firm in the city of Baton Rouge however intentional is purely fictional supposition.)
<
“I was warned about you.” He said as I walked into the overly plush, mortuary/museum type office and sat in the large overstuffed chair, my ankles barely crossed, my purse hadn’t even hit the ground beside me. “I was warned about you,” he said again, as I leaned back in the chair and adjusted my chin so that I could see him more clearly. He had that, "Now I’m dealing with a stupid woman." glaze on his face, as he adjusted his tie and I knew he wanted to straighten out the folds in his crotch and didn’t dare do it in front of me, but the intent was still there. I gave him my best “Ok, asshole so I’m a dumb bitch am I?” look and then I grimaced visibly at the games; old, old games that some men will play with women when they’re involved in a business deal with one that they consider to be a vapid airhead, which is 99.9 percent of all women with those guys with the exception of their daughters and that’s only if they’re not banging them or thinking about it.
I looked at him and said, “ So what?” I wanted to say, “Fuck you asshole.”
“It’s OK,” he said, “We’re friends” and he leaned over and pretended to look earnest. I couldn’t ever remember being real friends with him or even fuck-buddies in all the years that I‘d not known him. Trying to get a straight answer, a good deal, an honest estimation, anything that bordered on logic, or dealt in truth would have been impossible to achieve from him. This was still the old south, the good old boys with their young sons all grown up.
I hoped that the meeting would be over early, as I tuned out the standard "I'm your best friend I've known you for years spiel" that sounded more wooden and preconceived as he droned on and I wondered why he didn't give his secretary a form letter, sign it and mail out the rest of the speech in duplicate, since I could tell that he had used it many times in the past.
First you put them off guard, and then before they recover from the unexpected slight, you put them at ease, and then you deliver the TKO, which reminded me of my favorite daiquiri at the club down the street and I wondered how soon I could get in there and order one and get away from this jerk.
It's all about role playing and them owning the venue and setting the rules and placing you in what they consider your proper place which for me was, dumb witted and pregnant, or barring that, dim and effectively medicated, so that you won't be any trouble to their way of doing business and suddenly in a moment of insight; I understood how it was easily possible for Uncle Earl to rule that state from the loony bin and I thought about getting committed and running for office on 'real issues' (housing, healthcare, workplace environment, ethics, etc) which would certainly seem delusional to that piece of work in front of me, no I thought, better to not sign off on anything, beg off and go for that daquari.
I managed to extricate myself from the meeting intact and make it to the club down the street and I plopped down in a bar stool, ordered my own TKO and began talking to the guy in the seat next to me, a forty something business type, very similar in class and comportment to the one I‘d just left. I thought about a wild night of strange, but was weary from the screwing, that I’d already gotten that day, and anyway I wasn’t in there to do anything expect get a drink, and unwind. Then I noticed the grungy little, twenty something, bartender who was playing hacky sack in the kitchen behind the bar. I liked his long brown dread locked hair and his air of ease, recently smoked marijuana breath, and the way his low slung pants fit neatly around his hips and he had no qualms about adjusting himself in front of me as he caught me staring and gave me that, "knowing you want to do me," kind of coy smile.
He and I began talking, and we played a rousing game of trivial pursuit, choosing politics, as the subject matter on the bar machine; laughing as we picked the most absurd answers from the multiple choice list, knowing they were wrong, and secretly wishing that they were true. When the bar closed, he followed me out into the evening, and we agreed to meet at his apartment on Perkins road.
Later, I lay on my back on a mattress on the floor without my shirt as he leaned over and began suckling on my nipples in between pulls on a roach with a beaded feathered clip. I concentrated on the flatness of his brown belly and the subtle grind of hips and the way every muscle in his calf tensed as he grabbed my hair and rode me to the polished wood floors and we knocked over ashtrays and drinks on a night stand, laughing the whole time.
(More on Getting Screwed;
OR JUST BIDNESS AS USUAL IN LOOZIANA YA'LL
It occurs to me that perhaps I wasn’t wise in my choice of friends and choosing an attorney who built an office that looks like a reproduction of an antebellum home and dedicating it ostensibly to the working people of his state on a brass plaque in front of the entry is a little like a 19th century slave owner dedicating his plantation to the slaves that worked the land and built it, but you know that is business as usual if you’re from the deep south, and you still secretly believe that states rights is going to help your true native country to rise again.
And if you hire the football players and their families from the local university and treat them like illiterate lackeys and make them mix your cocktails in the board room and call them law clerks while trying to explain to the local media why they still sign their exam papers with an X, then who the hell was I, to expect them to conduct their business in an ethical manner.
Note: any resemblance to anyone or any firm in the city of Baton Rouge however intentional is purely fictional supposition.)
<
Saturday, January 11, 2003
I had one of those disagreeably, dysfunctional, eccentric southern families. We had Azalea bushes, instead of picket fences, and our grass in typical Louisiana fashion was greener than the grass in most other places. I grew up in one of those homes where they put on a big pot of food in the morning and said to everyone (even salesmen) "Ya'll come on in and get a plate." I think my parents have at different times fed half the city. Even when the constable came out to serve warrants he was offered a plate chicken and rice, or pot roast, or red beans depending on the day of the week. I’ve seen search warrants accompanied by coffee and pie in the sitting room "Let's go eat and have coffee first and then we'll talk about all this, Ya’ll.”
It usually started with one of us peering out the window and an exhaled “Oh fuck!” as we counted the number of police cars or sedans and determined whether it was the local, state, or federal. “Ah One, two, no three cars, and wait here comes some more.” and an “I wonder what he did this time?”
Sometimes we had warning, with him arriving just a moment before, drugged out of his mind, and shouting things like “ I don’t care what they say I didn’t rob the drug store.” or "I didn’t beat that guy up and I have 21 witnesses that will swear it wasn’t me.” and always the “They’ll never take me alive.” and one of us saying “Well if they’re coming, don’t you think that you should leave?” and he usually did.
It was always, "Mom the constable's office is here," or "Mom the city detectives are here," or "Mom this time it's the Secret Service," or "Mom it's the FBI." I'd have to count the number of uniforms or suits and get the right number of coffee cups and then serve them on a big tray in the front room.
The front room, or living room as we called it, with it’s overly ornate gold leaf coffee table, french reproduction sofas, lace curtains, large oil paintings, pottery and sculpture, always seemed to take those fellows by surprise. They clearly were not anticipating a tea service cart with fine bone china and homemade pecan pie when they arrived in their SWAT Team uniforms or black suits and sunglasses with wires protruding from their ears; they always sat a bit uncomfortably looking like errant schoolboys awaiting a scolding from some long forgotten Great Auntie; it was my job to put them at ease and I guess I laughed a bit too much under my head and in my own inner dialogue as I witnessed, yet another visit from another branch of the farce. Perhaps at some point when they left empty handed, one said to the other, “Get that bitch. I don’t care how you do it. Get her” Anyway, that's what was in my imagination as they sped out of our driveway, one by one, on to the country highway.
When I was 16, I abandoned the wild scene of my home life, and took up residence with some friend’s who lived on the Mississippi River in a complex with no elevator, and four flights of steps between me and ‘them’; sleeping head to head and side by side in quilts with pillows all over the floor, no electric, and flower arrangements with some of the finest swamp bud grown in that era, long green stalks of dense pretty cannabis, with wild, wiry, resinated, red hairs that stood out like an aura around the green edges; they went by the gram and we always separated our pounds, according the size of the bud, and placed them strategically in different vases and on constant exhibit, next to the scales, in my own version of my parent’s front room. We would stay up all night smoking and drinking Sunrises while laying on the roof and staring at the gray and blue clouds of Exxon billowing out just across the river; listening to Pink Floyd or the Calliope music from the Delta Queen when morning came. No one came to disturb me or my friends until the manager got wise and showed up with the police and an eviction order.
When my father died I had to leave the state. I was never the one they came to see, but they hated me anyway. So I just packed up and left.
It was early in the morning, around 2am, there was no moon out, the sky was pitch black, I was driving into the middle of a thunderstorm, flashes of lightning, occasionally lit up the countryside, and I could make out the lines of oak tree branches hanging over the narrow highway; I was alone and I couldn’t imagine my life being any different than it was, as my tires splashed across the pavement in north Louisiana, and the rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers, blended in with the steady drops of rain on the hood of my Dodge Charger, and blunted my consciousness; I was going at a steady speed, well above the limit, until I came to a wall of water in the road, out of nowhere, the beam of my headlights ended into a deep gully, the bridge had washed out, and I was the first one to encounter it, I slammed on my breaks, and hit the water, causing me to do a complete donut in the road, leaving a large plume in the wake around me, I stopped for just a second, stunned, I looked around, and as the water began seeping into doors, I floored it, and I barely managed to make it up, the muddy sloping embankment, and back to safety on the other side, my tires squealed, and I sped on, there were no towns to speak of, just boarded up old ma and pa stores, and a few dark farm houses, with shotguns and dogs, and barbed wire cow fields; I finally made it back to another farm road headed north and then I drove even faster to the Arkansas state line.
It usually started with one of us peering out the window and an exhaled “Oh fuck!” as we counted the number of police cars or sedans and determined whether it was the local, state, or federal. “Ah One, two, no three cars, and wait here comes some more.” and an “I wonder what he did this time?”
Sometimes we had warning, with him arriving just a moment before, drugged out of his mind, and shouting things like “ I don’t care what they say I didn’t rob the drug store.” or "I didn’t beat that guy up and I have 21 witnesses that will swear it wasn’t me.” and always the “They’ll never take me alive.” and one of us saying “Well if they’re coming, don’t you think that you should leave?” and he usually did.
It was always, "Mom the constable's office is here," or "Mom the city detectives are here," or "Mom this time it's the Secret Service," or "Mom it's the FBI." I'd have to count the number of uniforms or suits and get the right number of coffee cups and then serve them on a big tray in the front room.
The front room, or living room as we called it, with it’s overly ornate gold leaf coffee table, french reproduction sofas, lace curtains, large oil paintings, pottery and sculpture, always seemed to take those fellows by surprise. They clearly were not anticipating a tea service cart with fine bone china and homemade pecan pie when they arrived in their SWAT Team uniforms or black suits and sunglasses with wires protruding from their ears; they always sat a bit uncomfortably looking like errant schoolboys awaiting a scolding from some long forgotten Great Auntie; it was my job to put them at ease and I guess I laughed a bit too much under my head and in my own inner dialogue as I witnessed, yet another visit from another branch of the farce. Perhaps at some point when they left empty handed, one said to the other, “Get that bitch. I don’t care how you do it. Get her” Anyway, that's what was in my imagination as they sped out of our driveway, one by one, on to the country highway.
When I was 16, I abandoned the wild scene of my home life, and took up residence with some friend’s who lived on the Mississippi River in a complex with no elevator, and four flights of steps between me and ‘them’; sleeping head to head and side by side in quilts with pillows all over the floor, no electric, and flower arrangements with some of the finest swamp bud grown in that era, long green stalks of dense pretty cannabis, with wild, wiry, resinated, red hairs that stood out like an aura around the green edges; they went by the gram and we always separated our pounds, according the size of the bud, and placed them strategically in different vases and on constant exhibit, next to the scales, in my own version of my parent’s front room. We would stay up all night smoking and drinking Sunrises while laying on the roof and staring at the gray and blue clouds of Exxon billowing out just across the river; listening to Pink Floyd or the Calliope music from the Delta Queen when morning came. No one came to disturb me or my friends until the manager got wise and showed up with the police and an eviction order.
When my father died I had to leave the state. I was never the one they came to see, but they hated me anyway. So I just packed up and left.
It was early in the morning, around 2am, there was no moon out, the sky was pitch black, I was driving into the middle of a thunderstorm, flashes of lightning, occasionally lit up the countryside, and I could make out the lines of oak tree branches hanging over the narrow highway; I was alone and I couldn’t imagine my life being any different than it was, as my tires splashed across the pavement in north Louisiana, and the rhythmic swish of the windshield wipers, blended in with the steady drops of rain on the hood of my Dodge Charger, and blunted my consciousness; I was going at a steady speed, well above the limit, until I came to a wall of water in the road, out of nowhere, the beam of my headlights ended into a deep gully, the bridge had washed out, and I was the first one to encounter it, I slammed on my breaks, and hit the water, causing me to do a complete donut in the road, leaving a large plume in the wake around me, I stopped for just a second, stunned, I looked around, and as the water began seeping into doors, I floored it, and I barely managed to make it up, the muddy sloping embankment, and back to safety on the other side, my tires squealed, and I sped on, there were no towns to speak of, just boarded up old ma and pa stores, and a few dark farm houses, with shotguns and dogs, and barbed wire cow fields; I finally made it back to another farm road headed north and then I drove even faster to the Arkansas state line.