Falls and Rearrangements

File this in the "Bless Her Heart" Department. 

I was lying back in bed, ensconced in three pillows, as well as a "husband" (the stuffed, corduroy-covered kind), struggling to focus my eyes, when the phone rang.

Because I am waiting for an out-of-state business call, I picked up.  Normally, I let everything go to voice mail, as telephones and what I often find on their other end repulse me.

It turned out to be a relative of whom I am very fond, my Dad's sister.

What a tale she had to tell -- and so perfectly foreshadowed by Fred having taken a loud, vicious fall in the shower last night.  Well... actually, Fred managed to fall OUT of the shower, which is hard to picture but he swears to it.

My Aunt was all dressed up for an evening Christmas party at a friend's home.  She had never been there before, and not living in Tête de Hergé (très décédé, d'ailleurs), the area turned out not to be well lit and to be inadequately and unevenly paved. 

That's right, she wiped out.  Right on the curb.  More importantly, right on her [very lovely] face.

Because this is not a phrase one normally hears from the mouth of the Best-Bred of the Upper Crust, I can only imagine her horror to find that "[her] nose was on the wrong side of [her] head."

She lay in the street bleeding for a bit, yelling for help that did not come, then struggled to her feet and made it to her friend's door where she politely rang the bell. 

The mystery is why the intelligent crowd gathered within chose to take her to an urgent care center instead of calling 911 or transporting her to an Emergency Room.  The erudite doctor there declared her nose broken and her face lacerated, then advised her to see an ENT "next week."

She would, of course, go on to have headaches and jaw pain -- and now knows that she was likely concussed.

She has spent weeks visiting plastic surgeons, only to find that none were willing to accept the allotted payment from Medicare for the fairly extensive surgery required to repair her nose, jaw, and skin.  Medicare thinks this work merits about $9,000.  Yes, I *can* wait for you to stop giggling.

Luckily, she lives in a university-rich area with several med schools and just this morning, one of the academic luminaries has deigned to operate for that paltry sum.

She has to wait four months, though, all the while in terrible pain and sporting the aforementioned now-misplaced schnoz and multicolored insulted tissues. 

So she calls to apologize for not having contacted me over Christmas... and I so want to reassure her that, compared with one whole brood of my relations, she is promptness, largesse, and good-humor personified.

I neglected her extensive chronic medical woes, of which she rarely speaks, and the financial hardships that I know of, but that she has never mentioned. 

She reserved her one moment of agitation for one of her sons, by chance an orthopedic surgeon, and his overstated contention that she fell because of her age.

Harrumph!

(Clearly, she fell precisely because she does not live here, in the well-maintained environs of Marlinspike Hall.  We are clearing out The Computer Turret in hopes that she will spend The Thaw with us, come Spring.  My boorish cousin is welcome, too, I suppose, provided he can keep his age-ist prejudices to himself.)

So, as I am fond of saying, but usually without such literal intent:  Bless her bones!

We wish Nancy a full and rapid recovery.

Fred is okay, by the way, although his tailbone is quite painful and he is walking funny.  Apparently, his acrobatics paid off and allowed him to land on his unsubstantial tush instead of on the base of his humongous skull, for which we give thanks.

Update on some details: Lindsey Baum

This is an odd update to make about the case of Lindsey Baum, the 12-year old child from McCleary, Washington, missing since June 26, 2009.  There is, as is so often the case, no hard news about her.  What is heartening is that people continue to tell her story and keep the hope of finding her alive.

Today, Susan Murphy Milano, of HWT Radio fame, wrote about Lindsey in her blog.  Seeing just the title, and not knowing who Susan Murphy Milano from Eve, I was prepared to be incensed:   "The Connection Between Michael Jackson and Lindsey Baum."

I've become used to finding psychics and other less-than-what-I-consider-reliable-sorts on the other end of searches for updates on missing children.  Lindsey Baum, unfortunately, has attracted quite a nutty following.  So I was feeling combattive when I finally landed on this ersatz linking of Baum and The King of Pop.

It was nice to be disappointed for a change.  She has grabbed the attention that Michael Jackson never fails to attract and has connected it with Lindsey's disappearance, the news of which was eclipsed, at the time, by Jackson's death.

I managed to miss some of the details that Ms. Murphy Milano was able to share.  She based them on the profile at the CUE Center for Missing Persons, I believe, and while don't know their sourcing, either, they have my confidence.

Erring on the side of better-late-than-never, these details seem worth airing here:

Lindsey has the following distinguishing physical characteristics: 

Scar above her left eye;
Birth mark dark brown on right wrist;
Colored fillings in her teeth.

At the time of her disappearance, June 26, 2009, Lindsey Baum was wearing:

A long sleeve hooded shirt (not sweatshirt) light bluish/gray;
Jeans with knees cut out;
Black slip on American Eagle shoes with white rubber soles (no socks);
Bathing suit under clothes (a red/white/blue striped/polkadotted top with mismatched floral print bottoms).

If you have any information regarding Lindsey Baum, please call the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's Office at 866-915-8299 [Tip Hotline].

NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN

1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)

McCleary Police Department (Washington) 1-360-533-8765

Family Website: Lindsey Baum

Orifessavivarous

Orificeseses... Orifessesive... Orifessavivarous*:  If it wasn't a word before, it won't be one now.  Unlike Sarah Palin, the Neologism Deity doesn't generally smile on, at, or about me.  I find myself, in truth, to be almost obsessively refudiated.

I follow @God (and only @God) on Twitter.  It was @God who turned me on to a photoessay leitmotif with which most of you are already familiar. 

I couldn't bring myself to reproduce the captioning but decided that, really, it's not necessary -- which is sad and hilarious at the same time.

Also sad and hilarious at the same time?  There are several photos of Palin from which to choose, each as exuberant as the others, just with slight outfit and background changes.  I chose this one because of the beautiful white pearlized cross she sports.  It takes a strong woman to pull that off.

And because, frankly, certain angles are just easier to believe, @God or no @God.  Ultimately, I'll have to consult old friend @Tweetin4Palin. 

For the record?  We Americans owe a profound debt of gratitude to Sarah Palin's Ghost Tweeter for a host of unseen protections from things unamerican -- and mostly pagan -- the latest as recently as Winter Solstice 2010:

[...D]emons tried 2 take the moon away last night! I am a Maverick Grizzly Prayer Warrior; made 'em give it back. You're welcome.--Tweetin4Palin SP GhostTweeter, 21 December 2010 

Anyway, I trust her implicitly.  She assures me that publishing this post will not undermine any of the political (or comedic) gravitas for which I am known. 

She also sent me a pint jar of chicken noodle soup.  And some crackers.  In a cute basket.

I'm just sayin'.


* No, I don't know what it means.  Yet.  Something along the lines of oriflamme meets fesse meets vivisection?  Amazingly enough, if you enter those three terms into Google Search, one of your first, and only, successes will be Deucalion, King Of The Golden River, Dame Wiggins Of Lee, The Eagle's Nest by John Ruskin.  This puts a whole new twist on my understanding of art history.

Embedded Collars: The Boundaries of Compassion

I cannot imagine being this sick ever again without the benefit of staring, hour after hour, at the Animal Planet channel.  Dobby, Our Little Idiot, and Marmy Fluffy Butt, Dobby's mother, concur, as they have become dedicated viewers of Animal Cops, Animal Precinct, and even, hard as it is to believe, Pit Bulls and Parolees.

The regional differences -- Dallas, Phoenix, Detroit, New York City, and Canyon Country, California are all represented -- are worth the witness.  You will hear, for example, a NYC cop say things that the polite folks in Texas wouldn't dare utter without benefit of a centuries-old adage involving a rocking chair or a moving truck. What is common to all, of course, is unshakable dedication to the animals, even when the outcomes are nothing less than tragic.

Unfortunately, one result of our steady diet of animal rescue shows is a growing suspicion that humankind does not merit the benevolence shown us by the creatures we deign to domesticate for their companionship and service.

Watching a vet debride a young cat's neck and "armpit," deep red tissue pulsating from the blood vessels nearly exposed by an imbedded collar, Dobby shakes his tiny little head in disbelief and shoots me a look approaching disgust.  Unbelievably, the cat's owners are not charged with cruelty as it turns out the elderly couple thought that the spreading, stinking wound was the natural result of the spay the cat underwent just prior to their adoption.  That's right.  It never occurred to these TWO people that perhaps their pet had outgrown the collar it sported when it was 6 weeks old.  Rather, they chose to believe that spaying a feline naturally results in a bloody, pus-filled mess in the region of the animal's neck.  The poor thing had tried to escape its collar but in so doing only managed to entrap one of its front legs -- but that had to have happened months earlier, given the depth of the... embedment, if such a term exists.

I am also, I confess, a dedicated viewer of shows about hoarding.  I consider myself an unactuated hoarder.  I have the tendency but never act upon it.  In fact, I force myself to live in the other direction -- I am an anti-hoarder. 

Yes, I get rid of even the most precious of artifacts.  My past can easily explain it but that's boredom squared, so we won't go there!

Early on in my hoarding education, television-based, I wondered about the convergence of such people with the animal kingdom.  It was hardly a surprise, then, one drug-addled afternoon, to see Confessions: Animal Hoarding cheerfully advertised.

Holy Mother of God.

Fred informed me that he once did a research paper on the history of the American SPCA and learned that this pioneering group was among the first to expose, and insist on legislation against, child abuse.  That made sad sense to me and I treated it as another piece of logical received information.  Then one day, as I watched a child surrounded by heights of cherished garbage hug a faithful pet dog, I plugged the ASPCA and "child abuse" into Google's search engine.  Fred had spared telling me that the organization had had to force the powers that be to declare, in 1873, human children part of the "animal kingdom" in order to extend to that precious race the umbrella of its protection.  (I know that there was much going on in 1873 to appall a more modern and enlightened being, but I've never been fond of relativism, as it tends to stunt my ability to be shocked by the social crimes of the present day.):

In the late 1800s, a church worker named Etta Wheeler forever changed the face of parental authority in North America.


During a family visit, Mrs. Wheeler discovered 11-year-old Mary-Ellen, the step-daughter of the woman casually entertaining Mrs. Wheeler, shackled to her bed and badly beaten. Too tiny and ill-formed for her 11 years, it was quite evident Mary-Ellen was also grossly malnourished. Some of her scars were visibly healed over, giving a clear picture of long-term and sustained child abuse.


Appalled by what she saw, Mrs. Wheeler reported the severe and obvious abuse and neglect to the authorities. The authorities could find no law that had been broken: in 1873—and even today in many countries—what went on behind the closed doors of the family was considered no one's business but the family's.


But Etta Wheeler was determined: she marched herself into the American S.P.C.A. demanding they do something to help the battered Mary-Ellen.


Animals were protected, but children were not!


In order for the A.S.P.C.A. to act on behalf of Mary-Ellen, children had to be declared members of the animal kingdom, which is indeed what happened. The A.S.P.C.A. did finally intervene. Mary-Ellen was removed from her abusive home and placed in foster care, where she thrived. She eventually married and had 2 daughters of her own, one of whom she named Etta as a tribute to her rescuer. Mary-Ellen lived to the age of 92.


Mary-Ellen is considered the very first case of child abuse in North America, more because of the historical significance than the historical accuracy. The time had finally come to protect children as children, which lead to the creation of child abuse laws.

It is easy to see that our willingness to legislate against cruelty to animals leads investigators into situations where the environment is equally destructive and detrimental to humans.  The surprise is how difficult it remains, 138 years after Etta Wheeler got pissed off, to intercede on behalf of our own species. 

Clearly, linking animal advocates to human social services (ranging from incarceration to psychiatric treatment, or my favorite -- both) is an enlightened, if overwhelming, approach.

Based on my extensive research -- itself based on the close, febrile viewing of five television episodes -- animal hoarders consider themselves bona fide rescuers and think that the environment which they provide is the best possible, and above reproach.  They see themselves as martyred workers for a cause, so when divergent opinions are voiced, they rarely comprehend the message and are incredibly resistant.  The more expert the opinion, in fact, the more stringent the denial. 

Recently, I found myself so overcome by horror that I did the unthinkable and turned the Idiot Box off mere minutes into an A & E Hoarding show segment.  Featured were foul-mouthed Hanna and her chickens, lame goats, and waterless ducks, on the one hand, and Kathy and her emotionally-stunted husband Gary, with his feral rabbits ensconced in the very walls of their home, on the other.  I recorded the episode but haven't had fever high enough to excuse watching it. 

I confess to thinking that it would be an emotional reprieve to see animal hoarding have as its object creatures besides dogs, cats, and doe-eyed horses (errr, well, horse-eyed horses... but you understand my meaning... their eyes are intelligent velvet).  I don't relate much to chickens or apparently insane, inbred rabbits, but this was impossible to witness.  Also, it correctly begged several questions, not the least of which are conditions provided animals raised solely with the intent of slaughter, as well as the impact of personal antipathy when we are engaged in the obligation of human "rescue."

I'm cruising at 101 degrees, so maybe later today we will try to watch Episode 40 again -- but only if Dobby and Marmy can stomach it. 

They're sleeping on it and that seems a grand idea.

making it to 6:30

i love the new (to me) blogger "stats." i can know, for instance, that someone from denmark is at present looking at the strange compline piece i wrote last week.

i am not alone! someone else is awake, online, and, quite likely, given his present activity, also suffering!

my mdvip go-to guy will field a call from me in one hour, as i figure that 6:30 am is a decent enough time for phoning in what is clearly a quasi-emergency. i've had my index finger primed for button-punching since, oh-h-h-h, roughly 1 am.

at roughly 1 am, though, i was hysterical. not "kind of" hysterical, or "hysterical" in a literary sense that has nothing whatsoever to do with gender bias. no, i mean: hysterical, as in, freud would be both bored and delighted.

there has been an onslaught of "oh god... oh god oh god oh god." i whined, in a particularly ugly whining voice: "heeeellllppppp me... oh god oh god oh god... heeeellllppppp me."

fred, sworn to take care of me, has managed to slip into his old ways and spend most of his time deeply asleep.

what is really irritating? oh god... oh god oh god oh god? well, that would be fred's insistence that he'll do whatever i decide to do. as in: drive us to the emergency room/department... or fill my water bottle... or feed the felines... or tie a knot in the warbling tongue of la bonne et belle bianca castafiore.

as she practiced her best, and only, aria last evening, how could i not feel... oh god oh god oh god oh god... that i was being mocked?

"ah, je ris de me voir si belle dans ce miroir?" i mean, really? as the muted dulcet tones of moi -- barfing and moaning, moaning and barfing, in full-fledged feminine hysteria -- served as bad moravian background singing from just outside detroit? pure mockery, pure mockery.

don't touch my sentences. any of them. attribution, even spelling, might be a bit off, but i am writing, clearly, from my death bed.


wow. i just plugged in "female hysteria" over at dear, dear wikipedia (and if you haven't been moved by jimmy wales to help out with a few bucks, what are you waiting for?), and i am stunned.

Since ancient times women considered to be suffering from hysteria would sometimes undergo "pelvic massage" — manual stimulation of the genitals by the doctor until the patient experienced "hysterical paroxysm" (orgasm).

yes, okay, [oh god oh god -- yaddayadda] so i was tossing around terms with which i am not really familiar. my connaissance of freud came from literary criticism classes at berkeley. worse, those classes were in french. what did make freud of acute interest, at the time, was the influence of that neer-do-well, jeffrey masson.

wow, that was a long time ago. what were we so riled up about? we filled auditoriums just to hear the guy, and this was when both foucault and derrida (as well as derri-da-da's son) were essentially in residence.

[it's later and i am rereading this, despite my eyes inclination to cross.  we heard him because he was "happening" at the time, because he'd published the assault on truth, was fired from the freud archives, had a libel suit ongoing against janet malcolm of the new yorker.

whatever. i am in pain, and laughing doesn't help matters any -- as it jiggles jiggly-prone body parts and, well, that hurts. still, for you, dear reader from denmark --(prince hal? hal? is that you?) -- we will share the aforementioned wikipedia's introduction to dr. jeffrey masson.

to whit, to woo:

Dr. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941 as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson in Chicago, Illinois) is an American author, residing in New Zealand. Masson is best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his book The Assault on Truth, Masson argued that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims that they had been sexually abused would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods. (Several Freud scholars have disputed the traditional story that Freud's seduction theory patients reported having been sexually abused in early childhood, the basis on which Masson built his case.) He is a vegan and has written about animal rights.

oh god!  if you were in any way involved in what *must* be called the BROUHAHA (mwa ha ha ha!) surrounding his book, Assault on Truth, and the postpublication rock star tour, you must read the wikipedia entry for dr. masson.  Curious as to what... well, as to what happened to masson? where did he go, what did he do, in that post assault on truth phase?

Since the early 1990s, Masson has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages. He has explained this radical change in the subject of his writings as follows:

“ I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, 'As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals.'

my favorite comment over at amazon for when elephants weep was: "i loved it but it was way too anthropomorphic." mwa ha ha!
 
ouch.  ouch.  oh god.

and then, of course, it must be said: more power to him.

and thanks to him, my essential weirdness, an inspirational unknown visitor from denmark, the influence of anti-nausea medication, and high anxiety?  it is 6:28 am.  made it!