Presidential Poetics: "No woman ever played the whore / Unless She had a man to help her."*

* a recommended primer: "The Poetry of Abraham Lincoln" at Open Culture

source of my titular tease:

Whatever Spiteful fools may Say—

Each jealous, ranting yelper—

No woman ever played the whore

Unless She had a man to help her.

**************************************************************************

Thought I'd share this, as I never knew that President Lincoln wrote in verse.  I admit that not much would astound me.

"President Lincoln leads the Nordic Combined after soaring over the heads of the fans gathered at the bottom of the Normal Hill, for an estimated distance of 145 meters.  Having forgotten his cross-country skis at Knob Creek Farm in Kentucky, Lincoln himself fashioned a fine pair of Sochi birch, sharing a drink of warm black birch nectar with all comers.."

Anyway... once again I sing the praises of the Academy of American Poets and their Poem-A-Day program. It would not occur to me to search for The Poems of Abraham Lincoln while wandering the aisles at Amazon.

Only three poems can be attributed to Lincoln with certainty, and all are in the public domain.  I like the remark, though, that reviewer fredtownward threw down:

OK, I have to admit, this one has me a bit stumped. Who WOULD appreciate a gift edition of the only complete narrative poem (though sometimes treated as 2 or 3 separate poems as it is here, the author considered it a single poem in three cantos with differing subjects) attributed to Abraham Lincoln with absolute certainty? (There are several short scraps of verse scattered throughout his writings and one anonymous poem, "The Suicide's Soliloquy," that has been attributed to him by some scholars.)

Well, poetry lovers are a good possibility, as are teachers of poetry, and they might also appreciate the uniform edition of John Quincy Adams' poem The Wants of Man. Abraham Lincoln had a lifelong interest in both reading and writing poetry, and as these verses prove, he was no slouch at it. Another are would-be poets who could use a little encouragement to keep at it: if Abraham Lincoln could keep at it,... Admirers, students, and teachers of Lincoln and his times are good possibilities, too, and they might also appreciate the uniform edition of The Emancipation Proclamation.

Note: One could complain that this book is available online for free. Well, yes, what part of in the public domain do you not understand? However, trying to get away with giving someone a printout as a gift will earn you the nickname of cheapskate.... 

Someone had the nerve to pretend the praise of "home-spun" in describing Lincoln's work.  I have a knee-jerk issue with that phrase that I will have to get over, for spinning from his home, like some knob-kneed spindly spider wending his web, mending his land... is perhaps what best describes the words Lincoln wrought, fraught with more care -- and cares -- than I can imagine.

Okay, Lincoln gets to me.

Here's the poem the Academy dropped in my email box today, perfect for the frozen tundra that quiets Marlinspike Hall today.  We are somber, we admit it.  The Castafiore feels the weather in her bones, and chose to cuddle with our Maine Coon, Buddy, an ever ready and egalitarian cuddler, over the opportunity to nuzzle her darling Sven Feingold.  "Mein Prof," she whispered, "I don't want to brush my teeth or fight the laces forsaken by God on that damned red satin bustier... Please find some Maze Emergency that Sven and only Sven might tend to?  A bevy of frigid beavers to rescue, something!"

Sometimes Bianca confuses our fledgling marshlands with the centuries-old English Boxwood Maze, star attraction of bright summertime's ManorFest.  I spared Sven a pointless romp in the icy mess and gifted the Milanese Nightingale with an ordinary headache, instead.  He borrowed Dobby on his way back to the Domestic Quarters, claiming that his adult son, Cabana Boy, was a bit blue -- Dobby's purview. 

Since that left me and Fred with but one feline, and as Marmy Fluffy Butt is bent on practicing her hauteur, we decided to treat our own sobriety of spirit with poetry.

My Childhood Home I See Again

by Abraham Lincoln

  

My childhood home I see again, 

And sadden with the view; 

And still, as memory crowds my brain, 

There's pleasure in it too. 

O Memory! thou midway world 

'Twixt earth and paradise, 

Where things decayed and loved ones lost 

In dreamy shadows rise, 

And, freed from all that's earthly vile, 

Seem hallowed, pure, and bright, 

Like scenes in some enchanted isle 

All bathed in liquid light. 

As dusky mountains please the eye 

When twilight chases day; 

As bugle-notes that, passing by, 

In distance die away; 

As leaving some grand waterfall, 

We, lingering, list its roar-- 

So memory will hallow all 

We've known, but know no more. 

Near twenty years have passed away 

Since here I bid farewell 

To woods and fields, and scenes of play, 

And playmates loved so well. 

Where many were, but few remain 

Of old familiar things; 

But seeing them, to mind again 

The lost and absent brings. 

The friends I left that parting day, 

How changed, as time has sped! 

Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray, 

And half of all are dead. 

I hear the loved survivors tell 

How nought from death could save, 

Till every sound appears a knell, 

And every spot a grave. 

I range the fields with pensive tread, 

And pace the hollow rooms, 

And feel (companion of the dead) 

I'm living in the tombs.

from blog January Magazine

The Privilege of Abuse

The television is fuzzy and my hearing is off.  I thought the NBC announcer called two women lugers "losers," and was getting ready to write the proverbial letter. Then it occurred to me that the women seemed to be taking the insult pretty well, and that I hadn't eaten in a good while, and the room was spinning, as well -- perhaps an example in surfeit.  Sharp as a tack, the phonic similarity of luge and lose eventually asserted itself, as well as my recollection that Lester Holt is an excellent commentator and, to my honed intuition, a good man.  The overweight Italian diva draped over the foot of my hospital bed loves him, but not to the degree that she adores Tom Brokaw (get well, Tom!), over whom she desires to one day exert her seductive powers.  Luckily, Bianca Castafiore has never had occasion to share space with the dignified Brokaw.

It'd be really cool were that a segue.

However, had the NBC announcer called the winter sportswomen "crazy nut-jobs who must have emerged from really twisted childhoods," I'd not even have blinked.

No, wait. Maybe that's how I feel about the skeleton sliders.  In case you've forgotten:

Skeleton is a fast winter sliding sport in which an individual person rides a small sled down a frozen track while lying face down, during which athletes experience forces up to 5 g.

Unfortunately, my mental plasticity slid over to my email, reading some, tossing most. The plastics in my skull never seem to completely gel with the desired mold, never seem to attain that waxy smoothness that so aids really smart and able people. In part to protect my defective neuroplasticity,  I usually avoid WSJ columnists, not "like the plague," but as "not my preferred source of editorial information."  However ThinkProgress headed one of their magazine-like "come hither, dah-link" ads for today's content with this:

Wall Street Journal Columnist: Rape Victims Are Just As Guilty As Rapists 

If They’re Both Drunk

The headline spoke to me, having been drunk on some of the finest campuses in the world, academically-speaking, including one famed for its motto "Work hard, play hard," and because I owe the loss of a good half-cup of brain cells for my work to bring the "top party school in the USA" accolade to one of my undergraduate institutions.  (I did a great deal of endeavoring, undergraduately.)  I was not raped at any of the eight universities I attended, although I would say, of three sexual encounters, that there hasn't been a label invented to do them justice.

But it is of the North Carolina Gothic Wonderland that i think, automatically, after reading James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today" opinion piece, entitled "Drunkenness and Double Standards: A balanced look at college sex offenses."

It almost makes you itch, doesn't it, that title?  Makes you think of Title IX, almost!  Fair is Fair!  This must be yet another meditation on the "Equal Opportunity in Education Act"!  But it would be shallow to judge a work by its title, as it may have been chosen all willy-nilly by some ersatz editor, and besides, that is how Taranto chose to début his own thought piece -- by vigorously shaking his editorial tail, much like Buddy my Maine Coon, when riled, in an attempt to mark it with odd conservative pheromones. 

It's an old odd tail, er, tale.  It begins with false accusations of rape (all instances he discusses treat rape of women by men).  We all detest unjust accusations, particularly of the sort that taint the accused no matter an ultimate determination of innocence, or lack of legal guilt.  

The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics annually publishes a report on Criminal Victimization, the latest being from October 2013.  This paper, covering 2012, estimates that only 28.8% of rapes are reported.  Remember that when you hear bandied about the FBI assertion that 8% of reported rapes are false accusations or "unfounded" reports.  Take a moment to contemplate -- I mean, really get down and zen with it, mindfully -- the FBI definition of what constitutes an "unfounded" rape accusation: "if the victim did not fight back, if the attacker did not use a weapon, if the victim did not sustain injuries, or if the victim had a prior relationship with their attacker."

The mathematical adjustment brings the 8% level of "unfounded" rape within the norm of all falsely recorded violent crime, to approximately 2% -- for rape, 2.2%.

In a very FOX-y News echo, Taranto wants to bring a "balanced approach" to college sexual assaults, by making alcohol consumption some sort of levelizing force, a strike for equality.  He compares a car crash (I'm imagining his neuroplasticity invites further interpretation of this roadway danger as a fender-bender) to drunken college co-eds having sex, which will, of course, end with the woman falsely charging the man with rape. Elementary!

Taranto writes:

If two drunk drivers are in a collision, one doesn't determine fault on the basis of demographic details such as each driver's sex. But when two drunken college students "collide," the male one is almost always presumed to be at fault. His diminished capacity owing to alcohol is not a mitigating factor, but her diminished capacity is an aggravating factor for him.

I hate it when I run into a penis, don't you?

Unfortunately, Taranto writes from a mindset that seems steeped in an insurance lexicon, in some sort of automoblile accident outline drawing, with arrows and dotted lines, much as might be used to determine a sub-$5,000 monetary verdict of culpability by the ever astute Judge Judy.

He jumps too quickly, as well, to another paradigm -- from a reported, possible crime to the openly adversarial environment of the courtroom.  He refers to every accused man as a "defendant," which should make every woman, college-educated or not, guffaw.  Snort Diet Coke out her nose.  Gasp, even.

For a woman desirous of reporting rape, the road from report, rape kit, ridicule, mental and physical anguish, ruination of relationships... to an identifiable male being labelled by the judicial system as a "defendant"?  That road is arduous, long, and full of surprises, such as exposure of her sexual history, her habits of dress, her use of drink and drug, and the discovery of the stereotypes of ethnicity, lifestyle choices, and socioeconomic status.

Aw, leave Taranto with his banging cars, and yes, with the real cases of false accusations among college crowds, where binge drinking is truly a dangerous epidemic that compromises good decision-making.

I have personal knowledge of college women who practically "begged for it" when the college man in question was from a famous, infamous, or rich family.  Toss in an abject Greek system, and digging the good earth for the original kernels of truth becomes a muddy mess.  I have personal knowledge that money was often that honest germ, and, just as often, money was the muddy mess solution.  Society weddings have been based on less.

Colleges and universities are evolving, some ahead of the curve, some behind, keeping the Bell Curve theory alive, if gasping.  There are more advocates, more guidance counselors trained in sexual trauma, and there are vastly improved campus police agencies, better able to work with local law enforcement. One major obstacle still to be successfully managed in the insular campus world is the role of college athletics, and how collegiate athletes survive on amplified reputations, and sometimes steroids, and occasionally via well-placed good-old-boy pedophiles... and how that contributes to sexual coercion.

But I want to leave you with something that should shock whatever side of this "the booze made me do it" argument you support -- if it is even an argument, and not just another way to render complicated one of the least complicated of crimes.

Basic forensic evidence gathered from the body and clothing of the person claiming rape is called a "rape kit." It's important.  It takes hours to complete, feels invasive and degrading to someone who may have just undergone a violent and humiliating attack.

It's important.  And the backlog in processing these kits, combined with their incorrect storage, and their mysterious propensity for being "lost," leave me sputtering.  So I'll close, because it's my night to cook dinner, with this excerpt from The Joyful Heart Foundation, itself originally part of an article by Sarah Tofte for the Shreveport Times in Louisiana, published November 6, 2013:

Every year, thousands of individuals take the courageous step of reporting their rape to the police. They overcome the social stigma of being the victim of sexual violence, the warnings sometimes uttered by the rapist to keep silent, the suggestions that these issues ought not to be spoken of; and they speak up. During a forensic exam of their bodies which can take between four and six hours evidence is collected in a “Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Kit” — a rape kit.

Experts estimate there are hundreds of thousands of rape kits sitting untested throughout the country. Over the past several years, this rape kit backlog has become a fixture in the national media, with reports of untested rape kits piling up in police and crime lab storage facilities across the nation.

Rape kit evidence is an invaluable investigative tool for a country that has struggled to respond adequately to sexual assault. When tested, rape kit evidence can identify an unknown assailant, affirm a survivor’s account of the attack, connect a suspect to other unsolved crimes and exonerate innocent suspects. And yet, hundreds of thousands of times, a decision is made not to process the evidence. Even when a member of law enforcement does send a kit for testing, it can sit unprocessed for months and, in some cases, years. Each untested kit represents a missed chance for justice for survivors and accountability for offenders.

Of all violent crimes in the country, rape has the lowest reporting, arrest and prosecution rates. According to FBI crime data, rape has a 24 percent arrest rate — the lowest in nearly 40 years of tracking such information. This means that a survivor of rape has a one-in-five chance of seeing the perpetrator brought to justice. It also means that a rapist is likely to get away with the crime and, in many cases, to rape again.

We have seen the difference that testing every rape kit makes. New York City cleared its backlog of 17,000 kits and now tests every kit booked into police evidence. Proof of the value of testing every kit: the city’s arrest rate for rape has jumped from 40 percent to 70 percent.

Detroit is another city that now faces the massive task of clearing its backlog — more than 11,000 untested kits. After a National Institute of Justice grant allowed the first 850 kits to be tested, 46 potential serial rapists were identified. From those first kits, prosecutors have already secured two convictions, and traced assailants to crimes in 12 additional states and the District of Columbia.  [READ ALL OF MS. TOFTE'S ARTICLE HERE.]

© 2013 L. Ryan

it's almost there...

the "sick room" is looking a little brighter... i'd love to paint, but that involves more of the dread "royal we," meaning that fred would have to do all the work.

© 2013 L. Ryan

Definition of the Moon

I've never dared to second-guess the choices by Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders of Apollo 8, the first space mission to leave Mother Earth and travel to another planet, our moon.

They were the first to see Earth alone, and entire.

On December 24, 1968, they broadcast this message as they circled the moon for the ninth time -- the first ten verses of the Biblical Book of Genesis, using the King James translation.

William Anders:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Jim Lovell:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Frank Borman:

And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.

I found this photo on a woman's defunct blog, and just as it has no attribution here, it had none there either. She did say something, though, about it being her "definition of the moon." Or perhaps it was "my picture of the moon."   I cannot recall.

But in some moments spent failing dreadfully at mindfulness meant to squash severe physical pain and the ever-present specter of psychic torture, I found myself ripped in two -- between the men on their ninth rotation 'round the moon and this woman's chosen photo, unattributed, that reflected her understanding of that orb.

Yeah, yeah, yeah:  perspective.

Still, I ask you:  What would you choose?  Or, if you break out in a rash at open-ended essays, what would you have chosen to say to an Earth audience on December 24, 1968 (the date begging so many questions as to require medical marijuana)?  If you cannot speak, and now, thanks to that thought, I'll be thinking of the many ways in which my readers may have lost their speech, from force of will to tongue slashing -- If you cannot speak, refer me to the photo of your choice.  Unless you have no use of limbs, and nothing directable by eye movement or the witty manipulation of a straw.

"I know it's bad, kid. I got your back, kid."

What some teachers wish they could rap, if they could rap, in those hazy, hasty last moments with their Starbucks, before homeroom bell and the influx of the usual:

Bo Burnham:  Nerds

I'm a faggot, I'm a retard, I got a girl's bag, and a V-card.
I got three friends and a whack ass ride, you can judge by the cover 'cause it's shitty on the inside.
No girls wanna fuck me, trust me.
I don't give a fuck, don't adjust me, just please shut your face hole for just one second.
"Fuck you faggot, you're so fucking dumb."
Dumb, I'm the dumb one?
Calm down, Bo, just count to ten.
One, two, three, whore-I mean four-shit, three, four, five, bitch-I mean six-shit.
I quit, I got no patience, you won, I'll face it.
Your life peaks at graduation, well, congratu-fucking-lations.

Nerds, the faggots, the spastic fat chicks who sit in the back with no one to do their lab with, the kid with acne and tons of Proactive packed inside his backpack.
I got your back, kid.

Do you know why, kid, I can rap so mean?
I was reading while you were fucking the prom queen.
Huddled up reading, no lacrosse team.
"Huddle up, huddle up"
What? You lost me.
Sorry, bro, did I interrupt the circle of jerks all circle jerking?
I need savin'? No, fuck no.
Quote the raven? No, fuck Poe.
Ah, shit, I'm bitchin, listenin'.

They don't know what they're missing.
For instance, I like poetry, I like instruments.
Maybe we have similar interests?
It's no fall balls, no balls fall.
Sit and scrawl on the stall walls.
At three p.m., I pause.
That shit sounds like applause.

Nerds, the faggots, the spastic fat chicks who sit in the back with no one to do their lab with, the kid with acne and tons of Proactive packed inside his backpack.
I got your back, kid.

Nerds, the faggots, the spastic fat chicks who sit in the back with no one to do their lab with, the kid with acne and tons of Proactive packed inside his backpack.
I got your back, kid.

She stood in line and got cut.
Tried out, got cut.
Loved art, but the budget got cut.
Then, she got numb, and she only felt when she knelt and cut.

Nerds, the faggots, the spastic fat chicks who sit in the back with no one to do their lab with, the kid with acne and tons of Proactive packed inside his backpack.
I got your back, kid.

I know it's bad, kid.
I got your back, kid.

Happy Chinese New Year: Blazing Saddles...

Happy New Year!

It's the year of the horse, with the associated fifth element of wood:

It’s the Lunar New Year and the Chinese Year of the Horse. The horse is part of a 12-year-cycle of animals that make up the Chinese zodiac. These interact with the five elements: wood, metal, fire, water, earth. 2014 is the year of the wood horse, taking over from the year of the water snake. 

GET READY TO RUMBLE 

It will be a fast year full of conflicts according to some astrologers, who see wood as providing fuel for the energetic horse sign. The later part of the year is “yin fire”, increasing the potential for heated clashes even more. Feng shui practitioner Raymond Lo told Reuters: “The upcoming Horse year is also a 'yang wood' year, when people will stick more to their principles and stand firm. So it is hard to negotiate or compromise as there are more tendencies for people to fight for their ideals.”

Having US of American politics in mind, that's a grim prediction by Feng shui practitioner Raymond Lo. I'm not a student of geomancy, but perhaps it would've served us better if the fiery horse had paired up with, say, earth.  Then we could go around ordering the extremists of all political parties to stop imagining zebras running amok.  

"That's the good, solid sound of a fiery, fierce, proud horse running freely across hard dirt," we could tell them.  "That's not endless herds of wild, displaced, burning zebras tearing about the Capitol Rotunda." It is bound to come up during immigration reform discussions, and Lord help us later in the year, when mid-term elections bear down upon our National Sanity Reserves.

But why borrow trouble on New Year's very first day?  Instead enjoy some of these representations of the blazing steed known by Westerners as an unadorned, unpretentious 2014.  For an excellent short explanation of the well-kept "Chinese" lunar calendar, check out this Christian Science Monitor article.

The art/graphics were found HERE, and are, for the moment, offered for use as cards, calendars, and such, free of charge.

© 2013 L. Ryan

"Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crecen las palmas..."

May 3, 1919 - January 27, 2014

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crecen las palmas

Yo soy un hombre sincero, de donde crecen las palmas

Y antes de morirme quiero echar mis versos del alma

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Mi verso es de un verde claro y de un carmin encendido

Mi verso es de un verde claro y de un carmin encendido

Mi verso es un ciervo herido que busca en el monte amparo

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees

Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul

My verses are light green but they are also flaming red

I cultivate a rose in June and in January

For the sincere friend who gives me his hand

And for the cruel one who would tear out this heart with which I live

I do not cultivate thistles nor nettles I cultivate a white rose

Cultivo la rosa blanca en junio como en enero

Cultivo la rosa blanca en junio como en enero

Para el amigo sincero que me da su mano franca

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Y para el cruel que me arranca el corazon con que vivo

Y para el cruel que me arranca el corazon con que vivo

Cardo ni ortiga cultivo cultivo la rosa blanca

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Con los pobres de la tierra quiero yo mi suerte echar

Con los pobres de la tierra quiero yo mi suerte echar

El arroyo de la sierra me complace mas que el mar

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

ugly bedroom

i've been quiet because... things turn on a dime.

anyone want to come and redesign my bedroom?  the centerpiece is now one butt-ugly brown hospital bed. i remain, o my president, author of obamacare, which allowed me to receive a hospital bed with trapeze within 48 hours of the doctor ordering it, o do i remain ever grateful!

but a butt-ugly bedroom will not do.

new rugs will be necessary, because i don't want to fall off the butt-ugly brown bed onto the slick butt-ugly brown floor.

this morning, after dear fred went to a sunday morning shake-and-bake with the militant existential lesbian feminists, taking along a gourmet tuna salad with a fresh and golden loaf of bread, i challenged myself.  "self," i said...

sorry.

anyway, i cleaned the common areas we share with the castafiore and her amours, and with the hangers-on that groups such as ours attract.  mollusks. oops.  typed that out loud, i did!

in my brief period of profound laziness, the feline triumvirate has been intensively training.  dry, sculptural, free-standing hair ball sculptures tucked like hidden treasures behind furniture legs -- sublime!  a stylized swirl of hardened ocean waves, slick and seemingly splashing, reaching for the sky -- carefully presented alongside a gravity-bound fourteenth-century leather and iron virginal hope chest.  the first pieces were clearly the creation of marmy fluffy butt, and her fury was swift and fierce when my efforts to preserve her commentary on world hunger somehow fell prey to the chaotic anti-art suction of my hoover.  the watery, shellacked offering was from the suddenly shy buddy, of maine coon provenance, and he approved its destruction, seeing his arching, asiatic columns as bits of performance art that already were passé.

using the forensic skills that only advanced students of french literature (and its intertwined, inbred complications known as critics) are able to focus upon the disparate remnants of avant garde cat art, i determined that dobby, the edgiest of this feline force, had dabbled with such success in a retrospective homage to trompe-l'oeil that it will be only by chance that we discern his gastric artiface from our hooman accoutrements and clutter.

so i am back in the putrid brown bed.  i confess that it helps my body relax, that joints previously screaming at an annoying level are now making only the occasional habitual moue.

but this room... this room.  a disaster.  i offer proof:

© 2013 L. Ryan

My First Use of Obamacare: Two Thumbs Up

Dear President Obama:

I thought you might like to know how my first use of "Obamacare" coverage, obtained through HealthCare.gov, went, and whether it was, in general, a thumbs up or down situation.

Two thumbs way up, sir!

I saw one of my new doctors on Tuesday. Due to electronic transmission of records, my daunting list of 20 medications preceded my arrival, so figuring out which ones required immediate renewal was easy.  I needed x-rays of my decrepit bones and got them, immediately - while  my prescriptions were filled.

I mentioned to the doctor that my former internist wanted me to have a hospital bed, with a trapeze (I've always wanted to be one of the "flying Wallendas"!).  I try to follow the Rule of Threes when I see a doctor and only mention 3 concerns or needs.  More than that can be overwhelming.  So, though I mentioned the bed and trapeze, I was not sure he even heard me.

Guess what is arriving at my home this afternoon? That's right!  A hospital bed with trapeze. Two days after mentioning the need in passing, almost under my breath, and voilà.

While writing this letter to you, I got a phone call, scheduling my first appointment with a pain management doctor in March.

I was treated courteously and professionally at every turn.  There were no flashing lights over my head announcing "Obamacare recipient, receiving tax credit assistance with her premium, despite enough medical problems to bankrupt the entire nation." None of that!

I filled 5 prescriptions for $75. I paid a $30 co-pay to see the doctor.  There will be a rental fee for the bed/trapeze, but it goes toward my reasonable deductible.

It almost feels like America again.  I don't feel like a "taker," or someone having great fun with "entitlements." I am paying my fair share, and struggle to live within my means.  I am a "permanently and totally disabled" French prof, who gladly would give up hospital bed and wheelchair to stand in a classroom again, sharing, helping, guiding, working.

This was certainly not how I envisioned things turning out.

It's my birthday tomorrow and this is my first "thank you" note: for the gift of "Obamacare" and the ACA, for the gift of people who listen and hear, for the many people who make a tough life tolerable.

Anyway, that's how my first use of my new coverage worked out.

Excellent work, Mr. President, and thank you.

© 2013 L. Ryan

this is true and that is true and these things are true, and yet.

i've been writing a lot, just not down.  hoping that as one word, line, thought goes, it will consider coming back when called, when searched for.  it matters less and less, which is satisfying.

still sleeping in spurts, the happiest being of ninety minutes.  i woke early this morning as my earbud played to a snoozy brain and ben harper singing "like a king."

i did not make that up.  it took me almost to the end of the song to piece together what day it was, and why it mattered to wake up to ben harper singing "like a king."

"Like A King" (1993)

Well Martin's dream
Has become Rodney's worst
Nightmare
Can't walk the streets
To them we are fair game
Our lives don't mean a thing

Like a king, like a king, like a king
Rodney King, Rodney King, Rodney King
Like a king, like a king, like a king
How I wish you could help us Dr. King

Make sure it's filmed
Shown on national T.V.
They'll have no mercy
A legal lynch mob
Like the days strung up from the tree
The L.A.P.D.

Like a king, like a king, like a king
Rodney King, Rodney King, Rodney King
Like a king, like a king, like a king
How I wish you could help us Dr. King

So if you catch yourself
Thinking it has changed for the best
You better second guess
Cause Martin's dream
Has become Rodney's worst
Nightmare

Like a king, like a king, like a king
Rodney King, Rodney King, Rodney King
Like a king, like a king, like a king
How I wish you could help us Dr. King

hours later, going through emails, missing the ones i did not get, i stopped for today's offering from the academy of american poets "poem-a-day" electronic gift box.  it was langston hughes' "Let America Be America Again." i did not waste a precious moment wishing some tea party enthusiast would read it, sit with it, be with it for a few minutes.  well, apparently i wasted a fleeting minute or two.  a lovely thing, this poem, an example of a poet's sight and essential fairness. this is true and that is true and these things are true, and yet.

this is true and that is true and these things are true, and yet.

Let America Be America Again

by Langston Hughes

 

Let America be America again. 

Let it be the dream it used to be. 

Let it be the pioneer on the plain 

Seeking a home where he himself is free. 

 

(America never was America to me.) 

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- 

Let it be that great strong land of love 

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme 

That any man be crushed by one above. 

 

(It never was America to me.) 

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty 

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, 

But opportunity is real, and life is free, 

Equality is in the air we breathe. 

 

(There's never been equality for me, 

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") 

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? 

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, 

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. 

I am the red man driven from the land, 

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- 

And finding only the same old stupid plan 

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. 

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope, 

Tangled in that ancient endless chain 

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! 

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! 

Of work the men! Of take the pay! 

Of owning everything for one's own greed! 

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. 

I am the worker sold to the machine. 

I am the Negro, servant to you all. 

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- 

Hungry yet today despite the dream. 

Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers! 

I am the man who never got ahead, 

The poorest worker bartered through the years. 

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream 

In the Old World while still a serf of kings, 

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, 

That even yet its mighty daring sings 

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned 

That's made America the land it has become. 

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas 

In search of what I meant to be my home-- 

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore, 

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea, 

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came 

To build a "homeland of the free." 

 

The free? 

 

Who said the free? Not me? 

Surely not me? The millions on relief today? 

The millions shot down when we strike? 

The millions who have nothing for our pay? 

For all the dreams we've dreamed 

And all the songs we've sung 

And all the hopes we've held 

And all the flags we've hung, 

The millions who have nothing for our pay-- 

Except the dream that's almost dead today. 

 

O, let America be America again-- 

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free. 

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

Who made America, 

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, 

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, 

Must bring back our mighty dream again. 

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- 

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, 

We must take back our land again, 

America! 

 

O, yes, 

I say it plain, 

America never was America to me, 

And yet I swear this oath-- 

America will be! 

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, 

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, 

We, the people, must redeem 

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. 

The mountains and the endless plain-- 

All, all the stretch of these great green states-- 

And make America again!

this is true and that is true and these things are true, and yet.

then i wandered a bit, following the "if you liked that, then here, you might like this" coquetterie.  i landed on another poem: "The Day I Saw Barack Obama Reading Derek Walcott's Collected Poems" by yusef komunyakaa.  that was nice, but what was nicer was the next "come hither," an NPR interview with derek walcott on the matter of a president who reads poetry. 

he makes my point quite well, i think. for those of you confused as to what my point might be, this is true and that is true and these things are true, and yet.

from the transcript of that interview, available in its entirely HERE:

Walcott says it's good for people in power to read poetry because human beings are complex and contradictory, and poetry can capture that. Like in Langston Hughes' poem "Theme for English B" when the black student writes to his white teacher, "Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me. / Nor do I often want to be a part of you. / But we are, that's true!" Or in Walt Whitman's line, "I am large -- I contain multitudes." 

Walcott likes the idea of a president who reads poetry and thinks about this kind of human truth. Someone who can see beyond the act of political posturing. 

"There's a deeper truth in the contradictions that exist in poetry than there is in foreign policy. Foreign policy changes with generations. One generation you're the enemy of Japan, the next you're the friend of Germany and so it's never stable. Who are our enemies and when are they our enemies? You can't deal with those lies, there's a deeper truth in there." 

For Walcott, politics and poetry are a natural pair. He wrote his latest poem for Obama. The title, "Forty Acres," refers to the "forty acres and a mule" offered to slaves after emancipation. That offer was revoked. And the phrase came to represent a broken promise of equality. 

"The way I knew [the poem] was going to perhaps finish itself was finding the rhyme which sometimes happens in a poem, like crowd and plowed. Once that happened, I saw the furrow that the plow had made. Same thing as if say a limousine were going through a crowd it would make a furrow of a kind and the turnover of the dirt would be the separation of people before the president's car, which of course becomes a plow, so the idea of the design of the whole endeavor of the plowing becomes the endeavor of shaping the flag, with all the states, confederate and union together, led by this plowman who is the young president." 

Walcott draws on the history of slavery in his poem for Obama. But, he says Americans shouldn't make a big deal of the fact that they elected their first black president. 

"What is there to celebrate to say that he's black and he's a president. The celebration is a contradiction of the belief. The statement is all men are created equal, but when they become president, you say 'Oh, we've got a black president.' How can they be equal if that's the case?" 

He says they should focus on the kind of person Obama is, and celebrate that their next president is courteous, dignified and he reads poetry.

Blog Repost 1639: Blog Entry 1,249

Roughly a year ago, I wrote this post commemorating my 1,249th post.  Today, I can claim 1,639 of the insipid things, minus, of course, this one, and other reposts -- unless in the prologue to the reposting, I manage to produce something substantive.

It was written about a month before Daisy Love Merrick died. Not sufficient that the world should lose such a planetary citizen and surfer evangelist, I lost my writing groove and the whole-hearted embrace of my pseudo-sponsorship of pediatric cancer patients became something of a bad grappling take-down technique when I wrote my best poem ever, and then ruined it, in her name.  [Daisy Love Merrick:  An Abandoned Villanelle]

The problem? Me.  Me:  Reductio ad absurdum.  A year later, and the problem hasn't changed, budged, morphed, evolved.  There's just me and this lump of a blog, and a palpable, chewy, nasty fog of self-pity.

On the up side?  Robert Frost's Mending Wall.

******************************************************

Why do I follow and try to support individual pediatric cancer patients?  I try to keep it to four at a time, as time, itself, has somehow shown that to be manageable on an emotional and time-management level.

If you've decided, after carefully reading the 1, 248 blog entries comprising elle est belle la seine la seine elle est belle that I am one of the besotted Altruistic and Prayerful Loving People of the Interwebs, then -- Whoa, Nelly! -- do you ever need reading comprehension lessons!

There are times when keeping the number at four is very hard to do.  Sometimes, these children are dropping and dying with a swiftness bordering on rude.  Sometimes, they (or usually, their parental chroniclers on CaringBridge or CarePages) sneak new names to you, requesting that you stumble and mumble more prayerful stumblemumbles on behalf of the child they just met next door to them at their hospital, or the nifty eight year old who is in crisis down the hall.

These chronicling parents become daredevils at asking for what they think they want and need.  They can get downright bossy, pushy, and presumptuous.  Most are simply marvelous and in the midst of radical reformation, and the thought of what I might be going through (a cat scratch, having to wait for my first cup of coffee in bed, dropping more carrots on the kitchen floor than actually make it into my stock pot) escapes their attention.

We begin as strangers, and that, to me, is the exceedingly weird part -- how quickly that normally carefully cultivated societal divide is obliterated.  Sometimes on "first contact," like a failed Star Trek Prime Directive; Sometimes over weeks and months, as their initial politeness and crying hosanna is worn down by the frustrations of children with raw bottoms and the inability to swallow due to mouth sores and white plaque sneaking down painful esophagi.  Oh, and the scariness of a child no longer behaving like him or her self, but succumbing to the metamorphoses demanded by tumors and weird neurotransmitters of that most mysterious organ, the brain.

There is nothing much sadder, or terrifying, than to read:  "This is not him.  This is not her." Then, they love on, but the mission changes and becomes one of regaining the personality and impishness, politeness, innate loveliness, and spontaneity that were the hallmarks of these little hard beset beings -- a mission sometimes more important, ultimately, than saving their physical lives.

Steroids are often blamed, and I just roll my eyes, as I'm going on my 15th year of corticosteroids. The eye roll is not one of exasperation on my part, but of imagining all the unsaid weirdnesses going on in their home, their hospital room.  Thrown food, pouts, rages, moving from ecstatic utterances to gloom-and-doom within 60 seconds.  Moon faces and huge guts in children barely eating  or the same in children single-handedly destroying the household food budget.

Sometimes all of the official four scheme to die within weeks of one another.  Occasionally, remissions and cures and a gradual withdrawal from reportage (they don't need "us" any longer, thank goodness), leave holes in my desired level of involvement.  So I will begin to follow some new child they've mentioned as in need... only to have remission turn into relapse.  They are all the time screwing with my desired and well thought out number of only four kids at once (plus there is the growing number of alumni of the cured who remain active fighters in the battle to get more funding and attention paid to pediatric cancers).

There is little doubt that precious, precocious Daisy Love Merrick is dying.  It's been clear for quite some time.  The Merrick's have insulated themselves brilliantly as her circumstances have changed, as she entered the active phase of dying.  These are dynamic people, surrounded by friends and family, neighbors and the fruits of living lovingly, wisely, and with generous hearts.  They don't need the support of internet pediatric cancer groupies, ready to pray at the drop of a hat, or a wink from their cute kid.

And man, has that had me pissed off.

I actually reentered the world of real prayer for Miss Daisy, for her Mom Kate, for her Dad Britt, and for her sweet brother Isaiah.  None of that formulaic nonsense for Daisy, no siree.

A note on "siree," from that favorite former fad, the Urban Dictionary:

it is a word that a gay but popular man used to say a lot, then everyone else said it because they thought it was cool. and now everyone uses the word even though it has absolutely no meaning.

No, I'd not fold my hands together -- as if I still could -- and become one of these famous yet scary -- in an icky sort of scary way -- "prayer warriors" whose goal it is, apparently, to "storm" heaven.
I tended to look at her picture, imagine her pain, and wish for it to end -- but end well, for everyone's sake.

Back when I was intimately entwined with a Presbyterian Church, as intimate as one can get with Presbyterians, I'd actually schedule an entire very early morning hour for intercessory prayer.  Please note that it never occurred to me to pray for myself and my lacks and needs -- much easier to zoom past one's own sad self to save the day for these poor, god-energy-sucking prayer entitlement hogs.  In so doing, I was establishing my Goodness, my Humility, and my everlovin' Love for my fellow man.

It helped me when I decided to quit smoking, because it got me through the day's first coffee hour. I'd sit and sip and pray, no breaks for cigarettes.

Another thing the Merrick's did that pissed me off -- they established a successful, well-run organization on Daisy's behalf and they did it before she died.  It has a director and everything.   Set up to raise money to pay for her experimental treatment in Israel, it achieved that goal, but is now primed and set to move forward as whatever they would like it to become.

I shouldn't have thought of "foundations" because "pissed off" doesn't really begin to cover what then happens in my evil heart.  Every family that loses a beloved child wants to bring about change in the world in honor of that child.  Often, the kid herself will have stumbled upon some nice way to cheer up fellow cancer-sufferers while still alive -- collecting and distributing toys or gift baskets, usually.  Some, like Kate McRae and her family, concentrate on one or two events, in her case, Kate's Crazy Cool Christmas, where they gather and distribute not just stuffed animals, but gas cards and restaurant gift meals.  They remember not just those currently in the fight, but those who have lost, and are in danger of being forgotten during that horrible period when they are too tired, too beat down to care.

But most of the foundations are misguided, most slowly fade away.  There is a natural resistance to want to join established, already successful projects because that takes away the uniqueness that was their child -- his name, his image, him.  I wish that would change.

And don't get me started on the "christianity" aspect of all this.  Lord, lord.

And since when does God need to be asked or beseeched, or even praised, twice?  Is this all too much for him? (Fear not, we won't be going *there*.)

I love the Mothers and Fathers who go nuts and vent their anger.  Again, almost all devout Christians, they do so with a certainty that their God can take it.  They also crack the best jokes.

Every single damn post that I've ever written has been written because I wanted to explain why and how a certain thought, decision, or reaction came into my head.  That's not a normal reason for writing, I don't think.  But it is mine, and as I try to point out at least quarterly around here, whose blog is it, anyway?

So just what the hell inspired me to write about this 4-kids-with-cancer monkey on my back this morning...  Okay, well, afternoon?

Dreams.  Angry dreams about my own dying, how it will likely be alone, how I might have been more comfortable these past years if I had sued the pants off of St. Joseph's Hospital, Eric Carson, Steven Sween, Leslie Kelman, and that idiot nurse in the ICU -- you know the one.  The Lying Liars, I call this group.  I'd add, of course, the then VP of Nursing and every lawyer in the Risk Management Department.  Dreams of Fred, tossed out of Marlinspike Hall, forced to become a Cistercian Postulant, under the quivering thumb of the alcoholic Abbot Truffatore.

Which reminds me, I have a draft, a very ongoing draft (other pseudo-writers may know what I mean!), in the works about the Abbot.  It begins:

Abbot Truffatore arrived unannounced last night.  No, "Abbot Truffatore" is not some exceedingly weird euphemism for "Aunt Flo." He is, in fact, an abbot, more specifically, the local head of the Cistercian monastery whose territory abuts our apple and cherry orchard, divided by Robert Frost's wall -- we meet to mend it, faithfully.*

And yes, of course, I slammed that asterisk down so that I could paste Frost's marvelous "Mending Wall" at the very bottom of the unfinished thing.  Several times a year, I force its reading. But what am I doing talking of poetry, when I was awash in being pissed off?

I woke angry also at Walmart.  Their pharmacy, in particular, which tried to run a scam, the same scam they tried about a year ago, robbing me of $16 and the acknowledgment of a payment toward my considerable deductible.  Yes, God bless Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act, and the creation of PCIP.  Now, if someone would just give me the money to afford the affordable.

In my just-under-the-surface-of-sleep dreaming, I also wanted to blow the whistle on the ambulance company that got paid $2000 to transport me from a doctor's office across an alley to the hospital emergency room.  And the anesthesiologist who administered the paralytic before being ready to intubate, before sedation, and after being politely asked to tell me what he was going to do before he did it.  His epistolary obsession with me has been all about the joy of Double Dipping -- balanced billing, in other words.

And I wonder why I ended up in the hospital with my stomach weeping blood?

I couldn't even start the day correctly.  No face-washing, no teeth-brushing, no precisely dripped coffee, no insulin, no morning meds. All I could do was the absolutely necessary Feeding of the Manor Felines -- because Buddy decided to sit on my snoring face.

There was also the still fresh memory of yesterday's phone call to the Mother-Unit.  Or day before yesterday.  I cannot remember.  Such fun to hear yourself and your most beloved siblings trashed by an amazingly astute woman who croons, "Did your Father leave you lots of money when he died?"  My body begins to do the shimmy again at the mere thought of that conversation, in which children aged anywhere from newborn to ten were blamed for her maternal inabilities.  I think she might be a sociopath.

Anyway, blessings forever and ever, amen, upon Buddy and his feline behind.  I had a fever of 101 when he so sweetly woke me, but something made me check emails before hoisting and leveraging myself back into this bleeping bed.

Daisy had already crossed my mind several times, even such a mind as the one I've described, vengeful, hateful.  I still see her face at will, at "not will," I still see her face, and wonder.

There was an update.  I thought, "She has died." But no, she still lives, though it is hard living.  She, good as she is, is trying hard to have a good death.  Anyway, her mom Kate wrote the update piece, and part of it went like this:

Daisy is as courageous as ever, full of grace and maturity as she voices her needs without ever whining or being rude. She once again is saving her downy hair for the birds by our house, hoping as they have spring babies they can enjoy her softness.  

One last thought, as a parent and as a human being; opportunities to love surround us. When we take those opportunities time seems to stop, and in that timelessness is where memories are made and beauty is beheld.  We will never regret rising to the occasion.  I believe it has something to do with the fact that God is love and we are made in His image. Suffering isn’t what we are made for, but it can be fruitful in ways we could never imagine. 

And so now I don't know what to do with my damn day.  I am still stuck in bed, in horrible pain, high fever, and with the mounting frustration of no coffee and bedhead.  My feet are ice, my face fire.

But Fred just fed the birds (an ice storm cometh) and made me some excellent coffee.  If I wash the remnants of Buddy from my brow, and sterilize my mouth, I'll feel better.  A hair band will have to tame the frizzy curls.

And Walmart, St. Joseph's, Carson, Sween, Kelman, and that ICU nurse will all have to fend for themselves today.  The anesthesiologist?  Pshaw.  The ambulance company, as will all of this crowd, as will I, will continue to accumulate karma.

Prayer isn't going to happen either.  Yearnings, yes. Some reading. I am reading possibly the worst bit of historical fiction, ever.  Ever! So in between chapters, I foresee Mahjongg.  Bianca and I need to discuss the terms for her repayment of our upteenth contribution to bailing her out of her umpteenth trip to jail (a lovely apartment over Tante Louise's freestanding garage).

Pray For Daisy

MENDING WALL by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, 

And spills the upper boulders in the sun, 

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. 

The work of hunters is another thing: 

I have come after them and made repair 

Where they have left not one stone on a stone, 

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, 

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, 

No one has seen them made or heard them made, 

But at spring mending-time we find them there. 

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; 

And on a day we meet to walk the line 

And set the wall between us once again. 

We keep the wall between us as we go. 

To each the boulders that have fallen to each. 

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls 

We have to use a spell to make them balance: 

'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' 

We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 

Oh, just another kind of out-door game, 

One on a side. It comes to little more: 

There where it is we do not need the wall: 

He is all pine and I am apple orchard. 

My apple trees will never get across 

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. 

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder 

If I could put a notion in his head: 

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it 

Where there are cows? 

But here there are no cows. 

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 

What I was walling in or walling out, 

And to whom I was like to give offence. 

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 

That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him, 

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather 

He said it for himself. I see him there 

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top 

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed. 

He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ 

Not of woods only and the shade of trees. 

He will not go behind his father's saying, 

And he likes having thought of it so well 

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

The Boss and Fallon: "Stuck in NJ's Chris Christie Traffic Jam"

I swear this is the truth: Upon first comprehending what the uproar was all about regarding the bitchslap payback via purposeful traffic Ft. Lee bridge snafus (which lost its humor upon learning human life was lost as a result), and then wrapping my brain around the strange repurposing of hurricane Sandy disaster monies, one of my first thoughts was how those "progressives" with whom Christie has been snuggling were going to respond.

I was kinda hoping they would not respond at all, as the best political recourse would be to leave this to the good people of New Jersey to handle.  All Obama need do is be quiet, and let FEMA or the DOT do their dooties.

But... I couldn't shake thoughts of The Boss.

I never can.  I love Bruce.  In ways too personal to discuss.

Ahem.

Anyway, I saw this posted over at Daily Kos and once I got past the weird feeling that Fallon sounded more like Springsteen than Springsteen did, as well as finally ripping my eyes away from the musculature of their upper arms, I thought the response poignant, whimsical, and on point.

Now I understand why Bruce and the Band, when in my city, are famous for fancy but healthy eating, and frequent, sober visits to various gyms.

Fred just reminded me that he once witnessed, in the East Village, a "Dylan Competition," in which Dylan, himself, participated, and came in second.