"two cheers" for thanksgiving...

family and friends and good food....wonderful things. but like so much of history--american and otherwise--there is the sad and terrible side.  so i ask us all to remember, as we celebrate the joys of the day, that it is built on a lie about european settlers and natives feasting together and sharing everything. our ancestors [literal and mythical] committed genocide against the native peoples.  ugly word, ugly fact. however we may have redeemed the 'thanksgiving' story by how we have lived it among ourselves, we have an obligation to remember the history. and with that, i do wish you all a happy thanksgiving in the present.

Oh Death, Where Is Thy Sting-aling-aling

let me start this by saying i am in no way an expert on death and dying.  i am not a doctor, or a medical writer, or even an amateur who has read a lot.  perhaps more important, i do not have as of yet any major life threatening diseases.  i have two chronic conditions, asthma and depression, either of which can be fatal, but also, with decent medical  care, can be controlled with medications and to some extent life-style  choices.  i want to emphasize this because i have strong feelings of what i would want to do facing a fatal illness, and that i am  fully aware of the huge gap between what-i-would-do-if and what-i-will-do-now that i have this condition.  however, more important than how accurate i am in self-predicting is that i am [a] glad that more options are being publicized and [b] sad that others are ignored.

Dr. susan love recently posted on facebook a terrific new york times article about doctors with fatal illnesses choosing to end cure-aimed or life-prolonging treatment when their illnesses have reached a clear point of no return.  instead these doctors opt for palliative care that leaves them in good enough shape to live at home with their families and to do the things they want as long as they can.  in place of a possible few weeks longer  spent physically but painfully alive in the wake of  further chemo, radiation, or surgery,  they have chosen quality over quantity.  the article lamented that this option is not more publicized and that the medical profession in general does little to promote it, or even to suggest it to patients as a possibility.

what concerns me, though, is the given that the only options mentioned are the conventional, die-in-hospital-tied-to-tubes-and-miserable or die- at-home-surrounded-by-loved-ones.  there are at least two other possibilities that i would like to see get more press.

does everyone want to be surrounded by loved ones when they are in the last stages of disease, and to be with these loved ones at the moment of death?  maybe. probably more would than wouldn't, given the choice.  but what i think now that i want is to be somewhere far from anyone i know, being treated palliatively by paid strangers to whom i owe no debt of love and who owe me no emotion beyond
friendly, professional compassion.  i want books and a television, a computer if i'm able to write, and solitude.  maybe a nice volunteer to  occasionally share opinions on the tv shows i watch.  mortality is a humbling enough experience; i don't need to be more humbled by the survival of healthy, hovering loved ones. if i'm alone in feeling like that, it doesn't matter if this possibility gets attention. but i doubt that i am--i'm not so original as all that.  nor do i think it's a particularly better way to be.  but it's one way to be.

the other concern is that i think the options of suicide, assisted or not, needs to be addressed. i know it is addressed in articles as a separate topic, but i'd like to see it discussed anywhere alternatives to extended medical treatment are discussed.  that its illegality needs be abandoned is to me a given.  but the stigma needs also to go.  i don't think it's crazy or wrong to want to die, and to effect that death oneself, at a certain point of pain, decay, helplessness.  'who's life is it anyway?' is a very legitimate question.  i don't want to die like my mother did, of an illness that paralyzed her so totally that she couldn't finally let us know if she needed to scratch an itch.  in her more mobile times, she tried, feebly, to smother herself by putting a pillow over her face.  she had no strength to make it hold, even if she'd been allowed to  continue. had she wished to kill herself earlier? we had no way of knowing.  i want the choice of suicide, if i have a progressive and paralyzing disease like she did, and i want the knowledge of  how to do it, with or without medical assistance.

i would hope, as would many of us, that all this would become moot to me-- that like my grandfather, who was a fairly healthy 80-something when  as he was he reaching up to get what he wanted at a department store, had a sudden, instantly fatal heart attack.  like woody allen, i don't want to be there when i die. if that causes some confusion in the transition to the next life, i'll deal with it. immortality must have its resources. meanwhile, if fate decides otherwise, i want a range of workable alternatives, from the right to cling to every last minute of life with every medical treatment possible, to palliative care, at home or alone, to suicide, and to whatever other possibilities  might exist.  in the unwinnable battle against death, let me fall on my own painless sword.

A NEW LIGHTBULB JOKE

''This is an excerpt from a blog posted on facebook. The blog is id’d only as Research & HE blog roll, and the article is a take on how various scholarly modes might play out the old  ‘’how many….does it take to change a lightbulb’’ joke:  probably of interest chiefly to people caught up in academia and its language, and old enough to remember lightbulb jokes.

"… postmodernist scholars have deconstructed what they characterize as a repressive hegemonic discourse of light-bulb changing, with its implicit binary opposition between ‘light’ and ‘darkness’ and its phalogocentric privileging  of the bulb over the socket, which they see as colonialist, sexist, and racist. .."

Veteran's Day

I seem to say this often, but it so often bears saying.  I think we should respect the fact that soldiers go to war with the propaganda of chauvinism in their minds.  they are told that they are doing something wonderful for US citizens, regardless of the moral justification for whatever war they are fighting. Once in the war, they kill and they often get killed. they watch their comrades die. they live lives of fear and drudgery and horror. and they come home often with terrible physical and emotional wounds the rest of us can barely imagine.

for those who believe the propaganda, i feel sorrow and respect. for those who go so they can get better education, and/or support their families, and/or offer their children better lives than they have had, i also feel sorrow. i do not feel thankful--at least not towards veterans of any recent war.  world war 2, yes.  korea, vietnam, iraq, afghanistan, no.  i am sad that they have been used as cannon fodder for the rich and powerful in the US, but i am not grateful.

what i do feel that we owe them is far from what they get all too often--help, consistent, steady medical and emotional help for the aftereffects of what has been done to them.  that there are homeless vets, unemployed vets, suicidal vets, vets living in misery and confusion because of the wars they've fought: this is a national disgrace. instead of easy flagwaving and more propaganda, our government should offer as much healing as is possible for the permanently scarred men and women among this much-heralded and little-helped population. for that, at least, i would be thankful.

Facebook and My Castle Dwellers

when i first got onto facebook, it was for one major reason: i wanted to be in touch with, or at least know what was happening, with as many as possible of the students i'd had at emerson college's semester abroad program, in which i've taught the spring semester for the last quarter century.  although my 'freinds' now include many non-students,  that vast and lovely crew has remained core for my facebook experience.  recently kim. a 1986 student, posted a challenge to all her facebook buddies: explain why you have stayed with one particular facebook friend over time.  instead of choosing one person, i picked all my castle kids.  [that's right: we live together in a 17th century dutch castle].  i got a great response to the post, so i decided  to pretty it up and post it here.

 teaching at the castle has had its ups and downs, so many ups i barely remember the downs. to live among your students, to in some way share their lives--it would be hard to explain what that has meant, and continues to mean, to me. it's actually the decision to get onto facebook was inspired by a very sad event. a few years ago, a castle kid, whom i didn't know well but liked immensely, died of leukemia. the kind of grief i felt was hard to place. i was neither relative nor friend, and i didn't feel the loss of this special young man on that level. but i did grieve, and there was no one to share that with. i wanted to know that from now on, i would have a place to turn if something like that would ever happen again. it has happened again, i'm sorry to say, two years ago--another bright, talented young man died, unexpectedly.  this time his fellow students were there, and i could post my own sadness at  his loss
.
yet the 'kids' have been so much more. i love knowing what they've been doing. i love when they graduate, and get jobs they like, and marry, and have kids [tough tony from my second term turned beaming daddy, so proud of his kids his smile seems to break out of the confines of his pictures when he posts photos of his family;  patty, who spent so much of her time at the castle pounding the piano, and who is now an international pianist/performer], with their happy and sad news. in some cases, i've gotten to know them on a whole different level than i did at the castle.  i enjoy the teaching that i do at home, and i do keep up with some of those students as well.  but the intimacy of the castle creates a special bond among what the director likes to call her 'castle dwellers,' and that intimacy includes faculty and staff. i have been so very lucky.

TV and Me--Final Episode (For Now)

Briefly, three current shows and why i like them:

NCIS--Like the other two I'll discuss, this is implicitly right wing:  a bunch of heroes who work for the CIA are unlikely to be liberals.  But it's terrific entertainment.  I have wondered why I've found it so, given the rah-rah-america undertones, few women, and only one person of color, who is the head of the department but far from the lead character. i could argue that one of the key characters, abbie,  is female, brilliant, and refreshingly odd. but that would be only partially honest. there was, until the actor's recent resignation, another brilliant female character--ziva, who was annoyingly beautiful but cool.  [and yes, i was one of those people who had to see the episode about  ziva's departure and her near-romance with tony culminating in a passionate kiss.] The plots are unavoidably repetitive: at least half of the TVGuide blurbs begin with "a marine is found dead in...'' But the action always works, because, i think, it's a terrific acting ensemble.  And it has among the cast the terrific, aging [also a relelif to me] david mccallum as the chief medical officer, briskly efficient but deeply compassionate: he always gently talks to the corpses he is dissecting, and these monologues are one of the show's highlights.

the spinoff of NCIS, NCIS LA, has a good cast, though not as fine a cast as its parent show.  but it has something that  the former show doesn't--linda hunt. hunt is one of the few female actors who succeeded in hollywood without being conventionally beautiful--or even pretty.  She was amazing in the 1982  film, The Year of Living Dangerously,  in which she played, believably and stunningly, a chinese-australian  male dwarf.  A tiny woman and now an elderly one, she sparkles as the head of the agency, and is a constant presence, radiating a strength that easily surpasses the talents of the rest of the cast.  the show itself is fun, but i watch it chiefly to see her.

finally, there's my butterscotch sundae, the show i indulge in with no nutrients, but pure pleasure--the summer show covert affairs. like drop dead diva, it was divided into two sections--half of which played in the summer, half in fall. since affairs started later in the fall than ddd, i get to enjoy it for a few more weeks.  it's another cia show, this time occupied by undercover [hence the 'covert'; the 'affairs' is pure sexual come-on] agents. the hero is annie walker, young-and-beautiful, and able to successfully flee from or pursue baddies--usually rogue agents from other countries--in stilleto heels and tight dresses.  she can also jump from the shore into a boat moored nearby in a single leap without scratching an ankle [although to be fair, she did this in low-heeled boots].

 so okay, verisimilitude isn't its strong point. in fact the second most important character [competing with annie in importance, if you take the fan mail seriously] is her handler, auggie, who was blinded in iraq and is almost as much a super-hero as annie. through 3 seasons he was also her best buddy, and anyone who doubted they would become lovers wasn't paying attention from day one.  last summer's season ended with their first kiss; this season began with them as a couple, with a flashback to their first night of sex, complete with the ubiquitous tv satin blanket covering him to the waist and her to just above her breasts.  i always think these blankets are specially made to be 5 inches higher on one side than the other.  and while the scene was appropriately sexy, the camera did a lot more moving around than the lovers.

but they have been an absolutely endearing couple, with as much tenderness as sexiness always in view, even at their most angst-ridden.  and honesty compels me to admit that this is what i watch it for. i love the action sequences, and the plotting the cia agents --and yes, they're all gorgeous--get involved in. this season has been a bit darker than the earlier ones, with annie, auggie, and the crowd in their different way out to defeat super-villain henry wilcox, until recently a higher-up in the cia.  this separates our lovebirds, as annie 'goes rogue' in her pursuit of wilcox and her determination to disband his evil empire.  i do like when we see bad apples in the cia.  annie follows henry's trail to geneva, disguised with dyed but not cut hair--no scissors will shear those sex locks!--and at one point actually tortures to death one of his henchmen, whom she has tied to a chair.  the scene should be appalling, but the writers set it up with a strain of gallows humor: the henchman receives each of annie's vicious blows with an appropriate scream, then blandly critiques her performance. since we see lots of blood and body goo, she's clearly doing a fairly good job, and one does wonder what his complaint is. when she sets out to use electric torture, sticking both of his legs into pails of water, a lamp gets knocked over into the water, and the obnoxious torturee is dead before she can get the info she needs from him.

still, none of this is why i watch. i watch for the pure romantic perfection of annie and auggie.  they are a gorgeous fantasy of tortured but true love.  what straight woman wouldn't want an auggie? what straight man woildn't want an annie?  but then, what decent perosn wouldd want to interfere with their terrific symmetry?  the show's fan mail is loaded with fierce demands to keep them together, or to separate them and pair annie up with a seasoned israeli rogue agent who often appears on the show.  these fans, as far as i can see, are as passionate as the ddd fans but without the friendly banter of the latter.  maybe it's the cia influence: these fans are out to kill.  but  how can i criticize them?--i'm one of them. break up a&a, and i'll do worse than kill. i'll remove one aging spinster from their viewers.  that'll show them.  jump on those boats without me, annie walker!

Another Installment in the Adventures of India Footlock

It was on the afternoon of the Vandellen’s Annual Charity Event that we learned about the time India Footlock had been bitten by a fish.  The Event was as dreary as such events tend to be: you presented your invitation, paid for long in advance, to a butlerish sort of man and entered a large room that had once been a ballroom, and began to approach a huge table that held pots of sour coffee and soggy sandwiches.  Then you carried, precariously, your paper cup and paper plate and drifted about looking for a place to sit.  We had long since learned that to get a spot with enough chairs together to seat those of our group we knew were coming we had to arrive early; by now we had, by unspoken agreement,  always included an extra chair for when India joined us. We knew that she would show up, and that sooner or later she would meander toward us and, if seating were available, join us.

         She showed up fairly soon, looking with mild distaste at her plateful of lettuce and pale salmon as she carefully lowered herself into her chair. “I was bitten by one of these long ago,” she said, “and haven’t trusted them since.”

         With anyone else, we would have assumed a metaphoric meaning: the speaker had gotten ill from eating spoiled lettuce, or too much salmon, that sort of thing.  With India, such an assumption was questionable.  After a moment’s hesitation and a near sigh, Riply took the lead.  “You mean,” he asked cautiously, “a salmon bit you?’’

         “Yes,” she replied.  “Of course, I was fairly young at the time.”  We all nodded, and she continued.  “It was in one of the foster homes, where the people were very nice, and tried to make sure we all had educational experiences.  So one Sunday, they took us all out to a fish hatchery.  Have you ever been to a fish hatchery? No?  I wouldn’t recommend it.  They’re very boring—at least this one was; I’ve never been to one since.  Just these square pools full of baby fish, who don’t do much but swim around in circles, poor things, and then there’s one real little lake with examples of what the fish look like when they grow up, which isn’t much more interesting than the baby pools.  I had eaten  tuna salad earlier in the day, and some must have remained on my fingers. Anyway my fingers felt greasy and I stuck them into the water.  I was daydreaming about something; you do tend to daydream when they’re making you watch baby fish all day.  And one of the grownup fish must have thought I was a tuna.  Silly, wasn’t it?  Tuna are awfully big; a little salmon couldn’t eat one, now could it? But whatever the reason, the wretched thing dug its teeth into my finger; it felt like a knife cutting and I screamed and yanked my hand up, with the nasty salmon attached to it, and the teeth pulling the wound further open with the weight of the fish, which fell onto the ground.  I was bleeding  and I was and scared of getting rabies, because those shots, you know, are very painful but if you don’t get them you die.  So I started, quite sensibly, to scream, which brought the other foster children, lost no doubt in their own daydreams, to attention.  They ignored me, all but one little boy, who glared at me and pointed to the flapping fish at my foot. 

         “If you leave it there it will drown,” he yelled at me, and pushed the creature back into the water with his foot.  Someone eventually found me a band-aid, and I never did get rabies, so I guess that was alright.  But I’ve never trusted the ghastly creatures since.” She popped the salad into her mouth, winced, washed it down with coffee, and winced again.  Then she smiled at us and walked on to another group of people, stopping at the table on the way to grab a fresh sandwich.  Prunella watched her, and then looked at us.  “You don’t suppose she ever got bitten by a chicken, do you?” she asked.