tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64884891209296075452024-03-13T11:20:14.722-04:00Joyous In Hell"...so from that broken stump issued together both words and blood..."joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-37659970858881374212020-02-20T10:15:00.001-05:002020-02-20T10:18:15.734-05:00Sympathy for Mitch<div style="text-align: justify;">
How she ruined you--dancing in the Saturnalia moonlight, rubbing women's history into her dishpan hands. Twelve years of giggling at your celebratory floats and striped ties, mocking you with her Queen Elizabeth wave. Gloria Steinem had her clip your balls, wanted your head on a platter. The Rapture: she taught your daughters to use Swiss Army knives and pronounce <i>misogyny</i>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I know. I was beaten for twelve years, too. She was waiting every day, heavy gold rings on all fingers. She'd slap me to the ground, anger branding me. It was for my own good: girls like me were blinded by filthy boys, strangled by devil-talk on telephones. I didn't slink about holding hands, I bleached them. And when I escaped, I danced in veils at midnight, cursing her name.</div>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-41704949839902569902019-10-08T08:34:00.001-04:002019-10-08T08:34:18.486-04:00Still Dreaming of My High School Sweatheart, 25 Years LaterStill Dreaming of My High School Sweetheart, 25 Years Later<br />
<br />
And this time<br />
I'm sure I'll reach you<br />
before your feet disappear<br />
over the roof's edge,<br />
<br />
or, if not, I'll see<br />
your muddy eyes,<br />
not just the shadow<br />
fringe of your hair<br />
<br />
as I sprint to you,<br />
my arms all tendon,<br />
pulling me closer,<br />
fingers at your neck<br />
<br />
and your name<br />
in my throat<br />
like a prayer<br />
I can't swallow or scream.joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-80804413504298924022018-07-19T10:23:00.003-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.440-04:00<div style="text-align: justify;">
Bleeding, Still Bleeding <br />
<br />
In the dream, I’m pregnant, so we drive to the city, circle the block three times before we find the building behind the buildings, bland office with security door, buzzer, intercom demanding my name and appointment time. No protesters. He holds my hand longer than he ever has. Other women grip bags with robes tucked inside, whisper to their drivers—aunts, sisters, roommates, all groggy, annoyed by this inconvenient abortion. Panoramic pictures span the waiting room walls—Philadelphia, San Francisco, Miami: <i>This is where you’ll go without your unwanted children. </i><br />
<br />
In the dream, I have to confess to the counselor that I’ve been to the clinic before, in the spring, when my husband promised he’d get a vasectomy. Six months later, I’ve bought the peas and briefs, and am doing my part for our family. We have three children already, can’t afford another or two or more. And I can’t do this again. Or again. I crawl into the paper gown, my own robe and socks, pull myself up to the mirror over the sink and say <i>I’m doing this to be a better mother to the three of you. </i><br />
<br />
In the dream, the women are all single. One has a thirteen-year-old with Downs Syndrome. Another is sixteen, rail thin. Her mother is waiting. They haven’t told her father—a minister—who thinks they’re on a shopping spree, bonding over belts and shoes. A woman my age—mid-forties—says this was a menopausal surprise. She has raised three kids already. Her ex doesn’t believe this one is his. Her divorce was final last week. One woman, tattoo of stars on her neck, holds a rosary and says <i>God forgives people who ask and repent. I’ll repent for the rest of my life. </i><br />
<br />
In the dream, I fall asleep to the cold creeping up my arm like a spider, the elderly nurse, her lips lined like a web, counts back from ten. I wake, recovered, thick gauze between my legs. I’ve been carved out, hollow again. I call my sister, ask her: <i>What was it like when the raped girl—sixth months gone—told you her baby had fingernails? Did you cry when she said she didn’t care about getting rid of it? Did you wish, for a moment, you’d never been born? Are you still bleeding, these five years later? </i></div>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-52959460875397497392018-07-19T10:11:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.052-04:00<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Crosses<br /> </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A white cross looms on the highway horizon, the only rest stop for fifty miles. Tiny marble crosses swarm the base—In Memory of All the Unborn Children. At the mouth of the parking lot, a steel donation box demands payment. Behind the bathrooms, bronze statues of Jesus and the thieves carrying their loads, slouching in an infinite circle. A woman and her husband ask me to take their picture—she holds up her hands to Christ, as if to collect his blood. <br /><br />At Rose Hill, the dead have bought riverside property. Lost branches of family trees abandon the tombs, while the ancient limbs swing along the boulevard, blooming in their Sunday finest. They wait for visitors to sit around the ponds, beside trickling streams, spy marble angels peeking from behind fallen magnolias. Orchestras once played in the bandstand, but no one sings for the hidden dead whose bricked caves carve the hillside. <br /><br />Knees kneel under black umbrellas, the rain makes mush of the stony narrow avenues. Priestesses swaddle their heads in purple, gold, and green rags, pin pouches at their waists and fill them with feathers. They paint crosses on sealed death-vessel doors, ox-blood on marble and tarnished brass names. The ground regurgitates the dead, so they lay above it in pairs, coupled like serpents on the ark, ash mingling with ash. <br /><br />We’re bone and blood, motes swirling in the wind. Our memorials prove our faith, bargain for salvation, make shrewd deals with death. But the flesh is shredded when the soul claws itself alive, then dissolves into air. So break my bones and suck the marrow. Wrap my body in cheesecloth. Anoint my hair with oils. Bury me beneath a tree. Let me rot. Don’t weigh me down. Don’t etch crosses on me.</span></div>
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joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-22774278527889971782018-04-24T09:45:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:13.614-04:00The Damaged Ones<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In honor of Poetry Month, I attempted a poem:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The Damaged Ones</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">The supermarket shelves day-old bread, bruised fruit, and spotted vegetables, on a rack labelled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Damaged </i>at the back of the store, near the stinking storeroom doors. Shoppers yearn for waxed apples, tough grapes, unscented strawberries, not circling fruit flies, bananas ripened by avocado gas, stale loaves, shriveled tomatoes, wrinkled zucchini. They’ll take home the perfect plum, nestle it into a cool drawer, write a poem of apology when it’s eaten. But the damaged ones, no time left, their epitaphs blacken.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I consider the torn bag of limes straightjacketed in green tape, nothing wrong except the netting is frayed, one lime is soft, ready to rim a glass, follow a shot, spoon a foil-wrapped taco. Bunches of browning bananas, blackening avocado, spotted eggplant, oozing syrupy peaches, oranges dropped and rolled, ripe, ready before they’re bought. I’m tempted to bite the yellow pepper.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m damaged, too. I know the stinking world, bruises, fraying. How could I not, with a father in prison, and a grandmother whose love was bleach and soap, heavy-ringed fingers, loose tongue: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All men want is sex.</i> Her love re-netted me, toughened my soft parts, re-shelved me with the undamaged: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hold your head high. No one will ever know you’re a rapist’s daughter. It’s You against Them, beat Them every time.</i> And at my peak, ripped me open, exposed my cold bones and mealy heart, held it to my mouth so I could bite.</span></span></div>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-23083023423908653462018-02-20T10:43:00.000-05:002018-07-20T08:32:13.649-04:00Empathy Cannot Be Taught"Just look at his eyes. They're crazy eyes," she said.<br />
<br />
"That's right," the petite woman next to her agreed.<br />
<br />
"I mean, you can tell. He looks crazy," the first woman said.<br />
<br />
<br />
I was sitting in the lobby of the gym where my four-year-old daughter takes a class two days a week. I bring a book, typically, and enjoy the hour I have all to myself away from work and without one of my three kids tugging on me for attention. It's my quiet time between the heaves of storm.<br />
<br />
Unless the storm is sitting three seats away. And by storm I mean the dressed-for-the-gym moms who don't work outside of the home, have married a man who works 60 hours a week, and fill their lonely days doing charity work. And by charity work I mean buying cupcakes they take for the weekly random holiday celebrations at their childrens' schools. These women travel in packs of 3-5. Their hair is always straight and dyed. Their eyebrows invented "on fleek." Their makeup rivals Tammy Faye. They are thin. They were the girls in high school who charmed their way onto the Honor Roll. They went to college for the football games.<br />
<br />
You know them.<br />
<br />
The three moms were talking about the newest school shooting, this time in Florida. The crazy man they were describing was the shooter. Their magical powers of detecting mental illness should be bottled and sent to every FBI office in the country.<br />
<br />
"I tell you what," the first mom said, "I am pissed at the FBI. Why can't they do their job?" It wasn't hard to detect the queen bee. I didn't flatter myself into thinking I'd hear anything of substance from the other two.<br />
<br />
"I know," both of the other moms agreed. <br />
<br />
<br />
"I'll tell you what I thought when I saw that they'd caught him. I thought 'I hope they kill him. I hope he gets tortured.' I said that. Then I had to ask God to forgive me. Because that's someone's child. I mean, I couldn't believe I even thought that."<br />
<br />
The other two remained quiet. Queenie repeated herself. Twice. Finally one of the other bees said, "You did the right thing. It was probably what we all thought. God knows that."<br />
<br />
"These things happen for a reason," Queenie said.<br />
<br />
At that moment a girl--about age 9--burst from the gym and skipped over to the women. She was Queen Bee's daughter, wearing a halter, boy shorts, and a ponytail fastened with a perfect ribbon bow. There was an exchange. Then the girl went back into the gym.<br />
<br />
"I swear," Queenie said, "she has no empathy. I was in a car wreck, in the hospital with a broken neck and twelve breaks in my ribs, and on the day I got home Madison said, 'So if you died, who would take care of me?' That was it. Not a hug or kiss or anything. Just wanted to know what would happen if I died. The girl has no empathy. None." She threw up her hands. "I don't know what to do with her. She just doesn't."<br />
<br />
The other two moms laughed.<br />
<br />
It was at this moment that I had to bite my lip. I had to keep the teacher in me from rearing her ugly head. I had to keep the good citizen contained. I had to pretend I hadn't read the same page of my book three times.<br />
<br />
Otherwise, I would've started my lecture. Or challenged her. Or punched her in the face.<br />
<br />
It was at that moment that I wanted to scream, "Empathy is a taught emotion!"<br />
<br />
It was at that moment that I wanted to say, "You do realize you're part of the gun violence problem, right?"<br />
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It was at that moment that I wanted to point out to Queenie and the rest of her bees that they lack empathy, thus their children lack empathy, thus they are creating a hive without empathy.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZUkZ_LlJsniJvslfutWoc9QyDH0D28AjF5w9Mr1VGk4QovPgh6d1oqAOyw0zHyxsth2le2IYPzP9pzTcvB2X9P7XQi1QsG3ucl8fA2vYpHRDGY7ESXjam-fxUASFMuCRrZwnK9KSxMbU/s1600/MeMeMeMe.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZUkZ_LlJsniJvslfutWoc9QyDH0D28AjF5w9Mr1VGk4QovPgh6d1oqAOyw0zHyxsth2le2IYPzP9pzTcvB2X9P7XQi1QsG3ucl8fA2vYpHRDGY7ESXjam-fxUASFMuCRrZwnK9KSxMbU/s320/MeMeMeMe.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
I've heard a lot of stupid shit over the last 20 years while teaching in public colleges and universities. But these women, in their bubbles of privilege, admit and laugh about the fact that they can't be bothered to teach their own children what it means to experience the world through the eyes of anyone else. They can't be bothered to do just a small amount of research on their own to understand the cultural perpetuation of gun violence that is a uniquely American trait. They can't be bothered to parent. They can't be bothered. They can't be bothered.<br />
<br />
And as if they were reading my mind, they moved on to discussing what does bother them: the cruises they were booking for their fall vacations. They've already booked their summer vacations--beach destinations--so their fall cruises to Jamaica will allow them to keep their tans into the winter.joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-85379792677529315322017-06-28T15:46:00.000-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.496-04:00What the Heart Wants<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIY74yESt94pSgmqQ-uLHRTEWmMk8IM6Nwm8UVRZBpGVU1GyWSxYAzwSG5blkOjKDRF62X-cWb6bK0pVwKxNNZW5fWTGwjAU5sTYaKppMaaGK5YdOuNVUoY0lGB2VGmMnyw0s-Vd3vP94/s1600/RedBioGrandfather.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIY74yESt94pSgmqQ-uLHRTEWmMk8IM6Nwm8UVRZBpGVU1GyWSxYAzwSG5blkOjKDRF62X-cWb6bK0pVwKxNNZW5fWTGwjAU5sTYaKppMaaGK5YdOuNVUoY0lGB2VGmMnyw0s-Vd3vP94/s200/RedBioGrandfather.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What the Heart Wants<br /><br /><br />“The Heart wants what it wants—" <br />--Emily Dickinson, 1862</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"What if I told you I'm incapable of tolerating my own heart?"<br />--Virginia Woolf, 1919</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><br /><br /> <span style="font-size: large;">It’s not </span>an easy call to make, to accuse my only living grandparent of deception. And it’s not exactly deception, nor an accusation, really. But it sounds that way in my head. No matter how many times I’ve rehearsed it, every time I say, “I did a DNA test and found my biological grandfather,” I lose my breath, my ribs contract, begin to strangle my heart. To reveal my blood-kin is to let surface my grandmother’s secret. A secret that has pulled our family under for over sixty years. I’m tired of drowning. I pick up the phone and try to control my voice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /> Freda is giddy after I tell her. Her laugh and “Oh my!” flow into my lungs like ice water, not what I expected. She makes no denial of the past, gives no quick revisionist history. Freda does not sound like the woman who, for the last twenty years, has tried to get me to read the K.J.V. Bible, The Secret, The Purpose Driven Life. She sounds like the woman she suddenly became at her husband’s funeral. "Who the hell is she?" my sister and I asked each other after we'd been pulled out of our adult lives to become girls again in their home. We were sharing a bedroom and helping Freda sort the arrangements for the man we knew as our grandfather. Three days into his death, and she was giving away their lifetime together—the snow blower, his pickup, his collection of Stetsons, belts, and cowboy boots. It was a cold shock when she announced she'd given his rifle, the one he'd used to teach me to shoot quail, to her own brother. "When you come and visit us in Missouri, you can get it," she said. This was her way of revealing she was selling up and moving out of Raton, New Mexico, returning to her childhood hometown.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Then she foisted our grandfather’s ashes on us, a white cardboard box. Not knowing what else to do, my sister took them home. She put the box on a shelf in her closet, and after a week called me to say, "My closet keeps making noises. Grandpa is haunting me. Why didn't Granny want his ashes?" I muttered something about grief, but somehow knew it wasn't right. "We've got to get rid of him. He's not happy with me," she said. A few months later, we returned to New Mexico, just before the house sold, and scattered his ashes inside Capulin Volcano. Freda didn't come with us.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />We asked our mother about Freda's behavior. Her response was so prompt it was as if she'd been waiting years to tell it. "I never got the impression he really loved her," she said. "She probably fell out of love with him years ago."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />"What? How can you say that? They were married, like, forever," I said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />"Yeah, because he adopted Terry, and Freda didn't want to be on her own. Did you ever hear him tell her he loved her? He worked hard and never let her buy a thing. He socked away nearly every penny, like a miser. He made her work, even when she wanted to stay home with your father. He made your father work like a man from the time he was adopted. He was a cold man, you know."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I'd never heard my grandfather mention the word love with anyone. When I entered college, he sent me newspaper and magazine articles about saving money and planning for my future career, the type of advice no one else in my family seemed to follow. Most of them had declared bankruptcy at least once. He called me, sent birthday checks and cards. He took me to restaurants when I visited them, walked the rim of Capulin Volcano, went sight-seeing on long drives upon the mesas. If I needed something, he bought it or sent me the money for it. I got the feeling he loved me. That had been enough. My mother, though, knew it hadn't been for Freda. "He never let her forget that she needed him," she said. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />My grandfather willed Freda a small fortune when he died. I remember this as I'm listening to her reaction about a man she'd known only long enough to conceive my father sometime in the spring of 1951. That man, with whom I share DNA, was nearly useless. He was a notorious philanderer, though he was married. All he'd given his wife was a hard time and a string of children. When I tell Freda about his cheating, she says, "Yes, I knew that." Her words are clipped and heavy, normal again. For a moment I wish my sister was with me, could hear Freda admit she'd slept with a married man. But then she says, "I didn't know it until after I was pregnant with your father, though. I found out when I was at my sister's. Eleanor and I were sitting at her kitchen table and I'd just told her I was pregnant. Before she could say anything about it, her neighbor came in the back door and was talking about a red-haired man with a red truck who worked with the state’s bridge-building crew and how a man who worked with him told his wife he was running around. 'He's been going around with some girl and he's got four kids of his own at home. The oldest boy is big enough to know now.' That's how she said it. She didn't know it was me. Eleanor didn't know it either. But I knew it was him. We rode around in that red truck all over St. Louis. He'd pick me up from the diner where I waited tables, where I met him. He came in with some other men on the crew, sat at my table, and winked. Told me he loved my dark hair. After that, he’d pick me up after work and that's what we'd do, ride around all over the hills." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />My eardrums are banging so loudly, I'm sure Freda can hear them through the phone line. This is more than anyone—except maybe Eleanor, who is dead—has ever known about my father's father. And it all came out rehearsed, like a stale monologue, sixty years past its expiration date. "I didn't even know his real name," she continues. "I just called him Red because of his hair. I didn't know it until I looked in his glovebox. He'd left me in the truck and gone in a store for something," her voice fades. Somehow I know that he'd gone into the store for liquor, something Freda now demonizes. "I opened the glove box and there was his registration. As soon as I knew his name, I remembered rumors some of the other woman around town had going about him. But I didn't think much of gossip like that. I probably should have done. But when you're young, you just don't think of those things," she says. "He didn't know I was pregnant. He never saw me again after that day I was at Eleanor's. I quit the diner. But he saw me on the street after Terry was born, and that's how he found out. He knew just by looking at him that he was his son. He saw your father a couple of times. Brought him a present for his second birthday." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I need to ask her why this has to be such a dark secret. Why she never bothered to tell my father any of this when he was a child and begged her for answers. Why she insisted on keeping such a small thing as an affair a secret. Why she's letting him continue to pine. But I can't quiet my heart, now thrumming so fast and loud I’ve broken into a sweat. Anything I say will come out as accusatory, like I’m blaming her while she’s in the witness box. That’s why I’d practiced so long before picking up the phone. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I force a breath into my chest, and feel my heart move, then I say, "He had other kids. He and his wife had other kids after Terry was born. They lived on a chicken farm. And he had another family. Another woman who was like his wife in another town. They had at least one kid, maybe more. His real wife even knew about her. He'd go there when he was in the dog house. He'd just go off and leave his wife with their six or seven kids."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />"But she wouldn't divorce him,” Freda says, sounding like someone who's been living too long by a stranger's rules. "She was religious. They didn't do that. He told me she'd tried to, but the judge told her they had too many kids and she had to uphold her vow. 'For better or worse.'"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I get the impression that Freda is lying about breaking it off with Red. I suddenly imagine an</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /> argument between my pregnant grandmother and Red. She’s screaming at the man who's charmed his way into her bed, who won't leave his wife and children. Or maybe she was screaming when he showed up with presents for my father. Maybe it wasn't until then that she realized Red would never leave the chicken farm. And then I'm hit with a faint memory, something whispered that I'd overheard when I was a child. Eleanor was supposed to adopt my father because she and her husband weren't able to have children. At the very last minute, though, Freda had changed her mind. My brain clicks, tumblers fall, and I see my grandmother with her married lover, his plea for her to keep the child so they can make a life together. I see her believing him. And suddenly, Freda and my father are the other family Red kept, the one he ran to over the next three years every time an argument with his wife got heated. Before I can test this theory, Freda asks, "Is he still in Missouri?"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />My heart drums in my ears. I manage to swallow and squeeze out the answer. "He's dead. He died when Terry was eight. Heart failure. He was only forty-seven. He left his wife with nothing but kids. They lost their farm and had to sleep on couches of relatives and friends. The oldest boy turned out okay. The younger ones, though..." I can't say any more, can't tell her the little I've uncovered about my half-aunts and -uncles. I wait for her to offer some condolence, something obligatory. My receiver-holding hand sweats and I try to eke out another sentence. Nothing comes. Freda's silence causes my face to burn.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>My father's</b></span> half-siblings fared poorly after Red's death. They were homeless and split up. One or two, along with their mother, would be taken in for days at a time by a friend or neighbor, but there was never enough room for all of them. The older kids were forced into an early adulthood and bore the weight of constantly feeling out of place. Several of them died just before I got my DNA results. But the oldest son, my father's oldest half-brother, twelve years his senior, went to college and managed to rise from the stink of the chicken farm, the perpetual life of poverty, and make a man of himself. Even before Red’s death, he knew his father was everything he didn’t want to become. When Red fell ill, my half-uncle hadn't seen him in four years. Red spent the last two months of his life in a VA hospital, suffering from congestive heart failure. By the time his oldest son visited him, he'd been reduced to a shell. His father had loomed so large, always had a twinkle in his eye, had served in World War II, and played on a semi-professional baseball team. But his hands and feet were like ice. He died shortly after the visit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />My grandfather, too, died of congestive heart failure. He’d survived Scarlet Fever as a child, but it had damaged part of his heart muscle. He spent his life working hard—as a boy on a ranch, then as a man for Pacific Bell and an apartment complex owner. He had to take doctor-prescribed naps in the middle of the day to care for his weak heart. He and Freda bought a central California hilltop ranch and raised chinchillas, taught me to hunt rabbits and small birds. He still napped, even when we visited. Then, after he’d retired and they moved to New Mexico, a standard operation to remove cancerous tumors from his prostate damaged his kidneys. Rather than endure a transplant, he chose a port in his chest and a machine to filter his blood three times a week for the next eleven years. I never heard him complain about the dialysis until the year before he died. “I should’ve taken the transplant,” he said, voice laced not with self-pity but with the lament of having made the wrong decision. By then his body had shriveled. Two days before his death, he’d been admitted to the ICU to drain fluid from around his heart. Freda spent thirty-six hours with him, and when he was feeling better he told her to go home and change clothes, to bring him some clean pants for the ride home they’d make soon. He died alone, shortly after Freda had left his side.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />A fairly common heart condition killed both men. One had swayed Freda with a sweet tongue, took her driving on cool Missouri nights, and did nothing to help her raise their child. The other man married her, gave his name to a boy not his own, worked to provide for them both, but never expressed love. It’s clear Freda regrets the choices she's made, especially when it came to the well-being of my father. She blames herself for his behavior, mental incapacities, and eventual incarceration, wonders where she went wrong. Her turn toward religion has helped absolve her a little, but the sorrow and shame linger. Still, the heart wants what it wants. If given a choice between passion and stability, the heart jumps into Red’s truck every time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>My father</b></span> bore the pull of his absent father through his childhood. He begged her for information and, at first, was met with a stern reprisal. More questions earned him a smack. When he got older and the questions became accusations, he got a belt lashing from my grandfather. He continued to ask, even after he was told, "You're lucky to have a father at all." There is some dispute over who said this to him. My mother insists it was my grandfather, while Freda has told me she said as much to him a handful of times. But his heart was tethered to a man he imagined loved him and wanted to be with him. He thought his life could've been better. He still believes this even though he's over sixty years old and has made his own choices.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />In spite of everything, here's what completely hollows my chest, creates a sucking pressure in my heart: my unknowing eight-, nine-, ten-year-old fatherless father, begging for information about a father he wished would suddenly arrive and love him. His life was hollow somehow, but he tried to hide it by excelling in sports, as if he'd been mentored by a man to hit a baseball, catch a football, jump a hurdle. At school, he was teased and bullied, but even the principal told him he had to bear his powerlessness. He couldn’t stop what others did. The principal told him to pray. Pray for strength. Loneliness kept him awake at night in his Los Angeles apartment, so he sat in a nearly-bare bedroom, gazing out a wide window at a starless sky, pleading to the dark, his cheeks wet, his nose dripping snot. He begged for his father to come. He didn’t know Red was already dust, moldering in a Missouri graveyard. He made promises—he'd quit fighting in school, even when the boys called him a bastard; he'd stop showing off on the baseball field; he'd do every chore his step-father asked, even if it meant blisters and scrapes and bruises. As long as his father came to the door, puts his arms out, hugged him the way his mother used to before she married, he would do all of these things, and more. If his father came now.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Now.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Now. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />His little ears strained to hear a knock at the door. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Now. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Each time he heard nothing, his little heart beat once, stopped, beat again, stopped. His chest sank.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />At some point, his prayers turned to anger. By the time he was a young man, he'd been accused by his step-father's tenants of being a peeping Tom and of stealing jewelry from their apartments. Once, on the street, he’d grabbed a woman’s breasts and been called before a judge, who sentenced him to a psychiatric evaluation. In his twenties, he lost a meter-reading job with Southern California Gas Company because he'd walked into a sleeping woman’s bedroom, claiming he smelled a gas leak in her house. Again, he was court-ordered to see a psychiatrist. Years later, he was arrested, tried for violence against eight women, and sentenced to 101 years in prison. Until then, he’d managed to keep the violent nature in his heart a secret from his parents and my mother. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: large;">I was</span> just shy of my eighth birthday when the press dubbed my father “The Nine-Fingered Rapist.” Before then we were an unassuming, church-going family. But, by the time I turned nine we’d been dragged under the tidal wave he created. I was told again and again that I'd never see him again and I'd be better off telling people he was dead. I was not allowed to write to him in prison. No one shied away from telling me the details—I knew what rape was before I knew about menstruation and breasts. His case was followed by a gaggle of reporters, the gory details of his burglaries and violence is the stuff of television melodrama. My mother was eventually shunned. I was bullied. Our neighbors read the papers. We cut out the articles and squirrelled them away with the half-dozen letters he wrote to us from jail. He condemned my mother for going through with a divorce, assuring her that his children would never forget their father because he’d never forgotten his. He wrote to my mother in an early letter, “The girls will never forget their father. I never did!” Among the vitriol he extolled toward her, his lawyer, his accusers, he seemed to pass along a certain legacy—that fatherlessness would be our curse, our ruin, as it had been his. I’m not sure why we kept the newspaper articles or letters. They were didactic and ethnographic, and constantly squeezed my heart.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /> It was hinted that, had my father not been caught, he would've eventually moved on to his own daughters. I doubt it. His victims were all in their early or mid-thirties, of a certain height and weight, had dark hair, and all lived alone. One detective said they probably would have caught him sooner had they simply warned women who fit the demographic. But they were hesitant to pin him down as a serial, or even accuse one man of the 60-80 cases that all revealed the same pattern, the same profile: someone who seemed to both desire and need to exert power over middle-aged brunettes. He longed too long for blood-kin. Though I was raised to believe his sins would haunt me, that I had to walk the straight and narrow or I'd be just like him somehow, that he’d break out of prison and crawl through my window in the middle of the night, I never thought he’d harm me. Instead, I hoped he would come. So I slept little and listened to the sounds of the night, the loudest was the beat of my own heart. I knew it was wrong to wish him home, but for years I couldn't shut my heart. Though I longed for my father, I lived with continual thoughts that I would eventually do something that would land me in prison just like him. Already, when I looked in the mirror I saw my father lurking around the edges of my reflection. I’d learned over the years that children with incarcerated parents feel guilt and shame over their parents' crimes, and were seventy percent more likely to commit crimes that result in prison or jail time. I kept myself awake at night, worrying when my father’s blood would it would rise, flood my world, drown me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Just after I turned thirty, I decided to write to him. My heart wanted him to be more than the vengeful man he'd been in the yellowing newspaper clippings. I wanted to know about his childhood, his love for the Dodgers, and if he'd ever known happiness. From his letters, it’s clear he’s mentally unstable. He has a brain deficiency he has never wanted to treat, though his lawyers and the parole board have encouraged it. He chooses to pray, to lead prayer groups, and to lift weights. I quickly realized that no matter how much I wrote to him, no matter how many questions I asked, he would write to me as if I was still a little girl. He remained tight-lipped about the rapes and burglaries. The refrain in every letter was a plea for me to get his mother to write to him. He wanted to write to her. He still wanted to know the identity of his biological father.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>I call</b></span> Freda a few weeks after telling her about the DNA results, after she's had time to consider what I'd discovered, time to think about anything else she might tell me. I ask her why she never told, still refuses to tell, my father about her long-dead lover. She says, "Maybe I should. I don't know what to say."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />"How about just tell him what happened? That's what he wanted as a kid." Though weeks have passed since our last call, I am still struggling to speak without sounding like a criminal prosecutor. She lets out a sigh, then is silent for so long I think she may be angry. I wonder if I sound like my father had, so many years ago when he was a little boy asking about his father. I wonder if she is remembering how she refused him, and in doing so created a rift that grew to become a gulf that drown him, buoyed him to confusion and anger. She blames herself, but has never said why specifically, only that she wishes she'd helped him more. Her word: help.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I can't get myself to talk. My chest is heavy, my heart thudding against my constricting ribcage. Finally, Freda sighs again and says, "I don't understand why any of it matters to him. It was a long time ago. It’s over." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />It's clear to me she won't tell my father anything. I get the feeling that, though I've given her all of my father's contact information, she isn't gong to write to him at all. She's scared. Not of him, of what he might say or do, that he might, somehow, get out of prison and find her, but of herself, what she might write<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I say, "Granny, I'm gonna tell him his dad died. He needs to know."<br /><br />"I think that's good," she says. "But, I can't write to him about that." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /> It's useless for me to tell Freda that mental health professionals now acknowledge that talking to children about their relatives and ancestors—immediate or distant—makes them more emotionally stable and empathetic to others. Not only because my father is no longer a child, but because when she was raising him, in the idyllic age of the 1950's and 60's, self-righteousness reigned, social status was derived from perceived normalcy, and pasts like Freda's were swept under the rug. It would be unnatural for her to do anything other than keep silent. What I somehow know, however, as the ache in my chest blooms, is that there is more to her silence. She can't admit that she'd fallen in love with Red, a man she could never have for herself. That perhaps for the whole of her adult life, even as she was married to my grandfather, she still loved Red. Perhaps some part of her believed, as her son hoped, that he would one day walk back into her life the way he'd walked into that Missouri diner and winked at her. She remained silent not to keep a secret from her son, but to protect her own crushed heart. I can hear the mourning in her voice, laced with regret. It's a sound only those who've felt it can hear.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />I wrote to my father and told him everything I'd found out about Red. I wish I could say that something profound happened after I sent that long letter. But this isn't the movies, it's not even poetic. When I finally heard back from him, he reacted by asking me, again, if I could get his mother to write to him. <br /><br />I’ve quietly started to acknowledge a birthright over which I have no control. And I think of my father in the same way I do about others: there are many versions of ourselves over our lifetimes, and the person we are today is not the one we'll be in a decade, or that we were two decades ago. I choose to think of him not as a predator but as the small boy who pined for a father, tethered like a tiny boat to an unimaginable anchor. I choose this version of him because it is most like my own experience, it is a reality that allows me a measure of emotional connection to a father that was so prominently absent that he was an overwhelming force in my life. And I choose to love that little boy because it is the least I can do for myself. Still, I often retreat—out of habit, out of ritual, out of heart-sickness—into the thought that we all hang on to things that can eventually drown us. I think of Virginia Woolf, who, on her stroll near the Ouse River, stopped intermittently to fill her pockets with the stones that would weigh her down.</span>joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-86715813044221857532017-05-03T12:46:00.000-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.530-04:00California Poppy<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">The</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> red Tehachapi and the purple San Gabriel Mountains</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> form a horseshoe around </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">California's</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> high-desert Antelope Valley</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> The only way out, it seems, is to snake through </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">a descending</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">pass</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">M</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">y father moved us there</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, to the tiny hamlet of Littlerock,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">in the winter of 1983</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. Though it was one of the oldest settlements in the state, by the time we arrived</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">the
only notable landmark was the cavernous mine quarry. Miles of Joshua
trees, tumbleweeds, and prehistoric yucca—flat surfaces that were used
to depict the Wild West or sandy Mexican outposts in Hollywood silent
films—were consumed by cranes, whose dinosaur-like necks sprouted from </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">the canyons they’d cut</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.
Dump trucks were loaded, then rumbled onto the highway and spat
detritus onto car windows. Littlerock was little more than a whistle
stop for Los Angelinos on their way to Las Vegas. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">One-hundred years earlier, it was a vibrant community of Piute Indians and almond </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">farmers</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">The town grew in size during the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Industrial Revolution,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> when the desert was ripped open for irrigation and Midwesterners invested in pear orchards</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">took up residence </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">at the Palmer Boarding House—one of the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">state’s </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">oldest</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> buildings</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. In the 1960’s Neil Armstrong lived nearby</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> while he trained for his space mission</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Aldous Huxley was once a </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">resident. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">By</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">eighties, though, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Littlerock was exploited by</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> the mining companies</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> that seemingly ignored </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">the San Andreas Fault </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">nearby and the instability their digging creat</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ed.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Just as no one connected the complete re-routing and damming of the Little Rock Creek to the Valley’s profound demise</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, they </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ignored the quarry's contribution</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> to the possibility of an earthquake</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Our
new house was less than a mile from the fault's crest, and my
Prohibition-era school was even closer. In preparation for The Big One, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">teachers taught</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
that the best places to hide were away from windows and under a
steel-framed desk, or, at home, under a bed or table. Possible
catastrophic seismic events couldn’t be predicted and it was better for
us to drill weekly than be smashed by a falling wall or roof. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I
was six. Old enough to know no one should live that close to a fault,
but young enough to forget it. I was proud to finally be living in a
real house rather than a</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> North Hollywood apartment </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">on a congested street of a dirty city that had caused my baby sister’s lungs to </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">repeatedly </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">fill with goo. The desert was part of </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">her</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> prescription</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.
I thought the desert—its Santa Ana winds and cold bright nights—was
heaven. And in the spring, when my parents took us to the Antelope
Valley Poppy </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO3rPGkdxr0bmhbehiSO7YmPxcSr5nq_9NibPcCSvgTdJWii_JgqKDhEhIJyp4bClEUOoSygETDVuSKCBYZcxQ9k3rk-fVC9XjvvXaWNZJlDl_lKPt9g6Wuh-sj85imenhsrhW9IxyJyA/s1600/poppiesandsnake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO3rPGkdxr0bmhbehiSO7YmPxcSr5nq_9NibPcCSvgTdJWii_JgqKDhEhIJyp4bClEUOoSygETDVuSKCBYZcxQ9k3rk-fVC9XjvvXaWNZJlDl_lKPt9g6Wuh-sj85imenhsrhW9IxyJyA/s320/poppiesandsnake.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Preserve, I was sure I’d walked right into a scene from <span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">The Wizard of Oz</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.
I like to think that my parents were altruistic and felt some sadness
toward the shrinking beauty of our new hometown. But these many decades
later, their motives remain their own. My mother likes a controlled
garden</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. And my father hasn’t been out in the open in nearly thirty years.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">On
the drive to the preserve, my baby sister, April, sat on my mother’s
lap in the passenger seat of our silver Ford sedan. My other sister,
Deidre, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">and
I were quiet and tense in the back seat, cramped against the cooler
that held our lunches inside. My father drove in silence. After what
seemed like hours, but what could</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">n’t have</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
been more than a half-hour drive, our car bounced into the graveled
lot, slants of light pin-wheeling from its silver hood. On the hills,
the bright orange petals seemed proud, as if standing in resistance to
the quarry cranes and noise of bulldozers some miles away. They created
a mosaic of oranges and yellows against a field of green prairie
grass. Across the mounds, railroad ties outlined jagged paths </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">that</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> looked like open sores. Part of me was beginning to understand the beauty and silence of my new hometown. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">When my father parked, I grabbed Deidre’s hand, violently pulling her onto the floorboard and across to my side</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. She</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> whine</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">d</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> that I’d skinned her knees</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, but we raced onto the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">nearest path, passing the white ticket booth where my father would hand over a few dollars for the Valley’s beauty.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> A dust of </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">camel-colored</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">dirt</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> rose </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">as we ran. It collected</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">in the creases of our cheap read sneakers. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I
wore my white T-shirt tucked into my jeans, my hair bundled beneath my
Dodger’s cap. Deidre wore her personalized “Daddy’s Girl” jersey
(flawed because my father had </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">transposed the "</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="SpellingError SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ei</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">"</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">). </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">By the time we topped the largest hill, sweat</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> and grit</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> had nearly glued our palms together. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">We were panting, lungs afire, standing among the brilliant flowers, our back to our parents, turned away from a future</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> too strange to understand at the time, perhaps even too strange for any time since. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Deidre </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">raised her free hand and said, “That’s a snake.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Five yards ahead, a baby rattler, its head raised from</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> the ground, hissed and writhed</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I pulled her toward it. “Come on.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">She jerked away and took a few steps back. “You’re nuts.” She was only five, but already she sounded just like our mother. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Snakes,
foxes, coyotes, cottontails. These were animals I'd only ever seen in
Richard Scary books. But when we moved to the desert, they became part
of our daily conversations—</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">we'd seen a coyote from the window of the school bus, a snake had coiled itself into the trashcan at Mar</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">t</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">in Park. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">K</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">eeping animals out of the house</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> was a real concern</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. Keeping people out, though, didn't occur to us until a year after we'd moved in. On a crisp spring evening in 1984, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">with </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">the windows of our house open wide to the calm wind and darkening sky, my parents gathered around the kitchen table </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">to play Gin</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">with
a few of our neighbors. The younger kids and my sisters tinkered in the
back bedroom, while I played Atari with the older kids. The adults sat
</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">behind us, smacking cards on the table as they played, and laughed</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> at something one of them had said in a low voice</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“I’ve
got to use the bathroom,” one of the women said. She'd become my
mother’s best friend. She, her husband, and son lived at the end of our
block. They kept horses and were building their own house</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, but t</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">he progress </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">was slow</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
and they were living in a cramped two-bedroom trailer behind the
framing. She wore tight jeans and cowboy boots and let her long dark
hair trail behind her like a horse’s mane. Her husband was a short man
with thick glasses and a pointy nose. Their son, Garret, a year younger
than me, had a head abnormally large for his shoulders.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">She passed us saying, “Looks like a good game.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">We smiled but didn’t look away from the television. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">M</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">y father’s newest gadget</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">wa</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">s the only one on the street</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. “You’re being careful, Joyce, right?” he said.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I nodded, still not looking away from the television.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">The
woman went into the bathroom. The light was on and threw a shaft of
orange into my bedroom which was directly across the hall. Instead of
closing the door when she entered she said, “What the hell? Terry!
Mickey!” All the adults were on their feet. The panic was that of a
woman who'd found a live rattler in the</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> sink</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">There was a muddy trail on the floor from the bathroom to my room. It followed along the carpet to my open window where </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">mud continued up</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> the short wall. My bedroom screen, we’d later find, was in the yard. A man stood on the other side of the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">gaping </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">window,
my bedside lamp illuminating a small portion of our yard and his face
and torso. He was older than my father, wore a dirty white </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">polo </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">shirt with a yellowed collar. His eyes were wide and dark.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">My father yelled, “What the hell are you doing?” and the intruder took off.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">The men gathered together in the foyer, briefly searching for flashlights in the hall closet </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">before
they headed out after the dark-eyed man. Because it had rained earlier
in the day, they were able to follow his muddy footprints for two
blocks, and just as the police were heading down the dirt road with
flashers blazing, they found him in the fenced front yard of another
house.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">When the men returned, my mother's girlfriends listened, nearly bored, as their husb</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ands told my parents about the T</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">own </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Looney,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> who snuck into homes looking for anything he could snort, swallow, or inject. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">He’d been in Vietnam at some point and had come back addicted to pain killers. His parents moved away from Littlerock </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">after they'd sold the</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> family orchard </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">that had been theirs for over one-hundred years. H</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">e
lived in a small cinder-block shed on the edge of town and had been
there alone for nearly fifteen years. The quarry was slowly buying out </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">the people around </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">him</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">He'd been found passed out inside</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> of</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> unfinished house</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">s</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.
He’d been arrested hundreds of times, but no one ever pressed charges
because he never stole anything other than food, beer, aspirin, or
prescriptions. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">They endured him out of communal dignity, giving him food on occasion. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“In L.A. they shoot intruders,” my mother said. “That guy’s lucky.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Before
that muddy spring evening, no one in our house had ever thought twice
about sleeping with the windows open. In fact, we often cracked them in
the evenings instead of running the air conditioner. But after that
introduction, my father fastened every window with a ventilation latch.
He drilled small holes along the bottom metal frame of each window, and
through those he threaded thumb screws</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, which he showed us how to use</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.
When in place, each window would only slide four inches. Before we
went to bed, we were to check that the screws were properly positioned.
If the weather was warm at night, we were only allowed to keep the
window open as far as the screw allowed. In this way, my father kept his
family safe from intruders. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I
tip-toed toward the snake sunning itself in the lane of the Poppy
Preserve. It hissed again, this time raising its head a bit higher from
the dirt path. Fine silt stuck to its underbelly. The </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">grey</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> jagged stripes undulated. It had eaten something recently—there was a lump only inches from its mouth. “You’re not </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="SpellingError SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">gonna</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> hurt us,” I said. “You’re just a </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">little one</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> anyway.” The snake rattled its translucent tail. I wasn’t stupid</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. T</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">he snake could kill me or</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> at least</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> poison me. In my gut I </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">felt</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> if that happened</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> my father would hesitate before he took me to the hospital. It would teach me not to play with snakes if I died from a bite.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“Stop it, Joyce,” Deidre said, rubbing her hands on her jeans. “Stop it.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I cut my eyes at her, took a deep breath</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
and jumped, picturing myself flying high and looking down at the
snake. I’d leave Deidre on the other side and keep on going. But
before I even got </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">off the ground</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">there was, behind me, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">a heavy crunch of sneakers on grit and I felt </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">myself</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> being </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">pulled backward. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">My father </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">held</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">m</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">e against him, then spun me away</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Deidre </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">blinked at me, at our father, then turned and ran along a railroad tie toward where our mother </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">held April on her hip and was watching us, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">her hand to her forehead to shield her eyes from the sun. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">The snake made its way between two crossties and disappeared. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Without </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">looking from </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">the snake-marked earth, my </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">father</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> said, “You know that was a rattler.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“Just a </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">little one</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. I know.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“It could’ve bit you.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">My lip curled.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">He knelt next to the edge of the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">path</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, rested one knee on a railroad tie. “We wouldn’t make it to the hospital.” </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">A</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
heavy weight fell where my heart was steady-beating. That weight would
come and go for most of my life, anytime my gut instinct w</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">as</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> proven right.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">My
father studied the snake’s trail and plucked a handful of owl’s clover,
goldfield, and cream cups. “You’re not supposed to pick the poppies,”
he said. He caressed the petals with his fingertips</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. They</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
were crisscrossed with hairline cuts, some crusted with blood. A large
bruise marked his forearm, just below the cuff of his T-shirt. I
wouldn’t know until years later what they meant or who might've put them
there. “Eighteen-ninety, I think,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">" he said,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">"</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">is when they voted for it. So you can’t pick them now. It’s illegal. Do you know what that means?”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“It means you go to jail for it.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“Not exactly.” My father fingered through a </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">tuft of prairie grass and green hair-like stalks to</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">expose</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
a few orange faces to the spring sun. “You have to pay a fine.” He
watched the horizon where the crystal blue sky met the blotches </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">of</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> orange. Then he said, “This poppy can do some neat things. Come here.”</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I didn’t move. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Our mother doctored our wounds, held us when we cried, tucked us in at </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">night.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> Our father watched these things transpire, as if offering help </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">m</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ight cut him open</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. It was rare that he'd teach me anything, so I feared him—this </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">tall man, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">with a presence that seemed to take up the space around him, pushing whoever was near to the fringes. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">E</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">verything I did seemed to keep him </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">angry, and jumping the snake would be no exception. I was going to get it</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">But w</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">hatever ire my father carried, he </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">kept it </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">at arm’s length. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">"</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Come here</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">”</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> he said again.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Letting out a deep sigh, I came to his side and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I kneeled</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> My muscles clinched, I ground my teeth, and waited for punishment. But </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">my father didn't raise his hand, didn't yell. Instead he</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">said, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“You take your hands and put them like this.” He cupped his hands together </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">but left a thin opening </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">at the bottom. “Then you reach down and cover the poppy.” Without touching a petal</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, he covered a single flower. He put his eye to the small hole at his thumbs and smiled, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">then he raised his face</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> and</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> resumed his distant gaze</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. He</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> said, “Now. You do it.” </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I cupped my hands and mimicked what he'd done. The petals</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> grazed my palms. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">When I peered into my hands, saw a spiral of orange instead of a large happy face.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> The poppy had closed.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">“The poppy goes to slee</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">p in the dark. It closes up to protect itself,” my father said.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX214904885" style="direction: ltr;">
<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">He stood and brushed off his jeans. Without looking at me</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,
he walked back down the path. I opened my hands and the poppy burst
open, its orange face glowing in the desert sun. I practiced the poppy
trick over and over until it seemed I’d made every flower in the entire
field protect itself</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">We
left the preserve just as the sun began to set, and the flowers started
to quiver and close on their own. The mountains around us purpled, and
the shadows shifted the field from vibrant orange to mottled green. The
San Andreas Fault would be falling asleep just beyond the ridge, and I
hoped it would stay that way—silent, ancient, in no rush to crumble the
world around me. The highway dipped into the outskirts of Littlerock,
and we passed the vicious quarry. At night, I could hear the cranes
pulling and scraping, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">their compulsive digging continually carving wounds into the earth. Tall b</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">right lights illuminat</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ed</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> the excavation while </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> tried to sleep. Even though the evenings were warm, I </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">kept</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
my window closed against the violent noise. I secured the screws the
way my father taught me, to keep our home safe. And make it </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">a plac</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">e </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">where</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I could curl up and rest against a world that was becoming larger and larger the older I got.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Decades later, I moved</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">far from the quarry, the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">incessant</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> digging, the fault that threatened to swallow me whole. I moved a</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">way
from the father I hadn't seen since my childhood, a man who, during our
third winter in the Valley, was caught, tried, and convicted of serial
rape. He would write to me, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">from a California State Prison </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">where he was serving his 101 year sentence, and say that </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">shortly after we'd moved to Littlerock, he'd begun to lose </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">himself</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> and give in to urges he'd previously been able to </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">repress</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. He was powerless, he</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> said</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, to keep from hurting strangers</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">He'd felt s</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">o upset and guilty, h</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">e'd wanted to kill himself a few different times, wanted </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> to drive his car off the </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">road and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">into the deep canyons cut by the mining</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">The </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">police</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">have</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> a different story. A</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">t least </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">fo</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">rty </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">files</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">spanning</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> a decade,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">report</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">a </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">pattern of </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">burgl</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">a</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ry</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> and rape. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">My father was still commuting to Los Angeles for work</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> even though we'd relocated to the desert</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, s</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">o my mother never knew when he'd be home</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. He began telling </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">her he was working overtime, but he'd leave work on time, drive to a Hollywood or Burbank neighborhood, and park his car. He'd </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">sit and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">watch apartment complexes until </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">he </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">found a woman</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> who lived alone in a ground-floor apartment. Once he'd </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">chosen</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, he'd</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> make his way around</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> the building until he found her half-open bedroom window. He'd return the next </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">afternoo</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">n</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> before she arrived</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, jimmy</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> the screen, and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">crawl</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> inside. He'd open her drawers, jewelry box. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Eventually</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, he'd leave through the front door</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, as if he lived there. No one in the buildings ever suspected him—he was good-looking, white, and wearing cover-</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="SpellingError SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">alls</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">He looked like he'd been repairing a faucet.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Perhaps he stole money and jewelry as a way to control his darker </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">urges</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. But it wasn't enough, and these many years </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">later I know </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">that</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">a</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">t</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> least o</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ne time, after </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">h</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">is pre-inspection </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">burglary</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">, an</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> apartment manager </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">install</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ed</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> bars on </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">all of the ground-level apartment </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">windows</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Rather than stop himself, my father</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> came back </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">another day</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">in the pre-dawn light</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> he</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> donned his white batting gloves, grabbed his socket wrench, and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">worked quietly in the dark, removing the bars</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. When he climbed inside, he still hadn’t managed to wake </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">the woman</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> in the bed</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. She didn’t move until he was atop her, covering her face with his hands</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> and threatening to kill her if she didn't roll over and let him have her</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<div class="Paragraph SCX214904885" style="background-color: transparent; color: windowtext; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; text-align: left; text-indent: 48px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">After eighteen months</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">police</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">finally </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">began a manhunt. They had plain-clothes officers staked out in </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">va</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">rious</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> neighborhoods and urged anyone with information to come forward.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> T</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">he</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">y warned women living alone to close </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">windows </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">and lock </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">doors. The</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> rapes became more frequent, more brutal. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">Detectives called in </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">an FBI</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> profile</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">r</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">who </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">erroneously </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">described him </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">as a single male, living at home with his mother, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">and </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">unemployed.</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">For the first e</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ighteen months </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">that we</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> liv</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">ed</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> in the desert, </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">he took us</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> to the Poppy Reserve</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> and a picnic</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> at Devil's Punchbowl</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. He arranged a visit to Santa's Village. He smiled in photos taken at birthday parties, Easter, Christmas. We took</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">regular </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">drives along the dippy-doo highway next to the quarry</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">,</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> and spent early evenings at </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="SpellingError SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">MacAdam</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> Park where he played softball</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> For eighteen months he pinned women to their beds, holding them </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">down and threatening them with a screwdriver—he told them it was a knife. But it was t</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">he same screwdriver he used to remove the training wheels from my BMX. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">But I didn't know any of this on the day we visited the Reserve. All I knew was that my father had finally taught me </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">a lesson</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">that </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">I'd remember for the rest of my life. </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">My</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">
eyes grew heavy. I cupped my hands in my lap and pretended to put more
flowers to sleep. I rode home that way. I watched to see if my father’s
eyes would appear in the rearview </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">mirror. When they didn’t, I leaned my head against </span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">the window</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX214904885" lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX214904885" style="background-color: inherit;">.
The blurs of the Valley dissolved into the dark. In my cupped hands, I
imagined a brilliant poppy, protecting itself from the dark and the
cold. Then I shut my eyes. I was safe, even with my father so close.</span></span><span class="EOP SCX214904885" style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 38px;"> </span></div>
</div>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-57995590604825109662015-10-26T15:29:00.000-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.127-04:00My Child is an American AmbassadorI have very little sympathy for American Ambassadors who are killed in foreign countries, where the mere presence of "outsiders" is seen as a threat to the existing regime. Thus, I am completely sick and tired of hearing about Benghazi. Especially how the death of one ambassador and three American nationals is somehow cause for upheaval in Congress. Cause for Hillary Clinton to drop her bid for the White House. Cause for Obama to be <b><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/10/25/benghazi-obamas-actions-amount-to-a-shameful-dereliction-of-duty/" target="_blank">scrutinized, once again by the white wing-nuts</a></b>, because he failed to send more security to the Embassy. <br />
<br />
Here are some more failures happening right now:<br />
<br />
Millions of children go to school every day without a single armed security guard on their open campuses. While it's true that some schools have neared the point of prison-culture--metal detectors and city police at every entrance--the overwhelming majority of schools, especially in suburbs and rural areas, don't even employ a Mall Cop. Yet four Americans in Benghazi, one who was ex-military, needed heightened security in an area that was becoming increasingly hostile as September 11, 2013 approached. The threats were obvious. Instead of leaving, the diplomats chose to stay put. Which is probably why I'd never hope to be a diplomat--if angry mobs shouted at me, threw things, killed other diplomats in the street, I'd be on the next plane to Geneva.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7PZxDv8S-0VkHxD1ko7AmlsfZmjLT82_UEiPlWhWNUObu-cMTL6BAeAOrcOwNT-0qdJu4CJ7qIiKVxLyBAQL8B7EQ9HSxOoUkXK-bxE9ZiNJoSViKiaKrVMrmdhQmXjVH1Okv5tJjsiw/s1600/active+shooter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7PZxDv8S-0VkHxD1ko7AmlsfZmjLT82_UEiPlWhWNUObu-cMTL6BAeAOrcOwNT-0qdJu4CJ7qIiKVxLyBAQL8B7EQ9HSxOoUkXK-bxE9ZiNJoSViKiaKrVMrmdhQmXjVH1Okv5tJjsiw/s320/active+shooter.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Millions of children practice in-school "drills" during the school week. Instruction time is consumed by these drills that teach kids--in the event of an emergency--to stay silent in a darkened corner of their classrooms, lest a "bad person" open the door and find them. Yet four American adults, who'd chosen to stay in an antagonistic environment, couldn't take a similar precaution. <br />
<br />
Millions of teachers are asked to go to work every day, put themselves in harm's way to save the lives of the children in their classrooms. Ambassadors <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-19575689" target="_blank"><b>assume risk</b></a> when accepting their positions. Teachers should not have to assume the risk of bodily harm.<br />
<br />
A group of community college teachers took it <b><a href="http://wqad.com/2014/06/10/muscatine-teachers-invention-could-save-your-childs-life/" target="_blank">upon themselves to invent</a></b> a way of barricading their classrooms against an attack. The college where they worked didn't think their lives were worth the cost of installing doors that could protect classroom occupants during an Active Shooter event.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO6YZnCHgR-9sBRkSh0NGj7NnSTUaMU0Fbx-NT4dRl2aoGZdFCqQVr2I_XrJZAwVCOK1H7e8dkEa2Cd0KatfU_oBRV_YSQToP1-00UHjMreIaBN5nHXVaIg3pAsAp49cum2hVowHw7A-w/s1600/backpack2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO6YZnCHgR-9sBRkSh0NGj7NnSTUaMU0Fbx-NT4dRl2aoGZdFCqQVr2I_XrJZAwVCOK1H7e8dkEa2Cd0KatfU_oBRV_YSQToP1-00UHjMreIaBN5nHXVaIg3pAsAp49cum2hVowHw7A-w/s200/backpack2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
Bulletproof backpacks and backpack inserts are being marketed and sold to parents.<br />
<br />
I've written about <b><a href="http://joyousinhell.blogspot.com/2013/06/this-is-what-youre-pretending-to-be.html" target="_blank">my stance on gun control</a> </b>before.<br />
<br />
After over forty more school shootings since <b><a href="http://joyousinhell.blogspot.com/2013/06/this-is-what-youre-pretending-to-be.html" target="_blank">that post</a></b>, my view hasn't changed.<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
On the roadside in front of my daughter's elementary school are yellow yield signs with the message<br />
"Caution: Future World and Local Leaders at Work and Play."<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxPq4GZ6lhAKLq3w4mMJ8Zgx4yYqbunYZml59EhjtSmkqm9hM3PRYonAtikVMCerB1KX4LFbN0T6t7J5_tpriciadUncED76YFeeG6g9vj0sGOzcvo-i9z0LwMS1nRwfYqpJpm9zrVkmw/s1600/caution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxPq4GZ6lhAKLq3w4mMJ8Zgx4yYqbunYZml59EhjtSmkqm9hM3PRYonAtikVMCerB1KX4LFbN0T6t7J5_tpriciadUncED76YFeeG6g9vj0sGOzcvo-i9z0LwMS1nRwfYqpJpm9zrVkmw/s320/caution.jpg" width="320" /></a>My daughter's school administrators value the lives of the children inside, so much so that they caution passersby to slow their roll lest they run down a future American Ambassador. Yet my own local, state, and federal politicians could care less about those future leaders. They're too busy getting kick-backs and payoffs from<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/18/pro-gun-groups-donated-senators" target="_blank"><b> the NRA.</b></a><br />
<br />
They're allowing children to die.<br />
<br />
I want those politicians to be held accountable. They need to be brought up on charges of treason--their crimes include the deaths of 117 students. 117 future leaders. 117 future Ambassadors. <br />
<br />
Out of 160 Active Shooter incidents between 2000-2013, 39 took place at schools. During those 39 incidents, 117 students were killed, and 120 were wounded. <b><a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi-releases-study-on-active-shooter-incidents/pdfs/a-study-of-active-shooter-incidents-in-the-u.s.-between-2000-and-2013" target="_blank">According to the FBI</a></b>,
"Incidents in educational facilities account for some of the higher
casualty counts." So while more Active Shooter incidents happen in
public places (45.6%), the casualty rate is lower per incident.<br />
<br />
In 13 years, 117 students were gunned down in a place that was supposed to be safe--their own country--by one (sometimes more) of their own citizens. And our politicians continue to allow that to happen. The people with the power to make our future ambassadors safe are failing to do so. Because <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/21/nra-illegal-political-spending-lobbying-pac" target="_blank"><b>they're being paid</b></a> to allow students to die.<br />
<br />
How many ambassadors have been killed in that same time? After looking at several different sources, I've come up with a total: <b><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/us/us-diplomats-attacked/" target="_blank">6</a></b>. A half dozen adults die in foreign countries, where <a href="http://www.commercialappeal.com/opinion/national/walter-pincus-us-ambassador-knew-the-risks-of-visiting-benghazi-22902349-b872-420a-e053-0100007f54e0-334911821.html" target="_blank"><b>risk is part of the job description</b></a>, and the nation loses its collective mind.<br />
<br />
But 117 students are simply par for the course. A sacrifice to the gun lobby gods. I'm sure their parents will understand. <br />
<br />
What's even more alarming about the "outrage" over Lybia, is this graphic (Courtesy of <b><a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/libya-consulate-embassy-attacks-obama-romney" target="_blank">Mother Jones</a></b>):<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz20zvMZ8GH9NmdAeCWhPFPMRYOW3o7I1Y51bC9T51qdADxE0PtGpw8W0SjMyScF-RoJi0jItOJYxbSpQhl63ZvvNfdLTX7glmc38m_Nwj_6vWqx7G4vO4LdXO3pCcqOsf7EmYD6kQ1Tc/s1600/Diplomatic+attacks.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz20zvMZ8GH9NmdAeCWhPFPMRYOW3o7I1Y51bC9T51qdADxE0PtGpw8W0SjMyScF-RoJi0jItOJYxbSpQhl63ZvvNfdLTX7glmc38m_Nwj_6vWqx7G4vO4LdXO3pCcqOsf7EmYD6kQ1Tc/s400/Diplomatic+attacks.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
The number of attacks (not even resulting in the death of an Ambassador or diplomat) has decreased over forty years, dramatically so within the last eight.<br />
<br />
Yet, according to the <b><a href="https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=49" target="_blank">National Center for Education Statistics</a></b>, "Between July 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012, there were a total of 45
school-associated violent deaths in elementary and secondary schools in
the United States. Of the 45 student, staff, and non-student
school-associated violent deaths occurring during this time span,
there were 26 homicides."<br />
<br />
In one year: 26 innocent children<br />
In over a decade: 6 adults who knew the risks they were assuming<br />
<br />
<br />
Even more alarming is the information about the way students actually feel on campus or going to/from campus: "In 2013, about 3 percent of students ages 12–18 reported that they were
afraid of attack or harm at school or on the way to and from school
during the school year. Similarly, 3 percent of students ages 12–18
reported that they were afraid of attack or harm away from school during
the school year."<br />
<br />
According to the <b><a href="http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf" target="_blank">2010 census</a></b>, there were 53,980,105 children in America aged 5-17. Three percent of that number is 1,619,403. Though the NCES only measured middle and high school fear levels, if we assume that elementary students--who practice the same "drills" as their older counterparts--share those fears, <b>over 1.5 million schoolchildren live in fear of "attack or harm."</b><br />
<br />
Schoolchildren: over 1.5 million <br />
Ambassadors: 6<br />
<br />
***<br />
<br />
An all-out ban on weapons will not work. I lived through the "Just Say
No to Drugs" campaign and have studied enough about Prohibition to know
that an all-out "ban" won't work. Americans are assholes that way. Tell
us "no" and we'll find a way to do it.<br />
<br />
I've been told by rational, educated people that restricting the purchase of guns won't keep them from being bought and/or traded. Truer words were never spoken, according to a recent <b><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html?_r=0" target="_blank">New York Times article</a> </b>chronicling the ability of 8 Active Shooters with documented mental illnesses to obtain several guns each.<br />
<br />
<br />
But the status quo isn't working.<br />
<br />
As of this post, nothing is being done.<br />
<br />
No legislators are coming forward to address this very real problem.<br />
<br />
There is no one voice fighting the blood money.<br />
<br />
<br />
When the future leaders at my daughter's school become old enough to vote, I wonder what they'll do with the fear and terror they've lived with for the entirety of their school years. Will they vote for change, advocate for change, demand change? Will one of them be the voice we need?<br />
<br />
Or will these future leaders go out and buy guns, and more guns, and more guns, with the hope of making themselves feel safe? Will they carry those guns with them to the grocery store, to their own childrens' schools? Or will they, one day, be so overwhelmed with fear that they wander into a gun shop, purchase an automatic weapon, and turn it on their neighbors, their coworkers, their own children?joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-18030166835728063772015-08-26T15:08:00.000-04:002018-07-20T08:32:13.525-04:00Here's the REAL Problem with College Rape Culture<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAOHcrQUXuWIW1iYjCUcZouZI1uojesKDYnVyKpsm2e4U9DdLRuMLOgdEXpg47LXtd3E-D-ZqrVWHHO7uXeJp1Ix0qB934YDoyflclXq66IfA_2KmkwEj6IBOmEPKm5frVy8hGxw8c9XU/s1600/odu2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAOHcrQUXuWIW1iYjCUcZouZI1uojesKDYnVyKpsm2e4U9DdLRuMLOgdEXpg47LXtd3E-D-ZqrVWHHO7uXeJp1Ix0qB934YDoyflclXq66IfA_2KmkwEj6IBOmEPKm5frVy8hGxw8c9XU/s640/odu2.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Don't worry about them, they're only jokes about raping your daughter. Lighten up. Only uptight administrators and Women's Studies majors are upset about these banners. <br />
<br />
In a patriarchal culture, where jokes about female anatomy are explicit and those about sex, rape, and control are often implicit, it's a woman's job to intuit the dangers of both. At least that's what <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/banners-old-dominion-university_55d90270e4b04ae49703769d" target="_blank">comments regarding Sigma Nu's offensive banners</a> would have us believe. A woman needs to know the difference between "having a good time" and "I'm going to get you drunk and have sex with you whether you want to or not." But no one is going to teach her those things. She's got to put herself in a sexually dangerous situation before she can distinguish between them. And it's her father's job to lead her into the open arms of her predators, apparently.<br />
<br />
She also needs to learn "it's always been like this," so she should just sit back and let rape culture continue.<br />
<br />
Ahem. Just because a culture has previously accepted bad behavior as part of the mainstream, does not mean a change isn't in order. See "slavery." At any point in history. See "Black Lives Matter." See "suffrage" or "oppression" or "the American Revolution."<br />
<br />
When these Old Dominion University students hung banners outside of their home asking for "baby girls" (and their mothers) to be dropped off, they promised a "rowdy and fun" time. As a woman and mother, I was immediately offended and sickened by the implications of those banners. Additionally, I wondered how these men made it through (at least one year of) college at a prestigious institution without one person challenging them about their views of women, rape, and sexism. How is that possible?<br />
<br />
As a female faculty member at a small college, I got angry. These men seem to think that women enjoy being referred to as babies. With all of the news lately about grown men sexually assaulting children, I'd think these fraternity members would've at least considered the notion that sex with babies might not be the best way to persuade members of the opposite sex to enter their abode. I also find it difficult to believe that any notion of feminism has escaped their knowledge. I'm sure some professor has at least mentioned it as part of a writing assignment or multiple choice test. Did those young men really not know what they were implying? I'm sure someone at the University heard or read something from these young men that was equally offensive prior to their ill-worded banner. I've seen and heard plenty of inappropriate language. And I challenge students on it. That's my job and responsibility. Why weren't these men ever corrected beforehand?<br />
<br />
Then I really got angry. I teach writing, so when I see words like "fun" and "rowdy" I think <i>That's the best language you could use?</i> Those words are vague at best, insulting and heinous at worst. They are abstract. They mean different things to different people. A rowdy afternoon in my house means that all three of my kids are jumping on the furniture. A rowdy time at the frat house conjures images of drunken young men staggering around on a lawn. My Friday night fun time could be watching a movie as I brush my daughter's hair. While the fun time had by Sigma Nu could be raping freshmen co-eds. Which, because they were so vague, is exactly what their sign implies. I doubt a single person in America read those banners and thought, "Oh, they're not talking about something sexual."<br />
<br />
Yeah. Pigs are flying out of my ass. Right. Now.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaijElvq8F-3L1Gs3ldzHYb3vOnD1qof1XJ7Px4J7IT5fYSR1mfylg9YFQYHTo7qIKnVQhcCuQYhtvBFmklDL5JuE-p06JHq1101G33R_znTwxMJ0sgUyNyKQEpn-G9mZQRljHOTBnNmo/s1600/Daddy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaijElvq8F-3L1Gs3ldzHYb3vOnD1qof1XJ7Px4J7IT5fYSR1mfylg9YFQYHTo7qIKnVQhcCuQYhtvBFmklDL5JuE-p06JHq1101G33R_znTwxMJ0sgUyNyKQEpn-G9mZQRljHOTBnNmo/s400/Daddy.jpeg" width="225" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">While I'm being outraged over grammar, </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I'd like to put in a side note
here: </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">based on the way this banner is written, </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">they
want to call someone "daddy" </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">now that "she" is no longer doing it. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Oye.</span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
A group of <a href="http://jezebel.com/cool-guys-at-ohio-state-university-offer-daughter-dayca-1726341553" target="_blank">male Ohio State students hung a banner outside of their home advertising "Daughter Daycare"</a> to fathers dropping off their
freshmen. When questioned about it, Alex Sheets, an occupant of the house, said,
"My dad, he is a good Christian man, I am a good Christian man, but we
just do this for fun. We are not trying to cause any havoc or stir up
any trouble, we are just trying to have some fun."<br />
<br />
The problem
with that statement--beyond the use of the abstract word "fun" which thus implies being a sexual predator is "fun"--is the
use of "but." I'm a good man, but... I'm a Christian, but... "But" what?
Your goodness and belief in a higher power excuse your heinous
behavior? No. The use of the conjunction "but" suggests that your previous clause is about to be at odds
with the clause that follows the conjunction. So when Mr. Sheets uses "but"
instead of "and" (an addition to the subject, a continuation of the first clause), he's admitting
culpability. He knows what he's doing is not right, is vulgar and
indecent. He knows the banner was inappropriate. But he did it anyway, in the name of "fun." (See what I did there with the conjunction?)<br />
<br />
So all of the Mr. Sheetes of the world think a joke at the expense of a woman's safety is acceptable. Never mind that it makes her uncomfortable or squeamish or
look over her shoulder for the predator closing in. She's just overreacting if she wants to turn around and head back home instead of set foot on a college campus that endorses such behavior. Our culture accepts a man's excuse for just having a
little "fun" because we still buy into "boys will be boys" and "we need
to protect the women." You won't need to protect your daughters, wives,
girlfriends, aunts, or sisters if you stop accepting rape culture, if you stop perpetuating it.<br />
<br />
If you start accepting responsibility for it. OSU senior Justin Miller, Mr. Sheet's housemate, said,
"Our motives were not to insult or look down on anyone, not to be
sexist. Our
motive is just to have fun, it is college." Perhaps Mr. Miller has
forgotten the point of college. College can be "fun." In fact, many of my fondest memories are of the "fun" times I had on my University's campus. "Fun" I had without putting myself in the care of sexual predators. But what college "is" is not "fun." It's serious work. The function of a college is to prepare people for the world, a
career, a future. Colleges graduate those who've completed course study and are ready to take on large responsibilities. Judging by the banners outside of their house, these young men are preparing for lives as sexual predators. Or worse, they expect other
men to willingly hand over their daughters, as if they're entitled to
them. As if women are property to be exchanged and bartered.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, Mr. Miller claims he's not a sexist, but I wonder why he didn't open his
home to all freshmen. Why just the daughters? Um, that's sexism, Mr. Miller. <br />
<br />
And here's a fact about "motive" and
rape: it's a crime that doesn't require a motive. You did it. The reason
doesn't matter. There are not degrees of rape, the way there are with
things like murder, fraud, and theft. Your motives wouldn't factor into
your defense in an American court. No one gives a damn about your motives. Your actions speak for themselves.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsm3CGJspwcCS6iVyKAWjg7f4o9RsSgYc2s-HlPWw79WQPdUBWhY0AaTmppD51QzNnkXMzObsW5d6KECyz4HQ9ZDaL_oIlb4KZX-yHHY89v7eJoDkI5mkGhUakoJw3NcZGrfFpOcL2hKo/s1600/osu1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsm3CGJspwcCS6iVyKAWjg7f4o9RsSgYc2s-HlPWw79WQPdUBWhY0AaTmppD51QzNnkXMzObsW5d6KECyz4HQ9ZDaL_oIlb4KZX-yHHY89v7eJoDkI5mkGhUakoJw3NcZGrfFpOcL2hKo/s320/osu1.jpg" width="240" /></a>I'm glad <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Old.Dominion.University/posts/10152964450977234" target="_blank">ODU's president responded</a> with an open message condemning the banners. I hope the offenders are ejected from their fraternity. I hope we learn their names. In fact, I'd like to know the names of anyone who thinks those sorts of messages are appropriate. Perhaps armed with that information, we can work to enlighten, and change the culture. The University needs to see this moment for what it is: an opportunity to engage its student body in a real world issue, to seek solutions from young people for young people. They don't need to just give lip service to it, then quietly let it go away. They need to create a safe environment for everyone, not just the female cohort.<br />
<br />
In fact, they could take this opportunity to really empower said cohort, since female college students seem to need a refresher in identifying and disengaging in rape culture. For example, members of an OSU sorority posted a banner making sure "boys" "pull out" (while simultaneously throwing someone named "Megan" under the bus). These sorority sisters and their double-entendres should be held
accountable for perpetuating a culture of rape. They are just as
culpable as their male counterparts. In my eyes, they are even more
culpable. They don't even realize they're victims of a patriarchy that
values them for what is between their legs (no matter what's inside of
their heads). They've bought into devaluing themselves and other women,
including the daughters they may one day conceive. They're blind to the
problems this sort of thinking has caused our country--like lower pay
for women, little-to-no maternity leave, and accepted sexual harassment
in the workplace.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKGDYf3O5wZXww95jKL2E2VqoyMgzMcmSZjPJaSxqotl64BnrZwSvnuTWIzK8o-bUoI073kOHzkAVIPuCO-vjQL3KgJdSjyTd3VsBdTUnZgLfyBkH5Ph84CeMuNDV7NSLqYeWFcsCSxUc/s1600/ButtBack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKGDYf3O5wZXww95jKL2E2VqoyMgzMcmSZjPJaSxqotl64BnrZwSvnuTWIzK8o-bUoI073kOHzkAVIPuCO-vjQL3KgJdSjyTd3VsBdTUnZgLfyBkH5Ph84CeMuNDV7NSLqYeWFcsCSxUc/s320/ButtBack.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The smiles on these women's faces are frightening. The one young woman bending over while being held by another housemate, and the one across from them laughing heartily, are enough to make me frightened. For me and for them. They have no idea what they're saying, endorsing, or perpetuating. This isn't "girl power" or "empowerment." It's rape culture working at a subconscious level.</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
The outrage over the sorority signs at OSU quickly devolved into calling these women "sluts." So women are either babies or sluts. This sounds like the same sort of dichotomy that was proposed and refuted in one of my freshman seminar courses twenty years ago. I went to a progressive California University nestled among a very conservative county. I was educated how not to pigeon-hole other women, myself, and even--can you believe it!--men. Using sexually explicit or implicit language to degrade anyone, yourself included, is unacceptable. <br />
<br />
This is the real problem with college rape culture: generations of "educated" women who subconsciously perpetuate it, who find sexually explicit jokes "funny," who call other women "whores" and "sluts." These "educated" women will one day infiltrate the corporate world, the professional world, and classrooms. They will allow themselves, other women, and our daughters to be pinched, touched, and prodded by men and boys. They will distinguish between "normal" men and "child molesters," but they won't see that by accepting an aggressive, patriarchal, sexually-charged environment they're endorsing rape.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0onMflmgh_e3Q4F2Ht-rA0whQ918zlKYGmeMBP1qnVs6VKfwNHDzZXWsaBa5fAvLtV-xSyUDLD2pTI4UWvQwN9S7Ey9g4n6H0ohpwF1bD8kqEncwGT9imVS-SCKkCuOgdb1lV9_vuwWU/s1600/PlanB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0onMflmgh_e3Q4F2Ht-rA0whQ918zlKYGmeMBP1qnVs6VKfwNHDzZXWsaBa5fAvLtV-xSyUDLD2pTI4UWvQwN9S7Ey9g4n6H0ohpwF1bD8kqEncwGT9imVS-SCKkCuOgdb1lV9_vuwWU/s320/PlanB.jpg" width="238" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The young woman sitting next to this young man</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">is smiling. I wonder how long that smile will last</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">when she can't afford "the day after drug"</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">or is harassed when attempting to make an</span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #674ea7;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">appointment at Planned Parenthood </span></span></span></div>
<br />
They'll shake their heads, perhaps even rail against conservative societies that require women to cover everything but their eyes lest a man be tempted into a sexual act. But they'll think nothing of calling another woman "slutty" if one too many buttons of a blouse is unfastened. They'll be shocked and horrified by random stranger rapes--those that get sensationalized in the media--but when a friend attempts to confide in them that she's been assaulted by a man she went to dinner with, they'll say, "What did you do? What did you wear? What did you say?" They'll deflect attention from the rapists. They'll think it could never happen to them.joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-47394125687812309742015-08-04T21:28:00.000-04:002018-07-20T08:32:13.958-04:00Three Decades LaterThis month I'll turn thirty-eight. It occurred to me last week that it's been exactly thirty years since I last saw my father, who was arrested three weeks before my eighth birthday. Thirty years ago, I began to understand that I'd never see him again. I began to understand that the man he'd been--angry and mean at times, but my father nevertheless--was not who he was. I began to understand the rage that accompanies adulthood.<br />
<br />
Thirty years ago, I was my oldest daughter's age. I look at her and am amazed by how young she is, how she laughs at silly voices and bad knock-knock jokes. I don't remember feeling young. I quickly grew up after my father's arrest, suddenly flooded by knowing, and the world became a rising tide.<br />
<br />
I've been feeling significantly depressed over the last few weeks. It's the feeling I get every July. I carry it with me through August and can't shake it, especially on my birthday. While researching for my memoir, I discovered that my depression is a common phenomenon suffered by people who experience traumatic events, especially in childhood. It's called "<a href="http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/research-bio/research/anniversary_reactions_pro.asp" target="_blank">anniversary reaction</a>" and it's a type of PTSD.<br />
<br />
I thought I'd try something new this year and instead of sinking into the familiar and nearly-irreversible sadness, I'd share a bit of my experience from thirty years ago. These are some snippits of a chapter titled "Baptisms."<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
I have a friend who becomes a hermit in the week leading up to the
anniversary of her husband’s death. Typically, she’s boisterous, social,
driving all over town to visit people and deliver little gifts to brighten the
days of others. But during that week, she doesn’t even answer her phone. She
won’t see anyone. She falls into the grief of a situation thirteen years past
and has learned it’s best for her to cope by being alone. Then, on the
anniversary of the day he died, she visits her husband’s grave, and celebrates
his life in a small service with their only son and a few family members. The
next day, she’s back to her old self. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Like her, I suffer from what psychologists call “the anniversary
reaction.” Loosely defined, the anniversary reaction is “an individual’s
response to unresolved grief resulting from significant losses [and] can
involve several days or even weeks of anxiety, anger, nightmares, flashbacks,
depression, or fear.”<a href="file:///F:/Father%20Memoir/UoD%20Blood%20and%20Circumstance%20draft.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Unlike her, my trauma refuses to be soothed by isolation, or therapy, or
medication. For me, the last weeks of July bring on an uncontrollable sense of
restlessness, grief, anger, shame, and fatigue. Most of what I felt about my
father’s arrest went unresolved in my childhood. My family’s reaction—the
product of a repressed American culture—was to sweep it under the rug, keep it
taboo, lie about it. Let it hang over our heads and leave us to simply toughen
up or drown under the weight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<o:p> ***</o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The morning after my father’s arrest, a group of thin Brothers and their
over-stuffed wives from our LDS church ward convened in our living room. They looked at us with a mixture of pity and
doubt as if we were co-conspirators. My mother got down on her knees while one
of the Brothers held his hand on her head and prayed. From a metal vial he wore on a beaded chain
around his neck, he sprinkled water onto her forehead. My mother cried the way
only a woman whose husband had been keeping secrets could cry—tears of shame
and ignorance. The thin Brothers then moved on to praying over me. The holy
water ran down my forehead and caught in my eyelashes. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Out in our dirt yard, Grandma smoked one cigarette after the other and
snubbed them out into the marigolds my mother had just planted.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
While the Brothers prayed, their wives set up shop in our kitchen. They’d leave behind casseroles and Bundt
cakes, all of it laced with pity and suspicion. While the holy water dripped
from my face and onto the brown shag of our living room, I could feel the women
staring. And the stares of those
churchgoing Brothers and Sisters, our townspeople, our friends expected us to
be hiding other secrets. After all, we’d let my father’s evil into the house.
No one believed my mother nor I—because I was the oldest—knew nothing about my
father’s double life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Immediately following his arrest, my mother phoned my father’s parents to
tell them what had happened, and they didn’t say much, only that they would
come to see us in a few days. “They didn’t seem surprised,” Grandma told me a
few years later. “I imagine they’d been waiting for something like this to
happen. Of course they were waiting.” She’d scoff at this point, light a
cigarette even if she still had another one burning, and say between puffs, “Of
course they were waiting because they knew he was sick way before Mickey
married him, and they just let it happen. Without saying a word. They never got
him any help. Even after The Gas Company, they didn’t tell anyone even then.
They should’ve. They were sorrysonsofbitches not to say a word.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The Gas Company was code for my father’s short stint as a meter reader. A
few years after his conviction, when I was ten or eleven, I’d come home from
school to find a strange man standing in our backyard. Men in general scared
me, and when I ran through the house screaming to Grandma that someone was in
the yard, she’d said, “Don’t be an idiot. That’s just the gas man.” After he’d
jotted our numbers down on his clipboard, he walked on to the next house, and
through a slit in the curtains I watched him go. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
That incident prompted Grandma to tell me about my father’s career when
he was just twenty-three years old, just after my younger sister, Deidre, had
been born. His blonde hair had just begun to recede, so both his forehead and
his aluminum-framed glasses glinted in the sun while he walked from property to
property on his Hollywood route for the Southern California Gas Company. Sometime halfway through, he found himself
inside the bedroom of a woman who lived alone.
She was about thirty and sleeping atop the sheets with her sliding glass
door open to the faint summer breeze. He
didn’t know how long he’d been standing there watching her, but he’d touched
her hair and it had woken her. She began yelling at him immediately. He stepped backward, nearly falling over the
frame of the sliding door. He dashed
around the corner to where he’d parked the company truck. He started the engine
and drove.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
“He smelled gas, that’s what he said,” Grandma told me. “He rang the bell
and knocked, gone into the back yard to see if the family was outside. That’s when he saw the woman through the
window on the bed and worried that she’d asphyxiate, but she got
hysterical. Accusing him of all kinds of
things. He panicked and ran away.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
When I finally wrote to my father twenty years after Grandma’s rendering
of the events, he admitted he’d known he’d done something wrong, but couldn’t
explain what had brought him into that woman’s bedroom, why he thought he could
get away with the gas leak story. All he wrote about it was that he knew he
was “in trouble” because he’d pulled into the company lot and saw the police
cars. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
When he went before a judge to plead guilty for trespassing, one of the
police who’d first arrived at the gas company to arrest my father gave a brief
statement about how calm and collected he’d seemed. The woman had spoken to him at the police
station. She’d said she wouldn’t press
charges. The judge listened patiently
when my father told his story of the smell of gas. He didn’t know why he was standing in the
courtroom, why the police insisted he plead or stand trial. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
My mother and grandparents, and our church bishops believed the
story. But the judge didn’t buy it. And
after his arrest, Grandma told The Gas Company story with suspicion, with
gusto, as if she too hadn’t been duped. At the end of it she always said, “I
knew something was wrong. I told your mother to leave him then.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
“She never told me that,” my mother told me recently. “She didn’t even
know the whole story. Your grandmother could take a little bit of knowledge
about something and turn it into a circus when she wanted to. That’s why we never
told her the rest of it, just that Terry had been let go.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
But really, he’d been sentenced to psychiatric therapy. He spoke to a
court-ordered psychologist for six months.
By then, he’d found a new job as a machinist at Menasco, and at the end
of his Tuesday and Thursday shifts, he headed to the clinic on Tujunga. He sat with the man for an hour each time,
while he was asked questions about his family, his friends, the church, his
job. After a month, the doctor began probing him about his parents and my
father began to suspect the therapist was fishing for something. Those things were private, he’d said. He could handle them himself. They had nothing to do with why he was there.
That was the judge’s doing. He just
wanted to get the six months over with.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
***</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
My father’s arrest happened during the summer break between my first and
second grade years of school. I’d spent much of first grade in a deep funk
because I missed kindergarten and the naps we’d taken in the afternoons. My kindergarten teacher’s name was Mrs.
Kreis, but to my young Mormon ears it sounded like Christ, so I’d spent many
days after school complaining to my mother that I missed Mrs. Christ and wanted
to go back to kindergarten. To this complaint, my mother told me to go to my
room and get Mousie and read a book.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Mousie was a felt hand-puppet that Mrs. Kreis used during story time.
She’d read to us from a different book each day and as we all formed a circle
around her she asked for a volunteer to retrieve Mousie from the closet where
she kept all kinds of supplies. I always volunteered, not scared of the dark
dank closet, and so I was nearly always the one to grab Mousie from his shelf
and bring him into the circle. He was made of gray felt and wore a bright pink
vest with a watch fob dangling from the front pocket. At the end of my
kindergarten year, Mrs. Kreis left Alpine Elementary, and she’d given me Mousie
because I loved him. I spent much of the summer afternoons with him on my left
hand, reading books in my room. After my father’s arrest, I took Mousie with me
to Grandma’s house where the three of us girls were staying while my mother
“sorted things out.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
That summer I also moved up into a new Sunday school class and it became
my responsibility to remember all of the Ten Commandments. On top of these, our God had sent Joseph
Smith some additional rules, and I learned his history by singing, “Book of
Mormon stories that my teacher tells to me/ all about the Roman knights in
ancient history.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Our Sunday school class met in the church gym, the place where the
teenagers held their dances and, once a year we had a family festival and a
Magic Show. The room was partitioned on
Sunday’s by gray cloth screens, creating cubicles for the classes—one for the
five-year-olds, one for six, seven, eight, etc.
It wouldn’t be until we were in our teens that they’d start grouping us
with different age mates based on what we could learn out of The Bible, <i>The Book of Mormon,</i> <i>Pearl of Great Price</i>, and <i>Doctrine
and Covenants</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Our teacher arranged us all into a circle, and we recited the Ten
Commandments. It was well known in our Sunday school class that if they
couldn’t be memorized or if the numbers from the thirteen<i> Articles of Faith </i>were given incorrectly, advancement to the next
class would be impossible. That’s why
one of the teenager groups was whispered to be the <i>stupid group.</i> The members of
the stupid group consisted of kids who’d joined the church late or didn’t own
their own <i>Book of Mormon,</i> and every
Sunday they’d check one out of the library where my mother worked. None of them could even read, really, we said.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Although I was bright—a Super Speller and Math Whiz—I couldn’t keep the
Ten Commandments and Articles of Faith straight. I was too busy wondering where my father had
gone, and trying to believe my mother when she said, “He’s never coming back,”
even though I thought he would. And then I’d think, if the words of God were so
important, then my Sunday school teacher should make up a song to help me
remember them, the way Mrs. Kreis had taught us in kindergarten. Of course, I
was the only kid in my class thinking this as very few of them actually
attended public school—their mothers taught them in makeshift classes in
garages and living rooms. I had all of
this on my mind, coupled with the weight of the stares in my direction, when I
arrived in class after Testimony (<i>There
she is, the white elephant we won’t talk about!</i>), so that by the time my
Sunday school teacher got around the circle to me and stated a number for a
Commandment or Covenant, I’d answer incorrectly. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
She’d ask, “Joyce, do you know Jesus Christ in your heart? He wants you to know him, but you have to
live by these words.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
On one of the Sundays after my father’s arrest, when I hadn’t seen my
mother until that morning before church, I thought long and hard, staring at my
patent leather shoes and stupid frilly socks I had to wear. Finally I answered, “I know Mrs. Christ, my kindergarten
teacher. She read to us with Mousie, and
he makes reading easy.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
At the end of the church, as families stood around the massive foyer and
chatted about the upcoming workweek and family dinners and who’d be giving Testimony
for next Sunday, my teacher pulled my mother aside and told her what had
happened. She was afraid for my soul,
she said.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
“She’s seven,” my mother said, always practical. “Have you tried a puppet? Maybe that would help.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
</div>
<div style="border-bottom: dotted windowtext 3.0pt; border: none; mso-element: para-border-div; padding: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; line-height: 200%; mso-border-bottom-alt: dotted windowtext 3.0pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; mso-pagination: none; padding: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
No, she hadn’t tried a puppet, my teacher
said. All the other kids in my class
were capable of saving their souls without Mousie.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; line-height: 200%; mso-border-bottom-alt: dotted windowtext 3.0pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; mso-pagination: none; padding: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="border: none; line-height: 200%; mso-border-bottom-alt: dotted windowtext 3.0pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; mso-pagination: none; padding: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="file:///F:/Father%20Memoir/UoD%20Blood%20and%20Circumstance%20draft.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;" title="">[1]</a></span></span></span><span style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;">
“Anxiety and Sadness May Increase on Anniversary of Traumatic Event.” American Psychological
Association. 2011.</span></span></div>
</div>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-62226774116244644342015-07-21T15:49:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.203-04:00And I Don't Know What to Do with My Anger<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<![endif]-->I'm very angry. And by that I mean I've made snarky comments to my husband and he's now sick of them so I'm going to blog about my anger. It takes a lot to get my blood boiling. And it takes a special kind of asshole for me to publicly acknowledge that assholishness. I'll take a lot of shit from someone. But I can't stand a person who lowers my property values.<br />
<br />
If you've read <a href="http://joyousinhell.blogspot.com/search/label/neighbors" target="_blank">any of my blogs</a>, you're familiar with the woman who took up residence in the <a href="http://joyousinhell.blogspot.com/2012/04/open-letter-1.html" target="_blank">beautiful, well-maintained home next door</a>. You're also familiar with <a href="http://joyousinhell.blogspot.com/2012/04/open-letter-2.html" target="_blank">the 4-6 grandchildren</a> living with her at any given moment, the revolving door of pets, and the daughter(s) in and out of rehab/prison. You know that she converted the two-car garage into bedrooms and allowed the above-ground pool to congeal into a cesspool that eventually broke free of its walls and killed the grass and beautiful ornamental bushes in the backyard. You know there's the constant smell of dog shit wafting from the yard. For reasons unknown, she's never bothered to use the sprinkler system on the grass and has let the crape myrtle trees and hedges grow willy-nilly. The doorbell is missing. Only two wires remain, poking through a dark hole near the front door. The front bedroom window has been boarded up for two years, ever since one of the ragged teens broke the glass with a baseball bat.<br />
<br />
Earlier this summer, the teens were all been shipped off to their respective fathers. Then, my neighbor's brother suddenly died, and she has been left to care for her elderly mother. She stays with her mother for days at a time and the house has been empty, quiet.<br />
<br />
But last month, she took in a woman with three children. The youngest child, and only girl, is a year ahead of our daughter in school. They have been attached to each other all summer, often playing until it's dark outside. She is a sweet little girl, well mannered. I like her. And that's saying something. Because I hate kids.<br />
<br />
So I allowed myself to think that perhaps I was being too hard on my neighbor. If my daughter enjoyed playing at the house, and I enjoyed having one of its residents as a guest, I really shouldn't get upset when the sturdy wooden mailbox post suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a rickety bent pole held up by three landscape pavers. It was a price I was willing to pay for my daughter's happiness.<br />
<br />
I was even a bit awed--and jealous--this weekend when a whirlwind of activity began outside of the house. A parade of lawn care dudes and pressure washing dudes and shirtless dudes, marched around repairing, cleaning, pruning, and sprucing. I thought perhaps the young woman and her three children were making some sort of positive influence on my neighbor. Perhaps with the other teens gone to their daddies, my neighbor could finally make the house a home. She was even out in the yard cutting away dead limbs on the once-lush knockout roses.<br />
<br />
Then, the unthinkable happened. They put down pine straw.<br />
<br />
Mulching is a commitment. It says, "See, I care if my trees and shrubs and flowers live through the harsh weather."<br />
<br />
I thought, <i>Holy shit, they've actually started to take pride in the place now that they've completely fucked it up</i>. Even with the enclosed garage and still-boarded window, the yard maintenance was enough to make me think that the property value had risen a bit.<br />
<br />
I bragged to my neighbor on the fantastic job.<br />
<br />
I should have known.<br />
<br />
I came home from work today and a "For Sale" sign was in the yard. And not the half-assed <i>yeah-we-may-sell</i> sort of "By Owner" shit. This is the real deal. A Coldwell Banker sign.<br />
<br />
Great. I think we all know the kind of people who buy homes with converted garages. I hate those people. They have a slew of lonely pets. Their garbage cans are constantly over-filled. There are strange smells seeping through the cracked windows. That's right. I'm talking about large families. Families with hoards of kids. Knock-on-your-door-all-the-time kids. Kids with snotty noses and scraped knees and sticky hands. Kids like mine.<br />
<br />
Now that my neighbor has done so much ugly damage that a pressure wash and a layer of pine straw won't cover it, she's abandoning ship. She's going to allow a huge family to move in and terrorize me. I can see it now: the mother who will home-school the entire brood. And the husband who will shake his head because I work. They'll take "stay-cations."<br />
<br />
And they'll lower my property value with the 10,000 plastic sand buckets and ride-on toys strewn about the front lawn.<br />
<br />
I just can't wait. Can't. Wait.<br />
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-52270053516056886332015-06-10T15:52:00.002-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.020-04:00Go Ahead, Take the Hormones. But, Please, Not "Caitlyn"So here's the post you've all been waiting for. And when I say "all" I mean about half of you. Or, realistically, about five of you.<br />
<br />
Okay, really this is just for my one friend with whom I had the following text war:<br />
<br />
She wrote: "Have you seen Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of <i>Cosmo</i>?"<br />
<br />
"No," I wrote. "Do people actually read magazines anymore? Is <i>Cosmo</i> still around? Do they still publish those quizzes about what type of sex you'd be best at doing? I think I need to take that quiz again now that I'm older and fatter."<br />
<br />
Her: "You're missing the point."<br />
<br />
Me: "Which was?"<br />
<br />
Her: "Caitlyn Jenner."<br />
<br />
Me: "Is that one of those reality TV people? You know I don't have cable."<br />
<br />
Her: "You're hopeless. Caitlyn Jenner is Bruce Jenner."<br />
<br />
Me: "Bruce Jenner's what?"<br />
<br />
Her: "Huh?"<br />
<br />
Me: "His daughter? Wife? Sister? Mother? Aunt?"<br />
<br />
Her: "No, you idiot. Caitlyn Jenner IS Bruce Jenner."<br />
<br />
Me: "I'm confused."<br />
<br />
Her: "No, you're an idiot. Don't you even watch the news? Bruce Jenner is a guy who ran in the Olympics and now he's a woman."<br />
<br />
Me: "Running in the Olympics made him a woman?"<br />
<br />
Her: "I hate you sometimes. He was an Olympic athlete. He has lived as a man and has secretly been changing himself into a woman with hormones. He's on the cover of <i>Cosmo</i> and it says <i>Call Me Caitlyn</i> because he wants to be Caitlyn not Bruce."<br />
<br />
Me: "He wants to be called Caitlyn? Why? Can't he think of a better name? That name is so trite."<br />
<br />
Her: "I don't know what that means."<br />
<br />
Me: "It means it's stupid. And common." (I know the <i>real definition</i>.)<br />
<br />
Her: "Oh."<br />
<br />
Me: "Couldn't he have chosen something better? Less popular? Like Claire or Catherine or Cher? Or just move away from the C names altogether and choose something even more fabulous like Miranda or Penelope? Caitlyn is stupid. Every ten-year-old I know is named Caitlyn."<br />
<br />
Her: "Know a lot of ten-year-olds?"<br />
<br />
Me: "Shut up. It's a dumb name and you know it."<br />
<br />
Her: "You're missing the point."<br />
<br />
Me: "I don't think I am."joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-64206013147865039972015-05-15T11:08:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.257-04:00Don't Mind Me, I've Just Been DNA TestingThat moment when--after thinking for <i>all 37 years of your life</i> that you'll never know who your biological grandfathers were--you realize: "Holy fuck, I just did a DNA test and found out the identities of both of my biological grandfathers."<br />
<br />
Yep. That's me this week.<br />
<br />
Let me back up a little and explain how both of my grandmothers were promiscuous young women. Or at least one of them wanted us to think she was and the other one was but didn't want us to know.<br />
<br />
It's difficult, I know, to think of a grandmother as a sexual person, with desires and needs. And a vagina.<br />
<br />
For many years I've trained myself to divorce the chain-smoking, man-hating woman who was my maternal grandmother, from the young woman in high-heeled Mary Janes and a red feather in her hair who worked on a Louisiana riverboat casino and played blackjack until the wee hours of the morning. I've trained myself to separate the white-haired, plump woman who fried bacon every morning for my father, from the laughing-too-loud, flirty twenty-something that Granny had been when she was a waitress in Kansas City, Missouri. <br />
<br />
First, the liar. Yep, my maternal grandma wanted us all thinking she was a big-time hoe-bag. So much so that when both of my sisters got pregnant out of wedlock, and in their teens, she lit up a Pall Mall and was like, "Oh that happens all the time."<br />
<br />
When my youngest sister got divorced last year, after thirteen years of marriage, I told her, "Dude, go sleep around. Just blame it on our whore gene." There's a mixed bag of theories in genetic research whether or not it's in an individual's DNA to be promiscuous. Still, in a March article of <i>Daily Mail</i>, it was reported that 8% of woman aged 65-74 have had ten or more sexual partners. My grandmothers fit into that category, or were slightly ahead of the curve, so that gives my sister a free pass. Just catch up with Grandma. <br />
<br />
This week I confirmed with a DNA analysis of my spit that I hail from a group of people with the surname Tippen. My fourth great-grandparents were named John Wesley Tippen and Elizabeth Castleberry Tippen. I share genes with another living person who also had their DNA tested. This person is the third great-grandchild of the Tippens. The Tippen line carried down to me through my mother, and to her from a man Grandma married because, as she told my mother years later, she was preggo and needed a hubby, STAT. My mother's real father, Grandma said, was already married, was a traveling salesman from Michigan or Minnesota, or one of those "M" states no one ever admits to being from. She never told my mother a name or anything about this guy. Just that the Tippens were not blood relatives.<br />
<br />
Grandma was lying. But why the hell would you make up some shit about another man when <i>there was no other man</i>? The only thing I can think of--and this totally fits Grandma's possessive compulsions--is that at some point after Grandma had moved to California and remarried, my mother asked her about her biological father's identity. And Grandma, who couldn't handle any sort of rejection, told my mother a lie so she'd never want to go back to Texas and live with her father. So my mother has lived most of her life thinking there's a mythical father somewhere who may or may not know anything about her. When, really, her biological father died in 1971 and she never got to mourn him properly because she didn't think he was really her dad.<br />
<br />
Yep. I know. That is fucked up.<br />
<br />
It's the total opposite of what I'd do. If I got divorced and my kids wanted to live with their dad, I'd be all, "Sure. Here's a suitcase. Don't let the door hit you on your way out."<br />
<br />
Then I'd bust out my slut gene.<br />
<br />
Now let's address Granny. A born-again Christian, she's has never been forthcoming about the details of her sordid past. Instead, she's stuck a short story titled "I-Don't-Remember-Who-Your-Grandfather-Was," which reads, "Your father was adopted by Don when he was seven, so Don's his father." And that's it.<br />
<br />
But she can't deny the DNA that has linked me with a living second cousin, a huge branch of people still living in Missouri that have pictures of my father's biological father, who died in 1961, and lament that they never knew my father ever existed. They seem like a happy enough bunch and are curious about me and my sisters and our father. So I didn't really know what tone to take when I called Granny to give her the news. I finally decided on the casual route, saying, "Hey, I think I found a link to my biological grandfather," and gave her the name of the dude.<br />
<br />
And without missing a beat she said, "Yeah, that's him. He had red hair so I just called him 'Red.'"<br />
<br />
What the fuck?<br />
<br />
She's not senile. She hasn't been hit over the head with a blunt object. How the hell do you forget the name of the man who got you preggo and then, <i>poof</i>, remember?<br />
<br />
Though, I could completely understand a drunken one-night-stand, which is what I was thinking when Granny suddenly got even more of her memory back and elaborated: "He was an iron worker, much older than me. He worked on a crew building bridges. I didn't know he was married until one of the guys on his crew told his wife we were running around. By then I was pregnant with your father." <br />
<br />
Okay then.<br />
<br />
This is the big family mystery she's kept for over sixty years? She's never told my father the identity of his father because she fell for a married man? Sure it was 1953. Sure she was young and looking for a good time. But really? Never telling anyone? Or at least, never telling anyone who might need to know family medical history information? Apparently, having her son and three granddaughters write "unknown" on doctor's office information forms, then having the doctor say things like, "This cancer could be hereditary, if only we knew..." was a lot less humiliating than telling her son the name of his father.<br />
<br />
What is with that generation and lying? Is this what sex-shaming has done? Created an entire female generation, or two, or three, or thousand, who are so completely terrified of living the truth that they deny it even happened? And we wonder why we have a mental health epidemic in this country; we're afraid to live our own truths because of what our neighbors will say about our bedroom behavior. When will we, as a culture, embrace women's sexuality and promiscuity without labeling them "sluts"? Without running them out of town, pushing them to the fringes because they remind us of our own unfulfilled sexual desires? Instead, let's practice birth control--educating young women about how to effectively use condoms and hormonal injections and little pills that can keep away unplanned pregnancy, and <i>allow them the sexual freedom they deserve</i>.<br />
<br />
Let's not be afraid to talk about Grandma's vagina. joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-58245926486631439152015-02-17T11:46:00.000-05:002018-07-20T08:32:14.139-04:00The Great Depression...this is a long-ish piece i've been working on for a LONG time...i think i finally figured out in the last few months what i really wanted to say here about hunger and poverty and depression...it's changed very much since the initial draft and i'm pleased to say that the parts i cut have found their way into a new piece of writing...i'll be shopping this around soon, so i welcome comments and feedback...<br />
<br />
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<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
The
Great Depression</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">“Maybe
sadness was a kind of hunger, she thought. Maybe the two went together.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Year of the Flood, </i>Margaret Atwood</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The Big House—as we called it—came to Grandma through auction in the
summer of 1992.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A small grouping of
tract homes, on the outskirts of the California desert where we lived, had gone
bankrupt because no one was buying 3500-square-foot houses during a recession. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People in our town were more concerned with eating
regular meals than luxury living. But in our family—that small unit consisting
of just Grandma and me—beautiful architecture and unnecessary square footage
trumped food. All of the abandoned homes in the small neighborhood were for sale.
They were gorgeous pastel stucco two-stories, with Spanish tile roofs and large
airy rooms. But they’d been dumped into the middle of bare yards, cinder block
walls dividing the lots from the trailer park next door. Grandma wanted the
model home, completely landscaped and furnished. Its bedrooms were supposed to
simulate easy living, the living rooms (two of them) were designed to make even
a family of ten comfortable, and the dining table set for a wax
ham-and-potatoes dinner enticed buyers to pull up a chair. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The facade had failed. That should’ve been a warning to anyone who wanted
to live there.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
The auction was held in a motel that had once been a razzle-dazzle place
along Sierra Highway, but was now home to transients, off-the-books day
workers, and immigrants. Before the auction, Grandma parked her aging maroon Cadillac
in the faded parking lot and groaned when she slid out from behind the wheel.
Her back popped. Her pumps crunched the broken asphalt. She flicked a lighter
and stood in the pitted lot while smoking a cigarette. She said, “I’m not going
above 130.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How she arrived at this
number I didn’t know. She might as well have said she wasn’t going to go above
two million. To me, all numbers were the same: money we didn’t have, money
others did.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Inside, the conference room smelled like a Las Vegas casino—dead promises
and stale cigarettes. It had low ceilings, dim lighting, wood paneled walls, brown
shag carpet. On the day she bought The Big House, we sat in the first row of
folding chairs set out before a long banquet table covered with a white
cloth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A man standing at a podium clicked
a slide projector when each home was put on the block. When the model house
came up for bid, Grandma raised her marker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The price reached 135, and still she bid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up, up, up it went.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Middle-Eastern couple across the aisle kept
raising their marker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the price
reached 195 I squeezed Grandma’s elbow, a gesture that was meant to say <i>Please
stop. </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Just stop.</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Grandma lifted her marker at 199, and before I knew what was happening
she’d won.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was silent, stricken with
fear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just knew the house would “go
back” as she said whenever she was borrowing from Peter MasterCard to pay Paul
Visa. She incessantly called one of her ex-husbands for more alimony. I’m not
exactly sure how she managed to buy a house without having a nickel in the bank
or a steady income, but I’ve since learned that recession homes can be
purchased with spit and a promise. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Once all of the paperwork was complete—a process that took less than an
hour and included several tongue clicks as Grandma signed on a series of dotted
lines—we walked out into the desert afternoon and climbed inside the Cadillac.
The cracked leather seats scorched my thighs. I couldn’t look at her, and spent
the ride back to our house attempting to ignore the churning of my empty stomach,
the anxiety that had plagued me for all of the years I’d lived with her<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">. </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5oKONxqF0wDKtoaIRxIxAMBKHGl2ZFO-_PzPU_XUn9MARChgctOB2OkQHOCk6BPDO-i31vqfHnZIkPnWgaBfZy0YVgzfCTqwFbnkHS5oH2CIUbBLQmqXDqh7Vj16c3QjHoJRInKIbkxg/s1600/Tiffany+Street+House.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5oKONxqF0wDKtoaIRxIxAMBKHGl2ZFO-_PzPU_XUn9MARChgctOB2OkQHOCk6BPDO-i31vqfHnZIkPnWgaBfZy0YVgzfCTqwFbnkHS5oH2CIUbBLQmqXDqh7Vj16c3QjHoJRInKIbkxg/s1600/Tiffany+Street+House.PNG" height="191" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Big House, 2014</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My
head began to ache and pulse above my temples and eyes. Grandma spoke only
once. Stopped at a red light, she lit a cigarette and said, “You wanted that
house so badly you pinched me on the arm. I think you left a bruise.”<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-align: center;">
* </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
We couldn’t afford a new house and I knew moving wouldn’t solve anything—I’d
fallen into a state of depression when I turned thirteen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At times, Grandma called it “hormones.” But
mostly she blamed it on the genetically far-fetched ideas of my incarcerated
father’s bad blood and her daughter’s stupidity in marrying him in the first
place. She often told me that if I strayed from her teachings, I’d become white
trash just like the both of them. When I heard these words, I thought of a
reverse Cinderella—a kingdom falling in on itself, a pumpkin instantly
transformed from carriage to rot. But her threats seemed to lose their impact when
I entered my teens. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
So, because she was the type of person to run from problems, the only
solution she could think of was to move me into a grand house where I could
build a new persona. Or the persona of what she called A Good Girl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Good Girl was a ghost. A Good Girl didn’t date,
go to the movies with friends, sleep over at girlfriends’ houses, or talk on
the telephone. A Good Girl went to school, occasionally participated in a
school-sanctioned activity like a club meeting or a dance, and never socialized
with classmates outside of the confines of the school grounds. A Good Girl
lived unknown to her peers. No one knew what went on within the confines of her
home.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
What went on behind this Good Girl’s closed door was the utter absence of
food. Grandma had a purse full of credit cards, all maxed out, and no income.
The only work we had was going to garage sales on Thursday and Friday
afternoons, and reselling the items we found at the local Swap Meet on
Saturdays and Sundays. I spent Friday nights cleaning and repairing trashed
items, readying them for a markup. Grandma gave them each a “family history” to
entice potential buyers. We’d arrive at the Swap Meet before the sunrise and
leave after dark. I’d subsist on water and four boiled eggs until Sunday when
Grandma stopped at VONS and bought bread, canned vegetables, a chicken, cheese,
Coke Classic, canned tuna, and cartons of cigarettes. Then we’d return to the
confines of the beautiful house.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Perhaps because of the housing boom and bust of the early 21<sup>st</sup>
century, American society is now more aware of the “near poor” or people who are
just getting by.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> But when I was a teenager,
normal-looking actually meant that you were just like everyone else. No one
knew I was hungry and poor. And I believed Grandma when she said all I needed
was a change of address to improve my mood. Everyone in my small hometown—home
of the T-shirt that read “Would the last person to leave Littlerock, CA please
turn off the lights?”—knew my father was in prison and my mother had left me
with Grandma years before. My days were spent under close watch, and I was Grandma’s
sole companion. Even in the middle of the night, when other kids’ parents were
sleeping, she was vigilant, sitting up in bed with the television blaring its
End of Broadcast signal, afraid that if she slept I’d somehow sneak away and
leave her all alone. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
By the summer she bought The Big House, I’d lived under Grandma’s roof
for six years and though the move was meant to pull me out of my depression, it
only worked to make me more aware of my shortcomings, the differences between
me and all of the other kids my age. My new school was more affluent, filled
with kids whose parents were doctors, teachers, lawyers, ranchers. They ate a
never-ending supply of Pop Tarts—something I knew the name of but had never
tasted—and never bothered to pick up change they dropped in the school parking
lot. While they were from two-parent families and complained about having to
eat asparagus while sitting next to annoying siblings at the dinner table, I
longed for food that might fill a plate and for siblings with whom I could
talk. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
I was ashamed of my hunger and kept quiet about it. No one knew that our
fridge seemed to have only three purposes: to keep Cokes, milk, and leftovers
cold, to house two glass jugs of water, and to preserve her Pall Mall
unfiltered cigarettes. No one knew a typical day in our home met me with a bowl
of cold cereal and nothing more. No one knew dinner was optional. On good days,
Grandma baked a chicken, smothered in onions, and a huge pot of fluffy white
rice. Or steak and gravy and green beans. Or goulash. Or spaghetti. I remember
these meals only because they were so infrequent they are burned into my
memory. Most of the time, dinner was an iceberg lettuce wedge smeared with
mayonnaise and a sprinkle of garlic powder. Or sugared toast. Or another bowl
of cereal. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Grandma never cooked anything until all of the left-overs from a meal had
been consumed. So never was I allowed to say, “I don’t want to eat that again.”
I’d tried it less than a handful of times and learned the result was an empty
belly until the next morning. I thought dinner rolls, biscuits, croissants, and
French bread were only for braggarts. I once went to a neighbor’s house and her
mother made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. They were as big as my hand and she
let us eat as many as we wanted with huge glasses of milk. When I got home and
reported my awe, Grandma’s response was to say, “If you think that sort of
thing happens every day, you’ve got another thing coming, gal. I’ve got more
important things to do than bake cookies for kids to just eat up in one
sitting.” She did make cookies once, the dough out of a tube. I was given two.
The next day at school I dreamed of those cookies and couldn’t wait to get
home. But when I arrived, they were all gone. She’d eaten them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
I realize that the food I managed to survive on during my childhood is more
than some children today find awaiting them when they get in from school,
especially those born to the “working poor.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a>
Like those kids, my main meal of the day came during school lunch. Grandma
bought me a lunch card at the start of every month, and I watched each day as
the thin construction paper square was consumed by the lunch lady’s hole punch.
Thirty years later, I still have nightmares that I arrive in line for lunch and
have lost my punch card. I look everywhere for it—even in my socks—but it’s
gone and I have to go without my only sure-fire meal of the day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
At some point in Grandma’s life—probably between her fourth and fifth
marriages—she was diagnosed with agoraphobia and prescribed Valium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have vague memories of a small brown bottle
in her purse right next to her Pall Malls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Every so often, she’d split a little yellow pill through its holed
center and down it with a swig of Coke. By the time she bought The Big House,
though, the valium had gone. Instead of heading to a doctor and getting a new
prescription, Grandma simply stemmed her increased nervousness with more
cigarettes. Smoking helps those with money worries “cope with high levels of
stress and depression.” A 2013 study reveals that depravity “creates enormous
mental anguish. One of the fastest, most convenient ways to help is a
cigarette.” Put simply, “smoking treats hunger pangs.”<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
She’d tried to quit smoking only once in her life. “That’s when I got as
big around as a house,” she often recalled of herself without nicotine. She’d
bring out her photo albums, a monthly ritual, and point to her “fat” pictures.
The only difference I could see was that her face was fuller, her bosom more
pronounced. When the albums appeared, she smoked more and picked at her meals,
only eating a small portion before dumping them back into the pot or pan. I’d
like to think she did this because we didn’t have the money to grocery shop and
she was allowing for more food for the upcoming days. But it was vanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Along with the photos went the stories—relatives long-dead, holidays
spent on vacation, tables laden with food prepared for a reunion or homecoming.
The glory of her past, my lineage, sat on the table before us and listening to
her talk about each picture filled my meal-time hours. She’d seen people die
from hunger and malnutrition from the earliest times she could remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was born in 1930, and for the first ten
years of her life her family hardly had enough food to survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Though she never admitted going hungry, she
would proudly tell me how poor they’d been, as if challenging me to contradict
the sepia-toned evidence. They lived on a farm in East Texas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My great-grandmother, Eula Mae, was an
Humble—as in Humble Oil and Humble, Texas—my great-grandfather, William, was
supposedly Cherokee Indian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two met
and fell in love and Eula was doomed, as Grandma said it, “to live a life
beneath her” until their divorce when Grandma and most of her siblings were
already adults. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
She’d had rich cousins, aunts, and uncles on her mother’s side who
visited the farm and brought hand-me-down clothes and tins of saltine crackers.
They took pictures of the family, flashed them around Humble and said things
like, “Just look at our country cousins.” Grandma never smiled in the pictures.
She hated being a country cousin. Poverty, or her rise from it, was her badge
of honor. Even as an adult, she hungered for the life she’d seen from her
Humble cousins. And The Big House, her Cadillac, her Good Girl granddaughter, all
flew in the face of that life-long hurt. These things might’ve been compromised
if she’d quit smoking and suddenly allowed herself to eat. Her self-worth was
somehow at stake. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Ruminations over old photographs were the extent of her conversations
about pain, physical or mental. She spoke matter-of-factly about the scorn from
her city cousins. She never elaborated on why, when she was still an infant,
her mother left her father for a short time. Left the kids in his care. Or why,
when her mother returned, after Grandma had already begun to walk, she clung to
her oldest sister. “I didn’t know my own mother,” she told me. “I screamed when
she tried to hold me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought Sister
was my mother, I guess.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never did she
outwardly admit that as the fourth living child in a family of ten that she had
to scramble for table scraps, to suck the meat from a chicken neck, eat a
sliver of cornbread in a mug of buttermilk as her only meal. Nor did she ever know
that prolonged malnutrition within the first year of life causes higher
anxiety, egocentrism, and lowered sociability in adults.<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Instead, she told stories about the people she said were “really
poor”—the displaced families of The Great Depression, who traveled in droves
through Texas. If the stragglers neared the family farm, my great-grandmother
would feed them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes twenty people
would eat off the same chicken. A pan of cornbread could feed a mob.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a small child, Grandma sat in the barn
loft and watched the men huddled around a campfire in the yard while sucking
chicken bones. Off in the distance, the women either crowded around their own
fire or clustered together trying desperately to get a new mother to release
the long-dead baby she clutched to her chest. The men ate because when the work
came they’d have to be strong enough to do it. The babies and women starved.
She told me how repulsed she was, how she would never be that bad off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center; text-indent: 0.5in;">
*</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
On the evenings when we sat down to a proper dinner, Grandma’s attention
was often elsewhere, sometimes on the television but more often she simply held
a far-away gaze almost as if she was in a trance. She lit a cigarette and let
it burn nearly to her fingers before realizing she’d done it. Then she’d light
another and puff away. At the time I was grateful for the silence—could
concentrate of the luxury of the food on my plate. But as I think about those
evening meals, I recall that she hardly touched her food. Instead, she let the
silence consume her, thoughts of her past, her family, their East Texas farm.
Or maybe she was worried about us, the fact that we might not have money for
the next bill or the next. And maybe, that led to regret, fear, and anger,<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a>
because on those glazed-over evenings she would, eventually, become furious and
stay up late into the night cursing something, someone. And, eventually, she’d
come around to “dirty, filthy men” and the husbands she’d left. And,
eventually, The Leather Jacket Man.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none;">
The Leather Jacket Man wasn’t his name, it was the name I gave to his
story. She never told me his name, never fleshed out his appearance or lineage
or any love he may have felt for her in return. He was a boyfriend from her
early teens who rode a motorcycle. The Depression had ended and the country was
booming from war-industry jobs. Oilfield and mill towns burst with people from
all over the country. One of them was this much-loved man, the one she wished
she’d never let go, the one who could’ve given her the life she wanted. He was
the one she spent years regretting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
told me, “It was the smell of his leather jacket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way the noon sun fell on a jagged fence
in the middle of that field beyond the barn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>How it felt like he squeezed my heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Into a tiny fist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s it,
mostly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you can’t convince yourself,
no matter how hard you try, that a man will deliver. When you’re young you want
everything fixed right away. You want someone to do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So. Sometimes where the heart goes, the mind
just won’t follow.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none;">
I’d then
listen to her talk about running away from her tiny family farm, not to marry
The Leather Jacket Man who brought her cotton candy and half-melted ice cream
cones from the tiny town mercantile, but into the arms of a man twice her age
who lived in a nearby city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He bought
her pretty clothes but she claimed, “He never touched me.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She ran away from that husband to work on the
riverboats of Lake Pontchartrain. She met a woman with the last name Moneymaker
who took her on trips to Chicago and New York.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Eventually, she became pregnant with a married man’s child and cuckolded
another husband. Her second illegitimate child got her run out of The South,
all the way to California, where she married husband four or five.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But always, she came full circle to that
first love, the motorcycle she rode while wrapping her arms around his waist,
resting her cool cheek against the warm leather jacket.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none;">
Now that I’m
an adult, I understand why creating me as A Good Girl in the way she did was so
important to Grandma. It was an attempt to save me not just from myself, but
from her past. Perhaps to keep me from the pain she must’ve felt for the
majority of her life. Her external behavior masked a serious internal, mental
deficit that began with childhood hunger<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a>
and went unnamed for the entirety of her life. Her depression shaped me more
than anything that went on behind the walls of The Big House.</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 200%; text-align: center;">
*</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none;">
I never
thought Grandma would consciously not eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even if it was simply potato chips and cigarettes and Coke, I was sure
she’d have enough. But after I left home, she quit cooking and actively starved
herself to pay the mortgage and utilities on The Big House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When her alimony payments dried up, she sold
most of her antiques and slept on a narrow couch in the den near the front door
because she was afraid of intruders in the night. Her mind began to slip, her
memories escaping like ravenous field mice. Eventually, she sold The Big House
and moved into a retirement complex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’d
call me from her small apartment and leave message after message about how sick
she felt, how her back and head hurt, how she wanted to move back to The Big
House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I equated this last comment with a
threat of suicide and didn’t know what to say when I returned her calls. I
tried to get her to talk about her family farm, The Great Depression, The
Leather Jacket Man, until one day when she scoffed with indignity and said,
“What the hell are you talking about, a man in a leather jacket? I’ve never ridden
a motorcycle in my life.”</div>
<div class="MsoBodyText2" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none;">
Perhaps if
she’d been born after The Great Depression, or not been left by her mother, or
if she’d acknowledged her own suffering beyond nostalgia, Grandma might’ve
escaped her own mind, perhaps she wouldn’t have become so physically frail that
the wind seemed to whistle through her bones. Or if I’d been stronger, been
able to handle life without a father and mother and food on the table, she
never would’ve bought The Big House and instead she could’ve bought groceries
and fed her memories with more than ghost stories and nicotine. Perhaps then
she could’ve continued to remember The Leather Jacket Man instead of losing
him, too. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have a sepia-toned photo of
Grandma in her late teens, the years of The Leather Jacket Man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In it, she seems happy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s plump-faced and sitting on what looks
to be a veranda, on a stone bench near an iron rail. A mural of palm trees is
painted behind her. I can see why so many men loved her—big eyes and full
lips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no idea where the photo was
taken because it was given to me after her death by her brother, who came
across it from an old friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The friend
had the photo for over fifty years and claimed Grandma had given it to
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think of this nameless, faceless
old man as the young leather jacket lover who held the photo for years, even
during his own marriage, recalling a time in his life when he was happiest. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
That photo squeezes my heart thinking about the loneliness that
then-happy girl would grow up to face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
In the photo, she looks just like me, or I look like her. The resemblance
used to throw me into a panic where I feared I was doomed by blood and
circumstance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the majority of my
adult life, I’ve struggled with the depression that began in my youth. At times
it consumes me so much that I cry for no reason. On my way home from work, I’ll
turn down a road off of my usual route, pull over to the curb, and simply stare
out into the sky. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It causes me to run to
the store for more groceries. I finally realized, after a particularly long
bout of depression where I hoarded not only potato chips but also laundry
detergent, that I needed help. When I approached my doctor, I thought of
Grandma and her far-away gaze at the dinner table. I told my physician, “I’ve
been thinking of killing myself.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Nonplussed he said, “How long have you had these thoughts?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
“Since I was thirteen.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
He frantically scratched on a prescription pad and encouraged me to seek
out a psychiatrist. That was eight years ago. And every night, when I take my
little blue pill, I remind myself that the past, this depression, is a dangerous
thing. I can’t forget to take the pills, to fill the prescription, or my
afternoon sky gazing will become too much. I’ll seek out the nearest closet and
use my own belt as a noose.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
And I think of Grandma, and her regrets. Of her past spread all around her
like a field of wheat at harvest time. As far as the eye can see are decades.
One loaf of bread grown from those crops initiates a series of memories, some ending
with abandonment, starvation, and pining.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And when she wasn’t careful, an entire field left her crying into her
bone-light hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: .5in;">
Just before her death, Grandma wrestled with days of mania, forgetting
where she stored her towels, soap, coffee. She accused her neighbors of
stealing. My mother took her to the grocery store and made sure her cabinets
were overstocked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she forgot to eat.
And the lack of food allowed her mind to fade even further into depression.
When I remember her now, she’s sitting at the glass-topped table of the tiny
kitchen in her last apartment, not the huge looming kitchen of The Big
House.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She drinks coffee and smokes
cigarettes, and though there is a full plate before her, she doesn’t eat.
Instead, she stares in silence through the large window at the clear blue sky. As
if she’s waiting for The Leather Jacket Man and the return of the time when he made
her forget her poverty. As if the fields of her memory are full of nothing else
but him and something intangible she’s always hungered for.</div>
<div style="mso-element: footnote-list;">
<br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<div id="ftn1" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> Jason DeParle, Robert
Gebeloff, and Sabrina Tavernise. “Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’
Startle Census.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New York Times.</i> November 18, 2011.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn2" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a> DeParle, Gebeloff, and
Tavernise. “Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New York Times. </i>November 18, 2011.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a> “For the poor, cigarettes
a salve for hunger pangs and mental woes.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philadelphia
Inquirer.</i> November 11, 2013.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a> Galler, Bryce, Zichlin,
Waber, Exner, Fitzmaurice, & Costa. “Malnutrition in the first year of life
and personality at age 40” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry.</i> Association for Child and Adolescent
Mental Health. 2013.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn5" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftnref5" name="_ftn5" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span></span></span></a> Trafton, Anne. “‘Hunger
Hormone’ Linked to PTSD: Chronic Stress elevates ghrelin, increasing
susceptibility to fear.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Technology
Review.</i> January 1, 2014.</div>
</div>
<div id="ftn6" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6488489120929607545#_ftnref6" name="_ftn6" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[6]</span></span></span></span></a> Galler, Briyce, Waber,
Sichlin, Fitzmourice, & Eaglesfield. “Socioeconomic outcomes in adults
malnourished in the first year of life: a 40 year study.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pediatrics.</i> June 25, 2012.</div>
</div>
</div>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-82606524174048751712014-12-10T13:15:00.000-05:002018-07-20T08:32:14.451-04:00Staten Island: You Get What You Don't Vote For<br />
...in 2009, Staten Island had a population of 4<span class="st">91,730 residents of which </span>76.9% were over eighteen years of age (according to the US census bureau)...that means there were 378,140 potential voters living in Staten Island in 2009...<br />
<br />
...<a href="http://www.decidenyc.com/post-election-staten-island-looks-ahead/" target="_blank">roughly 70,000 registered voters in Staten Island cast ballots in the last NYC mayoral election</a>...if we use 70,000 as a benchmark for the number of Staten Island residents who vote in a typical local election, <b>5.4% of people are determining who runs the city</b>...<br />
<br />
...so <b>5.4% of people are deciding how the city is run</b>...<br />
<br />
...i recently came across a news clip of protesters in Berkeley shutting down part of a freeway and the BART to show solidarity with their Staten Island brethren protesting <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/03/eric-garner_n_6263656.html" target="_blank">the grand jury decision to pass on an indictment of the police officer who used a choke hold on eric garner</a>...i love a good protest...especially if it'll shut down a branch of "the system" that is "broken":<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnbP6N9lnB3L0r-Q27rEuvGp88UJCetlNmJrtHJRmMGoEMjSFcFROr5bsOeT5RVvTOLGsb2BX4406CxSX3ObckD0PDOlpcqNT6BLHRjyoJImVNWWq4VDQnqnUMh_X7FDhiVwDf52PP42I/s1600/Separate-but-equal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnbP6N9lnB3L0r-Q27rEuvGp88UJCetlNmJrtHJRmMGoEMjSFcFROr5bsOeT5RVvTOLGsb2BX4406CxSX3ObckD0PDOlpcqNT6BLHRjyoJImVNWWq4VDQnqnUMh_X7FDhiVwDf52PP42I/s1600/Separate-but-equal.jpg" height="223" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />...i don't love traffic...nor do i love the <strike>common</strike> practice of the police murdering citizens...but i fail to see the connection between stopping traffic and stopping the abuse of power...<br />
<br />
...a protest <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nypd-chokehold-death-grand-jury-votes-not-to-charge-cop-in-eric-garner-case/" target="_blank">march on Washington is in the works</a>...fantastic...but i wonder if al sharpton and the rest of the organizers wouldn't mind reminding their protesters that a grand jury decided not to indict the officer...grand jury members are selected from the general populace of registered voters...<br />
<br />
...additionally, most cities in america hold local elections for positions like district attorney...<a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/04/meet-dan-donovan-the-prosecutor-who-let-eric-garner-s-killer-walk.html" target="_blank">dan donovan has won four Staten Island races</a>...it was his "office" that failed to persuade the grand jury that the officer should stand trial...<br />
<br />
...so to use my perfect math and wonky hypothesis on voting trends: <b>5.4% of Staten Island residents have voted for dan donovan four times...the other 94.6% of potential voters have been content to let that happen</b>...<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/05/police-chokehold-eric-garner_n_6277790.html" target="_blank">in the case of eric garner</a>--and any other people murdered by police--you get what you vote for...or, for Staten Island residents, you get what you don't vote for...<br />
<br />
...i realize protesting gets press...i realize there are no sound bytes when we vote...it's illegal--within 100 yards of a polling place--to carry signs or wear controversial t-shirts that make grand statements about candidates or issues...but if you're willing to stand in the middle of a freeway and stop traffic because you think "the system" is letting you down, you should be willing to stand in line to vote to change that system...there's probably less of a chance of being hit by a car doing the latter...joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-37910513543936103592014-11-04T08:19:00.001-05:002018-07-20T08:32:13.870-04:00It's Election Day...So Why Am I At Work?...so i voted in my first election when i was eight...technically, my vote didn't count (thank the gods because i simply checked all of the republican candidates' boxes the way Grandma told me to) but i was hooked on politics at that point...during every election, Grandma volunteered to run the polls...and at every election, i was there with her...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL8jcY03vxoeMOAL1dPV6tlV4ibUwiI095-bwcTDcjPw-NNzShdVnav3oGcGRPdKe0noiRS08nre5spPoqbvxZaJthtQfasXeTAUGMwZojJut0gj81DzUGWGgIvytKkHPBJT6HiXmaxnI/s1600/Turtle.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL8jcY03vxoeMOAL1dPV6tlV4ibUwiI095-bwcTDcjPw-NNzShdVnav3oGcGRPdKe0noiRS08nre5spPoqbvxZaJthtQfasXeTAUGMwZojJut0gj81DzUGWGgIvytKkHPBJT6HiXmaxnI/s1600/Turtle.PNG" height="220" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>...neither one cares about you...<br />...both are completely fine with allowing the universe to collapse...</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...i don't understand why today isn't a national holiday...i mean, we still celebrate columbus and he was a slave-owning miscreant whose own crew mutinied (three different times)...he was brought back to europe in chains...he couldn't have navigated his way out of a palace hedge maze and he thought natives were animals who should be brought back to "civilization" in cages...but, hey, close the banks...<br />
<br />
...seriously...here's a way to get more people to the polls: HOLIDAY! <br />
<br />
...turn this time into a four-day weekend...that way americans can vacation, shop, and overeat...and, perhaps, squeeze in a vote...joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-62616376353093332212014-10-20T15:12:00.000-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.235-04:00An Open Letter to Any Students Taking College Composition, But Specifically My OwnDear Writing Students,<br />
<br />
Stop blaming your high school English teachers for your mistakes. Just because they didn't teach you how to diagram sentences doesn't mean you can fault them when you misuse a conjunction. And stop asking if you can start a sentence with "and" or "but." YES YOU CAN! (Notice I've done it once already and I haven't burst into flames.) To begin a sentence with "and" or "but" is a stylistic choice. We write
sentences that begin with "and" and "but" for emphasis. Because of <i><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/12/schools-standardized-testing-fail-students" target="_blank">No Child Left Behind</a></i>, your high school English teachers couldn't cover this complex nuance of the written word. But they understand it. And they've seen it in action in plenty of "books." (You know, "books"? Those funny-smelling rectangular things with words on the pages?) If sentences couldn't begin with "and," Joan Didion would be a Starving Unknown, living in the doldrums of Sacramento.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZtwy7tc3obXDF-nbw6yv3-h4y4tIdV-2gdAvw-YOAtFnyZIBTkQrdv1GsZHz7RO70ZW3JNsGk1PxaAeFez_LN9co0NRRYA_JPaGKwL0VN3zO31SOzcj3hHsjxMQ-m6exsuc9fSIcp9I/s1600/faulkner+fish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdZtwy7tc3obXDF-nbw6yv3-h4y4tIdV-2gdAvw-YOAtFnyZIBTkQrdv1GsZHz7RO70ZW3JNsGk1PxaAeFez_LN9co0NRRYA_JPaGKwL0VN3zO31SOzcj3hHsjxMQ-m6exsuc9fSIcp9I/s1600/faulkner+fish.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Holy-One-Sentence-Chapter, Batman!</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Speaking of Didion, it's also perfectly fine to write a one or two sentence paragraph. Again, writers do this for emphasis of a point they're making.<br />
<br />
Quit trying to fool me with your enlarged margins, extra spaces between paragraphs, and/or 14 point fonts. We've covered MLA style. Even if you missed it, you can Google it and figure it out. This isn't my first rodeo, cowboys. I can spot intentional MLA finagling from a screenshot away.<br />
<br />
What the fuck do you mean you "don't know how to word process"? Computers have been around <i>longer than you've been alive</i>. I used a typewriter in college. My life got totally complex when I got my first dot matrix printer. (I know you have no idea what I'm talking about, so Google these things.) <i>I've</i> figured out how to open, write, and save my documents. You should've been able to do it <i>in utero</i>. <br />
<br />
Having a computer that has crashed, died, blown up and created a house fire, or otherwise failed you right as you finished your essay is no excuse for losing all of your work. Your generation invented USB drives. You're required to have one for the class. (See the syllabus.) Plug the damned thing in and save your blank document before you start to write. Then save it after you write every paragraph. BACK YOUR SHIT UP, people. Seriously, you're exhausting me.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNxuM9fFMN9z-EtYlD-T0SwDmG-X6Lc66TmuIqjLcU52XJ2Ez9OPorfhw0TWXHdgoyv3NfR78q9u6isb5EVnhvyiz21IVafNkf__5ySUOfasDVr52qrDy3vjBEhEpw_diS2Ro4mj-W66Q/s1600/Dead_Grandma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNxuM9fFMN9z-EtYlD-T0SwDmG-X6Lc66TmuIqjLcU52XJ2Ez9OPorfhw0TWXHdgoyv3NfR78q9u6isb5EVnhvyiz21IVafNkf__5ySUOfasDVr52qrDy3vjBEhEpw_diS2Ro4mj-W66Q/s1600/Dead_Grandma.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a>Let me give you some sage advice: call your loved ones now. Especially your grandparents. <b>Because I'm about to assign an essay and it's going to kill a lot of elderly people.</b> In fact, it might also kill your pet turtle, your brother's best friend who-is-like-a-brother to you, and a member of "1 Direction." I'm not kidding. It happens all the time. I am a mass murderer. Sometimes I kill every member of my students' families, except parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and cousins. But the rest die as soon as the essay writing begins. I'm trying to save you from the shame spiral into which my past students have fallen. The grief is going to consume you and
you won't be able to write your essays if you don't call/visit/coddle your
grandma/turtle/friend/boy band member. So go ahead and stop reading this letter and get in touch with these loved ones. Right now. <br />
<br />
Also, I keep a stack of sympathy cards in my office for moments like those mentioned in the previous paragraph. I send them to the affected families, so when you come to my office with a program from the funeral, be prepared to leave me with an address where I can send my deepest regrets for your recent loss.<br />
<br />
Okay, so you've got kids. Guess what? So do I. Three of them. Ohmygodwetotallyjustbonded. No.<br />
<br />
Okay, so you've got kids who, for some reason, constantly keep you from getting your essays done. The last time you sat down to write, your toddler pushed the exact key on the keyboard that deleted all of your work. That is one <i>fucking smart kid</i> to have picked that one key from a whole host of keys. Call MENSA now. Let that kid pick your next Lotto numbers. And what key is it, exactly, that deletes everything? I don't seem to have it on my keyboard and I want to get one so I can use this excuse the next time my boss gives me a deadline.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnpjJHLNzQ9WkgUQ1KrBLWCkamKdevG_3O86b4dz-c0aZEwW3hDSefxJqu8QZ8VQ24z_6WnGYimqdOvxRbAZm0TY1hdNgbITSgr0kM0sNvJ2YrPNq9elby4qsHzhCxDDNE6owQK_J3UTg/s1600/say+this+to+your+professor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnpjJHLNzQ9WkgUQ1KrBLWCkamKdevG_3O86b4dz-c0aZEwW3hDSefxJqu8QZ8VQ24z_6WnGYimqdOvxRbAZm0TY1hdNgbITSgr0kM0sNvJ2YrPNq9elby4qsHzhCxDDNE6owQK_J3UTg/s1600/say+this+to+your+professor.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Seriously? </b></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>Someone got paid to write this book?</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Your car caught fire? Your meth-addicted significant other suddenly had to enter rehab? Your husband is having an affair with another married man who is also a transvestite? Wow. Sucks to be you. I don't think you'll recover. Honestly. Drop the class.<br />
<br />
And. TMI. Boundaries, people.<br />
<br />
When the internet at your house crashes (<i>say huh?</i>), don't just throw up your hands and say, "Well, I guess I can't research my essay/turn my essay in/email my essay." Get your ass to the nearest building with internet access and DO YOUR WORK. If your digital television provider suddenly stopped broadcasting right in the middle of a bowl game, your little behind would be huffing it to the nearest Buffalo Wild Wings. So I expect you to make the long journey to a place I like to call a "library"--that's where the "books" are free and so is the internet access. Take your USB drive and head out into the great unknown. Or you can just go to Starbucks.<br />
<br />
What's that you say? You don't have the money to buy the "books" for this class and so you haven't done the reading? That's interesting. Most of what we're reading can be found by Googling. The rest can be found in the "library" on campus. And by the way, how much did those shoes/that grill/your highlights/cell phone cost? Uh huh. Drop the class.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvo819Rws9NfFfKhyZtFMsMh72m2Oiwg0G0S16zO1mAe2w0FHSY_l744Jl3DZVpGZg0szmxNcQP07p-8rVZnw1QIAPs1MpXAqz-oIPLYZBFQAgVKGSbe5oHyYpnU1_cQuKbP0aYoOHPyY/s1600/bill+gates+devil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvo819Rws9NfFfKhyZtFMsMh72m2Oiwg0G0S16zO1mAe2w0FHSY_l744Jl3DZVpGZg0szmxNcQP07p-8rVZnw1QIAPs1MpXAqz-oIPLYZBFQAgVKGSbe5oHyYpnU1_cQuKbP0aYoOHPyY/s1600/bill+gates+devil.jpg" height="232" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>I completely agree that Bill Gates is the devil. But even I</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>know this Wikipedia entry is bogus.</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for research, nor will it ever be. If you don't quit asking, I'm going to make you go to the "library" and use an actual "book."<br />
<br />
So you "just can't find the time" to get to my class.
Perhaps what you really mean is you "just can't find the time" to be a college student. I've
got a kooky idea--quit school and work full time at a minimum wage
job. That way, you only have to show up, do something for about nine hours, and go home. You can
totally afford an apartment and a decade-old car and gas and weed and
beer on minimum wage. Be happy. Don't bother with college. Unless, of
course, you eventually want healthcare. Or a marriage/family. You might
be able to support one more person on minimum wage, if you cut out
the weed and beer. But there is no way in hell you can support an entire brood. Do yourself a
favor, sterilize yourself now. And stock up on hand sanitizer.<br />
<br />
Accept the fact that nothing you write about will ever be profound. It won't be. Even if it <i>is </i>about your high school graduation.<br />
<br />
Thanks for the poorly-written email which half-ass clarifies why you left in the middle of class. I thought I'd offended you by mentioning prepositional phrases. (As far as I know, these are not the same as what you refer to in your email as "propositional phrases.") Of course your mother's telephone call was much more important than my class. In fact, your parents are much more important than your entire college education because you will end up living with them, not me, when you violate the school's absence policy and are dropped from all of your classes. Take your parents' calls during my lectures. In fact, give them your schedule so they'll call you three times during one fifty minute class. I'm sure they don't give a rat's ass about your education.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdJE4-oyayRvv3N2HvaNZ_gmoTtjsezVkDy6omTiLWXv0JMJx7bxO5U__Cty-4_ImdRU3KDdevFJU2EnjMCL2DqmAf9N90kK6pTV7184it6pyDQJgq0p64UB10mGjS93qcEyc-kmSZals/s1600/sandwich+recipe+fail.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdJE4-oyayRvv3N2HvaNZ_gmoTtjsezVkDy6omTiLWXv0JMJx7bxO5U__Cty-4_ImdRU3KDdevFJU2EnjMCL2DqmAf9N90kK6pTV7184it6pyDQJgq0p64UB10mGjS93qcEyc-kmSZals/s1600/sandwich+recipe+fail.jpeg" height="250" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>I get these all of the time.</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Sure I'm here to help you properly string words together, and maybe even inspire you to write something you'll be proud to show to someone other than your MENSA toddler. But really, essay writing is about demonstrating thought and meeting deadlines. If you spend a whopping three hours composing your essay on the eve the work is due--say between eleven and two in the morning--and then admit this to your instructor when you hand it in, not only will you forever be branded as a total fucking idiot, but you're basically saying you don't have time to think. Because you're too busy visiting with your soon-to-be-dead grandmother, probably.<br />
<br />
Think of procrastinating this way: it's your birthday and your mom--whose calls you always take, even during my class--has forgotten to get you a gift. So she runs over to the corner convenience store and grabs a bag of pork rinds and a plastic rose that's been collecting dust since the Clinton administration (Google, cowboys). Then she hands these things to you, unwrapped, while you're sitting at the dinner table and says, "I completely forgot it was your birthday."<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhleXp7Xc5RhECbXjTFwRiEPFDJNdbwFSscxuYeUCWZ4rMPzMmI2hx9xbAuRCJrwENkfC-HpWDBVhmHihNAKw-lAp_JfQvW0wXsts8Q00yMpKC8BrQ_Ea3JcyuOHajF-c_UDXSuYidecGc/s1600/earn+it.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhleXp7Xc5RhECbXjTFwRiEPFDJNdbwFSscxuYeUCWZ4rMPzMmI2hx9xbAuRCJrwENkfC-HpWDBVhmHihNAKw-lAp_JfQvW0wXsts8Q00yMpKC8BrQ_Ea3JcyuOHajF-c_UDXSuYidecGc/s1600/earn+it.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>I'm going to post this message </b></span><br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><b>to my office door.</b></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Let that feeling sink in. Then grade your mom on her work.<br />
<br />
Uh huh: Mom Fail. Fail=F.<br />
<br />
That's pretty much the exact way your writing instructor feels about your shitty, last-minute, my-life-is-so-complex-I-can't-write-in-my-own-language essay. <br />
<br />
However, if you actually put in some effort, say six hours here or there, and really think hard about your topic, put those thoughts on paper in an attempt to communicate in the language you've been speaking <strike>incorrectly</strike> since birth, format the page using MLA style, and get it done on time, you'll learn that your efforts are not in vain. You'll earn that D in a blaze of glory.<br />
<br />
And just because I look "young and hip" or seem "cool" don't think I won't totally nail your ass on all of the bullshit you spew my way. In fact, it's the "young and hip" and "cool" instructors you should be most afraid of because we're fresh out of graduate school and have <strike>delusions that our classrooms will be filled with intelligent people</strike> high expectations.You should also be afraid of the "older" and "cranky" instructors because they're close to retirement and have nothing to lose. They will totally flunk your ass for misspelling their names in the heading. In general, you should just be afraid. Never assume that, because you sit in a room for three hours a week, your instructor suddenly becomes your <i>bff</i> and actually gives a shit. We're just counting the days until you violate the attendance policy so we can drop your sorry ass and read one less shitty essay.<br />
<br />
Sincerely,<br />
<br />
Your Instructor<br />
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</div>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-76921598935691662322014-10-14T15:37:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.359-04:00I Need Heroin to Be More Funny...Or Just to Relax...essayists and memoirists i greatly admire typically use humor to describe their otherwise shitty lives...my favorite humorist (is that a dig? i totally don't ever give anyone the moniker of "humorist"...especially a fucking genius...but that word worked here, so i'm going with it) is david sedaris...my love affair with him began not long after his first piece appeared on NPR...yes, i realize he's gay...and that he has a partner...and that i don't KNOW him...and so for all of these reasons i can't have an affair with him...and that i'd probably not be his type, even if i had a penis, because i'm totally boring and don't speak french...<br />
<br />
...thanks for the reminders...<br />
<br />
...i also greatly admire joan didion, who writes sentences that cut so close to the bone my joints ache after i finish an essay...some of her writing is so blatantly dry in its humor, i wonder sometimes if i'm the only one laughing...<br />
<br />
...i probably am...since i'm crazy enough to think that i'm having an affair with david sedaris...<br />
<br />
...i've often wondered if my writing is missing humor...so many of my unpublished essays are serious in tone...the ones that tend to "make it" are those where the audience is tempted to laugh at me and my own idiocy...<br />
<br />
...i've been thinking about this A LOT...to the point where i haven't posted anything here in nearly two months...<br />
<br />
...and i've made a decision...<br />
<br />
...some things just aren't funny: <br />
<ul>
<li>the fact that my father is in prison for rape = not funny...anyone who wants to make rape/rapists into a punchline should just be punched...<br /></li>
<li>the fact that my maternal grandmother was xenophobic and probably bi-polar = not funny...mental illness should never be trivialized...sure, we can poke fun at our phobias, but at the end of the day serious mental conditions don't exist just so we can have a good laugh...</li>
</ul>
...other things are funny, but for some reason i'm struggling trying to compose coherent essays and/or blog posts about them:<br />
<ul>
<li>the fact that i seem to be the only person in the world who mishears song lyrics = funny... seriously, i thought a line in Prince's "7" was "with your intellect and your side warfare"...you know, as in the wars we have on the side...<br /></li>
<li>the fact that, until i was thirty five, i didn't know the location of the caribbean = funny...(my husband set me straight on this one, and couldn't fathom how i'd never just, i don't know, looked at a map...when i explained to him that i didn't need a map because my favorite ride at disneyland is "The Pirates of the Caribbean," he squinted at me as if he'd suddenly become superman and could see right into my skull with his x-ray eyes and was not surprised that i lacked a brain)...since my frame of reference for all things geographic is disney, i should defend myself...the ride begins with a short boat tour through a swamp-like area...for some reason, i always mistook that swamp for somewhere in louisiana...probably because i'd actually been to a louisiana swamp...and then there's a huge drop and the boat is delivered to a hot underground area where everyone's speaking with british accents, the soldiers are wearing british uniforms, the prostitues tempt us with their british sorcery...so we must be somewhere on the coast of britain or perhaps north africa, right?...it's not the case, actually...apparently, the british somehow managed to move their entire culture of waste and debauchery to a set of tiny islands a wee bit south of florida...who knew?<br /></li>
<li>the fact that when i'm left alone for an extended period of time i begin to wonder if things i was <strike>told</strike> misunderstood in my childhood were actually true = funny...i have thoughts like <i>do toilets flush in the opposite direction in australia? are all ice-cream trucks just enticing cover vehicles for child molesters? can you really choke on pixie-stick sugar? is the caribbean really just a wee bit south of florida? </i>but i never actually google these things...i just wonder...<br /></li>
<li>the fact that my twins and my oldest daughter tempt me on a daily basis
to take up drinking, smoking (again) and/or heroin use...not that
they're actually holding up the wine/packs of smokes/heroin needles, but
that their general "kidness" sometimes requires me to react the way i
do right before a tube of pillsbury biscuits pops...i hold it at arm's
length and try to cover my ears at the same time and eventually just
drop dough everywhere and yell at my husband to handle it...i would
think that shooting heroin might help calm my nerves...i could be
wrong...</li>
</ul>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-8929092707356312272014-08-06T14:53:00.000-04:002018-07-20T08:32:14.564-04:00My Natural Hair Journey...i'm the only woman in my family with naturally curly hair...but i haven't always embraced my curls...especially since i didn't acquire them until i hit puberty sometime in middle school...instead of breasts, my menstrual cycle was accompanied by new hair growth that was thin, curly, and frizzy...<br />
<br />
...for those of you still reading after the mention of my menstrual cycle, allow me to share a picture of what my hair looked like during the process of growing new curly hair and living with board-straight ends:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSMaTFaMbO-n0PhlfQa-Me5R_ZnpsNriETZyn0LmwmatB3hyphenhyphenxdkghNHDZlmLLLck6T9nEAz_miqOXAdA6ojRtLG_eGb09aTIuqjmmJNyJnTJ-fXcQXqRRD7OFxMnj8mK1zcbW-C9fBUPw/s1600/writer+cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSMaTFaMbO-n0PhlfQa-Me5R_ZnpsNriETZyn0LmwmatB3hyphenhyphenxdkghNHDZlmLLLck6T9nEAz_miqOXAdA6ojRtLG_eGb09aTIuqjmmJNyJnTJ-fXcQXqRRD7OFxMnj8mK1zcbW-C9fBUPw/s1600/writer+cat.jpg" height="308" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...i began my obsession with writing in middle school...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...it wasn't pretty...especially since my dirty-blonde hair reached nearly to my waist...<br />
<br />
...Grandma devised three solutions...the first was to wet and braid my hair before i went to bed...so i'd sleep on wet braids, my pillows would get damp, and i'd wake with a migraine...once she took out all of the braids the next morning, and finger combed each section, only the last few inches of my hair would be straight for the day...thus i looked exactly like this:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnSAWO494sfnKJ-bcyNXb6HriWpCYz5TCutRwIyptn8qFLr0bq6AsXli6jflQpF5Q2KhyphenhyphenEsTVxlWQs6npHx5yzAq1oo3nNhqqVbFr4PJipkbDYWfVmK3GUTo5NwILzQRaxvO0__hPd2sc/s1600/Curly-hair-calico-kitten.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnSAWO494sfnKJ-bcyNXb6HriWpCYz5TCutRwIyptn8qFLr0bq6AsXli6jflQpF5Q2KhyphenhyphenEsTVxlWQs6npHx5yzAq1oo3nNhqqVbFr4PJipkbDYWfVmK3GUTo5NwILzQRaxvO0__hPd2sc/s1600/Curly-hair-calico-kitten.jpg" height="374" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...i was actually kinda cute back then...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...my mother is still convinced this method of wearing wet braids to bed is what really "turned my head curly"...personally, i think it's why i had pneumonia...twice...<br />
<br />
...solution number two was a bit less involved for Grandma, but made for a difficult night's sleep for me...she purchased 200 small pink foam rollers, the self-locking kind, and sectioned my hair into 200 squares..then she wrapped my long wet strands around and around and around and around the sponge until it resembled a barbell...she locked it in place and repeated the process until she got through all 200 strands...then i slept like this:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPpkOkNK3KK8Dyo4MH_I06rlFYXip-SebS3O0NL3tEoZTOqVm7gfYrd4IcO3z6JYeSGiypa2JZ6w3zWfH4u155I5RzD0JL8HSm8q4FoExMkaDG7an3E0e3fShHTC3hb4-I0WYcNCfrijY/s1600/cat+in+rollers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPpkOkNK3KK8Dyo4MH_I06rlFYXip-SebS3O0NL3tEoZTOqVm7gfYrd4IcO3z6JYeSGiypa2JZ6w3zWfH4u155I5RzD0JL8HSm8q4FoExMkaDG7an3E0e3fShHTC3hb4-I0WYcNCfrijY/s1600/cat+in+rollers.jpg" height="400" width="284" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...i couldn't find a picture of me sleeping with my eyes open...<br />
...but this is pretty close...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...the next morning, Grandma freed the rollers that hadn't escaped from their lassos--there were a litter of refugees in the bed--then she used a pick to fluff it all out...she took a big clip or a scrunchie (don't judge, this was the early nineties) and tied back the front curls--which were always kinkier than the rest--so i could see...at the end of this process, i looked like this:<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggYpandkOijwfp5cAnt7IVC9LvsLM6Hef-6LHBTcMG5ZcQoEjXoH0hbDkYBJAAufWS9BSrAcNjUQjsGijycZOKt3p7JcMgYcZQ_WIRkMhgbyJyvkKzixcZQbIb5Pp5cmYM5kWIZsQS6I0/s1600/poofy+cat+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggYpandkOijwfp5cAnt7IVC9LvsLM6Hef-6LHBTcMG5ZcQoEjXoH0hbDkYBJAAufWS9BSrAcNjUQjsGijycZOKt3p7JcMgYcZQ_WIRkMhgbyJyvkKzixcZQbIb5Pp5cmYM5kWIZsQS6I0/s1600/poofy+cat+2.jpg" height="302" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...those of you who own a copy of Almondale Middle School's yearbook for <br />
my 8th grade year will recognize this as my class photograph...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...Grandma's last line of defense was to blow dry my hair...she owned a hand dryer that was older than my mother and resembled a child's toy...it worked well on her straight short helmet, but for me it simply did this: <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFisfrbLnoUAsGdjZzXIL5Pk6eLEb9Yg2aF4sWrvoVD48IgAI7aoWSkbN8Pz8RAh8S58Q1UBiRP64KFGpaDTODQARe2-AscmFSjNslhxfJvU7PCWAe8I92mXUhcrcI8zJG3j_WSmHWCr4/s1600/straight+poof+cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFisfrbLnoUAsGdjZzXIL5Pk6eLEb9Yg2aF4sWrvoVD48IgAI7aoWSkbN8Pz8RAh8S58Q1UBiRP64KFGpaDTODQARe2-AscmFSjNslhxfJvU7PCWAe8I92mXUhcrcI8zJG3j_WSmHWCr4/s1600/straight+poof+cat.jpg" height="252" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...this is the only photo i have of my blown-out hair...i hope you get the idea...</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...seven inches of hair got chopped before i began high school...that way, i only had to deal with the ten remaining straight inches and my curly roots...Grandma bought me a set of curling irons and i spent about an hour every morning curling my hair into loose waves...and wishing the entire time i had straight hair just like all of the other smooth-headed girls in my school...i used the irons, and a shellac of hairspray, to straighten a set of bangs for myself, so desperate was i to fit in with the rest of the crowd:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK2iQeDVXS22VkwP2mS6nF1iVU4ksfw_zObR19kxSVXPcs0-mpw_jnKuHGunl_t45wGhAnuy0q_kwhhrUcO9mqqQ1yaUUT1HcCKY6EZvpZp4xRRVaXA2_pngPmVocdFxxnZXL4PRTb9uc/s1600/cat+straightens+hair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK2iQeDVXS22VkwP2mS6nF1iVU4ksfw_zObR19kxSVXPcs0-mpw_jnKuHGunl_t45wGhAnuy0q_kwhhrUcO9mqqQ1yaUUT1HcCKY6EZvpZp4xRRVaXA2_pngPmVocdFxxnZXL4PRTb9uc/s1600/cat+straightens+hair.jpg" height="400" width="334" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...here's a candid shot of me straightening my bangs for school...</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...every magazine, movie, television show, and cassette cover glorified straight hair...shampoos and conditioners promised to tame frizz and straighten locks...i followed the directions daily--lather, wash, rinse, repeat--yet my hair seemed to get curlier and curlier...<br />
<br />
...eventually, i got enough trims so i didn't have to camouflage my straight ends anymore...the curls completely took over...and i got bombarded by comments from my family about being the only person with curly hair--the freak, the standout...i was given hairbrushes, hair dryers, flat irons, and serums to straighten it all out...that way i'd look like i belonged in the same house...<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTtpFQnW1MqoMguWgb0Y9WTi3aRBC9Lpa4rgWKv_q35jZyHNILj_ZkviBdbDUO_oAZVmkCU7KGxRUCSI5VyfW17AYDmgkpMEhsNrvO6Ma6HX0vjTtzQbtpqbV3XZxb_AEyGa-8R9p0_To/s1600/oriental-shorthair-0004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTtpFQnW1MqoMguWgb0Y9WTi3aRBC9Lpa4rgWKv_q35jZyHNILj_ZkviBdbDUO_oAZVmkCU7KGxRUCSI5VyfW17AYDmgkpMEhsNrvO6Ma6HX0vjTtzQbtpqbV3XZxb_AEyGa-8R9p0_To/s1600/oriental-shorthair-0004.jpg" height="314" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...my sisters in the far back, mother on the left, and grandma on the right...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
...eventually, perms were <i>en vogue</i>...and for second i was envied...Grandma bought me <i>Mane n Tail</i> conditioner...something called a diffusing sock was given to me as a stocking stuffer one christmas...my long curly hair was not the thorn in my side it had been...<br />
<br />
...a week later, madonna straightened her hair...<br />
<br />
...so my only two hairstyles became a ponytail, with straight-ironed bangs or a half-up, half-down blown-out catastrophe...i spent about a quarter of my life wishing i could simply wear a wig over the disaster that was my natural hair...<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
<br />
...i sprouted white hairs when i was seventeen, mostly because perms fell out
of fashion and i began to, again, long for straight hair...along with damaging it with brushing and heat-drying, i started to cover my white with dye...by my twenties, my curls were very damaged, so i underwent a big chop...i had a stylist cut it down to an inch all over...it was the first time in my life i didn't have to do a thing to my hair in order to leave the house:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKYZczFARKnbJBkWjzuqUcfr7D1JPvy4RI_GzB4WE-08dSyGuxG11l59mSTz3agdgEUDw_hQWYFObcUrnF657gYLPQWatO-RKkaINFZbrdpv-zhDhX7XuSPQDix7rEB_QsLwIUuG9WpGU/s1600/perfect+cat+curls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKYZczFARKnbJBkWjzuqUcfr7D1JPvy4RI_GzB4WE-08dSyGuxG11l59mSTz3agdgEUDw_hQWYFObcUrnF657gYLPQWatO-RKkaINFZbrdpv-zhDhX7XuSPQDix7rEB_QsLwIUuG9WpGU/s1600/perfect+cat+curls.jpg" height="256" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...me at my sister's wedding...<br />
...just looking at this picture makes me long for my short-short hair...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...and everywhere i went, people thought i was a lesbian...i'm not sure why having short curly hair made me a lesbian, but there you have it...<br />
<br />
...after the big chop i promised myself i would never torture my hair again...i was going to embrace my curly hair even if learning how to care for it caused me to pull it all out in exasperation...i bought books on caring for curly hair...i learned about pattern and texture...that i actually have 3 patterns of curls on my head, thus i can't treat all areas in the same way...<br />
<br />
...i let my curls grow and stopped trying to straighten them...<br />
<br />
...and i began shopping for haircare products in the tiny "ethnic" hair section of my local store...i did this because it's what all of the books and articles i'd read told me to do, not because i suddenly felt a kinship with african-american women...i consider myself post-racial and the fact that these products were put into a separate but equal aisle burned my ass...especially since i'd lived through high school with bad hair...had these "ethnic" bottles been included in the rows of Pantene and Aussie, i may have had a better date to junior prom...<br />
<br />
...the stares that ensued when i shopped for "ethnic" products were so laced with blatant racism that i didn't know how to respond...why was i buying "ethnic" products, the narrowed eyes of the checker asked me...in the aisle, the african-american women sporting glorious afros tisked when i grabbed bottles and began to read the "Directions for use"...and my straight-haired family members joked that i was "black"...<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5ttbqcr1_348_jC6FZiiL6lXOMXYZXLUni6UCiZL04Xiht7yuG998dzx03RuKc1WQKydHSZQPotIhRvy0498sANp_gtOeSz5TJKjM0IU5FBUcQjwDC-EqPhSsL16BR4YdHKEKUT-3AOk/s1600/noble+cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5ttbqcr1_348_jC6FZiiL6lXOMXYZXLUni6UCiZL04Xiht7yuG998dzx03RuKc1WQKydHSZQPotIhRvy0498sANp_gtOeSz5TJKjM0IU5FBUcQjwDC-EqPhSsL16BR4YdHKEKUT-3AOk/s1600/noble+cat.jpg" height="400" width="280" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...my noble pose...rising above...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...when i began shopping for head wraps, shower caps, deep conditioning treatments, silk pillow cases, and curl-friendly hair dye at my local beauty supply store, i got the patronizing sort of racism...the kind that said, "oh aren't you cute? you think you're one of us"...when i went online and searched for protective styles for sleeping with curly hair, the first hundred thousand videos were all made by "ethnic" women...when a co-worker of mine began a natural hair club, i was the only white woman in the room, and when i began to talk about <a href="http://www.naturallycurly.com/hair-types" target="_blank">curl patterns and texture</a> the young members all gaped at me, shocked i could speak the curly girl language...<br />
<br />
...i'm floored by the angry comments i've recently seen on <a href="http://www.jouelzy.com/2014/07/white-women-natural-hair/">natural hair posts</a> and <a href="http://www.wattpad.com/58876366-the-rants-of-an-angry-black-girl-natural-hair" target="_blank">blogs</a>...was i so busy trying to look like<a href="http://www.curlynikki.com/2014/06/theres-something-very-freeing-about.html" target="_blank"> a white girl </a>with straight hair that i completely missed the movement to <a href="http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2014/07/curlynikki-responds-ebony-backlash-white-bglh-reader-says-teamnatural-black-women/" target="_blank">turn curly hair into an "us versus them" argument</a>? i'm not an uneducated yokel...i minored in US History at University...specifically US Southern history from 1700-the civil rights movement...i understand that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ama-yawson/how-to-get-rid-of-black-kinky-hair_b_5585380.html" target="_blank">"black is beautiful" is not a universally accepted mantra</a>, that black women (and men) have been unjustly brainwashed into believing their hair is "nappy" or "shameful" or "ethnic" and thus "inferior"...i was infuriated when the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/21/you-can-touch-my-hair-film_n_4136229.html" target="_blank">"You Can Touch My Hair" exhibition</a> went down at Union Square--it reminded me of the accounts of white slave owners pawing over slaves on the auction block...but COME ON...<a href="http://www.curlcentric.com/i-hate-the-natural-hair-movement/" target="_blank">it's curly hair</a>...if we're going to <a href="http://thenaturalhairacademy.com/2014/07/11/should-white-women-be-part-of-teamnatural-the-curly-nikki-controversy/" target="_blank">make this an "us versus them" issue</a> let's <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=5565719" target="_blank">make it an "US versus THEM" issue</a> and get to the root cause of why we've been shamed out of our natural hair: those straight-haired skinny bitches we hated in high school...<br />
<br />
...i think back to the
nights when i slept sitting up...the dozens of wet braids...the years i
spent camouflaging my natural look, not just by the failed
attempts at curling the straight ends, but by wearing it in a ponytail
or french braid or horrific blow-out because i didn't know what to do with it, and <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2007/04/04/imus-called-womens-basketball-team-nappy-headed/138497" target="_blank">my culture</a> and family told me straight was the only way to go...i wanted so
badly to look like everyone else that i didn't even know what <i>i</i> looked
like...the women who've been able to share that exact feeling with
me are my "ethnic" friends...so when i read <a href="http://brownsista.com/curly-nikki-white-women-and-the-need-for-all-black-spaces/" target="_blank">articles about the need for "black only" spaces</a>, i cringe...the need and desire for these spaces, under the context of not having to "perform" for those outside of one's race, seems to be taking a giant leap backward...it reminds me of that small "ethnic" section in my local store, the managers who place those products in <a href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/1-segregated/separate-but-equal.html" target="_blank">separate but equal</a> space...<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsLSpBZrcErAp9j1VFaPGoC6Xsmcmx_PSPYiM9ivgaHwkf9uKLZgLeWGCvIXXvKzg_ie9c0PsodpWI9Z0OKHXwjHV0TcH8uX8GmjkYtPLjsS-jbfDztQXL-xfX91VIavQ6w-dmbav4L7U/s1600/Selkirk-Rex_5-650x487.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsLSpBZrcErAp9j1VFaPGoC6Xsmcmx_PSPYiM9ivgaHwkf9uKLZgLeWGCvIXXvKzg_ie9c0PsodpWI9Z0OKHXwjHV0TcH8uX8GmjkYtPLjsS-jbfDztQXL-xfX91VIavQ6w-dmbav4L7U/s1600/Selkirk-Rex_5-650x487.jpg" height="298" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...me, front, with a couple of my "ethnic" girlfriends...<br />
...notice how i still can't seem to get it right, yet their natural styles are perfect...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
...i'm no hair guru...i've been embracing my curls for fifteen years and i just learned last week to dry it with a t-shirt so it won't frizz...i still haven't mastered wearing a head wrap the way my stylish and sophisticated "ethnic" friends do (i need more pashminas, apparently)...i don't wrap my hair at night the way my Victorian ancestors used to (though i want to, so please help: if you can, come over and wrap it for me, because every time i try it falls out)...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifLsuO5UZ5B-DVuV6srb0uDNwc5gAbAfCo4doJQhFoXpUhCccNCWkmWN3KeUIPMAOXaTg5A00LbBSwQ5Y1V_mdyjPM_K9KHYl0Nbe-0oNrqonbuEL8QYw5QGoPB4-QaWDNzENFZGY2sdk/s1600/kitten2withbonnetcropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifLsuO5UZ5B-DVuV6srb0uDNwc5gAbAfCo4doJQhFoXpUhCccNCWkmWN3KeUIPMAOXaTg5A00LbBSwQ5Y1V_mdyjPM_K9KHYl0Nbe-0oNrqonbuEL8QYw5QGoPB4-QaWDNzENFZGY2sdk/s1600/kitten2withbonnetcropped.jpg" height="281" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">...a rare color photo of my great-grandmother wearing her night cap...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...when i get a cut, i still have my stylist wash it and give me a blow out so i can pretend to be one of the beautiful people for a few days...i ask my "ethnic" girlfriends for hair tips and advice, and we joke openly about the fact that i have more in common, follically, with them than anyone in my own family...<br />
<br />
...my six-year-old daughter has board-straight hair...she often asks me to straighten my curls...i patiently tell her that mommy's hair is curly, not straight, and she sighs and says, "i don't like your curly hair"<br />
<br />
...when i ask her why she says, "because we don't look alike"<br />
<br />
...i take the opportunity to turn her distressed comment into a teaching moment...we have a chat about embracing our differences, not stepping to the same drum beat, and what a sad world we would live in if we all had straight hair and looked alike...because she's six, we've had this conversation more than once...it typically takes a few reminders for these life lessons to sink in...<br />
<br />
...what's truly distressing to me is the large number of women, "ethnic" and not, who've never had this conversation...or think it's a conversation that is beneath them...<br />
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joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-40554437085351350302014-07-09T12:40:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:13.892-04:00The Gross...even though it's like pouring warm water on a frostbitten foot, i continue to listen to "Fresh Air" whose host i've taken to referring to as The Gross...i think i'm biased against her, in part, because of <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1145387" target="_blank">her shoddy interview with barry hannah</a>, where it's clear barry is humoring her...but something that also bothers me is her corny laugh...she sounds like the long-lost sister to beavis or butthead...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHqPrSS9M0PHrCHpTe7BuTp0RsWGC2RSEmTyzI00HfeWhYPVBNlu8AE3ovZhDKdKv-_AdSM3xJBJoghWFfmlHjy-iJqzc82HH1Km9pxsbj3gwTlpPfMyQdFg1qXIrCz2R6cwP6erMT4Q/s1600/BBGROSS.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiHqPrSS9M0PHrCHpTe7BuTp0RsWGC2RSEmTyzI00HfeWhYPVBNlu8AE3ovZhDKdKv-_AdSM3xJBJoghWFfmlHjy-iJqzc82HH1Km9pxsbj3gwTlpPfMyQdFg1qXIrCz2R6cwP6erMT4Q/s1600/BBGROSS.JPG" height="139" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="color: #0b5394;">...there's a resemblance here, right? i can't be the only idiot who thinks so...</span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
...you'd think that after years of interviewing celebrities, politicians, and other important people, she'd grow out of that schoolgirl giggling and just do a damned good interview...is it too much to ask that she be barbara walters?<br />
<br />
...still, i listen...and i cringe...and every so often i'll write down a phrase, word, or sentence uttered by The Gross that actually makes me embarrassed...so much so i feel an overwhelming need to crawl under my desk, and begin moaning and rocking until the prickles of her voice on those words is eradicated from my brain...i wish there was a way to open the top of my skull and bleach some of these away...<br />
<br />
...i thought purging them might help to keep them from spinning in my brain during the wee hours of the morning when i can't sleep...<br />
<br />
"So, when you come out of rehab, and you're, like, off drugs..." say huh? what does it mean, exactly, to be "like, off drugs"?<br />
<br />
"So I'm having a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of parallel universes..." thank you for this keen, insightful, and interview-worthy comment... <br />
<br />
"What about throwing up blood? Did you consult a magician for that too?" this is from her notorious interview with Gene Simmons...really, that whole interview made me cringe, but for some reason when she said this phrase i lost it...i thought, <i>no, The Gross, he consulted a doctor who said, "Sure, Gene, puke blood"...</i><br />
<br />
"I think, like, the human voice is an amazing instrument. Like the more you understand it, the more amazing it becomes." (an interview with Tom Waits)...was this some sort of backhand insult about Waits' voice?...this is a woman who TALKS for a LIVING, and this was her profound wisdom about voices...<br />
<br />
"How much sadism is, like, enough?"<br />
<br />
"Yes, your manhood is kind of, like, italicized."<br />
<br />
"Well, I'm going to say it and I hope it gives you pleasure."<br />
<br />
...these phrases came from three different interviews, if you can believe it... <br />
<br />
...The Gross has a series of words she tends to rush through, slur, or almost lick onto the microphone so as to distort her voice and make the listener wonder, <i>What the hell did she just say?</i>...words like "sex" and "meth dealer" and "bra" and "yearning"...when she says these things, my brain summons a giddy schoolboy who has stolen the mic from the principal during an assembly, is running around the auditorium pursued by wild-eyed teachers, and is muttering into the too-close foam ball of said microphone all of the curse words he can before getting caught...i'll never be able to hear someone say "hard drive" again without thinking of The Gross and suddenly feeling like i need a sterilizing shower...<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4XMwEPc48Qzk652eeNZwuTJ73_b1OB9hrsutP0T3X8rUW4qyt83fNvjpbX9nzy0Z2x_Mb-8hzs1A054_6i38SErhXEfLYTHr43vEgKPOtSDFXZbB8Q4YjUHXhB2SCFHhtthvL8Xr0PjI/s1600/like.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4XMwEPc48Qzk652eeNZwuTJ73_b1OB9hrsutP0T3X8rUW4qyt83fNvjpbX9nzy0Z2x_Mb-8hzs1A054_6i38SErhXEfLYTHr43vEgKPOtSDFXZbB8Q4YjUHXhB2SCFHhtthvL8Xr0PjI/s1600/like.jpg" /></a>...perhaps my masochistic relationship with The Gross has to do with her use of "like" during her interviews...it's a word that, like, used to, like, make it's way into, like, every conversation i had when i was, like, a<i> </i><br />
teenager in california...it reminds me of talking to my
sisters--who live far away from me and i hardly ever see--because when we, like, talk on the phone, we, like, <i>totally</i> throw back to, like, the eighties...though her show is taped in philly, her overuse of "like" reminds me of those wayward years
when i could talk to someone and wasn't expected to follow the rules of
standard american english grammar...<br />
<br />joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-23431135803295828192014-06-27T10:35:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:13.660-04:00I Want Boehner's Job...i'm going to start working the way our representatives work and see what happens...<br />
<br />
1. Congress never shows up to work the way normal Americans do. In fact, they take off for the entire month of August. Nearly a full week of every other month is devoted to "constituent work." Right. Boo-hoo, they put in 60 hour work weeks. I once had a colleague who added up all of the time he devoted to each task he completed each day. He found out he was working 29 hours a day.<br />
<ul>
<li>I'm going to start listing my student contact hours as "in my office" or "virtual teaching" and then, I don't know, go to the mall or a U-2 concert.</li>
</ul>
<br />
2. Under the Bush reign, Congress failed to pay for two wars, though our Constitution clearly states that taxes have to be levied to do so. Taxes were cut, thus increasing the national debt.<br />
<ul>
<li>I'm going to tell my students that every assignment they complete must be turned in electronically. Then I'm going to tell them if they use any electronic devices, they'll fail the course.</li>
</ul>
<br />
3. Congress gives itself pay increases and benefits packages. What might Jefferson have given himself? More slaves. More land. More velvet knickers.<br />
<ul>
<li>I'd like to start voting for my own accommodations at work--an office with a window, zero deductible health care, a salary large enough to support my family on one paycheck.</li>
</ul>
<br />
4. Our representatives can work until they die. Meanwhile, the president has to solve all of the problems they've created in four (maybe eight) years. All other elderly Americans get pushed out of the workplace and become Wal-Mart greeters. John Boehner becoming a Wal-Mart greeter would be one more reason to avoid Wal-Mart.<br />
<ul>
<li>I'm going to stop using all forms of technology in my classrooms. I'll refuse to use e-mail. I'll start making ditto copies. I'll demand a typewriter to replace my computer. My students will be forced into the library where they'll actually hold books in their hands--this is the only way to read! I'm too old to learn new things, and these whippersnappers aren't taking over on my watch.</li>
</ul>
<br />
5. Let me get this straight--they banged a gavel, announced they were in session, and left the chamber? No one in sight. Just so the president couldn't do his job. This is the equivalent of reserving a tennis court, failing to show up to play, and suing the Parks
and Rec department when they let someone play on the reserved court.<br />
<ul>
<li>I'm coming to work Monday and putting a note on my office door that I'm inside. Then I'll go home.</li>
</ul>
<br />
6. The popularity of our constituents drops below 10%, yet over 90% of incumbents are reelected. Hum.<br />
<ul>
<li>I have an advisee who has taken the same class twice. And failed twice. By doing the same thing--plagiarizing a paper. But instead of reporting him to the Dean, I'll just allow him to enroll in the class again. Because he says he's gonna change.</li>
</ul>
<br />
7. Many representatives are blatantly sexist and racist. From the comments on rape, to insinuations about "inner city" populations, they don't care who they offend. They're not afraid to share their individual prejudices with the world. And the world isn't afraid to think those sexist and racist comments represent the whole of America.<br />
<ul>
<li>The next time a pregnant African-American student enters my classroom, I'm going to say, "Who's the baby daddy this time? All of the instructors here are saying it's some dude with three other illegitimate kids." Let's see how that goes over.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-26984579140278341532014-05-27T12:56:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:13.715-04:00Miss (Lazy) Piggy<span style="font-family: inherit;">The <a href="https://blended.online.ucf.edu/blendkit-course-blendkit-reader-chapter-5/">fifth
chapter reading</a> from my Blendkit2014 class discusses “hallmarks of quality”
in online and blended courses.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Basically, there’s no One Size Fits Most
quality control model for blended classes because standards vary from course to
course, semester to semester, student to student. Essentially, if some grand
set of standards <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were</i> created, by the
following semester they would be obsolete for various reasons, among them the
evolution of the technology used to facilitate learning.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What the chapter argues most strongly for is communication between
faculty members about best practices. The chapter
notes course instructors should “solicit peer review of specific resources,
activities, or assessment strategies” in order to improve. Communicating with my colleagues about
what works and what falls short is something I started doing when I began to
teach over a decade ago. I did it because I felt inferior. Because I hadn't spent nearly a decade student teaching before I got my first tenure-track position. Because I didn't spend nine years on a PhD. I student taught for one year. And I didn't have to take the ubiquitous "This is How You Need to Teach" graduate course in order to teach. How I got so lucky, I have no idea. But this bit of luck left me feeling like I was swinging for the fences without knowing exactly where The Green Monster was located.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So I’m all for sharing.
What I hate is when we share, and I change, but everyone else goes right on doing the same ole thing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Case in point: Miss Piggy—a former colleague who, though she
was thin as a rail, looked so much like the Muppet that I couldn’t stand to
make eye contact with her, lest I inquire about her lopsided relationship with Kermit.</span></div>
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Miss Piggy’s favorite pastime was to complain about an ethnography project she
assigned to her freshmen writing students. She made the information about the assignment—lecture,
PowerPoints, examples, links—available for students through the online platform
used by the College. Yet every semester she would give that high-pitched "hurm" and complain her students “just didn’t get it.”<br />
<br />
After three years
of her bitching and moaning—which inevitably found me cornered in a stairwell
while she gesticulated and huffed—I <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>finally
asked if she wanted me to review the directions for the assignment and help her
identify any shortcomings.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSC4YFsnCw_uavPk2EzQcagk5aGgtYFImL-KnQ8hhpZ5BwYGVxrZzRbZVqQ3n9pTRnw2RlZ8kjqNrsDPaQ4uXbHCCwzaqwdiMq9fBDJvNPMa9PxrVfYJThhGRomzzif2BG-NIcdFuftsA/s1600/MadEyedPiggy-WKF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSC4YFsnCw_uavPk2EzQcagk5aGgtYFImL-KnQ8hhpZ5BwYGVxrZzRbZVqQ3n9pTRnw2RlZ8kjqNrsDPaQ4uXbHCCwzaqwdiMq9fBDJvNPMa9PxrVfYJThhGRomzzif2BG-NIcdFuftsA/s1600/MadEyedPiggy-WKF.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">She gave me that famous Miss Piggy scowl. And said,
“Why do students need directions?”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">No joke.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I modified my question and framed it ineloquently while using the phrase “guidelines by which to complete the research and writing.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The scowl remained, this time coupled with the downward
nose-bend. “If I tell them what to do, I’ll be doing the work for them,” she
finally said.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was hard to take Miss Piggy seriously.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Especially when she was out of touch with quality control
in her pedagogy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She deemed even the
mention of explaining an outcome, goal, or expectation beneath her.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Miss Piggy is not alone. There are hundreds of instructors
on University, College, and CC campuses that feel like students should “just
know.” They should “just know” how to navigate an online platform. They should “just
know” good writing from bad. They should “just know” that the liver is not an
organ in the neck.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I wonder where all of this “just knowing” should come from.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chapter Five asserts “it is the<i>
lived experiences</i> of the students and teachers, their actual
interactions, in which teaching and learning are made manifest.” If this is the
case—and I believe it is—Miss Piggy and her fellow players need to, as Grandma would say, “Git down offa their high horses.” The
students, though they may be incapable of whipping up an ethnography of their
own extended family, are sometimes the best teachers a professional educator
can have (and so says the chapter). They adapt to technology more quickly than those of us who remember
our first typewriters with near-sexual fondness. They were born into a world of
.com, and are capable of using tools older instructors find frustrating.
Instead of seeing them as peons who benefit only from expostulations from the
mouth of a Muppet pig, perhaps they should be seen as potential equals who need
a little guidance. Otherwise, when we forget to open a drop box or close a unit prematurely, we might find them looking at us and saying, “</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">You’re the one implementing the technology, so s</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">houldn’t
you know how to do this?”</span><br />
</div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
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<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">People—professionals and novices—learn through experience.
We internalize what we’ve learned and we change things (hopefully for the
better). If those things fail, we try something else. We don’t continue to use
a failed model and expect a different result each time. That’s insanity.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But to admit that what we’re doing is failing, or falling
short of “good” teaching, is perhaps difficult for Miss Piggy and the other
Muppets, perhaps because they’ve reached a point in their teaching careers that
to admit failure is to admit they really hate what they do. And that admission
is scary because then the students may not be—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gasp!</i>—as stupid as Miss Piggy wants us to believe.</span><br />
<br />
Miss Piggy's ethnography assignment made me <s>panic over</s> ponder the
quality
of education her freshmen were getting in comparison to my own students.
She had spent years on her dissertation, had been a student teacher for
longer than I was in graduate school, and used the word "pedagogy"
before I even knew I had one. Clearly, she was better/smarter than I
was when it came to handling students. <a href="https://blended.online.ucf.edu/blendkit-course-blendkit-reader-chapter-5/" target="_blank">Chapter Five</a> says comparison is a natural instinct, that “there is likely
always to be some degree of comparison since it seems that there is always
someone concerned with whether this course is ‘good enough’.” Though this
phrase seems to imply there is little validity in <strike>panic</strike> comparing and making judgments of quality, I know bullshit
when I see it. </div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And what I saw was one lazy Miss Piggy.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6488489120929607545.post-101986064711126762014-05-15T09:33:00.001-04:002018-07-20T08:32:13.405-04:00And Then They Made Me Their Chief<!--[if !mso]>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s a tid-bit from <a href="https://blended.online.ucf.edu/blendkit-course-blendkit-reader-chapter-4/">Chapter
4 of the Blendkit</a> course I’m taking at UCF:<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /><br />Traditionally, in a
lecture format, the instructor provides motivation (scheduled class time) and
content in pre-planned units according to the course’s relation to the program
of study. As information has become more public and distributed, the role of
instructor as organizer and dispenser of information has shifted. Learners can
readily access online lectures, articles, podcasts, and other resources to
augment the information provided by the instructor.</i><br /><br />This passage made me think of the hunter-gatherer dichotomy.
Here are all of my students, running across the open plains of information, flinging
their spears and shooting arrows at the mastodons of knowledge. And when they
bring back the carcasses, it’s my job, as their chief, to help them parse, digest, and
assimilate that knowledge. To make sure that what they’re doing with it will benefit the tribe.<br /><br />So.<br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicWTxSYFV1LQFuPcNCeXWtlA45Zd7cv-wb9nRGg2V3n8INU0qnc5hrSAs5Mb4SeO4tYsUs-pR9KGsYTRVrl1VcfDJICXqmXPre5H78Ydt107IKmcI8HhinNuWVl1IwoDVTqvf4GuA9hGs/s1600/SmartphoneGrowth1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicWTxSYFV1LQFuPcNCeXWtlA45Zd7cv-wb9nRGg2V3n8INU0qnc5hrSAs5Mb4SeO4tYsUs-pR9KGsYTRVrl1VcfDJICXqmXPre5H78Ydt107IKmcI8HhinNuWVl1IwoDVTqvf4GuA9hGs/s1600/SmartphoneGrowth1.png" height="640" width="288" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want a headdress. And a sweat lodge in my classroom.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I also want an App for my class.<i><span style="font-style: normal;"><br /><br />As in, “Are you taking English 1101 this semester? There’s an </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">A</span><i><span style="font-style: normal;">pp for
that.”<br /><br />The Blendkit2014 chapter suggests </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Online materials are central to a blended course’s success, and the
students’ work online must be relevant to the in-class activities.</i> I want to
take this one step further. I want my class to be relevant to their lives, thus
making the class central to their success as hunters.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And hunters need Apps.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And I’m not talking about <a href="http://mashable.com/2013/08/08/apps-for-college/">all of the Apps that
would just “help”</a> them in college in general.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blackboard.com/resources/mobile/mobile_learn_splash/desktop/portal-nonsprint.html#android">Blackboard
has an App</a> similar to what I want, but my College hasn’t subscribed to it. So, as a good chief would, I'm doing the equivalent of a rain dance, asking the mother goddess to send me an App to strengthen my tribe.<br /><br />I want my hunters to be able to whip out their Smart
devices—at the beauty salon, at their kids’ t-ball games, while they are
running through the prairies of information—and dazzle the other hunters with
their accuracy at spearing a mastodon. When someone says, “Hey, what’s that App?” I want my students to say, “It’s my English class. I just read ‘Shooting
an Elephant.’”</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span>
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This week’s BlendKit chapter covered how to assess student
learning. Ah assessment. How I love that word. My introduction to classroom assessment happened not long after I was hired at The School
That Shall Not Be Named, and my Chair handed me a CD Rom with the label “Ass. Docs.” </div>
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<br /></div>
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Yep. Thankfully, it was not a CD of strange MLA porn. </div>
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<br /></div>
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I’ve learned a few things since then. Mostly that when
someone hands you a CD Rom with the label “Ass. Docs.” you should expect
him/her not to be around much longer. And he wasn’t. </div>
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Then came his esteemed successor—Shriveled Spider—who had
our division juke stats for assessment. Ass Docs indeed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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At my new institution, assessment is taken a bit more
seriously. They have standardized tests in place that gauge student learning.
Plug the assessment into your course,<i> viola!</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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Still, these assessments are typically multiple choice exams
(MCEs). So I stopped and pondered when I came across the following passage in <a href="https://blended.online.ucf.edu/blendkit-course-blendkit-reader-chapter-3/">my
chapter reading</a> this week:</div>
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“Despite the importance of real life application of
knowledge and skills, perhaps the most common type of assessment is still the
traditional multiple choice exam. Placing such tests (or non-graded
self-assessment versions) online is one of the most popular approaches to
blended assessment of learning.”</div>
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Why is this the case? If educators—and assumingly
administrators who used to be educators—realize the MCE runs a distant second
to assessing students’ application of knowledge and skills why not chuck it and
create/implement assessments that completely apply to what students will be
doing in “real life”?</div>
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I loathe multiple choice tests—in college I was diagnosed with
test anxiety and had to implement <s>rituals </s>strategies for completing MCEs.
It was a rare occasion when I didn’t have a complete panic attack during one. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I try not to have any MCEs in my
classes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, in a writing course I just
designed and built in our online platform (to be used by all faculty at my
College) I had to implement two MCEs. One is to assess SLOs for SACS (so,
really there’s no way around that one—the data has to be solid, unchanging, and
not left up to interpretation). The other is to test for grammar—which to me is
ridiculous. Grammar is not learned through rote instruction, it’s learned
through trial and error. Then, we <s>forget </s>break the rules. Like misplaced
modifiers. I’m reading a NYT Bestseller right now and on page 24, right there
in broad daylight, living without shame, is an incredibly bad misplaced
modifier. The author, the agent, the editor, the publisher—they all missed
it/didn’t care it was there. So why, oh why, should I test my students on
misplaced modifiers? Who cares if they write, “I saw a sculpture next to the
man with a moustache made of ice.” I know the moustache wasn’t made of ice. We’re
not on Pluto. Ice moustaches don’t exist. I’m just impressed they can spell
moustache.</div>
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So why did I include the test? Simple. I’m lazy. There are ten
assessments in the class—the two MCEs and eight writing assignments. Those
eight assignments involve several steps and workshops before the final draft is
submitted—drop boxes, peer edits, classroom presentation. I will spend most of
my semester grading the writing assignments using a detailed rubric, giving grammar
instruction through trial and error, and writing end notes that say things
like, “If you can’t quit using the second person pronoun, you will fail the
course.” I need a wee break, even if it comes in the form as a self-grading
MCE.</div>
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And I’m not ashamed to admit it. </div>
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So I was very happy when the chapter reading directed me to <a href="http://teach.ucf.edu/2010/12/14/effective-online-assessment-scalable-success-strategies/">the
web-page</a> by Bobby Hoffman and Denise Lowe. I am going to keep this little
page in my back pocket as I create new, more effective MCEs.</div>
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And I’m also going to go polish my ice moustache.</div>
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And then I’m going to take my Ass Docs for a little walk.</div>
joyousinhellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17570991136529451904noreply@blogger.com0