At the close of the second of NPR’s two part look at how parents are addressing their children’s gender-identity issues which aired last week, Robert, the father of Violet, who is “absolutely certain” that she is “genuinely transgender,” explains how he finds himself “almost offended” when people suggest that he and his family have been too quick to embrace a transgender identity:

“It puzzles me because we even have well-intentioned parents who we care about and who know us … say, ‘Well she’s too young to know!’ Well, when did you know you were a girl? When did I know I was a boy? I knew my whole life, I can’t tell you exactly when, but it wasn’t like I was 10 and realized, ‘Oh gee, I must be a boy!’ ” Robert says. “What people fail to realize is they made that decision way earlier than that. It just happened that their gender identity and their anatomy matched.”

The story’s focus is a highly controversial treatment, monthly injections of a medication for preteen kids to postpone puberty and avoid developing the physical attributes of the sex they were born with. The family found a therapist and after a two-month evaluation, a gender identity disorder diagnosis was rendered; on a family vacation, Armand, their son, would “transition” to Violet, their daughter.

When I am asked how old I was when I realized that I was gay, I answer, “five.”  How I knew when I was that young, I do not know, but that’s my honest answer. So my sympathies are with those parents. My sympathies are, however, complicated by the condition known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder. Also called Apotemnophilia, and Amputee Identity Disorder, I first learned of the condition in an 8,800 word Atlantic piece from December 2000, by Carl Elliott, titled A New Way to Be Mad:

I am on the phone with Max Price, a graphic designer in Santa Fe, who has offered to talk to me about apotemnophilia. (He has asked me to change his name and the details of his life and history if I write about him, and I have.) Price is a charming man, articulate and well-read, and despite my initial uneasiness about calling him, I am enjoying our conversation. I had corresponded by e-mail with a number of wannabes, but had not managed to talk to any of them until now. The conversation has taken on an easy intellectual tone, more like a discussion between colleagues than an interview. Price is telling me about his efforts to get doctors to adopt some guidelines for deciding when a person with apotemnophilia should have surgery. I am tossing out ideas, trying out some of my thoughts, and I wonder aloud about a relationship between apotemnophilia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. I ask Price whether he feels that his desire is more like an obsession, a fantasy, or a wish. He says, “Well, it was definitely like an obsession. Until I cut my leg off, of course.”

That brings me up short. I had been unaware that he had actually gone ahead with an amputation. “Ah,” I say. I pause. Should I ask? I decide I should. “May I ask how you did it?” Price laughs. “It was kind of messy,” he says. “I did it with a log splitter.” Read the rest of this entry »

NPR has a terrific and nuanced story on a difficult and challenging topic. One issue to dispose of right away, the story is headlined Two Families Grapple with Sons’ Gender Preferences, which may suggest to some that those boys make a choice about their gender identity.

As their story makes clear, little choice is involved. To people of my sexual identity (I self-identify as gay) using the words gender identity in the title would be more precise. Please forgive the quibble and let’s move on… Why on earth would any child ever choose to go through this:

Bradley had always had a preference for girls’ things. From his earliest days he had chosen girls’ dolls, identified with female characters and gravitated toward female children. But Carol had never thought to care. As far as she was concerned, it wasn’t a loaded gun; it wasn’t a lit cigarette. She says it had really never crossed her mind to say, “I’d really rather you played with a truck.” […]

It was a single event that transformed her vague sense of worry into something more serious. One day, Bradley came home from an outing at the local playground with his baby sitter. He was covered in blood. A gash on his forehead ran deep into his hairline.
Read the rest of this entry »

In this TMV blog I keep writing occasionally on subjects that have an important role to play in increasing positivity in discussion and debate on matters related to politics. After all what is politics?…Surely, not just the circus where politicians are the key players. Politics percolates down to, and influences, health, education, art and culture…In fact all spheres of life.

As India dreams of (and works towards) joining the big league of powerful/”developed” nations, there are many individuals/institutions that have raised pertinent points as to whether we are headed towards the “right” direction. The big questions relate to the need to retain the vitality of the social fabric and ensuring social equity in this mad race to reach the high GDP targets.

Recently, I came across two write-ups on these concerns, as also about the role of media, by those who have earned a name for their contribution in the field of education and social welfare in India. The first is by Madhav Chavan of “Pratham”, an NGO that was recently given The Hewlett and Gates Foundations Award $9 Million towards its “Read India Campaign”. To read Chavan’s article please click here…

(The grant supports Pratham’s “Read India” initiative, which is working in conjunction with Indian state governments to help ensure that children between the ages of 6 and 14 achieve basic mastery in these skills by the end of 2009. The grant to Pratham will improve basic learning skills in 100 districts of India, touching 10 million children spread over 10 states for three years.)

The second article is by a sensitive young lady concerned at the questionable priorities of the mainstream media. Writes Snigdha Jain:

— Rush-hour murder on Kalkaji street, April 8, 2008
— Tibetan protests burn bright, Olympics torch put out in Paris, April 8, 2008
—Gurgaon pub brawl injured two pilots and their friends, April 7, 2008
— Rape and murder of British teenager, April 6, 2008

“This is all that I get to read in the newspaper and see on the news channels everyday. The news that creates vibes or sells has to be related to crime or political gimmicks. All my mornings begin with reading about incidences of rape, murder, bomb blast, riot, suicide and so on. On the one hand, it instills a certain degree of fear in me but, on the other gives me a sense of comfort that I am not one of the victims. But, is it really so? Don’t we all get affected by things happening around us? Read the rest of this entry »

In Eldorado, Texas, there’s been a gathering up of women and children taken into protective custody from a commune that practices polygamy, one that claims LDS (Mormon) status, (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints: FLDS) but long ago was exiled from the Mormon Church… Facts presented in affidavits brings again into the spotlight, evil toward children justified by wrapping it in robes of religion.

Lawyers for the commune are arguing that this was ‘an unlawful raid,’ “matching anything in Russia or Germany,” rather than a taking into protective custody 401 some children and girls, most under 18 years of age and more than a few either pregnant or with children of their own. Proponents of polygamy are outraged.

The alleged phone call that was the catalyst for this protective custody came from a girl who said she was 15, had been married off to a 48 year old man who raped her, abused her and that she had a child by him already and was currently pregnant again… She said other women in the community would hold her child, while her (their) husband beat her.

Where this girl-woman is among the 401 taken to shelter by protective services of Texas, is not clear. (Also accompanied by 130 grown women who volunteered to leave the commune, I think to be with the children.) It appears that the young caller’s husband, an LDS progenitor of babies, is also a registered sex offender, according to records, showing he was charged with trying to solicit a minor, and put on probation for three years.

It’s a long night, and it’s cold here in the Rockies tonight. Maybe that’s disturbed my outlook.

It’s not about polygamy between adults. It’s a set of different issues regarding children.

Remember all the arguments, for/pro, years ago about the usefulness and the ethnic roots that ought not be disturbed in female genital mutilation “rituals?” It was “religious,” they said. Therefore, somehow, supposed to be ok.

This ‘ritual’ is wherein a girl child between ages of birth to eight years old is held down and with an old knife or rusty razor to her tender parts has her clitoris sliced off and sometimes her outer labia also lacerated off, with the inner labia sewn shut except for…. good God Almighty, what are people thinking? Or not.

If you’re a man reading this, the equivalent is not taking the foreskin… which personally despite all mohels’ teachings and any physician averring “it doesn’t hurt” or that boys will grow up to be too stupid to learn to wash themselves properly, so “this must be done.” (what are people thinking? Or not.) … as a mother who labored to bring life into this world, who knitted up bones from my bones, blood from my blood, I am never, ever going to accept grown mens’ claims …in the clear face of seeing many a newborn boychild at hospital screaming bloody murder red-faced and sobbing themselves to sleep after ‘circumcisions’ that ‘don’t hurt.’

I don’t buy the bring ‘em into the world, and hurt them right away to make them Read the rest of this entry »

December 24, 2007, After Dark in the Rockies, the Full Moon, Mars Shining Bright, 15″ of Snow…
posted for The Moderate Voice

UPDATE: IT IS DONE…

PEPINO

Big Boy Dalmation, Guardian of the Family

Born 1994, Died December 24, 2007

Go well dear, dear, loyal old friend. Thank you for showing us, we who are far more frail, what bold unconditional love a soul can truly give to others while on earth.

And, don’t rest in peace, Pepino. Run in happiness. Strong again and to your heart’s content. There is a little boy in heaven just waiting for you, and all our mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers have just now come to heaven’s gate to meet you.

Let our tears be the river that takes you there Pepino.

December 24, 2007, Early Afternoon in the Rockies, posted for The Moderate Voice

When your grown children call you ‘mommie,’ their childhood name for you, you know they are in need.

The call came just an hour ago. Pepino cannot stand up. They are carrying him to take him outdoors to the bathroom.

Six months ago I had a hunch. Christmas. I thought Pepino would make it through Christmas. That’s not to be.

I promised my family six months ago, I would…. well, what? Certainly be there to take Pepino to rest, for the family has suffered a loss of a son 11 years ago, that makes it all come rushing back now that Pepino is so ill, and devastatingly so. On the phone just now, I could tell. The boat with the dark sail has pulled up and moored right outside my family’s minds, and they are building sandbag walls as well as they can, so as not to slip back 11 years, to not have that vault that took so many years to shut, crack open again…. Just trying to stay here in the grief of Now. It may not be possible completely. The worlds do leak into one another, sometimes.

I just pulled on my snow boots a few minutes ago. Then, I’ll get in my black pickup and drive through the snow to get down to the city where my family and Pepino are waiting for me …

But, I stopped as I was lacing the boots, thinking for the millionth time this year about my elders who are all gone to heaven now … and suddenly I thought “I am putting on my father’s boots, my grandfather’s and grandmother’s boots”… the big shoes of the people who stayed up all night to help the mares, the people who had their arms up to their elbows to turn an ewe or a colt in the birth canal, and the ones who looked angry while in tears, when they laid the horses and the dogs down as their times came.” I hope I can do as well.

I understand now, they weren’t angry, just so intent to do the right thing by their animal, by this loyal, stalwart soul who’d been their familiar for so long. In the end, to focus the most infinite tenderness and love possible in one burning star of might, enough to do what must be done, to do what no one in their right soul, can hardly stand to do…

….to lay this grand dog, Pepino, our relative, down.

Maybe I’ve lost it, but before leaving, I’ve stumbled around gathering up Pepino’s Christmas gifts to take to him, a little red mesh stocking filled with bones and a label showing a silly Dachshund in stocking cap dancing on back legs. Pepino always liked other dogs, even pictures of dogs. He would always grin like he’d just seen Chaplin take a prat-fall.

And two things keep conjuring to mind, one, a prayer for the dying animal by William Stafford the poet, and the other a tiny child’s prayer that keeps translating itself in my mind to Pepino: Now I lay you down to sleep, I pray the Lord your soul to keep….

Six months ago I had a hunch. Christmas. I thought Pepino would make it through Christmas. That won’t be. But just now I thought, maybe Pepino will have made it … it’s literally Christmas already on the other side… of the world.

Big breath. Prayers. I can do this.
Without losing my mind. I hope…

_____________

July 17, 2007, posted for The Moderate Voice

I Promise The Last Voice You Hear Will Be One of Such Love: Pet Loss
By Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The worlds leak into each other sometimes… Most often when our lives are surrounded by people who are facing life and death challenges, we don’t want to burden them with sorrows going on in our own lives. So I was thinking.

…until July 1st of this year, when, on Freecycle ads, I saw “WANTED: Christmas wreath.” I had one. I contacted. The son of a father who is dying quickly wants to make one more Christmas for his dad. In July. No better place my Christmas wreath could go. But too, when this stranger, this good son wrote back to me, copying my email back to me, I saw I’d made a huge Freudian/ Jungian/ Adlerian typo in my email to him. Instead of writing “Christmas wreath,” I’d accidentally or otherwise instead written, “Christmas grief”…. I’m a shrink. I get the picture. The worlds leak into each other sometimes. Being a shrink does not insulate; if anything, it sandpapers the senses all the more, right down to the walls of the arteries.

This summer, in my family world, there are waves of “know it’s coming, try not to think about it right now.’ Pepino, our family “big boy,’ is a 13 year old Dalmatian who last week was just a crazy bitey, grabby, wacko-grinning pup jumping all over, mistaking all of us for a fun trampoline. Today, Pepino is a brave elderly dog who sleeps most of the time and has cancer throughout his whole body. So far he is not in pain, but my family has known for months… “time, time time keeps slipping into the future…’

I know. I do. I’ve been here before over these many decades, with my team of Huskies, with our “found on the road’ dogs… all of them, “throw yourself into the grave with them’ times… but I’ve never been here before in “this way,’ not since a hideous “watershed event,’ took place in our family’s life… an event that all things of our lives are now measured against forever, as “before’ that event, and “after’ that event. I’ll get to that time in a moment; it’s a place in the psyche that I have to circle to build courage to look, not for the last time… there’ll never be a last time.. but for one more time…

In the meantime, there’s Good Boy Dog Pepino. God, if I describe this, I know you will be able to see him vividly: Read the rest of this entry »

“Just a moment ago we were children… Just a moment from now we awaken as elders…” **

Dear Brave Souls
I am sitting here on a snowy night in the Rockies; there’s a fire in the fireplace, it is darkest night out with a big yellow half-bellied moon hanging over the little lake we live on. I am thinking about all of you… and about thankfulness in these times we live in….

One of the things I have been thankful for in years past are the old ones in my family, in all families really, those cantankerous, odd, strange, loving, horrible, on most days loveable, “last of their kind” elders that belong to each of us.

Yet, I have been having this strange reaction now every holiday for the last 9 years, this strange reaction… when I go to a restaurant or to church and I see people with their old ones— it makes me weep.

I see people wheeling their very old folks around in wheelchairs. I see them helping them with their walkers. I see them being mostly patient and laughing with each other, toasting each other. I see the old one’s eyeglasses sparkling.

I see the elderly ladies wearing corsages. Some of the elder woman are dapper and stylish. Others have bad wigs on sideways and are in great humor. I hear the wisecracks only the truly elderly can make… and get away with.

Some old guys are dressed to the nines with cufflinks and patterned hose. I see other elderly men, having shrunk over the years, are wearing clothes that sometimes don’t fit, or fit lopsided now. But they are in good spirits for the most part, for they are with their families and are taking in the often much deserved help and regard their family members have stored up for them

…including all the little children getting and giving hugs, sometimes acting up, but overall, just being children, lovely children, or sullen teenagers, or intense souls, including ‘brand new with the owner’s manual’ young adults… everyone pretty much just as they are, in this ‘non-father-knows-best’ world.

The Family Thrall/ Brawl

In my family it’s not been so Norman Rockwell though. More like Rube Goldberg under siege… every holiday, wedding and funeral has to last at least three days otherwise our family would have been destroyed long ago…
–the first day everyone so happy to see each other;
–the second day WWIII breaks out, often on several fronts… in the kitchen, at the card table, out back;
–the third day is for making up and meaning it. Mostly. At least until provoked again.

Some of us who hosted these triathlon holidays ran around like zombie-maniacs with food and drink constantly appearing from our hands.
–We tried to not let Uncle Luis bring up that subject again in the presences of his brother
– tried to quarantine Aunt Izzy so she and her ex wouldn’t be in the same room together
– kept count of the liquor bottles to make sure the young cousins weren’t sneaking a magnum out into the woods and coming back with ‘the smile of Zendo-khan’ on their mugs
– took the role of caterer and cop, shrink for the troubled, schmata for the weeping.

Thus, we kitchen slaves always thought holidays and celebrations really needed a fourth and fifth day too… for us to recover from our 13th nervous breakdown… that came from that deeply ingrained ethnic tradition of trying to keep everyone happy– not only because we try to be gracious, but because if they fight, it’s your fault. “Remember Thanksgiving 1977 when we were at Rose’s and she let Skinny and Sal tear each other apart?”

Sobriety Ain’t for Sissies

Several years ago when my adoptive mother passed away, my elderly adoptive father came to live with us. He was 86 at the time. An immigrant from the old country, he brought his village life and values to America, including the idea that women were to serve men, and that men were supposed to demand that. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been a military wife for two decades; my husband USAF, 21 years, retired, now working for the VA helping vets get their prosthetics.

Not long ago, on a rehab ward, having gone to visit with two dozen vets recovering from injuries …I brought ice cream cones… a hit…. what laughing boy moments there still can be sometimes, the spirit of boy still deeply rooted inside the adult soldier, even though injured.

Later, in the visiting room, the conversation turned more serious: hopes and dreams, disappointments, perceived failures, visions and plans. I’d mentioned I’d been trained to pray by ‘the madwomen in black’ (the good Sisters of the Holy Cross). Some men asked, would I pray for them? ‘My specialty,’ I said, ‘the Angelus three times a day, every day of my life.’ I would be honored to pray for the men.

We requisitioned scraps of paper and everyone wrote down as best they could what they’d like prayed for. Some told me what to say, and I wrote for them. Then, I gathered up the papers, asked would it be alright if we prayed right now, out loud? And all assented.

I come from old country refugees and immigrants who prayed so loud in church that other more sophisticated people born in the USA would give us dirty looks. So yes!, the men and I did pray. We did pray big and wide and loud… with some pretty good counterpoint Amens and Right ons! and Yes sisters! flying.

One soul wept, saying he couldn’t pray. Someone greater with wings, put a hand on his shoulder, saying through me, ‘Tears are prayers, liquid prayers.’ By the end we all prayed in the rivers we stood in.

I promised that their askings would be in my prayers from that day forward, and asked permission, ‘Could I pass their needs onto others to pray for too?’ And they said, very much yes. And I have.

So I was thinking to share some of their prayer requests in a different way today, a way that most readers never see, a kind of hidden news of the goodness of warrior souls… just in case readers would like to, on this Veterans Day, have a direction to aim their prayers… fluid, rough, or otherwise.

You’ll see, what is being asked for is not material, but of this time, and also, eternal… which is simple in words, but more complex in another way: I think written prayer requests, (of which I have literally thousands from my travels to see and be with many different groups of souls,) contain inside a hidden story, each one. If you have inner seeing and inner hearing you can definitely hear and see the inner story of others who ask for prayers.

Here are some of what the men asked prayer for… any to be added are welcome here too:

Please pray for my daughter who is in prison, not in jail, but in a prison of alcohol. I am ashamed she got this from me. Please pray for my continued sobriety. Please pray for her to find the way out.

Please pray for all my buds, that they make it home in one peace. That their women wait for them.

Please pray that they will let me sit in this wheelchair all my life, that my butt will not wear out so I have to lie down on a gurney for the rest of my life.

Please pray for my son to be returned to me whole. He is lost and beyond reach.

Please comfort my mother over losing my brother. He’s in a better place, but we aren’t yet.

Pleas stiff the sumbatch captain who cheated me out of a 20 after poker game. No serious, keep him safe. I take it out of his hide when he gets home.

Please hold me and my children and my wife together. Please let me not let them down.

I would appreciate it if you would pray for me. I hope God understands that sometimes you need someone else to talk for you. I am in need.

Thank you for remembering in prayer that we will soon have another child. Everyone is tense. we lost our first to sids. I pray for you to continue in your work.

Please pray that my boy can get a stem cell transplant, and for me to find the place of peace that has eluded me so far. I know it’s there somewhere. If you could just pray that God shows it to me really big so I can see it. Or pray for me to get a spiritual magnifying glass.

Please pray that my father will speak to me again. We are on opposite sides. Thank you.

For my mother who is in a wheelchair too. For her to learn humor.

Prayer for the kids I met. All of them. Keep them somewhere they don’t have to see everything.

Please pray for those who do funeral detail. The boxes are heavier than just the bodies.

Please pray that God forgives me for saying the word F in front of my mother-in-law. She just about faints. Please ask God to give me another word. If he cant do that, just ask him to make my Mother-in-law temporarily deaf.

Please pray for a new road.

Pray to have these memories retired.

Pray that everyone can re-up into greater capacity. Pray for me to know the message I’m supposed to carry now.

Please pray for better painkillers, and big scissors to cut all the red tape.

I’ve been through a lot. We all have. Please pray that there really are ponies for all of us somewhere in all this horseshi-.

To which I have only one thing to say, a reverent and fervent Amen.

I had a night dream long ago about how hard it was to get to earth. For those of us who get pregnant when just passing through a room where a man is reading a newspaper and no more, it has sometimes seemed as though women becoming pregnant, carrying to term, and laboring to bring a living baby into this world is easy, common, like falling out of a ground floor window.

But, it isn’t. It is hard to get to earth, more than a one in a million odds, I think with certainty. Those souls who make it to earth have made a long trek with many perils along the way.

In my dream, I saw that getting to earth was like running an obstacle course of timing: making love timing, who what where when timing, physical timing, time of life timing, money timing, right lover timing, right this that and the other timing.

If little souls sit on clouds gambling on a body being made for each one, they’d lose their bets more often than win.

That’s why I think being born, no matter how a person came to be conceived, is like winning the lottery. Most of us were not planned. Some of us were not ‘wanted.’ Some of us arrived through a loveless act or a perfunctory one. Some of us came by accident. Some of us are called ‘the ooopsie baby.’ Some of us came from unsanctioned moments and are called ‘love child.’ Some of us were sick in utero, even sick unto death, but somehow recovered. And some of us, well…
Listen…

When doctors found that Gabriel was weaker than his brother, with an enlarged heart,and believed he was going to die in the womb, his mother Rebecca Jones had to make a heartbreaking decision.

Doctors told her his death could cause his twin brother to die too before they were born, and that it would be better to end Gabriel’s suffering sooner rather than later.

Mrs Jones decided to let doctors operate to terminate Gabriel’s life.

Firstly they tried to sever his umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply, but the cord was too strong.

They then cut Mrs Jones’s placenta in half so that when Gabriel died, it would not affect his twin brother.

But after the operation which was meant to end his life, tiny Gabriel had other ideas.

Although he weighed less than a pound, he put up such a fight for survival that doctors called him Rocky.

Astonishingly, he managed to carry on living in his mother’s womb for another five weeks - until the babies were delivered by caesarean section.

The children are home now. The doctor’s thinking was that one child seemed half the size of the other, not getting enough nutrients. The doctors said his heart was 3x normal size and it was likely the tiny baby in distress would die from a heart attack or stroke in utero.

Mrs Jones said: “They told us that if he died, it could be life threatening for his brother.

“We had to decide whether to end his life and let his brother live, or risk them both.”

At Birmingham Women’s Hospital, when Mrs Jones was 25 weeks pregnant, doctors tried to sever Gabriel’s umbilical cord to cut off his blood supply and allow him to die.

But the cord was too thick, and they could not cut through it.

As a last resort they divided Mrs Jones’s placenta so that when Gabriel died, it would allow Ieuan to survive. Mrs Jones said: “I put my hands on my stomach thinking of Gabriel. It was devastating. I had said my goodbyes.”

But the next morning Mrs Jones felt Gabriel kicking. A scan showed his heart was still beating. She said: “No one could quite believe it.”

Gabriel hung on, and his enlarged heart started to reduce in size. He also gained weight.

Mrs Jones said: “They thought it may be because the placenta had been divided. Inadvertently, it had evened out the distribution of nutrition between them, allowing Gabriel to survive.’

Like I said, it’s really something to make it to earth. If you’re reading this, you’re one of the very few lucky ones. I know with an earth burgeoning with over 6 billion people that sounds like an overstatement. It isn’t. Given all other matters, that you and I are here, is amazing.

I hope I can say this right without it being misunderstood; I hope I can adequately express the way this all sits in my heart, in my bones: I’m not pro-abortion. I’m not anti-abortion except for myself, my daughters and grandchildren: we consider a pregnancy, no matter how unexpected, no matter how it comes about, a gift of a soul trying to come to earth.

Read the rest of this entry »

And now the Democrats have highlighted a 2-old and her family — so they are under the same kind of attack.

21st Century Politics 101: If they oppose you on an issue, they must be discredited and taken out… Debate on the issue? Issue shmissue…

How it goes.

After the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado in 1999 where 12 students and one teacher were murdered by high school seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (who then killed themselves)… many people in the community, in the nation and in the world wondered could more people have been saved? What happened to spread the alarm? Who heard it, who did not? What was the students’ response? The teachers’? What should have been set in place long before? There were many other questions. We might have one more small answer now.

Today, an extraordinary film was released by CNN, a home video made yesterday by a Cleveland Ohio student, Warren Marks, of his teacher and classroom of students at his Success Tech Academy when a ‘code blue’ was called over the loudspeakers. The students in Mark’s math class didn’t realize it, but at that moment, one of their classmates was loose in the school with a loaded firearm.

The students as shown on the video are very slow to react to protect themselves. Precious time is lost until what appears to be an alert teacher climbs up and stands on a desk trying to quiet and focus the raucous students, shouting at them that this is not a joke, to stop laughing, this is to be taken seriously.

More moments before the message sinks in; til the students organize and finally lock down in the classroom. This chaotic and slow response comes in part from the students not immediately having enough specific information about the threat.

For many persons in general, when confronted with alarm, it’s a knee-jerk reaction to initially question or disbelieve there’s a real threat. Despite old media which no doubt will now seek out students who have been proximate to violence before and portray that as ‘the norm’, most students reacted normally… they still expected the inside of the school to be a protected place.

Asa Coon, the troubled 14 year old student who was the reason for the ‘code blue,’ subsequently shot two teachers and two students, and then took his own life. One teacher was shot in the back, one in the chest; the latter teacher having now had surgery and being listed in ‘fair’ condition.

We know the drill.
1. Troubled student
2. Students complained about the student
3. Teachers brought the issue forward
4. Evidence of ill intents found in troubled student’s writing, video, artwork
5. Others tried to intervene but were not supported
6. Other attempted to install precautionary rules /devices in school system
7. Nothing effective accomplished
8. Student gave warnings of impending homicide/suicide
9. Student had known serious mental distress
10. Student kept falling through cracks in terms of containment, help.
11. Harassment, ridiculing, scorning confrontations against/ with troubled student continue by others.
12. Firearm obtained
13. One last straw occurs
14. Psychotic break
15. Murder, suicide.

Everyone in shock.

As well they ought be. The dirty secret is that Read the rest of this entry »

Our mayor here in San Diego has changed his stand on gay marriage upon deep personal reflection.

The worlds leak into each other sometimes… Most often when our lives are surrounded by people who are facing life and death challenges, we don’t want to burden them with sorrows going on in our own lives. So I was thinking.

…until July 1st of this year, when, on Freecycle ads, I saw “WANTED: Christmas wreath.” I had one. I contacted. The son of a father who is dying quickly wants to make one more Christmas for his dad. In July. No better place my Christmas wreath could go. But too, when this stranger, this good son wrote back to me, copying my email back to me, I saw I’d made a huge Freudian/ Jungian/ Adlerian typo in my email to him. Instead of writing “Christmas wreath,” I’d accidentally or otherwise instead written, “Christmas grief”…. I’m a shrink. I get the picture. The worlds leak into each other sometimes. Being a shrink does not insulate; if anything, it sandpapers the senses all the more, right down to the walls of the arteries.

This summer, in my family world, there are waves of “know it’s coming, try not to think about it right now.’ Pepino, our family “big boy,’ is a 13 year old Dalmatian who last week was just a crazy bitey, grabby, wacko-grinning pup jumping all over, mistaking all of us for a fun trampoline. Today, Pepino is a brave elderly dog who sleeps most of the time and has cancer throughout his whole body. So far he is not in pain, but my family has known for months… “time, time time keeps slipping into the future…’

I know. I do. I’ve been here before over these many decades, with my team of Huskies, with our “found on the road’ dogs… all of them, “throw yourself into the grave with them’ times… but I’ve never been here before in “this way,’ not since a hideous “watershed event,’ took place in our family’s life… an event that all things of our lives are now measured against forever, as “before’ that event, and “after’ that event. I’ll get to that time in a moment; it’s a place in the psyche that I have to circle to build courage to look, not for the last time… there’ll never be a last time.. but for one more time…

In the meantime, there’s Good Boy Dog Pepino. God, if I describe this, I know you will be able to see him vividly: he had big heavy black balls that swayed so much when he walked that he swaggered instead of prancing…. just like you see some big lug human guys doing, walking down the sidewalk in full braggadocio with their feet widely planted apart… It made me laugh with joy. In dogs. And men. Both.

This big boy Dalmatian was a glory of a male. Still is, even though he’s sicker than a … yes, well, right. Protective, a great male consciousness; raising his big bony head still, to bark at that sound of footsteps on gravel a block away, sound only he can hear. Got to protect my pups, he thinks; he, the alpha dog; we are his pups. Not guard dog, but Guardian dog. Dear dear dog. And darn irritating/endearing dog who early on, could never sit in a car like a proper person, but that you wound up wearing him like a trembling and huffing polka dotted muffler across your shoulders, chin and chest.

I sense Pepino readying for this final trek; I think he’ll let us know for sure; this last walk yet to come will be slow, measured. We’ll take our time. His time, not ours. It doesn’t matter if we’re ready or not. We wont let him suffer. I know each soul in my family will have their own way to say goodbye to Pepino. I know. I do. It’s just that there are very few times in life that make me want to just stand with my forehead against a cool wall and just stay that way for a long time. This is one of those.

And so, to “the event,’ the ragged core that rises around the very thought of walking Pepino the Good to his end on earth… well, it’s a situation, though “situation’ isn’t the right word, there are no right words I know… it’s an “event,’ which is also not the right word, “an event’ that many other families have walked through, our family also, a time in my family’s lives that I’ve been reduced to trying to explain by saying, “Remember when Rachel wailed on the hills at Ramah and could not be consoled?”Those who know the passage, know exactly what happened in our family…

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As a post-trauma specialist, you see much. I have. I’ve been thinking about different kinds of fathers who, because of intent and heart, are definitely fathers, but are often forgotten in the Hallmark rush that brands the dominant family structure as a mom, a dad, the kidlettes, marriage.

Just this: on this Father’s Day to these fathers, I say: there are people in this world you don’t even know, who are pulling for you and everything that is dear to you… Hang in there. Just keep going.

So, to the fathers whose little ones are on life support… to those fathers whose son or daughter touched down on earth too soon and are in neonatal ICU. To the fathers who are at hospital holding a heavy wall away from their child who has been injured, or hurt. To fathers whose child is still in utero and is having some trouble… To them: miracles definitely occur, and just one step at a time. Do your best, and if you need advice, ask for it. People will be honored to help you. We will pray for best of all outcomes for you and your loved ones.

To the fathers who are searching for their children, who lost them through travail or neglect or happenstance or slanders from others along the way, but who are building across time now a bridge with love. For those fathers who when stationed overseas or at war, knew they left their child there when they came home, and who are now trying to find their son, or daughter and their mother, after all these years. For fathers who are seeking their son or daughter, now grown, that they surrendered for adoption many years ago when they as fathers were so young… many people are thinking of you and hoping that you soon find those whom you love.

To those fathers whose son or daughters are in trouble, on the street, in jail. To those fathers whose child or children are on the run, whereabouts unknown. To those fathers who know their children are, for now, lost to drugs, or alcohol. Many people are praying for you and your son, your daughter, that one day, you will be able to be near one another in good ways, and in the meantime that your heart and mind be at as much peace as posslible.

For those fathers who may not be blood fathers, but are fathers of huge heart. For those fathers who are actually grandfathers who are raising their children’s children. For those fathers who are not called ‘father’ but are father in most every way… all the same honors and gratitudes belong to you.

For families which are made of two fathers, for families that are made of no fathers present, but a mother who is being the best mother/father her kids ever had. For families made of women who also act as fathers. For families that want a father so badly… may all things you wish for come to pass for you.

For the fathers whose children have died, I know. I know it is not not not supposed to be this way. But for you… whether your child lived five minutes, or 50 years, or did not make it to earth alive, you are still a father, and on this father’s day, may you turn to whatever beauty there is nearest you, and consider it a small sign from your beloved child, as you wish, and in your own way of seeing.

To the fathers who are being held away from their children by legal storms or trumped up issues, but who love their children, time… time will pass, and this will be resolved. It will. Write to your children and post the letters to yourself, so when you see them again, you can show them you were there completely in spirit. And try hard as you can not to disrespect their mother. It will be better for the kids. I know. But try.

And to the fathers who are not presently speaking to their sons or daughters by the father’s choice, I’d just say this… I’m probably either as old as you, or about 20 years older than you. This is the paltry little but useful thing I’ve learned about our progeny and us, the parents. If the chasm has been dug over a life and death issue, fine. But if it’s over anything that is beneath your soul, some petty bs, then reach out. Say, “I was wrong, that’s all I’d like to say. I hope you’ll call from time to time.” Open the door. It’s not going to kill any of us who are stubborn crabby old people, to be able to say, Sorry, and mean it, once in a while. It doesnt even matter if it wasn’t your fault to begin with. What matters is abre la puerta, open the door. Many strangers you’ll never know are rooting for you: when they pray in the style they’ve been taught, they pray for reconciliation of loved ones. Those are prayers you can lean on.

A lot of people say father’s day is giving gifts, cards, eating together, shooting the bull,

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Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

Donald Hall is our most recent Poet Laureate of the United States. He has lived on a farm in New Hampshire most of his years. He’ll be 79 now. One of his poetry books, ‘The Painted Bed’ is about the marriage bed, and his life with Jane Kenyon, the poet. Another book, ‘Without,’ is about his loss of Jane, who was 20 years his junior and whom he nursed through leukemia until she died. The book, ‘Without,’ is written in such detail, and such love, it sets on its ear the rank pop notion that men are without feeling and cannot say more than ‘Arg.’ Many can say more. Much more.

When Donald Hall’s father died, he said he wrote immediately about his father’s passing, but that the poem took 17 years to complete. The poem was waiting…… for something. One day as Mr. Hall was walking along on the land, not at all thinking about his father, two phrases came into his mind: ‘White apples… the taste of stone.’ He knew immediately, these words belonged in his father poem, and once placed, he would have said what was in his heart to say about his father’s passing. Here is the poem from the grown son to the father who has passed:

WHITE APPLES

when my father had been dead a week

I woke

with his voice in my ear

I sat up in bed

and held my breath

and stared at the pale closed door

white apples and the taste of stone

if he called again

I would put on my coat and galoshes

- Donald Hall, “White Apples and the Taste of Stone”

Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune

I don’t know if people will see this if it scrolls too fast, I hope they will see and join in.

I would love to hear other people’s stories about their fathers, funny, strange, odd stories, memories. 

My foster father passed 9 years ago, a difficult person in the extreme and yet there were things about him that were admirable. Even though he’d brutal things in the aggregate, he was still irreplaceable to my heart. One memory about dad … when he was 45, he bought his first car, but didn’t know how to drive. It was a 58 Chevy stick. Dad walked around it, patting it, speaking softly, saying in Hungarian to the car, that everything was going to be alright, that the car should not be afraid, that ‘the rider knew the way’ … Then we all piled into the car, holding on for dear life as dad kept popping the clutch all the way to the end of the road, while yelling at the top of his lungs, Hee-Yah! … It was so exciting that the car hopped around like that, with my normally stern father acting so wild. It wasn’t til I was older that I understood. My father, who grew up in a tiny village in Hungary had not been in the USA very long and the salesman told him there were “horses under the hood.” So Dad just thought he’d have better luck driving, if he first spoke to “the horses” to reassure them, just as all the Magyar men did with the stallions back in the village.

This came from The Chicago Tribune: Letters, Talk of the Town

“When my dad was a few chapters into “The Greatest Generation” by Tom Brokaw, he put it down, saying it had become repetitious. He then told me his generation didn’t do anything any other generation, given the same circumstances, wouldn’t have done.”

This from a Santa Fe friend

“My father is not a generation. He is from a clan. We are Santa Clara. He served in WWII. We do not call our elders ‘Greatest Generation.’ We call them our elders. I served in Nam. In The Veteran’s Dance that opens every pow-wow, my father and I move in the dance circle shoulder to shoulder. I am not a Baby Boomer. I am my father’s son.”

This, from another friend, San Luis Valley

“My dad is a rancher. He was in the Army during the war. He just got all these medals recently. They didn’t award medals to many Latinos in WWII. He says he’s not from “The Greatest Generation,” but the ‘Latest Generation,’ in term of his war medals coming so late, in terms of the government not recognizing him and his three brothers who served. I wrote the letters for my dad to get his medals. It took a long time. My dad says my generation should be called “Pride of Our Fathers.”

This is Banaz Mahmod, who was given twenty years on earth. And no more.

Ten years ago her Kurdish family immigrated to London from Iraq, to escape Saddam, they said. The father married teenaged Banaz to a man who harmed her.

She ran, kept running.

Four times, she pled for protection from London Police. Four times, they dismissed her.

Killers raped her first, then strangled her, buried her in a garden belonging to colluders.

At trial, a female police officer, who’d earlier dismissed Banaz’s four different pleadings for protection, as “dramatic and calculating” thus giving the girl no refuge, no investigation… admitted at the murder trial in Old Bailey court, that she’d made “a dreadful mistake.”

Of three thugs who violated and then murdered Banaz, one admits it. The other two killers have fled back to Iraq after publicly bragging about their rapes and murders of Banaz.

Yes, rapes, plural. Yes, murders plural.
First, spirit; then, mind; then, body.

Though father and uncle had ordered Banaz’s death like they were ordering off a menu, yes, they protested all three months during their murder trial that they were innocent.

They’d not anticipated angels of Justice can give evidence; living on in electronic air and in the ink of written word, long after a soul is gone.

Banaz had recorded on her cell phone a film of herself telling of her terror.

The letter she had written pleading with police to protect her, and why, and who by name she feared would murder her, was still in a file at the station.

These were brought before the jury.

The father and uncle were found guilty this week.

Banaz’s four sisters still live. One brave sister, also very young, testified against her father, and fears for her life.

Five police officers who didn’t didn’t didn’t didn’t, four times didn’t…
are being investigated, to see what could have been, can be done in the future… differently.

May Banaz live forever, and may all persons concerned who have hearts, be made attentive and wise to the good, by her death.

The Moderate Voice is pleased and honored today to offer our readers the first copyrighted co-blog post written for TMV by New York Times list best selling author Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. She will be posting most of her observations in a column titled I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH. You can read about her many books (and readers’ reviews of them) by CLICKING HERE.

“If one were to look for the causes of those who fall from the sky, first look to who has fathered them in self-interested, incompetent, or non-vigilant ways; those who think of unleashing mightiness rather than teaching mightiness and its ethics, those who have no clear self boundary about ‘what is enough.”
dr.e

I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH

An Analysis of The Men Who Fall From The Sky:
Icarus … The Lost Story
by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

What Makes a Great Raptor, Or A Good Man, Fall From The Sky?

Walking in the sweetgrass here in the Rockies, I found a small Icarus… I knelt down to see the little fan of wing feathers still tied to its boney-bones by dried-out strings of sinew. The size of the hollow bones meant this noble being, now minus its meat and breath, was once a young eagle weighing maybe a half stone.

There are several deadly things that make high-flying creatures come crashing down from the sky: illness or injury, lightening strike, gun-shot wound, in-family fighting, a predator greater, being sucked into a huge engine’s vortex, or, under freak circumstances, a profound disregard for the law…
–those laws which govern gravity,
–the absolute rigidity of immovable objects,
–unexpected blows from sideways wind shears;
–and ability to use good judgment in extreme altitudes.

The sad causes of raptors suddenly plummeting from great heights can affect modern women and men too. Human beings can also fall– or be pushed– when placed in overly-elevated positions… especially when urged to fly beyond their true range, especially if they are naive, reckless, or inflated about not needing wise advice, falsely believing they can fly through changing winds and weather without making timely corrections.

Like Icarus of Greek mythos, modern women and men who are awarded mechanical wings, but who also love power too much, are granted no lasting favor. Amongst human beings, there are laws that govern gravity and the rigidity of immovable objects, wind shears and lack of judgment too.

For in being wafted atop the tall clouds, moderns inevitably experience psychologically and spiritually, toxic symptoms. These approximate those literally occurring to flight pilots. When the pressure drops and one has sailed far too high, then a lethal hypoxia takes over; an oxygen starvation.

The symptoms of hypoxia in a person who flies too high? Their discernment, memory, alertness, coordination, and ability to make calculations and good decisions, all these are vastly impaired.

The one who flies so very high on such unpredictable updrafts becomes drowsy, dizzy, and either notably belligerent or else fatally rapt — instead of dependably rational.

As any old-guard, “cold nose” (flying with radar turned off) pilot knows, once deep into such severe lapses, the fall from the sky commences.

Loss of consciousness, sense of inflation, thinking one is invulnerable, loss of judgment. So it was in the mythic time of Icarus, and so it goes in our modern times too…

Primary Cause of Fall Wasn’t Flying Too Close to the Sun

Many recall that the story goes, that Icarus flew too close to the sun which melted the wax holding the feathers to his wings. Thus, he fell to his death.

But there is ‘a lost story’ too, one that is seldom told, an ancient fable for modern times. As I analyze the mythos, I see that Icarus would never have fallen from the sky if the one who bragged he would and could guide him, had not failed Icarus utterly, that is, Icarus’ own father, Daedelus.

Icarus was set up into the sky by his father. But he was also set up by his father to fall, for Daedelus was well known to have an unpaid debt of blood on his hands from previous misuses of power.

Thus, Icarus, high-flier-to-be, was not just a son of a famous father. Icarus was the son of a murderer; the son of a disrupter of kingdoms; the son of a man who tried to play both sides in stealth. Icarus was the son of a man who appropriated honors and garb normally reserved for real heroes who had earned such through brave and perilous works of great heart and soul, mind and body. This Daedelus had not done.

Icarus was not the first man that Daedelus had led to the heights but who did not return alive.

The Unpaid Sins and Cunning of A Father Who Falsely Holds Himself Out as Experienced Guide, Gives His Son No Authentic Power to Choose to Be Different or Opposed to His Father, Thereby Binding The Son Into A Small World of Unquestioning Obediance… Even When Logic Alone Would Press for Inquiries at Depth

Previously, Daedelus had murdered a young craftsman whom he envied. His victim was a truly inventive soul whom Daedelus feared would be seen as a greater master builder than he himself. He threw the young inventor from a tower to his death. The stories go that Daedelus then lied about his bald crime, saying the young man simply tripped all by himself and thus fell to his death.

But as in the affairs of mere modern humans too, there was an unimpeachable eye-witness who saw it all and who cried out the truth. Thus, Daedelus, caught in his grave falsehood, fled. He hid, exiled in more ways than one, in a prison of his own deceits.

Yet, still allying with evil, Daedelus next empowered the enchanted wife of King Minos into an unholy alliance with a sub-human creature. From this, the queen brought forth a beast-man in the form of a monster who raged overland, plaguing the innocent populace.

Daedelus next, playing double agent, built a maze that restrained this beast-man, the minotaur. Daedelus played both ends against the middle: secretly enabling the creation of a monster, and then publicly holding himself out as ‘the one’ who contained the monster, all the while pretending to be a great champion of the people after all.

Sometimes the tempests and travails of the ancient world seem to leak into present time, don’t they?…

Daedelus’ very name means ‘artificer’ the maker of artifice in order to expedite, to trick, or deceive others …

That he displayed no remorse or sorrow for taking a life, or fracturing the lives of many others, or enabling a beast that murdered many people: That he had no regret for disrupting a kingdom, nor for leading others astray… thereby the blood debt of the father Daedelus, went unpaid.

If One Were To Look For The Causes of Those Who Fall From The Sky, First Look To Who Has Fathered Them

Look for who has fathered the son in self-interested, incompetent, or non-vigilant ways; those fathers who think of unleashing mightiness rather than teaching mightiness and its ethics, those fathers who have no clear self boundary about ‘what is enough.’

Thus, it is not that Icarus only naively flew too close to the sun and thus fell. No, it was far more that Icarus inherited his father’s unpaid blood debt… and in the dark of some kind of pre-human psychology, there is thus a requirement: someone has to pay this debt of blood…or else force someone else to pay it

Thus, Icarus thereafter, misled and negligently unprepared by his father about the many perils of flying either too low or too high, the young Icarus paid his father’s old blood debt with his own life. He paid by never awakening from his own naiveté. The blinders he wore, were such soft ones.

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