I hope that one day I can be brave.

I hope that one day I can be brave

As I realize that I’m in the last half of my life; I also realize that there are people around me day to day who are happy to work with me, collect monies from me, get great jobs because of me and break bread with me, but who, when it came time, to defend me…didn’t.  These friends, coworkers and acquaintances voted to pass an amendment in North Carolina making it a matter of state constitution for same sex couples to be denied the right to marry. They codified discrimination in the 21^st century, what great friends these are!

After John’s death and the disaster that was my relationship with Chris, I’m pretty sure that I’m never gonna get married again.  There are no prospects currently and the horizon is looking a lot like the Sahara desert.  Still, should one day I find someone that I love, maybe I’d want to get married.  I view it all as a matter of respect and right. 

My worry is in how I do I handle how I feel?  If I fly off the handle, get in folks faces and behave as a homo radical, it’ll be impossible to change attitudes.  I imagine that this feels a lot like racism.  The attitudes I'm up against are so covert, closeted if you will, they are impossible to parse out.   Perhaps now I understand why many of my black friends say, that they would rather have an in your face a racist as opposed to a closet racist.  When someone is in your face at least you know where they are coming from and what to expect.

I am faced with a paradox. My Christian beliefs teach me that I should love my enemies.  My heart tells me that I should hate them.  I don’t speak with my brother and his wife because of the way they openly profess how they feel about gay marriage.  They put bumper stickers on their car and signs in their yard for crying out loud.  EVEN WHEN I USED TO VISIT AND THEY KNEW I WAS COMING!  I appreciate these actions because it lets me know exactly where they stand.  Now I give them a very wide berth. 

I keep coming back to this question; how do I deal with those folks who don't put the bumper sticker on their car or sign in the yard? I know that each day that there are people in my life that feel exactly as my brother and his wife do, they however remain hidden from public view.  These people disguise their feelings with a smile on their face but would stick a knife in my back while standing in the anonymity of the voting booth, metaphorically speaking of course.

My question to myself is; why am I playing nice?

President Obama, not the risen God but not the anti Christ either.

 

Obamacare/ Obama Accomplishments

The downside of social media is that people can spout off opinion, hyperbole, rants, raves, and kudos and even sometimes lies with limited repercussion or consequence. One can unfriend them from one's social network or one can block their posts.  I do a little of both.  I tend NOT to engage on Facebook or Twitter because hiding behind a keyboard and a computer screen can indeed make one brave.

A fellow who I went to high school with is one of these folks. He clucks a constant tirade; he hates president Obama and the president’s policies. His latest drumbeat the medical insurance mandate. He states that he shouldn’t have to buy something that he doesn’t want.  Ok, I get that and to that I say:  I don’ want to pay for the care of folks too lazy, entrenched, cheap or dogmatic; who don’t want to purchase health insurance.  I know that those people are going to cost me and our health care system a whole lot more money by flying without a safety net. So get over it, and do the morally right thing.  And while were at it...think about this...

1.    Do you want a state of the art health care system?

2.    Do you want an accessible health care system?

3.    Do you want an inexpensive health care system?

You can only make one choice...1!  Anyway...moving on.

This social media fellow thinks that Obama has done nothing good, he thinks that the president is one of the Apocalypse' four horsemen. To that I say and site, Washington Monthly Online, March/April 2012

President Obama passed health care reform; after five previous presidents failed, president Obama has now passed a law that will insure 32 million uninsured Americans.  President Obama recognized as so many before him that health care cost growth is the number one cause of this nation’s long term financial problems.

Passed $787 billion dollars in economic stimulus, this after inheriting a destroyed economy from president G.W. Bush.  An economy that left to its own peril would have destroyed for a time the economy of the entire planet. The great depression of the 1930’s would have looked like a tea party by comparison. That pun directed at the far right is oh so intended. J

President Obama passed Wall Street reform to regulate those responsible for the financial disaster, again inherited from former president G.W. Bush.

President Obama ended the war in Iraq, which cost this country according to the Washington Post, somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion dollars. Perhaps my Facebook friend should think about what kind of health care insurance that kind of coin could buy for the American people. He should also think about the value we the people got for our investment in Iraq. Let’s do a cost benefit analysis on that one? I bet one column would be near empty and it wouldn't be the cost.

President Obama began drawdown to end the war in Afghanistan.  Again a costly folly that perhaps could have been executed with a scalpel instead of a sledge hammer.

President Obama had Osama Bin Laden killed.  I’m not sure killing anyone should ever be called an accomplishment. I’m sure none of us needs reminding of September 11, but if you do, here’s a link.

President Obama helped save the American auto industry.  Click the link to see the employment numbers.

President Obama recapitalized the banks, otherwise we’d still be in an economic depression, thanks to the folly of  G.W. Bush.

He repealed don’t ask don’t tell; finally allowing citizens like me to serve this nation in our armed forces in an open and affirming manner.

He helped topple Moammar Gaddafi, you know, the dude responsible for blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Remember that act of terrorism or war that killed 270 people at Christmas time.

President Obama, two days after taking office nullified G.W. Bush era policies that allowed torture of those detained by our military and government. He made us better than our enemies who torture. It is always better to do as we do and say. Actions and words should always sync.

I could go on and on, but I think my point is made. 

Concealed Guns and the North Carolinataliban aka General Assembly

Guns

In North Carolinatalibanistan the mental midgets in the general assembly have pushed back against towns that have passed strict concealed carry laws for guns.  The towns in the interest of their citizens now must bow to state control and their local ordinances must jive with state law when it comes to weapons of mass destruction namely: the American handgun, rifle and assault weapon.

The socially corrupt gun apologists on the right also known as the rabid second amendment gun lobby, insist that concealed weapons reduce crime, to that I site the Washington Post….12/17/2012

National Research Council of the National Academies devoted a chapter in a report titled “Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review” examining Lott’s research. The report concluded:

No link between right-to-carry laws and changes in crime is apparent in the raw data, even in the initial sample; it is only once numerous covariates are included that the negative results in the early data emerge. While the trend models show a reduction in the crime growth rate following the adoption of right-to-carry laws, these trend reductions occur long after law adoption, casting serious doubt on the proposition that the trend models estimated in the literature reflect effects of the law change. Finally, some of the point estimates are imprecise. Thus, the committee concludes that with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.

So nuff said on that. A whole lot of mish mash to say…NO causal link between the right to carry and reduced crime.  This right wing argument is so much like their climate change rants…they cow and crow that because they don’t like the science  they then refuse to  believe the science.

Finally, I refused to be lectured by those on the right and those in the gun lobby that they should be painted as victims in this argument because they feel as if their rights are being abridged.

So I site the following:

Sandy Hook Elementary, three semi-automatic guns used, gun owner killed by her gun and her child. Her guns legally owned fell into the hands of a lunatic because she didn’t have a sense of moral decency to rid her home of these horrid tools.  Sadly, Nancy Lanza knew her son was nuts. But the gun toting genie was out of the bottle and twenty six teachers and children shot dead in less than fifteen minutes. In my opinion, the first victim, Nancy Lanza, guilty of accessory to murder and to that she was sentenced to death prior to the crime. And worst of all, her death sentence was carried out by her child. 

At Virginia Tech, Seung Hui Cho, described by ABC News as insane/mentally ill buys two guns legally, passes background checks and in fifteen minutes shoots fifty six and kills thirty two. The internet gun sellers are NEVER held to account for their accessory to murder in the sale of those weapons. Neither is the NRA which works tirelessly to weaken gun control laws.  Interestingly, Virginia Tech has been sued because of the actions of Cho the lunatic.  Yet I can find no evidence that Eric Thompson president of TGSCOM, a company now closed that ran fifty websites that sell guns and sold Cho the Walther P22 used in commission of his murderous rampage has ever, EVER been held to any account for his culpability in dropping a weapon of mass destruction into the hands of a nut.  Yet there is some justice…. And Eric Thompson isn’t an innocent, he’s a fraud and a huckster.

So my point…it is morally bankrupt for the State of North Carolina in a fit of right wing hysteria to assert its rights on municipalities that are interested in protecting their citizens by enacting strict conceal carry laws. Secondly I site that a well-armed citizenry in Virginia and Connecticut and across this country is unable to prevent local holocausts while toting concealed weapons. No gun toting buckaroo stopped Adam Lanza or Seung Hui Cho or the 11,078 gun murders  committed in 2010 alone.

Well I really don't know...

Well I really don’t know…

Perhaps it was the fact that my forty ninth birthday had just passed. That I have had the realization that this party called life is beyond halfway over and that the slow slide to the finish line, really isn’t slow at all.  Maybe it was the realization that Thanksgiving and November 28^th marks what would have been Nana’s one hundred and second birthday and she’s been gone two months.  Then again, December 1 was World AIDS Day and thirty one tragic years have passed since this killer was named.

Whatever it was; yesterday left me emotional and weepy. It didn’t help that I watched a good portion of Angels in America; a movie that to this day instills abject terror in me. The story has so many threads that weave indelible scars throughout my life’s story. I have lived the story.  I have faced that terror. I still face those terrors.

You see, John, my John didn’t die of brain cancer. Well actually he did, but the underlying cause was AIDS. Wow, I’ve said it. John has been dead for nearly fourteen years. I held him as he died and he died of AIDS. There, now I’ve said it, twice. It’s time for me to come out of the closet again and face this reality head on. There is so much to do and I feel as if I need a cause. I need to step up and step out because until people like I do; this madness will continue.

Passing time

On September 24 2013 my Nana died. I was lucky enough to have some last fleeting moments with her. In fact when I arrived at her home on that day, she perked up when I walked in, she smiled and said my name and was gone twelve hours later. It was surreal.  I felt blessed to have some last moments with her.  That week in September also brought my brother and me face to face for the first time in about four years.  We had a brief conversation where my take away, as suspected, is that nothing is changed and most likely never will.  Interestingly, I’m past it.

The funeral and wake were fine.  It wasn’t a huge emotional carnival. Firstly, we’re not built that way and secondly Nana lived almost one hundred and two years.  She was unwell for the last two months of her life and no one should suffer; least of all my Nana.  As grandmothers go, my Nana was great. We were close, not so close that I shared everything with her or her with me.  There were aspects of each of our lives that we kept apart.  That is ok, her generation didn’t share everything and maybe I learned that lesson well from her.  Sitting here two months out, now I feel profound sadness and loss.  I keep wanting to call her on the telephone. Instead, I talk to her, much like I still talk to John and pray to God.

Thankfully, for the sake of my dad, I’d arranged for dad and mom to travel with me to Ireland for ten days in October. I think that the trip helped ease both of them through the process of Nana’s passing.  We had a great time and the trip was structured in a way to make dad comfortable.  Still, TSA and the mess that is the American airport leave me scratching my head. I wonder, exactly who won the battle on September 11? I don’t think it was the American traveler or air transit system. The screening system is silly, stupid and inefficient. There are indeed scores of blue shirted TSA employees standing around doing little if nothing.

My take away on all of this; enjoy your moments, stay close to loved ones and when traveling through US airports wear shoes that slid off and on easily.

North Carolina talibanistan

Things here in the old north state have gone a bit wacky and off the rails.  The scariness started a year ago with an amendment to the state constitution baring same sex marriage and since then things have been terrifying for those of us who are progressive.  Currently we have a state legislature and a governor who are right of Attila the Hun. 

Since storming into control in Raleigh the governor and his henchmen in the General Assembly have gone after everything from Dorthea Dix hospital to teacher tenure.  The former governor crafted a deal with the city of Raleigh to lease the Dorthea Dix mental hospital to the city of Raleigh.  Raleigh would create a regional park on the campus.  The legislature cancelled a SIGNED CONTRACT.  Talk about bad precedence.  If a binding contract can be unilaterally terminated because a signor to such has had a change of mind, well then the whole rule of law has just been sent through the paper shredder.  More reasonable behavior would have been a meeting to renegotiate.

Teachers in our state now will get no pay raise...AGAIN.  The public system is being gutted by an ill conceived voucher system for charter schools and teacher tenure is gone.  I sure hope the educators in the conservative counties in the east and west remember this come election time.

In North Carolina seventh graders must now be taught that abortion can impact future pregnancies.  This at the whim of the legislature.  I wonder if the mental midgets in Raleigh will legislate that drinking or using tobacco can also impact pregnancy.  I doubt it. 

Voting rights in this state have been gutted by a twenty first century version of a poll tax.  Voters now will have less time to vote, less time to register, may be challenged at the poll by anyone registered in their county, thus nullifying their vote.  Additionally, those who are poor, who don't drive, who live in the state's urban centers must now have a state issued photo id in order to vote.  Um, I wonder who that requirement is aimed at?  Could it be poor Democrats?  Of course.

There is so much moor that this evil General Assembly has been up to.  So to those thinking about North Carolina, don't.  Stay away because for the foreseeable future this is one scary place to live.

A Helicopter Magpie of a Momma

I knew when the phone rang it was trouble. The voice on the other end was akin to a Magpie on speed. It was the mother of a new tenant. Her voice had a bit of a skreetch with a thick Charlotte, NC accent and an air of anxiety. From the word hello, there was an agenda. Her agenda was to make my life miserable for a day, perhaps more. There is something terribly sad and pathetic when a grown person relies on a helicopter parent into their thirties or sometimes older. The purposes of the initial phone call this morning; to prompt me to immediate action on her child’s behalf. Truth be known, I’d already been in action for days. The underlying agenda of momma; to remove her precious little grown child from the new home she’d just leased. Momma just didn't approve.


Throughout the day, Magpie momma would amp up the pressure. She called no less than five times, she texted, she left messages and worse of all, she pecked away at her daughter until finally daughter called a lawyer to plead her case and get precious little grown child out of the lease. I let her go, after six hours of struggle. The lawyer is a liar, claiming that she’s been in the legal profession for twenty years; funny she received her J.D. in 2008, so her math doesn’t add up. Why did I acquiesce? Simple, I didn’t want to hear any more of it, I couldn’t win with three against one and I have someone else lined up to rent the home. The next tenant, self reliant, poised, capable and her momma isn’t hovering around line a maniacal helicopter on acid.