So Much To Write...

There are so many things to write about that it is hard for me to pick and choose this time around.  So, I decided to just start writing and let the thoughts sort of flow. 

This past week we celebrated, with great joy, the marriage of one of our daughters to her partner of 18 years.  It was pretty much of a “hurry up” affair because they wanted to get married before the Prop 8 people churned things up again in California.  In fact, the County Clerk of San Diego County filed to appeal the overturning of Prop 8, again, but the courts rejected the appeal just last week.  Although when Prop 8 passed, it was with the support of both the Catholic and Mormon churches.  I can’t speak at all for the Mormon Church, but I think the Catholic Bishops who supported Prop 8 did so, among many reasons, based on false information, which is no excuse for anyone in a position such as theirs.  They should have investigated further the allegation that the churches would be “required” to perform same-sex marriages.  Of course, no such thing was the case simply because it would violate the First Amendment to the US Constitution.  The state cannot order any church to perform any rite.  There is a separation of church and state, to the benefit of both.  But with the state of politics in this nation at this time, our daughter and her partner figured they had better get married while they had the chance.   

While we were celebrating and recuperating, we did keep up with the news, which included the Filner, Spitzer and Weiner circumstances.  If you are not acquainted with Bob Filner, Mayor of San Diego, google it.  It is disgusting, and I don’t want to waste time on it here.  There was the usual mantra from the radical right about how Democrats are so immoral, always having affairs, etc.  When that started it reminded me of a quip I had made up years ago.  “When the Democrats screw someone, it is usually one person at a time.  When the Republicans do it, it is the whole damn country”!  

To prove this point, think about what has been going on in states that are controlled by these new Republicans.  After the Republican Supreme Court knocked down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 recently, these Republican controlled states have passed stringent voter suppression laws against minorities, seniors, students and poor people.  They have voted to do away with women’s health clinics because they also provide abortions.  These are the same states that are refusing to accept the Affordable Health Care Act which will fund Medicaid in their states so that poor women now will have less access to mammograms, cervix and uterine cancer screening, diabetes screening, and other health care needs.  Although the attacks are aimed primarily at women, because Medicaid will be cut back, poor men will lose access to health care as well, although not as stringently as women.  The worst attack against the people of this country is the Republican threat to either de-fund the Affordable Health Care Act, or they will shut down the government, after failing to repeal it 39 times, with the 40^th due this next week.  (Does this mean they are insane, since one of the definitions of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?) 

Let’s see.  There are actions now against people of color, poor seniors, students, all poor hungry people, and women.  By golly, they are screwing the whole damn country.  Sometimes I hate it when I am right. 

 

 

 

 

Martin vs. Zimmerman Redux

In the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin verdict many black pundits, politicians and bureaucrats at all levels of government shared how they have had to have discussions with their sons about how to act after they walk out of their front doors.  How to not attract attention, how to interact with police officers, etc.  My husband and I found the need for these discussions to be very sad.

Listening to these stories, I had a flashback to my own young days in the 1940’s when I was a teenager.  My mother emphasized to me how, after I left our house, I should not attract attention, how I should walk, how I should dress, how I should never be alone after dark because any girl who didn’t follow these rules was asking to be sexually assaulted. My step-grandmother, whom I adored, had the advice, “You should never be seen in your clothes, dear.  It will give the boys the wrong idea”.  (I still like sloppy clothes, however.) There was no comprehension that I would not be the one who was at fault.  I must have broken the rules.  My own daughters are long past the age where I would need to advise them, and I have no idea what young girls are taught now, but I have a glimmer of feeling for what black men must feel as they advise their own sons, and how the sons must feel.

Just as there has been, and still is, pushback on the fact that when a young women is sexually assaulted, it is not her fault, regardless of how stupid she may have been dressed or acting.  That a sexual assault is wrong, wrong, wrong under all circumstances.  We need now to have that same level of pushback against the idiot belief that if you are a young black male, you are a criminal.  Gender and skin have the same quality.  There is not one iota of anything one can do about it!!

I need to interject here that I am not equating sexual assault with murder.  With good physical and psychological care, one can overcome sexual assault.  One cannot be brought back to life.   

When I listened and watched the trial of George Zimmerman I was totally frustrated that with all of the discussion of whether it was proper for George Zimmerman to rely on the Stand Your Ground law, pull his gun and shoot a boy, there was no in-depth discussion of the fact that in this instance George Zimmerman was the aggressor and Trayvon Martin was using the only weapons he had – his fists – to Stand His Ground against a fully grown and muscled adult male who was following him for no reason, and could easily pose a dangerous threat to him.  We have no idea if Zimmerman taunted Martin, or what was said or done. But we do know that Martin was afraid of Zimmerman, telling his friend, Rachelle Jeantel on his cell phone that he was being followed by a “creepy-ass cracker”. 

I waited for even the liberal talk show people like Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow to bring up this point that Martin had the right to the Stand Your Ground law and expound on it at length, but not one did.  It was all whether Zimmerman had the right to shoot Martin.  Of course someone may have brought up this point that I didn’t watch, but they all should have been discussing it, at length and in depth.  There was discussion that all Martin was doing was walking home, but there was no discussion that he, too, had an absolutely legal right to use the Stand Your Ground law against Zimmerman.  Again in this instance as in mine when a teen-ager, there was and is the assumption that white males have the absolute right to dictate to a whole group of people how they should act, talk, dress and think. To some, men have this right in general regarding women, and white men in regard to both women and black people, men and women.  Fortunately, not all men believe this, but too many do. 

The result is, that as all know in their hearts, underneath it all, that in Florida and elsewhere, a black boy or man does not have the right to Stand His/Her Ground.  After all, Martin was alone after dark, wearing suspicious clothing, and being where this white male decided he shouldn’t be.  Martin was ‘just asking for it’.

 

As California Goes, So Goes The Nation

As I have admitted before, I am a political junkie.  I limit the amount of time I watch politics by recording the programs I want to watch and blasting by the commercials.  Thus, for a one hour program I save 20 minutes.

This past week has been a real roller coaster.  The Zimmerman trial in Florida has taken up a lot of time, and although I found it fascinating to watch, thought about my health and exercise and really limited the amount of time I watched that.  I did watch the prosecution summation and tried to watch the defense summation but O’Mara droned on and on, so I raced through to the end.  At this point as I write this, no verdict.

The other issues that have been of interest are the sudden appearance of so many so-called anti-abortion laws, the gerrymandering of states by Republican legislatures to insure the election of a majority of Republicans along with and the proliferation of voter suppression bills in state legislatures after the Supreme Court struck down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. 

The majority of the clinics that are the target of the Republicans do provide abortions, but they also provide for over-all women’s health care.  These include but are probably not limited to mammograms, ovarian and cervical cancer screenings.  The one that had me both laughing at and feeling sort of sick at the same time was the North Carolina bill for motorcycle safety that had an amendment added at the last moment to restrict access to women’s health care clinics.  The reason for the laughter was the little headline at the bottom of the screen on Rachel Maddow’s program:  “Zen and the art of menstrual cycle maintenance”.  Ohio and Wisconsin have also passed anti-choice laws these past few weeks, usually by sneaking them through when they thought no one was looking. 

What I have found to be really interesting is that although most of the pundits I watch decry all of these maneuvers of gerrymandering Congressional Districts to ensure that Republicans are elected, sneaking anti-women’s health clinic laws through at the last moment, and the voter suppression laws, no one mentions the laws in California where these above sins now cannot occur.  I say “now cannot” because California appointed a bi-partisan commission of 12 private citizens to redraw California’s Congressional Districts to eliminate the Republican gerrymandering that had taken place.  Believe it or not, the Republican Party in California challenged the new Districting because “it did not favor Republicans”.  That was the point!  It didn’t favor either party, and now Democrats control the State government. 

As far as sneaking laws as amendments onto bills that have nothing to do with the amendment, as North Carolina did with the motorcycle safety act and abortion, California has had the Begley-Keene Act for years.  This Act has pretty strict requirements for special meetings, emergency meetings, etc., but for regular meetings of the Legislature, the meeting must be noticed 10 days prior to the date, with a draft agenda.  If an emergency item comes up that requires immediate action, there must be a 48 hour notification period, and depending on the item, requires either a 2/3rd or unanimous vote to place it on the agenda.  The reason for these strict rules is to enable the public to also be present when decisions regarding its life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are involved. 

The 52 counties and Special Districts in the State of California are covered by the Ralph M. Brown Act, which also requires public notification, the posting of an agenda, rules for open meetings, and the prohibition of secret meetings among the members of Boards and Commissions.  Thus, for a five member Board, two can have a discussion on an item, but not three.  Nor can there be a “serial” meeting.  That is, board member one cannot call up member two and tell him/her what the decision is, member two calls up member three, and on up the line.  This is highly illegal as well.  Consequently most of California’s counties are pretty well run.  We always have exceptions like San Bernardino County, and some others, but by and large the system works pretty well.

When it comes to election laws there are also some pretty strict guidelines.  But some of the voter suppression scams that other states use would be useless here.  That is, cutting back on days that the polls are open, or the number of polling places simply cannot work here because we have this really neat thing called “absentee voting”.  We sign up for absentee voting, and when our ballot comes in the mail we have the choice of filling it out at home and mailing it in, or filling it out at home and dropping it by a polling place on election day.  And heaven help the person who commits voter fraud!!  Consequently there is little to none in California, regardless of Darrell Issa’s ranting.

How I wish the old saying, “As California Goes, So Goes The Nation” could really happen now.

 

The Never Ending Story of Bianchi Place

So, when you have a family like ours with active, involved members who were raised to be their own persons, one gets what we refer to as “the never ending story of Bianchi Place”.  Or, for those too young to know, there was a book in the late 1940’s known as The Never Ending Story of Peyton Place.  It was a, for that time, really steamy story.  It was so notorious that my cousin, Frank, bought a copy but we all had to read it either in the closet with the door shut, or under the blankets at night with a flashlight so my beloved Aunt, with whom I was living at the time, wouldn’t catch us.  Anyway, I got a copy not too many years ago, settled in for a really hot read, and was truly shocked.  Mainly because the book would probably be appropriate nowadays for a young teen!  Society has truly evolved.  Sort of like the early 1950’s movie The Moon Is Blue.  When it came out it was on the Catholic Church’s, at that time, condemned list, and when I saw it recently it was the most innocuous movie by today’s standards.  Really cute with a “double entendre” story line. 

What that book and movie have to do with my family is that as our society has evolved, so has so much of our own personal understandings of so-called “cultural” issues, or as is more succinctly stated in Catholic Church circles, “pelvic issues”.  And, having one daughter who has a partner rather than a spouse really causes one to re-evaluate one’s thinking on this issue.  18 years ago when our daughter brought her new partner home to meet us, we absolutely fell in love with her.

Consequently this past 10 days has been a real roller coaster ride for our family with the Supreme Court striking down major provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and the unconstitutionality of California’s Proposition 8.  So, after much discussion between them the two decided to get married this past Monday. 

And this is where the never-ending story part begins.  Remember the heat wave that hit the Southwestern United States?  Well, we live in the area affected.  This is important to remember because when our daughter called to tell us their plans for Monday, my husband and I rearranged our lives in order to be at the courthouse for their ceremony.

But, she called at 7:30 Monday morning that they were going to dash down and get the license, but didn’t know when the ceremony would be because her horse was “colicking”.  So, thus began the wait.  She called every few hours to give us the update on the horse – she was walking him around every hour on the hour, in 110 degree heat, trying to get his insides to do what insides are supposed to do – move.  Finally, she called that they had to call the vet to “tube” Buster.  That is run a tube up his other end from his mouth to let the air out so he wouldn’t rupture something.  Since I am not a horse person, I didn’t even know that could happen, and it was something that had never happened to Buster before, ever, and his insides decided to do it on the day they planned to get married.  There was much discussion about changes in his diet necessary because of both the colic and the hot weather, and on Tuesday we got a hallelujah phone call that Buster had “done his thing” in the corral.  Now this was not necessarily the news that we thought we would get telling us that we should be at the Clerk-Recorder’s Office that day for a marriage ceremony, but it was still good news. 

In our family we have learned to sort of roll with whatever comes along.  The heat spell has broken, Buster is now back to his old perky self, and a new date has been set for a simple family ceremony at our place which is in a fairly remote location, with the subsequent food and drinks at our house which is more bug proof.

If anyone had told me when Bill and I got married years ago that we would be having a marriage ceremony at our house for a daughter and her same-sex partner, and be overjoyed with this event, I would have been totally appalled.  But, just like our culture, we have evolved with the times, as well.

 I just hope that damn horse continues to do its “thing.”