There's a reason we call California Shake & Bake.
Earthquakes and (usually) seasonal fires keep us on our toes here.
This week, the areas of Monterey/Big Sur and Santa Clarita are on evacuation commands for raging brush fires.
We send our love and prayers to family and friends who are in the vicinity.
Flurries of memories have arisen of time spent as a young child in the Big Sur...
Greeeeeeeen deep grass-covered hills, the sound of cowbells on the fog, tongue-wakening watercress fresh from the stream of Garapata Creek, Fells Naptha Soap for the inevitable case of poison oak, fragrant smoke from Bret and Cole Weston's wood stoves, and the strong scent of Eucalyptus from Edward Weston's myriad cats going in and out his ever open windows. Cats on the table. Cats on the floor. Cats on the couches. Cats at the door. I loved my time spent there at the beginning of every summer when we dropped off brother Melton to work the trout pond which Cole ran, and again the pick-up trip in September, when brother Mel's hair was long, his muscles popped out, his hat adorned with boar's teeth and a rattlesnake tail.
May all be well among the people and critters who may need to relocate. May these current tongues of hungry flame that lick and strip the once verdant habitats be satiated soon, and may new growth be nurtured by dew, and prayer-conjured RAIN.
May all be well.
Monday, July 25, 2016
Sunday, July 17, 2016
Weed 'em and Reap
Long white ghost roots wriggle and undulate as I pull them out from under the porous black tarp. It was thrown down to kill the weeds a couple of years ago. Neighbor Bob says it never was a lawn really, only a weed patch front and back, which the former owners paid someone to mow one a month. Said they liked it. Reminded them of the wilds of Mississippi.
When the kids sold the place to us in 2014, they were counseled to put shredded bark over all. Brown is the new Green in California. So, I pull the white ghost roots out from under the bark and black tarp. Some are as stout as linguini. Some as ephemeral as fairy hair. Greens are hardy beings. They go toward the sun.
As the warm gold life-bringer dips below the trees this evening, it is finally cool enough to weed. Mind you, this is post major weeding weeding. I paid Omar and William a full day’s worth at $20 per hour per man to get out the towering thistles with trunks big as my fist, and Bristly Ox Tongue with spikey owie-maker thorns. Wild oats as tall as my shoulder got hacked at the roots too. I had done three days worth of hand weeding and got only one quarter of the yard done. The fellows did an admirable job ten bags worth to my five.
My spiritual practice this evening is to nip in the bud the wanna-be solid green carpet that these wee weedy creatures remember and long to re-establish. Life goes toward life!
Metaphors abound: What must I rid myself of? What’s gone to seed and may be growing sticker ball purrs and Mexican Morning Glories that wants to obliterate my soul?
While Bristly Ox Tongue’s flowers are a pretty color yellow, their sticker-full leaves render them ugly when my tender finger tips get pricked. I need a tool for these.
Bless Deirdre Sloyan’s generous gardening heart. She told me about this perfect weeding tool from Smith Hawken. I found one in their brick and mortar shop in Pasadena in 1990. In the shop, I meandered like a glacial meander belt stream. No hurry. Slow wandering with eyes all a sparkle at every bend around shelf ends, and at every bend of my knees to explore lower shelves. Returning to upright after one such low-down investigation of some marvelous gardening toy, I came face to face with an on-coming angel. A woman maybe fifteen to twenty years my senior with white bun and tendrils framing her incandescent face. She looks so present in her body I know at once that I want whatever she’s having that makes her so alive. Utter peace emanates from her. I begin, like a duckling following its imprinted mom, to walk in her wake. When she gets to the cash register with her purchases, before my eavesdropping becomes embarrassingly obvious, I duck round a shelf near the cash register and wait my turn in line - breathless, and in hiding. I am simply happy to have seen a mentor, a pioneer of the possible. She leaves the store not knowing that she was that for me this lovely day. Too shy to share with her my contact high.
I think of her this evening as I heft my perfect weeding tool in warning to the burgeoning Bristly Ox Tongue leaves. This is MY garden and it’s not big enough for the both of us. I wonder. What would my secret mentor do?
When the kids sold the place to us in 2014, they were counseled to put shredded bark over all. Brown is the new Green in California. So, I pull the white ghost roots out from under the bark and black tarp. Some are as stout as linguini. Some as ephemeral as fairy hair. Greens are hardy beings. They go toward the sun.
As the warm gold life-bringer dips below the trees this evening, it is finally cool enough to weed. Mind you, this is post major weeding weeding. I paid Omar and William a full day’s worth at $20 per hour per man to get out the towering thistles with trunks big as my fist, and Bristly Ox Tongue with spikey owie-maker thorns. Wild oats as tall as my shoulder got hacked at the roots too. I had done three days worth of hand weeding and got only one quarter of the yard done. The fellows did an admirable job ten bags worth to my five.
My spiritual practice this evening is to nip in the bud the wanna-be solid green carpet that these wee weedy creatures remember and long to re-establish. Life goes toward life!
Metaphors abound: What must I rid myself of? What’s gone to seed and may be growing sticker ball purrs and Mexican Morning Glories that wants to obliterate my soul?
While Bristly Ox Tongue’s flowers are a pretty color yellow, their sticker-full leaves render them ugly when my tender finger tips get pricked. I need a tool for these.
Bless Deirdre Sloyan’s generous gardening heart. She told me about this perfect weeding tool from Smith Hawken. I found one in their brick and mortar shop in Pasadena in 1990. In the shop, I meandered like a glacial meander belt stream. No hurry. Slow wandering with eyes all a sparkle at every bend around shelf ends, and at every bend of my knees to explore lower shelves. Returning to upright after one such low-down investigation of some marvelous gardening toy, I came face to face with an on-coming angel. A woman maybe fifteen to twenty years my senior with white bun and tendrils framing her incandescent face. She looks so present in her body I know at once that I want whatever she’s having that makes her so alive. Utter peace emanates from her. I begin, like a duckling following its imprinted mom, to walk in her wake. When she gets to the cash register with her purchases, before my eavesdropping becomes embarrassingly obvious, I duck round a shelf near the cash register and wait my turn in line - breathless, and in hiding. I am simply happy to have seen a mentor, a pioneer of the possible. She leaves the store not knowing that she was that for me this lovely day. Too shy to share with her my contact high.
I think of her this evening as I heft my perfect weeding tool in warning to the burgeoning Bristly Ox Tongue leaves. This is MY garden and it’s not big enough for the both of us. I wonder. What would my secret mentor do?
Brother Marc Schuler, May 23, 1952 - January 28, 2016
I have always fought not to project but to be myself. To retain my own scale, which is a dot, but a vibrating dot, a pulsating dot, that is what I’d like to be. I would like to remain that pulsating dot which can reach out to the whole world, to the Universe. ——Chandralekha, Dancer
Our friend had a good send off. We, the living, colleagues, friends, lovers, and fans-of-Marc, had a way good story swap, food, and some amount of closure. Sure, time and c-c-cold conspired to shoo us out of Roberts Regional Park in what felt like premature evacuation, but we had some good stories, songs, and belly laughs. Portraits painted helped me imagine better the depth of this character Marc Schuler. He did, indeed, pulsate and he reached out to us all in his unique way of making contact - whether obliquely, from a distance, or with tender intimacy.
Living so far away, I knew him in the interstitial spaces around the perimeter of the conference rooms where both of us assisted Advanced trainings of Somatic Experiencing, since 2003. We were grandfathered-in at a time when the Foundation for Human Enrichment’s student population rapidly exploded and they were in dire need of assistants. It was a thrill to rub elbows with the likes of Amini Peller, Lorne Hager, Sandy Shore, and Danaan O’Lahey who assisted Peter Levine at our own advanced trainings. Later, we’d compare notes on assisting at the beginning and intermediate levels - Marc and I in parallel play. Marc assisted Raja Selvam by the Bay, and I in L.A. We joked that he lived sub-Berkeley, and I sub-Burbank.
Sotto voce, we’d discuss the growing pains of the mother ship with Peter at the helm trying to keep afloat and steer his baby - this burgeoning trauma-relief organization into broader shipping lanes and deeper water.
For years, Dr. Levine funneled his own money into FHE, setting a precedent of self-sacrifice for the greater good.
Marc and I talked in the kitchenettes at Mercy Center over our individual pots of steaming kale about the theory and practice of S.E., about the hardship of leaving our individual practice for a full week, and the need to do X number of sessions at the trainings - just to break even after paying room and board. His session log and that of Lee Wylie boggled my mind. Fifteen to eighteen sessions in five days? Wow. I was struggling to keep up with eight to ten sessions.
That humor and sullenness could co-exist so close to the surface in the real estate just under his ever-present cap, was endearing. One day he entered the assistant’s meeting at Mercy Center with a cartwheel, a summersault, a perfect landing in his seat, and a look that said, what ... nothing unusual has happened here. At another training in Petaluma he was unconscionably and inconsolably rude and clearly at the effect of painfully massive dental work. His appreciation for the exquisiteness of the tools we were receiving from Peter Levine, Raja Selvam, and Kathy was profound. His caustic judgements and curmudgeonliness about how stupid traumatized people could be, burned through the convent walls on occasion, scorching our kale and boiling the green juice. It was rare that we shared food, only company. Oh, that coffee smelled so good. He brought his own brewing system set-up, but never offered to share that.
One of my favorite times was the last time we were together at Mercy, though, neither of us knew it would be our last. We got to talking about our grandfathers. He described his as a meticulous, disciplined, engineer. It gave me some insight into one of his probable influences. Marc was certainly precise, a stickler for exactitude - in bodywork, in speech, and in music. He was interested when I told him he could be describing my grandfather, who began working in the aircraft industry in 1910, also an innovative engineer of sorts, designing and building the tools to build the tools to build the airplanes. Both were of German extraction. Both were focused perfectionists with deeply respectful dispositions, with respect for tools above all. (Later I would see Marc’s cooking knives. They were the sharpest ever, hanging from their magnetized strip on the wall by the sink - never to be dulled in a drawer.)
I wanted to know more of this man of mystery Marc. When I felt settled-in at my new home in Oakland, early in 2015, I invited Marc four times to join me for a walk/talk or coffee. Each time, he’d email back after a lengthy delay saying, not yet. Something’s going on.
Memorial Day weekend my husband and I hosted two days worth of open houses, one to meet our new neighbors, and one for our Bay Area family, friends and colleagues. Marc came and stayed about ten minutes. He looked sunken to me and he was very prickly. I suspected that the something going on was affecting his health. More dental work? I wondered.
A big-sisterly urge rose up in me to stand by him protectively, fiercely. I let him know I was here. In October, he called me in response to yet another invitation to get together. Soon, he said. Stuff’s goin’ on here, he said. A few days later, he called and told me of his diagnosis and all about his beloved Picnic Club and how Linda, Sarah, Maureen, and Lynn Ann came to his rescue when they recognized that he was in deep doo doo. He spoke of Marion his old friend coming to take his laundry, wash it to his specifications, fold and return it.
The first time I was invited into his Cleveland Street home / monastery, in December, it took him a full quarter hour to teach me the correct way to enter into his home and to come in contact with his energy body boundary space. I thought, I know how to work with hurt babies whose little nervous systems are all kafoogeldie with no protection from bumps, pokes, prods and assaults on their wee bodies. This man has got some huevos and some humongous hubris. Who was this butt brain turning up his nose and looking down on me from some self-righteous perch? Where was the sweet colleague I used to have a crush on?
Lucky for me, I swallowed my pride and stuck with the lesson so he could train me up - right there in his office space off the kitchen. We read the three papers he’d pinned to a blanket on the wall: Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye, The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Elder, and the lyrics to It’s a Wonderful World as sung by Luis Satchmo Armstrong. We swayed together, rocking in synchronized motion for another quarter hour. Then he went to lie down.
I’m a good work horse. I’d only come to pick up a shopping list and his laundry to give Marion a break. But he had to sense into my ability to remain present, and went on at length about how Linda could hold space, how Sarah, Mo and Lynne Ann could hold space. He recognized pretty soon that he needed a bigger team, but he fought giving up control every step of the way. He was not used to so many people in his space. He confessed that he’d had more social engagement in the two months since his diagnosis, than in the past two decades. He didn’t have energy to give to people who didn’t get how to be with him.
Cancer is a hungry beast and his was eating him from the inside. For the most part, he was not suffering. He was simply aware and took one nano-second at a time - each in all its exquisite detail.
The third time I was in his home, the new Kaiser Hospice nurse also came for her third visit. I heard that the original nurse was not a good match. She just couldn’t get it. This visit with Lia started with a wobble. She was in a hurry. He was in pain which made him imperious, impatient, and very prickly. I held space while the three of us sat on the floor in his treatment room, where he helped so many clients. Face to face, Marc and Lia told their truths, their hurts, and finally, their appreciations for one another, and ended with an amicable cease-fire. Lia’s fourth visit went much better. Whewh! Ditto with Sukhi, the Hospice Social Worker. When she offered him a rudraksha bead meditation bracelet, he just held it out like a dead mouse and smiled sweetly.
He was a good teacher and a fast learner! Perhaps he was channeling his grandfather in how meticulously he kept track of his medications. I’m sure he’ll be remembered a good long lucky time in the Kaiser cafeteria or wherever the hospice staff sit to swap stories. I think he trained them up rather well.
Later that day, looking longingly out the window at his beloved redwoods, he told me he needed to build yin energy like a redwood tree that keeps growing for thousands of years, but can be sawed off and toppled in under an hour by big yang activity at its base. He told me it was not so easy for him to take in the help and care he was receiving. I said, Duh, Dude. What was our first clue, Mr. Prickle Pants? It was good to hear him laugh.
I could not speak at the ceremony yesterday, too raw. I spent this, the day after, gathering my thoughts on paper. I feel great gratitude for Andrea Smith Gage and Kevin Gage for holding anchor for the community to share our memories. Heart-felt thanks for all the good food brought and shared. Marion found the perfect spot for us to convene. Linda and Sarah hiked in from way down the hill, carrying Marc's ashes. Michael and Michelle brought a redwood tree to plant. That will be a work in progress. We had to leave before that could be accomplished. More than forty folk and a couple of dogs showed up, from far-flung places. Marc would have loved the party - except that there was no coffee.
With grateful heart for the huge family of healing healers that includes Somatic Experiencing Practitioners everywhere,
Melinda
Our friend had a good send off. We, the living, colleagues, friends, lovers, and fans-of-Marc, had a way good story swap, food, and some amount of closure. Sure, time and c-c-cold conspired to shoo us out of Roberts Regional Park in what felt like premature evacuation, but we had some good stories, songs, and belly laughs. Portraits painted helped me imagine better the depth of this character Marc Schuler. He did, indeed, pulsate and he reached out to us all in his unique way of making contact - whether obliquely, from a distance, or with tender intimacy.
Living so far away, I knew him in the interstitial spaces around the perimeter of the conference rooms where both of us assisted Advanced trainings of Somatic Experiencing, since 2003. We were grandfathered-in at a time when the Foundation for Human Enrichment’s student population rapidly exploded and they were in dire need of assistants. It was a thrill to rub elbows with the likes of Amini Peller, Lorne Hager, Sandy Shore, and Danaan O’Lahey who assisted Peter Levine at our own advanced trainings. Later, we’d compare notes on assisting at the beginning and intermediate levels - Marc and I in parallel play. Marc assisted Raja Selvam by the Bay, and I in L.A. We joked that he lived sub-Berkeley, and I sub-Burbank.
Sotto voce, we’d discuss the growing pains of the mother ship with Peter at the helm trying to keep afloat and steer his baby - this burgeoning trauma-relief organization into broader shipping lanes and deeper water.
For years, Dr. Levine funneled his own money into FHE, setting a precedent of self-sacrifice for the greater good.
Marc and I talked in the kitchenettes at Mercy Center over our individual pots of steaming kale about the theory and practice of S.E., about the hardship of leaving our individual practice for a full week, and the need to do X number of sessions at the trainings - just to break even after paying room and board. His session log and that of Lee Wylie boggled my mind. Fifteen to eighteen sessions in five days? Wow. I was struggling to keep up with eight to ten sessions.
That humor and sullenness could co-exist so close to the surface in the real estate just under his ever-present cap, was endearing. One day he entered the assistant’s meeting at Mercy Center with a cartwheel, a summersault, a perfect landing in his seat, and a look that said, what ... nothing unusual has happened here. At another training in Petaluma he was unconscionably and inconsolably rude and clearly at the effect of painfully massive dental work. His appreciation for the exquisiteness of the tools we were receiving from Peter Levine, Raja Selvam, and Kathy was profound. His caustic judgements and curmudgeonliness about how stupid traumatized people could be, burned through the convent walls on occasion, scorching our kale and boiling the green juice. It was rare that we shared food, only company. Oh, that coffee smelled so good. He brought his own brewing system set-up, but never offered to share that.
One of my favorite times was the last time we were together at Mercy, though, neither of us knew it would be our last. We got to talking about our grandfathers. He described his as a meticulous, disciplined, engineer. It gave me some insight into one of his probable influences. Marc was certainly precise, a stickler for exactitude - in bodywork, in speech, and in music. He was interested when I told him he could be describing my grandfather, who began working in the aircraft industry in 1910, also an innovative engineer of sorts, designing and building the tools to build the tools to build the airplanes. Both were of German extraction. Both were focused perfectionists with deeply respectful dispositions, with respect for tools above all. (Later I would see Marc’s cooking knives. They were the sharpest ever, hanging from their magnetized strip on the wall by the sink - never to be dulled in a drawer.)
I wanted to know more of this man of mystery Marc. When I felt settled-in at my new home in Oakland, early in 2015, I invited Marc four times to join me for a walk/talk or coffee. Each time, he’d email back after a lengthy delay saying, not yet. Something’s going on.
Memorial Day weekend my husband and I hosted two days worth of open houses, one to meet our new neighbors, and one for our Bay Area family, friends and colleagues. Marc came and stayed about ten minutes. He looked sunken to me and he was very prickly. I suspected that the something going on was affecting his health. More dental work? I wondered.
A big-sisterly urge rose up in me to stand by him protectively, fiercely. I let him know I was here. In October, he called me in response to yet another invitation to get together. Soon, he said. Stuff’s goin’ on here, he said. A few days later, he called and told me of his diagnosis and all about his beloved Picnic Club and how Linda, Sarah, Maureen, and Lynn Ann came to his rescue when they recognized that he was in deep doo doo. He spoke of Marion his old friend coming to take his laundry, wash it to his specifications, fold and return it.
The first time I was invited into his Cleveland Street home / monastery, in December, it took him a full quarter hour to teach me the correct way to enter into his home and to come in contact with his energy body boundary space. I thought, I know how to work with hurt babies whose little nervous systems are all kafoogeldie with no protection from bumps, pokes, prods and assaults on their wee bodies. This man has got some huevos and some humongous hubris. Who was this butt brain turning up his nose and looking down on me from some self-righteous perch? Where was the sweet colleague I used to have a crush on?
Lucky for me, I swallowed my pride and stuck with the lesson so he could train me up - right there in his office space off the kitchen. We read the three papers he’d pinned to a blanket on the wall: Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye, The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Elder, and the lyrics to It’s a Wonderful World as sung by Luis Satchmo Armstrong. We swayed together, rocking in synchronized motion for another quarter hour. Then he went to lie down.
I’m a good work horse. I’d only come to pick up a shopping list and his laundry to give Marion a break. But he had to sense into my ability to remain present, and went on at length about how Linda could hold space, how Sarah, Mo and Lynne Ann could hold space. He recognized pretty soon that he needed a bigger team, but he fought giving up control every step of the way. He was not used to so many people in his space. He confessed that he’d had more social engagement in the two months since his diagnosis, than in the past two decades. He didn’t have energy to give to people who didn’t get how to be with him.
Cancer is a hungry beast and his was eating him from the inside. For the most part, he was not suffering. He was simply aware and took one nano-second at a time - each in all its exquisite detail.
The third time I was in his home, the new Kaiser Hospice nurse also came for her third visit. I heard that the original nurse was not a good match. She just couldn’t get it. This visit with Lia started with a wobble. She was in a hurry. He was in pain which made him imperious, impatient, and very prickly. I held space while the three of us sat on the floor in his treatment room, where he helped so many clients. Face to face, Marc and Lia told their truths, their hurts, and finally, their appreciations for one another, and ended with an amicable cease-fire. Lia’s fourth visit went much better. Whewh! Ditto with Sukhi, the Hospice Social Worker. When she offered him a rudraksha bead meditation bracelet, he just held it out like a dead mouse and smiled sweetly.
He was a good teacher and a fast learner! Perhaps he was channeling his grandfather in how meticulously he kept track of his medications. I’m sure he’ll be remembered a good long lucky time in the Kaiser cafeteria or wherever the hospice staff sit to swap stories. I think he trained them up rather well.
Later that day, looking longingly out the window at his beloved redwoods, he told me he needed to build yin energy like a redwood tree that keeps growing for thousands of years, but can be sawed off and toppled in under an hour by big yang activity at its base. He told me it was not so easy for him to take in the help and care he was receiving. I said, Duh, Dude. What was our first clue, Mr. Prickle Pants? It was good to hear him laugh.
I could not speak at the ceremony yesterday, too raw. I spent this, the day after, gathering my thoughts on paper. I feel great gratitude for Andrea Smith Gage and Kevin Gage for holding anchor for the community to share our memories. Heart-felt thanks for all the good food brought and shared. Marion found the perfect spot for us to convene. Linda and Sarah hiked in from way down the hill, carrying Marc's ashes. Michael and Michelle brought a redwood tree to plant. That will be a work in progress. We had to leave before that could be accomplished. More than forty folk and a couple of dogs showed up, from far-flung places. Marc would have loved the party - except that there was no coffee.
With grateful heart for the huge family of healing healers that includes Somatic Experiencing Practitioners everywhere,
Melinda
Sunday, July 10, 2016
Nama-Stay In Bed...
In the wake of two more men of color being killed by police doing their jobs of serving and protecting, and subsequent retaliation against colorless(?) Dallas police officers by a disturbed former soldier, at the very end of what had been a unifying and peaceful demonstration, shock has settled into my bones. I take to heart the pithy saying emblazoned on my sister-in-law’s night shirt:
“Nama-stay
in bed.”
Ostrich-up for a bit. Let the ache in my marrow, head, and heart subside.
Then what?
Had I known about the local demonstration in Oakland which closed down the Nimitz Freeway in both directions Thursday evening, I might well have joined the protestors.
Enough is… well... waaaaaay too much
Are we tipping into all out race wars? Civilians against an increasingly militaristic police force? Powerful against powerless?
National Public Radio carried a story about police in Scotland who do not carry guns; only mace. The reporter said Scotland has more knives per capita than any other country in Europe, yet police go virtually unarmed into their daily rounds. They DO practice the first technique I learned in Model Mugging, a self-defense course meant to empower women, which is to de-escalate the charged atmosphere when emotions are running amok, and to use calming posture, gestures, words, and facial expression. Diplomacy first. Guns ...maybe never. Is never good with you?
The invitation to write questions or comments on the radio station’s web site went by too swiftly for me to write it down, but I wanted to share this observation.
Highly structured organizations, such as the military and police forces, are magnets for folks who’ve experienced a lot of early trauma in their lives. Structure feels predictable. It is an antidote to the chaos of a disruptive childhood. Reliable regimented schedules and behaviors feel safer than the chaos in which many young ones steep in their family of origin. This is not to say that all soldiers and all police officers are traumatized, but only to recognize the allure of highly regimented professions for those who have a significant trauma history.
What happens when we put highly traumatized people into uniforms, hand them guns, and ask them to step into chaotic street scenarios? We get to watch their fight, flight, freeze kick in.
For the most part, training protocols extinguish flight and freeze, so the default setting becomes fight which, when the adrenaline of survival energies get stirred, can cause some less than optimal interactions.
Bless their hearts, soldiers and cops swear an oath to protect and serve, putting their own lives on the line whether in Kabul, Bagdad, Baton Rouge or Dallas. We appreciate their willingness to fight for us. We do not appreciate the warping of their judgement that can cause their trigger fingers to kill innocents - either because of unhealed traumas of their own, or through their acts of perceived self-preservation.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
National Rifle Association says more guns would solve the problem.
Dallas’s police chief says officers wear armor that is bullet proof only for hand guns. It cannot protect those who serve from rapid fire, high-velocity machine guns.
If these recent events don't tip legislators finally to recognize the folly of allowing artillery machines to be easily available to the mentally ill, the further devolution of society is ensured.
I confess to the fantasy of using Wayne LaPierre’s image for target practice… just a fantasy, but it helps the marrow, heart and head lose the ache. I guess the scenario in my imagination helps discharge my pent-up rage and thwarted fight response. Don’t hand me a real gun, please.
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“Nama-stay
in bed.”
Ostrich-up for a bit. Let the ache in my marrow, head, and heart subside.
Then what?
Had I known about the local demonstration in Oakland which closed down the Nimitz Freeway in both directions Thursday evening, I might well have joined the protestors.
Enough is… well... waaaaaay too much
Are we tipping into all out race wars? Civilians against an increasingly militaristic police force? Powerful against powerless?
National Public Radio carried a story about police in Scotland who do not carry guns; only mace. The reporter said Scotland has more knives per capita than any other country in Europe, yet police go virtually unarmed into their daily rounds. They DO practice the first technique I learned in Model Mugging, a self-defense course meant to empower women, which is to de-escalate the charged atmosphere when emotions are running amok, and to use calming posture, gestures, words, and facial expression. Diplomacy first. Guns ...maybe never. Is never good with you?
The invitation to write questions or comments on the radio station’s web site went by too swiftly for me to write it down, but I wanted to share this observation.
Highly structured organizations, such as the military and police forces, are magnets for folks who’ve experienced a lot of early trauma in their lives. Structure feels predictable. It is an antidote to the chaos of a disruptive childhood. Reliable regimented schedules and behaviors feel safer than the chaos in which many young ones steep in their family of origin. This is not to say that all soldiers and all police officers are traumatized, but only to recognize the allure of highly regimented professions for those who have a significant trauma history.
What happens when we put highly traumatized people into uniforms, hand them guns, and ask them to step into chaotic street scenarios? We get to watch their fight, flight, freeze kick in.
For the most part, training protocols extinguish flight and freeze, so the default setting becomes fight which, when the adrenaline of survival energies get stirred, can cause some less than optimal interactions.
Bless their hearts, soldiers and cops swear an oath to protect and serve, putting their own lives on the line whether in Kabul, Bagdad, Baton Rouge or Dallas. We appreciate their willingness to fight for us. We do not appreciate the warping of their judgement that can cause their trigger fingers to kill innocents - either because of unhealed traumas of their own, or through their acts of perceived self-preservation.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
National Rifle Association says more guns would solve the problem.
Dallas’s police chief says officers wear armor that is bullet proof only for hand guns. It cannot protect those who serve from rapid fire, high-velocity machine guns.
If these recent events don't tip legislators finally to recognize the folly of allowing artillery machines to be easily available to the mentally ill, the further devolution of society is ensured.
I confess to the fantasy of using Wayne LaPierre’s image for target practice… just a fantasy, but it helps the marrow, heart and head lose the ache. I guess the scenario in my imagination helps discharge my pent-up rage and thwarted fight response. Don’t hand me a real gun, please.
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Wayne LaPierre
Monday, July 4, 2016
May the Fourth Be With You!
Intriguing story on NPR this morning: Schools no longer have students sing patriotic songs in a group the way they used to sing them in the 1940s through 1960s and even into the early 1970s. Too many mentions of G_d, and even "bombs bursting in air," perhaps. One question arises: Because the United States welcomes people from all nations (up until the wall is built, anyway), why don't we sing the national anthems from all countries?
What we lose by dropping the practice is a sense of unity. Music literally and figuratively puts us into harmony with our fellow humans. Singing songs that identify the singers as belonging to the same group helps to unify people. Currently, we seem to have devolved and polarized into factions within the country, and into self-identified tribes, two of which are called the Republican and Democratic parties. These fractious factions have lost sight of the fact that we're all citizens of these United States. I'm not feeling the unity. How about you?
There's a sweet little parade I attended last Fourth of July with my husband, daughter, and granddaughter, in the town of Piedmont. Just the right size and homey enough that I got all teary-eyed with the earnest effort of neighbors coming out to celebrate together that "our flag is still there." There are flags waving, bands playing, horses clopping, people clapping in rhythm to one patriotic song or another, dogs dressed in red, white and blue, people dressed up in period clothing, from the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. It's a grand spectacle, but not overly grand.
Count us in for this Fourth of July as well. Look for us under an umbrella, humming America the Beautiful, wearing holiday finery.
What ever you do... may the Fourth be WITH you!
What we lose by dropping the practice is a sense of unity. Music literally and figuratively puts us into harmony with our fellow humans. Singing songs that identify the singers as belonging to the same group helps to unify people. Currently, we seem to have devolved and polarized into factions within the country, and into self-identified tribes, two of which are called the Republican and Democratic parties. These fractious factions have lost sight of the fact that we're all citizens of these United States. I'm not feeling the unity. How about you?
There's a sweet little parade I attended last Fourth of July with my husband, daughter, and granddaughter, in the town of Piedmont. Just the right size and homey enough that I got all teary-eyed with the earnest effort of neighbors coming out to celebrate together that "our flag is still there." There are flags waving, bands playing, horses clopping, people clapping in rhythm to one patriotic song or another, dogs dressed in red, white and blue, people dressed up in period clothing, from the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. It's a grand spectacle, but not overly grand.
Count us in for this Fourth of July as well. Look for us under an umbrella, humming America the Beautiful, wearing holiday finery.
What ever you do... may the Fourth be WITH you!
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