Tag Archives: life

Art, Poems, Poetry

LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS: three poems from book

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Reviews would be greatly appreciated! Here is link to book at Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com/Learning-See-Three-Dimensions-Poetry/dp/0998260460/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519480074&sr=8-1&keywords=Learning+to+see+in+three+dimensions

TO THE READER

who may be sitting as I am
in a green recliner with a cup of tea
staring out through the porch
to a darkened streetlamp outside the diner,
with a book in her lap, mine, I hope
the only one I feel I should have to mention
if I mention a book in a poem I write;
to the reader, the nitpicker, the one
who may be wondering why
on p. 47 there are two ands, one
right after another, and whose fault that is;
and to the reader, who may be tired
after a long ride home on the bus
after dark and a meal not worth mentioning
who picks up my book but finds his eyes
closing before he has opened the cover,
I say: Forgive me
I am only a writer sitting in a green recliner
with a cup of tea, I can’t explain
those two ands or the mysterious
streetlamp or warm the feet of a tired
reader in his bed. I can only put music on
and tell him stories to make movies
turn in his head, to let him wake
with the sudden understanding that poetry
may be all it takes to make a life—
well, my life at any rate, and maybe his,
and maybe the nitpicker’s and yours, too,
staring through the porch to the streetlamp
where what happens so mysteriously is poetry—
and the whole night is wrapped
in the words spoken by two strangers
meeting there, or not spoken, which is poetry too,
and all of us who listen are waiting
for the music of what is to happen.

(Last line, thanks to Helen Vendler)

MOSAIC

Mosaic: a word that means from the muses, from Moses
and a work of art created from broken fragments of pottery,
stone or glass.

 

Even the first time, surrender was not hard,
though the grownups and mothers
with their drinks and swizzle sticks
undoubtedly thought it so when you volunteered
your only present that 10th Christmas
to a younger child who wouldn’t understand
being giftless at the tail end of a line to Santa,
nor your inherent sin in being born.
Such generosity should have stayed
between your concept-of-God and you,
but grownup admiration (you could not hope
to make your act unpublic) sullied the soap
of any generosity’s power to cleanse you.
Other atonements followed, only one
almost perfect, being perfectly anonymous
spoiled by an accomplice’s later telling.
Perfection? You never made that grade,
your terrible love for God demanding all life
from your life. No one told you, “Live a lot,”
not in words that made it matter, though
they doubtless counseled, “Live a little.”
You were always in school to be perfect,
never knowing that life is a classroom
where one learns to love flaws
by throwing bad pots, to shatter
them with careful hammer,
assembling beauty from broken things.

FORGETTING TO REMEMBER

Multiples: former shorthand for people diagnosed
with multiple personality disorder, believed to arise
from early sexual trauma and abuse; now considered
a dissociative disorder.

 

Two suicides and such a multitude of multiples
wrung from their imagination the year I was there
by student psychologists eager to make names for themselves,
the halfway facility would be shut down for good the next.
But not before seeds of uncertain certainties were sown:
repressed memories miraculously recovered from the abyss,
of incests, sodomies, satanic abuses, so even my stalwart insistence
on a happy-go-not-so-unlucky childhood
became stained by the sepia of doubt:
had I really escaped such clutches?

Knowing memory’s foibles, it’s hard to trust
what my sister tells me was true: that there really were
neighborhood “Bad Boys” and a shack in the woods
where they kept a stash of comic books and pin-up calendars,
the price to read there all afternoon if you were a girl
a feel, that I’m not wrong to believe I read my fill
of “Archie” and “Prince Valiant” and “Peanuts” inside.

Though I had to find my own way out afterwards
after they’d gone, taking their comics with them,
leaving just June, now unpinned from the wall
in her tiny shorts, the shine of her raspberry lips
pouting next to a tractor, I recall only
dry motes falling through the last rays
of sun, the smoky smell of sawdust and dust,
and grit under my bare feet, my trembling relief,
as I studied a stroll through the back door at home,
perhaps worse for the wear but on time for supper
so nobody questioned the dirt in my hair.

Abuse, Health, Psychiatric Unit, Seclusion and Restraints

What are/were the most significant barriers to your recovery from “mental illness”?

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The biggest barrier to my recovery from what had always been diagnosed as schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder was, I regret to say, the mental health system and psychiatry itself. Yes, for many decades I had been told I was ill and needed interventions like medications and the hospital for my “brittle psychosis”. I was told even that obvious brutalities, like 5-point restraints and seclusion in locked freezing cold cells, devoid of anything but a slab in the wall and a grate in the floor for drainage, were helpful treatments for my condition and not the torture and punishment that I felt them to be. No one or very few people treated me with kindness or any understanding or with the idea that there was hope for recovery, even though I had a genius level IQ and had shown some significant talents in many areas, and still did even when sick. They seemed bent on only one thing: coercion and control, and to prove that they were able to dominate me, and the other patients. If you dared to question their superiority or their information you would either be dismissed as delusional or worse, treated with more abuse.

 

Needless to say, I lived up to these expectations for many years, and i did not get better or even come near to recovering. In fact, before I took the drastic step of giving almost all I owned away and leaving my home, the state where I had lived for all my life and moving to another 100 miles away, by myself, knowing no one and nothing about it, I ended up again in the hospital and almost did not make it out. Not only did the guards there attempt to strangle me, but the doctor was convinced that I should be committed to the state’s one public facility that provided long term treatment…from which I might not leave for a long time.

Instead, I managed to play the game this sadistic doctor insisted on, and was finally discharged from a city hospital that had spent weeks doing nothing but torturing me, daily throwing me into their seclusion cell or shackling me in restraints …for no better reason than that I “disturbed the unit milieu”.

But discharged I was, with newly acquired PTSD from my treatment there, and within a week I was two states away, safe for the first time from these ministration that had inflicted on me nothing but damage.

It was here, in this northern state that I finally began to heal, with the help not of the mental health system but of a non-licensed therapist (she has a psychotherapist license from the UK) who taught me Marshall Rosenberg’s non-violent communication or NVC, and is the first person I felt sees me for who I really am, not “just another schizophrenic.” Even though I still take medications, I am slowly tapering off of them and doing well after decades on the massive doses I was told I absolutely could not survive without. Why? Because I’m proof of the fact that you can recover from life-long “mental illness” when given enough unconditional acceptance and understanding. When someone sees you and understands you and does not dismiss you, crazy as you might have been told you are, a lot of the craziness just falls away and you become another human being, no more and no less.

There is no normal, there is no abnormal. We are all just human beings trying to get along in society and often society is sicker than “we are” in its demands that we conform to some impossible standard. Maybe my experiences — hearing voices, thinking things that might be called delusions, etcetera — are not common but they are not outside the realm of human experience either. We should rejoice in our differences as in our similarities and look for common cause between us, not find reasons to fear what is Other in each other. Love really is what it’s all about. Maybe that sounds squishy and sentimental, but have you ever met someone diagnosed with schizophrenia who says they both love themselves and feel that they are adequately loved in the world by others?

Health, nature, Poetry

Poem for my Twin Sister, Carolyn Spiro Silvestri

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This poem is in my new book, LEARNING TO SEE IN THREE DIMENSIONS. Alas this final version did not get there as i had misplaced it and did not find it till after the publication date!

Ten Minutes

(pour ma jumelle)

Sometimes when you’ve spent hours rushing somewhere

and just as many hours rushing back

you ought to make yourself stop ten minutes from home

ten minutes short of where you think

you can put your feet up

finally, and get out at the road’s edge

and ask yourself where you are

going and where have you been and why

are you hurrying just to get it over with, or is there no point

to this day but in the ending of it?

Ten minutes, this pause

wrenched out of the rush by the roadside

getting the kinks out, lets you hear the sudden quiet

of your own thoughts

as the out-of-doors pours in and gives you pause.

What have you been doing all day

racing, rushing, wasting your time all day

for what, to get what over with?

Better to have rested more along the way,

to have seen, to have been, to have watched, listened

to have paid attention

than to have beeped and swerved so much

sped and sweated in bottlenecks

and cursed the traffic for what could neither be avoided

nor its fault, being its nature.

Where had you been all day

in your hurrying to get home, but on your way

along the only way there was: yours.

Oh, but you should have known better–

how all homes are but temporary shelters:

a roadside shack or leafy park bench,

a ramshackle timber lean-to —

each a place to rest as good as any mansion

ten minutes away. Ten mere minutes from home

the roadside beckoned with saffron mustard sprigs,

brave bouncing bet. But you had no time

to pay attention, so nearly home to rest and relax.

Oh, but you should have known better—

The day scattered like dry leaves

and ended without you.

Now you pay with the rest of your life.

.

 

 

Art, Health

A poem plus art.

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Edited on July 29, 2016 and reposted.

The poem below is the introduction to my third book, and my second book of poems, this time with art, which should be published in the spring of 2017 by Sundog Poetry and Green Writers Press, both Vermont publishers.  Wowee!!! I am thrilled. Tamra Higgins of Sundog has generously said that she wants to make sure that I have an art show and reading at the time of the book launching. Moreover  I believe that Sydney Lea, Vermont’s wonderful former poet laureate, who had agreed to write the forward for it when it was still going to be published by CKP will still do so for the new publishers. I feel especially blessed!!!

I am very much a novice watercolorist and these are two beginning paintings.

imageJ

image

TO THE READER

who may be sitting as I am
in a green recliner with a cup of tea
staring out through the porch
to a darkened streetlamp outside the diner,
with a book in her lap, mine, I hope
the only one I feel I should have to mention
if I mention a book in a poem I write;
to the reader, the nitpicker, the one
who may be wondering why
on p. 47 there are two ands, one
right after another, and whose fault that is;
and to the reader, who may be tired
after a long ride home on the bus
after dark and a meal not worth mentioning
who picks up my book but finds his eyes
closing before he has opened the cover,
I say: Forgive me
I am only a writer sitting in a green recliner
with a cup of tea, I can’t explain
those two ands or the mysterious
streetlamp or warm the feet of a tired
reader in his bed. I can only put music on
and tell him stories to make movies
turn in his head, to let him wake
with the sudden understanding that poetry
may be all it takes to make a life—
well, my life at any rate, and maybe his,
and maybe the nitpicker’s and yours, too,
staring through the porch to the streetlamp
where what happens so mysteriously is poetry—
and the whole night is wrapped
in the words spoken by two strangers
meeting there, or not spoken, which is poetry too,
and all of us who listen are waiting
for the music of what is to happen.

Health, Mental Health

“Schizophrenia or Suggestibility ” by David

7 Comments

Sorry. Sorry! mea culpa!!! i meant to introduce this post with this: “David” wrote me with the following essay about his experience,which I promised to post for him on my blog. It follows: 

” I saw Lady Quixote’s story printed out at the Hearing Voices meeting in San Francisco.

 

“What struck me was how similar was the story she told to my story. When I was a small child I did self hypnosis as a hobby.  Later as a young teen I met a senior citizen from the Unity Church who provided me a lot of books about new-age psychic topics. She talked with me about automatic writing and spirits. I did many of these things in hopes of becoming psychic.

 

“Through my high-school years I continued to be interested in these things but only when the college experience overwhelmed me did I become preoccupied with the voices in my head.  I would look for guidance in things as simple as where to walk.  Since walking to class was a prerequisite to attending class, if I was guided instead to walk in the woods, I failed at college.

 

“In addition, throughout my psychic explorations there were instances where there were definite connections between my mind and the rest of the world.  Although the number of true experiences were far less frequent than the imagined ones, they reinforced my beliefs.

 

“After I returned to my parents’ home I had the typical delusional experience of believing that there was a direct connection between the universe and what I was thinking and hearing in my head.  Unfortunately what I was hearing was based on what I thought abut myself and as I spiraled downward, I was told that I had to kill myself.

“After getting out of the hospital and the halfway house with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, I returned to my parents’ home.  A few years went by with little change but I began to doubt the veracity of my voices and found that I could dismiss or ignore them.   They eventually faded away into the benign parade of inner thoughts.

“The thing that struck me after thinking about Lady Quixote and me is that there are some states of mind called schizophrenia that would better be described as suggestibility.  In the old days folks like us were seen as having been possessed by demons, and perhaps the exorcisms actually worked when the people believed strongly enough in prayer and calling on Jesus to drive the demons out.

“I think that it is a shame that this type of diagnosis has not been made by treaters because it would be helpful to folks to understand that they can be liberated from their troubles in a much more straightforward way, as  Lady Quixote was.

“Because, like her, I had some actual experiences that could be classified as psychic, having a diagnosis that labeled my inner thoughts as strictly delusional confounded matters.  The psychiatric community does not acknowledge that some of us have to deal with both real experiences and our overactive imaginations. They are trained in the practice of science, which is opposed to the various phenomena we call metaphysics.

 

“I am happy that my inexplicable experiences usually involve rather mild, not very intrusive thoughts, as opposed to noisy voices.  I try to practice good mental hygiene to keep the inner critic mostly at bay and avoid overstressing myself.  It has been about 40 years since I was troubled with my inner voices.

 

David”

Abuse, Michael E Balkunas MD, Seclusion and Restraints

Hartford COurant Article (that won’t be) about Michael E Balkunas, MD, Chief of psychiatry at HOCC

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Patients placed in Seclusion or Restraints are to be debriefed afterwards. To see standards of care, see below this reprint article.

I moved to Brattleboro Vermont on February 4, 2015, leaving my home state of Connecticut where I’ve lived for nearly 60 years. l had to move because of the horrific psychiatric abuses I experienced in Connecticut hospitals and my fear that if ever I were hospitalized again I would be killed.

I feel guilty, however, just getting out without accomplishing something to stop what continues to happen in Connecticut psychiatric units and hospitals.

The experience of mechanical four-point restraints – leather cuffs that are tightened around the wrists and ankles to immobilize a patient to a bed – or being isolated by force in an often freezing seclusion cell is almost universally terrifying. Nevertheless, both cell and/or restraints are routinely employed to curb loudness and undesirable behaviors at the Hospital of Central Connecticut on Grand Street in New Britain. I know this because I was subjected to both seclusion and restraints multiple times in the spring of 2014, despite a diagnosis of chronic paranoid schizophrenia, as well as PTSD that was triggered by precisely this sort of thing.

Bizarrely, the hospital psychiatrist, Dr Michael E Balkunas, treating me at HOCC challenged my PTSD diagnosis. “Patient misperceives her treatment as traumatic,” he wrote in my chart. Well, maybe so, but I don’t know how I can be accused of misperceiving three entire days callously abandoned alone, tied to the four posts of a metal bedstead at U-Conn’s Dempsey Hospital (for trying to escape the locked unit) as anything but brutality, even if it was in the 1990s. I also think it is nearly by definition traumatic to be forced to defecate in one’s own clothing while tied to a bed which is what they did at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living in the winter of 2013. This was after I was told to lie down and place my own limbs in the leather cuffs (“as a consequence but not a punishment”) for walking away from the very same “Side Room” that I had just been assured was “not a seclusion room unless you call it a seclusion room.”

Again, maybe I misperceived being grabbed and held face-down and nearly suffocated numerous times by staff at Yale Psychiatric Hospital in August 2013, who injected 10-20 milligrams of Haldol, a known drug of torture. Maybe this was just kindliness that I misunderstood as traumatic, maybe it was merely a “psychotic misperception” on my part? Maybe, and maybe not.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that in the ED of New Britain’s HOCC, a security guard in May 2014, grabbed me by my left shoulder immediately after he was warned by the nurse that it was my left shoulder that had a rotator cuff tear.

My New Britain chart records that I was admitted to that hospital, and to the IOL and others with a detailed Psychiatric Advance Directive, the first page of which states that seclusion, four-point restraints and forced medication invariably result in regression to “primitive states and severe worsening of symptoms.” It also makes several concrete suggestions how better to deal with me when I am upset. Even though I spent many hours on this document, Psychiatric Advance Directives have no legal clout in Connecticut and doctors can and do ignore them freely.

Perhaps because of this, HOCC staff literally forced me (“escorted me”) to seclusion and/or restrained me again and again. They took to stripping me “for safety’s sake,” and even though I put up no resistance, they had the male guards spread-eagle my limbs while still naked and put restraint cuffs on without even covering me.

Is it any wonder that what resulted was someone who would wash her hair in her own urine, defecate on the floor of her room and smear feces on the wall? Yet Dr Balkunas, the director of W-1, the general psychiatry unit at HOCC claimed that my trauma was imaginary. Why? Because treatment cannot be traumatic. He simply never got the connection between my horrendous decompensation and his so-called “therapy.” Maybe he never appreciated that he was torturing me, like a person who ripped the wings off butterflies as a child. Someone like that would not have understood how those creatures suffer either.

——————–

These are the NURSING De-Briefing standards for after restraints and/or seclusion:

APNA STANDARDS

DEBRIEFING AFTER RESTRAINTS/SECLUSION

Standard: As soon as possible, following the release from seclusion or restraint, the nurse, the person and others as appropriate should participate in a debriefing.

– See more at: http://www.apna.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3730#Release

Intent: A debriefing is done with persons who have been secluded or placed in restraints to:

  • Discuss and clarify any possible misperceptions the person may have concerning the incident.
  • Ascertain the person’s willingness to involve family or other caregivers in a debriefing to discuss and clarify their perceptions as well as identify additional alternatives or treatment plan modifications.
  • Support the person’s re-entry into the milieu.
  • Identify alternative interventions to reduce the potential for additional episodes.
  • Hear and record the person’s perspective on the episode.
  • Ascertain that the person’s rights and physical well-being were addressed during the episode and advise the person of processes to address perceived rights grievances.
  • Address any trauma that may have occurred as a result of the incident.
  • Modify the treatment plan as needed.

NONE of this was EVER done, ANYWHERE, in any hospital I have ever been in. Why? Because they all knew perfectly well what they had done to me and WHY…Not because I was dangerous to anyone, but as punishment…Naturally they did not want me to have a chance to tell anyone.

– See more at: http://www.apna.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3730#Release

Addiction, Health, Truth

This Post is Dedicated to TakingTheMaskOff.Com and Cortland Pfeffer, With Love

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Read the English  Lyrics below first if you need to as this song is in Italian.

HUMAN BEINGS/ESSERI UMANI  or go to this link: https://youtu.be/U-4OrzSBfm8

Thank you, TTMO’s Cortland Pfeffer, you are a man of true courage. I thank you for your blog and for everything you have done and are doing in the world and for people who are or were where I have been.

http://www.takingthemaskoff.com

pam w.

Here are the Lyrics to HUMAN BEINGS, in English followed by the Italian (just in case anyone wants to sing along –as I did!)

HUMAN BEINGS/Esseri Humani

Nowadays, people judge you

Because of your appearance

They see only masks

They don’t even know who you are

You must show yourself invincible

Collecting trophies

But when silently you cry

You find out who you really are

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

The courageous ones

The courage of being human

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

The courageous ones

The courage of being human

Take my hand and stand up

You can trust me

I am an ordinary man

One out of many just like you

But what a splendor there is in you

In your fragility

And I remind you that we are not alone

Fighting this reality

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

The courageous ones

The courage of being human

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

The courageous ones

The courage of being human

Love, love, love

Won, wins and will always win

Love, love, love

Won, wins and will always win

Love, love, love

Won, wins and will always win

Love, love, love

Won, wins and will always win

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

The courageous ones

The 
courage of being human

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

I believe in human beings

The courageous ones

The courage of being human

Human beings

Human beings

Esseri umani

Oggi la gente ti giudica,
per quale immagine hai.
Vede soltanto le maschere,
non sa nemmeno chi sei.

Devi mostrarti invincibile,
collezionare trofei.
Ma quando piangi in silenzio,
scopri davvero chi sei.

Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani
che hanno coraggio,
coraggio di essere umani

Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani.
credo negli esseri umani
che hanno coraggio,
coraggio di essere umani.

Prendi la mano e rialzati,
tu puoi fidarti di me.
Io sono uno qualunque,
uno dei tanti, uguale a te.

Ma che splendore che sei,
nella tua fragilità.
E ti ricordo che non siamo soli
a combattere questa realtà.

Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani che hanno coraggio,
coraggio di essere umani.

Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani che hanno coraggio,
coraggio di essere umani.

Essere umani.

L’amore, amore, amore
ha vinto, vince, vincerà.
L’amore, amore, amore
ha vinto, vince, vincerà.

L’amore, amore, amore
ha vinto, vince, vincerà.
L’amore, amore, amore,
ha vinto, vince, vincerà.

Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani che
hanno coraggio,
coraggio di essere umani.

Credo negli esseri umani.
Credo negli esseri umani.
Cedo negli esseri umani che hanno coraggio,
coraggio di essere umani.

Essere umani.
Essere umani.

Africa, Brain, girls

10-Year-Old Nigerian Girl Top in UK University Mathematics!

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Esther-Okade-200x150

Just thought this, from allAfrica.com: Nigeria, should be publicized as proof positive that girls can do just as well as boys in math…and maybe better, when they are not discouraged or told they have “math anxiety”! Go for it, all you ten year old University-bound young girls!

allAfrica: African news and information for a global audience

via allAfrica.com: Nigeria: 10-Year-Old Nigerian in UK Varsity.

By Amaka Abayomi, With Agency Reports

Ten year old Esther Okade, one of UK’s youngest students from Nigeria, has been accepted to start her maths degree at the Open University. Esther, who enrolled three weeks ago, is already top of her class, scoring 100 per cent in a recent test.

Esther’s mother, Efe, said the process of applying to the university was ‘an interesting one because of her age.

she said “We even had to talk to the VC and after they interviewed her, they realised that this has been her idea from the beginning. From the age of seven Esther has wanted to go to university.

“But I was afraid it was too soon. She would say, ‘mum, when am I starting?’, and go on and on and on. Finally, after three years, she told me, ‘mum I think it is about time I started university now.”

Esther applied in August, and after a phone interview, an essay and a maths exam, she finally got the news in December that she had been accepted onto the course.

Though she watches cartoons and plays with barbie dolls, Esther’s aim is to get First Class honours degree in two years and start a PhD programme. She also intends to run her own bank.

$20 bill, Latina Americans, Native American Women

A Response From Barbara Ortiz Howard: Now Let’s get that “Womenon20s” site to go VIRAL!!!! Yay!

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Lyda Conley
Lyda Conley

I suggested Women on 20s add Lyda Conley, about whom this much is known:

Eliza Burton “Lyda” Conley (ca. 1869 – 1946) was an American lawyer of Native American and European descent, the first woman admitted to the Kansas bar. She was notable for her campaign to prevent the sale and development of the Huron Cemetery in Kansas City, now known as the Wyandot National Burying Ground. She challenged the government in court, and in 1909 she was the first Native American woman admitted to argue a case before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Barbara said she would add Lyda to the “Hall of Fame” once the campaign steadies, then I asked if I might post her response. She edited and said, “Yes.” So this was her response and I think it is important to read and understand where she, et al, were coming from in the original Women on 20s campaign to get a woman’s image on the 20 dollar bill:

“Dear Pamela,

Thank you so much for your blog post.  I just wanted to take a moment to clarify some things so that our campaign is best understood.

Actually, we never said we were unable to find Native American or Latinas.  And it wasn’t just two women that developed the “slate”   With so many women to chose from, we needed a way to evaluate the over 100 possible candidates.  We came up with a method that scored candidates on a scale of 1-10 based on two criteria.  The first criteria was the candidates’  impact on society which was weighted more heavily than the second criteria , obstacles they had to overcome to achieve their goals or if they were a pioneer in their field.    We had a “caucus” of  approximately 100 historians and professionals weigh our candidates along these lines    We did not arbitrarily select anyone specifically for their ethnicity, sexual orientation, preference or race.  The only factor was that they be an American woman, which we realized in the process had to be deceased for at least two years.  This is explained on the website page:http://www.womenon20s.org/the_process and a list of 15 runner ups can also be found there.

 We certainly did want to have Latina and Native American Women on our slate.

Gloria Anzaldúa, died a few years ago, very beloved and influential feminist.  Luisa Capetillo, a lesser known socialist Puerto Rican feminist from early 20th century. Cristina Mena was not quite a feminist, but early 20th century Mexican American woman writer. Other earlier figures include Jovita Idar and Maria Ruiz de Burton.  All of these women were great, but none of them really met the base criteria.  Had we had a criteria that said that we must have a Latina for just the reason she is a Latina, we would have jeopardized the entire campaign for what would be seen as tokenism. As a Cuban American woman, I did want a Latina badly to be on our list.  For me, I am taking great pride in many Latinas that are leading the way and are still serving our nation and will surely be remembered for all their efforts to help create a more equal and fair nation, dozens including Sonia Sotomayer, Martha Cotera, Dolores Huerta and am so happy that they are leading the way today still.

As for Native Americans,Wilma Mankiller emerged from the dozens to the top 30.  Her impact was huge to a smaller group, albeit a key constituency and one which this very campaign hopes to heal in some way with the removal of a person responsible for the death and suffering of tens of thousands, indeed an entire people.   Sacagawea, also was named two years ago on the list to be considered, but did not make it through, not because she was on a coin, as that is but another form of tokenism , but because her impact was not as significant as the contributions of others.

We can have just so many women on our list.  If you find a glaring omission, please let me know

We are hoping that all this dialog can insure that we are equal sisters, in every wayl.  This is not a beauty competition, nor any competition at all.  We are also hoping that we can have a place on our site as a Hall of Fame for all sisters.

Yes, many are left out, because we have just so many we can nominate. Thank you

Barbara Ortiz Howard

Stay in touch and get out the vote so that at least we can have our voice heard !

Barbara”

Barbara Ortiz Howard

www.womenon20s.org

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Music, Singer/Songwriter

Rashid Taha: French Algerian Protest Singer/Songwriter Says “Bonjour”!

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* Thanks and a hug to my new and dear friend in Iraq, Sami, for my introduction to some wonderful new music, from the one who wears glasses and has a big grin:  8D

Lyrics of “Bonjour”:

Hello Kitty, Bonjour violente femme

Bonjour Grace Kelly, Bonjour madame

Hello Superman, Bonjour solitaire

Bonjour tous les jours tout l’envers

[…]

Ola l’amour, Bonjour la fontaine

Bonjour le dernier, Bonjour la graine

Bonjour sur les fesses, Bonjour la neige

Ola le systeme, Bonjour le revers

[…]

Hello Kitty, Bonjour violente femme

Bonjour Grace Kelly, Bonjour madame

Ola l’amour, Bonjour la fontaine

Bonjour le dernier, Bonjour la graine

[…]

Bonjour, Bonjour, Bonjour, Bonjour, Bonjour…

Hello Kitty, Bonjour violent femme

[…]

Bonjour Grace Kelly, Bonjour madame

[…]

Hello Superman, Bonjour solitaire

[…]

Bonjour tous les jours, tout l’envers

[…]

Ola l’amour, Bonjour la fontaine

[…]

Ola le systme, Bonjour le revers…

By the way, the following is Google’s English version, for which I take absolument aucun credit! i.e. I take no credit for it whatsoever…)

“Hello Hello violent woman

Grace Kelly, Hello Hello Mrs.

Superman, lonely Hello

Hello every day to all

[…]

Ola love, the fountain

Hello Hello last Hello

Hello seed on the buttocks,

Hello snow Ola the system,

the reverse Hi

[…]

Hello Kitty, Hello Hello violent woman

Grace Kelly, Mrs.

Ola Hello love, the fountain Hello

Hello latter Hello seed

[…]

Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello …

Hello Kitty, Hello violent woman

[…]

Grace Kelly Hello, Bonjour madame

[…]

Hello Superman, lonely Hello

[…]

Hello every day, all to

[.. .]

Ola love Hello fountain

[…]

Ola system, Hello setback”

From original article in RFI Musique 2009

________________

Rachid Taha says “bonjour”

A protest singer never dies

 

http://www.rfimusique.com/musiqueen/articles/119/article_8289.asp

Paris

09/11/2009 –

Globe-trotting rocker Rachid Taha has been flying back and forth between Paris and New York, making his eighth album with Bowie’s old producer Mark Plati. Bonjour is an album full of sparky guitars and positive vibes, the fruit of a spontaneous collaboration with Louise Attaque frontman Gaëtan Roussel. Taha, who plays L’Olympia in Paris on 10 November, talks to RFI Musique about the genesis of his new album and his thoughts on the government’s immigration policies.


RFI Musique: Why such a simple, naïve album title like Bonjour?
Rachid Taha: I called my album Bonjour – “hello” – because people have more or less stopped going round saying “hello” to one another. Even when they do say “hello”, it’s a purely functional greeting, it rarely comes from the heart. People in France are always rushing up to kiss one another on the cheek, but it’s a purely formal gesture that lacks any real depth or generosity. What I’m trying to do is reinstate “bonjour” to its rightful status, make the exchange of “hellos” a gesture full of warmth and human kindness. I want “hellos” to last and to mean something, like when you say “hello” in Africa and you take the time to talk about what’s going on in the village, what’s happening with friends and people you’ve loved who’ve disappeared, what’s going on with the kids…

How did you come up with the idea of working with Gaëtan Roussel?
I was having a few drinks in a bar in Ménilmontant! And I got to thinking about the song Bonjour. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I asked Gaëtan if he’d write a French version of the song while I wrote one in Arabic. At the end of the day, I preferred his version so we kept that and I added my lyrics. Everything happened so smoothly that I thought “OK, maybe we should take this collaboration a bit further now?” It was a question of feeling really, the right vibe passed between us and that’s how Gaëtan ended up acting as a sort of producer on the album.

Do you think Gaëtan Roussel added a new edge to your sound?
Yes, he did and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to work with him in the first place. I spent many years collaborating with Steve Hillage and then I felt the need to change tack and move on to something different. I loved the work Gaëtan did for Alain Bashung and that’s basically what I wanted from him. I was looking to him to inject a breath of fresh air, a lightness of touch, a bit of a country vibe. I wanted Bonjour to sound a bit like the sort of folk album made by Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley or Ry Cooder. I’m a big Ry Cooder fan!

You recorded part of your new album in New York with Mark Plati who took care of mixing and arrangements. What did he add to your sound?
Mark’s worked with a lot of people over the years like David Bowie, Alain Bashung and Les Rita Mitsouko… I’d say he introduced a bit of an urban rock feel on certain tracks. It was thanks to Gaëtan that we ended up in the studio with Mark and it was a brilliant experience. I’m really into the idea of travelling and exchanging ideas with people. I believe you have to reach out and look elsewhere if you want to vary your sound. I’m not into the idea of putting out the same album over and over again. Music’s like food in that respect – I’d never dream of eating the same thing every day. I don’t want to make myself sick or turn anyone else’s stomach by churning out the same old thing time after time!

On This is an Arabian Song, you and Bruno Maman sing “N’oublie jamais”(Never forget.) Never forget what?
Never forget the world’s problems. Never forget wars, genocide, poverty, misery, never forget the past… I’m not into the idea of nostalgia but I think it’s important to take responsibility for the world. You have to take responsibility for your behaviour towards others. And you have to be aware of the past. It’s only by reaching down to your roots that you can stand tall like a tree.

Where do you stand on the current debate about French national identity launched by the French immigration minister Eric Besson?
It takes me back 25 years, back to the time I recorded Douce France… The thing is the young generation are much more tolerant now than they were in the eighties. Everyone’s got Moroccan, Algerian, Portuguese and Senegalese friends these days. Why does a minister like Besson have to go round stoking up old hatreds if he isn’t trying to win National Front votes before the next election? Funnily enough it was Besson who revived the idea of DNA testing to crack down on immigration. That man is not living in the real world or he wouldn’t come up with such hypocritical solutions. And to think he was once a Socialist!

Bonjour

Rachid Taha Bonjour (Barclay) 2009
In concert at L’Olympia, Paris, 10 November 2009.


Fleur  de la Haye

Translation : Julie  Street

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Health

HOW TO PREVENT A CHOKING FIT

2 Comments

1. CLOSE YOUR MOUTH AND BREATHE THROUGH YOUR NOSE.

This will make you realize you CAN breathe just fine and immediately stop the panic.

2. WHILE BREATHING THROUGH YOUR NOSE, gently try to push the food item back up into your mouth, or swallow it if you can.

 

I figured this out while living alone. I would panic when I felt myself choking. It works like a miracle, because it is usually a spasm in the upper throat, near your mouth, and not a closed off pharynx that causes coking sensationss. You just have to understand that you CAN still breathe through your nose and that will end the panic. Once the panicky feelings are over, everything is easier to deal with and you can usually spit out the food or even find a way to swallow it. But at least you realize that you are not imminently going to die, which is a good thing to know.

 

Hope this advice helps someone. If it does, I would love some feedback. I have offered it to friends, and they have loved it, found it useful too, so I know it works.

 

Best wishes to all,

 

Pam

Health

Beyond Recovery: Stage Five

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I want to reblog this brilliant post by Anne C. Woodlen and then i will add my own editorial comments if i can in a later post or edit. In the meantime, i think it speaks for itself and says just about what i would want to tell a lot of young people newly diagnosed with bpd or did or add or even bipolar disorder and getting on disability, preparing for a life “in the system” – it sucks and it isn’t worth it unless you are floridly psychotic. And even then, don’t believe what they tell you about antipsychotic drugs. There ain’t no such medication, only sedatives that may or may not quiet things down temporarily. The only way out is through, if you can do it with a wise and caring guide and community. Don’t get stuck as i am, on multiple antipsychotic drugs, addicted to them so that getting off them only means you get more psychotic than ever. Psychosis need not be a lifelong problem, but it certainly will be if you keep taking high doses of the drugs and never explore other options.

Behind the Locked Doors of Inpatient Psychiatry

Hello,

My name is Dustin and I live in Michigan. When I was seventeen years old my mother put me in a psychiatric hospital called Forest View. The abuse I felt violated me to the core! I felt like I was being raped having to submit to all the rules, the bullying and the emotional abuse. To have your dignity removed when you are an innocent patient and just want genuine, kind, gentle care, and get unprofessional jerks who you can tell are fake and just care about getting paid is a horrible experience.   If anything it only caused me more traumas with the trauma that I already had. I am now twenty-two years old and live on disability while also living my life as a hermit because now I am afraid of people due to the awful treatment I endured.  I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder by a REAL…

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Acceptance, Vermont

TooGoose Lautrec, the Papier Mache Goose and How I will Miss Vermont, the state of my Dreams…

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Pam with unfinished paper mache goose, TooGoose Lautrec....
Pam with unfinished paper mache goose, TooGoose Lautrec….    

 

Across the driveway llive some great people...
Across the driveway live some great people…

 

Kitchen and work area in cottage
Kitchen and work area in cottage

 

More of Work area and art area
More of Work area and art area
Stephanie is "gods gardener" or so I call her!
Stephanie is “gods gardener” or so I call her!
Steffie at the state park
Steffie at the state park

 

As my time here comes to an end, I will miss it and my neighbors terribly., I don’t know what I will do without them, and Lydia my wonderful companion. Returning to Connecticut with its horrible hospitals and indifferent treatment just feels like a disaster waiting to happen. I want to move to Vermont but I don’t know how I can make that happen. I have felt amongst friends everywhere here, but isolated completely for years in CT, despite my lovely dear friends there, I wish I could bring them all up to VT with me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

nature, Vermont

Luna Moths rescued for another day….in Vermont

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Luna Moths are Giant Silk Moths, Actias, which live after eclosing from their pupae only about 4-7 days.
These are Giant Silk Moths, Actias Lunas, which live after eclosing from their pupae only about 4-7 days.

These huge 3-inch to 5-inch moths are not endangered but you have to find them after midnight in or near the woods, before the birds eat their bodies in the early hours of the morning. If you can preserve them for another nighttime, you may rescue these mouthless, non-eating creatures for their prime task, which is mating. The males live to breed and will mate and mate again, but the female, once she has mated, will go on to lay eggs anywhere she can until she is eaten or simply dies at the end of summer. When you rescue a single male you can almost hear the noise made by the rasping bristling antennae as it searches for the scent of the female, which is the one that gives off pheromones of desire for the male, then waits for a mate to come calling on her.

 

Steffie rescued these two from her house’s outer walls. And I photographed them inside the bucket where they were safe, we thought, until one got scared or attracted by the scent of a female and flew off (despite it being the middle of the morning when they are almost always inert.) The other survived over the day and was revived the next night in order to go out and to find a mate.

Health, Poetry

Thoughts on DESIDERATA and More

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Desiderata
Desiderata

Desiderata

© Max Ehrmann 1927 ?

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

 

 

 

“Desiderata” defined means things wanted or needed. A partial version of the poem hangs on the wall of the place where I will be staying for a while and while the piece is well-known, and indeed I have seen it before, the painted version here caught my eye and moved me. For some reason, however, I suspected that this particular version was a quotation only in part, so I looked up the entire poem. What I found struck me to tears.

 

Tears? Why?

 

Well, let me explain.

 

There are important lines that are missing in the poem on the wall here (important to me):

 

“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

 

Also this stanza is followed by the critical word, “Therefore…be at peace with God…” whereas on the wall, the “therefore” has been taken out. But what a difference it makes to keep it in.

 

The important thing to me in reading the poem in its entirety is that I do not feel I have a right to be here, do not feel I am in any sense “a child of the universe.” I feel instead that I have ruined the universe, and that if I had not been born the world would have been better off by far. That is one critical thing.

 

The other salient point the poet makes, which made me weep, was his belief, stated well before anyone thought about global warming, but presumably he would have said the same thing even so, if he truly had the courage of his convictions that “no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

 

TO the contrary, it feels to me completely tragic that the world should be ending in our geologic time, that we should be living in the end days, not something that was meant to be or unfolding as it should. ( I say “end times” without any religious intention to those words, only the sense that we have brought about the end of the living world upon ourselves by over-consumption and massively pig-headed over-population.) Of course, the “universe” is much bigger than humanity or even generally speaking the living blue planet called earth, but as a human living on it I have no other way to feel or see but from my puny human perspective. To lose Life on earth, all or most of it at any rate, to global warming feels utterly devastating. Who or what gave humans the right to destroy what might have been the tiniest fraction of a chance at existence, life itself, to throw it all away through the over-consumption of fossil fuel (in the brief span of 2 centuries) and making too many babies, and eating too many cows?

 

It sickens me that I am so much at fault, that I ought not to have existed at all, that much of this could have been avoided by my never having been born. But it also sickens me that as a species, humans have collectively, since my birth, ignored all the consequences of our “eating the earth” and now we have no earth for our children’s children to inherit…

 

Vis a vis another line in the poem, I cannot “be gentle” with myself. I do not deserve gentleness! That way disaster lies!

 

“With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” Maybe… But the world is fast losing its beauty and sometimes i think it is only beautiful to those wealthy enough to be able to willfully blind themselves to all the ugliness and injustice around them: blinding themselves to the dying oceans and all the starving homeless people…to name just two out of many.

 

Nevertheless, the poem is still a miracle of inspiration and remains so after nearly a century. Though not really new to me, it newly struck a chord, though I am sure that  people in the know would call it an “old chestnut” of a poem, nearly hackneyed and familiar as that other O.C., “Invictus”by William Ernest Henley, though I suggest Desiderata has always been far better written than Henley’s “chest-beater” of a poem (for all that it is a favorite of many thousands..).

Happiness, Health, Life

30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself

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30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself. From Bucket list Publications by Marcandangnel…words to live by. I loved these and while i rarely reblog someone else’s page or simply link to them. These 30 sugggestions were so simple and cogent i simply had to. Way to go marc and angel!

more later but for now i am on the train home from north carolina ans trying to write more on my. november novel. TTFN. Love you all!

 

pam