Category Archives: Society

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NRA helps ‘lone wolf’ Las Vegas shooter kill, injure hundreds at concert: how is this ‘not terrorism?’

 

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This morning, Sweetheart came in and sat at the at the edge of the bed.

“There’s coffee downstairs. And it happened after we went to bed last night, but there’s fresh hell,” he said.

I sat up. More quickly than I usually do first thing in the morning.

“Fifty people were killed and more than 200 were injured at a country music concert in Las Vegas,” he said. “A man on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel had automatic weapons. He’s dead.”

“Shit!” I said. “Fucking NRA.”

Downstairs, Fox News was on. I listened to it while I made Sweetheart’s lunch. It was on when I kissed him goodbye and said what I always do when he leaves for work. (“Work safely and come home.”)

It’s still on as I am writing this. As of this moment, we know the guy’s name (Stephen Paddock – I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess he’s white, because if he wasn’t, Fox and the other networks would be making sure to mention that every other minute). We know he was with a woman named Marilou, whose player card was found in the room and evidently she’s now being questioned.

We know there were multiple weapons in the room, that the windows at the hotel don’t open but that it was no biggie to shoot out a window as a prelude to mayhem.

Motive? What kind of sick piece of human offal takes out people listening to music? My first father-in-law Sidney used to say “You can’t judge irrational behavior by rational standards.”

That fits.

But still, we look for reasons.

Okay. I look for reasons. Dude was born in 1953. Is he a Vietnam veteran? Did the Ken Burns documentary kick open some locked door in his psyche? I’m not blaming Ken Burns. I’m also not blaming guns.

I know how to shoot. I’m a good shot. I’ve owned guns and have thought about getting one. Because I know what I’m doing. But the idea of amassing an arsenal and heading off to kill as many people as I can in one go turns my stomach. (There are hunters in my family, but all I’ve ever killed with a gun is paper and clay pigeons. I have also wounded tin cans.)

The National Rifle Association, though? That’s another story. They’re as complicit as anyone for this. They’ve perverted the Second Amendment. Between lobbying to make sure that sensible gun legislation isn’t enacted, making it easy for people to pick up guns at gun shows and generally tarring anyone who doesn’t agree with them lock, stock and barrel as some sort of wussy liberal….They’re responsible for making it as easy for this man to do what he did.

News is now reporting that the shooter was “known” to Las Vegas police. Whose hands were probably tied in regard to his gun ownership. Thanks again, NRA and the legislators who support them. I’m sure you are all sleeping like babies. Because of your actions, more than 50 people won’t ever wake up again, more than 200 are in hospitals and countless others will startle awake, reliving the event via nightmare.

 

PS When a white guy shoots up a concert full of people, it’s an “aberration” and not “terrorism,” according to a Fox interviewee. I wonder what he’d say if Stephen Paddock’s name was Hassan Abeddin. (Sorry to anyone named Hassan Abeddin.)

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Commentary, Holidays, Judaism, justice, opinion, politics, religion, Social Justice, Society, Uncategorized

Anthony Weiner sentenced at an interesting time….

Weiner_Wikipedia

Yesterday’s New York Times featured a story about Anthony Weiner, the former congressman who decimated his family and career by engaging in virtual sex with random women and a teenage girl.

In November, he will report to prison to begin serving a 21-month sentence, after which he has to register as a sex offender.

There’s no need to go into the details here. That’s not the point of this post. Suffice it to say that they’re easily obtained elsewhere (not that I have done a ton of looking).

The whole mess is sad on multiple levels. Weiner was married to an accomplished and beautiful woman. Their son was very small when the first scandal broke and 15 months old when the second became public. I know that last because evidently the baby was in the room with him when he was engaging in behavior I would rather not think about. So that bit was mentioned in the news stories at the time.

This morning it hit me that Weiner is Jewish. I don’t know how or even whether he connects religiously with that. But he was sentenced during the Ten Days of Repentance. That got my attention at a much deeper level than it would have had the sentence been handed down at any other time.

Between Rosh HaShanah (the Jewish New Year, which was last Thursday) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement, coming up this Saturday) is a 10-day period when we examine ourselves and our behavior and are judged accordingly.

I was going to look for something succinct to explain it, and then remembered that I wrote a story about it for our local Jewish community paper. In it, I interviewed two rabbis and a rabbi-in-training about what they do during that period, and what we can do.

Here’s me, quoting myself:

“The period is seen as a time when every Jewish adult is on trial. But rather than taking place in a court of law before a jury of our peers, the setting is inside ourselves, and God is the judge. In synagogue, we engage in communal prayer and communal confession.”

Outside of synagogue, we think about ourselves, not in a narcissistic way, but in a way that hopefully allows for us to be better people.

I spend this period examining things I’ve done over the past year of which I am proud and not so proud, and consider ways to do better moving forward. I also make a point of seeking out anyone I have upset or who has upset me and either apologize or forgive, as the case may be.

There is a passage in the holiday liturgy we repeat more than once that basically says for wrongs committed against God,  the Day of Atonement atones. But for wrongs committed against other people, the Day of Atonement does not atone.” Or, to put it another way, we need to take care of our own apology and forgiveness business. (There’s an interesting article about it in Psychology Today.)

It can be awkward, but it’s also purifying. This year, I have upped the ante a bit. Yesterday, I focused some apology/forgiveness mojo on a work aspect that’s sometimes made me feel at sea. I don’t know if the person I spoke with quite understood the timing, but we came away with a better understanding of the other’s point of reference, and that will affect the way we work moving forward.

So, in all this introspection and focusing on self, the timing of Weiner’s sentencing didn’t hit me until this morning. I don’t know what, if anything, it means to him. But it brings to mind, for me, the second paragraph of the Unetanah Tokef, a part of the liturgy on which Leonard Cohen (z”l) based his song “Who by Fire.”

Here is a translation I found on wikipedia:

“On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed – how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die after a long life and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted. But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity annul the severe Decree.”

 

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books, caregiving, Commentary, Family history, Family story, justice, kindness, lifestyle, opinion, personal history, Social Justice, Society, Uncategorized

The ‘Gray Rhino’ moves into a nursing home; great experiences ensue

Me&MicahRhinoOptimized

Me and a friend, both wearing our rhino-chasing faces….and, me, of course, the T-shirt.

When The New York Times recently ran a front page story about China’s effort to combat “gray rhinos” –large and obvious problems that are often ignored until they become crisis– I was beyond excited to see one of my dearest friends getting some well-deserved props.

Then I looked for the citation – because, after all, “The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore” is where the term comes from, and its author, Michele Wucker, is (full disclosure) my closest girlfriend.

The closest the reporter got was this phrase, “an eponymous business book that has become somewhat popular this year in China,” 11 words of a 22-word sentence.

Subsequent stories further twisted the meaning into something that restricted the term to a specific kind of Chinese company.  Every time I read one, I wanted to hurl herds of foam rhinos at my monitor, which was problematic because I don’t own any foam rhinos. (On the upside, CNN Money. Bloomberg. South China Morning Post mentioned the book and even spelled her first name – one “l,” not two – right.)

I remember when Michele first started talking about the book, and I remember when she was writing it. I forget a lot of stuff, but I’m pretty sure would have remembered Chinese banking crises if they’d been in mix for inclusion.  Greek defaults and the Argentinian financial debacle were. China, not so much. (It would have qualified, but it hadn’t happened yet.)

So, a brief review:

So what’s a gray rhino? In disaster avoidance parlance, to paraphrase the book’s subtitle, a gray rhino is an impending and avoidable threat to which you can respond. They do not have to be big international banking crises. A gray rhino can as simple as walking through your kitchen and noticing that the sugar canister is down to less than a tablespoon.

I was dealing with one when Michele was working on her book.

‘Woman with with weird resume seeking soft landing’

Ten years ago, something happened at my grant-funded job that made it pretty clear its days were numbered. Ironically, a large component of my job involved helping other people address the fallout from their up-ended lives. I helped them figure out what their best next moves were, then did what I could to see them through those moves. Given that, it would have been pretty hypocritical to pretend I didn’t need to start casting about for my own best chance at a soft landing, which turned out to be enrolling in a library and information science graduate program.

I got laid off the year after I walked across a stage to pick up my master’s degree, spent the following 11 months of non-day-job work applying for day jobs, editing dissertations, writing freelance newspaper and web-based stories and indexing a book. Then, one of those applications panned out and, to my great delight, I landed a job as a public librarian.

Michele loves that story. She keeps asking me to blog about it. But I want to blog about a different gray rhino.

My mom.

Mom has been in a nursing home for almost four years. Before she actually ended up in one, ending up in one was her biggest fear.

Rhino avoided….for awhile

I have vivid memories of nursing home visits to elderly relatives with 50-something Mom. That woman was vibrant. She ran from morning ‘til night. She worked, volunteered, played bridge, was active in her synagogue, a regular at book group and still found time to travel the world with her sisters and host friends at her house on Cape Cod.

We’d walk into a facility and the smell – a melange of stale, damp and vague decay – would hit us. Then, there’d be the sights en route to our destination, usually someone’s room. Near-comatose old people with wispy hair and rheumy eyes sitting in wheelchairs in the halls, or arranged in rows in common rooms in front of a TV. Some would stare at nothing, some were aware of us. Some babbled weird things that were unintelligible or if intelligible, more closely resembled random word strings than coherent thoughts.

We’d find our person and have our visit. On our walk back to the car, Mom would utter a variation of the same declaration.

“If I’m ever like that, shoot me or give me pills.”

I’m pretty sure that 50-year-old Mom would shoot 89-year-old Mom.

Eighty-nine-year-old Mom, however, is not nearly as upset about her current situation.

There are, I think, several reasons for this, many of which involve a veritable herd of Michele-style Gray Rhinos. If Parkinson’s disease had not derailed her well-laid out plans, she’d be living quite contentedly on Cape Cod, using her yearly required withdrawal from her 401K to travel. She’d still be living off her pension and social security checks for daily expenses. Parkinson’s disease was the gray rhino that led us, ultimately, to what Mom – and the rest of us – didn’t think existed.

A good nursing home experience.

After nearly four years, it dawned on me recently that my family is having one. In a very real sense, we were damned lucky to bumble into it. But we also did – and have continued to do – things to maximize the “good” ness of our situation.

How to have a ‘good’ nursing home experience

I could write for days about this, but no one wants to read that much for that long. So I’ll do my best to keep it simple. Here are four tips, two of which I have never seen in any book about nursing homes.

  1. PR Rollout
  2. Show up!
  3. Their casa is your casa
  4. Plan ahead

Before I elaborate, though, a disclaimer.  A lot of what went down in the decade or so preceding Mom’s decision (and it was her decision) to move to a nursing home had reassured her that as far as my sister and I were concerned, she was still in charge. Losing mobility and stamina did not mean losing the right to have her wishes honored while she was still intact enough to make those decisions herself. That still stands now that I am in charge of making decisions on her behalf.

FuneralCostsGrayRhino2015

Words to live by. And so benign-seeming when surrounded by painted gingerbread people.

So, without further ado, this, based on our experience, is how to have a great nursing home experience.

Create buzz

If possible, try to build some buzz around your person’s arrival. Think “PR rollout.”  We didn’t plan or intend that, but it turned out to be a lucky and very happy accident.

Mom, having made the decision that the nursing home was where she needed to be, opted to blow town and visit her sisters, leaving me to divest of what wouldn’t fit in her new room and choose what would and should. She flew off to California to spend three weeks with her older sisters.  (My daughter was headed out there for a conference, so she stopped and picked up Granny on the way; my sister flew from Canada to California, then brought Mom home to her new room.)

I spent the next three weeks cleaning out her apartment, the latter two of them moving things over to her new place, which was in an adjoining building. In the process I got to know the people on her unit. I found out that many of the CNAs had been there for years, a very good sign. They exclaimed over her artwork and listened to my stories about Mom. There was something exotic about her being in California, and the idea that she’d be arriving on a night in the future, like some movie star on tour.

I hadn’t intended the three weeks she was gone to be a buzz-building campaign, but that’s how it worked out. By the time she arrived, everyone was really excited to meet her. Note: I also decorated her room somewhat strategically, placing her United Way ‘Self Above Service’ award and other recognitions she’d received over the course of her life for teaching and synagogue involvement in view of the entrance to her room.

Be present!

I had the luxury of working a mile-and-a-half from Mom for the first two years she was at the Home. But if you can’t be the person who pops in between four and five times weekly (more often even), try to get someone else to do it for you. These don’t have to be extended visits. Sometimes the trip there and back took more time than the quick hello, hug and kiss for Mom and a ‘Hi!’ to other residents and staff people.

Now that I work on the other side of town at a much less flexible job, I’m only there a couple of times a week. But everyone knows why. My sister arranged for her to have a companion two nights a week, so even though I’m not there as often, Mom still gets outside attention.

One of my proudest moments some two years into Mom’s being there occurred when she, more lucid then, reported that on a bathroom run in the middle of the night, the attendants were talking past her (which happens, sadly). One said to the other, “We have to take care of her right away, otherwise she’ll call her daughter.” If you can’t win ‘em over with kindness, making them afraid of you is the next best thing.

By the way, about the staff people: Learn their names. And if you are that kind of person, learn their stories. My sister and I have both worked as reporters. Reporters are curious people who are genuinely interested in other people and their stories. If you’re not built that way, find other ways to be kind to the CNAs and caregivers. Figure out what’s in your comfort zone and show them you appreciate what they’re doing for your person.

Debby and I have ended up making some lovely friends. We also have gotten unofficial calls from staff who’ve let us know when Mom has needed something specific and/or something has happened of which they think we should be aware. To say that we’re grateful doesn’t begin to express our feelings of appreciation and respect for these amazing people.

Don’t treat it like an institution.

You may have to sign in and out and your house probably didn’t have elevators, CNAs and nurses (unless the latter two were your parents and/or siblings) but don’t be shy about treating the place like home. There was the time a new nurse-practitioner was looking for ice and asked a busy staffer. I knew where it was and got it for him.  My attitude? Yeah, it’s a nursing home. But my mother lives here. So it’s my mom’s house. That goes whether I’m rummaging in the kitchen for cups, straws and tops during an ice water run, fetching a towel or a wheelchair from the storage closets or helping out when dinner’s being served.

Look ahead.

Even though I thought I knew this, I didn’t. I do now because of something I said earlier: “Get to know the staff people.”

I have promised Mom a beautiful, easy death. Which is why, last month, I signed papers with hospice care. Mom gets to stay where she is, and a bunch of new people now come in to see her (social worker, nurse, personal care workers, music therapist).

She’s not at the point where anyone needs to swoop in as what my dear friend Julie (who spent a month in hospice before heading off to the Great Mysterious Beyond Place) referred to as “the pharmaceutical death factory.” But when it does, the hospice people are going to be right there to catch her.

What I didn’t know was that if those papers and that plan isn’t in place and your loved one in a nursing home takes a sudden turn for the worse, the lag time between contacting doctors and pharmacies might well mean that your loved one suffers and dies in pain.

That’s what happened recently to someone on Mom’s unit. The family hadn’t made any arrangements; their loved one did not have the easy death that would otherwise have happened. It tore at the hearts of the staff to watch someone they had come to love and care for suffer when that didn’t have to be the case.

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call to action, Commentary, education, journalism, justice, opinion, organizing, politics, Social Justice, Society, Uncategorized, writing

American ‘Greatness’ in action: Best celebrity gossip site & worst quiz ever

I am a lucky person. On weekday mornings, my alarm clock is Sweetheart coming through the bedroom door and handing me a cup of hot coffee.

The ritual dates back to the early days of our relationship. Since January 20, there’s been a new component.

He hands me coffee. My line after “Thank you” is:  “What fresh hell today?”

Sometimes he knows, because he watched the news. Other days, he tells me about the videos he watched and whether the dog has made her outdoor by-product deposit.

This morning, though, I owe a thanks to a fellow poster on Celebitchy, the high-end mind-candy celebrity gossip site for answering my daily question. Posts about the most banal of topics (the Clooney/Beyonce-JayZ twins, Kardashian-du-jour, etc.) are elevated by the site’s writers, and taken to a completely other level by its commenters.

They are, for the most part, a highly intelligent and thoughtful group. I don’t post as much there as I might because {job/Mom/pet care/other responsibilities} but I am a great lurker and have even made a friend there.

CB has been posting about the Trumps since election season, and is keeping the community updated on a regular basis about what’s happening. Those posts are informative on a lot of levels. Many of the commenters live outside the US, so we get a global perspective on how his antics are being received. I should add here that most posters are not his chosen demographic, so if you are all hyped about how “Great” America is becoming in the wake of the election, what you find on CB will not please you. (Just read the Selena Gomez and Angelina Jolie posts.)

Anyway, on a post titled “Donald Trump tweets that the media is the enemy of the American people,” from yesterday, commenter named justjj posted this:

 

just-jj

This was my response:

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I copied and pasted the survey below, so no one has to click on the site. And to anyone else who is either totally sick of winning and/or thinking about Germany in 1933, you’re not alone. (Based on some of the questions, it’s been up since before November but note that it has not been taken down or changed. Forgive me for not bothering to remove the extra bullet points in the spaces between questions. Someone has to get to the dog park!)

 

Mainstream Media Accountability Survey

  • Do you trust MSNBC to fairly report on our campaign?
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • Do you trust CNN to fairly report on our campaign?
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • Do you trust Fox News to fairly report on our campaign?
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • On which issues does the mainstream media do the worst job of representing Republicans? (Select as many that apply.)
    • Immigration
    • Economics
    • Pro-life values
    • Religion
    • Individual liberty
    • Conservatism
    • Foreign policy
    • Second Amendment rights
  • Which television source do you primarily get your news from?
    • Fox News
    • CNN
    • MSNBC
    • Local news
    • Other
  • Which online sources do you use? (Select as many that apply.)
    • Drudge Report
    • Breitbart
    • National Review
    • Weekly Standard
    • Free Beacon
    • Daily Caller
    • American Spectator
    • Red Alert Politics
    • Other
  • Do you trust the mainstream media to tell the truth about the Republican Party’s positions and actions?
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • Hillary Clinton still gets a free pass from the media as she continues to lie about sending classified information on her secret server.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The mainstream media takes Donald Trump’s statements out of context, but bends over backwards to defend Hillary’s statements.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The mainstream media failed to cover the fact that Bernie Sanders LEFT the Democrat Party.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The mainstream media needs to do more to expose the shady donations to the Clinton Foundation.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • Political correctness has created biased news coverage of both illegal immigration and radical Islamic terrorism.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The RNC was right to drop CNBC as a partner after they failed to fairly moderate the October debate.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The mainstream media hardly reported on the fact that our small-dollar fundraising nearly MATCHED Hillary’s Wall Street fundraising machine.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The mainstream media played a critical role in electing President Obama and is now attempting to do it again for Hillary Clinton.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • Contrary to what the media says, raising taxes does not create jobs.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • People of faith have been unfairly characterized by the media.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • American history is being rewritten by “social justice” activists.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The media has not done its due diligence to expose ObamaCare’s many failures.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The media wrongly attributes gun violence to Second Amendment rights.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • Coverage of the Tea Party movement has been deliberately negative.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The media has turned a blind eye to Planned Parenthood’s worst actions.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • Americans are not fully aware just how much waste there is in the federal government.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The fact that the man who set up Hillary’s server was granted immunity should be a bigger story in the press.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • More time is spent covering fake “scandals” involving Trump than real scandals involving Hillary and our national security.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • In order to preserve whatever journalistic integrity they have left, the mainstream media must come forward and admit Hillary LIED about her secret server.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The media uses slurs rather than facts to attack conservative stances on issues like border control, religious liberties, and ObamaCare.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • If Donald Trump said or did half of the things Hillary Clinton has, the media would effectively end his candidacy.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • The media purposely tries to divide Republicans against each other in order to help elect Democrats.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion
  • We should spend more time and resources holding the mainstream media accountable.
    • Yes
    • No
    • No opinion

 

Enter Your Information

Full Name

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call to action, justice, kindness, lifestyle, love, Media, opinion, politics, Social Justice, Society, Uncategorized

Kill ’em with kindness: Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway and the ‘Old People Hypothesis’

Ever been told to be careful about that sour expression on your face because “It might freeze like that?”

The truth is actually simpler and more complicated, and I offer up as Exhibits A (male) & B (female) our current mess of a president and one of his “counselors.”

Donald_Trump_official_portrait.jpgkellyanne_conway_by_gage_skidmore

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at Donald Trump’s and Kellyanne Conway’s faces and try to imagine that you’ve never seen them before.

Now, picture yourself  in a situation where you need to ask a stranger for some small thing – standing on a corner in a strange city and not being sure whether to turn left or right to reach your destination, wanting to know what time it is or whether you just missed the bus you’re waiting to catch.

Do they look like people you’d want to ask?

Over the past five years, I have been spending a lot of time hanging out with old people. And by “old people,” I mean the 80-plus set.

Back when 30 seemed like 100 and I blew out the candles on my eighth birthday cake, those people looked unimaginably ancient. Now, those eight and 30-year-olds look at me and see what I saw back then.

[Confession/digression: I kind of like it. Sure, mass media is all about youth and beauty, and it might be fun to be firm and wrinkle-free and all. But the truth is that learning to steer older has been a fairly smooth ride.

Benefits include the ability to call out someone with nothing more than a smile and a kind word or two. There’s zero attitude and the exchange often moves on from there, ending on an upbeat note for everyone involved. Which is, I think, is directly connected to my sense of entitlement – or lack thereof.]

An angry co-worker at a previous job once accused me of thinking I owned the world, and in my head I was l all, “Well, yeah, and so do you!”

Also at that previous job was an older female co-worker whose features could have settled into something pretty, or gentle, but didn’t. She looked mean. Because she was mean.

I’ve spent a lot of time since then observing old people – and that was way before Mom went to the nursing home. The result is my Old People Hypothesis.

Old People Hypothesis: As we age, we tend to look more on the outside like we are on the inside.

In other words, that mean-looking older person (assuming they haven’t had “work” done or been caught up by some disease that changed their physical appearance) is likely to be a mean older person. Conversely, the one whose default expression is soft and kind is also likely to be soft and kind.

aunties1

I see it with the residents in Mom’s nursing home, and I see it now with Kellyanne Conway, who, at 50, already is well on her way to a truly gruesome old-person face. Then there’s her boss. Who, at 70, looks on the outside the way he is on the inside.

The Old People Hypothesis doesn’t extend to spreading that ugliness around. But after his first week in office, I’m pretty sure of one thing for those of us out here on the ground.

Killing ‘em with kindness has never mattered more.

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