IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

On my way back to Digby, thinking to comment on a Fallwell blurb highlighted today, I was distracted by a news bite on 82-year-old Sarah Nome, whom Kaiser Permanente’s San Rafael Medical Center is suing. In 2002 “she broke both legs” (well, I doubt she took a mallet to them) and after several operations landed in a nursing home, unable to care for herself any longer. Then a year ago she was admitted to the hospital for a mental health review. She was deemed mentally healthy. She has no medical problem other than lack of mobility (the broken legs, result of an age thing here I’d imagine). The hospital attempted to show her the door but as she had nowhere to go (she is suing the nursing home where she was living) she insisted on staying put. And for some reason the hospital simply didn’t roll her bed to the door and drop her on the street. Imagine! Thus, though she has no medical problem, has not been taking medication, is merely occupying a bed, her medical bills have now topped $1 million, for which reason she’s being sued.

Nome has neither newspaper nor television privileges. I assume she is being fed and that her daughter isn’t daily coming around before work and dropping off a lunch pail of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Hostess cupcakes. Assuming the bulk of the million dollars she’s racked up in charges comes of the year she’s been idling in the hospital bed, reading and looking out the window, then what we have here is a pretty costly bed. Yeah, it’s got buttons that raise and lower the head and feet, and I trust she has bedpan privileges and that the linens are periodically changed. Still, it’s quite an expensive bed.

OK, she’s in Marin County. I do a quick web search for a studio apartment in Marin County (she wouldn’t need anything bigger) and come up with a nice little modern studio with a new kitchen at Valancia Street and Belle Avenue. Nice and quiet earth-toned color scheme, wood floors!, sunny yellow walls. $685 a week. That’s kind of pricey in my book but what do I know about Marin County. That’s $35,620 a year for a dwelling. Ouch, too much. Search again. Here’s a studio apartment at Mill Valley for $900 a month, gas, electric and water included. OK deal. $10,800 a year. Much better than the Valancia Street rip-off and the kitchen walls are at least a kind of happy mustard color that could be sunny yellow maybe with more light or a new paint job. Now, let’s say you have round-the-clock caregivers at $15 an hour, that would be about $131,400 a year.

Let’s allot Ms. Nome, hmmm, a generous $600 month allowance for food and spending money. Toiletry articles, freecycled mysteries and an occasional new pair of socks and lap blanket are about all she needs any more if her legs are now just for show. I don’t think it’s asking too much of anyone to figure out how to eat on at most $5 a day so that leaves plenty for cable. At 82 (and immobile), how many calories can you use?

The total for round-the-clock care and room and board and some extra cash comes to $149,400 a year. The median income for a household in Marin County is $71,306 a year. The median US income for a female with no male present is $29,307, while for a person over 65 (no sex given) it is $23,787 a year. Let’s knock out the round-the-clock care at $15 an hour and give her drop-in care at California’s $6.75 minimum wage, 40 hours a week for $14,040. The caregiver would not be able to afford Ms. Nome’s now very pricey $900 a month apartment but we’ve reduced Ms. Nome’s yearly expenses to $32.040 a year.

If Ms. Nome was on the $131,400 a year plan then it would take about 7 Ms. Nomes to rack up a million dollars in expenses over the course of a year. About 31 if she was on the $32,040 a year plan.

Yeah, I know that a hospital bed is not a $900 a month studio apartment that a minimum wage worker wouldn’t be able to afford. It’s a very specialized bed that Kaiser wants back, which is why they are suing Ms. Nome, which Kaiser admits is their attempt to entice her to pack her bags and call for a taxi to drop her off at a bus stop rather than them having to do the dirty work. Attempt to convince Ms. Nome to do the dirty work herself.

But let’s not linger. Ms. Nome sounds like a woman who’s better able to take care of herself than I would be if in her position. Had it been me and the hospital handed me my suitcases I would have ended up parked in some landfill in a short period of time, end of story. If you don’t have the material resources to exist on this planet (I mean outside of the clay and water you got as a birthday present) then you ought not to be here.

And besides, my little one wants to visit the Great Wall of China.

Oh, Digby and the Fallwell comment? The one where Fallwell was taking back what he said about choice sinners in America (pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the ACLU, People for the American Way) having caused God to lift the veil of protection which had allowed no one to attack America on our soil since 1812? A few battles between American Indian Nations and Americans spring to mind as having happened, subsequent 1812, on what is now American soil or was American soil even at the time of such battles though shortly before had been soil treatied to those Indian Nations but what’s a treaty worth when none were ever kept.

Before I sign off, however, on the flip side, the good side, Marty brought home for H.o.p. (boy has he been in a great mood all day) some more colored pencils and a box of pastels. We already have both in an assortment of brands but we welcome new to try out. My mother has been drawing a lot, taking a course that uses Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain as a base. She sends us scans of her drawings, which has been a good bit of fun. H.o.p.’s drawing implements of choice remain pens and magic markers and I imagine will remain so for a while. Still, I asked the paper banker for a loan and H.o.p. gave a couple of sheets and I did a quick sketch of his pretzeled computer-absorbed form. “Look, see,” I said, “that’s you.” He was polite; studied my version of his right foot for a bit with real curiosity. Having only observed it previously in real life and in photos I imagine my misrepresentation was yes, well, a curiosity.

Now, I return to the land of Godzilla.

I was going to start out with fun stuff, how H.o.p. and Marty went to see “The Adventures of Mighty Bug” at The Center for Puppetry Arts today, but on my way to get a link to the website I stopped in for some news and happened on this, a new old news story on Manadel al-Jamadi, a ghost detainee (ie. held secretly) of the CIA whose November 2003 obituary was a matter of photos showing Abu Ghraib guards giving a thumbs-up over his abused, ice-packed corpse. The new news is that he died in one of the prison shower rooms, during a half-hour of questioning, while being suspended by his wrists with his hands cuffed behind his back. He had already been roughed over by SEALS before turned over to the CIA interrogator and Abu Ghraib guards, his autopsy showing several broken ribs. It’s reported that when he was discovered to be dead, his shackles undone, lowered from his hanging position, that blood gushed from his mouth as if a faucet had been cut on.

I don’t know how the military pathologist who ruled the case a homicide phrased it, but the news article gives the pathologist as determining Manadel al-Jamadi had died from pressure to the chest and “difficulty breathing’. If I remember correctly, GW Bush’s daddy dignified his stint in office with the offer of a kinder, gentler world. This is the kinder, gentler world’s way of saying, “Asphyxiated.”

It’s called an “enhanced” intelligence gathering technique.

Sonny GW Bush insists he has always ordered questioning methods to remain within the law.

Today, GWB nominated for Director of National Intelligence, Ambassador John Negroponte.

GWB says,

“John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions. John understands America’s global intelligence needs because he spent the better part of his life in our foreign service, and is now serving with distinction in the sensitive post of our nation’s first Ambassador to a free Iraq. ”

GWB says,

“John’s nomination comes at an historic moment for our intelligence services. In the war against terrorists who target innocent civilians and continue to seek weapons of mass murder, intelligence is our first line of defense.”

GWB says,

“As DNI, John will lead a unified intelligence community, and will serve as the principle advisor to the President on intelligence matters. He will have the authority to order the collection of new intelligence, to ensure the sharing of information among agencies, and to establish common standards for the intelligence community’s personnel. “

Derechos Human Rights, a member of the World Organization Against Torture, says:

John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985. As such he supported and carried out a US-sponsored policy of violations to human rights and international law. Among other things he supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, where the US trained Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980’s. The base was used as a secret detention and torture center, in August 2001 excavations at the base discovered the first of the corpses of the 185 people, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at this base.

During his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic. The infamous Battalion 316, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with them, while lying to Congress.

President George W. Bush has nominated Negroponte to be US ambassador before the UN. Human Rights organizations in the US and Latin America have joined their voices in asking the US Senate to not ratify his nomination. Please join us!

The shower room is a “common” CIA interrogation spot.

Hopefully in the next Random House Dictionary update “shower room” will be noted for its euphemisms.

Today’s notes from Godzillaland…“The Adventures of Mighty Bug” was said to be visually appealing but not much to it. The literature reads, “The evil arachnid Scorpiana, fresh from a prison stay in a nearby entomologist’s lab, has assembled a group of insect-eating animals to attack Bugville while she captures Mighty Bug and the lovely Morpha. Scorpiana, however, is no match for our insect heroes - the most successful animal species on earth, after all. With the help of Professor Rhinoceros beetle, the insects of Bugville join forces to save the town…” According to Marty however there wasn’t much adventure and plot was practically nonexistent. That’s all right with H.o.p. who’s always there for the puppets, in this case shadow puppets. He came home with a spider puppet that he’d made. Cute and simple design. Black construction and brown pipe cleaners.

H.o.p. also came home with pot stickers and a little robot. A trip to the puppetry center means now for him a visit to the store there to get another puppet, but this time he came away with “Roxy the Robot” who looks suspiciously like the robot maid in the Jetsons cartoon, Rosie. Rosie is purple-blue, a Hindu robot goddess, has a white cap, antennae ears, white frill collar, white apron, black skirt, and skates about on a peg leg. Roxy, also a maid, is about 5 inches tall, pink, springs for hair, antennae for ears and is blessed with two legs but unfortunately has flat red monster of Frankenstein feet. She has a grey torso, black skirt and white apron. Roxy has breasts, which Rosie did not. Two little black knobs. She is supposed to be able to walk but in this Rosie’s case she only air walks. Put her down and she stops. H.o.p. doesn’t like his robots to walk anyway. None of them. She has a key that winds her up. Marty asked H.o.p. what he wanted to do with it. H.o.p. said he didn’t want it. We put it up.

Tin Roxy came with a collector’s certificate. (Hah.) The box reads she’s for ages 8 and up, but not for “children”!, she is for collectors only as she has some vaguely sharp edges (none of them projecting, the bottom of her skirt and shoes are a bit edgy). So, H.o.p. had to become a collector in order to purchase Roxy.

The reading program was on hold a couple of days as my speakers went out. They’re working again as of now but need to be replaced. We may make it through another reading “world” tomorrow.

I phoned in and listened to the recorded message thinking I hope I don’t really have to be paying attention to any of this. No, such luck. Yes, I know it’s my sacred civic duty so tar and feather me already but one of the last things I wanted to do was to be honored with the privilege of jury duty. We’re self-employed and homeschooling. My husband was going to and would have had to cancel his studio session today in order to stay home with H.o.p. but his brother, who had just moved down from NY Saturday (”The most frightening thing in the world is waking up and realizing I moved to Atlanta”) dropped by Sunday evening and offered to babysit. Also, H.o.p. was concerned with mom having to go to a government building. He hears enough about the government that concern is the first response (no, not shame on me, shame on them) upon learning that mom is going down to a government building. (”It’s all right, sweetie.” “But President Bush is in the government building.” “Not this government building.”) The kind of concern that isn’t assuaged when he says, “Don’t go!” and I say but I must and he demands why and I tell him the not-so-fine print that the government will hit me with a hefty fine or submit a bench warrant for my arrest if I don’t go, which means a court date regardless. I mean, they make jury duty so inviting in the first place, don’t they? If instead you opened your mail to “Summoning the Honor of Your Presence for coffee and homemade blueberry muffins with prosecution, defense and judge” then I’d feel a bit differently about it, more relaxed, even if the fine-print said the coffee and muffins would be at my own expense. Send me a blue slip that says Summons for State Court Jury Duty 8:15 a.m. Monday or you’re arrested and I get testy.

There’s an old joke as to do you really want to be tried by peers not smart enough to get out of jury duty. My take on it is what’s the privilege of jury duty, fulfilling the right of the accused to a jury by one’s peers, when the accused may simply be one of those not protected by any number of those laws which exempts from libablity anyone who earns more money than the judge. Where’s the justice in a country where we say it is stealing when you take someone’s $75 television but call it profit when you can, for instance, pollute to the point of extinction or pirate the pensions of hundreds of thousands. Where’s the justice when we’ll slap a person in prison who is actually endangering their life with certain select self-prescriptions, but legislate protection for corporations that willfully endanger the lives of thousands. And don’t tell me that a corporation holds the same rights as an individual under the law but is an institution and the owners aren’t responsible for its actions and that’s the way it has to be “because” (kind of just like politicians aren’t liable for anything that they conveniently can’t recollect telling a subordinate to do). When a car-pooling van makes a traffic violation, we don’t call the situation corporate and absolve the driver of responsibility.

I’d not slept but a couple of hours Saturday night. I slept one hour Sunday night because my body decided to wake up after an hour. Marty asked why. I said because I was wild with anticipation.

It having been a sleepless several days, I wondered if I started hallucinating from sleep deprivation during jury selection if they would send me home and my obligation would be fulfilled.

I chose “Spit in the Ocean, All About Kesey” as reading material, because it doesn’t require much focus and would be like porting along a friendly angel, and it seemed appropriate, considering the prospect of sleep deprivation hallucinations. I looked for second choice of reading material but Marty and brother-in-law said I probably shouldn’t carry along too much, and they ought to know as they both have never done jury duty. “Maybe I should take along some cards?” I said, but Marty and brother-in-law said no there would be no room to play and again they ought to know, they both having never done jury duty.

The line at 8:15 was long outside the courthouse. At least, I reasoned the line of obviously disgruntled souls at the center door, a grab bag of humanity burdened with worries of livelihood, was jury duty and that the left door had nothing to do with me as those breezing through it were far too cheerful. I must have looked like I knew. “Is this the line for jury duty?” a passing someone asked me. “Yes,” I said and thought I should have said, “so I assume” and called it out after-the-fact because I would have felt guilty had I not. People walking in and out the left door remarked on wow why so many people this morning and I wondered if there was something especially choice going on where they expected to run through prospective jurors like, well like a body with an intestinal bug only absorbs so much nutritionally whilst heavy purging. Not the best of images I know, but it was what came to me.

Once inside the door, the line snake wound multiple times before you finally made it to the metal detector. If you’re an employee have your ID out, if you are jury duty have your summons out and coat off, an officer stood at the center of the room repeating. It was passed through the line that if you had fingernail files you were supposed to take them back out to the car. Except the man ahead of me turned and rather than telling me this informed the younger woman behind me . She had on make-up and a hairdo and clothes. I had on my racoon-eyed no sleep face. They struck up a conversation.

Thus far, I looked like the kind of a person you ask if this is the jury line but not a person you expect to carry a fingernail file.

Into the little white plastic basket I placed everything in my cargo pockets and my book and tablet. Onto the conveyor belt went it and my coat, the pockets I’d stuffed with toilet paper and a couple of paper towels as I’ve still got a sometimes runny nose from my cold and had been out of tissue paper and hadn’t wanted to carry a knapsack as I’ve gotten used to not carrying a knapsack since everyone thinks you’re going to shoplift or create a headline with an incendiary device. Of course, I set off the metal detector machine though the only metal I knew myself to be wearing was my ring and loop earrings. A wand run over my raised-arms form convinced I had nothing to hide.

Up to the 7th floor to the holding room for prospective jurors which contained both State and Superior Court prospective jurors and was big and reminded of an especially large airport waiting area except there were no windows. Line up first outside an oversized glassed-in theater ticket booth with several guides issuing instructions. Superior Court get white badges and sit down. State Court go to yet another desk at the rear of the room where you sign in and get your own badge. Then to look for a seat but the room was so packed with people, several hundred of them, that I went ahead and sat on the floor, and was the first one to do so for some reason. The seats were all in rows with seating cubes stuffed in awkward areas and I took the first floor spot that seemed reasonable where I could hopefully rest my back against a side of a large cube on which happened to sit several blond women who certainly had been carrying fingernail files and had to go back to their cars or throw them away. I fumbled with my orange badge, knowing the back should come off so I could stick it on my clothes but it just wouldn’t do. I gently folded, attempted to find where to peel. I was already a little anxious. I thought how odd it was that I spent the night installing Apache on my computer so I could have a local server, and tweeked it and installed PHP and MySQL and here I couldn’t figure out how to peel my stick-on badge. It was embarrssing. I asked the blond on my right who couldn’t believe I was asking anyone this, much less her, and turned to the woman on my left and asked her and she looked at me like I was a total simpleton and said fold it in the middle and this time when I folded it in the middle it parted, I unpeeled, I slapped on the badge and sat back as best I could (not) and began to observe the show. The summons had said business casual which everyone had defined as no pajamas or shorts or swimsuits. Most women wore fashionable or vaguely fashionable clothing with cute accents. I believe I was the only one in oversize men’s cargo pants and eight-year-old men’s steel-toed boots from Target (I dress cheap and break my toes a lot) and a men’s oversized hooded jacket from Old Navy and a bandana. But I did have on a nice black v-neck rib knit cotton sweater. If you separated the people off into who shopped at the up-scale malls, who shopped at the regular malls and who probably never visited a mall and got their vegetables at co-ops, there weren’t too many co-op shoppers and most of them were men. One of those men before eleven o’clock asked for a deferrment because he ran a restaurant.

We were treated to a movie of news anchor Brenda Wood telling us we were doing our honored civic duty and were appreciated for it. Brenda Wood said they might ask embarrassing questions and if we were too embarrassed to answer in public we could say so and the judge might grant answering in private but likely not. The videotaped news anchor told us not to discuss the trial with anyone and not to watch the news. I found this amusing.

The video over, I moved to a spot on the floor near the State Court desk where I could rest my back against a wall.

I was surprised to see only a few palm pilots (mostly held by young twenty-somethings), no laptops, few earphones and Ipods. (I don’t have an Ipod or laptap or Palm Pilot–not even a cell phone–but I expect most everyone else to have at least a cell phone and Palm Pilot or Ipod.) There were very few books. Almost no magazines. Very few newspapers. Most people slept in their seats. No one snored. With the colds going around and flu I was surprised no one was coughing or continually blowing their nose. The coffee vendor woman didn’t make an appearance, her station just teased people with its cups. In the holding room one can talk but for some reason can’t talk on a cell phone (what’s the difference) so a number of people gathered at the threshold with their phones.

I said to the State Court woman I understood if you had a child under four at home one was exempt, but how did jury selection tend to look on people who homeschooled and so had children at home to look after. I asked although I knew the answer, that the state doesn’t much care about that or if you are self-employed. She replied homeschooling was my “constitutional choice” and made no difference here.

The bad thing about the holding room is that you’re afraid to walk out to exercise the legs, go to the bathroom, anything, because you never know when they’ll call the next jury pool, besides which you’re not supposed to go wandering anyway unless you’ve officially been excused for a break. I offered a conversational comment here and there on nothing particular, and would get a brief mmm kind of response and so tried to read but shortly decided watching the people was more entertaining. Beginning at 9 o’clock, a woman representing the Superior Court would occasionally appear and read off about 50 names and they’d go to their appointed room and a woman representing State Court would occasionally step up to the mic and read off shorter lists and those souls would collect their things and leave.

Not having had any coffee, getting a mild headache, I was feeling in need of aspirin. I had asked where a coffee machine was. I was told where to find the vending area on the floor. There was no coffee machine, or it was in another dimension. I got a coke. I opened it. It spewed. I took out the few paper towels I’d brought along for my cold (yes still fresh) and cleaned the bottle. I took my aspirin out of my pocket and felt on the offensive taking them, thinking it wasn’t beyond likelihood that a knee-jerk response in a court house would be to wonder if you’re taking an illicit substance. Another woman came back and asked where the coffee machine was. I informed there was none. On the way down the hall I met another woman looking for the coffee machine. I said there was none but the vending area was thataway.

I returned to my spot near the State Court desk. A man on a cane asked the woman where the coffee was. She directed him to the same vending area. She worked on the computer and answered phones. She was having troubles with her computer and didn’t know what to do. Sometimes she’d answer the phone and after a moment quip, terse, “And why aren’t you here?”

Because I’m so good at it (reference lame drawing) I sketched for a couple minutes and realized how there was no difference, as far as carpet, walls, trims, between the materials and aesthetics that went into the courthouse room and your typical post 70s hospital waiting area. The colors were the same as used in the hospital where I gave birth to H.o.p. seven years ago. Cream, mauve and gray. Florescent lights were numerous and bright. Everything looked green.

As seats began to open up, the State Court woman twice commented there was an open seat I could take.

I stayed on the floor. If I had taken a seat I would have been in the midst of the pack and unable to watch or sketch.

A friendly damsel from Louisiana was making friends left and right, lots of smiles, lots of laughter. Those even slightly amenable were drawn into listening and conversing at one point or another. Her husband was a chef and people were amusing themselves talking about cooking raccoon and possom. I spoke up and said my husband’s family was from Louisiana. She said where from. I said where. She wasn’t familiar with the Parishes. Lapse into silence. She and the people around her returned to talking. I had thought maybe when a seat opened up in that area I’d take it but when one did a woman who had been seated for a little while on the floor near me got up and took it instead and I found myself wondering why we’d not been able to strike up a conversation when I’d tried but she immediately fell into laughing good times with the young woman from Louisiana. By the time we were given leave for lunch the young woman from Louisiana had a table full of friends from her general seating area.

If I had grown up in New Orleans I’d be a more likable person than I am, I’m pretty sure of that.

Lunch. I had first stepped outside for a cigarette (I smoke a very few a day still). A twenty-something young man in torn worn dirty jeans and hooded sweatshirt, raveling sweater and bandana came out of the courthouse, nodded passing by, went to a post to unlock his bike. I looked over as he unlocked his bike. He looked back and nodded and smiled. It was somehow one of the more convivial acknowledgements of existences during the day and I don’t know why. It had been raining and cool earlier and now was warm and dirty, gritty muggy feeling. I went inside and back through the metal detector etc. where I once again set it off and they waved the wand around me and a man behind me set it off and he muttered a couple of answers to questions and he seemed a tad drug-filigreed perhaps and the last I heard as I walked off was them then questioning him, “And how are you feeling today, sir?”

In the cafeteria I stood behind the man on the cane who had been earlier looking for coffee. He looked to be about 80. There were people who had stood out during the day and he’d been one of them. Very neatly dressed, suit coat. I wondered what his profession had been and where he was from as there was nothing remotely Southern about him. He turned and looked past me and struck up a conversation with the woman in line behind me. A worker said the lady who made sandwiches was the very best there was. I asked for a tuna on rye sandwich. The sandwich woman started putting white lunch meat on rye. I thought that was really strange tuna salad. She asked me if I wanted tomato on my turkey sandwich. I said no and thought, “Oh well” and let it slide, because I had begun to feel unaccostomed to speaking and I could just as well eat turkey. I paid for my sandwich. I was told a bag of chips came with it. I said never mind. The man with the cane took a seat with the woman behind me, at the table next to the Louisiana woman’s group. I found a seat somewhere in the middle of the room at a table where a woman was talking on her cell phone. I ate. I decided no coffee was probably a better choice than court house coffee and got none.

Back up to the jury room. Lunch seemed to have made everyone tired and sleepy rather than replenishing energy. Most people slept or sat quietly reading. I realized I don’t sit still. I move a lot. Tap my feet. Drum my hands. Stretch. I would occasionally get up and wander around and passing back through the room to the State Court holding area I took a second glance at a coat closet no one had paid any attention to. I glimpsed a board game on a shelf in the rear. What da’ you know. Backgammon, Dominoes and Scrabble. I got out the Scrabble game, wondered how many people ever noticed the games because they were in pretty decent shape. I returned to my spot and played Scrabble against myself.

It was about 3 o’clock. Superior Court emptied everyone out. Then State Court read out a long list of names and said if you were one of the 10 not on the list that you would be staying and definitely sent down for one of the jury selections. I was one of the last 10 and thought oh great a definite day two coming up. The seats around the Louisiana woman were now vacant, there only being ten of us left in a room that had held several hundred. I moved three paces from my seat on the floor to the row between the Louisiana woman and another woman reading a newspaper. We all exchanged a few sentences. They returned to their reading. I returned to looking around the room and staring at the ceiling and thinking about David Lynch and the scene in “Twin Peaks” when the camera zoomed in through the acoustic ceiling to the room where Leland Palmer was being questioned about Laura’s murder. As a woman passed in the hall outside I realized her footsteps were echoing and how quiet it now was. The Louisiana woman remarked on how quiet it was now. I said that I’d been thinking the same because of the woman’s echoing footsteps.

I don’t know where I got the idea the day would be more interesting than it had been. I was almost pleased not to have been sent home, to have to go through the questioning phase. I thought well they probably won’t release me from duty because of homeschooling and self-employment (I’m self-employed too but never mind). I thought they’ll probably send me home for some other reason, like my contempt for the justice system. I wondered if they would ask me something where I would show how undesirable a juror I’d be by mentioning prison as a growth industry in rural America and how we have a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other nation.

I thought maybe I should be a juror because of how I feel about the justice system, except Georgia only pays $25 a day, not even minimum wage, and Marty would have to take care of H.o.p. and that would mean cancelling studio sessions he was producing this week, which would mean not just him out of work those days and losing income but the musicians already booked to perform being out of work.

At 4 o’clock it was announced that we would not be needed. Our names were read out. My name was the last name called on the list. I thought well every day there is a last person to be called on the list and today I’m that person. I now went to the area marked “telephones”. I had not been back there and had envisioned lots of telephones. In cubicle after cubicle there were only telephone wires dangling from the wall, or forlorn jacks. There were only two phones. I wondered why.

The Georgia Constitution in 1999 was amended so that full-time post secondary school students could be exempted as well as anyone who is a primary caregiver to children under the age of four.

In the 2001 Georgia Courts in the 21st Century, The Report of the Supreme court of Georgia, Blue Ribbon commission on the Judiciary, one finds, along with the recommendation that employers be given tax incentives to pay jurors their salary, or at least not penalize employees who serve as jurors (ain’t that nice), “The drawbacks of placing responsibility on employers to avoid financial hardship to jurors, however, are that it does not address the problem of hardship faced by self-employed jurors, and that ultimately it is just another shifting of the cost for this public service to another private payer. One alternative solution to this problem might be the creation of a pool of resources on which trial judges could draw in case of significant financial hardship to individual jurors serving in their courts.”

There is nothing about reviewing hardship placed on those who homeschool.

In Connecticut you can request $50 in child-care reimbursement per day. In Minnesota you can request $50 if the care was from a licensed provider or up to $40 a day child-care from a non-licensed provider.

As already mentioned, in Georgia you are paid $25 a day for jury duty and there is no child-care reimbursement and no reimbursement for travel expenses (which some states have) and the Louisiana woman had talked about having to drive an hour and a half from North Fulton. Minimum wage it is not–and who can live on minimum wage? I read the normal length of a State Court trial is two and a half days. Add on the day of going through the selection proceess and you get three and a half days which is four days for $100.

Anyway, I did my duty. I guess I can sleep now.

The doorbell rings. Our friendly neighborhood USPS woman with a box. (And she is friendly.) H.o.p. grabs a fork and begins his transformation of the carton. He punches holes. Gets a flashlight and shines it through the holes onto the wall. “Look, a Phoenix!” And it is. A magical flutter of light wings and wisp of body that soars up the wall to the ceiling. He gets his puppet Phoenix and shines the flashlight through it so it is radiant orange and gold.

My brother and sister-in-law were over Sunday with their little girl who is a remarkable combination of brilliant, inquisitive intelligence and enviable, easy-going, even-tempered, good-natured, self-assurance. They brought a gift of homemade whole wheat bread made from grain they themselves ground. The bread is a perfectly formed loaf, light rather than dense and chewy stick-to-the-back-of-your-throat dry like my homemade whole wheat bread used to be eons ago, the one or two loaves I made.

Speaking of something that would be hard going down if not oiled by (alas) history and the travesties of Newt Gingrich, Sonny Perdue and Zell Miller (to name a few), is the announcement that Duluth’s Ralph Reed, of Century Strategies, will be running for Lt. Gov. in 2006. My first thought was I guess now I’ll be paying more attention to Georgia’s hopeless situation (I’ve preferred to block all knowledge Ralph Reed was down here) rather than South Dakota’s, and then just a few short minutes after that thought the internet reveals that Ralph Reed’s public campaign contributions, 15 lined up at Newsmeat, include one to John Thune for South Dakota in 2002 and another for John Thune for U.S. Senate in 2004.

Ralph Reed must like John Thune. His campaign totals coming to $14,620, Bush comes in as top recipient at $4000, and then Thune and the Vision for Tomorrow Fund tie for second at $2000 each.

I never see Ralph Reed’s face when I think the name. Rex Reed’s face (so-called film critic) is permanently the face of Ralph in my mind. I don’t even believe in a Christian hell but (none-the-less) Ralph convinced me years ago he was seeded here by Damien of Omen’s pappy to be the prince of the goths in prep-shirt blue brigade, the devil’s own stealth crew (don’t ask me how as I don’t even believe in the Christian devil yet it is true). A Violator of all Natural Laws, his Marvel World power is to make desirable and enviable Unbalanced Being where-ever he goes and then some. When you stumble to the kitchen in the morning and open the refrigerator door to find a litter of plastic wrapping and styrofoam and the fat stripped from your pork chops, Ralph will be at the gym working it off.

Rehashing his fast track rise to fame. He was student body president at his junior high in Miami Beach, FL at the age of 14, winning by a landslide (I don’t know about you but where I went to junior high, winning by a landslide meant someone, anyone voted). He was junior class president at Stephens County High School in GA. At the tender age of 15 he was already working on behalf of gubenatorial candidates in Georgia, North Carolina and California. He served as as 1982-1984 National Executive Director for the College Republicans, co-chairman of the youth effort for Ronnie Reagan (he made sure that in ‘84 more college students worked for a Republican–RR–in “modern memory”, so was the guy behind my perplexity at college students being so ass-backwards so as to vote for RR), and in 1984 founded his own Students for America, of which he was Executive Director, which had a presence on 200 campuses in 41 states. He worked on the re-election campaign of racist homophobe Jesse Helms in 1984 and 1990 and, indeed, the formation of Students for America was for the express purpose of getting Jesse Helms reelected. The executive director for the Khristian Koalition from 1989-1997, the KK grew from 2 thousand to a purported 2 million under him and its budget went from 200,000 to 27 million. In 1994 he helped usher in the first Republican Congress in 40 years and in 2000 was senior advisor to Bushie’s campaign and in 2004 was Chair of the Southeast Region for Bush-Cheny and campaign manager. He has “worked on seven presidential campaigns and has advised 88 campaigns for U.S. Senate Governor and Congress in 24 states”.

Seriously, what were Reed’s favorite toys as a child? That’s what I’d like to know.

The bio of his wife on his campaign site notes she was the daughter of an Army career officer, gives her parents’ names and that she was born in Alabama, while Reed’s bio infers he is Georgian, growing up in Toccoa, and mentions nothing about being born in Portsmouth, Virginia or growing up in Miami before transplanted to Toccoa for high school.

Reed was one of three children of a Navy doctor, spending his teen years in Toccoa. Dad was Ralph Reed Sr., an ophthalmologist and his mom was Marcy. His website gives his dad as a doctor in the Vietnam war and his mom was his his Troop Leader.

He was an Eagle Scout.

Reed says while other kids were watching Big Bird, he was consuming the autobiography of Eddie Rickenbacker, Carl Sandburg’s “Lincoln”, William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, David Halverstam’s “The Best and the Brightest” and “All the President’s Men” by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

For a penny, plus shipping, you can purchase his out-of-print book “Active Faith”. Then there’s “After the Revolution” and “Politically Incorrect: The Emerging Faith Factor in American Politics”. I suppose I should at least read the first and last pages except, y’know, but, well. But I should.

What were his favorite toys? Was he building church spire campaign headquarters with blocks while other kids were still chewing on them? Where’s the website of a Stephens County High School black sheep alumni that opens with the line, “I went to school with Ralph Reed”?

Years ago, when I’d a tougher constitution than now, I watched Pat Robertson’s 700 Club because I wanted to be versed in their daily spin. If a tea leaf reader had told me then that Ralph Reed would be running for Lt. Gov. of GA in 2006 I wouldn’t have been surprised but I would have melted into a gibbering mess. No change from today, but now I can melt into a gibbering mess online.

Kelli Davis, a student at Fleming Island High School in Green Cove Springs, Florida, wore a tuxedo for her high school yearbook picture. Sam Ward, the school’s principal, said it must be removed because Kelli was wearing boy’s clothes and was not following the rules on dress. The decision was debated at a school board meeting attended by about 200 people, at which 24 people spoke, the majority of whom supported Kelli. The school board took no action and so the picture will be pulled. Bruce Bickner, the school board attorney, said there was no written dress code for the pictures but principals had the “authority” to set standards.

Karen Gordon, no doubt a proud patriot, attending the board meeting, applauded Ward’s decision. Said Karen, “When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds.”

This astute appraisal of the situation appears to belong all to Karen. She thought it up in her very little-bitty own, or her husband did, or her pastor did, or maybe Principal Ward said it at a PTA meeting and Karen was so impressed that the words were impressed upon her brain with the near vehemence of the ten commandments. I looked up “in Google “When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds” and there were no returns. Karen, if she knew this, would be so proud she could about pop.

Back to the tuxedo for a minute. The argument couldn’t possibly be about a woman wearing trousers as I have never seen a class picture in which the whole person is pictured, instead it is usually a head and shoulders shot. Never mind that pants on females is the norm. Back in the late 60s pants on females were, yes, an issue in ass-backwards conservative America but I remember somewhere along 1969 girls being permitted to wear pants to school in most parts and then around 1972 jeans became acceptable. It’s true that at church services and rights of passage (weddings, funerals) dresses on women still tend to be the norm, a quirk that is attributed to etiquette, but defies rational explanation. Just like the gold standard is another culture quirk. And eating with forks or fingers.

Head and shoulders shot. You can’t see the pants, so the pants couldn’t be the problem. Is it the bow tie? Are bow ties overtly masculine? Have I missed some phallic symbolism in the bow tie that marks it as sacred to the male? Or maybe the school system doesn’t want to appear to be promoting a service industry career for women, tuxedo shirts and bow ties not uncommon as service uniforms in the restaurant or catering world?

Uniformity. Pants weren’t ever an issue, actually. Kelli showed up for her school photo and what happened was there were drapes for females to put over their bodices and tux tops for the guys to don. Kelli was uncomfortable with the drape baring her chest. She opted for the tux.

Kelli happens to be lesbian. Kelli’s mother says her lesbianism has nothing to do with the matter, that it’s a human rights issue. The papers beg to differ, lesbian being in most of the headlines. An article by Susan Clark Armstrong at altweeklies.com certainly suggests that lesbianism factored in principal’s decision, and that Kelli believes this was a factor.

Reason wasn’t a factor, that’s for sure.

Kelli is one of those problem students that cause headaches for school administrators every year. You know the type, the kind of person who feels compelled to try for a little self-expression and autonomy. There’s nothing that can throw a cog in the orderly wheels of a fine-tooled school system, the machine to seize up and start throwing gears, than a picture of a woman in a bow tie crossing the desk.

Truth is, Kelli’s lesbianism is a factor, but she would likely have had the same response in that school if she’d not been a lesbian. The problem in Sam Ward world is anyone, male or female, exercising a bit of brain matter and questioning our largely haphazard potluck culture table, what makes sense and what needs to go in the trash. Karen Gordon fully grasps the problem when she defends the principal’s position with her statement, “When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds.” She knows that when individuals start thinking for themselves in school, there’s no telling what can happen.

You know Sam Ward and Karen Gordon. You remember them, don’t you? Sure you do. They’re the students whose only question was ever, “Will this be on the test?”

Meanwhile. It’s tough to concentrate when your seven-year-old is rolling the bathroom in wet toilet paper and painting vanilla yogurt on the bathroom mirror. But I try. Besides, he was kind enough to make a movie of it for posterity so I’m not missing anything. He and his dad were supposed to be playing Ultra Seven and King Joe. H.o.p. and I played Ultra Seven and King Joe last night for quite a while. This was after one of his questions on mortality, asking me if I was going to die when I got lines all around my eyes and was on a cane. He asked me what it was like when people die and asked me to act it out. I at first demured then figured what the hell and did a good old drawn-out stage death. H.o.p. said I did a good job of dying. Then suddenly I was Ultra Seven and he was King Joe. When he was later doing his reading program, he’d had enough of one of the games at one point and moaned his hand was oh so tired from clicking the mouse (yeah, right, this is a kid who draws four hours a day and can play computer games for hours). I said hey I’m Ultra Seven trying to reach and attack you before you can get to the end of the game. He liked that. He liked it so much we played it over and over again. I’d start toward him, he’d yell freeze and I’d stay in that frozen position for a while and then he’d say I could go and so on and so forth. Thus does H.o.p. continue down the reading road in his own fashion. I laid down on the couch to rest my head this evening and when I came back in he had the reading program up and was doing the next episode.

Having entered upgrade and theme adjustment limbo, I was back at it early (couldn’t sleep) staring at the screen wondering where in the world my “edit” links had run off to. They’d been there a few hours earlier when I fell over on the bed, I knew it. Idiot that I am, didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t logged in but those of us who are more challenged than others, I think we have gifts to offer, such as making others feel good about themselves. Anyway, hark, I realized that was the soft sweet sound of birds tweeting I’d been hearing just under the roar of our lame loud air purifier. Checked the clock. Was about 5:30 a.m. The time about right. It occurred to me I’d not heard morning birds in quite some time, you don’t get warblers much around here. At least not loud enough I can hear them in the apartment. I saw and smelled new green, rose-yellows of dawn climbing above the neighboring brick apartment building on our east side. There are no windows in this room but the soul has a peephole. Yes, sing in the spring. My gravelly heart softened slightly. I answered email and took care of a few other computer chores while procrastinating on what might demand real decision-making or using left and right click on my mouse which mostly died last night. A while later I realized the birds were still singing. Persistent suckers. Spring will do that. I read a few blogs while I considered what to do about my edit links disappearing when they had been there last night, then I realized I wasn’t logged in and logged in and found the edit links were back which would have been good if not so disorienting, cause and effect not one of my stronger suits. Marty got up which meant I was probably now officially up and not just sleepless, and I realized the birds were still singing. Very rare for our city alley to sound like a tropical bird sanctuary. At which point I looked past the roaring air purifier over at my son’s computer. He still had up on the monitor a math game he’d been playing last night. I went over and leaned my ear into his speakers. Yep. Behind the math game window was another game he’d been playing,. Jungle theme. Like I said, some of us are more challenged than others.

“You know there are four monsters,” my son says to me as he enters the room, first words out of his mouth this morning. He tells me the names of the monsters. Well, doesn’t just tell. An annunciation meant to illuminate mom on their glorious nature. I ask him if he made up those remarkable names. He says no. I say oh where did you learn them. “My brain,” he says, and goes off to watch PBS and Caillou then comes back in and asks me if I want to be a bear and tells me he’s a bear with sharp claws and off again he goes to watch Caillou, calling on mom to follow with his two foot high stack of drawing paper and a handful of pens. “Lots of pens,” he says, “I want lots of pens.”

Reading back over the post, quite a dyslexic morning we’re having here. Three in one sentence alone. He’s becomes his. Follow becomes fall. Pens becomes pins. I had thought I wrote he’s. I had thought I wrote follow. I had thought I wrote pins. The words were in my head, I was seeing them in my head as I typed them out, and I could have sworn my fingers were typing them out true, but no.

“Mommy, there was a dragon and it had a cut shaped like a lightning scar because of the evil monster lizard. Everyone who saw it blew up because of its monstrous powers.”

What can I say but that I’m glad I don’t have to clean up after it.

Over at Rox Populi she asks what’s an alternative to Blogosphere? I call it the bog. Short, direct. Inspired with this wondering what people would call (blank), I was wondering this evening, if Bush was a wine, how would you describe him? Me? I’d say, “Bombastic yet insipid”. There are a number of wits out there and I wish I knew what others would conjure, descriptive.

I start out to do one thing and end up doing another and another and following the Sgrena/Calipari story from here to there to there around the internet. An interesting thread that’s been carried on at dailykos today has links to pics of the automobile in which Sgrena and Calipari were riding. At Corrierre della Sera. The front end looks surprisingly unscathed for a car of which the engine block was said to be the target of the gunfire. I was also surprised to see that it wasn’t the car which I’d initially seen elsewhere given as Sgrena and Calipari’s car and doing a search found that the first car I saw wasn’t the Sgrena and Calipari car at all. Story here at Wagnews on how it came to be given as the car. Oddly enough, the stand-in car was said to look too little damaged. But the Toyata that Calipari and Sgrena were traveling in looks in a lot better shape than that other auto. However, appearances are apparently deceiving. The Italian foreign minister said that photos of the car show the right side riddled with bullet holes. The pics only show what I would have called the left side (driver’s side) of the auto but it is I guess instead called the right side, one facing it. (I can’t give a link to the foreign minister’s quote as it is an excerpt of an audio from NPR. Anyway, one doesn’t see the bullet holes. Blown out glass yes, but not the holes.

Brigadier General Peter Vangiel has been appointed to lead the investigation. He is with the 18th Airborne Corps Artillery from Fort Bragg, fresh in to Iraq in January. I find at Daily Kos a Jan 10th posting mentioning the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg. “Soldiers given ‘talking points’ to repeat to any newsreporters they meet on the field” .

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) — Paratroopers from the 18th Airborne Corps are preparing to head to Iraq for a year of duty and among the lessons they’re getting is one in dealing with the news media they will encounter.
Soldiers will pack a plastic wallet card that lists talking points for interviews along with their rifles and body armor because the chances are good that they’ll meet a reporter in the field.

Continues with this…

Last week, about 60 members of the 18th Corps’ artillery headquarters battery sat for a refresher course in a classroom at Fort Bragg for a presentation from Master Sgt. Pam Smith of the Corps public affairs office.

“If you don’t tell your story, they will tell their own, and all they will have to go on is their own thoughts and opinions,” Smith said. “If we don’t share with them what we do, the good things we do, they can’t report it.”

Military public affairs officers say the idea isn’t to “spin” reporters. Rather, the goal is to familiarize troops with a duty that has become almost routine.

One of the main messages is that talking to journalists is smart, not just because it paints an accurate picture of the military but also because it’s an opportunity.

There also was a subtext to the course — that soldiers should dwell on the positive.

The slide show’s first talking point was, “We are not an occupying force. Goal is to help Iraqis secure their country.”

And ends up with…

Public affairs officers from all the branches of service learn the basics of training troops in dealing with the media at the Defense Information School at Fort Meade, Md.

Interesting. I was wondering what Peter Vangiel’s special qualifications were for dealing with this investigation. Maybe he has a particular way of currying the press and making positive presentations.

Continuing, the special talking points include the following (from an article by Joe Strupp at Iraq Occupation Watch):

* The Marine Corps is trained, resourced, and ready to accomplish its missions. We are committed to the cause and will remain in Iraq as long as we are needed.

* The fight in Iraq is tough, but we will remain steadfast and not lose heart.

* We are moving forward together with the Iraqi government as partners in building a future for the sons and daughters of Iraq.

* Coalition forces will help our Iraqi partners as they build their new and independent country and take their rightful place in the world community.

* Our troopers and their families are our greatest and most treasured resource.

* The Corps is a national institution it has never failed to do the will of the American people.

Not much room for freedom of thought and speech in the Marines, is there.

I don’t know how Vangjiel’s (I’ve seen spelled Vangjel and Vangiel) experience as a deputy commander of the Army Recruiting Command will help the investigation but he was deputy commander of Army Recruiting Command.

In interviews with recruiting officials, as well as in internal memos and e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times, this pressure to meet recruiting goals is evident.

“Guys the mission is at risk!” Col. Peter M. Vangjel, a deputy commander of the Army Recruiting Command, wrote to battalion commanders and top enlisted soldiers in an April 21 e-mail message. “We can NOT miss this mission. I need your full support.”

Colonel Vangjel continued, “The CG is the next guy to talk to you about this,” referring to the commanding general of the recruiting command, Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle. “Don’t let it happen.”

Ha. We are not an occupying force. Which brings me to Bush’s “Freedom will prevail in Lebanon!” speech.

In his speech, Mr. Bush won enthusiastic applause from the audience when he vowed that the United States will not rest until countries under authoritarian rule are freed and said he had no doubt that will happen.

“Those who place their hope in freedom may be attacked and challenged, but they will not ultimately be disappointed, because freedom is the design of humanity, and freedom is the direction of history,” Mr. Bush said. “The trumpet of freedom has been sounded, and that trumpet never calls retreat.”

What imagery. A bit more stately, though, than freedom ringing doorbells in the Middle East. That was in there too. Democracy is going to be ringing every door in the Middle East. Bush going door to door like the Jehovah’s Witnesses–imagine.

He said the spread of freedom has been stymied by repressive regimes in Syria and Iran and warned them the United States will adhere to its demand that they stop.

“The time has come for Syria and Iran to stop using murder as a tool of policy and to end all support for terrorism,” he said.

That’s right, when you tell people to stop using murder as a policy tool, people just have to assume that you wouldn’t use it as a policy tool, would you.

Mr. Bush said Iran “should listen to the concerns of the world and listen to the voice of the Iranian people, who long for their liberty and want their country to be a respected member of the international community.”

The United States believes Syria, which has just under 15,000 soldiers in Lebanon, was involved in the bomb plot that killed the anti-Syria former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafiq Hariri, three weeks ago.

Mr. Bush said, “We meet at a time of great consequence for the security of our nation, a time when the defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom, a time with echoes in our history. Twice in six decades a sudden attack on the United States launched our country into a global conflict and began a period of serious reflection on America’s place in the world.

Global police. (“US Push for global police force” ).

I caught a sound bite of the speech on television. Just heard, didn’t see. I have this visceral gut response to Bush every time I hear or see him. Nausea. And cringing disbelief that he is…President. Discombobulating. A bombastic yet insipid presence and voice. He just begs one to turn one’s back and walk away.

Scott McClellan, on Tuesday, fielded questions on Bush’s call for Syria to get out of Lebanon.

Q Scott, how does the President square his calls again today for Syria to get out of Lebanon, with the enormous outpouring of support for Syria on the streets of Lebanon today and calls for the international community to stay out of the internal affairs of Lebanon?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, we are glad to see people peacefully express their views in the town square, as they have done for days now. We hope the Lebanese people will be able to express their view at the ballot box, through free elections, without outside interference and outside intimidation.

That’s right, no outside interference, no outside intimidation.

Syria’s continued presence in Lebanon undermines the aspirations of the Lebanese people to live in freedom. I also noticed today that the flag that was being waved was the Lebanese flag.

Q Right, but it’s another side of the story, it would seem, that there is one segment of the Lebanese population who wants Syria to get out, another segment of the population that wants them to stay in; and that the call is for people like the President, for Germany, France, Saudi Arabia to stay out of the process, that it’s not their place to be involved in.

MR. McCLELLAN: We want the Lebanese people to be able to determine their own future without any outside interference or outside influence.

Right. Again, no outside interference or outside influence. We couldn’t possibly be accused of outside interference or influence. We couldn’t possibly be thinking of being an influencing force.

Meanwhile. Well, I gotta git. I’m being told that Aku is out to get the future where all his evil is coming. Aku is also trying to trick Elmo into Elmo thinking he is one of his pals.

There was even hail. Then drizzle. H.o.p. went to the toy store with Marty then the studio. The toy store was a ploy to distract and make him not worry about mom visiting at the hospital. H.o.p. said just this once and I explained I may be spending some evenings keeping company there over the next few weeks. H.o.p. didn’t cherish the idea.

I hadn’t wanted to bother with my knap sack in which is my scrawled list of must know numbers. I realized I needed to test my husband’s phone number on him as I reverse numbers and I was going to need to call him when I was done. Stress and being tired can exacerbate so I wanted to write the number down. “Your phone is…?” No, he said I had reversed numbers. He told it to me. I repeated it back, again reversed. He handed me his business card.

Unless you’re pregnant and alternating smiles with grimaces, or wearing a name tag, no one knows what business may have taken you down to the hospital and people are generally friendly in the speak-softly-give-nod friendly ways of buildings where individuals of a variety of races, cultures, ages, politics, fashion preferences, and economic status are brought happenstance together by disparate concerns which are same-boat enough to have you brushing shoulders at the entrance, the information desk, riding the same elevator together. If you ask directions a friendly woman in a flowered hospital smock and crayola cornflower blue pants may tell you three times over in as copious detail as she can because she’s assuming nothing other than significance has brought you here, has you asking, significance is stressful, good or ill, and she wants to make sure your trip through the maze of hallways is smooth.

Her husband had told me go to labor and delivery, through those doors and then at a second set of doors, the perinatal, there’s a phone and they’ll let you in. The room I wanted was the last on the right where the hall cut to the left. I had to reorient as the perinatal doors opened for me and I saw what he’d described for I’d envisioned it reversed.

On the way up, I had passed the cafeteria which looked more like a restaurant, smelled like a restaurant rather than a cafeteria, and in which the decibel levels were elevated above the church-going quiet of the halls. A hospital is a hospital. The food on the tray beside the patient’s bed had the same weary, overcooked, industrial look hospital food always has. She was too ill to eat anyway. I cut half a small soggy baked potato into small pieces. She needed at least a few bites of something with her medicine. It was the largest hospital room I’ve ever seen. She too, and eventually voiced concern over that. Her labor, far too early, had been, it was hoped, successfully quieted–again. Why the big hospital room, she wanted to know. In case something went wrong? No, they said. She was just the lucky one to get the large corner room, the room you wanted to be in too if you were going to be there several weeks. I realized how large the two windows were. Edward Hopper windows, the big, urban, life is a stage kind, cut clean out of the walls without a lot of finishing detail. “Wow, would you look at the windows! These are incredible!” A corner of sky out one if you strained to look around the neighboring building.

She was exhausted, hollow-eyed when I arrived. Her husband left to go home to the kids, one of whom had bemoaned to me on the phone earlier just how far far away mom was.

Four hours later she looked better, I hoped and thought. By then we were laughing but sometimes when she did she touched her stomach and grimaced and I felt guilty for laughing and causing her to laugh, for coaxing funny tales. We explored a little. “Look, you’ve got a VCR!” She had two whole trash cans. Huge white trash cans. She asked me to maneuver one over next to her bed so she could reach it if she needed, which I did, careful with the IV’s and miscellaneous lines to things that were hooked up to her.

I felt bad about leaving after four hours. It was ten. She’d had two hours sleep the night before. I reasoned she needed her rest and wasn’t likely to sleep while I was there.

Another relative had wanted to come several hundred miles to help take care of the children this weekend, who was also pregnant, had canceled her plans as problems suddenly arose, and I went home to receive the sad news she had miscarried.

A friend of mine has begun blogging at Cobalt Skink. She writes some beautiful things. A nice meditation today on weeding brambles, horror vacuui, making space and space being filled.

My son is telling me about majogos which are bugs that like to eat hair, which make everything unfurry and unhairy again. He asks if hippos have hair and why we can’t see the hair and then decides if it’s because their hair is tiny it must be because of the majogos that eat hair, which are also so tiny one can’t see them. He confesses to me one can’t see them because they are cartoon bugs he made up in his head. Some of them get really fat however when they eat the hair of a hippo. “When they eat the hippo’s hair they eventually get full and fat and take their hats off. They think hippos are a big forest. When they put back on their hats they are flat again and escape from the hippo that doesn’t grow any hair.” Majogos never get on monkeys because they’re too fast, and they run away from King Kong. There are majogos which when they finish eating the hair they become extinct. But other majogos stay on planet earth. In 15 years, he says, the evil majogos will be extinct.

Now you know. Maybe I should enter majogos in the Wikipedia.

My son just held up up a flashlight to his right ear and asked if I could see the light coming out of his left ear.

That is rather how I’m feeling.