By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

The book was a struggle, but I felt duty bound to stay put in my yard chair and honor the author’s effort to finish the thing. Consequently, even a trail of ants, Fallbrook’s ever-present organic waste abatement crews, distracted me from the chore of reading. I watched the good little refuse engineers tidily toting to their nest the remnants of a mourning dove egg, probably dropped from its cedar nest by a murderous Blue Jay. I’d heard a ruckus the day before and ducked inside to avoid its calamitous end. But damn if fate didn’t catch up with me! At least the ants were swift and effective. Perhaps too effective.

I remembered the gift my father sent to my kiddo when she was small enough to still handle insects as though they were playthings. It had been a surprise, a special grandfatherly treat. And, according to the accompanying literature, we all — yes, children and adults alike — were in for hours of entomological fun as we played audience to the life’s work of the inhabitants of Uncle Milton’s Ant Farm.

Actually, said inhabitants of the green petrochemical-based farm were shipped separately, which meant a wait for all that fun we knew was coming our way. In the meantime, we filled the bottom couple inches of the farm with the lily-white synthetic sand provided, and eagerly anticipated the ants’ Herculean feats, their mind-bending commitment to earthmoving, their fastidious exercise of home economics — all the requisite behaviors of a proper ant.

The estimated day of arrival drew near, and we tacked the ant poster that came with the farm to my daughter’s wall. Together, we reviewed Milton’s ageless discourse on the wondrous world of ants. With a couple of honored bugologists in the family, I thought this might prove a prophetic science experience for the kid, soon to graduate from daycare to real school.

At long last, our ants arrived — as expected, only soldier-workers of ambiguous gender. Queens were prohibited from travel. In we poured our new housemates to their escape-proof quarters, while I considered the years of effort I’d previously expended to keep the little bastards out of our home. Nonetheless, gave them a welcoming honey-water spritz and set them in a place of honor at the dining room table.

Thankfully, Uncle Milton had adequately forewarned us, so we were not surprised when a few ants died the first day or two. This was to be expected. What was a bit disconcerting was the ants’ method of disposing of their dead: They broke down their brethren and, piece by piece, added their teeny black body parts to the white synthetic hills. And, to my maternal dismay, the ants continued dropping like, well, flies. Every day, we awoke to a grislier scene of death and dismemberment as the lily mounds became speckled with the black grains of dissected ant bodies.

In fear for my daughter’s psyche, and not a little grossed out, I poured through Uncle Milton’s brochure, a desperate review in search of advice I might have missed, critical guidance for keeping ants alive and well, but to no avail. The ants continued their unthinking hill building and their dying, only to be recycled as pepper to the sand’s salt by their surviving peers.

As the ant population rapidly dwindled and the hills darkened, I wondered about the significance of the ants’ unnatural existence on my table. Even when confronted with increasing mortality, the soldiers just plodded along, following the mandate of their biology — until the sad day when but one ant remained alive.

A lousy way to start the morning, I groped my way to the kitchen for day-old coffee and the eye dropper of honey-water, and returned to find the sole survivor atop the tallest hill peering skyward. I was grateful that the poor thing was too brainless to experience the bitter isolation of such utter aloneness, too rudimentary to beseech some great ant god in the artificial green sky to end this brutal abandonment. Unwilling to expose my daughter to such angst, I shattered the plastic and dumped the last ant outside in the garbage — to eat himself to a happy end.

I was certain then, as I am now, that we are not intended to keep ant farms on our dining room tables. Any more than we are intended to live in petrochemical plastic and perpetuate our soulless behaviors into our own extinction — our reckless Wall Street finanigans, our natural resource guzzling, our political demolition derbies, our hate-mortared border walls.

But, hey, it was just a bunch of ants, you might say? Yes, and if we don’t do any better than Uncle Milton’s ants, the species in my yard is likely to outlast us all, tidily toting our remnants back to their nests.

Love,
K-B

©2010 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Note: K-B is on vacation.

Academics vs. Athletics: Where Does the Money Flow?

By Hunt Gressitt, S.A., P.A.-C.

I am infuriated every time I hear of an academically capable student whose family is going into deep hock to pay tuition at a public institution of higher learning, while multiple teams full of illiterati who happen to be skilled at basketball or football are getting free rides — plus God only knows what all else in the way of special privileges and other goodies. Granting bachelor’s degrees to people who were too busy playing ball or sucking down the Coors to bother going to class, and who need tutors to help them read the TV guide, has been eroding the value of those degrees to the point that they’re no longer worth the parchment they’re written on.

To add insult to injury, these public colleges and universities are heavily supported by tax dollars, thus enabling them to provide an opportunity for professional athletic recruiters to have a venue in which to survey the current crop of prospects without having to pay for the privilege — as if there were so little money in professional athletics that they couldn’t afford to do it any other way. Snarl!

It’s an old issue, but it has grown out of control. The amount of money available to scholastic nitwits now seems relatively boundless. National Collegiate Athletic Association data for 2003-4 indicate that 138,216 students received an average of $10,409 in athletic aid. Compare that to 8,486 National Merit Scholarship students who received $2,500 each in 2007-08 or the maximum Pell Grant award for 2009-10 of $5,350.

Even physicians, into whose care we entrust our lives, have to pay through the nose for the privilege. Unlike most civilized nations, which subsidize the education of their health care providers, in the United States, physicians finish medical school with an average debt of $140,000.

I recently spoke with yet another parent who is racking up debt to her eyeballs, courtesy of the tuition bills of her two university student progeny, both of whom are working part time to help pay the bills, both of whom are on the dean’s list, both of whom will graduate with a mountain of debt that they will share with their mama, and neither of whom has been able to get any academic scholarship funds. It surely doesn’t seem fair.

I wonder how long it will take a teacher living on an average salary of $51,000 to pay off the average undergraduate debt of about $24,000, all the while accruing more educational costs in order to comply with the requirements that most decent school systems have for their teachers, to complete a master’s degree.

Meantime, the average professional athletes’ salaries would make a teacher’s head spin:

Basketball (NBA) — $5,000,000
Baseball (MLB) — $2,800,000
Football (NFL) — $1,750,000
Hockey (NHL) — $1,500,000
Men’s Golf — $973,495
Women’s Tennis — $345,000
Men’s Tennis — $260,000
Women’s Golf — $162,043

If the numbers are an accurate measure of perceived social value, the message is dismaying.

Note: Hunt Gressitt is an emergency room physician assistant in Ellsworth, Maine, down to her last $4,000 of student loan debt after way too many moons.

©2009 Hunt Gressitt

(Football photograph by Dirk Hansen via a Creative Commons license. Reading photograph by VolaVale via a Creative Commons license.)

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

A few months ago, I received a letter from the California Employment Development Department (EDD), indicating that I might qualify for yet another federal extension of unemployment insurance (UI). As I wondered at this amazing government largesse, my dear, darling and gainfully-employed husband reminded me of the hundreds of thousands of dollars I have paid into government coffers over the last thirty-six years, taking the fun out of what had heretofore felt like a gift. Killjoy.

Anyway, the letter said if I were to qualify for the next extension, I could just sit tight because EDD would process the claim for me and keep on sending those bi-weekly claim forms and checks, so I could continue eating my chocolate-laced gorp; watching my lineup of soapy, scripted lives portrayed by unexceptional actors who forsook Hollywood hopes for the joys of regular paychecks; and ordering monstrosities made by enslaved children for other unexceptional actors to model on the shopping channels.

Impressed with the ease and respectful nature of the UI process (I had previously jotted notes of heartfelt thanks on claim forms, even though a heartless computer scanner was the likely recipient of my gratitude) and well aware that I could not get a live UI representative on the phone (I spent three hours and forty-seven minutes one morning when the cable TV was down hitting the redial button to no avail), I assumed a wait-and-see attitude and returned to my activities of daily living.

Shortly thereafter, I received the final UI check from the previous federal extension. Knowing it might be the last, I debated whether to spend it on Christmas gifts for everyone on my list who had not said anything idiotic in at least a fortnight or for everyone on my list who had voted for Barack Obama. The debate concluded when it became apparent the two lists were mutually inclusive. However, some weeks later, having received no communication from EDD — no bi-weekly claim forms, no checks, no love notes, no nada — I realized I had not qualified for the next federal extension.

That last check was indeed the last. So, in a fit of pique I took it to one of the many local casinos and blew the whole thing on five-dollar slots.

Not really. Although I’m pleased at least some tribes have figured out a way to be reimbursed for the lands the white guys with bigger guns took from them, I cannot condone gambling. No, no, no. In actuality, I went the Obama voter Christmas gift route.

Nope, didn’t do that either. In a burst of self-indulgence, I spent it all on slinky lingerie.

OK, if you knew me, you’d know that’s a joke, and you’d know just how absurd — and unbecoming — a thought it is. In fact, I put the check in the bank. And then charged a plasma screen TV. Just kidding — you have to find cheap fun when you’re on the dole.

A few weeks later, out of the blue, I received three bi-weekly claim forms from EDD for the next federal extension. Yippee! I resumed counting UI a nice benefit of these great United States, completed the forms, signed them and was about to stick them in their envelopes, when I noticed I’d filled in a “Yes” box on one form where I should have responded “No.” I distinctly exed out the “Yes,” solidly filled in the “No,” and dropped the forms in the mail, once again duly impressed with the ability of a vast bureaucracy to serve little old me with such relative ease. Then I waited for the checks to restart.

In the meantime, I spent my days dining on a healthier gorp blend (heavier on the blueberries and almonds for their anti-oxidant benefits and lighter on the chocolate); watching a new lineup of those humiliating judge shows, because they made my paltry unemployed life feel so exquisitely superior; and flaccidly cruising eBay, yearning — inconsummately, due to the delay of my UI checks — to purchase such gems as a collection of three vintage, mint-condition Cowsills albums that would be just perfect to take to Bob Cowsill’s upcoming concert in my little town of Fallbrook, along with my Cowsills fan club membership certificate and signed poster from 1969, if I could just find them.

One hot and sticky afternoon, with my tushy in the air and my head submerged under the bed, fruitlessly searching for my Cowsills memorabilia, I heard the faint opening and closing of the mailbox. Spitting dust balls and frustration, I retrieved the mail and found another EDD letter, hidden in a haberdashery catalogue. Unlike lingerie catalogues, clearly designed for the male audience, I find the intended target of haberdashery collateral mystifying. Nonetheless, the EDD letter was clear and direct. It indicated a telephone interview had been scheduled for me and firmly stated I had better be prepared to answer questions pertaining to why I had been unable to accept full-time work. “Or else” was strongly implied.

I cursed the computer that had neither noticed my appreciative comments nor my corrected “No” response to question number 2, “Was there any reason (other than sickness or injury) that you could not have accepted full time work each workday?” Then I added a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips to my gorp, turned on a novella (I figured I could at least practice my Spanish while losing myself in the soap’s misery), put the Cowsill’s album collection on the credit card, and awaited my interview to right the computer’s inhuman wrong.

On the appointed day, I received a call from a fellow with the singsong speech of a technical support person laboring in the bowels of Mumbai. I thanked him for the call, explained I had no tech support requirements, and tried to get off the phone. He was persistent and a little difficult to understand, but after my third “Excuse me?” I realized he was introducing himself as “Ben.” It seemed an interesting choice for someone working in an IT sweatshop in India. Perhaps it was a nod to Ben Franklin, a man of many accomplishments worthy of such sweet recognition. Or maybe the fellow was delivering some veiled commentary on our economic woes by assuming the given name of Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Bernanke.

As it turns out, I never learned why he chose Ben, because I suddenly recognized the words “Employment Development Department,” and I swiftly pedaled to correct our inauspicious start. “Ooh, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t quite hear you. How are you, today?”

“Fine, thank you,” and Ben proceeded to ask me if I were available for full-time employment. “Yep,” I said. He asked if I were doing anything that would preclude my accepting full-time employment. “Nope,” I assured him. “Because,” Ben said, “if you were offered full-time employment, you must be able to accept it.” “Well, of course,” I said. “You are certain,” Ben asked, “if you were offered full-time employment you would be able to accept it?”

This was a confusing interview, and I worried it might not end well. So, despite a sense that as a beneficiary of UI, I should embrace my Southern roots and just follow Ben’s manly lead, I decided to take a more directive approach.

“Oh, sure, I’d be able to accept it. But you know, I think the problem here is simply that I checked the wrong box on the form. If you have access to my claim forms, you’ll see I corrected it. That’s why you’re calling, right? But it was just an error, and I fixed it, and you know how computers are,” which statement caused me to stop short because, of course, he was not the tech support fellow I’d first assumed and perhaps he didn’t know how computers are and maybe I was a racist pig to have made the original assumption. Rats, I thought, and I wondered if I could cancel the Cowsills order.

“No,” Ben said, “we are calling because you reported that you had earnings. I see here you had earnings in April. What did you do to earn this money?”

I had written the answer to that question on the form under his nose, but I explained anyway. “I write occasional book reviews for a newspaper, which comes to about seventeen cents an hour, but I figure it saves the government a few dollars.” And then I waited for his expression of heartfelt appreciation for my honesty.

Instead, he said, “Please explain the work you did to earn this money.”

“Explain book reviews?” I was even more confused and began my typical diarrhetic nervous spew. “I read books and then I wrote critiques of them. You know, what I thought of them, as, like, books.” And then I rallied a bit. “Actually, I haven’t been particularly impressed by the authors so far — they certainly aren’t Salman Rushdies or Jhumpa Lahiris — but stringers can’t be choosers.” Nice touch on the Indian authors, I applauded myself. Sadly, it had no effect.

“Was this full-time work that you did?”

“No, I’m a stringer, a freelancer. It’s similar to piecework.”

“Did this work prevent you from accepting full-time employment?”

“Excuse me?”

“Did you sign a contract for this work that would prevent you from accepting full-time employment?”

“Ah, nope.” This was weird.

“And this work you did, it does not prevent you from accepting full-time employment?”

“I sense you think I did something wrong by doing freelance work?”

“No, but you must be available to accept full-time employment. Are you available to accept full-time employment?”

“Yes, I am available to accept full-time employment.”

“You are certain you are available to accept full-time employment?”

I was certain of nothing at this point, but, in flailing defensive mode, I resorted to fabrication. “Yes, I am certain.”

“OK then. Thank you for your time. Good day.”

And that was it: The UI checks had stopped for ten weeks because I reported earning one hundred dollars for a couple book reviews — self-published books at that! I wondered what EDD would do when it laid human eyes on the teaching income I reported in May, then I contemplated the dismal descent into the hell fires of self-publishing and fretted that I might one day face the excruciating choice between that and full-time employment, and then a worrisome thought occurred to me.

What about the people who don’t have working spouses? What about the people who rely on unemployment insurance to feed their kids, to keep roofs over their heads? What are they supposed to do when they report a bit of income and their checks are stopped until their names pop up on the call list of flagrant abusers of the UI system? What about them?

Images of The Full Monty’s dancing dole line flashed before my eyes and I realized my hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone to a bureaucracy that only works if you don’t really need it. This epiphany was more than I could bear in my flustered state. I reached for the gorp.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo “Gorped Out” by Stephen Cummings via a Creative Commons license.)

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Poor Sarah Palin, erstwhile GOP vice presidential candidate and soon-to-be former governor of Alaska. We’ve been mean to her. Our hostility likely pushed her right out of her gubernatorial seat. What’s the poor thing going to do with herself now?

Um, write.

Indeed, Palin signed a contract in May with HarperCollins Publishers for the next public-figure-reveals-true-and-endearing-essence-of-self blockbuster, due in 2010 with some help from a ghostwriter. And Tuesday, she had an op-ed piece published in The Washington Post, “The Cap and Tax Dead End.”

I, myself, a lover of our wonderful nation of ours, and a benefitter of the energy-rich state of Palin’s hometown Alaska that could feed the many hungry markets of the lower forty-eight, would Alaska just get the go-ahead from Washington bureaucrats to start up those drills in that tiny corner up there of the wildlife refuge, because it is our patriotic duty to use the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil and, um … Where was that sentence going?

Oh, was that mean? OK, sorry, Sarah. It could be that I’m jealous: I don’t have a book deal with HarperCollins and I can write a proper sentence without a ghostwriter’s assistance. Neither has The Washington Post seen fit to publish my considered opinions, and I have plenty of them.

Nonetheless, that caveat offered, what I really meant to write was that I had no idea Palin could actually, well, write. Who knew?

Should I have deduced it from her self-description in a report on her book deal?

Being a voracious reader, I read a lot today and have read a lot growing up. And having that journalism degree, all of that, will be a great assistance for me in writing this book, talking about the challenges and the joys, balancing the work and parenting, and, in my case, work means running the state. … I’ve read a variety of books, and that helps shape my opinions and my views.

Her opinions and her views, hmm. How does she distinguish the two? And that journalism degree is actually in communications, with an emphasis on journalism. Such degrees are often a get-me-the-hell-out-of-college route for students with mediocre intellectual gifts or an abundance of distractions — in her case, perhaps both.

Oops, that was mean. I knew it as the letters appeared on my screen. Sorry, Sarah.

Anyway, I figured her op-ed piece would surely reveal her writing skills, her ability to grasp a complex concept, explain it to the average newspaper reader, and offer her studied opinion about its cause or a possible resolution. So I took a look at the piece.

She first tells us how worrisome the economy and unemployment are, and that the federal government continues to misbehave — ¡qué sorpresa!

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America’s unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won’t bring jobs. Our nation’s debt is unsustainable, and the federal government’s reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Unfortunately, she never explains what she means by that last sentence, which left me imagining the government’s long arm up one of those short skirts of hers, but I figured her husband had already set that precedent.

Ooo, I know — mean, mean, mean! Sorry, Sarah!

Next, she repeats her complaint that the media attack her when they should be focusing on the grave challenges of our day, but then I questioned why she keeps bringing it up — maybe she’s being coy?

Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be: I am deeply concerned about President Obama’s cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy.

I had to give her negative points for revisiting her standard social slur, class, but I was encouraged that she was poised to explain the concept of cap-and-trade policy for pollution management and how it could threaten us.

It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage. … [I]n Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president’s cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.

So, she tells us the Obama policy is a threat because it will damage us, she touts Alaska — a favorite non sequitor of hers — and then she repeats her accusation sans substantiation. Alas, she explains nothing.*

Uh-oh, I guess that was mean, too. Again, sorry, Sarah.

She goes on to write that Obama’s plan would create job loss and higher prices for just about everything, but she doesn’t say how, she doesn’t cite any analyses, she doesn’t say nada, although she does deliver a divisive little wedge into the festering gap between liberals and conservatives:

The ironic beauty in [Obama’s energy] plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.

Of course, Palin has not demonstrated any understanding of economics — and I think she’s being a little mean to liberals. Nonetheless, I read a bit more, looking for her fix for the disaster she foresees.

We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. … In Alaska … our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.

Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.

And then I got it!

It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t draw a path to her new direction, that she doesn’t explain how we can safely drill offshore as our weather becomes more extreme, that she offers no recipe for responsibly devouring all the coal and gas and oil God planted right under our ripe feet, that she fails to address the realities of permitting and developing fifty prospective nuclear power plants; none of that matters, because what she’s actually trying to do here is comedy!

Yep, it is absolutely clear that Sarah confused The Washington Post with The Capitol Steps, and sent off her satire to the wrong recipient.

Hmm, was that mean? I don’t think so. Being a voracious reader, I’ve read a variety of things about Sarah, and that helps shape my opinions and my views of her. And, like Sarah, I’m OK with that.

Love,
K-B

* “Cap-and-trade” policies establish pollutant caps (limits) and allow a polluting business that reduces its emission of a pollutant below the cap to sell (trade) the difference (credit) to another company, which then factors the credit into its effort to achieve the cap.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

A Story by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Through heavy brown air, the sun is hot enough to stew the tar, bubbling from a terminally neglected street. Mingled with impotent wafts of twice-smoked cigarettes and desiccated human excrement, the sizzling urban exhaust sticks in my throat, leaving me gasping for breath. So I pause, as usual, to yearn for the cool mist that hovers just above the waterfalls in the torn cigarette poster taped to the back of the cash register.

Here, each morning, the besotted buy their 99-proof and I, in my tidy little pumps and ambitious suit, buy my unbranded bottle of water. But the falls are only paper, and the stagnant stench of the city invariably jerks my violated senses back to rank reality and the daily rhythm.

“Hola, chica. Seventy-nine cents. ¿Hace calor, eh?”

“Si, Señor, really hot. Muchas gracias. Bye-bye.”

“De nada, Señorita. Hasta mañana.”

Still, the street offers an odd and occasional respite from the snot-green walls of the snake pit I call work, one of the many private hostelries crafted decades ago by Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial cost-cutting and civil rights for the tormented gone awry.

Inside, the howls of the chronically terrified and forgotten echo through the veins of sixty-seven clients, ages twenty-two to a shrunken unknown. Their shrieks bounce off the frames of denuded sofas and urine-sopped cushions littering the hallways. Their fears bind them to horrid things others cannot see. And their lucidity, resurrected with decreasing frequency, is inevitably felled by the ferocious thwacks life deals them.

Once a month, they are lined up for their hallucinations to bounce off the chill steel wall of the visiting Medi-Cal shrink. Their torments dribble into puddles of quivering pleas for help on the institutional-linoleum floor, while he preens over his designer prescription pad and coffee.

Today, the good doctor is too busy flirting with his new answering service operator to approve hospitalizing the suicidal Chinese empress for a medication adjustment. The teeth marks with which she has tattooed her arms are not enough to get his attention; neither are the razor blades we’ve indelicately manhandled from her. Not even my suggestion that he stick his Moroccan leather pad someplace scatological elicits anything more than a snickering invitation to join him for an adult beverage after work and help him perform that enticing activity.

So I take an angry hike for the great outdoors to vent my self-righteous rage.

With my tasteful pumps, I stomp over the bodies of addicts, stoned near to death by failed choices. I storm around the cardboard condominiums filled with humans as hungry and parasite-wracked as their dogs. I fling myself away from it all into a futile rant.

Halfway around the decomposing block I’m stopped by a sweaty, unwashed kid with a knife.

“Whaddaya got, lady?” he snarls, oblivious to my good intentions, my hopeful aspirations.

Confronted by this little shit blocking my path and threatening me with a sharp object, I wish for a split second that I have a gun.

Now, it isn’t as though I would propel society’s paranoia into the chest of a beloved security guard at a museum intent on just saying no to hate. It is nowhere near the realm of the playful five year old who crashes her own birthday party with the disregard of her grandfather’s unsecured .22. And it’s a far cry from the family whose domesticity is discharged with abusive daddy’s death by gunshot.

Nonetheless, if I had a gun, I would aim it right at the kid’s pubescent face, the pimple on his nose for a target. I would pump him full of seething rage at a system that rejects the humanity of the recipients of its stingy offerings. In the stormy flush of utter frustration, I’d splatter his youthful flesh across a cityscape that would simply add his shredded carrion to its endless pit of stinking detritus. I would blow away that scrawny sack of symptoms of poverty, inequity and corruption. Yes, I would do to him what the psycho Med-Cal prick does to my clients.

If I had a gun.

But I don’t.

And I am too busy picking at my fiery ire to respond to the boy’s unseemly overture with appropriate fear. Instead, I hiss at him through gnashing teeth to get the hell out of my way or I’ll hurt him — fuck him up, in fact.

“OK, lady, OK, lady,” he backs away, pocketing his weapon.

I watch him retreat.

Distracted by a neglected adolescent with a rusty, broken steak knife, I head back toward the mayhem of a system that has abandoned its victims to hell, and I wonder, “Hmm, who in her right mind would wear pumps on this street?”

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by John Anderson via a Creative Commons License.)

On Main Street

Proprietor: I’m going out of business.
Customer: Oh, I’m sorry!
P: Don’t be. It’s on to the next adventure.
C: What are you going to do?
P: Open a house of ill repute.
C: Oh, good. Fallbrook needs a little livening up.

From a recuperating Fallbrookian

At least the pain is manageable now — as long as I don’t talk too much or do anything strenuous. This has been good and bad for my husband. I am quieter, but we are reduced to hallway sex. We pass each other in the hallway, and I say “Screw you.” He says, “Screw you, too.” I say. “Was it good for you?” He says, “Oh baby, oh baby.”

Read more Fallbrookisms…

My mother is a child of the Depression: She throws out nothing.

We always knew this without ever consciously acknowledging it, because as children we were plagued a couple times a week by Mother’s lovingly prepared olios of leftovers. Oh, they started as wondrous things, her exquisite curried cauliflower and Maryland country ham or marinated skirt steak and asparagus with hollandaise sauce. But recycling the remnants of her popular dishes into something akin to string bean and cream of mushroom soup casserole adorned with onion rings, hurriedly served on choir practice nights, proved a challenge to the palates of kids who had never been allowed so much as a whiff of the Hostess cream-filled cupcakes so seductively pitched on the Howdy Doody Show.

The lesson of salvage Mother learned during the Depression became impressively clear when my siblings and I descended last week on our widowed mother’s home for the final accounting and dispersal of its contents. We opened a lovely hatbox, anticipating a trove of fashion treasure topped with feathers and veils and rhinestone-studded hatpins. Instead, we found a hoard of decades old batteries, light bulbs for appliances no longer made, shoe button hooks with broken handles. The antique wooden box with hand-carved dovetail joints, oozing historicity and the hope of another era’s baubles, opened to a stash of carefully compacted plastic shopping bags from Foodtown. The bits of felt, fake gems and snippets of grosgrain ribbon with which Mother once created tally cards for the bridge clubs of yore were still tidily organized in the brittle lining of a faded cherry cordials box. A multitude of photographs — Ye gods!, as Mother would say — filled copious recycled containers: shoeboxes of forgotten brands, reused envelopes, file folders with thrice relabeled tabs. And fifty years of humor-filled letters and greeting cards reflected the gradual acceptance of scatological content in polite conversation (surely, our family pioneered it).

Nope, my mother throws out nothing.

We found an iron skillet full of bacon grease in the oven — ready for frying an egg or a chicken thigh or our favorite, creamed chipped beef. Six styles of black dance shoes, in graduated states of wear, rested in a closet, one for each of the last six decades, and a lonely Keds sneaker waited in a bathroom corner for Mother to happen upon a lucky match at a yard sale. The stubs of every check our parents ever wrote told the history of their cautious consumption, when they weren’t paying with the evermore reliable cash. A vintage milk box held ­— guess what — carefully compacted plastic shopping bags from Foodtown. And Mother held onto every card tablecloth she ever owned, whether hand-me-downs from her mother or later acquisitions. She even kept the quilted covers that went under the linen cloths to protect ladies’ dainty wrists from the table’s edge — neatly folded in a box from a dress shop long out of business.

As we harvested the house, it was sometimes hard to know what was a family treasure and what was the result of Mother’s penchant for yard sale and thrift store shopping. Should we really part with that little rug? Was it saved from a neighbor’s curb on junk day, before the garbage truck could haul it away, or was it made of our ancestors’ threadbare suits and camel’s hair coats a grandmother or great aunt cut into strips and braided into renewal? We worried about tossing all the plastic shopping bags released from countless caches while Earth Day was upon us. We fretted how we could possibly stuff eighty years of recipes and books and art and music and living into our four homes already filled with the fruits of contemporary consumption. And we occasionally bickered — not about what went to whom but about the proper style and order of the packing. Just like our parents.

Ultimately, it took the seventy-eleventh fingertip cut on the dreaded packing tape dispenser, and the consequent round of sobbing and laughter, to stop the desperate grasp for our parents’ life and face the exquisite loss of it. Father is dead and Mother’s delightful light is subtly fading, just a few decades before our own. No manner of memorabilia, no family heirloom cum childhood fort, no book with a hundred-years-old inscription will perpetuate our family. Our stories and aspirations, our love and anger, our sorrows and joys; these things cannot reside in objects.

But Mother and Father’s wisdom lives on — as we forgive each other our foibles, as we recycle with added vigor, as we take the previous generation into our homes and nurture them to their deaths, as we honor the ingenuity, love and humor that helped them survive the Depression by emulating those things today.

If nothing else, I hope our offspring learn the lesson that a plastic shopping bag, if they absolutely must use one, is actually packing material for china or throw pillow stuffing or a litter box liner — and that however downward the economy might spiral, we will always be rich in family. … Oh — and that laughing at elevator farts is far preferable to excusing them.

Love,
K-B

Note: This column is cross-posted at iVoryTowerz.com.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photograph is from the U.S. Library of Congress.)

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and a Google news search for “child abuse” produced the following articles — published over only three days.

Infant death suspect was awaiting trial in earlier child abuse Florida — A 27-year-old Davenport man who is charged with killing an infant in Osceola County on Monday was out on bail awaiting trial in an earlier child abuse case.

Man pleads not guilty in child abuse case Ohio — A man accused of strapping a toddler to a toilet seat pleaded not guilty to child endangering charges in Clark County Municipal court Monday, April 6.

Richmond woman pleads insanity in son’s abuse death California — A Richmond woman charged with murder, torture and child abuse in the 2006 death of her 8-year-old son has changed her not-guilty plea to not guilty by reason of insanity.

Delta man faces first degree murder charges Colorado — Daven Beck has posted a $150,000 bond after being arrested on suspicion of murder in the first degree, child abuse resulting in death, and child abuse.

Murrells Inlet nanny gets probation for child abuse South Carolina — A Murrells Inlet woman on Wednesday admitted she abused a 5-month-old baby in her care and apologized to the child’s family before being sentenced to probation.

Child abuse arrest Florida — A 6-month-old baby is in critical condition after a woman allegedly shook the child severely.

DCF report documents tot’s severe beating, troubled mom Florida — An investigate summary compiled by the Department of Children and Families in the days following Faith J. Ray’s death indicates the 2-year-old sustained a severe beating, possibly over a long period of time, before being admitted to the hospital last December with fatal injuries.

Tampa father tortured child over porn, police say Florida — The allegation was horrifying: A father used water torture to punish his 10-year-old daughter for finding his pornography.

CCPD investigating after child, 2, at hospital with multiple injuries Texas — Police plan to interview a 2-year-old’s relatives and caretakers after doctors found the child had injuries consistent with abuse, Lt. Rebeca Schauer said.

Father charged with child abuse after 17 month old dies  Missouri — A Bismarck man faces child abuse charges after his 17-month-old daughter died.

River Edge man charged with assaulting 13 year old New Jersey — The Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office today announced the arrest of Yoon Park, 53, of River Edge, on charges of endangering the welfare of a child and simple assault.

Amantea pleads guilty to sexual abuse charge Iowa — A Norwalk man involved in a police standoff in February pleaded guilty to a child sexual abuse charge. Albert Amantea, 43, pleaded guilty April 6 to the charge of a lascivious act with a child, which is a class C felony.

Jury finds man ‘guilty’ of child abuse; recommends life in prison Oklahoma — A Washington County jury has recommended that a Collinsville man — already serving 30 years in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for the sexual abuse of a minor child — serve life in prison for the child sexual abuse of a 10-year-old girl in 2004.

Mashpee student abuse charge probed Massachusetts — Police are investigating an alleged child abuse case involving a special needs student and a school bus monitor, Mashpee police officials said yesterday.

Principal charged with sexual abuse of 11-year-old girl Illinois — A 54-year-old principal of a far north suburban elementary school has been charged with the sexual abuse of an 11-year-old girl who is a student at the school. Investigators believe other victims may be out there and they are encouraging them to come forward.

Massena man pleads guilty to child endangerment New York — The owner of a Massena gymnastics school has admitted in court to child endangerment charges for offering alcohol and showing a pornographic video to underage girls.

There were many more articles — and the economy is aggravating the problem — but I don’t recommend reading them. They are excruciating.

There is something you should know, though: As long as parental rights receive greater priority than a child’s right to live free from abuse; as long as we give parents, guardians, teachers, nannies, boyfriends and girlfriends another chance not to harm a child; as long as we hesitate to report our suspicions, these stories will be repeated endlessly. And the lives of beaten, starved, burned and raped children will continue to seep away into the hospital linens beneath them.

You can help: Report suspected child abuse and neglect by calling your local child protective services or child welfare agency or Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 800-4-A-CHILD (800-422-4453). All calls are anonymous.

Love,
K-B

For more information: child abuse statistics 

Note: This column is cross-posted at iVoryTowerz.com.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(The 1938 WPA poster is from the Library of Congress and is in the public domain.)

From a Fallbrook yard

My greatest frustration is I can’t take other people’s manuscripts in the hot tub.

Heard around town

He: Why do you suppose blond jokes are all one-liners?
She: So you guys can remember them.

In Major Market

After one shopper delivered a long and colorful rant about the recent G20 summit in London, another shopper asked, “What’s a G20 summit?”

From a local teen

The difference between racism and homophobia is when you’re black, you don’t have to break it to your parents.

Read more…

Enchanted April, a film based on a 1922 novel by Countess Elizabeth von Arnim, opens to the dreary winter cityscape of a drenched 1920 London. The camera captures a chance glimpse by dowdy hausfrau Lottie Wilkins of a newspaper advertisement for a small, medieval Italian castle to let on the shores of the Mediterranean. The unfolding and folding of the newspaper, Lottie’s desperate pursuit of the rental, and her ultimate blossoming amid the Italian wisteria and sunshine could eventually prove an allegory for the transition of U.S. newspapers — to whatever it is they will become. But for now, they mostly stagnate in the dismal downpour of winter’s remnants, unable to step back from the chilling splash of online media speeding past them.

Perhaps that’s overwrought — possibly a symptom of watching the film too often — but countless reports of the newspaper industry’s pending demise serve a steady dose of failure that’s as dismaying to subscribers as London’s winter runoff is to pedestrians sprayed by passing hacks. Recent stories have touted repeated rounds of layoffs at papers across the nation, reductions in employee benefits, forced furloughs, bankruptcy filings and the folding of entire newspapers or their print editions. The significance of what in 1964 captured the attention of 80.8 percent of U.S. adults is becoming as archaic as dial phones, and with only 48.4 percent adult readership in 2007, daily print papers might be supplanted by cell phone headlines.

I imagine nevermore adding to the choice newspaper articles my grandmother carefully clipped with her best needlepoint scissors and filed away for the oddly interested grandchild.

The thrill of opening the paper to the page where the accomplishment of a loved one or the stunning failure of a leader is printed in black and white permanence is passing with the last of our World War II vets.

Scenes of youthful entrepreneurs on bicycles, flinging newspapers onto roofs or into dog poo, are fading out with the few remaining afternoon papers.

The rush of responding to breaking news before press time, topping the competition with the perfect combination of brute force and literary finesse, is as outmoded as Adolphe Menjou’s waxed mustache in The Front Page.

An image like that of my grandfather ensconced in his favorite reading chair and The Baltimore Sun, unwrapping caramel squares softened by afternoon rays, might never again be witnessed by sweets-seeking progeny.

I mourn the loss of the most tangible indicator of our freedom, the free press, but then I remember: When my husband succumbed to a subscription offer from the San Diego Union-Tribune, I scoffed at his investing in a failing paper that endorses only candidates who ride elephants and covers only news in our outlying burg of Fallbrook that includes unnatural death and illicit sex. And I canceled my last newspaper subscription when I left the paper for which I worked.

Now, instead of my morning fix of newspaper and caffeine, I peruse online news sources and, ah, well, drink coffee, which, OK, is all just another version of my morning fix — but with more comprehensive coverage from more direct sources. Why read in a newspaper what the president said when I can visit his website and read it untouched by an editor? So, despite his wise-assery, satirical commentator Stephen Colbert is on target: “A newspaper is like a blog that leaves ink on your hands and covers topics other than how much you love Fall Out Boy.”

All I really lack is local news, although San Diego is home to two blossoming ink-free publications focusing on the city’s local news, San Diego News Network and Voice of San Diego, which is oft referenced in the media and consulted by similar ventures.

Voice of San Diego Editor Andrew Donohue wrote in an email, “I love holding my newspaper on a Sunday morning, too. But the daily printed newspaper is looking like it’s not viable financially in the long term. … [T]he internet is a fundamentally better place to both produce news and receive it. … People are culturally tied to the actual newspaper product. But think if you flipped what’s going on now and we were going from an online media world to a paper one. What would be the outcry then? I can only get my news once a day. The editors have to trim the stories artificially to make them short so they fit in an arbitrary amount of space. I can’t click through and read past stories so that I understand what’s going on behind this story. I can’t read the actual documents that this story is based on. There’s only one photo and it’s in black and white.”

Convincing readers to pay for online news might prove the missing magic ingredient in newspaper’s transition, but nonetheless, alas, I agree with Donohue. And now I’m going to go cheer myself up with Enchanted April.

Love,
K-B

Note: This column is cross-posted at iVoryTowerz.com.

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Paperboy photo from the U.S. Library of Congress.)