Archive for January, 2009

Let me get this straight?  I am to blogroll five blogs smaller than myself?

Holy cats….I am infintisimally tiny, actually, since I assume I get hit more by search engines than readers.  So who the heck is smaller than me?

So heck, I will do what I always do when unsure of the validity of instruction: ignore them.  I KNOW the first blog is huge compared to mine, but it is younger than mine.

It is “A Day in the Fat Life” and discusses the perils of daring to suggest that being thin is not necessarily healthier, better, smarter or any other “er” usually attached.

And one I have been reading for a while, I don’t know how it hasn’t been listed before is Deuddersun Says!  Here the resident scholar holds forth for the American Patriot Institute!  We must have “patriot” defined, after all, by someone other than Ann Coulter.

I am also enjoying The Great Endarkenment and think some of you will find laughter there as well.  Recent postings about brothers-in-laws of the Republican type engender both giggles and sympathy.

I find that The Crone Speaks….at least to me, and I think she may have plenty that will speak to you,  too.  Do go peek and enjoy and feel spurred to steam-out-of-ears action taking.

And I am exploring Mock, Paper, Scissors….come look with me!

AND (drumroll please) Belief Net has added a pagan blogger that I have been reading on Wordpress for ages: Gus Dizerga!  Yeehaw!

I also added a number of blogs I have been reading for a good while, surprised to find they were not already on the list; an oversight on my part….so browse and enjoy!

Mind you, I have no idea how many readers these blogs get.  But I will share the wealth out of curiosity!  If there are other bloggers out there who read here and want their name on my list, just contact me with the contact button on the main page!

I was a military brat.  I was a military member.  I was a military spouse.  Frankly, the last one of those was my least favorite.  It was like being a second class citizen.  I was not allowed to do ANYthing without my “sponsor”—the military member, agreeing to it.  Not such a small thing as renewing my military ID card without him present.  And if there was a problem—say with houseing, the hospital or anything, I had to have him handle it.  Spouses are just relegated to “Don’t call us and we probably won’t call you.” status—at least in the Army.

So, in the course of that history,  I saw women in the military supermarket–the commissary, with black eyes, split lips, arms in slings.  I saw other women’s eyes slide over them and drop away, because we all knew the chances were good those injuries were no accident.  I knew and sheltered women beaten by their military husbands, sometimes opening the quarters’ door to the sound of weeping  at one a.m., to take in a neighbor.  She always went back, though.  It did no good to report it, and worse “endangered his career” and marked the woman as not caring about his career.  Worst of all is when the battered woman was married to a Military Policeman.

So, last night, when Katie Couric did a report on the recent over the top levels of abuse and even spousal murder  in the Army, I was very emotionally involved.  Their little director of family affairs couldn’t even tap dance through it….she had no answers for how a man could fill out his end of deployment papers saying that YES, in fact, he DID think he might harm his spouse and yet nothing was done.  No treatment, no intervention—and a year later he killed his wife.  Well, those of us who have been military are not surprised.  Sickened, but not surprised.

What sickens me more?  The kind of camo-green wall built by wives.  I came across a message board, by accident, for military wives.  Without even having seen the advertised news report, they were already talking about how it would probably be negative towards the military.  Excuse me?  More than ninety military wives murdered in less than a decade, more than 25000 battered—-and those are the tip of a very large unreported iceberg, I assure you; and you DARE to worry about the report being negative to the military?

Are you joking?  You sound like the spokesperson for the Vatican on the carpet about pedophiles, decrying “negative” reporting about the Church’s continual habit of sheltering these sick criminals out of concern for their “immortal souls.”  The wives and officials of the military make that same kind of plea, only instead of quoting the value of the immortal soul they plead for the “soldier’s career.”  Both Church and Army simply throw away the women and children locked in chains by this so-called moral equation.

You see, in civilian life, battered women often get the insidious message that “Well, if you STAY with him, you must deserve it.”  In the military it is worse.  They get several implicit messages such as:  “He needs you so he can do his job defending America.  Suck it up, he is under stress.”  and “If you mess up his career he will have nothing and NEITHER will you.” and “Don’t make him look bad, it makes all of us look bad and we are a military FAMILY—dont’ let the civilians have another reason to criticize us.”  Family, is it?  Could be, and a disfunctional one beyond compare.  The primary message of disfunctional families is that the individual is sacrificed for the group and that all secrets WILL be kept.

Couric’s story suggests that it is this bad because of the wars.  What an optimist she is!  This “hidden casualty” angle of the story sounds nice, but these casualties have been accruing for more than the decade she talks about on the video. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/28/eveningnews/main4761199.shtml )

Seriously now, don’t you have to ask yourselves, why a soldier’s “career” as a probable bullet-stopper or IED absorber is more important than a woman living to dance uncrippled at the wedding of her son or daughter?   If you are a woman, especially if you are a military wife, how CAN you make the case for solidarity with the ABUSERS and not with the victims?  How can you protect the system that does NOT protect you?

For the second time since the Wall Street debacle really got rolling down the excrement slicked slope, I read about a family found dead in their home.  The first time, they were due to be evicted for lack of paying on the mortgage; this time the parents didn’t wait that long.  Both parents had been fired from their job at a health care giant and they went home, planned to kill their children and themselves.  And they did it. Seven bodies and emailed murder-suicide notes.

I am sure some parts of America would like to think it is just a Southern California phenomenon…..that is where both of these tragedies unfolded.  I am sure millions take comfort from the psycho-babble in the news articles: “Americans tend to over-identify with their jobs; they don’t develop other parts of their personalities and when the job goes, they go with it.”  Really?

I call that kind of thing “whistling in the dark” and it is effective as putting a band-aide on a severed artery.  People might kill themselves out of that kind of imbalanced identification with corporate dronedom, but parents don’t murder their children because they had to turn in their logo polo shirt.  I am not a mental health professional, nor do I play one online, but I have more than a passing acqauintaince with suicidal thoughts and people.  My father committed suicide.  My brother attempted suicide.  In my youth, it was my “ace in the hole” for if my life was too untenable.  It was my connection to other people and to job and duty that pulled me from that edge.

Losing the jobs didn’t put me back there, either.  I suggest that the reality is, these parents DID develop other sides of the personality.  They developed the “My children won’t suffer and do without.” side, for instance.  They developed the “Surely there is help for us, we won’t be on the streets.” side, too.  But this latest family worked for a big health care corporation and doubtless saw people lose homes over medical bills.  They came to know that no, in fact, there really isn’t any help out there.  The states are so financially strapped that they routinely deny unemployment for the vaguest reasons, possibly even falsifying data to justify saying no. (My son, first denied unemployment because he was “imprudent” about taking a day for religious reasons, has now been told he is still denied because he is a full time student and “unavailable to work.”  Except, you see, he IS not a student—he can’t pay the tuition.)  Most families are either wide-spread, or so hard-pressed that they cannot be a safety net either.  The infrastructure is frayed and tattered, if not broken completely and America began largely espousing “If you are poor it is your own fault” when churches became more interested in contributions to pay for Mercedes for the preachers.  So the typical three sources of aid are useless: government, church, family.  I do believe a sense of failure wraps these tragic families in a constrictive grip a python would envy.

Here is what I see as the hard and bitter truth: We are alone in the dark.  There is no help but ourselves and any change coming from Washington above is going to take a very long time to trickle down.  We won’t stop family murder-suicides by branding it as a bad identification with job issue; label it correctly—desperation and despair!  And the next sunshine enema idiot whistling in my presence is going to get a chop in the chops!

Today, going through the list of blogs I usually read, I found a story about a man in Michigan.  A man who was 93 years old, a widower with no children who fell behind on paying his electric bills.  So, his utility company sent out a guy to put a special box on his power supply—it only allowed so much usage and then turned off.  This would be his “ten day warning” system before they shut his power off completely if he didn’t pay up.  Apparently, they didn’t inform him how this worked.  One small problem, in this case—they didn’t get a check in the mail.  Their efforts to teach him to pay his bills or do without failed, because he FROZE to DEATH inside his 32 degree house.

Do you get that? A poor, lonely old man died of freezing.  But hey, surely that is just nature’s way of getting rid of old farts who can’t pay bills, right?  It isn’t like he is an innocent fetus in danger of being flushed or anything, is it?  Yeah….are you getting that I am plenty ashamed and pissed off about a country-full of people screaming about pro-life so long as it applies only to the unborn or those who WANT to die because they are teminally ill and suffering irremediable pain.

What lesson do I take away from this pitiable and contemptible example?  That those who are already living in this country are ignored, those who want to leave are forbidden to do so, and the only ones “treasured” are fetal lives that cannot speak or have any contrary opinions yet.  Am I smacking Christianity?  Well, yes, at least the parts of it who are so up at arms ready to tell everyone how to live their lives and how or whether they may die and the reason has jack to do with me being a pagan.  I am smacking them for ignoring the Book they tell me is so holy to them.

I don’t recall Jesus going around telling women what to do with their wombs. And don’t tell me there were no abortionists back then, EVERY society has figured out what to do with unwanted fertility issues.  But I do recall him saying to visit the prisoner and the sick.  An old man, impoverished and alone is certainly imprisoned.  And now, he is dead.  All you oh-so-pro-life sorts can put down your placards and quit screaming at television cameras; if you want to follow Jesus GO HOME to your community and check on the abandoned elders.  Make sure they are warm and have groceries.  Do not EVEN get in my face in the grocery store aisle where birth control foam and rubbers live unless you can show me you give a damn about someone already breathing on this planet.

I’d also like to smack the utility company which SHOULD know if electricity is the only heat in a home during a Michigan winter.  I’d like to smack whatever billing department bean counter simply didn’t give a shit if someone was cold or not.  I’d say the infrastructure that let this man freeze had better not try moral one-upmanship with any primitive society made infamous by putting elders out to die on the ice when they couldn’t feed them any more; because a 21st century American state just did the equivalent with the keystroke of a billing department computer.

At the very least, I suggest every one of you look at your electric bill.  Mine has a little block that says I can donate a few bucks to help old folks pay their bill.  At the very least, round up a bit; someone out there is sitting in the cold with nobody to defend their right to life.

Yes, it is being Winter.  But the sun is coming out and it will all soon be gone.

The moon is new, and so is the heartbreak of many families; the names released during the last moon phase:

US Air Force Senior Airman Omar J. McKnight, 22, of Marrero, La., died Jan 17 as a result of a non-hostile incident in Balad, Iraq.

US Army Staff SSgt. Joshua R. Townsend, 30, of Solvang , Calif. , died Jan. 16 in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan , of injuries sustained in a non-combat related incident.

US Army Pfc. Ricky L. Turner, 20, of Athens, Ala., died Jan. 16 in Iraq when an improvised explosive device detonated.

US Army Staff Sgt. Roberto Andrade Jr., 26, of Chicago, Ill., died Jan. 18 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device struck his vehicle.

US Army Spc. Ezra Dawson, 31, of Las Vegas, Nev., died Jan. 17 in Konar Province, Afghanistan when the Chinook helicopter he was in made a hard landing under combat conditions.

US Army PFC Matthew M. Pollini died in Iraq in a vehicle rollover. (age and home state info not available yet)

(photo–counting/prayer beads from the center monument of the Labyrinth)

Her, in this case, being the United States of America.  Yes, take a wrecking ball to Lady Liberty, and be done with it.  That is the end result of eight years of being told how to be patriotic. We liberal sorts apparently needed schooling in that you see, being called “traitors” at best for the last five years or more.

We liberals were sinking America by our dissent, by our insistence on defending the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and other American traditions.  Oh, the shouts from the likes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh were loud and long.

So, now, in something that goes far beyond sour grapes, Rush Limbaugh has announced that he hopes President Obama “fails.”  Say what, Rush?  The survival of America and her myriad citizens depends on the success of this President and you, Mr. Right Wing Patriot, want him to fail?  Screw it all, Rush?  Sink the ship, knock holes in her bottom and watch her go under?

Wow.  Talk about mixing your priorities and metaphors, Mr. Limbaugh.  The captain is supposed to go down with the ship, but the ship is NOT supposed to go down with the captain.  You are basically saying if America doesn’t have your right-wing captain, you want the country to fall apart and fail with the leader you despise.

Patriotism, eh?  Yeah, I SAID I wanted that word back come the new administration.  I guess you gave it to me, you sorry, sad excuse for an American.  To think, American men and women are in harm’s way defending your right to demand a Presidential failure that will sink the country.  Guess someone with your bank account from spewing spleen for years can afford a pretty good lifeboat—-you don’t have to care about the rest of America.

Sail away, Rush.  And don’t call the U. S. Coast Guard if your motor quits.

I watch television in the winter, more than in summer.  I knit, I exercise indoors to television.  And usually, I like some of the CBS line-up, but that is changing very rapidly.  The first show that offended my pagan sensibilities was “The Mentalist” when they did a really trashy portrayal of a “Wiccan witch” as a rather spacey, emotionally scarred blonde ditz who did “killing spells” and took underage minors into her coven and called non-Wiccans “cowans.”  Who are they using for writer support and research—someone from a Falwell-related college?  I am not Wiccan, but I seriously get angry when any religion is stigmatized and so badly protrayed.  I figured, well, one mistake and they will take their public opinion lumps and learn, maybe?

Apparently not.  Now, after watching tonight’s episode of “Criminal Minds” I have to wonder if CBS is systematically engaging in writing shows intending to marginalize minority religions and ethnic groups.  This show utterly trashed the Romany peoples.  The Romany are often commonly referred to as “gypsies” or sometimes called simply the “Rom.”

The show identified as Rom an apparently disparate band of individuals who steal ten year old girls to bring up as brides, and murder the girl’s parents when doing so.  They also said most of the Romany make their living as petty thieves and criminals and identify them as “very superstitious.”  Wow.  Way to go, CBS.  That is two shows off my watch list in less than a week!  The Romany suffer from this sort of “thieves” branding all the time and meet persecution wherever they go, and now CBS wants America to think they steal child brides and murder, too?  Yes, they had the one requisite line (no doubt advised by counsel) saying this must be a “perversion” of Romany belief, but end the show on the note that there are many such murdering families out there looking for likely ten year olds.

How would that have played, CBS, if your killers were said to be Jewish?  Gee, the old “blood guilt” legend that spurred pogroms all over Europe for centuries and now you apply it to the Romany peoples?  Or if you had made it someone black?  What, did you finally get thumped for making every hopped up killer in a cop show a Viet Nam veteran?  So, you figure perhaps the Romany people don’t watch television so they are safe bets?  You could have had a maddened superstitious killer just as easily without branding the Rom.  Cheap shot, that was, and your corporate sponsors will hear from me.

If any of you saw this show and feel as I do, or if you didn’t watch it, but still find it reprehensible, you can tell CBS what you think: http://www.cbs.com/info/user_services/fb_global_form.php

(Chart from http://icasualties.org/Iraq/HostileNonHostile.aspx )

Just a word on this topic, because as I wasted time today, (stalling on housework because I am asthmatic and unmotivated) I noted those terms as search terms that bring folks to the website.  Likely that was not a satisfying experience since it is probably they found only the lists of the dead with “non-hostile incident” or “non-combat cause” named as the cause of death.

First off, for the non-military who might be curious, “non-hostile” does not mean natural causes by any means.  It merely means that the death was not caused by the enemy combatants of any sort.  The individual so killed may indeed have been shot, or beat to death, or strangled—but not by an Iraqi or Afghani enemy.

Non-combat deaths could include any number of things, from an ordinary accident to illness.  It could include suicide, although that could be listed as non-hostile as well.

Movies and television shows prepare folks to expect deaths in wartime.  But it only prepares them to expect gunshot or bombs and such as the cause.  The historical truth from time immemorial is that as many or more troops die of non-combat and non-hostile causes.  Illness used to kill literally half of any given army.  That is better now, but not eradicated as a cause of death.  Accidents are still a big killer; people get tired and make mistakes, or they get clumsy or fall asleep at the wheel.  Soldiers and Marines are not immune to exhaustion—they ARE people just like the rest of us in that regard.  Also, because the men and women at war are people, just like people anywhere else, ordinary disagreements happen.  But when they happen where people are routinely armed sometimes death is the result.  Violence between military members is not unheard of at all; in fact sexual assault has been a major problem this war.  At least one woman who is dead was probably murdered following a possible sexual assault.

It is a dangerous world in Iraq and Afghanistan, even if the enemy is no place nearby.  Keep our men and women in your hearts and prayers.  For purposes of the Labyrinth, I don’t care what caused the death; I contend they likely would be alive if they were not sent to the war—-so all the deaths are war-caused for me.  I keep all their names, I hold them all as dedicated to service of the country.  And I am dedicated to their memory.  I count them in my beads—all are precious losses to me.

Not perfect, we had to get rid of “Tiny Portal” or put up with a very boring blue and white theme as the ONLY possible theme.

Also not perfect, everyone will need to re-register, set profiles and all that stuff.  And we can’t get the avatars to work yet.  Work continues.

However, the niftiest thing is now you CAN put video up on the message boards and this is awesomely easy.

Since comments are not working here (and considering the spammage, I am not really sorry), anyone with a desire to go in depth and talk SHOULD not bother registering here at all (it does not good with comments down), but aught to dash over to the forum at http://www.walkofthefallen.com/forum/index/php to sign on and post up a pile of discussion.

It IS horrid starting from the bottom again, but I will be dedicated to posting news items, and other conversation pieces.  Go introduce yourself and help us get the chatter started!