Jill Rants and Raves

don't tell me about my lightbulbs please barack

Photo: Adelaide, 2007 /Jill Posener © 2009/ All rights reserved

California was once the the 7th largest economy in the world. Not too long ago. It now teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. We were shocked a year or two ago as small cities in California like Vallejo declared themselves to be broke. Now the powerhouse of America is looking more and more like a banana republic with an action man in a Hummer wondering what he got himself into. The collapse of Schwarzenegger and the prospect of a true financial meltdown in the California sun will be one of the head scratchingly bewildering stories one hundred years from now as people who care about these things (there won't be many left) look at the overthrow of Gray Davis as one of the first real signs that Amerika was already in a state of corporate fascism. That mob rule guided by the tyrannical hand of consumerism was already dictating our political and social course.

Is there really any difference between what the right wing describes as the 'soft tyranny' of Obama's 'daddy knows best, so change your lightbulbs now' approach and the terror inflicted on us by CheneyBush in the form of the corporatized military. They bring us to the same point of aquiescence and apathy. In fact, it could be argued that Obama is committed to the transformation of government into one large nanny impacting and controlling every tiny piece of our lives - it just won't be Blackwater but instead a growing cadre of self important and empowered nannies. We are all lobsters here. And we are not noticing how pink, tiddly pom, our toes, tiddly pom - are growing. (My apologies to A.A Milne and my hero Winnie The Pooh).

The problem is that under either form of control - we have already become a one party state with small variations of attitude when a 'social' issue comes into play, such as gay marriage or abortion. And those communities which might at one point have raised a voice of dissent are too busy taking huge contributions from the corporate world that is enslaving us. How can the gay community battle rampant alcoholism when alcohol companies sponsor every event we hold? When banks, vehicle and chemical companies advertise shamelessly that they are gay friendly, minority friendly and environment friendly who is left to ask 'then how did it happen that small businesses are declaring bankruptcy at a rate of thousands per day, how is it that whole areas of cities look like a scene out of a Hollywood disaster movie, how is it that the jails are full of black men, that drug companies are using doctors to peddle untried medications, that foreclosures are rising, that the streets are no longer being cleaned, freeways unfixed, and developers running roughshod over the needs of communities?'

We are turning very pink, and not even so slowly.

Can I ask Bayer Corporation for a donation to my beloved animal shelter and still demand of them 'What exactly are you doing with the amazing primates you experiment on?' We have become so dependent on government or corporations for our needs, and government is so deeply dependent on the corporate trough that we can no longer raise a voice or a fist in dissent. Small business - the lifeblood of the middle class has been pillaged to the point of decimation.

I got stopped yesterday by two young black female police officers. In a city where there is an internal affairs department three times the size of other police departments of the same size. They say I didn't stop long enough at a Stop sign. Could be true. I was driving in a quiet area, stopped, looked carefully at the intersection to see that I wasn't gonna hit a pedestrian, bicyclist or other vehicle, and then turned the corner. Not long enough for these two. Who stopped me saying that I had been going 5mph at the time of the 'offense'. But you know what? These two knights of the road, they said they would do me a favour. They gave me a citation that was based on the local Municipal code violation and not the state violation. Meaning it wouldn't count as a point on my record and I wouldn't have to go to traffic school. But also meaning that the city gets the freakin' fine. Do they get an instruction as they head out onto those deadly streets ' give the traffic violators a municipal citation - we get the money, you keep your jobs'.

We are living in a California where the needs of the corporations, the municipalities and the government employees are so deeply intertwined that independence is a word on the edge of extinction. But look on the bright side. Restaurants are packed. Have you noticed? We really do have the capacity, us Californians, to fiddle while Rome burns. I'll take the Sirloin. Thanks.

day trip perfection

I went away for a day. It was just a harmless daytrip to a land north of here. I chose the warmest, bluest, golden day. Trippy. The dogs stayed home. Packed up and put the Tundra into 'drive' and didn't stop at the rest stop at the top of the Jenner Grade (where usually I would have to stop and let the dogs out to pee); had my usual cry as I passed the vet where I had taken Roo after she was torn apart by Mama and Yogi and where those dogs met their sudden end two days later; passed the turnoff to the dirt road to Aida's house and felt a lump in my throat. Oscar had always leapt to alertness as we made that turn from asphalt to gravel and clambered onto my lap and headed for the open window, snout resting firmly on the window sill and ears flapping in the breeze; cruised into the small town and headed to the Inn overlooking the cove where Candye was getting ready for her gig at the little 200 seat theatre with the red velvet plush seats and the over 40's crowd, with their feather boas and pork pie hats handed out at the box office. Haven't seen this woman in a long while, since long before she battled pancreatic cancer; I always joke about the time that I took her on a cold and foggy evening to the pet cemetery in the Presidio in San Francisco and she is always very gracious about it, and reminds me that I took a beautiful photo of her on a nude beach on the San Mateo coast on a day that feels much like this one - a California dreamin' kind of day. I am reminded of how much time has passed. The band sounds great, after dinner at the Phoenix where I greet people I have come to know in this small town over the years.

Laura Chavez on guitar sort of fixates me, it's not just the strange, almost spiralling howling sound but that it is really hard to see where the instrument begins and she ends. It's visual, every bit as aural - unusual for me. I wanna take her picture is all I can think. Candye, smaller in sheer numbers and bigger in spirit than ever before is just as I remember - a pioneer. My friend Bronwyn dances all evening and when the evening winds down we all say goodnight and I drive the dirt roads to where I am staying, to Shannon's and her bully dogs posturing through the glass doors as I try to sneak quietly to the little hideaway below the house where I climb between cool sheets and fall asleep to the sound of nothing as the barks subside upstairs and the gentlest of light from a sliver moon sneaking through slanted blinds. I wake to ravens arguing loudly and shower yesterdays excitement from me, and wander upstairs. Shannon and the dogs greet me, Rosie the reddy brown pit and her companion Pono, a ripped brindle and white American bulldog. I have seen Shannon in weaker times, as she beat back the cancer that assaulted her, I had photographed her while in treatment; without hair but always with certainty of her own strength. She makes us a wonderful breakfast and we talk of my desire to spend more time - perhaps too much time - in the small town. After Shannon leaves for work, I simply stare out across the trees and sky to the simmering Pacific and give thanks.

For where I am. At that very moment. I am at that moment in a state of perfect. Slowly I get ready to leave to head back to town to say goodbye to Candye; the band is getting packed up, food eaten, coffee drunk, and we sit around a weathered table.

Candye and I wander off and take a few pictures, she puts her arm around me and gives me relationship advice. The band is heading down Highway 1 and I head off to the land to visit Bron and play a bit of cricket - though thankfully (given I have not held a cricket bat for 28 years) it is good it is a practice day and not a game day where I could humiliate myself in front of a small crowd of enthusiasts sitting in the little pavillion cheering on the 'leg before wickets'. Cricket on a sunny day in a small town in northern California, on land bought by southern California runaways decades ago and sitting pretty on the Garcia river and under the redwoods. It's becoming late afternoon and my daytrip meanders to a close. I am warm with pleasure and sweaty with the exertion of chasing balls hit into the long grasses beyond the mown field and the cat watching with bored familiarity.

Bron says goodbye, don't forget to play your scrabble turns online, the Tundra roars up the dirt road to Ten Mile; I hang a left to take the backroad to Gualala and Highway 1.

it's all good

For those of you worried that my anguish about prince Oscar's death might plunge me back into that depression you watched me swim around and almost sink in over the last three plus years - take heart. These are like minor market adjustments, little glitches. Buy stock now. The trend is up, my friends.

So, no. I am not slipping into a deep recession, I mean depression, though truth be told, come the end of the year my financial situation is gonna look pretty dire and I'll be panicking again. Life on the edge. I don't recommend it. I decided I would like a cleaner life, a life where I only have to please myself, the taxman and the mortgage company. And the animals. I don't wanna negotiate too much, be it around where or when to eat, where or when to go away for the weekend, whether to go to dinner with friends or not, or whether to stop on the frickin' freeway and pick up a bleeding dog, dammit. Just stop the car Jill. Rip up the bathroom floor? Do it. Paint the bedroom walls a concrete color. Got it, no worries. Listen to Rush on the radio? Just do it. Fuck it. Don't worry, you can flick the dial back to NPR when you get in my car. It's programmed.

But I haven't slept since Oscar died. I've tossed and turned and restlessly stared at the ceiling (still waiting for Aida or Susie to put some damn lighting in). I've longed for the feel and smell of that litle dog, his snout resting on the pillow next to mine, his breathing calm and measured. Who knew that a ten pound dog could occupy such a space? Kris, a friend who walks her dog at the landfill gave me a check today. For the non profit I am fundraising for - Berkeley Animal Welfare Fund. In honor of Oscar. I fucking wept when I found it in my car at the landfill, along with a bar of chocolate. That is so sweet. Bitter. Sweet.

I like feeling sad, I like crying, I'm not afraid of anger, I think emotion is a good thing. And I'm coming to realise, slowly, that as I become more closely reconciled with truths not yet emerged, my comfort level with all that has gone before rises, and the rage subsides. I keep avoiding saying certain things. For the first time recently I used the word 'masculinity' to describe myself - as in 'comfortable with'. Whew, it is getting hot in here. I have come to accept that the many times in my younger life when I shocked myself with outbursts of horrible anger, it was very much as if a teenage boy could simply not contain the rage at being humiliated like a girl. There. It's said. I worry that I'll be able to get senior benefits before I'm fully at peace with this. Guess it comes when it does. And one simply can't behave like a teenage boi forever, much as I might like to.

So, I have been missing holding my little boy dog in bed. And not sleeping, and wishing I wasn't so resistant to touch, to tenderness, to being loved. Clean the attic. Move boxes around, write blogs, cook, walk the dogs, work, write, take pictures, raise money, lots of it, do battle with bureaucrats. It's all good.

of hypocrisy, affairs and intensity

The second night of no Oscar was worse than the first. It reminded me of the second night after Susie, my partner of 12 years, left early in the evening on a Saturday in early March eight years ago. She had cleaned house all day while I had worked with the woman she left me for. The house was spotless, the floors gleamed and everything smelled sweet. A small overnight bag sat by the front door. Susie looked great. I asked 'What's going on?' She looked flustered. I said 'If you leave now, you can never come back'. She left, and she didn't. The day before I had found a CD of Handel's 'Largo' and it was a sweet reminder of our amazing roadtrip to Cornwall. I had called her at work and played the track over the phone onto her message machine. Before I hung up I said 'This is how much I love you.' Susie and I were the best of friends in our partnership and Susie has again become my closest friend in the intervening years.

No chance of that kind of reconciliation with the little four legged long low red thing. I am reconciling though, with my decision to end his life on a good day, a day after he slept peacefully and sweetly through the night, a day when he was trotting - albeit awkwardly - around the yard, hunting for Tutte's crap in the gravel. He was happily snatching liver treats out of Dr Grant's fingers, even as the narcotics took effect. That's my boy! But it was something the vet said, as we were walking, all of us canine and human procession, to the meadow at the waterfront, that solidified my decision. He said that to him Oscar looked 'worn out'. And he did. His eyes were no longer brightening spotlights, but dimmed to that teetering point of almost shadow. I think Oscar was ready. Just wish I could say the same for me.

But this is not about Oscar (although perhaps everything is about Oscar, or about loss. Really). No-one likes loss. That's for sure. Just some are better equipped to deal with it.

This morning another GOP near-star has shattered in the firmament, as middle aged Senator John Ensign, 51, from Nevada and a vocal member of the Promise Keepers (you know the guys that shout loudly from the rooftops that they will keep their promises, like marriage vows for example) announced that he had an affair with a married aide, and so waves goodbye to his possible run at the Presidency in 2012.

Yeah, men like Ensign can vote on the Defense Of Marriage Act and screw his aide in his taxpayer funded office at the same time. He joins an illustrious list of freakin' hypocrites. Nothing really that dramatic about that. It's one of the reasons I liked Eliot Spitzer's m.o. He hired a high class hooker for his extramarital larks. I think that is OK. That last sentence said in bold letters by the way. And underlined. I've said it before. Declaring undying love (and lust) for one person is a pretty tall order whatever gender you may be. I don't believe in lifelong monogamy, I definitely don't believe in marriage as a romantic commitment. It's a freakin' tax break, a contract, a pre-nup, a child support provision, a way to get rich quick, a way to fuck up a bunch of lives other than your own. It's Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle with bells on.

I do believe in long term commitments, in loves that last a lifetime (of change and adjustment). I think needing to get fucked in the back of a car by a stranger is a natural enough desire (not for me, but you get my drift), I think running a Senate campaign and falling into hotel sheets with an aide is a reasonable thing to expect. I think playing around with the other team is exciting, a relief from 'honey, I'm home'. I get it. I think it's OK. I just don't really like the lying. Because to be lied to is to be totally humiliated. And that does not sit well with me. I think having crushes on people is fine, I think flirting is pretty cool actually, I think developing strong, intense friendships is a bloody good thing. But affairs - and I say this from the standpoint of an expert in the subject - affairs will wipe the good feelings off the face of any relationship map.

Why am I so upset about this? Because hypocrisy isn't limited to the GOP and the men and women who vote yes on H8, and no to sharing their precious little resource called 'marriage'. Someone said to me recently 'He is so sweet to me, he makes me so happy' about the married man she is seeing. I asked 'Does his wife know?' and she answered 'No, he has told his wife that I hate him, and won't talk to him'. Love and Hate - it's a thin line. Secrets. Who is keeping them? In Ensign's case - a Promise Keeper. Perfect.

Someone called me intense yesterday. Yup. That's me. I just killed my dog, I'm impossible to have a relationship with, and my relentless search for perfection is tough to live with. Sometimes I wish I had a bit more moral relativism in my make up - life could be so much easier....

oscar has left the building

 
Thank you Oscar for every single day of the nineteen years you gave us -

love from Aida, Jill, Zelda, Frank, Roo, Calvin, Mars Bar, Slim the Delinquent, Tutte, Blackie, Joe, Cowgirl, Ajax, Maisy, Roxy, Allie, Desmond, Kitty Kitty, Spotty, Tiger, all the dozens of foster dogs you allowed to share your home, and every single person who ever asked 'where is Oscar?'

not just about a dog

I wrote a Facebook update today that was clearly an appeal for approval, agreement, support for a decision I don't want to make. It was a crude and blatant cry for help - from the friends, sort of friends and semi strangers that make up my FB alumni. I want an overwhelming cacophany of voices to make the decison for me. They can't. I know that. The majority will tell me that I am making the right choice, that I will 'do the right thing'. But obviously - this is not about Oscar or whether to kill him at 1.30 today in the meadow of the park he and I love so much. This is not just about a dog. This is about me and whether I can put off this pain as long as possible. Because the last three years have seen a deconstruction of many of the walls I carefully put together over 50 plus years on this earth, and I am literally terrified that I don't have the defenses left to cope with a major hurt.

It also is about my ability to get back to some sort of photographic creative point. Oscar has been my muse since September 2005 when he came to live with me after his older 'sister' Zelda chomped a piece of his ear and Aida agreed he would do better with my crew. Truth is I have photographed Oscar more than anyone or thing in my entire life.

Photograph: Jill Posener © All Rights Reserved

Even Susie, who I spent 12 photography filled years with. The camera loves Oscar every bit as much as it loved Susie, whose sultry image is the last photo in 'Nothing But The Girl' (which incidentally is the last major book project I created). My terror of trying to pick up a camera and take the pictures I am yearning to take is a bit like getting back on a bike after being sideswiped by a car. I have lost my confidence along with my bravado. Oscar never asked for approval of the images. His crooked nose, his chunky legs with their folds of skin, his deep brown pools of eyes, and his ever-whitening visage never seemed to bother him. I don't feel physically sick when taking his portrait like I did the last time I ever went out on a photo shoot for a magazine - to photograph Ally Sheedy - and fucked it up. Completely.

She and I talked about dogs.

Photograph: Jill Posener © All Rights Reserved

And I don't seem to have a problem using this blog to help untie the knottiest internal ramblings of my troubled self. Clearly, I either have major boundary issues (lack of them) or else I believe as I always did - that the personal is political. That if we climb out of our constructed private zones we can smash the walls and bridge the gulfs between us. Private lives are much overrated. I am taken aback over and over how little we actually know about even the people close to us. How the public face bears little resemblance to the private agony. And I don't handle it well.

But then, there is much I don't handle well. 

When I fell apart - I mean really fell apart 3 and a bit years ago the seams had been unraveling for a long while but it was the killing of two dogs that kicked me through the doors and into the descent to a basement of unimaginable darkness and distress. But it was a place I recognized well from the terrors of my early life. I've managed over the years to get back up the stairs and slam the door on the basement. To get out of the cellar this time, I had to deconstruct the walls from inside. I learned a whole bunch of things. Those of you who've been kind enough to follow along know a lot - but the act of accepting is a long way from being over, done, complete.

To be at war within oneself - whatever the reason - and for me it stems from the most fundamental of states of being - my gender - one has to find a zone in which one can survive, the place you do the things you have to do to survive. My emotional deadzone has done me well - I have retreated there to be rageful, to be angered by everything, to be cruel, to euthanise animals, to break away from someone, to take on the injustices of the world. But now that it has ceased to be a place of refuge, it is a place of terror - so unspeakably cold, as if I'm in a plastic tunnel and sounds are muffled, images muted and people who are trying to reach me are beyond my reach. And I'm scared that Oscar's death will push me down there. Being out of the depression for some time now, I really do not wanna go back.

I love being close and intimate with my friends and family, I am one of the most social and outgoing people I know (though please don't hug me), but I don't trust myself with intimacy of any other kind, be it romantic love or death. So, it's not about a dog. It's about trusting myself - which I have probably never been able to really do....

albany bulb - emerging the eccentric

The Albany Landfill brings out the best in most people. And it's because we make our own rules out there, our own imaginations guide our steps and the eccentric in us has room to move and breathe.

There's Osha, my friend and comrade in the battle to save the Albany Bulb or landfill or waterfront or whatever you want to call it from the machinations of the State Park system and the park planners who never met an open space they didn't think they could improve on by 'developing' is as a 'park'. Osha Neumann is a civil rights attorney who has devoted his life to representing the under-man and woman - the poor, the disposesessed, the disposed, the homeless, the activist.

And Osha is one of the artists who has transformed the Bulb with his hands through reclaimed metal and wood found on the landfill and made sculptures of dragons and birds, dogs and warrior women and fishermen reclining. For years he painted alongside the four artists in Sniff, whose large paintings on found surfaces were described as inappropriate for a 'family park' by the same park planners who thought 'interpretive signs' and picnic areas were a good idea. Whose family were they talking about? Osha engaged once in a lengthy discussion with a man at the landfill who destroyed some of the art because he thought it satanic and erected a large cross at the tip of the Bulb in an effort to redress the imbalance.

There's Tom, also an attorney, who would come to the Bulb at the end of the day and collect all the bicycle parts and car hub caps and metal objects he found and constructed an astonishing sculture wall, to which visitors would add their own finds. These days Tom can be found deep among the fennel and rose bushes extracting metals, which Mark then collects and takes as scrap to the metal recycling yards in town earning enough to feed himself. For those of us who live and breathe with the landfill there is just a hint of smile as people remove metals from a landfill to recycle.

And Mark, who built the castle, an homage to Rocky and Bulwinkle, overlooking the Bay to San Francisco has had to abandon his maintenance on his magnificent achievement. Vandals and taggers have so defaced and disrespected his creation that he no longer tries to upkeep the paint job or the front patio. Recently a tagger painted a massive penis on the turret, a glob of machismo waving at us as a reminder that even here in our unregulated park there is no refuge from the domination of the stupid.

Jimbo, who has lived on the landfill on and off for 15 years, still invites visitors into his home, the Albany Free Library, where people can bring or borrow books. Sarah and Richard recently had to have their beautiful dog Rowdy put to sleep, Amber passes me on the trails on her bike heading home. They are all part of the neighborhood on the landfill, and I love them for the friendship they show me.

Dog walkers, bird watchers, bicyclists, groups of teens hiding their spray cans under their jackets, school outings, fisherman, artists, residents, and the increasing number of 'tourists' mingle on this magnificent place of wild imagination and every day brings a new view, a stone moved by a visitor, a new bird I've never seen and I bring my own eccentric habit. There is a huge concrete box - who knows what it might have been in it's former life in a building on land - and every year during the rains it fills to the brim. As the weeks go by and spring melds into summer, the water greens and mosquitoes begin to hatch. Walking in that area of the landfill always means a tangle of the buzzing insects. I decided to fill the box with rocks and dirt so the next year there will be no breeding ground for these nasty creatures. So, in the evenings my dogs lay around in the grasses while I go about my little task, carrying rocks and stones and hurling them into what seems a bottomless pit. For half an hour I play like a little boy watching the splashes and hearing the splat of the rocks. It makes me happy.

As the state presents it's solution to the economic crisis it has plunged us into, and closing our park is on the list, I contemplate the beauty of the most simple of pleasures, and the joy of eccentricity.

george tiller - an american tragedy

Dr George Tiller amazingly lived to be 67 years old. There had been previous attempts on his life, including the one in 1993 when Shelley Shannon shot through both of his arms. There have been bomb and arson attacks on his clinic, and abortion opponents brought charges against him accusing him of performing illegal procedures at his clinic - charges of which he was acquitted earlier this year. It isn't a surprise that people who call themselves pro-life were involved in creating a frenzy of hate for this man, including calling him a mass murderer. A climate of hate which led directly to his cowardly assassination in a church in Kansas. Toto - when you're in Wichita, keep your mouth shut.

Today, the glee among the haters is palpable - comments on blogs and news sites are dripping hellfire and brimstone, and Amerika seems a very dangerous place to support women's choices. I have never met anyone, not a single person who likes abortions. Most women I know who have been heterosexual in their lives have considered abortion. Many of them have also had children and raised them well, with a respect for the natural and living world around them.

Tiller never intended to be a lightning rod for abortion foes. In 1970 he was about to start a dermatology practice, but on August 21, 1970, his parents, sister and brother in law were killed in an accident and his sister requested in her will that he look after her 1 year old son. He went back to Wichita to close his father's medical practice (which had included providing abortions) and when he found out that a woman in the area had died after having to seek out an illegal abortion, he decided to stay - and to make abortions as safe as possible.

Tiller was an usher at his church and his wife, who was there at the time of his killing, was in the choir. It takes a particularly arrogant human being to act judge jury and executioner and snuff out the life of another human being who has committed no crime - even though it is perfectly justifiable to dislike what the man is doing and for you to use every legal means to stop him. They tried that, and they failed. So, in classic American style the next stop was the gun store. A 51 year old man, Scott Roeder, has been arrested. Presumably his political and religious connections will soon be known.

My heart goes out to the Tiller family whose public statement spoke first and foremost about Tiller's commitment to providing safe abortion care to women.

may 26th 2009 - time (and right) is most definitely on our side

I like this ruling. It is the only one the justices could have arrived at. It makes the entire system look ridiculous, because the California Supreme Court  had to reverse itself in the face of mass hysteria which proves that 'the will of the people' is not always the moral or even constitutional viewpoint.

I like this ruling because 36,000 gay Californians (of all descriptions) now have a civil right that the rest of us as yet unmarried gay people will not now have access to. This is now the beginning of a fight which we can, and will win.

I like this simply because it might actually herald the beginning of the end of the insanity of the proposition and initiative process. We elect through the ballot box the legislators the majority of a communty wishes to send to work for us. The ballot box to unseat a reresentative is the process by which we as electors can and should change the course of legislative and judicial decisions. Not through initiatives funded by Mormons  or corporations, Indian tribes or even unions with spokespeople from soap operas or sports teams.

Time is on our side.

love'n'anger

  JP, Berlin 1992 /Photo © Susie Fought

It wasn't all that long ago that I was 'triggered' by so many different stimuli I couldn't tell when one episode ended and another began - like one of those old hotel switchboards that lights up each time a guest in a room pressed the 'service' button, my switchboard was lit up all the time, all the rooms screaming for attention all at once, and in my hotel some of the room numbers didn't match up with the names of the guests. Is that a good image? Works for me, sounds like a fricking nightmare. It would be easy - as it always is - to serve up a dish of cold blame and wilted excuses. But 3 years of therapy -which I'm happy to report is now on a 'need to refresh' basis - will do wonders for the searching soul. Even if the searching never ends, and the manna never found and the soothing balm continues to elude one and the demons pop up like familiars in the most unexpected places and at the most inopportune times. These days, when I have a fight with someone, it is like a shock of cold water and nausea. Fight. Anger. My precious defense, especially with those flight risk women I am so drawn to. The layers of fight, fear, disassociation, and fight again have done me well (well, that's debatable!) over 50 some years. I have laid waste to some pretty exceptional people in my life, and watched somehow, as if from another vantage point. Sometimes the pieces could be put back together, sometimes not. But there was one consistent loser.

At some point it becomes an exercise in indulgence to continue to ask 'why'? At some point the facts are on the table, the mysteries are still mysteries. The dreadful truth floods into every corner like an incoming tide. I remember one of my earliest slash and burn moments - I was....how old was I...not over 14 that's for sure. I don't remember the girls name, or what she looked like, though I do have a clearer memory of her bedroom. She was obviously a friend, although I have no recollection of her before that day. It was raining. I've always hated the rain. It rained a lot in Berlin. The memory I have, vivid, painful and mysterious is of her sobbing, crying out 'why, why are you doing this? I thought you liked me'. She sat on her bed, and her bedroom was on the corner of a house, light flooding in from two large windows. And I don't have any idea what might have brought me to that point, but that I simply left, with the sound of her heartache in my ears and a face that I recognize in myself - when my soft blue eyes become battleship grey. Cruel is not something I think of when describing myself - but I can't help feeling that this may well have been the first time that a girl that I liked asked something of me, showed her vulnerability and my own interior battle clicked into action. Like a scene from 'Night At The Museum' when all the inanimate models in the Smithsonian leap into terrifying action for short bursts of mayhem and then subside as the sun comes up and the public enters the still, hallowed museum.

Mayhem - it's a good word to describe what has gone on in my brain almost my whole life. I once described it as a rubik's cube on acid, but mayhem sounds right. Why, you may ask, am I taking time out here, to re-visit my war zone. Peace has come, the treaty is in place, the prisoners exchanged, right? I wonder sometimes whether I will ever fully come to terms with the past. I can still feel the fight in me. And I wonder sometimes whether it can be as simple as I think it might be. And that the past four of five years I have been trying to catapault myself over the last barrier to self acceptance. At the heart of it is that when one lives at odds with ones very skin, there can no peace, no dimming of the lights, no lowering of the sound. I am learning, even at this middle to late point in the day, to be at peace with who I am and that there may still be acceptance from the outside as well.

Immigrants destroying our way of life!

This just in from the Florida Everglades: They come here from other places and take our food, burden our medical system, form gangs and steal, they attack innocents, kill, loot and pillage, have noisy fights which keep us up at night and now they are affecting the food chain and they breed like...well they breed like lizards. Our way of life and our culture is under assault!! HELP!

You know what I'm talking about - I'm talking about pesky Nile Monitor Lizards - thousands of them released into the wild by 'pet owners' when they grow from the 6 inch reptiles they bought in the store into the 6 foot giants they become as adults. Just last week, I blogged about the Burmese pythons which have changed the face of the Florida Keys, threatening to erase forever some native species. Now, with the news about the Nile Monitor Lizard who have the same m.o as the pythons - destroying nests and eating the young or the eggs of threatened species this is shaping up into some World Wrestling Federation Battle of the Giant Reptiles.

It would be an understatement to say that I have a freakin' problem with this. But where does one lay the blame? Is it all the responsibility of the ignorant people who cruise the exotic animal displays at the unregulated pet stores, vivariums or internet suppliers? Is it all just the greed of the retailers who buy these creatures wholesale from their native countries and ship them in cardboard boxes (during which thousands die) and profit off the need of the suppliers (many of whom live in poverty) and the ignorance of the purchaser? Is it the fault of other countries who make little effort to stem the export of live reptiles, birds and animals for consumption in the Stupid States Of Amerika? Enough  f*-----ing blame to go around.

I have seen thousands of bats swirl above my head, crossed paths with tigers, stumbled upon nests of baby cobras, watched a six inch diameter spider amble towards me as I sat on the toilet and had monkeys clamber all over me - so I understand all too well the allure of the unfamiliar - the exotic. But I don't believe any of these creatures belongs in a box, a cage or a glass container. Full disclosure here - my Dad kept a couple of iguanas as 'pets' in Berlin. After we left Malaya, I think we were all enamored of the incredible animals and reptiles whose habitat we had invaded and who graciously took up residence in our home. And my father loved these reptiles, nurtured them, built a large outdoor residence for them on warm summer days, and let them roam free in his apartment where they would often be found stretched out, still as a statue, next to the radiators as the Berlin winters set in. They would let themselves up and down off the sofa, and make their way back to their artificially warmed large cages as the evenings set in, and mealtime approached, when my father would prepare a feast of chopped fruits and vegetables, and feed them by hand. Then, using a dimmer switch, my dad would slowly set the artificial sun on the large creatures and the show was over for another day.

We cannot, nor should we, legislate stupidity, much as we may want to to - and the big losers are the millions of living creatures whom we can buy just as easily as we can buy the latest gadget or toy and then discard. And who are changing the very 'nature' of the north American continent by being released into our wild. Just as people drop puppies or kittens into the parks. Nothing can be done to prevent the rampant commercialism of the animal kingdoms we no longer have any interest in unless we can own, control and then throw away. Change is not always progress.

rule britannia bans the savage nation

Banning Michael Savage from the UK on the grounds that he foments hate is a dangerous path for my government to head down. I say my government because even though I am a legal resident of the USA, own a home, work and pay taxes, I am unable to vote here but can vote in Britain. Savage is distasteful - no he's more than that. He is a toxic, smart, ascerbic, acidic, animal loving, funny, ugly American son of immigrants. He is also litigious, angry and vengeful, reaching for the lawyer in the bottle to be his genie when he feels wronged. Which he does frequently. He is also one of many right wing talkers who - just as a sociopath does - disassociates himself from the consequences of his actions or speech. That while he is sipping a bottle of plonk and eating garlic shrimp on his boat on the San Francisco Bay, his toy poodle Teddy in his lap, there are thousands of disaffected Americans - disenfranchised, unemployed, undereducated and amped up by the decibels of doom spewing from the AM dial - who don't have a boat to unwind on, or the security of million dollar contracts lapping at their feet.

And while I believe that he should not be held personally responsible for the actions of his listeners were they to attack a follower of Islam, or to brutally beat a young transgender teen, I am convinced that the history of this nation from the founders on forward is littered with bodies and debris from the effects of hysteria being engendered in those not able to change their own circumstances and who are encouraged to blame someone - anyone. Demonising minorities, de-humanising queers, scaring people virtually senseless with terror stories of health care reform, socialism, marxism, evoking a former time as if it were a paradise lost, quoting passages out of context from the signers of the Constitution to suggest the very soul of the nation is being destroyed - these are all tactics and devices used in talk radio and Michael Savage is a master at the art. Liberal talkers are a bunch of ninnies compared to the giants on the right - Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Savage and the god-daddy of them all - Mark Levin. And the reason is that the left is not fighting a cultural war like the right is.

When Dick Cheney says quite candidly that if he had to choose between Limbaugh and Colin Powell to lead the Republican Party, it would be the oxycontin popping, viagra swallowing, three times divorced childless family values fan, private jet soaring, mansion expanding, multi millionaire - hands down, you get a pretty clear picture of the wilderness the GOP currently finds itself in. Because these kinds of conservatives are fighting the culture war while the rest of us are trying to win the battle against climate change, poverty, broken educational and health care systems and social injustice - and that's just here in California. And while they don't get bloodied in the trenches themselves, they take calls from Deb in White Plains, Kevin in Baltimore and Luis in Ventura County and fuel their anger and fear which is a dry and aching powder keg.

Putting Savage on the banned list is a mistake because one simply cannot and should not ban thought or speech. His incendiary devices are scattered around the world, whether or not he set foot in a Muslim area in London, whether or not he was feted by the ever present dark side of the British psyche, whether or not he was interviewed by the media or simply admired from afar - he should not have been made more powerful or important.

mothers of the world unite - every day is your day

Mothers still earn 78 ¢ on the dollar compared to Fathers.

I can't seem to find anyone to talk to today - unless I wanna go and hang out with them at a Mother's Day event. The one good thing about today actually being Mother's Day is that the inane ads on the radio for two dozen roses (grown where? Try Colombia) in a 'free' glass vase (made where? Try China) will finally go silent. Look, I'm not a killjoy or down on motherhood - little known fact about me: I seriously wanted a child in my twenties until of course I realised that I could not, simply couldn't have a child in this body. I have been involved with a fair number of mothers, and am saddened (especially in one case) that my own demons made the relationship with the mothers (not the children) unworkable. And many - maybe most - of the people I know, are parents. My nieces Jenny and Lisa have been in my life and my camera lens from the beginning, and the prospect of their becoming mothers excites me. So it aint that I'm just a freakin' grump. I always bought my mum fresias on what we quaintly call Mothering Sunday in Britain and called her on the phone wherever I was in the world. But Amerika can't just celebrate something - you have to C-E-L-B-R-A-T-E it, dontcha?

Celebrating some form of Mothers Day has been a pagan and Christian tradition for hundreds of years. Here in the US we owe the tradition to a woman called Anna Jarvis from West Virginia. In 1907, two years after her mother died she held a memorial to her mother and then embarked on a campaign to make Mother's Day a federally recognized Holiday (actually Anna wanted it to be on a Sunday so that it would be a Holy Day, not a Holiday). She succeeded in 1914.

But soon Jarvis soured on the holiday and how rampantly commercialized it had become. She incorporated herself as the 'Mothers Day International Association' and trademarked the phrases 'Mothers Day' and 'Second Sunday in May' a phrase I use often leading up to this day 'Hey, wanna get together? What are you doing the second Sunday in May?'

Anna and her sister Ellsinore (that is a deeply cruel name to give a child) then spent her family inheritance campaigning against the holiday, and got arrested for disturbing the peace. Her New York Times Obituary quoted her as saying "A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A petty sentiment!"

Anna Jarvis died in poverty, never married and childless.

burmese pythons, unwanted sofas and our culture of discard

The headline 'Python explodes after swallowing 6 foot alligator' caught my eye. I have held pythons and been equally enamored and shudderingly fearful.

I spent some amazing formative young years in Malaysia (Malaya as it was then) and my relationship with snakes, geckos and spiders began as I clambered through bush and jungle that sat, literally, at the edge of our manicured yard. We lived in a new housing development on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur on Guillemard Valley Road and one of my most vivid memories is of hearing my mother let out a blood curdling scream as she watched me saunter along the road right into the path of a Krait. 'JILL. STOP!' Ordinarily my mother yelling at me to stop doing something was pretty ineffectual, but there was something about this command. I stopped. The snake, sensing movement, darted across inches from me, as I stood transfixed by this beautiful and entirely deadly resident, whose neighbourhood the developers had so crudely invaded. I remember finding a young tiny cobra yards from the house and happily bringing it into the kitchen. I'm not sure exactly what my Mum did, but I never did that again.

So, I definitely understand the fascination with the exotic, especially snakes. But honestly, I don't see the beauty in playing house with these completely wild creatures in a 3 bedroom ranchette in Key West - or anywhere else. Snakes simply don't belong in glass houses. And the mammoth industry in exotic snakes and reptiles leaves me saddened and angered. On two occasions recently large boas have been found in Berkeley's Aquatic Park (which is a fancy name for a pretty mediocre and under maintained park by the freeway). Both snakes were once pets and presumably abandoned or simply dumped by owners who thought that the snakes would find plenty of entertainment and food, crusing the tent encampments of the homeless, snagging rodents or young birds. Both were 'impounded' by animal control and at least one died of a nasty contagious fungal condition which made it hard for the creature to eat.

While on the surface there isn't much comparison between the importation, breeding and sale of exotic species and the millions of domestic animals that end up in animal shelters each year - there is one primary similarity. Us. The human incapacity to gauge the consequences of our actions. The same attitude which says it's ok to throw your unwanted sofa by the side of the road because you can't be freakin' bothered to take it to the dump and pay the $10 fee. The same mindset that says 'hey, I think I'll just throw my baby's used diaper out the car window in the parking lot of my local park'. The very same thinking that generated the 140 ads on the local Craigslist for unwanted chihuahuas last week.  Someone else will always pick up your waste. Right? It's the same sickness, uniquely human, which has created the Burmese Python pandemic in Florida. Now that is a real pandemic. Over 150,000 Burma Pythons have been imported for sale in the United States. They are young, fairly small when sold but these fantastic snakes can grow to be 250 pounds and up to 20 feet long. And an enormous number of them have been thrown from cars and these giants have now become a threat to many endangered species including the Florida Panther and the wood stork. And of course to the less endangered Fifi or Sophie - your poodle or Siamese cat.

So, the headline about the exploding python and the photos that went with the article about the python whose eyes were bigger than it's substantial stomach got me thinking about why it is that we simply have to have whatever it is we want. And then, just as quickly, don't want anymore. And the number of non native species that we have imported purely for fun and then discarded over the last two hundred years and which have changed the native face of this land forever.

education of an animal rescuer - part two

Truth # 1 The price of saving these animals is watching them die.

I have watched so many die I have lost count. My folder at the vets office is so thick, with so many names, so many descriptions and today we culled the dead or adopted out. I had trouble remembering who was who. Not because I did not care - intensely, passionately about every single one. But 'stray baby kitten # 4, DSH, black and white' with its medical record telling a tale of heroic attempts at saving a lost cause is simply not a clear picture anymore. I may have found it in a dumpsite, covered in fleas, skin and bone with an eye infection and parasites. It was probably anemic and dehydrated and it died. As did so many others - even those who looked like they might survive. Pups with distemper, developing those dreadful neurological seizures, if they made it past the horrible intestinal distress, kittens with calici virus so that the insides of their mouths are covered in sores making eating an agonising chore, parvo pups spilling pink diarreah all over you, and the stench of their intestine shedding is not something you will ever forget.

The pup whose paw was crushed flat and then thrown from a car survived. I rushed her to the hospital and eventually she was adopted and I would see her in the park chasing balls, stumbling on this clumsy stub, exuberantly alive. The dog whose rear leg needed ACL surgery and whose owner just left him at the vet one day also survived, and Calvin has lived with me for the past 7 years. There have been hundreds of them - and many more have lived than have died. I cannot leave an animal to hurt. How can you do that?
But I had to euthanise a beautiful feral red dog, whom I named Canyon, who simply could not get along with other dogs or people and so had nowhere in the world to go. I had the two dogs killed that attacked and mauled my own little Roo. Even though I loved those two dogs passionately. I had rescued them from the streets of West Oakland. I have seen so many fail to thrive, turn their heads away from the tastiest life saving food, they have died in my arms, in the vets office, on a warm fleece in my home, I have picked them up on the side of the road and watched them die in my car. I have been bitten and scratched by them and run from them a time or two. Each one, each and every one, has deserved the care. And I would do it all over again. My own humanity demands nothing less.

Truth # 2 Once your eyes are open, you cannot close them again

Take a look. Do you see the dog lying by the side of the freeway? Is it still alive? Can you stop safely and pick it up? Do you see the puppy heading up the off ramp? Can you get there before it flies into oncoming traffic? Do you know how many animals die in your local animal shelter? Do you care that 'no kill' means nothing of the sort? Does it worry you that some shelters still sell animals to vivisection labs, that some shelters shoot their dogs, gas them? Does it get you in your gut that people walk into an animal shelter with a paper bag stuffed full of underage kittens? And dump it on the counter? And that under California law, a litter of kittens under 8 weeks old can legally be killed, right there and then? Does it make sense to you that Police departments run animal shelters? Or the Sherriff's department? That the budget for your local animal shelter can be 'stolen' from if the PD needs a new cruiser or better weaponry? Did you know that the euthanasia drug is called Fatal Plus, but better known as pink juice by animal control officers who administer the fatal shot? That many of them failed to get into the Police Academy and being an animal control officer was the best way to stay in uniform and be a wannabe cop? Did you know that most shelters kill animals because they have no space? That at least 25% of all animals in shelters are pure breeds? That Caltrans (the California state agency that oversees freeways) will pick up dead dogs and cats and dump them in the same bins with dead deer and raccoons and often animal shelter workers won't go through the dead bodies to determine whether an 'owned' animal might be in there? That your local 'no kill' facility does kill - you just have to read the fine print which says they won't kill 'adoptable animals'. Who defines an adoptable animal? That homeless people routinely lose their animals because if they are arrested, the animals are impounded and often killed. That animal abusers rarely stop there, yet few District Attorneys pursue animal abuse cases? That volunteers fear that if they speak up about what they see in shelters that they will be barred from volunteering? That one officer I spoke to laughed his head off as he described animal rescuers as 'humaniacs'.

Truth # 3 Yes. It is an addiction!

There's no doubt. It can be an addiction. There are more women than men involved in animal rescue. Many are white, middle aged, middle class women who had no children or are empty nesters. That animal rescue is a continuum and that the line between rescue and 'collector' is often uncomfortably close. That animal rescuers are sometimes filled with a virulent misanthropy, a self righteous indignant sense that they know best, and will take an animal from someone if they feel the individual is a 'bad' owner. That animal rescue can sometimes be the last to admit that their own system is riddled with disease, disenchantment, and deception, and that the deaths are an 'acceptable' part of the saving. As long as the ratio looks pretty good. And the major donors don't see the dogs dying in cages. How long can a dog acceptably be kept in a cage? How long can a cat be kept in a closed bathroom? How many cat boxes before your house is filled with the unmistakeable scent of cat piss which peels off the inside of your nasal passages? How many times can you justify a dog killing another dog in a Sanctuary situation?

And beyond all that and beside all that is the sense of complete happiness when a dog who was being led to the euthanasia room, somehow finds herself in the back seat of you car and spends her first night of safety curled up next to your bed, exhausted. And two weeks later walks happily off into the sunset with a new home, tail wagging, with people who feel a joy unlike any other as they lead their new family member to the second (or third) chance at life.

Truth # 4  A part of your soul remains unawakened until you love an animal.