04 July 2011

NOT Independence Day –– NO FREEDOM –– in America for DEhuman Mamas

"I could do something, however, about the remainder of Youngest Son Mirzah’s high school experience. Immediately I made an appointment for the 22nd of August, with Mirzah’s former pediatrician’s office to have done for him that very vaccination pronto: the MMR. School –– Mirzah’s sophomore year at Ames High –– could commence then … unobstructed. As the two of us inside the beater – wagon turned the Teacup’s corner onto Havencourt Drive along around 4 that Tuesday afternoon and after just concluding less than an hour earlier this so simple chore over to the Clinic, Mirzah and I smiled about the ease of this particular visit to the doctor –– in contrast to those of tiny children when they have to periodically go in for their shots. Almost simultaneously, we together spotted in the distance sitting alongside the curb of 6143, our condominium, something looming there about which I had such the ominous and threatening flashback: a Ryder rental truck.

Ol’ Black crept closer and closer to our driveway, and the smile vanished from my mouth. I cast a jerked and frightened gawk at Mirzah who exclaimed as he leaned forward toward the dashboard, “It’s Herry!”

“Om’god! A truck just like when he first took you all away, Mirzah!” Immediately thrown right back into hypervigilance mode, I remembered out loud that horrible Saturday morning of the 13th day of October almost five years previously! “What’s he doing here?! What’s he doing here with a truck, for chris’sake!?”

“I called him.”

“You called him?!”

“Wull, yeah. But. Um.”

“You called him an’, and … an’ right away out he comes?! But why?!” I was stunned. “What’s he gonna do?! He’s got a truck, for chris’sake! What does that mean, Mirzah?!”

“Well, ah, I … I, um, I think it means I’m going back to West Virginia, Mom.”

I was sick! Literally … sick. Nauseated and throat – choked, my breathing ceased again! Sure enough. “In and out in about an hour,” just like that television commercial beckons a viewer to go get himself fixed up with a pair of new eyeglasses of that hawking store’s particular brands.

“In and out in about an hour,” my whole life was stolen from me … yet once AGAIN! By now –– Daddee – Herry’s so infamous bait – and – switch gutting of the Bitch’s whole essence. And of at least two of those three Truemaier Boys’ beings, of course, as well. Yet once AGAIN!

As much as my remembering that so twisted whirlwind of those 60 – some minutes’ worth of both of these Truemaier Boys’ last moments beside me there on Havencourt Drive, I recall Herod Edinsmaier’s … signature snide smirkface. The Good and Wonderful Doctor – Daddee was on … The Take again! From specifically me –– on the prowl and on His Take … AGAIN! Taking back –– from me, the Kiddos’ mama –– both Mirzah and Jesse! “SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER! MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS! I say so! Therefore, Pussy, it is so!”

As with very many a hating and violent man, I am thinking now as I type, Jury, that if joy ever comes to this guy from anywhere or from anything, –– ever, truly –– then its emergence for him must almost always be tied to: how great is the pain and the grief and the sorrow –– how great is the vengeance –– that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier can manage to reign in and to rain down upon Legion True. What an insecure man! Dry – Drunk and Addict Herry’s happiness depends, daily, upon taking –––– upon his taking away … mine.

Pretty much the exact same assessment of and sentiment expressed about Herry –– precisely as a father –– by Iowa Court of Appeals Appellate Judge Pansy Shawshank –––– within her six – page majority decision! … … ah, er, that is, inside the one which, of course, became … because of sexism and chicanery by that court’s Chiefy Donnellson plus a couple other of his specific judiciary’s hench –– ah, er, um, … bench – men … the woman’s dissent, instead! She, naturally its one and only token DEhuman jurist, so saw Hardhearted Herry for who he was, too –– and she did so in far less time and scope than most other folks who come into Dr. Edinsmaier’s sphere have had at their disposals in order “to measure” him. Him … daMan. A destroyer doctor. “First, do no harm?” As so decrees the very first dictum to which all health care providers pledge themselves? This one also an alleged daddee, granted the M.D. degree in March of 1980, when Mirzah Truemaier was but a wee six months of age and Brother Jesse a 19 – month – old, is not an honorable and healing lifter – up of humankind but, instead, an insecure, ruthless –– and measurable –– rot who denies, ruptures and annihilates.

I had already forgotten about the disagreement Mirzah and I had had sometime during the previous week. And, now, I cannot even remember the cause at that time of my vexation with my so soon – to – be sophomore Son nor the scrape in which the two of us must have earlier engaged. I am said to have been so ireful at whatever it was that Mirzah did or said or wanted or decided on his own that I locked him out of the condominium declaring as I did so the directive, “My house. My rules.” I don’t believe the squabble could have been focused on something Mirzah said and certainly nothing that he did to people whom he considers his friends and acquaintances. He is just too sweet – natured a human being, then and now, to have purposefully and calculatingly with nefarious motive, hurt any one of his contemporaries intentionally.

Except for one matter –––– pornography. What hath Herry Edinsmaier wrought?

With his gonzo mind and his snide mouth and Corrupt Herry’s dastardly deeds against women, I suddenly remembered about, as Ol’ Black inched into the condo’s driveway, those two DEhumans whom Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had not even cared enough about to have bothered himself to get out of bed in time to show up for the women’s breast biopsies as their frozen – section pathologist whom he had been hired by Kansas City’s Downshim Laboratories to be! With Herry’s bestial (literally, –– Jury, remember the cows – / dogs – / pigs – / chickens – / and cunt models – fucking) view of womankind –– that same contaminating contagion which he had inherited from Detanimod’s Grand – Dominating Poker – Patriarch Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier and the one which both That Old Mother – Fucker and the sooooo, so christianizingly DEhuman – fucking Martin Luther King, Jr. held about aaaall of us females, –– why, Daddee Herry had easily, readily –– and happily –– passed woman – loathing and his concerted DEhumanization of well over half of the World’s populations anywhere on … to all of the sons. And, most especially, Model Parent Edinsmaier, relying upon for his “excuse” to do so the Truemaier Boys’ and his most entitled of “cultural” speech freedoms, could voluminously secure as he so desired to procure for his own addicted neediness then, more and more and more pornography, “Stupid – Ass Heifer, now doncha’ be a – messin’ with my and m’boys’ First Amendment Right, You Whore!”

Exactly the very escape from accountability –– this paternal – filial pornography – ‘sharing’ camaraderie is –– as the alcoholic father who purposefully places himself in situations in order to be able to drink with his kiddo. And jokingly but yet loudly terms it to them and to all the World as … “bonding” –– instead of as the addiction it actually is! “How can ya’ come between a man and his dad when they’re just out enjoyin’ a coupla’ brews together at the ballpark, Bitch?” Pops gets what he wants, doesn’t he, Jury? More and more and more booze. And the adult child? Why, the kid also gets what Bucko – Pappy –– and Attorney Jazzy Jinx some time back had counseled that Slacker – Slick Daddee –– always wants: Father as the picture – perfect “parent who just likes to have some fun, ya’ know. To show ‘his good, good buddy’ a mighty fine time, that’s all!” But it –– the sham –– is soooo not all –– at all, is it, Jury?

The one child likely most influenced by the twisted yet so commonly “accepted” recesses of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s deviance was the one child actually with his mama the least amount of time –– Mirzah.

If the quarrel had been about print pornography or videotape pornography run and viewed upon my condominium’s VCR machine or if I had come across other formats of woman – loathing, then I certainly can see where I would have acted on the “my house / my rules” declaration. I had explained –– repeatedly and try to do so to this day –– how the production and consumption of pornography by any person is the purposeful and intentional harm and destruction and loathing of female human beings –– 53 percent of and, therefore, the majority of the entire Earth. A DEhumanization with proportions not equaled by any other matter in the whole wide World; but I was with Mirzah, and, therefore, to date his maternally parental influencer, … the least amount within his lifetime.

And Herry? Herry, as husband and as ex – spouse, has plied his addiction and purposefully involved his minor children with it in quite the silenced and secretive way that that alcoholic daddee carries on with his hooch, “The more my sons drink with me, the more I can, too!” Whether that juicing jag takes place at home or in bars, in cars or during a day at the beach. Anywhere. “The more my kids use porn and think it fun, humorous and entertainment, then the more of it my brain gets to have?! Well, that’s just A – okay, too! After all, we’re bonding! Me an’ m’boys! Father and son –– we’re buds! Jus’ engagin’ in a … ‘bonding’ … activity together, for chris’sake, Twat!”

When those 12 issues of Playboy had, regular as the moon’s cycles, crept into his Othello Drive bachelor – pad starter castle under the subscription Daddee – Herry had corrected for nine – year – old Zane Truemaier’s ordering of it and all four of its household’s males had retired together to King Herod’s den with any one of the particular, newly arrived issues of it … “to check on the Boys’ development,” Mirzah and Mirzah’s brain had been only six years old. When the separation and divorce was pending and Addicted Herry, right straightaway, ‘chose’ Ms. Fannie Issicran McLive with whom to start keeping company, it was Mirzah, barely seven and eight years of age, whom Herry took with him when he went to buy for her a gem – studded condom and a “hormones are raging” greeting card. All three Truemaier Boys were present during a mandatory visitation (Of course! Of course, these sojourning soirées were androcentrically and sperm – exaltingly … daddee – mandatory!) with Herry when Daddee Dearest, smirkingly I am sure, told Ms. McLive a three ducks’ anuses’ joke inside a booth at a Fatlantic café –– that particular tarriance of the Wooing and Courting King Herod’s having been the Boys’ –– any of my three Truemaier Boys’ –– very first time meeting The Other Snide Person who in such short order was to become their … so, so unwilling to – step – back – from and to – step – out – of – the – Real – Mama – position’s step – mother.

And through the years, there had been more. So much, much more. The Boys had been inundated when they were still in and then, even more frequently, just passed the primary grades and going, going, going, … then finally altogether … gone from me. Gone –– Zane, Jesse and Mirzah –– from me, their mama.

All crimes, of course. Every instance a crime. All of it criminal and perpetrated by one abusing, violent and violating man, their own biological father, that Great and Wonderful Healer, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier.

With Mirzah always then the youngest –– both in terms of the Daddee Herry – “approved” and – facilitated exposure to and use of pornography and of a child’s perception with regard to the whole and utterly complete disappearance so fashioned and brought about by that same father of the kiddo’s own mother –– there came into existence then the altogether determined wiping – out, the absolute erasure and deletion of a so inconveniently protecting mama who would have tried, had she physically been around, to put a stop to Daddee – Herry’s (and, generationally, to Juggern Aut Misein Edinsmaier’s) insidious inculcation and passing on of woman – hating to her children, all of them happening to be, of course, in Dr. Legion True’s case, … male children. That is, the World’s women’s worth of at least three of its very next generation of marrying and / or fathering and / or ancestoring … men.

Right in line soooo Catholic Edinsmaier’s christianizing of my three Sons is –– exactly as had been the schooling of Ms. Soraya Manutchehri’s two eldest boys (out of her nine – born children in 14 years’ time … rather precise shades, not so Jury? Anyone? of Juggern Aut’s perpetual poking of Detanimod … ) by the woman’s sharia “law” – spewing Sperm Donor, Ghorban – Ali Manutchehri. Wanting to mawwy another much, much younger DEhuman, a teenaged schoolgirl actually, and to support only one wife, Mr. Manutchehri, the mama’s two oldest sons and her very own father –– in full and hooting view of the entire town and right alongside all of those ‘educated’ males of ‘The Court’ which had just condemned Ms. Soraya, falsely accused of infidelity but such for that specific daddee … The Inconvenient Wife so by its islamic “law” on “these matters” so, so easily manmade now “no longer a human being” –– “freely” set about murdering her, this suddenly made Non Human, by hurling stones aimed in 1986, right at and striking her head, throat and thorax until this battered, eviscerated and unrecognizable corpse of a cur –– “That Bitch!” –– she, the mother, altogether stopped breathing. Gutted. Made gone … she. In and out with ‘The Court’ ’s ruling on the woman in about a dusty and bloodied hour’s time –– is all.

In an’ out –– literally, –– in and altogether out of life –– in about an hour!

‘Member, Jury, how it is that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had, as well, wanted quite dead ... Dr. Legion True? Only difference? Offing the True Twat himself –– in this christianizingly patriarchal country –– may have cost him his doctoring position and, thus, his money. So Daddee – Herry –– as have as well so many, many spousal daddees including Ghorban – Ali – Daddee –– simply “used” the most willing men of ‘The Court’ … ‘alone’ … to kill her off. Apparently … “quite constitutional” –– and within aaaaall of their very, very manmade / “We tell ourselves thus and so –– cuz we, DaMen, sooooo can” ‘laws,’ too!

It would be no wonderment to me at all that a clash which the now nearly 16 – year – old Mirzah and I evidently had had … may have centered around something woman – loathing such as pornography. Mirzah had plenty of friends, of course, as agreeable, as kind and as amiable as he always, always appeared to me to be with other guys his own age. But it was also true that for almost seven preteen and adolescent years’ worth I had not a physical clue –– I hadn’t been (allowed !!! to be) around him since he was nine! –– about his dealings, about Mirzah’s … comings, goings, thinkings and doings … with that same age group of girls. And I do recall, with both Jesse and Mirzah back in Ames and Jesse’s so recent threat of alcohol toxicity, having laid down some parameters about the perimeter of 6143 Havencourt, one of which –– for a fact I know, –– would have been that no pornography of any kind exist on those premises for any reason nor possessed under its roof by anybody.

That summer of 1995, in Ames the Truemaier Boys and I certainly had had no home computer and, therefore, no easy internet access. The passageway, that is, to web – based pornography. It was not until the next February’s Leap Day as I cleaned out the Havencourt condominium in my preparations for altogether leaving behind our Teacup subdivision that I came across, wedged down behind what had been Mirzah’s mattress, a computer – produced ‘business card’ done up on cardstock – quality paper and sized appropriately to any general ones which I have ever seen. On white in simple, black – inked font were the words, “Your Friendly Neighborhood Ho Service. Dial 666 – 5678 for a really, really good time. ––– Signed, Mirzah and Matt, Pimps. Confidentiality GUARANTEED.”

By 5 o’clock that hot and humid August afternoon, Mirzah and Jesse –– again … viciously made no longer Iowans –– vanished.

The yellow truck pulled away; and with its doing so, I remember most … Herry’s smirkface. I also know that the pillared Dr. Edinsmaier took away with him more, however, –– that aprovechar of his again! –– … more that late afternoon than my two Truemaier Boys.

As I had scurried around the condominium, to its three bedrooms upstairs and down to the basement, rounding up every bit of clothing and equipment and treasures I guessed –– in my concurrent and profound sorrow! –– that the two Boys would want with them when back in West Virginia, my one – vehicle garage went … … ‘unguarded.’

And, a couple of days later, when I needed that pliers? The one in the vessel resting upon Mirzah’s wooden changing dais painted bronze with its so easy – to – clean Formica tabletop, the sturdiest ever with baby supplies’ drawers built in underneath, the table which AmTaham True had, just 16 years earlier, constructed from leftover scraps of remodeling materials when he first learned I had become pregnant for the third time and Mirzah’s Grandpa had not wanted his Legion’s backbone to ache anymore from my repeatedly crouching down on the floor multiple times a day to change his grandbambino’s diapers!

Well, my pliers? All of my tools had gone missing, too suddenly, as suddenly and at exactly when as had Jesse and Mirzah! Including the galvanized metal, standard – sized toolbox in which Grandpa AmTaham had collected them all for me, the general genre of receptacle which any respectable repairperson owns!

* * * *

This man was not done with that particular day’s worth of taking. Still. Of Herry Edinsmaier’s taking away from Legion True. With my Boys’ taking and with my tools’ taking, the man still had more –– much, much more of aprovechar –– on His Agenda to accomplish.

Here I had been left thinking that the Good and Wonderful Healer had swung my two Boys right out onto Interstate – 35 and was spiriting them out of Iowa as fast as that Ryder could possibly sprint, the entrance to that freeway merely a half a mile from the one to our Havencourt Drive! But I was wrong on this assumption!

Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Mirzah and Jesse Truemaier –– my Boys –– and his Ryder took a wide, wide detour –––– one so wide its width matched that of my mouth’s gaping. And of both Grace’s and Lynda’s, too!

What bulk, what mass of unmitigated effrontery, insolent entitlement and flippant, filliping arrogance the entire bunkum of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier is –– especially when it comes to us … DEhumans. Lynda Kincaid lived approximately five miles from me on Havencourt –– through some of the most tangled web of streets and tortuous thoroughfares Ames possesses, particularly … at rush hour. It was to her home’s INTERIOR that Corrupt Herry Edinsmaier’s entitlement and arrogance –– his taking –– next appeared. And it did so … right away within that very same hour as when he had pilfered way away from me … both my two Kiddos and all of my several tools.

“I can’t believe it,” I gasped. “You have to be kidding, Woman. Are you sure, Lynda?!”

I am still incredulous as I am thinking on it right now. All –– absolutely all –– of my girlfriends remain so to this day … as well. It was a stunning performance by Herod Edinsmaier. Positively utterly staggering.

We –– my friends and I –– we were never “used” to his taking, to Pillared Father’s Rightster Herry’s snatching up of my Boys whenever and wherever the time and the venue seemed to suit him; but we women, at the least, knew that So Predictable Herod Edinsmaier was entirely capable of this androcentric egregiousness, this patriarchal cruelty. We just never expected, although so very well – trained all of us should have been by now! we just never expected Exalted Sperm Donor Edinsmaier’s next fucking flagrancy. Let alone, so very, very mother – fuckingly soon! Within this very same –– “in – ‘nd – out – in – about – an” –– hour! that “Fuck you, Bitches” – hour!

“O, JYeah, Legion, I am sure!” Lynda Kincaid exploded. “They’re gone. They’re all gone. The guns. They are gone from the basement, Legion. Every last one of ‘em. Outta there! All of them! Taken.”

Months later, Jesse himself confirmed this home – invasion crime for all of us women: That Herry had actually driven up and out of his own gettin’ – outta – the – Gutted – Bitch’s – town route is one thing in and of itself. But Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had done so … for forbidden guns that he did not even own. –– And never had!

As soon as Absconder Edinsmaier pulled his rented transport, UNconstitutionally yet domineeringly –– and criminally –– loaded up both with Legion True’s two younger Boys and all of Legion’s garaged toolbox’s contents, out of my driveway and back on to Havencourt’s street headed, I had so incorrectly presumed, immediately on out to the interstate’s entrance quite proximally nearby and bound, yet again, through those same five states on back to Grubtrop, West Virginia, I had telephoned Lynda at her National Animal Disease Center desk. She had been the first friend to know –– to know of daMan’s same – style abduction … yet again! And … yet again! … of another of Legion’s ripping heartbreaks. Lynda left work to come to my side straightaway and, after cups of late – afternoon, hot sage tea and as much head – banging truisms together about our passions and our struggles as could be emotionally borne, had driven not back to work since it was now eventide but directly on over to her own home on Douglas Avenue.

I had not asked her to –– to do so; Friend Lynda Kincaid had thought all on her own to check. She told me on her commute on over to her street, a revelation had come in to her brain, “This is Herod Edinsmaier Legion’s dealing with. Of course, he just might do this. He just might! I’d better check the shelves downstairs. Just in case.”

My telephone rang not more than 20 minutes after Lynda had exited my condominium’s front door.

These were all of the guns given over to Jesse after … after … the divorce and, more importantly, given over to him by his Grandpa AmTaham but … but … but with one huge caveat: Given over from Grandpa AmTaham to Jesse by way of me, … first. That is to say, Jesse’s grandfather had made crystal clear to Jesse that his mother’s rules ruled … first! First and foremost. “Only when Legion says you may, can you have any access for any reason, for hunting or for target practice that is, at all, Jesse! You must obey your mother on this, Jesse. Verstehen? Verstehen, Young Man? I mean it. Do you understand me, Jesse?”

AmTaham True, as a matter of fact for years before this date of 22 August 1995, and when quite the Cinqué – of – the – Amistad style Ancestor – in – Training, that is, when the man was alive, and for years before Jesse’s freshest – ever 17th year (since his latest 15 August birthday had just passed) had tried and tried and tried to have all three Boys understand that the ownership and the use of any gun was far, far unlike the ownership and the use of any other item which the Boys would ever, ever possess.

Grandpa AmTaham had instructed all three Boys that at no time in their teen years’ development of “a relationship” between themselves and their firearms were any of the guns and / or their ammunitions to be brought out of safekeeping and handled by, or even just shown to, anyone else. As one may a new volleyball or a new bicycle or how it is a kiddo gifted with a used, let alone a new, vehicle might take her or his friends for a spin in it, for that matter. Developing an adult mindset circa the ownership and the use of firearms, AmTaham True taught, was akin to the learning of no other lesson. And all –– absolutely all –– of one’s minor years when she or he is still a teenager are to be determinedly spent up in the maturation of this relationship between the person and the owned firearm. By the time the person becomes 18 years of age, a parent or a grandparent –– and no other adult, that is –– needs to have instilled in this child enough then: enough protecting wisdom on this firearms’ ownership matter. AmTaham had stated, as had Dr. Powell during the several hunter safety session hours which Jesse and Zane had both enthusiastically, and some time ago by then, attended in Storm County, that the properly licensed parents and grandparents held entire and utter accountability in this endeavor because at no time did any other adult in the kiddos’ lives –––– not their Uncle Mark, not Daddee’s Pal Kevin home on his university’s semester break, not High School Voc Ag or Shop Teacher Dick, –––– actually care about the muzzles’ locations and the emptied or filled status of the guns’ chambers … as much as … does the children’s own –– properly licensed –– parents or grandparents.

* * * *

“And now … most importantly, … Jury, for the FLIP / REVERSE clincher on this specific Tuesday’s events: What woman do you know, Folks, can get clean, slick away with entering in to, home invasion – style … thus, with the criminality of it all, her ex – husband’s friend’s home –––– and abscond with daMan’s owned property, with all of his guns there for example, being stored inside his pal’s premises? Huh, Jury? Name one woman for me, please, –– anywhere in the Whole World –– who can get away –– clean, slick away –– with this act? One woman who can, in addition, TAKE with her inside this ex – husband’s friend’s home … her very own daughter, too?! Take the teenaged daughter criminally inside the residence, too, to serve as mama’s accomplice and as mother’s carrier – of – Daddee’s – guns back out to the truck parked outside?! With this mother – modeled ‘Fuck you, Bastards’ action of Mama’s and have back on herself for her having done these several crimes absolutely NO consequence whatsoever, Jury?! Name one woman anywhere who can do these very same deeds as Herry Edinsmaier’s, please. One.”

Because that is what Narcissist and Passive – Aggressor Herod Edinsmaier who “is above the law because he tells his pillared self –– and my three Truemaier Boys –– that they all are!” … did! And then, and by now well in to the 21st Century, daMan is known to have gotten his modeling self and my Boy Jesse –– with my Boy Mirzah serving as lookout sentry inside the truck’s cab … clean, slick away with it. Ex – Husband Herry took, aprovechar – style and criminally, whilst demonstrating for both of my teenaged sons then, how it is that men, just whenever and wherever they wanna, … can … simply take from women. From multiple women. “Because He Can.”

We all know this, do we not, Jury? Because he can. “These are mere women, conscious these two happen to be and not anesthetized,” Corrupt Herry reckoned, “but females, none the less. How utterly UNimportant … DEhumans are! And to her Boys, Jesse and Mirzah, as well! I will demonstrate these very same thinkings and doings, these comings and goings about women to them, too! And absolutely looooove doing so!”

Noooo different. The very same this is as … the two, elder boys who ‘helped’ their daddee, Ghorban – Ali Manutchehri, murder stoned – to – death Soraya, their very own –– and siblings’ –– birthing mama. Not a human being … she; their laws so state, the laws the men themselves “make” –– particularly as any of these, on the whole of them all, pertain in any way to us DEhumans’ general slutlery. Remember, Jury, that so common Arab maxim regarding the insatiability of graves, deserts and, of course, all … cunts? The males? The men and the boys? They are … The Human Beings. And … The Only Human Beings.

Just exactly how UNimportant is … specifically … the one DEhuman, Dr. True? Whose first name, Legion, is never to be Edinsmaier – uttered?! –– Ever?!

Consider –– yet again! –– that I had admonished us all, hadn’t I Jury, from deeeeep within Chapter 28, to be certain to so nota bene the following phraseology out of Herry – Daddee’s 02 July 1994, quite queer letter – thingy mailed to me?! That grammatically incorrect missive, displaying its stupendously stupid sentence structure, which had been sent to me, the woman whom all of DaMen of ‘the Court’, an American court –– it needs to be marked, remarked and so, so … well – remembered, an American court! –– had ascribed as the Crazed and Whoring Mother –––– yet, as well, to whom Herry – Daddee, that flouncing and professedly accountable father!, suddenly and right then so very, very soon after Jesse’s release from hospitalization at the Blue Hazelnut Ridge, had decided to entrust to lovingly and correctly shepherd one minor teen, Jesse, with as well in such a short, short span of time thereafter another, second one, Mirzah?!

“#8. Should … any matter arise … which we cannot settle under the terms of this agreement, … we both agree … to immediately return to the present arrangement as set forth by the existing divorce decree with modifications,” yada, yada, yada and so forth.” Signed, “Sincerely, Herod Edinsmaier” …

Only it is most clear, isn’t it Jury, that i) from Mirzah’s one wee, apparently whining telephone call back to Daddee – Herry when the Evil – Mother Monster quite torqued him off some –– “she pissed off daMan” (as with Ms. Soraya’s sons, Mirzah equaling this particular male this particular time) and ii) from Jesse’s desiring for himself Legion True’s guns back in West Virginian woods, it is most clear, isn’t it, that none –– utterly none–– of Proviso #8 had to its “declaration” any “sincerity” or any Truth … WHATSOEVER?!

Because it did not have to. Whether inside a courtroom with daMen’s status as “under oath” there or with their promising or their avowing –– or even with their “evidence” – and witness – wowing there! True it is. O, so head – bangingly true it is: Depending upon who you are, it is easier to lie to and deceive anyone inside an American civil court of law and get clean, slick away with it than it is to lie to and deceive one’s own mom and dad. It is easier to lie to and deceive an American civil court of law, which, we all know from long back within Chapter Eight, is a judge or nearly an entire state’s district and appellate court system’s worth of them! –– circa 23 or so of them! than it is to lie to and deceive your own minister, your own teacher, your boss and co – workers, your spouse or even all three of your own children. It is, mind you, easier to get clean, slick away with lying to and deceiving an American civil court judge about anything, depending, of course, upon who you are, than it is to lie to and deceive yourself, Corrupt Herry!

Or outside of one. Outside courtrooms. As with Liar Herry’s mid – 1994 letter to me regarding “our both agreeing” if “any matter arises.” “Heh. Heh. Heh, Woman!” I am yet again! reminding my own brainy self. “These are men making ‘the rules’, the ‘laws.’ And no amount of, no accounting of Flip / Reverse as to how these same men would feel or as to how the humans would like the trashing and the smashing, the utter mucking up of their Constitutional rights to, O say, … breathing … if the DEhumans’ mother – fucking –– if, O say, father – fucking –– is visited down upon them … matters … squat at all to them!”

"I ask, Jury, only one thing about the aprovechar – absconsion of my Boys and of my tools and guns, about this home – invasion crime, on all of this one particular day’s worth of mother – fucking –––– all of it perped by Hosing Herry, the Pillared Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, against Lynda Kincaid and against me, Dr. Legion True, as well as against all three of my Truemaier Boys, … … the fucking outrage?! Where is the OUTRAGE?!" "

19 June 2011

From the same Dr Phyllis Chesler of ! 1989 ! ’s 1556529993

And just as true then as it is ... now. Now ... on y2011’s ... Father’s Day. Regarding, of course, those of us many, many mamas "insanely long - suffering" with various DSM - V's "Patriarchal Defiance Disorders" ...

"Sure to inspire anger, understanding and action." Gloria Steinem
"Extremely subversive. It should and will enrage, entice, incite and liberate." Kate Millett ... ... "An essential work." Erica Jong

i) "The 25th anniversary edition of Mothers on Trial: The Battle for Children and Custody (with eight new chapters) is just coming out. It is the best and only book of its kind and, over the years, has been referred to as THE DEFINITIVE WORK for mothers who are faced with a custody battle.

Mothers have described underlining the entire book, taking it to court with them, begging their lawyers to read it –– and keeping it near their bedsides.

Over the years, with some very few exceptions, things have gotten worse in the court system, not better. This is one of the reasons
I decided to both update and add to this important work.

This book is now available online [ http://tinyurl.com/3o7l6an ] and in paperback. In terms of helping a book find its natural audiences, online reviews really matter.

Therefore, if you are moved to do so, please write an online review of this book wherever you buy books online. It is currently for sale at Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, etc.

I am attaching a June 2011 Library Journal review of the new edition of Mothers on Trial. I am also attaching selected endorsements and reviews that appeared in 1986 – 1987. Some of you may recall that I also coordinated a Congressional Press Briefing with then – Congress members, now Senators Chuck Schumer and Barbara Boxer and a large, well publicized, and well attended National Speakout about Mothers Losing Custody of Children. If you can, if it's easy, please send me your review when you have posted it or simply tell me that it is up.

All best,
Phyllis"

ii) "Custody Disputes Now Tougher for Battered Moms by Phyllis Chesler, WeNews guest author -- Sunday, 26 June 2011

It's been 25 years since Phyllis Chesler wrote "Mothers on Trial" to help women fight their child-custody battles. In this excerpt from her revised book, she reviews what's changed, for better and worse.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Going through a custody battle is like going through
a war. One does not emerge unscathed. Yes, one may learn important lessons, but one may also be left broken and incapable of trusting others, including our so-called justice system, ever again.

Custody battles can take a very long time. They range from only several years to more than 15 or 20. They may have profound legal, economic, social, psychological and even medical consequences for years afterward, perhaps forever.

What's changed since I first started researching and writing about custody battles?

Documented domestic violence does get factored in somewhat more than before. Where real assets exist, judges have the power to award more of them to mothers and children. Fewer mothers and fathers automatically lose custody or visitation because they are gay or because they have high-powered careers.

However, certain injustices (crimes, really) that I first began tracking in the late 1970s have now gotten much worse.

For example, battered women are losing custody to their batterers in record numbers. Children are being successfully brainwashed by fathers, but many mothers are being falsely accused of brainwashing. Worse: Children with mandated reporters--physicians, nurses or teachers--who report to them that they have been sexually abused by their fathers ARE USUALLY GIVEN .TO. THOSE VERY FATHERS. The mothers of these children are almost always viewed as having "coached" or "alienated" the children and, on this basis alone, are seen as "unfit" mothers.

'Parental Alienation Syndrome'

I understand that this sounds unbelievable. But it is still true. The mothers of raped children, who are also described as "protective" mothers, are seen as guilty of "parental alienation syndrome." The fact that this concept, first pioneered by Dr. Richard Gardner and widely endorsed by fathers' rights groups, has been dismissed as junk science does not seem to matter. Most guardians ad litem, parenting counselors, mediators, lawyers, mental health professionals and judges still act as if this syndrome were real and mainly find mothers, not fathers, guilty in this regard. In 2010 the American Psychiatric Association was still fighting to include a new disorder in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders": the parental alienation disorder, to replace the debunked parental alienation syndrome.

In 2009 and 2010 more than 50 mothers from 21 U.S. states and a number of foreign countries all shared their stories with me. Their cases took place between the late 1980s and 2010. Some cases are still ongoing.

In some instances, I spoke with the mothers in person or at length on the phone. Some mothers filled out questionnaires, but many also sent additional narratives and documentation. Some mothers sent me eloquent, beautifully written, full-length memoirs. Some wrote pithy but equally heartbreaking accounts of their marriages and custody battles.

With a few exceptions, most of my 2010 mother-interviewees said that the system was "corrupt" and that lawyers and judges don't care about "justice," are "very biased," or can be "bought and sold."

Feeling Actively 'Disliked'

These mothers said that social workers, mental health professionals, guardians ad litem and parent coordinators--especially if they were women--actively "disliked" and were "cruel and hostile" to them as women. (Perhaps they expected women to be more compassionate toward other women. In this, they were sadly mistaken.)

Also, MANY mothers found that female professionals WERE OFTEN COMPLETELY TAKEN IN BY charming, sociopathic men ("parasites," "smother-fathers"), dangerously violent men and men who sexually abused their children.

Perhaps the mothers who sent me their stories were married to uniquely terrible men who used the court system to make their lives a living hell. Perhaps mothers who did not write to me had the good fortune to have been married to and divorced from far nicer men.

Good fathers definitely exist. Some fathers move heaven and earth to rescue their children from a genuinely mentally ill mother but do not try to alienate the children from her. If the mother has been the primary caretaker, some fathers give up custody, pay a decent amount of child support (and continue to do so) and work out a relationship with their children based on what's good for both the children and their mother.

These men exist. They do not launch custody battles from hell."

Phyllis Chesler is an emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at City University of New York, a psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. She is the cofounder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network, a charter member of the Women's Forum and the Veteran Feminists of America, a founder and board member of the International Committee for the Women of the Wall and an affiliated professor with Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities. She is the author of Women and Madness and Woman's Inhumanity to Woman. She lives in New York City.

---- June and July 2011 reviews ----

i) by (multiple - works') Author Talia Carner

Not since slavery in the USA were mothers punished by having their children taken away from them. Yet, in family courts all across America, judges and quasi-judicial officers of the court do just that: children who are abused or molested by their fathers are removed from their primary-care good mothers and are placed in the hands of their molesting fathers.

How this scandal can go on for decades with hardly any change, without any public outcry, and without any protest from human rights' activists is due to the fact that outsiders to the gutter of our family courts' justice simply refuse to believe it.


In her revised and updated milestone fact-filled book, "Mothers on Trial," Phyllis Chesler fights to save thousands of children from becoming yet another generation of victims of a court system that betrays them time and again. She points out that while adult women often recount childhood sexual molestation at home by close relatives--and these women's stories are believed--people tend to disbelieve when actually facing such cases as they happen in real time, right in front of them.

It is a documented fact that when fathers fight for custody, 70% of the time they obtain full or partial custody. People often assume that the reason these men who, in most part, have not been fully involved in their children's lives--sometimes have been absent for months or even years--now gain custody is because the mothers are unfit.

The naked truth is that IN MOST of these cases, the father is emotionally and verbally abusive or outright violent. The mother, often the product of an abusive home, often abused for years in her marriage to the father of her children, now faces battle for which she is woefully unequipped to wage. Distraught, terrified, isolated, alienated in a system that scrutinizes her with the same critical and belittling attitude she's encountered in her private lives, panicked over the fate of her sexually molested children, she seems "emotional" "unreasonable" and "difficult." Her refusal to share parenting or give access to a man who sexually molest her children is viewed as her being "rigid" and "uncooperative."

Furthermore, with limited or no financial resources, she comes to court either unrepresented by an attorney, or by an incompetent lawyer with little interest in the complexity of such a case. Or, as is often the case, she does not have the funds to keep the protracted legal battle a high-conflict custody case requires. Filing fees, transcripts, payments to evaluators and her lawyer's hourly rate quickly rise to thousands of dollars.

In the 1990s I stumbled upon the phenomenon of protective mothers losing these battles in droves, researched it for a few years, and finally published a novel about one such fictional mother in 2002. (Puppet Child.) Since then, I became an activist, trying to find ways to save thousands of children each year from family court's "justice." What amazes me is HOW LITTLE HAS CHANGED in the over decade in which I've witnessed more mothers enter the nightmare of family court, where they are discredited, disenfranchised and disbelieved.

Dr. Chesler has been at it a lot longer. Twenty-five years ago she published "Mothers on Trial," a book that starts with the history of men's ownership of their families and the lingering feudal notion of male supremacy as the head of the household. She pointed then--and continues to do so now in this excellent revised edition--that society and court hold men to much lower parenting standards than they do women.

Mothers fail at every single checklist (Does the divorced mother have sex? Is she overwrought with anxiety? Is she poor?) while men can be cold, disinterested, dysfunctional or even violent and they will be excused. In fact, fathers are given new chances time and again to foster their relationships with their children regardless of their abhorant personal histories, while mothers' contact with their children are not only curtailed or cut down to expensive supervised visitations, but ALL TOO OFTEN ARE SEVERED COMPLETELY.

If a father poisons a child's mind against the mother, it does not enter into the question of his parenting skills. But all too often, a child's fear of an abusive father is regarded as the mother's brainwashing the child, rather than the father's own doing. A judge will then chastise the mother for not encouraging enough the relationship with the father--and ACTUALLY TRANSFER CUSTODY TO THAT ABUSIVE FATHER. The notion of the best interest of the child and how much the child stands to suffer from CUTTING THE BOND WITH THE PRIME CARE-TAKING MOTHER and shuttling the child into a new life with a man the child fears, DOES NOT ENTER INTO THE EQUATION.

In this revised edition, after editing out six chapters and adding eight more while updating the available research, Dr. Chesler examines closely MANY SUCH CASES OF OUTRIGHT INJUSTICE THAT DEFY ANYTHING PEOPLE KNOW AND BELIEVE POSSIBLE IN OUR SOCIETY.

Phyllis Chesler's book is a must read for every judge, court evaluation, guardian ad litem, social worker, psychologist and lawyer. But more importantly, IT SHOULD BE READ BY ANYONE WHO CARES ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS OR ABOUT CHILDREN, because it is time we raise our collective indignation to stop and reverse the life sentence without parole our courts inflict upon children placed in the hands of their molesters.

ii) by Paula J Caplan

Phyllis Chesler's work was brave and groundbreaking when the first edition of this book appeared many years ago and is equally brave and poignantly still much-needed, because things are no better and in some ways are worse for mothers than they used to be. Every parent going through a custody battle, every lawyer, and every judge should have to read this book. In fact, _everyone_ should read it, because I am astonished by how many people think, upon hearing a fragment of what Chesler reports in the book, and want to believe ... it cannot be true. That it is true, no one reading her book can ever doubt.

iii) by Lauren Crane

As an experienced matrimonial lawyer in Manhattan, this updated and modernized classic should be required reading in law schools. It should be in the library of every single professional who deals with custody, divorce, and children. That means judges, law guardians, mediators and mental health personnel. Child Protective Service workers should be required to read this. It is a solid piece of work about a heartbreaking situation.

iv) by Zara Feingold

As a college student and as a young feminist, I find Phyllis Chesler's Mothers on Trial to be a unique and invaluable resource. This book should be required reading for feminists, future lawyers, and all those who care about social justice. In her classic whistle-blowing fashion,
Dr. Chesler exposes America's courts as anti-mother. Chesler's thousands of interviews that span three decades tragically expose women as survivors of many different intersecting oppressions. White women, black women, American Indian women, poor women, and lesbian women are all victims of a sexist, racist, classist, and homophobic bureaucracy.

This book is not only for mothers who are going through a custody battle.
It is for young women who want to dismantle patriarchy for their generation. Chelser's interviews are heartbreaking and tragic, but can create real change within the American legal system.

Thank you, Phyllis Chesler, for your bravery and vigilance!

v) by Kerry V MacKenzie

Embroiled in a world and a system that I never knew existed, I felt lost and alone. More than lost and alone, I felt horrified. I was a fulltime mother fighting for custody from my ex who called me 'crazy, a bad mother, delusional.' The worst of it was that in family court I was presumed guilty until proven innocent. From the lawyers to the legal guardian to the judge,
I was treated as if I was invisible. If my forensic psychiatrist had not been unbiased and thoughtful, I would have lost my children to a bitter and vengeful man, and it would have been likely I would have never seen them again.

It was so bizarre that I thought I was the only person in the world to experience this institutional contempt, or worse, that I was imagining it. That is, until I read this book.

If you are going through a custody battle, your experiences need to be validated with this book. It is a dear friend during hard times.

vi) by Mordechai Stern

This book is not just for feminists and certainly not just for mothers. Anyone who cares about fighting injustice in the American legal system should read Mothers on Trial.

Reading about the pain of these mothers who have been robbed of their children, and about their courage and devotion to their children in the most trying circumstances has certainly made me a better son.

vii) by Fern Sidman

Feminist icon Phyllis Chesler does it again!! The newly released, updated version of her classic monograph, Mothers On Trial, is a powerful testament to the flagrant and continuing injustices that custodially challenged mothers face in this country and beyond. This compelling tome is a real page turner guaranteed to evoke palpable emotions as egregious facts about the patriarchal family court system are revealed in nuanced detail. Beautifully written, empathic and courageous, tremendously insightful.

For all mothers caught in the maelstrom of a child custody battle, it is strongly recommended that you run out and buy this book !! It will serve as a soothing and compassionate source of succor while simultaneously educating, enlightening and empowering women who are faced with this excruciatingly painful tribulation. A must read !!

viii) by (multiple - works') Author Trish Wilson

I read the original edition of this book many years ago and I saw how well – researched and supported it was. This new version is even better. The additional chapters show the difficulties and impossible position mothers are in these days worldwide and throughout history. This is an important book that must be required reading for all students so they know the truth about child custody and motherhood the media refuses to report.

ix) by Lorraine Tipton

Thank you, Phyllis Chesler, for being one of the voices of reason, sanity and truth with these social injustices we have faced in family court. Our time is coming....our voices are no longer silenced...we have suffered...but we have persevered and grown stronger. There is nothing stronger than the mighty Phoenix who rises through the ashes. We are beyond "survivor" label and are now warriors...and we will be victorious! Hell hath no fury like the most dangerous place to be: between a mother and her child!

Twenty years later and now the mothers have figured out what they have been doing to us. We have social networked with thanks to the internet; and now we are never going to shut up, give up or go away!

x) by Valette Clark

For those of us who have been through this nightmare, this book is hope.
It is hope for the future victim families who will be discriminated against in a system and process that mirrors our societal views promoting institutionalized sexism.

It is at the base of who we are as a society and why violence is accepted in the home and continues to rise statistically each year. Violent crime in the home has been given a separate category governed by a separate set of "domestic laws" rather than criminal laws while all violence is a crime. The politicians could and should change this but I do not believe they really want to and this attitude is not gender specific. Women and men alike hold deep seated feelings and ideas that they learned from a young age that families deserve whatever they get -- from an abusive spouse to an abusive court system. I can only hope and pray that all family court systems in the US review this book and actually take a look in the mirror. They may not like what they see!

xi) by Judy Gee

Dr. Chesler has written this very important book that should be on the reading list for every woman who is unprepared for the way the world works. This book should also be required reading for every young woman who is considering marriage. If you are involved with a man who is controlling toward you and vengeful toward others while you are still in the enchantment stage of your relationship, you might want to reconsider. These are poignant and quite terrifying cautionary tales from women who desperately try to gain custody of their children. Their courageous struggle not to be overwhelmed by the injustices of our justice system as it applies to custodial mothers is an inspiration to fight on.

xii) by Louis Santacroce

Every word of this book is true! I see these guys EVERY DAY! They are the bane of my job. Right now, I have a guy calling me daily about how the guy his ex is now living with is a registered sex offender (he's not, not even an unregistered one) and how they sleep in the same bed with his five year old daughter.

Another calls to complain that his wife has him arrested for no reason whenever he tries to see his children, neglecting to inform me (as the police have no trouble doing) that he shows up to see his kids drunk and at 3 AM, and tries to run the mother over with his pick-up when she tells him to go away.

They all want custody because their ex's are no good whores who suddenly became alcoholics, junkies and sleep-arounds without them to keep 'em in line.
But when I go to interview the kids, 90% of them are terrified of the FATHERS and beg not to be returned to them.

xiii) by Jennifer Jones

Phyllis Chesler's Mothers On Trial is a remarkable contribution to contemporary feminist activism. Current liberal academia completely neglects America's anti-mother courts. This is to the detriment of the millions of good mothers who are systematically robbed of their children every day.

Chesler writes about thousands of white, American Indian, black, and lesbian mothers spanning a wide socioeconomic net. Third wave feminists will find great profundity and inspiration in Dr. Chesler's analysis of racism and homophobia within America's custody battles. Chesler's experience as a psychologist gives deep and unique analysis to these devastating custody battles.

Well researched, intellectually ambitious, and highly emotional, Mothers on Trial is a sacred friend for mothers who have experienced unjust loss of children. Chesler's work is also a frightening cautionary tale to a younger generation of activists who are blind to this hidden manifestation of patriarchy.

xiv) by Ann

How can this happen in a "good country"; what is happening to families will effect the future. Most people turn a blind eye to what is really happening to good mothers. This book highlights the belief that "mothers who lose their children must have done something awful"----is a myth.

xv) by Fern

Feminist icon Phyllis Chesler does it again!! The newly released updated version of her classic monograph, "Mothers On Trial" is a powerful testament to the flagrant and continuing injustices that custodially challenged mothers face in this country and beyond. This compelling tome is a real page turner; guaranteed to evoke palpable emotions as egregious facts about the patriarchal family court system are revealed in nuanced detail. Beautifully written; empathic and courageous; tremendously insightful. For all mothers caught in the maelstrom of a child custody battle, it is strongly recommended that you run out and buy this book !! It will serve as a soothing and compassionate source of succor, while simultaneously educating, enlightening and empowering women who are faced with this excruciatingly painful tribulation. A must read !!

xvi) by Brenda

Mothers on Trial is eye opening. Per Dr. Chesler, most people who have never experienced a custody battle believe the myth that mothers always win custody as they are believed to be inherently more nurturing. This falsity has achieved prominence because most fathers do not want custody. However, when fathers do want custody, they usually get it.

Stereotypically nurturing women are held to completely different standards than are their male counterparts. Good mothers are shunned and abusive and neglectful fathers are rewarded for their "devotion."

Others have tried to shed light on this tragic problem. However, only Phyllis Chesler has done justice to these thousands of women's stories. Mothers on Trial incorporates rigorous research, including hundreds of interviews spanning a wide ethnic and geographical net. Mothers on Trial tells all those who care about children's welfare to rise up and create change. Beyond Chesler's tragic stories and psychological analysis is a plan for progress and human rights.

20 March 2011

Great – Grandma Adeline’s and Great – Grandpa Arthur’s 92nd Wedding Anniversary

JYeah well, maybe not. But were the two of these folks, indeed, breathing, then today would be that: Great – Grandma Adeline Baach’s and Great – Grandpa Arthur Maas’ 92nd Wedding Anniversary.

I remember at my Grandma Adeline’s death – bedside October 1985, hearing from her about her and Arthur’s day in 1919’s eastern Iowa springtime. She regaled about the fact that for her dress she had actually not gone from out of the Montgomery Wards catalog with the conventional mawwying fabric of the times: black taffeta ... but that she actually had led off the county’s women in being its first bride of the post war to order, sew up and wear, instead, a flowy organza number in ... (gasp !) white !

Into what she changed –– that of her trousseau –– after their promises? That was done up in ... the black taffeta, instead ! All of the county was agog and gaggling when its folks later learned of Adeline’s such the ... breach ... of mawwiage tradition !

Then, tiny – / tiny – boned, itsy bitsy – framed Great – Grandma Adeline, the mounds of her platinum locks as snowy - glistening as ever before and herself born in eastern Iowa on 24 December 1896, giggled and giggled and giggled ... as she queried me, "Well, Syn – thee, so as they say: have you done the math by now?"

"Why, Gramma – Gramma, whatever do you mean?"

"You know, Girl, You know. You have the same birthday, Girl, as your daddy does … the Winter Solstice, not ?! So … ah, soooo Syn – thee, … what’s nine months from the 20th of March ?!"

11 February 2011

(Anna Mina Augusta) Gussie Oldenberg and Carl Holden –––– on yet another 11 February – Friday

(Anna Mina Augusta) Gussie Oldenberg and Carl Holden

d. Friday, 11 February 1949

HOLDEN, OLDENBERG, HASTINGS, BRUNS, TILLMAN, MAAS, PALMER, HUMPHREY, MAYLAND, LUBKEMANN, EDWARDS, WETJEN, JONES, WALLACE, ROGERS, HARRINGTON, GLANDORF, WITTE, DANE, LANDA, HEITSHUSEN

Williamsburg Journal – Tribune, Williamsburg (Iowa County), Iowa,
17 February 1949

EXPLOSION AND FIRE IN TOURIST CABIN AT BEAUMONT, TEXAS, CAUSES DEATH FRIDAY OF MR. AND MRS. HOLDEN

Services In Memoriam Held At Presbyterian Church Here Tues. Afternoon Attended By Hundreds Of Their Neighbors

Carl Holden, born June 29, 1884, and Augusta Oldenburg Holden, his wife born June 11, 1883, while on a vacation tour in the south met death under tragic circumstances.

It was in a tourist cabin at Beaumont, Texas that an explosion caused the death of Mr. and Mrs. Holden. Gas came from an unused gas vent which was opened when the bed was moved away from the wall. Both after the accident were removed to the Dien hospital in Beaumont Friday, February 11.

Funeral services were held in the Presbyterian church in Williamsburg, Iowa, Tuesday afternoon at 2 o'clock. The Rev. Lloyd Snyder officiating.

Mr. Holden was born on the old farm homestead in York township and
Mrs. Holden was born on the Oldenberg family place near Sigourney in Keokuk county.

The parents of Mr. Holden were Myron W. Holden and Emma Hastings Holden. Mrs. Holden's parents were George Oldenberg and Anna Bruns Oldenberg.

Both received their education in the rural schools of their home districts, and in addition Mrs. Holden took two years of high school normal training preparing herself for teaching which profession she followed for eight years.

They were married August 11, 1908, in the Evangelical Lutheran church at Sigourney, Iowa, the Rev. Tillman officiating.

For the first two years the couple made their home on the Oldenberg farm near Sigourney. Later they moved to the Frendal neighborhood where they lived for five years.

In 1916, they moved to the old farm home in York township in Iowa county where in the course of twenty seven years they together fostered and developed Mr. Holden's life long interest in hybrid corn and saw the industry develop into a large enterprise.

In November, 1944, they retired and came to Williamsburg. They are survived by three sons and one daughter. The sons are Palmer and Carlton of Tipton, and Roland on the farmstead near Williamsburg. The daughter is Mrs. Willard Maas of Williamsburg. One son Russell died in infancy.

He is further survived by sisters, Mrs. Edith Palmer and Mrs. Carrie Humphrey of Long Beach, California, and brothers, Eugene M. of North English and Roscoe G. of Des Moines.

The survivors of Mrs. Holden include three sisters: Mrs. Doris Mayland of Ottumwa Iowa, Mrs. Adda Lubkemann of Hampton, Ia., and Mrs. Charlotte Edwards of Beaman, Iowa. They had twelve grandchildren.

Interment was in Oak Hill cemetery. Pallbearers were Albert Wetjen,
O.E. Jones, Arthur Wallace, Lon Rogers, Howard Harrington, Arthur Glandorf, George P. Maas, H.F. Witte, George L. Dane, Ross Landa, Anton Heitshusen and Martin Glandorf.

posted by Ms Melissa Mayhew Grandt // // 13 April 2009 @ 21:43:17

22 December 2010

One, Simple Telephone Call

With the FULL MOON - Winter Solstice y2010, on what would have been Willard Maas’s 91st birthday and is my 63rd,

... One, Simple Telephone Call:

Sexism and chicanery surrounding a farmland property’s mineral rights' matter is exactly why, when I was a junior in high school, Grandpa Willard was fired from Des Moines’ Brenton Bank. 1965. He, at age 45, and my mother had two children in college –– and two others still in high school, planning to attend college.

Willard had himself just left Iowa State University’s Department of Economics and interviewed at 14 different places. With his snow white hair, the man was told always that he was "too old." (Now allegedly a crime but, then — [and … now, … still … of course!] — very much an habitual workplace discrimination.) WHEN ... ... he was a land appraiser, new there in his first year, for this central Iowa bank.

One day he discovered a rock quarry underneath a 33 – year – old widow's property which she, having moved to California, still owned from her and her husband's estate back in Iowa — before the man had suddenly died. Because she desperately needed some money for her two children and from afar then, the single mother had requested the Bank to sell the property, she believing it nothing more than scrubland barely suitable for grazing cattle.

On behalf of this specific Brenton Bank having been asked by the woman to sell it off, Willard, then, was assigned to go out and appraise the property. He found a rock quarry underneath her scrub. When he went back to the bank and told them this, the bank’s officials said that he should call the owner and tell her a $ figure which she would be expecting to hear and that under no circumstance was Willard to give to her .no way / no how. the Truth about it all, let alone, the $ figure which it was actually worth.

The Bank officials planned to buy it all themselves, get its deed into the Bank’s owned records, then to later find an "appropriate" buyer for it such as a rock quarry business —— and, in the end, to give over to the woman in California only the amount from this sale which she would be expecting. To KEEP the rest for themselves.

Nights my mother and father were up late at the kitchen table, about two or three weeks' worth of nights. Then one of those days Daddy no longer had a job — and we were moving back to the farmhouse outside of Williamsburg; Daddy was going to go to work for Holden's, farm a little and walk the watchman's beat evenings and nights over at the Amana Refrigeration Plant 30 minutes’ drive away ... all in one 24 – hour period.

Grandpa Willard had not done what the bankers had ordered him to do.

Never having laid eyes upon the woman then nor since, Willard Maas telephoned her out in California, all right, from our home in Ankeny —— and told her of what he knew. And advised her to, straightaway, get for herself an attorney.

She did.

Willard Maas was fired. And, lock – stock – and – barrel, we all left Ankeny.

And I have never dealt, ever, with a Brenton Bank —— since. And will not.

Grandpa Willard was fired --- AND ... BLACKBALLED.

Before he made that telephone call to the woman, the Bank officials had further threatened him, "You tell her, and we will blackball you in all the banks in Iowa.

You will never work in another bank again."

Let alone, in a rural one, thereby ... his actually using the agricultural economics background and education which he had just acquired during his bachelor's and master's programs at Iowa State University, beginning these degrees then at the age of 40, thus becoming the University’s first "older" / “alternative” ISU student in the Spring Quarter of 1960. And because of this endeavor, our family had been written up and featured in the Spring 1961 issue of The Iowan magazine as that: the family of the "first" yada, yada, yada ...

And ... he never did. Willard Maas never again worked in another bank.

Without a doubt, Willard Maas at the second start of his college years (his first two years at Iowa State University having been derailed in 1939, by the poliomyelitis virus) —— as with others' lives similarly ... 'rerouted' —— could not have imagined for them all ... this end result.

No one will ever remember Grandpa Willard for the mighty fine Pendleton wool, bezillion – $ suits and the glove – snug Armani wingtips he never wore nor for the effusive parties he never threw nor for the lavish vacation cruises he never took, not even for the fact that likely due to his huge hearing loss and his brain in general, he did own the finest speaking voice and the most massive vocabulary of anyone I have ever, ever known.

But Righteous Ancestor Willard Maas .WILL. be remembered for ——
this one, simple telephone call.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

18 December 2010

Mr DeFord's comment this week

[Carol DeFord and her spouse, Frank, regular ‘Morning Edition’ commentator on npr on Wednesdays, lost to death from cystic fibrosis a child at the little girl’s age of eight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Deford

I loathe that this ("In a crowded world of images, you need the extreme to upset the accepted; you need a phenomenon to change the everyday.") is true re struggling against sexism, in particular. But it is true.

Frank DeFord, although he is senior Sports Illustrated writer, is the only man in sports media (of whom I know) who .regularly. writes about -- -- and then, too, actually in his very own voice loudly and .regularly. speaks out about -- -- struggling against sexism.

Frank DeFord has long, long ago made My Edition list -- -- the registry of names, past and present and of short - to - moderate length, of men (of whom I know) ... whom I do and would ... trust.]

Sweetness And Light

by Frank DeFord // 15 December 2010

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132053134/uconn-women-s-team-rises-to-a-watershed-moment

On the whole, far less attention is paid to women's team sports than to women's individual sports. The most recognized female stars are invariably tennis players, swimmers, skiers –– whereas most popular male heroes are team players.

After all, these guys are on our teams. They're playing for us. Women's teams have never enjoyed that sense of the possessive.

And it's not so simple as the old glass-ceiling analogy. No, it's more emotional: teams represent our city, our college. They represent us –– the old team spirit. So, for many gentlemen, having a team of girls representing us is too much to bear.

And to be frank, female fans have themselves miserably failed their sisters; they've not yet come to support women's teams as men do their own athletes.

O, there was that feel-good moment in the summer of '99 when our American women won the soccer World Cup. But an attempt at a women's pro soccer league quickly collapsed, and a new one barely survives. Women's pro basketball is humored –– forced to play in the off-season, the summer, so the desperate arenas can at least open the concession stands.

In college, women's softball, volleyball, and ice hockey are tolerated mostly just as necessary evils –– fill up the Title IX quota. They sure don't fill up the stands. Watch your local 6 o'clock news. How often does the sports guy even make a reference to a women's team game?

Sure, Serena and Venus get mentioned during the Grand Slams; the be-sequined figure-skater dolls every four years at the Olympics; maybe golfer Michelle Wie if she's in contention this weekend — but women's teams?

That's why the University of Connecticut's basketball team and its 87 consecutive victories mean so much. The streak places a spotlight on all of women's basketball.

The Huskies force people –– men and women alike –– to at least think about women's teams. The idea. Little girls see UConn and they realize they don't have to pick up a tennis racket or a pair of figure skates. By being so good, UConn has not just transcended its sport, but it's doing a number on tradition. On sexism, too.

And, well, as for numbers, the Huskies can, within a week, pass the incredible record of 88 wins in a row set by the UCLA men back in the 1970s. Whether the Huskies break that record or not –– and they're not so very good this year that they couldn't come a cropper against Ohio State this Sunday –– they sure have made people notice them.

By its success, UConn is to women's basketball sort of what the Baltimore Colts-New York Giants overtime game in 1958 was to the NFL. After that, fans stayed tuned to pro football. They bought tickets.

In a crowded world of images, you need the extreme to upset the accepted; you need a phenomenon to change the everyday.
=====
"Under no persuasion could I be made to believe that a human sacrifice several thousand years ago vicariously redeems me from sin. Nothing could persuade me that that was true, or moral, by the way. It's white noise to me." Christopher Hitchens, @ the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 13 October 2010, and published in Freethought Today, Freedom From Religion Foundation, December 2010 issue.

"I wouldn't say that religion is a form of mental illness, but I will say that religion allows perfectly sane and neurologically healthy people to believe things by the millions that only mentally ill people could believe on their own. The social support of doctrine allows for quite crazy beliefs in the 21st century to be held and operated upon by perfectly sane people." Sam Harris in discussing his The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values and published in Freethought Today, Freedom From Religion Foundation, December 2010 issue.

"Staff attorney Patrick Elliott's correspondence with the Janesville (Wisconsin) Public School system got Alcoholics Anonymous dropped from the curriculum of a public charter school." The Annual Freedom From Religion Foundation Report and Year in Review for 2010, http://www.ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today/articles/overheard-november-2010

"Another judge maintained that he believed women sought protection orders in order to get the family home. Another judge refused to believe one woman's story because her husband was a physician and a 'pillar of the community.' Another judge refused to believe a woman because she had no visible bruises by the time she appeared in his court, and he suggested she come back after her next beating!" -- -- US Congressional hearing - testimony re "justice" meted out on to ."American". women -- -- http://www.mith2.umd.edu/WomensStudies/GenderIssues/Violence+Women/testimony-morella

19 September 2010

in this age of gaming, then: … the Custody Evaluator Bullshit BINGO game …

... The custody evaluator version of the old - fashioned Bullshit BINGO game is now online courtesy of Frank Ledo, programmer.

http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/custody_evaluator and

http://www.buzzwordbingogame.com/cards/custody_evaluator

Cards only (handy for printing)
http://www.buzzwordbingogame.com/cards/custody_evaluator/?cardonly=1

The game can be played in multiple milieus.

Signaling by the winner will vary depending upon where the game is being held.

In educational venues, such as meetings in law offices, continuing education conferences at which the evaluator is pontificating, and in law school family law classes, it is appropriate to use the old-fashioned enthusiastic expression of joy that characterized the original "buzzword" bingo game, coupled (at the winner's option) by feet shuffling or even stomping or cheering.

In the courtroom or during depositions, however, a winner who feels inhibited by formal protocols may, instead, utter something along the lines of "I heard a Who!" or "Psssst -- No clothes!" (the latter being short for "The Emperor has no clothes!") or any creative variation thereof in the winner's discretion, with or without a choking fit, that will be understood by the other game players.

The foregoing notwithstanding, lawyers playing the game in court are deemed to win if at any point in the game they move to strike the evaluator's testimony. Bonus tournament points also are given IF (heh.heh.heh) ... the judge agrees!

presented here from liz of http://www.thelizlibrary.org and
http://www.thelizlibrary.org/child-centered-divorce/child-centered-divorce.html

20 June 2010

the Archipiélago de Galápagos

Ola from Quito on the Eve of 0º0'0" 's Summer Solstice y2010, and my last of all nights here and in four of the Archipiélago de Galápagos: Balta, Santa Cruz, Isabela and Floreana, with Juan Carlos. ´

Out tomorrow morning and back to work Wednesday, 23 June 2010.

And on to the next adventure.

The ... Archipiélago de Galápagos ... =s closest, most recently, to an .actual. spiritual experience.

:) Azul

24 May 2010

A Feminist’s Anniversary re Her Scorched Earth

... the video of this link PLUS Chapter Twenty – Three
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxRm7_faGto

of http://bluemaas.public.iastate.edu/chapter_23

Mawwiage: Thy Scientific Name, Thy Scorched – Earth Plague is Misogyny

“Women have very little idea of how much ... men hate them.”

--- The Female Eunuch, 1970, and Germaine Greer’s opening sentence,
p 245, of the first chapter, “Loathing and Disgust,” in its Part IV
entitled “Hate”

18 May 2010

TWO WORDS =s THE key to World Peace AND World Prosperity: HONOR WOMEN

i) May 2010 by Elizabeth Black http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/05/19/abused-women-in-maryland-arent-lying
ABUSIVE fathers are more likely to obtain primary custody when domestic violence is present, alleged or not.

ii) How Family Courts Punish Abused Women

17 May 2010 by R. Dianne Bartlow http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/05/17/how-family-courts-punish-abused-women

“The dirtiest little secret in America” is that family courts, in deciding custody, often wreak devastation upon mothers and children.

So argue Mo Therese Hannah and Barry Goldstein, editors of the new anthology Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody, which brings to light what many familiar with the family court system have long known: Designed to dispense justice, the system has become instead “an instrument of oppression,” particularly in cases involving domestic violence.

To find a chilling example of what the editors mean, we need look no further than the recent murder of infant Wyatt Garcia, reported in the Daily Beast:

Wyatt Garcia was born in April 2009. Nine months later, he was shot and killed by his father, who then turned the gun on himself.

It might have turned out differently—if a family-court judge had listened to Wyatt’s mother.

Wyatt’s mother, Katie Tagle, had previously filed three motions in family court for an order of protection against the baby’s father, Stephen Garcia, alleging that he had physically assaulted her and harassed her and her family. Garcia was apparently jealous that she was dating again. In the last motion, Tagle charged that Garcia “had threatened to kill her and their baby.”

The San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Robert Lemkau chose to believe Garcia’s denials over the evidence supplied by Tagle – which included emails, text messages, and voice messages, according to the Daily Beast. Tagle says she was treated like a “criminal” and “complaining woman.”

One goal of Hannah and Goldstein’s book is to convince judges, attorneys, and others who work in the court system that all forms of abusive behavior, whether physical, verbal, financial or legal, cause harm to women and children. On the legal side, men who abuse their female intimate partners have successfully used strategies such as false accusations, harassment, manipulation, and intimidation to win custody while often driving their victims into poverty. According to contributing author and lawyer Joan Zorza:

Abusive men not only harass their victims, many harass their partners’ lawyers and manipulate those in and connected with the court system who are supposed to insure that children are placed with their better parent in a safe, nurturing environment.

This makes it all the stranger that about half of the time batterers win custody in family courts. They are actually more likely to win custody than men who do not abuse their partners, according to Zorza. Over the past nine months, 75 children have been murdered by abusive fathers who used custody battles to get even with the mothers, according to the Daily Beast.

Yet Katie Tagle’s dismissive treatment by family courts is all-too-familiar. While there has been a growing awareness over the last 30 years of the harm domestic violence causes, courts are more and more ignoring women’s allegations of domestic violence and holding them responsible for their own abuse. This is largely due to courts’ reliance upon mental health experts who have inadequate training in intimate violence or child sexual abuse and who are easily manipulated by batterers.

Gender bias plays a large role in this backlash, according to the editors:

Compared to men, women are disbelieved more often, held to much higher standards, and judged far more punitively for failings such as drinking, use of drugs, adultery or hostility to their partners. …Such behaviors are readily seen as grounds for giving the father custody.

Hannah and Goldstein hope to also expose two particularly harmful court practices that have evolved over the last several decades: Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), and “friendly parent” statutes. PAS provides a handy–and utterly without basis–refutation to incest and abuse claims by blaming mothers for any hostility that the children feel towards their fathers, maintaining that children love and respect their fathers unless a “poisonous” mother has convinced them otherwise. Even alleged incest and violence are not deemed reason enough for children to independently turn against their fathers.

Since PAS has been deemed by the American Psychological Association to have no scientific backing, at least 32 states have incorporated the milder sounding “friendly parent” concept into their custody laws. This gives custody to the parent who will encourage the child to have more contact and a better relationship with the other parent. Often mothers are hurt by the friendly parent concept, since they can be deemed “unfriendly” for saying anything against the father, including alleging abuse. Zorza says that, ironically enough:

The unfriendly behavior of noncustodial parents (usually the father), such as not paying child support, physically or verbally abusing the mother, or stalking her, is not considered as meeting the definition of unfriendly.

With such an approach, Zorza says, family violence is discounted, and abusers are empowered while battered women are disempowered. Ultimately, children are harmed.

Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody will be instructive for policymakers, those working in the family justice system, and members of the media–which the authors say has by-and-large failed to expose custody court scandals. But it is a must-read for any mother involved in a child custody battle, and especially for mothers trying get free from an abusive relationship.

iii) Female Sales Reps Win Case Against (birth control - maker!) Novartis In Largest Gender Discrimination Case to Go to Verdict // Jury Says Pharma Giant Discriminated Against Women and LARGEST - EVER AWARD in GENDER - BIAS case // http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFriendly.jsp?id=1202458479079

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/female-sales-reps-win-case-against-novartis-in-largest-gender-discrimination-case-to-go-to-verdict-93965454.html

NEW YORK, 17 May 17 / PRNewswire -- A New York jury handed Novartis Pharmaceuticals a bitter pill today, finding the giant drug maker guilty of gender discrimination in pay, promotional opportunities and pregnancy-related matters. The nation-wide class of 5,600 female sales representatives earned the victory in Judge Colleen McMahon's courtroom in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

In addition to delivering a verdict for the Plaintiffs, the jury awarded the 12 testifying witnesses some $3.36 million in compensatory damages for the specific instances of discrimination testified to by those witnesses. This award is just the beginning of the money that will be associated with this verdict.

In deliberations tomorrow, the jury will determine how much in punitive damages to award against the company in order to punish it for its discriminatory acts and to deter it from behaving so in the future.

Judge McMahon will determine a separate amount of class damages for the approximate 5,600 individuals in the class at a later date. Those class damages will include back-pay damages for lost earnings.

In separate proceedings, compensatory damages will be decided for each member of the class that opts-in. Those damages will include money for the pain and suffering caused by Novartis' discriminatory acts.

In addition, Judge McMahon now has the opportunity to order Novartis to make changes to its policies and procedures in order to prevent future discriminatory behavior.
The class includes female sales representatives who have worked for the drug giant between 2002 and 2007. Thirteen of them testified during the five week trial. The class action was originally filed in 2004. The case is Amy Velez et al., vs. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation 04 Civ. 09194.

The case was the largest gender discrimination matter ever to go to trial in the U.S.

The women were represented by David Sanford, Steven Wittels and Katherine Kimpel in the New York and Washington, D.C. offices of Sanford, Wittels & Heisler LLP, and Grant Morris, of Washington, D.C.

"Today's verdict sends a clear and powerful message to Novartis and every corporation in the United States: women are equal partners in our workforce. The days of second-class citizenship are over. Play by the rules or be subject to great exposure – financially and reputationally," said David Sanford. "This verdict is the first step in bringing about long overdue changes at Novartis and other companies that encourage or tolerate unfair treatment of women in their workplaces. We'll have to wait and see just how much the jury awards in punitive damages, but this is certainly a company that deserves to be punished for the way it has mistreated working women in this country."

"This jury learned that Novartis is not somewhere you would want your wife, your mother, your sister or your daughter to work," said Kate Kimpel. "Novartis expected its female employees to do more than just go out and market its drugs -- Novartis has a corporate culture that expects female representatives to be available and amenable to sexual advances from the doctors they call on. Time and time again, Novartis looked the other way when female representatives complained about inappropriate doctors. And then, to add insult to injury, Novartis paid those same women less, wouldn't promote them into management, and punished them if they got pregnant. Novartis refused to treat its female employees as the competent and hard-working professionals that they were and are."

On the first day of the trial in the defense's opening statement, Novartis' own attorney said of an abusive male district manager, who had shown female sales reps pornography and invited them to sit on his lap, "He wasn't that bad a manager. He was just terrible with women." *!*!*!

Novartis kept that manager on staff, actively managing women in the field, for years after it first learned of his inappropriate behavior.

Although several of Novartis' witnesses claimed it had a "zero tolerance policy" for discrimination, those same witnesses admitted that managers were not terminated or demoted even when complaints of discrimination were substantiated by HR.

Steven Wittels said of today's victory, "This jury has sent a message to Novartis ---- Get your house in order! Change your culture: the 'old boys network' will not be tolerated. Provide your HR department with enough resources to create policies which mandate employment equity across the board, and provides training and guidance as well as people to make sure the laws are respected and followed."

Novartis was created in 1996 through a merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz pharmaceutical companies. Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, the company had 2009 sales of $44.3 billion.

Sanford Wittels & Heisler is a law firm with offices in Washington, D.C., New York, and San Francisco that specializes in employment discrimination, wage and hour, consumer and complex corporate class action litigation and has represented thousands of individuals in some of the major class action cases in the United States. The firm also represents individual clients in employment, employment discrimination, sexual harassment, whistleblower, public accommodations, commercial, medical malpractice, and personal injury matters. More information at www.SWHlegal.com

*!*!*! DEFINITION of "MANAGER" ---- IF a person canNOT work managing ... women, THEN the person canNOT work ... managing!

IF he canNOT manage himself, then he canNOT ... MANAGE!

11 May 2010

respecting NONmagical – / freethinking

respecting NONreligion -- from Teaching TOLERANCE & the Southern Poverty Law Center and

http://www.tolerance.org/activity/respecting-nonreligious-people?newsletter=TT051110

* Level:* Grades 3 to 5 * Grades 6 to 8 * Grades 9 to 12

* Subject:* Reading and Language Arts * Social Studies * ELL / ESL

"Students often learn the importance of respecting people of different religions, and of respecting religious beliefs that are different from their own. But what about people who do not hold religious beliefs at all? Too often the right not to believe is excluded from lessons about tolerance.

Yet atheists and others who do not believe in gods experience discrimination because of their NONbelief. In this lesson, students learn about episodes of anti - atheist discrimination; and they develop ways to educate others about respecting nonreligious, as well as religious, diversity."

10 May 2010

Is it too much to ask for a MOTHER on the Supreme Court?

As long as the diversity nonsense continues ad nauseam, how about -- FINALLY -- a representative from a TRUE, and not faux, demographic group ... THE largest one there is?

FLIP / REVERSE -- AGAIN! How many SUPREME COURT justices over the years have, themselves, not been fathers? What has been, since the Court's inception, the ratio of them that were fathers to them that were not (... ever ... ) fathers, "step" [- back and - away when there is actually, in the kiddos' lives, true ... ] fathers, ahalfadaddy or someone's ... sugar ... daddee?

http://trueslant.com/level/2010/05/09/headed-for-a-motherless-supreme-court-elena-kagan-nominee

Elena Kagan sends us on the way to a(nother) MOTHERLESS Supreme Court .by Michael Rosten

As Mother's Day comes to a close, we're hearing reports that tomorrow morning, President Obama will nominate an individual to be the ninth Supreme Court Justice to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

If Mike Allen's reporting for Politico and NBC News's late breaking report holds up, that nominee will be Elena Kagan, the current Solicitor General of the United States.

There are all manner of issues to raise where Kagan is concerned -- from the relevant, such as her minimal record of scholarship and her lack of judicial experience, to the irrelevant such as rumors that she's a lesbian. Critics also have expressed concern that she's too conservative-leaning for an Obama appointee. But an issue about Kagan that hasn't been discussed is one that transcends her -- if she is confirmed as a Supreme Court Associate Justice this year, the nation's top bench will be heading toward a make-up with no mothers sitting on it for the first time since 1981.

It will be great to have three women sitting on the nation's highest court, but it probably won't last for long. An aging Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg remains sharp as a tack, but her health is not great, and like Justice Stevens, she might feel the time is right to exit the bench while there is a guarantee that President Obama can replace her with someone who won’t move the Court to the far right.

There are no guarantees that a third Obama justice will be a woman, and even the statistical probability that he won't appoint another woman given the variety of constituencies that he'll need to satisfy with his next pick. And that will mean that the two women sitting on the nation's high court (Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor being the other) will both be single and childless.

Certainly there is no requirement that every Justice sitting on the court be a parent. But on a powerful body full of fathers, is it too much to ask that we have one mother as a member of the Supreme Court?

I would posit that there are an enormous number of problems in our country that have or will come before the Supreme Court in which motherhood is a critically important detail. From abortion to discrimination in the workplace to future technologies concerning genetic engineering and beyond, women and the decisions they make (or don't get to make) about becoming mothers to sons and daughters will be burning issues in Supreme Court jurisprudence. Mothers in our society are often forced to make complicated decisions about their lives and those of their children that are not necessarily faced by childless women or even fathers for that matter. And since 1981, the Court has had the benefit of having a mother involved in deliberations on these issues, starting with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was later joined by Ginsburg.

It’s true that Justice Sotomayor and a possible Justice Kagan could sympathize or even (gasp) empathize with mothers. But they’ve never personally been confronted with the choices that being a parent generally, and a mother in particular brings on in our society. Women in America are constantly facing decision points about whether to focus on work, raising a child, or both. Once they become mothers, women have to make decisions along the way about how best to raise their children. And the decisions they make for better or worse often wind up being of broader concern to society as a whole.

To me, if a woman doesn't have a child, she has only an abstract ability to pass judgment on issues where motherhood is concerned. I say this not out of disrespect for childless women, whose own struggles I would not dare to play down. Rather, I say it out of respect for all the mothers in the world, including my own. Women with the concrete knowledge of the decision-making that comes with motherhood simply know better -- A mother knows best -- as we so often say.

General Kagan and Justice Sotomayor are talented women, and their unique experiences, legal knowledge bases, and ability to judge laws are worthy of esteem and fair consideration on their own merits. But I must insist that a Supreme Court without a mother on the bench would be as incomplete as a tricycle with two wheels. Mothers make the world move forward, and they need to have a voice in the arrangement of our society, from the boardroom to the courtroom and beyond.

So while the Solicitor General's lack of children in no way disqualifies her, it would be a setback if in 2011 or in a year not too far off, we find ourselves with a bench of nine that includes no justices who are mothers. And that's something that President Obama must consider when he contemplates future Justices beyond Kagan.

09 May 2010

nytimes: Group Backs Ritual ‘Prick’ as Female Circumcision Option

"On this day, you are not going to believe this one. This? This is soooo not.not.not believable!"

"O Blue! YOU exaggerate! O'course, it IS believable. These are "modernity" 's medical MEN you're talking about = those of the American Pediatric Association! ! !

O'course, THEY are gonna suggest this "wee - prick" - ing "solution" and BE themselves COMPLICIT (in America!) with the other men of the World who loathe femaleness so much so that ... BECAUSE THEY CAN ... then they WILL ( ... CONTINUE TO ... ) defile ( ... ONLY ... ) us DEhumans!"

"Un – fucking – believable!" I drop jaw!

“FLIP / REVERSE: NOOOO gawddamn pricking of any girl. NOT until ALL boys' wee pricks are under such SAME PATRIARCHAL "RELIGIOUS" / "MORAL" / family - "HONOR" attack and are ... likewise ... PRICKED,” I blitz!

nota bene, Folks! … how quite "carefully" America’s pediatricians used as spokesperson to the New York Times ... a ... (very male - identified) female ... MD. !heh.heh.heh!

This? This just begs for the wisdom of University of North Carolina’s Pyschiatrist Cort A Pedersen from his primates’ research: “The evolution of mother love was essential FOR the evolution of ... intelligence.”

That’s “ … FOR the evolution of INTELLIGENCE,” Folks!

NOTHING … LESS THAN THAT!


Group Backs Ritual ‘Nick’ as Female Circumcision Option
By PAM BELLUCK
06 May 2010

In a controversial change to a longstanding policy concerning the practice of female circumcision in some African and Asian cultures, the American Academy of Pediatrics is suggesting that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial pinprick or “nick” on girls from these cultures if it would keep their families from sending them overseas for the full circumcision.

The academy’s committee on bioethics, in a policy statement last week, said some pediatricians had suggested that current federal law, which “makes criminal any nonmedical procedure performed on the genitals” of a girl in the United States, has had the unintended consequence of driving some families to take their daughters to other countries to undergo mutilation.

“It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm,” the group said.

But some opponents of female genital mutilation, or F.G.M., denounced the statement.

“I am sure the academy had only good intentions, but what their recommendation has done is only create confusion about whether F.G.M. is acceptable in any form, and it is the wrong step forward on how best to protect young women and girls,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who recently introduced a bill to toughen federal law by making it a crime to take a girl overseas to be circumcised. “F.G.M. serves no medical purpose, and it is rightfully banned in the U.S.”

Georganne Chapin, executive director of an advocacy group called Intact America, said she was “astonished that a group of intelligent people did not see the utter slippery slope that we put physicians on” with the new policy statement. “How much blood will parents be satisfied with?”

She added: “There are countries in the world that allow wife beating, slavery and child abuse, but we don’t allow people to practice those customs in this country. We don’t let people have slavery a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway, or beat their wives a little bit because they’re going to do it anyway.”

A member of the academy’s bioethics committee, Dr. Lainie Friedman Ross, associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, said the panel’s intent was to issue a “statement on safety in a culturally sensitive context.”

Dr. Friedman Ross said that the committee members “oppose all types of female genital cutting that impose risks or physical or psychological harm,” and consider the ritual nick “a last resort,” but that the nick is “supposed to be as benign as getting a girl’s ears pierced. It’s taking a pin and creating a drop of blood.”

She said the panel had heard anecdotes from worried doctors.

“If we just told parents, ‘No, this is wrong,’ our concern is they may take their daughters back to their home countries, where the procedure may be more extensive cutting and may even be done without anesthesia, with unsterilized knives or even glass,” she said. “A just-say-no policy may end up alienating these families, who are going to then find an alternative that will do more harm than good.”

Currently, more than 130 million women and girls worldwide have undergone female genital cutting, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It is mostly performed on girls younger than 15 in countries including Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia. Consequences can include severe complications with pregnancy, childbirth and sexual dysfunction.

The academy’s statement acknowledged that opponents of the procedure, “including women from African countries, strongly oppose any compromise that would legitimize even the most minimal procedure.”

Dr. Friedman Ross said, “If you medicalize it and say it’s permissible, is there a possibility that some people will misunderstand it and go beyond a nick? Yes.”

But she said the risk that people denied the ceremonial procedure, usually on the clitoris, would opt for the more harmful one was much more dangerous.

And the statement said that, “in some countries where FGC is common, some progress toward eradication or amelioration has been made by substituting ritual ‘nicks’ for more severe forms.”

15 April 2010

– Tax Day in ((e.g., corporate)) America: STILL the SEXISM in y2010 –

America’s favorite golfer must understand that corporate dealmakers use 'men – only' clubs to maintain power // from Ms Ellen Snortland on 15 April 2010

Bully for him! Tiger Woods had earned my scorn and contempt years ago, well before the revelations of his marital problems. I knew he was an enema bag without knowing about his double life, cheating addiction or peccadilloes with numerous “dillos” with his pecca. More fundamentally, he earned my disgust through his lack of principles and absence of a stand on gender apartheid at the apex of corporate and athletic America: the Masters Golf Tournament and Augusta National Golf Club.

In case you’re not a golf enthusiast, have been living on a desert island or don’t follow sports in general, let me give you a thumbnail portrait of the Masters, one of the most important golf events on the planet. According to the Wikipedia, it is “one of the four major championships in professional golf. Scheduled for the first full week of April, it is the first of the majors to be played each year. Unlike the other major championships, the Masters is held each year at the same location, Augusta National Golf Club, a private golf club in the city of Augusta, Georgia, USA.”

Buried in the same Wikipedia article is the fact that Augusta National Golf Club is restricted to only men, and in my opinion is the equivalent of 1950s-era "whites-only" buses, water fountains and lunch counters. However, gender apartheid is often "winked" at, minimized and certainly accepted at the most powerful and monied levels of our society.

You may be saying, "O, but Ellen! Where's your sense of humor? Boys will be boys, and can't they just play a game without including the girls? For goodness' sake! Come on now! You're making a mountain out of a molehill!"

Let me disabuse of you the notion that golf is just a little game: we’re talking billions of dollars and a social network that reaches into the highest platforms of government, the military and capitalism.

But before I give you a little profile, let me lead you to one of the most inspiring gender analysts we have writing today: Martha Burk. I’m proud to claim Martha as a friend, although I must admit I have author envy. Burk wrote a book I wish I’d written called "Cult of Power: Sex Discrimination in Corporate America and What Can Be Done About It." In addition to writing "Cult of Power," Martha led a protest in 2003 that brought a lot of attention to gender apartheid in golf. But don’t take my word for it; get the book and read it cover to cover. It’ll explain just why women of all colors face such a major glass ceiling in the Fortune 500 corporations, nationally and internationally.

Which brings me back to Tiger Woods. Tiger was not only the youngest golfer to win the Masters tournament at Augusta, but the first man of color to do so. Augusta National Golf Club let the first African American into its hallowed ranks for the first time in 1990, only seven years before Woods played and won.

Tiger Woods has more authority and moral positioning to stand up for ending "men-only" policies at Augusta than almost anyone else I can think of ... but of course he wouldn’t, because his behavior indicates that, to him, women are playthings, not people to be taken seriously. If I’m being too harsh in that judgment, since I don’t really know the guy, at the very least his sexual shenanigans would make him reluctant to take a visible stance about ending discrimination against women.

Woods is purportedly receiving treatment for his sex addiction. Typically, treatment involves making amends for commissions and omissions that are based in the person’s drug of choice, which in this case seems to be heterosexual sex outside of marriage. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that Woods has taken objectification of women to new public lows.

Hey, Tiger! Do I have an amends idea for YOU!

Use your bully pulpit — or Tiger pulpit, in this case — to insist that the Augusta National integrate its club further with women. Why? Because it’s a disgusting bastion of male privilege and for you to take that kind of stand would be a triumph of morality.

Again, Burk’s "Cult of Power" is a must-read, but it doesn’t take a hole-in-one golfer to understand that corporate deal makers use "men-only" clubs to maintain power, cut deals and, yes, exclude women from the halls of power and decision-making. Having a penis apparently is still the most important club to have in one’s bag.

The term "bully pulpit" came from President Teddy Roosevelt’s using the term for the White House and its astounding power to impact opinion and change. Roosevelt used the term "bully" as an adjective, like "great" or "magnificent."

Wouldn’t it be "bully" if Tiger could turn his personal fiasco into a major stride for women? I’m not holding my breath.

09 April 2010

“““Mother to Son””” … by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

the Future: subsequent generations growing and … grown … up // all thanks to family law’s “civil” courts

---- USA - and Worldwide - cases abound ----

Teen sues county for placing her in custody of sex offender grandfather, father (Cowlitz County, Washington)

The kids are growing up--and they're angry.

These are the kids whose childhoods were ruined by so-called "family court investigators" who knowingly placed them in the home of batterers and sexual abusers. Note that the accusations against formerly custodial mom were minor or negligible at best (a dirty house?) and that the girl's own father warned that she shouldn't be left with Gramps unsupervised since he had been CONVICTED of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl.

Yet Dad VERNIL JONES, who lived with his mother and sex offender father, got primary custody anyway. Though the girl was supposed to be "supervised" around the grandfather. Which obviously never happened. Not that anybody really expected it would happen, unless they were really, really stupid. So naturally, this poor child is molested every day for ten freaking year. Outrageous, as this was completely preventable.

http://www.whas11.com/news/Teen-sues-county-for-placing-her-in-custody-of-sex-offender-grandfather-90358309.html

Teen sues county for placing her in custody of sex offender grandfather

by EMILY FRIEDMAN

Posted on April 9, 2010 at 12:02 PM

(ABC News) - A Washington state teen is suing for millions of dollars in damages after she said a family court investigator "ruined her life" by knowingly sending her to live with her grandfather, a convicted sex offender who proceeded to abuse her nearly every day for a decade.

In court documents filed late last month, the unidentified teen claimed that she was just six years old when Cowlitz County Family Court Services investigator Mark Workingor took her from her mother and placed her in a home with her father and grandparents.

The teen said in the court documents that it happened in spite of her own father warning Workingor that his father, Vernil Jones, had been convicted of sodomizing a 10-year-old girl.

"She went through 10 years of incest of every kind almost daily by her grandfather," said Lincoln Beauregard, the attorney representing the teen.

"The bottom line is, regardless of where she lived, she should not have lived with a pedophile," said Beauregard.

Jones since has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the assaults against the teen.

Attempts to reach Workingor were unsuccessful, and messages left for Ron Marshall, the Cowlitz County's chief civil deputy prosecutor, were not immediately returned.

Marshall told The Daily News in Washington that while he had no comment on the pending litigation, Workingor no longer was working for the county.

Teen Spent 10 Years With Abusive Grandfather Despite Warnings

Outlined in the court documents is the sequence of events that led to the teen being placed under the same roof as Jones.

In March 1999, the teen's father petitioned the court for custody of the then-6-year-old. According to the court documents, the father told authorities that he was worried that the teen's mother "neglects the child's supervision, nutrition and hygiene" and had a "history of drug use."
The father also claimed that his daughter suffered from "chronic head lice infestations" because of the "filthy home" the mother kept, according to the court documents.

The investigator found that while the teen's mother had provided the majority of the teen's care since she was born, she was doing so inadequately and awarded primary custody to the father. Also included in the investigator's recommendation was that any contact between the child and the sex offender grandfather "be supervised by either the father or the paternal grandmother."

The teen's lawyer referred to that recommendation as "outrageous," and called the county's decision to place the child with Jones "egregious."

The teen's lawyer said that his client decided to bring her case to the public's attention in hopes of helping other children like her who have become victims because of the "egregious actions" of Cowlitz County.

"She hopes that bringing visibility to her case will be a form of justice to her," said Beauregard.

08 March 2010

International Women’s Day

With Proctor and Gamble's / Tide's y2010 Olympics' commercial, finally the just acknowledgment of the first person such as herself ever to do so, Ms Kathryn Bigelow, and Ms Sandra Bullock's best performance – acceptance statement of " ... dedicated to moms who take care of their babies and their children no matter where they come from. Those moms never get thanked," the Women of the World celebrate today matters and things ... accountable.

"[NOW ... HERE COMES THE MOTHER – FUCKING IN ALL OF ITS ANDROCENTRIC, PATRIARCHAL, SPERM – / FATHERHOOD – EXALTING FUCKINGNESS: THE PRECEDENT!!!]

TOTALLY TERMINATING THE VISITATION BETWEEN A NONCUSTODIAL PARENT WHERE THERE IS SUBSTANTIAL BONDING BETWEEN THE NONCUSTODIAL PARENT AND THE CHILDREN IS ... WITHOUT PRECEDENT." --- page 477, Chapter 28, Mother - Fucking: the Saga of One Fucked Mother, http://bluemAAs.public.iastate.edu

19 February 2010

Tribal news update: an anniversary today

19 February 2010 // 50 years –– out, also on a Friday … the Midwest’s Mid – Winter Friday FARM SALE

I – in his and in my lifetimes – witnessed Willard Albert William Maas cry three times. Of course, there may have been more times; I was present for three.

All of these three times occurred in the same decade ––– the 1960s.

The first time I was already 12 years old. From my recollection Friday, 19 February 1960, was of that particular 1959 – 1960 winter, its coldest day … … at least for most of its waking breadth ~20۫ Fahrenheit below zero.

Fifty years ago today
, Daddy and I were alone together and standing on that screen – enclosed east porch’s sturdily gray – painted flooring, not inside the much smaller one of the farmhouse’s southside.

Our gazes went out toward the long, long lane (“16 rods” ’ worth, I had always used to hear said of its length) at where ––– right beside the profoundly gorgeous prominence of the farmstead’s actual entrance … The First Barn ––– an auctioneer around 10 a.m. of the easterly sunshine got underway. Started off this particular Midwestern Friday morning the man did ––– as so many such Fridays had on other farmsteads around the county … already that winter.

In no time at all, it seemed, the evidence was clear: the ‘success’ ––– measured however a deal as this is measured ––– of such a farm sale occurring that Friday beside The First Barn was … not to be.

And the tears in near torrents spilling forth from both medial commissures quietly tracked down both of Willard Maas’ staid cheeks … O – so silently … streaming right on down to that floor’s strong gray gloss.

My gaze, and my head, went down. To that floor’s puddle. I have remembered that morning ––– for, at least, … fifty years.