something for nothing

from Texas' Professor Jensen ... ... ... today --- --- the National Day of Mourning

http://www.popularresistance.org/no-thanks-to-thanksgiving
" Teach YOUR CHILDREN ... ... ... well. " --- lyrics by Graham Nash, 1970

Instead, we should atone for the genocide that was incited — and condoned — by ... ... ... the very men we idolize as ... ... ... our ‘heroic’ founding fathers.

28 November 2013, the United American Indians of New England will hold their annual National Day of Mourning beginning at 12 noon at Coles Hill Plymouth, Massachusetts

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by ... ... ... a self-reflective collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits — which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.

That the world’s great powers achieved “greatness” through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin — the genocide of indigenous people — is of special importance today.  It’s now routine — even among conservative commentators — to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it’s also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians’ land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving “wild beasts” from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, “both being beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in shape.”

Thomas Jefferson — president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the “merciless Indian Savages” — was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn’t stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, “[W]e shall destroy all of them.”

As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process “due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.”

Roosevelt also once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”

How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here’s how “respectable” politicians, pundits, and professors play the game: When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations’ lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history.

In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who “settled” the country — and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.

But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable — such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States — suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, “Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?”

This is the mark of a well-disciplined intellectual class — one that can extol the importance of knowing history for contemporary citizenship and, at the same time, argue that we shouldn’t spend too much time thinking about history.

This off-and-on engagement with history isn’t of mere academic interest; as the dominant imperial power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history.  Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures — such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq — as another benevolent action.

Any attempt to complicate this story guarantees hostility from mainstream culture. After raising the barbarism of America’s much-revered founding fathers in a lecture, I was once accused of trying to “humble our proud nation” and “undermine young people’s faith in our country.”

Yes, of course — that is exactly what I would hope to achieve. We should practice the virtue of humility and avoid the excessive pride that can, when combined with great power, lead to great abuses of power.

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it.

The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact.

Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony. History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation.

The truth won’t set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.

As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines.

We would be better to think about the constricting effects of the day’s mythology on our minds.

" ... my advice is: Go out and have a crisis. "

[ for birthday - celebrants, too ... ... such as today's ]   Dear graduates, I am not one of those commencement orators Who takes you down a series of rhetorical corridors Called "The Pursuit of Excellence" or "The Commitment to Quality," Meanwhile your brains are taking a brief holiday, And then you go to the parking lot and you find the Chev and you Think, "Quality, okay, but what am I going to do for revenue?"   You are excellent. Even if you were delivering pizza, I would see that, like when a body meets a Body coming through the rye, or coming through the trees, You can recognize excellence even if it smells of onions and cheese. Young people, you may have come already to the pinnacle And forgive me if it sounds cynical But as we gather to hail your Feats, let's not forget to talk about failure. Failure is essential, a form of mortality. Without it, a person has a very weak sense of reality. It is all well and good to strive for glory, But today's grievous mistake is tomorrow's humorous story. And one should not be a person whose memoirs consist Of notes from the classes you never missed. In a nutshell, my advice is: Go out and have a crisis. Would the Prodigal Son's dad have killed the fatted calf If the boy had graduated with an average of three-point-ninety-nine and a half? No, nor would Job have grown so wise in the Lord's ways Had his only tribulation been one or two B's among a whole long string of A's. You're much too smart and it all started with prenatal math, Your mother reading theorems in the bath, The warm water intended to calm the fetus And maximize the effect of the Bach partitas Which promote the growth of the secondary Neurons of the cerebral promontory Increasing the residuary Inventory Of vocabulary Authorities consider necessary To get into a first-rate Montessori. An advanced Montessori where smarter children are created, Where the sandbox is enriched and naptime accelerated, And every child, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew or Gentile, Is targeted for the 99th percentile.   A person who lives a charmed life, Gets the great job and size 4 wife, The starter mansion that proclaims His wealth, the beautiful children with Celtic names--- At the age of forty, a successful stock analyst, he Runs off with a cocktail waitress, Misty, Takes up cocaine and dungarees and permed hair And writes third-rate poems in the style of Baudelaire For five years, poems about spiritual emptiness and hunger: This would've taken two months if he'd done it when he was younger. O brave navigators on the road to tomorrow, Speak to your parents and ask to borrow Two or three thousand bucks and have yourself a beautiful disastrous summer Marching to a different drummer. Among exotic music and voices, foreign sights and smells, Sleazy barrooms and city parks and cheap hotels, The streets thronged with traffic, pedestrian and vehicular, And all those strange people and one in particular Who stops and talks and you strike up a tete-a-tete And gradually become a duet And you go for a walk along the Seine And kiss as if you might never kiss again But then you kiss again and then one thing leads to another And you have an experience you won't be sharing with your father and mother. Have a glorious summer so that as the autumn days come nigh Your adventures are the envy of other alumni. Forget about excellence. Think about courage. And let that audacious side of you emourage. In Paris, St. Petersburg, Macchu Picchu, You learn what college cannot teach you Whether you get a bachelor's or a master's: That being a traveler means learning to deal with disasters.   We can't all be Aristotle or St. Thomas or Socrates, Some of us, thanks to the law of averages, must be mediocrities, But we can all live with esprit and panache And sometimes throw whites and colored into the same wash And get the expensive wine, the kind with a cork, never mind the cost, And walk into strange cities and have the good sense to get lost.                                                               ---- Garrison Keillor, 2001

   

 

Friday, the 13th: "Godmother" by D Parker, 1928

The day that I was christened ––
It’s a hundred years, and more ! ––
A hag came and listened
At the white church door,
A - hearing her that bore me
And all my kith and kin
Considerately, for me,
Renouncing sin.

While some gave me corals,
And some gave me gold,
And porringers, with morals
Agreeably scrolled,
The hag stood, buckled
In a dim gray cloak;
Stood there and chuckled,
Spat, and spoke:

“There’s few enough in life’ll
Be needing my help,
But I’ve got a trifle
For your fine young whelp.
I give her sadness,
And the gift of pain,
The new - moon madness,
And the love of rain.”

And little good to lave me
In their holy silver bowl
After what she gave me ––
... ... –– Rest her soul !

LIES and JEALOUSIES = PERJURY during FAMILY DECONSTRUCTION

[ ... ... ON puffing up / inflating / the tumefaction of one's Self with two BOGUS college degrees Dr Herry Edinsmaier never earned and never received ! = Me.hit.able's 'religion' of " image control " and " historical revisionism / negationism ! " ... ... p 216 of Chapter 26, An Opera in Three Acts – But with Five Parts Acts One and Two: Parts One, Two and Three – Their Overture in Book Three's Mother - Fucking ]

" So.
 

To begin then, “Wha’, Herry?  ‘From 1968 through 1972’ you taught junior high, then suddenly back in Ames you have, you swear, a grad degree in cell biology also in 1972?  But didn’t go to med school until 1975?  That ain’t so at all, now is it, Herry?  No graduate degree #1, Herry – zip, zilch on the master’s degree, right?!  That, well, along with all of your other procrastinations, well, … that just never did happen ever, now did it, Hype – ing Hypocrite Herry?  No diploma ‘tall!  Not even in 1975, which is when you left graduate school after I literally lived with and doctored you day and night, 24 / 7, back to life from a deathly parasitic pulmonary infestation from June 1975, right through till nine days before medical school began in late August 1975, when you were released from Oakdale Sanitarium outside Iowa City to where I’d had Devin drive you at top, breakneck speeds two weeks earlier and he thought those two harrowing hours in the car that you, coughing, gasping, cyanotic and doubled over, … that you were going to die on him right there racing down the interstate.  Okaaay, now that that’s straight, there’s more, isn’t there, Herry?!  How it is I literally saved that sacko’shit life of yours for you, isn’t there?!”
 

The tangible –– and screaming –– absence of Herry’s master’s degree in cell biology, something really, really easy to prove, well, did anyone bother ever to bring back to Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor the actual “evidence” of its existence?!  Of its nonexistence? ! ! ! 

 

“In fact, the master’s degree’s nonexistence has, indeed, hasn’t it Hype – ing Hypocrite Herry, just exactly the same nonexistence to it as that of a supposedly earned bachelor’s degree in physics ! ! ! which You, the Good and Wonderful Doctor Edinsmaier, to this day in Grubtrop and in Montclank, West Virginia, also claim to have, at one time, merited and deservedly received ! ! ! – but in point of actual fact, continue several decades later to pad thereby falsifying your medical organizations’ and societies’ résumés with and there state (as well as at these several agencies’ websites!) that you once obtained this alleged physics degree at Iowa State University –– when you soooo never did do? ! ! !  Ha!” 

Of course, we already know the answer to that –– along with all of the other NOT! answers to the very same question after every written affidavit lie and almost all of them, if not all of them, most easily and equally ascertained as false and, therefore, lies and – and – and, therefore too, … the crime of perjury!   Ya’ know, the crime detailed at Iowa Code, Chapter 720.2.  IF only they had been.  IF only that other pillar of the community known as daJudge, Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor, had ordered up the tangible proof  of … what it is … ‘he said’! "

Yet Another ONE MORE STEP Among Very Many == On DECONSTRUCTING the WHOLE FAMILY

[ I do not know what piles of lies, acceptance, practice and, when believed to be gotten away with, the celebration of aprovechar – taking / – swindling, jealousies, entrapment, hypocrisy, threats, neediness and insecurities, ultimatums and mockery are now operational in the Truemaier Boys' adult lives.   

What I do know are these two matters:  
    i) None of these are of my concern as I am done being the brunt of any of these acts.   
   ii) Deconstruction of one specific household unit did not occur because of me.  --- Dr Legion True ]

Chapter Twelve:  Book Two (A Mama's Long View Redemption) of Mother - Fucking:  The Unimportance of Unconscious Women, pp 52 - 57: 

The Unimportance of Unconscious Women

“Woman Is Nigger Of The World.”

--- Song title and recurring lyrics by John Lennon, 1972

Rush hour occurred at the start of the Boys’ school day as well, of course.  We needed to be across town the other way five days a week allowing for plenty of downtime at all the train tracks laden with working, racing trains which Ames accommodated.  Someone said 65 times a day a train hurled itself along the two principle lines that crisscrossed the town, and he said he wasn’t exaggerating.  He was not.  We had to be belted, all of us, in the Diplomat by not a minute later than 7:20 to rest assured that the Boys’d be strolling through the school’s double – door entrance by 8 am.  What a trick that was. 

But then, too, there was the Foreign Language Program for elementary students.  German for Jesse and French for Mirzah.  I learned to say, from his teaching me, tOpe for taupe and mOve for mauve, both with that really long O sound, after Mirzah’s first session!  “I wore the mOve and tOpe skirt with the matching mOve heels!”  How correct I became.  None of Mehitable’s tawhp and mawhv anymore.  I still pronounce those words correctly now because of that miniature lesson from Mirzah.

So we had to leave home and Othello Drive even earlier.  Missed the awful traffic this early, still dealt with the darn trains and got to school in time for 45 minutes of language lessons before 8 but had to figure out what to take along with which to entertain Zane those two mornings a week.  Zane didn’t want to take foreign language.  So he read – reading occupying the top position on the list of all the many, many things which Z loved doing – or he slept a bit more, as did I.  Well, fitful sleep for both of us, if really much at all.

It wasn’t so hard to figure out what to do to keep him busy, I guess, except for those all – too – frequent mornings when we forgot to bring along reading material because we were all running from aft to fore through the Iroquois – sized long house to the garage at top speed.  It was just really, really hard to do, especially when the mornings, that early, were getting colder and colder.  School officials did not want children in the building alone unsupervised too early so that was it.  We read and waited out in the wagon, Zane and I, or we went to gas up at a neighborhood Casey’s.  Or, I made two round, road trips.  Two trips was not an option. 

Overall, school was fabulous.  The Truemaier Boys, all three of them, already possessed a highly developed and copacetic desire to learn and loved it; they simply loved learning.  This was good.  For the most part.  Each made lots of friends, easily and quickly, just as they had done in other schools in other university towns before moving to Ames; and very soon our lives both just off 13^th Street at Othello Drive and down south in the Tea Garden Subdivision where Kate Mitchell was located and all those other   friends lived thrived.  Mirzah was in Unit A, Jesse in Unit B and Zane with Mr. Green in Unit C.  I did join Ms. Stuart’s Principal’s Advisory Committee and help put together recommendations to her for the School’s next – year budget.  We met in the School’s auditorium or in its awesome Media Center / Library which, I soon found out, hosted all sorts of parent committee meetings; and our priority recommendation, straight up, was to get the Center loaded with the latest in computer hardware and a keyboard artist hired to start teaching the required typing lessons as soon as possible, preferably by the next summer, that is, all of this proposal up and running by the middle of May 1988, if we could manage the bucks from the Board.  Summer keyboarding sessions would be quite a huge benefit to the kids.

Legion True was the only homeroom parent who objected, one weekday evening, to providing the Boy Scouts use of the school building for its after – school meetings so around the time of that paramilitary organization’s national 75^th ‘jubilee’ year, my itty bitty protest was completely drowned out.  Most everyone there, men and women alike and themselves fairly progressive I was thinking wrongly, not     only turned around to check out who it was that could possibly be in disagreement with this early fall      and usually rubberstamped proposal but there were also all manner of slacked jaws with heads a – shaking to and fro as well.  

A local chapter continued its long – standing tradition of little – boy pseudoleadership training with its khaki, honors – bedecked uniform – wearing conformity right under my and my Boys’ pacifist Quaker noses.  I wasn’t vociferous or even ardent in my ankle – length blue denim skirt and cotton socks inside high – top hiking boots but not because, in my mind of minds, I didn’t want to be.  I did.  I just had had a lot of standing alone and being yelled off the dogs by Mehitable and then by Herry, that I really just hadn’t the fucking guts to carry my points any fucking further.  Not like I did have on those nights alongside David and husband #1 John, and hundreds of others actually, in front of the New York City Waldorf where Nixon touted the nation’s role in Viet Nam but we protestors outside in the cold faced down the entire cadre of the City’s mounted police all armored themselves inside full riot gear astride their side – by – side equines.  Mehitable would have been so happily proud of me had she witnessed me, of my own accord, back down, use a truly feigned soft voice, fundamentally shut the fuck up really and get all servile – like in deference to the patriarchal Scouts’ demand.  Even if it was in just a little neighborhood school auditorium.

*     *     *     *

Still.  I, too, made friends, also easily and fairly rapidly.  I knew Ames pretty much inside and out and did not have to expend a lot of effort or time, as had been the cases in our moves to and within Iowa City, Hershey, Columbia and Manhattan, learning their layouts or agencies.  I could delve nearly immediately into service for the Boys and their activities as well as research and continue a few of my own.  The branch’s Dr. Edinsmaier did his local lab thing and was also out on the road somewhat – up to little farming towns north and west and east servicing small hospitals in these villages by riding a circuit of approximately a 50 – to 80 – mile radius in those directions and then performing pathology lab things. 

Except for the two times Dr. Herod Edinsmaier slept in and forgot to go.  Oops.  Oops. 

Leaving two, separate and unrelated, unknown and faceless women anesthetized, that is, truly unconscious, on very cold operating room tables with their breasts bared.  And pointing straight up at strangers’ eyeballs. 

Or, maybe their breasts weren’t in full view of strangers after all.  These are small Iowa towns, for christ’s sake, where everyone knows everyone; but, now, these men and women who worked over at the community hospital were also ‘knowing’ her in the most intimate of ways – in addition to their folksy greetings to her up at their post office boxes six days a week and down at the Prince of Peace Lutheran church’s basement bazaar twice a year! 

Nameless they were not; Dr. Edinsmaier knew their names.  The two women’s names were affixed to the order forms faxed to his branch laboratory.  The orders requested by the attending surgeons in these two tiny rural communities involved a little matter about the pathologist’s expertise being needed to perform and read out frozen sections, right there nearly tableside, to check for malignancy.  Well, something a little bit like that, I am guessing. 

In psychiatry and psychology, this is called minimalization or minimization, maybe.  I’m not exactly sure which.  It really isn’t such a big deal now.  Why are you getting so bent out of shape, Lady?  It’s silly really.  Such a little thing you’re so upset about.  “You can see for yourself, Your Honor, just how hysterical and full of histrionics the Bitch gets.”  Such a small thing so blown way out of proportion.  “Ya’ know, Your Honor, for attention.  ‘Cuz she’s so needy and all.  She’s always doin’ this.  A real emotional basketcase she is, idn’t she?!”

Of course, now, if primary or metastatic cancer were to be found, why, that tumor, probably the entire breast, surrounding regional nodes, some lymph circulation and whatever else, would have to be lopped off; and she and her kids and her grandchildren and her husband all already knew that when she went under.  Possibly then, of course, to also be under the slicing and dicing and lopping scalpel as well.

Dr. Edinsmaier’s absenteeism during these two breast biopsy episodes was fairly well spelled out in the letter I came across while cleaning the den one December 1987 morning.  Yeah, I read it.  And others, too.  Yeah, I actually opened US mail addressed to Edinsmaiers and to Trues on Othello Drive.  Items addressed to only the Truemaiers, to one or to all three of them collectively, were numerous enough, and those I didn’t open.  Except for the pornography.  I didn’t open the pornography addressed to the Truemaiers,  but I did try to intercept it.  Even mail addressed just to Herod alone I opened.  Like an office manager does, I would later find out.

And – And therein I took care of all the matters – again like an office manager takes care of such stuff.    All the bills – all in the man – of – the – household’s name, of course, and none of them in mine – got paid on or ahead of time including the newspaper and magazine subscription renewals.  My Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Iowa veterinary license renewals, even the Iowa and New York nursing license renewals although in the “inactive” category, the $1,400 – a – month mortgage on the pad which we had suddenly leapt up to paying out from just the $400 a month on the Manhattan rental, the Storm County property taxes, no small thing now those taxes, and the various insurances, even those on Herry’s two airplanes.

And those paybacks on the educational loads!  Loans, I mean.  Aaahh, but were they ever a shitload, too!  Both medical and veterinary medical student loans.  In addition to the low – interest National Defense Loans, there were the monthly installments still –  – on the many simple signature loans secured just for living expenses along the way.  None of those loans had been taken out from really quite wealthy Edinsmaier family members either.  Herry had made it crystal clear back in Hershey that that was not ever going to happen:  we were to stay current on everything yet we were to never borrow from any of that clan at all.  For awhile all of these continued to be paid up on time anyway.  Fortunately the two wagons were paid off, and I had started just after marching for my PhD to make rather decent headway in Manhattan on this get – us – debtfree – and – keep – us – solvent project of mine – – “Keep solvent!” Herry had loved to repeatedly order me to make our family finances be – – despite his airplanes!  My nursing school loans which John’d just simply ignored when he sauntered away I had shortly paid off anyway before beginning that pre – vet year of required Iowa State coursework and meeting Herry during its March month of 1974.

Upon dusting the walnut, built - in, flip – out escritoire in the northeast corner of Herry and the Boys’ walnut – paneled den opposite the placement of the walnut Haines console, two pieces of white paper sailed down to the beige pile carpet from where I had accidentally released them far atop the secretary.  One was ripped from a spiral notebook and lined with penciled words scripted on one side only, and the other one appeared to be on official letterhead from the White and Sons Law Firm, Kansas City, three short paragraphs neatly typed.  I didn’t know of the White and Sons Law Firm and, not knowing of lawyers really much at all except for the fine experience I had had with two of them in Manhattan who I thought had given me very sound advice about the nonrenewal of my faculty contract at Kansas State, I was neither daunted nor cowed by things lawyer – like either.  Yet.

I read.  There were words on this official letter about someone’s job, too.  About Dr. Edinsmaier’s job.  Herry was going to lose his job:  he was actually going to be fired by the parent laboratory company based in KC – if he didn’t get his act together and stop messing up so much.  And right now.  And this letter – straight to him from that lab’s legal eagles – was Herry’s official notification of that. 

Of the impending dismissal of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier.  For dereliction of duty as a medical doctor. 

Whoa.  Whoa.  Whoa.  I could not swallow because there was that choke in my throat again.  And I was the one slack – jawed now!  Not only over the wholly whopping whammy of the sudden job – and life – insecurity; but I was reading about and, therefore, knowing of these “two little incidents” in my husband’s most recent past for just the very first time.  Herry had said not a peep about this, and the letter was dated two months’ time earlier – back in October!  Just 90+ days into our all being newly minted Ames residents.

The chastising letter went on to castigate.  It seemed it wasn’t just the matter of the two women and their being put out and put off.  Yeah, they were let up from the anesthesia all right and, upon seeing their wholeness, both of them believed the absolute best possible news.  Only to find out, momentarily, that, well, ah, no, not exactly.  Not exactly the best news forthcoming at all … since, “Ah, we will need to reschedule this,” andah, ah, do it and, O JYeah, pain everyone all over again – as a matter of fact!  There was more than just this tragedy alone to the debacle which my husband, along with his common amnesia regarding ordinary women, had perpetrated.  As far as the actual business was concerned, there was more than … ‘just this’ much! 

Dr. Edinsmaier’s literally stolen hours of extra sleep those two mornings, it seemed, had really cost the laboratory and the two hospitals way more in real coin squandered and lost than just the unmeasured expenditure that was those two women’s angst and that of their two families.  “There is the economic matter, Dr. Edinsmaier, of deploying all of the lower echelon for the second time again, the rank and file workers, and the supplies, sterile or not so, the O R and the utilities and the beds and the anesthetist and the surgeon.  Get this right from now on, Dr. Edinsmaier, or you’re outta here.  Capeesh?!  Capisci?!”

Well, JYeah!

The only upside to this disaster?  These two specific women weren’t anesthetized awaiting frozen section results and perhaps further radical and disfiguring surgery at large, urban teaching hospitals.  Only within two tiny, rural county ones – whereat those medical staffers there most probably would not be found ‘practicing’ their vaginal – examination techniques on unconscious, er, I mean ‘relaxed’ and non – objecting individuals.  Had these particular two DEhumans been anesthetized, pre – surgery patients within, say, Johns Hopkins or Duke University Medical Centers, the teaching faculties there would have simply and easily set aside the rape criminality to it all – – and, like androcentric Herod’s dereliction regarding   “First, Do No Harm” and women, just gone ahead, as is also standard in patriarchal medical centers worldwide, with their intentional and pompous parade of routine, medical student – ‘entitled’ assaults on us unimportant females – upwards many times of five to six violators during any one anesthetized clip a recent federal investigation uncovered to a United States Congressional hearing.  And merely rationalized and justified it all away with the flippancy, also the same as arrogant Herry’s, that they were “just teaching.”  And, therefore, “making good use of the available resources” – who just happen to be us unconsenting, unconscious … women.  Itty bitty are the Voices of the faceless and anonymous majority … … in the grip of powerful medicine men and their “ … cycle of smugness substituting for … knowledge.”

*     *     *     *

That other piece of white paper with handwritten words in pencil and yanked out of its place in someone’s notebook was also a letter.  Signed by Zane.  “Dear Ann Landers, I am 11 years old and think I am addicted to cigarettes.”  Whoa.  First Herry, now Zane.  “I and my friend Ethan hide out behind a bunch of trees by our school and smoke cigarettes every afternoon when my little brothers are in chess and doing other stuff after school.  Our mom hasn’t come to pick us up yet.  She doesn’t know and thinks I am in the library waiting.  Ethan has an older brother and he gets them for us.  What should I do to stop?  I inhale and I’m afraid I’m already an addict.”  Whoa.  Double whammy. 

So.  Zane was watching.  All those times in Columbia on Lily Drive when I sneaked a few next to Thumper in his hutch alongside the clothesline and to whom I chatted in whispers about the truly important things of the day just fading while exhaling away to the secret breezes out back and my lungs’ content.  

Or …, discontent.  Zane and I had made a pact, and he was keeping up his end of the bargain.  The deal had been:  If I immediately brought to zero the number of Merit Menthol and Pall Mall filterless cigarettes I smoked up in a day’s time, then Zane would bring to zero, also, the number of his own brand of boogers that he munched on in a day’s time.  A fair exchange of a deal it was, too.  Poor me, though.

Now, it wasn’t that anymore – but this.  Seventeen years it had taken me to deal with my nicotine addiction and, well, I had had some truly elegant help in that, hadn’t I, by way of all those threatening ultimatums from Herry and the simultaneous years and years’ worth of juicy cracks from Mehitable, too, about my femininity being fucked up instead as a hardened ‘drag’ queen who puffed and reeked like old, farting tramps and despicable curs.  Poor dear, dear Zane.  Writing Anne Landers to get help with smoking cessation was a way better method than any browbeating I could deal him and a mighty fine idea I thought; and while this written confession of his at 11 years of age was, to me, just a terrible, terrible revelation,      it was nothing compared to what I now knew about Herry!

Zane always could pick ‘em, the strategic times to let launch a few exploding bombshells.  This one was freakishly fateful – – or was it?  Did my magnificently brilliant Zane already know about the letter from the White Law Firm?  And did he then masterfully station his plea for help really meant for me and not for Ms. Landers at all in and amongst the escritoire mishmash that also held that horrid one from the laboratory’s lawyers?  Something as potentially angering to me as his smoking cigarettes, surely Zane himself was dropping puzzle piece – like clues for me to find this time.  And Herry, about his being utterly dressed down, certainly was not!  Not this time.  There being no swagger and no braggadocio, let alone, any manner of catalyst that could enable the fulfillment of his unfolding flight from the marital bed that he could possibly fashion out of this particular job fuck – up, Herry wanted me to know exactly squat about it.

*     *     *     *

Among the friends I was making, there was not one in whom I could confide about this deal with Herry.  And not my parents either.  AmTaham?  AmTaham had never, ever wanted me to hook up with Herry       in the first place.  AmTaham’s only probable shortcoming his whole, o - so short 72 years on Earth was   that he never wanted his Legion, preciously born to him on his bloody cold 28^th Winter Solstice birthday,  to ever hook up with any other man but him.  Pretty typical daddy, but I really, really was that selfishly special to him; and I always, always knew it, too.  An extra heavy burden on me in a way.  Herry meant and was synonymous with my mother’s god, ya’ know, money.  And now that he actually was a medical doctor and, to Mehitable, then made by that mere appellation as M.D. alone, no longer a milquetoast or a pantywaist, I pretty much knew to keep shut up about him to her. 

It was okay, more than okay to Mehitable as well, and one thing for Herry to upbraid me royally up one side and down my other about the contract at Kansas State not being renewed as part of a newly appointed department chief’s strategic reorganization plan that I’d had zip control over and certainly did not contribute to with my ever having been derelict as a veterinary microbiologist.  ““What now?!””  I recalled Herry’s words to me quite plainly, his coming at me from over his telephone in Kansas City the very first night I knew about the contract after I’d finally, alone again of course, gotten all the babies bathed and off to dreamland.  “You have the mother – fucking audacity to ask me, “What now?!”  No, no, no, no.  This one’s on you, Cunt.  You deal with it!  I have nothing more to say to you!  Ya’ll have to hump yourself on this one cuz ya’re not getting any here, and I’m hanging up!”  Click.  Nothing more to say.  And then there’s always something more to say, of course.  If Herry’d just used the word ‘Squaw’ to address me, then I wouldn’t’ve come so undone.  I liked Indians and things Indian, my being a fairly fresh Quaker and all, and, besides, I didn’t have any idea then yet about the meaning of that word.  I did know the meaning of the name Herry had called me.  And I was undone.  No one to grieve with on that one. 

And not on this one either.  No one to grieve with over this devastating and so destructive news either.  Herry’s censure of me in Manhattan was one thing.  But it would have been quite another for me to divulge Truth about this job matter.  And, most especially … Dr. Edinsmaier’s accountability in it.  Or, absence thereof. 

I determined, right then and there in Herry’s den, to shove on.  It was December, nearly two months after the letter’s date; and, unlike the sinking ship that had been that deflating and not – so – whole air mattress fatuity out at Finger Lakes State Park with all my children’s lives clinging to it, I would deal with this one by denying it!  After all, I had been instructed by Herry, hadn’t I, to do exactly that?  Nada had happened  to the kids, really, so forget about it, he had taught us all.  I remembered that one.  But on this?  On this one, I told no one.  Then.

Again, I cannot believe how into such a wuss my brainy and brawny and beautiful self had transcended.  Slumped into … is a better choice of verb actually.  And for soooo long now.  Mehitable is right about one thing at least:  there are milquetoasts and pantywaists and so damn many of them are women.  We give ourselves such a rotten rep that it makes me ashamed to be walking around now.  My sinewy feminine ancestors, those that “ever were only because I am now” and of whom that Amistad guy spoke, those that walked the World circa 10,000 to 70,000 BC looking pretty much then like I pretty much look today and not at all like the ancestor that is my most recent one, Mehitable, would be so disappointed in me and ashamed of us women today who are, indeed, over 53 percent that is the human World.  Those women were what I want to be today.  Besides my being only there for my future granddaughters and great – granddaughters, too.  Let alone, my sons.  And, so far, right now, I wasn’t doing nearly weighty enough a job of being there at all.  Not when I was right ready to push on like nothing had even just happened to me.  Which is exactly what I did.  “Deal with it!” Fucked mothers’ very favorite three – word phrase everywhere.  Utterly beats out “I love you,” it does.

One thing did change.  Every weekday afternoon I drove, very bundled up by now, to the Boys’ school about an hour earlier than I usually had been, using that extra time down at Kate Mitchell to catch up on more reading or the sewing on of missing buttons or the writing of brief update notes to now far – off friends.  I always had been a damn faithful correspondent even before e – mail, a piece of the opus that it is to be a true friend which a lot of friend – wanting folks apparently don’t get.  Or, don’t want to do the work of scripting themselves.  And other little projects that I could haul there in the shitbox Dodge along with plenty of apples, orange wedges, carrot sticks and Oreos not just for my three but also for the other six – and seven – year – olds, too; and while soccer was wrapping up its season, Zane had to help me end the practices.  I told him Ethan could not. 

And I never spoke of either letter to either man in my life.  Soft, servile, deferent.  Well – taught by Me.hit.able and such a good student I was.  I was only being there after all:  Ancestor – In – Training that we all are.