What came first, the past or the future?

The news broke a couple of days ago that aerial images show evidence that a 1400 year old Christian monastery has been destroyed in Iraq. As with earlier destruction of antiquities, I read it with sorrow and a personal sense of loss. I'm not a Christian, I'm not a scholar of the ancient world, nor am I an archaeologist. But when singular objects or sites are lost, it feels similar to a species going extinct. It will never be there again, and that troubles me.

There will probably be consternation and outrage in some quarters over this from people who take it as an affront to their religion or culture. As for me, it has made me pause and bring it home. It's representative of my growing sense of impermanence.

 Andrew being a kid

Remember when you were a kid and summer vacation was a million miles away and the thought of being in high school was like some movie that you'd never star in? It was hard to project very far ahead, and even harder to imagine what the future would look like in 20 years. On this end of the spectrum, it's not hard at all to project ---- I probably do too much of it ---- but it's still hard to picture what the future will look like. One thing is certain, though. It won't be the same as today.

I like old stuff and always have. I did want to be an archaeologist when I was young, at least until I realized that it involved heat, dirt, and worst of all, bugs. But concrete articles from bygone eras fascinate me, whether it's clothing, implements, furniture, or buildings. I'm intrigued by how people lived and how we are connected to what came before.

I'm not as much interested in the future; it seems shadowy and confusing to think about. It makes my brain tired. That's not a value judgment. It's more like an orientation.

When I hear of destruction like that in Palmyra or Iraq, my first feeling is horror. But it has been happening forever and is part of the process of life. Destruction and creation go hand in hand. My idea of what should be preserved, and even venerated, doesn't necessarily fit with other people's. If every building from the 1850s in Manhattan still stood, New York would not be the city it is today. There is inherent tension between the old and the new and it is never resolved.

I have often mentioned that our house is filled with several generations worth of "stuff" --- photos, documents, paintings, books, furniture, all passed through the family for as many as five generations.

I know full well that I'm not the only 60-something person who has become the repository of the family heirlooms. What will beome of that collection?

When a building revered by one tribe or religion is destroyed by another, can we be surprised? What is valuable to one group represents idolatry to another. Similarly, what is valued in a family heirloom is the meaning brought to it by association. It is not to be expected that others, separated by time or distance, would hold that same veneration. They might view it as old junk to be removed to make way for something new. And maybe they would be right. But not while I'm around.

Old houses. Neglected churches. Deserted schools. Empty rocking chairs. All were filled with life once, alive with the voices of people long gone. Those are the whispers that haunt me.

Buxton, Iowa

I Just Can't Believe It!

Since I spend way too much time online these days, I'm exposed to ideas, beliefs, and conspiracy theories that I never would encounter anyplace else. It's nearly enough to make me put the computer away, but then I'd have to do something constructive and that sounds way too tiring. I've been building a mental list of things that strike me as I poke around. See if it sounds familiar.

There are lots of words being spilled over the rampant fear that's charging over the land --- everything is scary. Terrorists. Guns. Opiates. Vaccines. Textbooks. Drug-resistant Disease. People of all kinds, colors, and nationalities: religious fanatics, invasive immigrants, big government, lying politicians, giant corporations, and on and on and on.

I wonder what people scared themselves with before the rise of mass communication. Death, of course, is the bottom line. There was a time, not so long ago, when infectious diseases were the the big fear. Anybody, anytime, could be struck down. You only have to walk around an old cemetery to begin to understand the precariousness of life just two generations ago. It's still like that in many parts of the world.

Right now, we live in a country with amazing public health measures in place. Instead of open sewers in the middle of the street, we have waste treatment plants. The water in our sinks, for most people (sorry, Flint Michigan) is safe; you're not risking typhoid every time you get a drink. Yet, millions of people don't trust the water and buy bottled water in plastic containers. Not based on warnings or having been sickened by it, just because....something.

Food supply. Yes, there are plenty of glitches, and problems do arise. Food poisoning, mainly from not following proper storage guidelines, is not uncommon. But we have nearly 330,000,000 people in this country and the vast majority of them eat well and safely, every single day. That's remarkable. And still there are entire corners of the internet scaring people witless about how poisonous their food is. 

Crime! Guns! Crazy Criminals! It's almost too frightening to leave the house. To be absolutely safe, you can fortify your home with security systems, never let children out of sight, stay home and watch tv instead of going out in public places. You can even arrange to have almost everything you need delivered to your house. Just don't open the door when the delivery truck pulls up --- it could be a ruse.

Was it always this scary? I remember panics from years ago --- polio, communists, child snatchers --- so maybe it's just selective memory that makes it seem worse now. The thing is, living as though on the brink of disaster is no way to find happiness or satisfaction. So I just don't believe it.

I don't believe we're all headed to hell in a handbasket.

I don't believe everyone in any particular political party is terrible and out to ruin the country.

I don't believe any particular religion spells doom for the entire world. 

I don't believe Big Business is scheming to create products and an economy which will leave everyone but the most elite to die in the streets.

I do believe that change is hard and sometimes frightening, and we are in a time of dizzying change.

People still have babies. Sometimes that surprises me, since mine were born so long ago. People still invent things --- amazing things --- that will help humankind. People still love each other, work together, laugh, show kindness for no reason other than kindness itself. 

It's not all bad and scary. Yup, we're all going to die. It doesn't matter how much you pray to your favorite deity, it's still going to happen. It also doesn't matter how many times you go to the gym, how many ice cream sundaes you forego, whether you ever finish stitching that quilt or writing that book. It's still going to happen, and you can't stop it. 

So if that's the scariest thing in the playbook, and it's inevitable, lighten up! It's just not that serious. Do what you like, love the people around you, and don't take yourself so seriously. Remember that graveyard with all the kids we talked about earlier? Destination vacation. You really can't take it with you --- there's just not room.

Every day is a new one, brand spanking new, and I, for one, don't believe it's all that bad. 

What will you do with your short long life?

I have long had the practice of creating a list of "Goals and Intentions" during the week between Christmas and New Year.  I pull out the old list, tick off the ones that came to fruition, and look ahead at what I'm aiming for next. I started doing this after (dare I say it?) taking the est training in the mid-seventies. Hmmm. That's forty years ago. I set it up as a game, not a rigid list of must-do projects. The year-end review was a chance to see how strong my intention had been. I never looked at the list from one December to the next.

The past few years I've been spotty about it. The list, when I do it, is much shorter. I think that reflects my focus on what's important as much as a narrowing of what's possible. Of course, I could be fooling myself.

The fact is, at the ripe old age of 65, happily married, gratefully retired, living comfortably on less, many of the items that made the list back in the day have already happened. I don't know that it had anything to do with listing out my goals and intentions. I think maybe they just occurred in the process of life.

So what to put on a list this year, 2016? I always tacked on an addendum called Outrageous Goals and Intentions, the things that I would love to see happen, but couldn't imagine any way for them to come about ---- mainly in the realm of fame, fortune, and travel. Now I consider myself fortunate that they didn't happen. I love my quiet little life, though I could do with a little more travel.

It has been one year and 11 days since my mother, Nancy, died. I have taken this entire year off. Oh, I did what had to be done ---- the legal finalities for her small estate, daily and weekly chores in the house, 6 months of being a produce fairy, delivering veggies for a local farm. I even accomplished becoming certified to teach the Qigong set I have been practicing for the last three years, and lined up 5 classes per week. But actually, I was pretty much on auto-pilot all year long.

Losing my mother, even though the Alzheimer's had taken her mind long ago, fundamentally shook my foundation. It was not simply that we were close, which we were. It was that since childhood I had trouble knowing where she ended and I began. Sometimes I had the odd sensation, when we were together, of looking at her and thinking it was me. I'm sure there are shrinks who can have a heyday with that. It's probably got troubling diagnoses and is the reason I have spent most of my life in and out of therapy. Nonetheless, that's the way it has been since before I can remember. I once wrote a short story in which the teenager who was pregnant and living with her in-laws tried to starve the baby out of her until she finally made the choice to keep and love it. When my mother read it, she cried and asked me how I knew. I don't know how I knew, except that I had lived it. 

Now the world is a different place. I don't know if I'll ever quite adjust to it, but it's getting easier. In some ways, it's even better. There's more of me available now. And in my imagination she is free and wild, a kind of sparkling energy let loose in the universe, unconfined, uncontained.

As for me, I have a new freedom and a new happiness as well. I miss her ---- the old her ---- every day. At the same time, I'm developing a new perspective on lifespan. Even though I have had a love of history through fiction and non-fiction, museums and living history, when I was younger I didn't quite realize how short a time we have. Even the longest-lived among us can only claim a little over a century. Once upon a time, that felt like a very long life. Now it seems like the blink of an eye. 

I personally knew my great grandparents, born shortly after the Civil War. The farmhouse my great-great grandfather G.W. built has now been torn down, I discovered this past

summer. My mother and her siblings grew up in that house, Edgewood Farm. The past is not that distant. I have known people who lived during what we think is long-ago history. The "kids" I grew up with and I are becoming the keepers of the past, the tellers of stories from when the world was different. It all happens rather quickly.

This has been my year of reckoning. A time to look at the present and prepare for whatever is coming up next. It's unsettling. Occasionally, I'm afraid. But the overwhelming feeling is satisfaction. I haven't done so badly, no matter how many things never got knocked off of my lists. Sometimes, the best thing that can come of a goal is to not meet it. 

My intention for this year? Curiosity.

Life without Parole is a long time for Joanna Madonna

No police officer has ever stopped me on the street and frisked me. I've never been singled out by authorities because of how I look or who I am. My few encounters with law enforcement have been uneventful and non-threatening. But I have to admit, I see the justice system with new eyes after Joanna's conviction for first degree murder. 

It all feels arbitrary and unpredictable now. 

There was plenty of forensic evidence about the case. The prosecution presented every last item and photograph, with hours of testimony by professionals in one capacity or another. That's as it should be. Science. Facts. 

Underlying all the visible, measurable evidence lay interpretation and innuendo. In that realm, the prosecution was relentless. For a case in which two people were the only ones present, one of whom was beyond telling his story of what happened, the prosecutor relied on not just physical evidence, but calculated prejudice and character assassination. 

Jose Perez died in 2013. In order to make her case, the prosecutor was eager to point out that Joanna, though sober for 23 years, had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. That this was her third marriage. That each of her three daughters had a different father. That the trauma of three rapes in her teens and twenties were never reported to authorities, implying that she made it up. That she had had two abortions.

I don't repeat these because I want to cause Joanna or her family even more pain. The pain is out there on Youtube and nobody in this case escapes it. What struck me throughout the testimony, and especially during the closing arguments, was that Joanna was on trial for not meeting the feminine ideal. It was "slut-shaming" in its most hideous form. She might as well have been stripped naked in the courtroom and branded with a scarlet letter.

Was the fact that she had been raped germaine to this case? Yes, actually it was because it long ago set her up for PTSD. Unfortunately, that was not addressed by expert testimony, so the jury was urged to think that she was simply a "loose woman" with irrational behavior.

Much of the narrative of this case involved the ins and outs of addiction and recovery. As the jury was selected, each potential juror was questioned about their familiarity or experience with addiction. Most claimed to have none, or only tangential knowledge through friends of friends or distant family members. 

A jury of her peers.

The case also revolved around the difficult topic of intimate partner abuse. Not the kind that puts people in the hospital, the subtle kind. The psychological, controlling kind that often is found in a relationship between people with troubled pasts. The kind of abuse that arises from "chronic, habitual, pathological lying" as one of my exes used to call it, in reference to himself. It's a perfect dance until it escalates. Then it can turn ugly, or deadly.

None of the potential jurors said they had personal knowledge or knew anyone who had experienced intimate partner abuse. 

A jury of her peers.

In the end, the jury had a menu of choices. It wasn't all or nothing. They had 4 choices of a verdict, with diminishing consequences attached. They chose First Degree Murder in three hours. Joanna was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole and whisked off to prison.

I suppose you can take the Pollyanna view that at least she's not on death row. But the death penalty wasn't an option in this case. This is a sentence which satisfies the need for revenge, not only for the terrible death of Jose Perez, but for his wife's failure to be June Cleaver. It leaves the jurors with a clear conscience that justice has been meted out and they didn't have to be responsible for anybody's death.

Life in prison without possibility of parole is a death sentence. It just takes longer for it to play out.

Joanna, my friend, took another person's life. She told her story at length on the witness stand. She told of fear and blind panic as she felt like she was going to die. She claimed self defense and the jury didn't believe her. She has had trouble in her life, not unlike the trouble that millions of people have as they grow up and navigate adulthood. She overcame much of it. She had no record. No one claimed that she was a violent person, a danger to other people. 

We have a justice system based on retribution and punishment. It's not surprising. We have a society awash in violence, anger, and victimization. The "justice" system is an out-picturing of our collective id.

I'm learning about the movement for restorative justice. You can too.

Read about it here.

I Never Called it Rape

Fifty years ago today I was raped. I had just turned fifteen. It was my first sexual experience. 

We didn't have the word for date rape at that time. I thought it was my fault. I lived with not only the private shame, but was pilloried at school when my "boyfriend" of a few days bragged about it to all his friends. My father was called into the principal's office (he was a teacher) and told to get control of his daughter, or the whole family would be sent back to the States without him. I had publicly disgraced myself and my family and it was ALL MY FAULT.

I believed that, through two marriages and umpteen relationships. I believed that, through an addiction to  alcohol and drugs. I believed it through bouts of depression, years of therapy, consciousness raising and fist-pumping feminism. I lived with shame and defiance, bringing to all of my intimate relationships a need for power and control. I rarely let my guard down. I couldn't really trust that I wouldn't be hurt or left or held up to ridicule, so I simply closed off and held myself apart. I didn't talk about it for years, because I was too ashamed. 

The prevailing myth 50 years ago was that girls were in charge of NO. But (wink, wink, snicker) NO didn't really mean NO. It might mean maybe. It might mean sweep her off her feet and don't give her a choice. It might mean go ahead and push the limit and see what happend. Whatever the outcome though, it was the girl's fault for not enough NO. I hope it's not still that way, but I fear it is.

My 14-year-old self was awash with hormones and feelings. Aren't most teenagers? I was tantalyzed and curious, sizzling with fear and excitement. I loved the attention and affected a worldly persona I'd picked up from the movies and watching adults around me. I thought if boys liked me, it was because I was attractive and exciting and smart and sexy. I was very young. 

Those are characteristics of young adolescents, boys and girls alike. It plays out differently, but people of that age don't know what they're doing. They are, though they would protest long and loudly, kids.  By the time I turned 15, I wanted everybody to think I had it all figured out, and sometimes I even believed it myself. But I didn't.

The boy-child who got drunk and wouldn't stop was bigger than I, stronger than I, full of hormones and brashness. Nobody had taught him that no means no. Nobody had taught him that another person was involved, that he didn't have the right to use his strength to force himself on me. And I thought that since I let him in the door and kissed him, I had led him on beyond his control. If he disregarded my protestations and cries that he was hurting me, it was my fault for ----- what? Flirting? Wanting a boyfriend? Kissing?

I finally dealt with this rape and its long-lasting effects with a trusted therapist only three years ago. It's appalling how long it took for me to forgive my teenage self for being a kid. It's sad how many years I spent messing up one relationship after another, seeking a sense of self in other people.  

Rape at any age is a transgression that has repercussions far beyond the incident itself. I still find myself wanting to minimize it sometimes, even though half a century later I can follow the threads back and see what happened. I don't regret my life. I do regret that I spent most of a lifetime beating myself up for somebody else's actions.

 I don't dwell there. I don't relive it or keep the memory fresh. But now, at last, I acknowledge that it happened and it was not my fault. I have nothing to be ashamed of. 

Court is in Recess

Recess time!

I'm familiar with recess --- I used to be a teacher. The kids love recess. Time to jump and run and holler and play with friends. Time to talk to whoever you want to and make things up and test your skills or even just sit on top of the monkey bars and talk to your best friend. Wait! Strike that last one. Not too many monkey bars left on playgrounds these days.

No, recess from the courtroom is not the same. Every interruption to the proceedings is prefaced with instructions from the judge to the jury not to talk about the case with anybody, not even each other. There's a whole list of DO NOTs ---- recess is probably not much fun.

As a matter of fact, there's been nothing fun about this brush with our system of justice that I'm experiencing with my friend Joanna's trial. I've written about her here and here. Nothing alters the fact that one person is dead, one person killed him, and many, many lives have been shattered. But it does seem, from a friend and observer's point of view, that our method for sorting the whole situation out is almost as messy as the incident itself.

I've been to court myself only twice, once to get a divorce in 1975 before no-fault was invented. Once to testify in a friend's custody hearing. The rest of my courtroom experience has come from the teevee, starting with Perry Mason. It might not be the most accurate learning environment.

My biggest surprise with Joanna's trial has been that, despite my best intentions and repeated attempts to attend, I've been excluded from the courtroom at every turn. Somehow, magically, without my knowledge, I was included by the prosecution on a list of potential witnesses. That meant I got summarily removed each time I showed up. Not courteously, either. 

So I wound up watching the trial on the livestream broadcast on my tv at home. Couch. Snacks. Dogs. Jammies. It wasn't all bad, but it wasn't how I expected or wanted things to be. I fully expected that "open court" meant what it said. There was apparently no intention of calling me or the vast majority of other people on that list. But it certainly had the effect of removing any support for Joanna in the courtroom. See how bad she is? Nobody even comes to see her.

What's my take-away so far? I have come face to face with my own privilege. I'm a well-educated white woman, over a certain age. I walk in the world with privilege I don't recognize ---- until it is challenged. My encounters with people in power who showed me no respect, no courtesy, and in fact left me feeling bullied and helpless, were a slap in the face to my complacency. I'm someone who weighs my words, who constantly seeks to expand my perspective, listens to the experiences of others, puts myself in another person's shoes. I have acknowledged the privilege I have because I thought it out; it's an intellectual construct that I recognize. But not until someone speaks to me unnecessarily harshly, as though I am both slow-witted and without value, backed up by the hulking presence of a uniformed officer of the court, do I experience the inverse of my assumptions about who I am. It is a startling, humiliating moment. 

In my world, grown people speak to each other politely. I naively assume that everyone will do that, unless there's extreme provocation to behave otherwise. But that's not true. For a short time, I felt helpless in the face of power, unable to assert anything that would change the situation, and I was indignant, outraged, bewildered. 

Privilege means that I go through life assuming that people I meet will be reasonable, if not polite then at least civil. That I will usually get my way because I am also a reasonable, civilized person. 

I won't say it was good that this ADA felt she had the right to be mean and hiss at me. (That's what it felt like.) But it was good to be able to later think about what happened and realize that, for one thing, this is Joanna's life for the last two years and three months. If she is convicted and sent to prison, it's her life for the forseeable future, a life in which she is not valued for any of her accomplishments or who she is, but judged and categorized, labeled a convict and devalued accordingly. 

It's not just inmates, is it? It's anybody who encounters the diminution of their humanity based on superficial characteristics. It's the conversation that never truly starts and cannot ever end --- race, color, religion, gender, nationality, on and on and on. 

Recess will be over on Monday 9/28/15, 9:30 AM. The closing arguments will be heard. The jury will be instructed and dismissed to their deliberations. The wait will commence and sooner or later, judgment will be delivered. Guilty? Innocent? Either way, she is still a worthy human being, a person, not a label. Just like all the rest of us.

They call my friend a murderer; Joanna Madonna

Today her trial begins. It's been two years and three months since he died. Two years and three months since she saved her own life, at the expense of his. Two years and three months in county jail, with no fresh air, no sunshine on her face, no smell of cut grass and earth. 

Today the next phase begins.

I'm haunted by the word. Murder. It's familiar, all too familiar. It appears every day in news stories, in fiction, in tales of horror and on tv. It holds a special fascination, a sense of awful otherness. It could not apply to someone I know. 

Murder is a concept, the killing of another human being within specifications defined by law. But that's not what the word brings up for most of us. It's not a matter of preconditions and legal parameters, the dry language of law books. It's fraught with midnight danger, the stranger in the bushes or under the bed, the nightmare of blood and lust and revenge or greed. And the murderer is the ultimate bad guy.

Joanna is an alleged murderer. That's her charge and there's the body of her husband to prove it. But she's not a murderer to me. She's not a threat that will rob you of sleep, or haunt the dark corners of midnight. She's my beloved friend.

She's the person with a ready laugh, a listening ear, a shoulder to lean on, a sheltering presence. She's the woman who looks for the bright side and resolutely seeks silver linings. The person I know is not unkind, not rageful, certainly not a murderer. And yet . . .

This morning at ten a.m. the judge will pound his gavel and the trial will begin. Her fate is unknown, though the death penalty was taken off the table six months after her arrest. The news cameras and reporters are at the ready. It's not your run-of-the-mill murder trial. It's high profile in this neck of the woods; she a former teacher, he a disabled veteran. The newly elected District Attorney is coming out of her bureaucratic office and prosecuting the case herself. It has all the trappings of good theater.

Joanna and I talk on the phone every week. We discuss, not the case, but what led her to this point, what could have been different, what will be different, no matter the outcome. She could be acquitted. She could get life in prison. Or it could be anything in between. It's not often that any of us comes to such a stark turning point in life.

I've learned many things while Joanna has been locked up. We've had as deep discussions as possible in ten minute monitored phone calls, occasional "visits" by video at the jailhouse, and rambling, speculative, thoughtful letters, also shared with anonymous strangers in the mailroom. We've explored the pitfalls of false pride, secrets, fear and codependence. We've shared strengths to be found in honest inquiry and sobriety, in faith and doubt. We talk about parenting our children and education and the challenges faced by her autistic daughter. We've each lost a beloved parent during her incarceration and been able to comfort each other through the following grief and helplessness that knows no boundaries of lock and key.

I will be there today, and all the subsequent days. The jury will hear testimony. Attorneys will present cases based on evidence. People at work and at home, with no stake in the case except opinion and emotion, will debate and defend and attack based on nothing more than 800-word news articles. I'll try not to read comments.

Her daughters, her family, her friends and acquaintances will all watch closely as the woman they know will have her life dissected in the public eye, entertainment for the 6 o'clock news, morality tale and horror story. Will truth come out? Will justice prevail? Is that even possible?

I guess we'll see.