Musings on September…and Mortality
Folks, it’s no secret that I do not like September.
Why? Well, the main reason is that my husband Michael died during this month. So when the weather turns to fall (or at least the calendar does; in Wisconsin, we’re still in summertime mode for whatever reason), I start having trouble with all sorts of things.
You see, it’s hard to create when you’re fighting against grief. Because grieving takes energy. A surprising amount of it, actually…and even though I try hard to set that all aside, sometimes I just can’t.
Mind, I know my husband Michael would not want it to be this way. He was all about laughter, and joyfulness, and creativity…this isn’t the legacy he’d want, for me to feel terrible during the month of September.
Even so, I feel what I feel. Trying to change that doesn’t do any good.
So what do I do when grief gets to be too much? Usually, I read something amusing or divert myself with sports documentaries. (I’m quite partial to ESPN’s “30 for 30” series.)
Sometimes, though, I just have to experience the mourning. I don’t like doing this, but by accepting these awful feelings, I can better put them aside. (I learned this trick from Michael, who was a Zen Buddhist. He felt it made no sense to deny how you truly feel about anything. But if you accept the feelings, whatever they are, and then tell yourself, “I’ve heard them” or “I’ve felt them,” then it’s a little easier to set it aside. I’m not sure why this works, exactly, but it does.)
What’s frustrating is when I run into someone who says, “Barb, it’s been eleven years. Why in the Hell can’t you get past this?”
I know it’s been nearly eleven years. Yet some days, it feels like yesterday; on others, it feels like forever.
Michael was by far the most important person in my life, and I miss him every day. He saw me for what I was, loved every part of me (even the parts of myself I have a hard time loving), helped me create the Elfyverse, cheered me on while I wrote an earlier draft (or two) of CHANGING FACES…he was my biggest cheerleader, my biggest partisan, and my best friend, along with being the only man I’ve ever met who truly understood me.
Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to “get over” his loss. Because it truly is an incalculable loss, and I am well aware that it is. And I refuse to deny this truth, because if I did, I’d be a much different — and far lesser — person.
Besides, I don’t think you ever “get past” someone you loved deeply. I think all you can do is go on; you don’t “move on,” exactly — you go on, with the memories you have and the experiences you’ve had, and you do your best to build on them.
I know Michael would want me to continue to fight it out with CHANGING FACES, and he’d probably say in the end, no one will be able to tell just where I’ve struggled, and why.
So even though September, in general, is a bad month, I’m going to continue to do my best.
Michael wouldn’t want it any other way.
Suzy Favor Hamilton Opens Up About her Call-Girl Experiences, Being Bipolar
Folks, I am stunned.
Suzy Favor Hamilton, who I wrote about back in 2012 after the story broke that she’d become a high-priced Las Vegas escort, was interviewed by Elizabeth Vargas last night on ABC’s 20/20 news program. (Here is an article about the show from ABC News.) I watched this online, and was riveted. Not by the admission that she’d had sex with five guys in one night (though that didn’t surprise me much; if you’re an escort, you do what you’re paid to do), but because it appears being bipolar and being misdiagnosed sent her into her double life and downward spiral in the first place.
But let me unpack that a little.
Suzy Favor Hamilton is now 47. She’s still the best female runner to ever come out of the state of Wisconsin, and one of the best female athletes the United States has ever had. She’s a three-time Olympian, had multiple endorsements because of her good looks and running success, and, according to the story on 20/20, major anxiety issues.
Unbeknownst to anyone, Favor Hamilton also had bipolar disease. At the time, she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and thought her problems were solved. But the antidepressants that were given to her made her hypersexual, more willing to try risky behaviors — and isn’t becoming a high-priced escort the epitome of risky behavior?
Anyway, Favor Hamilton’s husband continues to stand by her, and I don’t understand why. (Neither does Vargas, who asked him point-blank why he’d stayed. Mr. Hamilton admitted he didn’t know why; he just did.) He is obviously an incredibly patient man, insofar as he’s stayed with his wife as she’s endured many ups and downs — most particularly this last, major scandal of being exposed as a high-priced Las Vegas escort.
(Even though I don’t understand it, more power to him. I hope their marriage will survive. But I digress.)
Look. I know many people with anxiety, depression, and even bipolar disorders. But I hadn’t any idea that being bipolar could make you do anything close to how Favor Hamilton behaved…that it could make you hypersexual to the degree that you could sleep with five men in a night, and still want more, is much more information than any doctor has ever told me (or any of my friends with bipolar disorder, either).
So just by being willing to discuss what she did before being properly diagnosed as bipolar, Favor Hamilton has done a great service.
Favor Hamilton has written a book called FAST GIRL, a play on words that makes perfect sense. In her book, she discusses her mental illness, along with what Vargas called her “scandalous life in Vegas” (my best paraphrase, as I don’t have a transcript). And she also has gone further, discussing what she’s done since to heal herself and her marriage, including moving to California, being honest with herself about her health and her personal needs, and much, much more.
As sportswriter Christine Brennan said during the 20/20 episode, what Favor Hamilton is doing today in discussing her bipolar disorder and all the things that she did until it was properly diagnosed is possibly the best thing Favor Hamilton has ever done.
While I’m still shocked that anyone with the looks, brains, and money that Favor Hamilton had would ever become an escort, I’m glad that Favor Hamilton has healed. She’s become an advocate for mental illness along with physical fitness, and it seems to me that she’s doing all she can to rebuild her life.
More power to her.
Ta Da! Planting the Seeds of Love Cover Reveal #ASMSG #IARTG #MFRWAuthor
I read PLANTING THE SEEDS OF LOVE, and thought it was a fun, fast read with a lot of true-to-life romantic entanglements. I enjoyed this novella, reviewed it at Amazon (giving it a solid four stars; at SBR, I’d have given it a B-plus, but Amazon doesn’t allow for gradations) and my recommendation.
Give this one a try. You’ll enjoy it.
Why Are People More Worried about #Deflategate than #NFL’s Pay-for-Play Faux Patriotism?
Folks, a while back, I wrote about the biggest scandal to hit the NFL in quite some time.
No, it wasn’t Deflategate. (For the record, I truly don’t care whether Tom Brady threw deflated footballs or not.)
No, it wasn’t even Spygate, which is a much worse problem in that the New England Patriots admitted to spying on at least one other team in order to gain an unfair competitive advantage.
Instead, it was a pay-for-play scandal that Keith Olbermann found out about while browsing the Internet. NFL teams, including the Green Bay Packers, the Miami Dolphins and the Pittsburgh Steelers were paid $5.4 million dollars to put “Hometown Hero” spots on jumbotrons; the Department of Defense gave the NFL this money to promote not patriotism — faux patriotism though this is — but for recruitment purposes.
It’s like the Department of Defense was saying, “See, men and women? If you join the military, you can be feted at a NFL game! Yet another reason to sign up!”
The reason this was and is plain, flat wrong is because most people — myself included — believed that these men and women were being singled out truly because they were — and are — heroes. Not because the Department of Defense had paid money to 14 NFL teams to do so.
The only major broadcaster who picked this story up was Keith Olbermann. He was passionate, explaining just what’s wrong with this sort of faux patriotism, and read NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell the riot act.
Olbermann was right to do this. What the NFL did in taking this money was absolutely shameful. That the NFL pushed the blame onto the 14 teams that took the money is at best a deflection; it is not an excuse.
At the moment, Olbermann is off the air. (Rumors abound that Olbermann will be reunited with MSNBC, one of his former employers, soon — MSNBC has a huge ratings problem, and Olbermann always drew great ratings. I hope for once that rumor will prove to be fact.) No other major broadcaster has taken up the baton in this area — meaning it is impossible for me, as a fan, to know that the “hometown hero” segments that continue to go on to this day in both the NFL and in major league baseball are legitimate — or if they’re the same type of phony patriotism Olbermann rightly excoriated months ago.
Now, there are two Senators, both from Arizona, who are continuing to look into this, these being Senator Jeff Flake and Senator John McCain. They’ve both been critical of this practice. (McCain is a former POW, as well as being a former Presidential candidate, and his voice carries great weight.) Flake said, according to an ESPN report from May of 2015:
“You go to a game and you see a team honoring ‘Hometown Heroes,’ and you think it’s some sort of public service announcement, that the team is doing it out of the goodness of their heart,” Senator Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said to ESPN on Monday. “Then you find out it’s paid for? That seems a little unseemly.”
What I want to know is this: Why is everyone so worried about whether or not Tom Brady threw deflated footballs, when taking money to “promote” the military in this cynical fashion is a far bigger scandal?
As Olbermann rightly said months ago (see his full comment on YouTube here):
If this time, our time, is one in which the country is pro-military, and if that is reflected at sporting events, so be it. But for that sense for where the nation is regarding sending our citizens in harm’s way — for or against — for that to be secretly tampered with by the government, by the Defense Department, using your money to purchase public sentiment and pay off the NFL, MLB, NBA, the HIGH SCHOOLS, and all the rest to influence that, that is intolerable! And it is dishonest! It is dishonest in an area where honesty is the only acceptable policy. As dishonest as if the LA clubs never revealed that they are paid nearly $6 million to call it Staples Center and instead insisted that they did so out of admiration for the company.
Folks, I hope the two Arizona Senators continue to be vigilant. Because until Olbermann gets another program, it is very unlikely we’re going to find out the whole story…because no one else seems to care.
And I, for one, see that as incredibly sad.
Thoughts About Discrimination
Happy Labor Day, folks!
My mother suggested today’s topic, which is simply this: discrimination. Who faces it, what can we do about it, and why are we still having to talk about it in 2015?
Look. Most of us have faced some form of discrimination in our lives. Some face far more than others, including African-Americans, Latinos, LGBT individuals, and the disabled. Women are often discriminated against in subtle ways, even in the United States, even when able-bodied; straight men sometimes get discriminated against because of their race, ethnicity, creed, or religion.
It is a rare individual indeed who’s faced no discrimination whatsoever in this life.
So why is it that politicians make so much hay pointing one group against another group? Do we not understand that every single one of us is likely to be discriminated against for one reason or another before we die?
Again, some of us face this discrimination every day. One of my earliest friends, an African-American viola player in high school, used to tell me that when she’d show up at auditions, conductors would give her a surprised look. (This quickly went away, as she was a very fine player.) Another of my friends, who is Japanese-American and disabled, has faced so much discrimination in her life, it would be harder for her to find a day where she didn’t deal with any discrimination than the reverse.
I, too, have faced discrimination. I’m disabled — I walk with a cane and wear braces on my hands on bad days due to carpal tunnel syndrome, and these two issues are very hard to camouflage. Plus, I’m not a small woman by any stretch of the imagination; as I’ve told people in the past, people come in all shapes and sizes, and my size is definitely curvier than most.
This might be one reason I have a great deal of sympathy for those currently facing overt and systematic discrimination. (Though just being human should do it, many people cannot put themselves in someone else’s shoes unless they’ve actually been there.) I think people should be judged on what they say, what they do, rather than what they look like or whether or not they need a wheelchair to get around.
And lest you think discrimination is a newfangled idea, it isn’t.
Most of us know about Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. He fought hard for civil rights, for labor unions, and for the dignity of the individual. But did you know other groups of United States citizens have been systematically discriminated against in the past?
My grandmother was of Irish descent, and grew up in Chicago. She told me about the signs she used to see, when she looked for employment in her teens — “No Irish Need Apply.”
And before the Irish were discriminated against, the Italians were discriminated against. Then the Poles. The Finns. The Swedes. The Norwegians. And on, and on…for some reason, the newcomers to the U.S. always seem to see this.
Then, usually, it settles down.
(Why it hasn’t settled down for African-Americans, Latinos, GLBT individuals, or the disabled is something I can’t answer. But I digress.)
All I know is this. We have to do our best every single day. Whether we’re gay, straight, bisexual, gender-fluid, Christian, Wiccan, Buddhist…whether we’re able-bodied or disabled…no matter what the color of our skin, the content of our character matters far, far more — just as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said.
I urge you to become acquainted with people of different backgrounds. Get past your personal prejudices. Try to see others as individuals. And see where common ground might be found.
Who knows? You might just make a new friend.
Special Labor Day Release! LEGENDS OF WINDEMERE #FANTASY SERIES BUNDLE #1
My friend Charles Yallowitz shared the news about “To Survive the Maelstrom” and “A Dark and Stormy Night” earlier this summer…now it’s time to return the favor.
And this is a really good deal — three books for $4.99? Go take a look right now. (He has a new one coming soon, too.)
Cover Art by Jason Pedersen
3D Conversion by Bestt_graphics
*This Book Bundle contains the first 3 volumes of the LEGENDS OF WINDEMERE fantasy series.*
Every hero must take that first courageous step into adventure. For Luke Callindor, it’s more of a blind stumble. From battling a demonic assassin to facing the family he left behind, this warrior’s adventuring career has been one awkward mistake after another. Most days the only things that keep him alive, yet never unharmed, are his trusted friends and his reckless courage. How long can his luck hold out before the gods of Windemere decide to cut his legend short?
CLICK HERE TO BUY ON AMAZON for $4.99
That’s right. Guess who just released a book bundle that includes the following:
- BEGINNING OF A HERO
- PRODIGY OF RAINBOW TOWER
- ALLURE OF THE GYPSIES
If you wanted to get into LEGENDS OF WINDEMERE, but feel like…
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Three Days, Three Quotes, and Three Bloggers Challenge
Folks, the lovely and talented N.N. Light (also known as Mrs. N.), challenged me on her blog last week with the latest blog-hop called “Three Days, Three Quotes, and Three Bloggers.” You’re supposed to give a quote every day from something in pop culture — at least, I’m going to assume this, as Mrs. N.’s quotes were all in that realm — and challenge three other bloggers a day to do the same thing.
Now, I’m not sure I know nine bloggers who might be willing to take part in this challenge. But I do know at least six. And I have a few favorite quotes to try out…so, here goes!
My quote is from possibly the best baseball comedy ever, the original Major League.
Bob Uecker, as radio announcer Harry Doyle, says:
“Ball four. Ball eight. Low, and he walks the bases loaded on twelve straight pitches.
“How can they lay off pitches that close?”
Now, why does this quote amuse me so much? It’s simple. Any baseball fan knows that if someone’s just walked the bases loaded, no pitches were actually that close. (So, Uecker is taking part in an old baseball tradition — sarcasm. Love it.)
As for why I picked this quote first? It’s probably my favorite quote ever — partly because it’s really funny, and partly because there’s actually somewhat of a moral in there if you dig deep enough.
See, part of the story of Major League is that of Ricky Vaughn, a pitcher who comes up with the nickname “Wild Thing” because he seemingly can’t find the strike zone — but he’s kept on the team because he throws hard and the manager believes Ricky will learn. (Plus, when the year starts, there really aren’t that many good players on his team that can outplay him. Keep that in mind.)
Usually, it’s only the talented guys who are left out on the mound to walk the bases loaded. The manager who does that makes the calculation that the pitcher needs to learn how to get out of trouble — including trouble of his own making. And the only way to do that is to put your pitcher in pressure situations.
Like pitching with the bases loaded. (Talk about a pressure-filled situation!)
So, Ricky’s walked the bases loaded. The pressure is on. What’s he going to do next?
All of that is summed up, laconically, by Bob Uecker’s character Harry Doyle in the quote I referenced above.
That’s why I love this quote.
Now, as for today’s three victims — er, bloggers? How about Jason Cordova, Chris Nuttall, and Dora Machado?
U.S. Supreme Court Rules that KY Court Clerk Must Issue Marriage Licenses to All
The Supreme Court of the United States tonight ruled that county clerks must give marriage licenses to all, regardless of their own personal religious convictions.
As the Associated Press article (by way of Yahoo News) states:
(Kim) Davis stopped issuing all marriage licenses in the days after the landmark decision. Two gay couples and two straight couples sued her, arguing that she must fulfill her duties as an elected official despite her personal religious faith. A federal judge ordered her to issue the licenses, and an appeals court upheld that decision. Her lawyers with the Liberty Counsel filed a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday, asking that they grant her “asylum for her conscience.”
Justice Elena Kagan, who oversees the 6th district, referred Davis’ request to the full court, which denied the stay without comment. Kagan joined the majority in June when the court legalized gay marriage across the nation.
Meanwhile, a couple that had been turned away went to Rowan County Attorney Cecil Watkins to ask that she be charged with official misconduct, a misdemeanor defined by state law as a public official who “refrains from performing a duty imposed upon him by law or clearly inherent in the nature of his office.” The crime is punishable by up to a year in jail.
I’m not at all surprised that the Supreme Court upheld its own, earlier ruling. But apparently, Kim Davis, County Clerk of Rowan County in Kentucky, did not think that was going to happen — else, she’d not have taken the position she has thus far.
See, there’s a fundamental issue going on here — but it’s not the issue Ms. Davis thinks.
If you are a duly elected clerk of a county, you are being paid to do your job. And part of your job is to give out marriage licenses.
You can’t refuse to give out marriage licenses, citing religious convictions, after the Supreme Court has already ruled that civil courts must allow GLBT couples to marry.
I realize Ms. Davis is not the only court clerk in the United States who’s thus far refused to do her duty. And I also realize she may well have legitimate religious convictions that don’t allow her to perform this part of her job. And refusing to give out any licenses — as Ms. Davis did — is not the right answer.
Not if she wants to keep her job.
That said, she had two other choices she never considered.
One was to allow someone else to give out these marriage licenses. There are a number of court clerks here in Wisconsin who’ve done that; they quietly allow someone else to do that part of the job. No one gets upset at this, either — so long as the licenses are given out, and the job is getting done, everyone seems fine with this.
(To my friends in the GLBT community: We can’t change everyone overnight. This ethical side-step is far, far better than what Ms. Davis did, because no one is being denied the right to marry. End aside.)
The second is very simple: Resign.
If Ms. Davis truly does not believe she can give out marriage licenses any more because of her religious convictions, and refuses to give them out to anyone — well, she should leave her job. Because she’s obviously unfit to perform it.
And, I must add, that lawsuit that’s been floated saying she’s not been performing her job seems like a slam dunk from here. (Which is yet another reason she should resign. Because these suits are just going to keep on coming, if she insists on being intransigent.)
Look. The Supreme Court has said that all loving couples, regardless of gender, should be allowed to legally marry. I personally agree with this stance. I think it makes legal, moral, and ethical sense.
Ms. Davis obviously does not. Which would not be a problem in a private individual. We believe in dissent in this country.
In this case, however, Ms. Davis is a county official.
So her choices are very simple. She must either do her job, or resign.
Anything else is completely nonsensical.
Barb Caffrey's Blog 