That’s what makes them angry that I love my liar sister even though she lied even though she hurt me even though she lied to them
That’s what makes them angry that I love my liar sister they want to love her lies they don’t want to know the truth they want to hide from lies
That’s what makes them angry
they are hella jealous
they want to be loved like that
they want to be loved whole
they want to be loved entire
they want to be loved even when they lie
That’s what makes them angry
they are so afraid to be themselves
they are so afraid to tell the truth
they are so afraid to be honest with each other
they are so tired of hiding
That’s what makes them angry one says she will be friends if we only talk about the positive about my mother, father, sister I counter: let’s not mention them at all nor your husband. Not a word. She doesn’t answer. Silence.
That’s what makes them sad
they don’t want to feel the anger
they deny the heartache
they avoid the longing
they bargain with their souls
they refuse to feel the grief
let us feel the anger let us feel the heartache let us feel the longing let us feel our grief let us feel our souls
Beloved, we long for you so
Please, Beloved, love us whole
_____________________
My sister sent me a t-shirt from Wicked. She died of cancer in 2012. The deaths from Covid-19 and every death brings her back to me. And this song sums up our relationship.
Two days ago I wrote to the owner of the website that “separated” me for “not explicitly breaking the rules”.
I have not gotten an answer.
Doesn’t matter, you say. I disagree. I think our ethics matters and it matters on line. Isn’t that part of what we are fighting about?
Let’s drill down. The editors stated on this obscure not to be named site that they were tightening rules and removing write-ups that should be logs or are just not high enough quality, and letting the writers repost them as logs. So far they have removed over 250 of my writeups. Ironically, I was one of the two most prolific writers in the last year. Let’s kill the golden goose because she’s annoying, won’t we? The other writer has not been “separated”.
I note that they have removed my write up called “birth of ——–“. Now, this interests me. This was a well received write up, had up votes, and was the start of a category. The category was people explaining how they chose their on line name.
So: the editors are liars and abusing their power. They have removed a well received and well liked write up because they have personal animosity towards me. I have protested the removal of 250+ writeups and asked that they be reposted as logs. No answer.
The other writeups in the how I chose my name category are still there. So this is PERSONAL and the editors of the site are unethical.
Therefore, I hope the site dies. Or gets rid of those editors. I think I want it to die, even though it has writing by my sister. This does matter. As a species, we will either learn to be fair and human on line as well as off line, or we will end in conflagration. The site will certainly not be there if we start lobbing nuclear bombs at each other. The owner works for the US government. Why is he/she not paying attention to this obscure website that he/she owns?
Whether or not the world burns this month, if the editors are manifestly unfair on the site, the site will die and deserves to die. I wish that I could have my sisterβs drafts before it shuts down.
I ended my email that is not answered with this: Good luck. I hope that ethics matters to both of us.
Thank you.
on line site name
_______________________
I will not name the site here or anywhere again, until and unless those editors are shut down and the site becomes ethical.
We are fighting this fight as a species, as humanity. We have to learn to be as ethical on line as we are in person. Well, you say, some people AREN’T ethical. Yes, that is true. As a rural physician, my goal is to take care of ANYONE WHO COMES IN. The emergency room physician cares for the family of four hit by the drunk and the drunk too, even if there is a dead child in the family of four. We set our judgement aside and do the best for each and every patient, regardless of the story. At least, that is the goal. It is the highest goal I know of.
Blessings and be your ethical self on line. As my children said to me when I threw their father out of the house once, “We don’t care what he does. We want you to be polite to dad no matter what.” And they were RIGHT! We answer to ourselves and to the Beloved and to our children.
Blessings.
The photo is me and my sister, dancing before my wedding in 1989. She died of cancer in 2012.
My sister freaks out once. “Oh, my gosh. Our parents still have boxes from their last move a decade later. What will we do when they die?”
Me: “Get a storage unit and open a box a year at Christmas for the rest of our lives.”
Her: “That could work.”
I tell my sister that we could start a magazine in response to Real Simple. “We will title it Playful Packrat.” We come from an impressive line of Packr– I mean, Collectors. Collector is honorable and respected. Packrat is, well, unfashionable. Perhaps I should title it Circumspect Collector instead. I know someone who seems to be collecting heavy equipment, which is an interesting choice. One needs more property than I have for parking.
My house would make Marie Kondo shudder. The photograph is the basement: the stack is my mother’s larger artworks. I am moving stuff around now that I am home-on-oxygen instead of running around clinic like a crazy rabbit. And like this writer, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/maximalist-response-marie-kondo-minimalist-mandate, it ALL gives me joy. Well, ok, not the tiny ants. We are at war. My kitchen may be cluttered but by gosh it’s clean clutter because the tiny ants let me know immediately if I screw up.
Anyhow, my mother died in 2000, my sister in 2012, and my father in 2013. My parents left me their stuff and grandparent stuff, some of which I had never seen, and I still get dead people mail. The colleges and universities are the most persistent. They don’t care if someone is dead, they still mail out the Alumni Magazine. I get U of WI, Cornell, Princeton, U of Oregon, Medical College of VA, OHSU and Williston. Holy moly. U of TN and SUNY Binghamptom have lost track of us, thankfully. I wish I had kept my father’s notes on Beowulf and mailed them to Williston for their library. It would be a sort of just revenge. I still have boxes (my excuse is busy physician) so I will bet that I can find something to mail to each one of those places. Something that they want just as much as I want their Alumni Magazine. With a cover letter that says that my contribution is hidden in the documents. One dollar each.
I have too much stuff but I have now turned middle aged, that is, I am over sixty. So I now am on the downward side and decide, there needs to be outflow rather than inflow. I like my stuff but it’s time to start moving it. My mother was a prolific artist and all of the silent auctions in town will now be blessed by her art. And don’t worry, it is not awful! She has art in the Smithsonian, the National Museum of Women Artists, and a bunch of other places. See my April A to Z for details.
For my father it was books and musical instruments. I still have the guitars. I think there were twelve trumpets? A lute, a harp, a cello — the lute is in very bad shape and the others have gone to someone else and the school, respectively. Recorders, gone. I have flutes, my regular flute and then ones made out of clay, cherry, pvc pipe and bamboo, as well as a Native American flute. I am mostly playing the regular flute, Native American flute and guitar.
I am guilty of books, too. I DO want to read them all, but even if I did nothing but read for the next sixty years, I might not finish. The excuse that some are reference does not fly. Some are pure unsullied entertainment and by gosh, I am keeping those! I am not allowed to go to the book sale next week. I do have a library box but the books are not leaving at the rate they have been arriving in the last year. And it’s my fault.
Anyhow, I am enjoying my clutter. After all, we invented tables to put things on. Sometimes we do have to clear the table for the NEXT project, but no worries! There is always the floor!
Finish the quote: One of Arnold Schwarzeneggerβs most famous lines is, βIβll beβ¦β “I’ll be PEEEEACE!”
Finish the song title: One of Randy Newmanβs best known songs is βWhy Canβt Weβ¦β “Why Can’t We Peace Each Other!”
Twilight wasnβt about a teenage girl who falls in love with a vampire. What was it about? The Forks Vampire/Human/Werewolf Peace Consortium that healed the entire world.
What made Blade different from the vampires he hunted? He changed his name from Blade to Peace and his very touch brought peace to the hearts of the world of Vampires.
In what movie did Billy Crystal play a character named, Miracle Max? WORLD PEACE IS HERE
The Goonies wasnβt about a group of kids searching for a lost treasure. What was it about? Some silly kids who start a peace movement in their neighborhood and end up leading the UN.
What was name of the character than Alan Rickman played in the first movie that he starred in? PEACEMAN.
In The Professional, who does Natalie Portmanβs character shoot with a paint pellet? The Horseman of WAR. Peace ensues.
The Phantom of the Opera isnβt about a disfigured man who terrorizes a Paris opera house. What is it about? A Peace Phantom who keeps changing the tragedies into Joyous Hymns to Peace.
I am blogging from A to Z about Helen Burling Ottaway, my artist mother, and other women artists.
Artists are unruly. They are not obedient. They are usurpers. They are unreasonable. This is another etching of my mother, a self portrait, titled “Giantess”. She looks giant, rising from an ocean. Will she have arms and hands and legs, or is she an octopus? We do not know. It may depend on her mood.
I am reading Kim Addonizio’s Ordinary Genius for a Centrum poetry class.
She challenges white poets: why don’t you write about racisim?
I write that we are afraid. I think it is more than that: it is shame. Thinking about her words, I thought about one of my mother’s pieces of art and how it makes me uncomfortable. And that my discomfort with it is new. I wrote this poem.
Race forward
Kim Addonizio asks
Why don’t white poets write about race?
Chickenshits, I think.
Afraid. We are afraid.
My mother called one color Nigger Pink.
She says, “It’s the color that only looks good on black people.”
She looks wicked as she says it and I know that I never should.
She didn’t think she was racist nor a feminist.
One time she says, “Maybe I am a feminist.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
“We had a group of women who went to plant trees. None of them could dig a hole.”
“Oh,” I say.
“They didn’t know how to use a shovel!”
She might be horrified how many high school graduates today would call a spade a shovel.
A mentor art teacher says, “Stop being small,” to her. “Get bigger.”
She starts pastel portraits, larger than life.
One that I love is titled “One Fist of Iron.”
Now: don’t lie. What race do you think the person is? And what gender?
Did you guess correctly? African American and male.
Another friend tells me he is trying to get his father to stop calling Brazil nuts nigger toes.
My mother told me that term too.
And that it was unacceptable.
At my friend’s father’s birthday, I focus my camera on the birthday man.
He holds a bowl of nuts. He says to himself, “I will now eat a politically incorrect nut.” and the camera clicks. I love this photograph because he is 90 and white and reluctantly changing his wicked words.
My mother says there might be hope when a small black child trick or treats her house in black face, in Alexandria, Virginia, in the 1990s.
I think there IS hope, even though the race seems slow and painful and there is so much anger
Look in the mirror, white poets.
And write the words.
One Fist of Iron, by Helen Burling Ottaway
The photograph at the beginning of this is not my mother. It is her mother’s mother, Mary Robbins White. I have pictures of five generations of women with that serious expression. She was the wife of George White, the Congregationalist Minister who was president of Anatolia College in Turkey. They and my grandmother and siblings were escorted to the Turkish border in 1916. George White and his wife were two of the main witnesses of the genocide of the Armenians in Turkey.
Ok, so the reason the bath mat is on the rack is because it is WET. And what does Sol Duc do? Climb right one and lie on it. Me: “The bath mat is wet AND the rack can fall down.”
Sol Duc: “I am totally loving wet bath mat plus it needs fur.”
Me: “All we need is for Elwha to join in.”
Siblings can be SOOOO annoying.
OOOOOoooo this fits the Ragtag Daily Prompt for Monday: PITCH. As in Sol Duc’s fur, pitch black.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
KO Rural Mad As Hell Blog 
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