Oh, the Stubbornness of Humans

 

Becky Bumgarner would like to say a big THANK YOU, from the bottom of her still-beating heart, to the EMTs who were on duty at the fire house in Vashon early on the morning of Monday, August 3rd. They totally rock, and they saved her life.

A little after six that morning I got a call from Becky. She said she had been kept awake by chest pains all night.

Now, Becky is the person who took me to the Fire Station when I had my TIA, and she said she felt much better when I got into the ambulance and headed to Swedish, so on August 3rd, when she asked me if I thought she should have her husband Roy take her up to the Fire Station to get her chest pains checked out, I said, yes, I would feel much better if she was in an ambulance and headed to Swedish.

So Roy took her up to the Fire Station, where the EMTs informed Becky she was having a heart attack. They wanted to airlift her but there was too much fog, so they whisked her off in an ambulance to Swedish Hospital at Cherry Hill, formerly Providence, where she was found to have a completely blocked left anterior descending artery, i.e., the big one that runs down the left side of the heart.

The docs put in two titanium stents.

When I talked to her later that morning, she was feeling much better.

Stents do that for people. Amazing what getting the proper amount of blood and oxygen distributed to your body can do.

Some of her heart muscle has been injured so she is not home free, but she is home, and she is recovering, and learning a whole new regimen of pills. We were talking about blood thinners the other day.

I am grateful she got in there and was saved, and so is her family, and so are her many friends.

Thanks, Vashon EMTs! Thanks, Swedish Cardiology!

When I spoke to her daughter Maggie, we expressed frustration that Becky did not get help as soon as she felt chest pains the previous Friday night.

She did call a medical advice line before she called me that Monday morning, and they told her to call 911.

“But I didn’t want to do that.”

Oh, the stubbornness of humans.

When Rick first became seriously ill, he wouldn’t go to the doctor.

"I'll work it off," he said, which is what he'd done all his life with every ache, pain, sprain, etc. Turns out you can't work off cancer or kidney failure.

I was angry about his refusal to take care of himself until he was nearly dead, and talking with other women, who said their husbands were just the same, I decided it was all men. Men! So stubborn!

And then ... I had my TIA. Transient Ischemic Attack, or a little stroke that resolved itself so was not a stroke. Woke up with a loud noise in my head, a weak left arm, and crap balance.

This happened at four or five in the morning, of course, so I called a nurse hotline and the nurse told me to call 911.

But I didn’t want to do that.

Part of the reason was that my grandson was living with me then, and he was asleep upstairs. I had to make some provision for him. Finally called Becky and asked her to take me to the ER. She came over, looked at me, and told me she would take me to the fire station.

I argued with her, but finally gave in. She took me to the fire station, where the EMTs put me in an ambulance and whisked me away to Swedish, Cherry Hill. Becky, god bless her, took care of my grandson, until she could hand him off to my son, Uncle Drew.

By the time I got to the hospital my symptoms were gone, but they kept me for a night for observation. That’s why I take a blood thinner.

So now I don't think stubbornness is a male trait. It's a human trait. I think most of us, maybe all of us, are pig headed, or simply don’t want to admit something serious is happening.

"I'll work it out."

"I'll just sit here with these stroke symptoms, and call Becky instead of calling 911."

"I'll put up with these chest pains all weekend and call Mary on Monday morning."

I'm off my high horse of being angry at Rick, or anyone, for being stubborn. It is humbling to realize that refusing to get help is exactly what I did when the time came.

The best things I learn in life involve being humbled.

Takeaway: When someone tells you to call 911, call 911. Even if you don’t want to do that.

The Seriousness of the Situation

Recently a cousin of mine wrote a post on Facebook expressing his concern that public health directives to wear face masks and observe social distancing would make him a sheep, blindly following the government’s orders.

He is worried about the tyranny of wearing face masks, but he is not worried that he is are already the willing sheep of a fascist government.

Trump claims he wants to “stop the insanity.” The insanity he wishes to stop is most of the American people demanding equality for black people, for indigenous people, for Latinx people, but mostly demanding that our police, who used to be called “peace officers,” stop killing people of color for no reason.

How dare we.

Protesters exercised their legal right to assemble peacefully. The police used their “crowd control” weapons, instigating violence where there was none.

Unfortunately, like the coronavirus, assholery is an equal opportunity employer, so we have had people going on violent rampages in Seattle, and elsewhere: Businesses attacked and vandalized, windows smashed, fires started, graffiti everywhere. This is the violence of which Trump accuses all protesters, labeling them, “domestic terrorists.” This is the “insanity” he wants to stop. The actions of a few are an invitation for him to send in his storm troopers. Not that he needed an invitation.

And oh yeah, some of those violent, destructive people? White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and QAnon geniuses, agitating for their “boogaloo,” using the protests as an opportunity to escalate violence among Americans.

The Homeland Security troops are thugs and goons. We have seen them in action in Portland, Oregon. Trump sends them only to cities whose mayors are Democrats. He is transparent about deploying his storm troopers as a political tactic to please his base, raise his polling numbers, and, he hopes, win the election in November.

His base loves seeing protesters getting beat up, shot, gassed, and otherwise injured.

Couple of weeks ago federal troops arrived in Seattle. The following day Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan held a press conference at which she said that she talked with Chad Wolf, the head of Homeland Security, the day before. He told her that he saw no need for sending federal troops to Seattle, and if they were sent, he would let Mayor Durkan know ahead of time.

The troops were in the air on their way to Seattle at the time of that phone call.

I hear that those troops have left now, after Mayor Durkan, Governor Inslee, and King County Executive Dow Constantine, the most visible of public leaders who objected to the troops’ presence, managed to convince whoever is in charge of their deployment that the troops were not wanted or needed here, and might escalate violence here as they have done in Oregon.

News reports are that Oregon Governor Kate Brown negotiated the departure of the federal troops from Portland. Portland has become a more peaceful place without them.

Supposing Trump loses the election in November. He has been open about saying that if he loses the election, he might refuse to leave the White House. Of course that is an extreme possibility. At least I hope it is. Trump is acting more and more like a cornered wounded animal.

Even if he loses the election, so much of the United States government is in ashes, so much of the Constitution has been trashed, so many fascist minions will be entrenched in government agencies and departments, and our population will still be divided almost in half. The Trump base will be mad as hell if he loses, and they have been emboldened these past four years to express their racism and act with violence.

They don’t mind fascism. They think it’s peachy, because the gestapo has not come for them or theirs yet.

If Trump wins, by hook or by crook (the latter, I’m thinking), our country will continue its downward plummet.

Even if he doesn’t win, so much of what used to be America is gone, and the rebuilding will take years, decades. That’s if enough people can keep their eyes on the prize and turn things around consistently for those years and those decades.

The United States was once the country that could call other countries to order. Now we have the fascist government so many of us have seen coming for years, and Americans are now judged the stupidest, and with the coronavirus out of control, literally the sickest people in the world.

I am sorry for our children, and our grandchildren, who will be inheritors of this sad, violent legacy.

My generation – yes, the infamous Boomers – had big ideas for the world, of making love not war, and giving peace a chance. We failed to do those things. We really did not grasp the seriousness of the situation.

Karens, Among Other Things

Recently those of us who use social media have been treated to an onslaught of videos of mostly middle-aged white women being ridiculously racist, and the name “Karen” has been applied to these women.

Now we have people who refuse to wear masks or do social distancing, people who insist that the Constitution states, “You ain’t the boss of me.” They are showing up in videos and the women are being called Karens as well.

A friend of mine whose name is Karen is feeling a little put out by all the Karen-shaming, and I do not blame her.

It’s too late, I know. This labeling racist or otherwise obnoxious white women in videos “Karen” has blown up and spread through our culture. Yesterday I found out there is an Instagram site called “crazykarens.” As soon as you say it’s a Karen story people know what you mean. This stinks for people named Karen.

It is better to use the offenders’ real names.

Early in July a white woman ran into an Asian family - mom, dad, and two daughters, plus their dog Fluffy, an 11-pound Maltipoo on a leash – hiking in the woods in Marin County, California.

The white woman blocked the trail and told the family that they were breaking the law by having their dog in the park (not true. Dogs on leash were legal). Then she told the family that they “couldn’t be in this country,” and they needed to “go back where they came from.”

The mother of the family told the white woman that she should check her own heritage and go back to wherever she came from.

If this Asian family went back where they came from that day, it was probably Mill Valley or San Rafael, at a guess.

The father of the family filmed the incident.

When white lady demanded to know the family’s name, he told her that was none of her business, then turned the tables and asked her what her name was.

By this time, her bandana had fallen, exposing her face, and she realized she was being filmed. She must have lost her presence of mind then because she walked away from the scene, muttering that her name was, “Beth.”

The father posted the video on YouTube, titling it, “Park Ranger Karen Tells Asian Family They're Breaking Laws & Don't Belong in America! (California)”

The video went viral. She was neither a Park Ranger nor a Karen. Beth was quickly identified – her name and where she worked. Within a couple of days her employers announced that after they reviewed the video, Beth turned in her resignation, and that they did not tolerate racism in any form.

I was sorry that the video title besmirched the name Karen, not to mention Park Rangers. Outing Beth’s real name led to real consequences for her.

Real names are better than Karen.

Then there was the video of a woman throwing boxes of shoes at a salesclerk. She was mad because it was store policy not to serve anyone who was not wearing a mask. This woman was so upset that she walked out leaving her wallet on the counter, making it easy for the police to round her up and charge her with assault.

Commenters on that video were unanimous in calling her a Karen and criticizing her actions. Some went farther and ridiculed her for being fat.

“Hey,” I thought, “wait a minute.”

Shoebox Woman was a violent jerk, yes, but it was her behavior, not her body shape, that was the issue. Come on, people. It’s racism and pigheadedness that we are fighting, not body shape or other physical attributes or lack of them.

Fat shaming is alive and well, a socially acceptable prejudice. More than once someone has dismissed me on sight because I am fat. Fat hating doctors are the worst. We fat women have plenty to say about those jerks, and I hope their ears are burning when we say it.

So. Those of us who are named Karen, or who are fat, are tired of the ridicule of Karens and fat people.

Real Karens, be patient. This trend will go the way of disco and elephant jokes.

Those of you who think you need to lose some weight and feel ashamed of your body? You know, some of us have lost and regained more than your entire body weight over a lifetime of trying to be “thin enough.” It is a fool’s game, and a big money-making business in America.

To quote Mr. Rogers, “I like you just the way you are.”

I did lose some weight without dieting this last fall and winter. My secret? I had cancer. Not a weight loss program I recommend.

Romance of the Rodeo Cowboy

“There’s a young man that I know, his age is twenty-one

Comes from down in southern Colorado

Just out of the service and he’s lookin' for his fun

Someday soon goin' with him someday soon”

(Someday Soon ©Ian Tyson)

Remember that song? Written by Ian Tyson and originally recorded by Ian and Sylvia, then a few years later by Judy Collins.

Ian Tyson “rode the rodeos” in his late teens and early twenties, so it is rumored on the internet, so that is where he was coming from when he wrote this – the sweet faithful young woman waiting for the rascally rodeo rider.

“My parents cannot stand him 'cause he rides the rodeo

My father says that he will leave me cryin'…”

Yep. We all hummed and sang along. Pretty tune.

“He loves his damned ol’ rodeo as much as he loves me

Someday soon goin' with him someday soon”

After my experience with rodeo cowboys, when I hear that song I want to say, “Run, girl, run! Your parents are right!”

The story: as a senior in high school I was accepted by the two colleges to which I applied – UC Santa Barbara, and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

I chose to go to Cal Poly as a journalism major instead of to the University of California at Santa Barbara as a music major. For some reason I thought that journalism would get me a job, whereas music would not. Wrong – in the sixties women weren’t being hired for journalism jobs like they are now. It was a man’s world.

I knew that Cal Poly was the choice that would please my parents. It was an engineering and agriculture school with a ratio of three male students to every female student (“Cal Poly- where the men are men, and the sheep are nervous”), and it was a conservative school.

This was 1965, when the Free Speech movement had taken off in Berkeley, quickly followed by the Filthy Speech Movement. My older brother had gone to Berkeley, but I knew that my parents would never allow me, their wee ewe lamb, to go to that cauldron of Communism and dirty language.

Besides, it was a three-hour drive down 101 from Watsonville to San Luis Obispo, and Santa Barbara was another couple of hours beyond that, at least. Cal Poly was geographically much more desirable.

My mother drove me down and checked me into my dormitory that September day. I couldn’t wait for her to leave. In retrospect, I’m ashamed of how rude I was to her. She knew better than I did what my staying and her going meant. It was the end of my living under the parental roof (at least until I came crawling out of Los Angeles six years later, but that’s another story).

Once ensconced in my dorm room, I got to know my roommates and the girls living across the hall, Julie and Carol.

Cal Poly had a championship rodeo team, and Julie and Carol were barrel racers on that team. Barrel racing is the women’s rodeo sport.

So, there I was, 17, literally a farmer’s daughter fresh out of the apple orchard, and I had new cowgirl friends at this ag school.

That first quarter I met some of the cowboys on the rodeo team, and those rodeo cowboys – holy carp. I’m not sure if many of them were that devoted to academics. They were there to rodeo on that championship team. And to drink.

I can’t help but wonder if they were like other athletes who are in college for one reason – to play their sport – and their academic transcripts were cooked, if you catch my drift.

One Friday evening late that fall I went to a cowboy party. Most of the team riders were there, and soon I realized that I was the only sober person in the room.

Guess what happened.

One drunk cowboy got into an argument with another drunk cowboy, and soon that escalated to one taking a swing at the other and connecting solidly. The kid who’d been hit went down like a tree falling over and struck his head on the refrigerator. I couldn’t tell if he was bleeding from a head wound or one of his existing orifices, but there was blood, and he was no longer conscious. The drunken party goers scrambled around, trying to figure out what to do. It was decided to carry him to a bedroom where he could sleep it off. No one thought to take him to an ER or call an ambulance. Cowboys.

If I had any illusions of rodeo cowboys being romantic or glamorous, those illusions died that night.

Ian Tyson’s fantasy about that nice passive girlfriend waiting for him and following him anywhere no matter how badly she was treated – well, reality kinda ruined that song for me, both seeing rodeo cowboys in action and my young adult life navigating the stormy waters of romance. My generation of girls was raised to be that girlfriend, and I must tell you that for most of us it did not lead to a happy life.

After my disillusionment with rodeo cowboys I started hanging around with the beatnik/bohemians at school, so my parents’ worst nightmare about me falling in with the commies was realized.

Of course there was nary a commie among them. They were just young people who drank, played guitars, and sat around talking – they weren’t violent, and they had some conversation.

Big improvement over the rodeo cowboys, I thought.

The Texas Relatives

Opened a paper bag the other day and came upon letters from the mid-70s from my mother's oldest sister, Gladys, in Texas, to Sister, my aunt whom I knew growing up.

Now, these were the Sheffield siblings: Gladys, born ca. 1906-07; Allie, named after his father but later changed it to Allen, born 1910; Della (Sister), born 1912; Thelma Juanita, my mother, born 1915; Genevieve, the baby, born after my mother sometime.

The only one whose year of birth I know for sure is my mother.

Gladys did not go into the home with her four younger siblings in 1921, the home being the Salvation Army orphanage in El Paso, Texas. At sixteen, she was considered too old.

Allen, like all boys, was kicked out when he turned twelve, and Sister, Juanita, and Genevieve remained.

Gladys probably went to work. She married young, a marriage that did not last. She remarried and stayed in Texas the rest of her life, and stayed close to their father, Allie Sheffield.

In these letters she was talking about their father, Allie, after he died. She asked Sister for help paying for his funeral and interment, because it would take her and her husband years to pay off that $250.

From Gladys’s letters I got the impression that Allie was a likable guy with a sense of humor, who was popular in his community, and he would be missed.

Sister had stayed in touch with him and Gladys after she left Texas and had gone back to visit them at least once.

She did help Gladys out with the bill. I found mortuary receipts.

Allie had lost a leg around 1920, and that was the reason the children were put into the home. He was no longer able to support a family of five with only one leg.

There was a picture of Allie with the letters, showing him full length, standing on his wooden leg, next to his pickup.

The wooden leg was a peg leg contraption unlike anything I have ever seen, a bracket strapped to his thigh, with a piece of wood coming down out of the bracket. The bottom piece was shaped down to a more slender end, and it might have had a metal cap.

That picture was a real find for me – after hearing about Daddy’s leg all those years, this was the first time I’d seen it, or seen my grandfather, for that matter.

When my father died in 1975, it hit me hard, so when Allie died sometime later, I expressed condolences to my mother.

She brushed them aside curtly: "I didn't know him."

In her late seventies my mother acquired a boyfriend, Armand. Apparently once when my mother was behaving badly - she was a world class complainer - Armand explained to some friends that she grew up in an orphanage and that was why she behaved that way.

That REALLY pissed her off. Later when she was complaining to me about Armand, she mentioned him saying that. Growing up in the home had not affected her like that, she said.

Hm. I could have sworn it had affected her exactly like that.

She once told me she had been a “happy go lucky” child.

Eh, maybe she did have a cheerful disposition until she married my father and had children, and then was dealing with her depression, and raising children, and my father's temper (he had a bad one, she said), and doing it all without medication or therapy, except for that once a week visit to Polly to get her hair done.

I have been much more fortunate in my life than my mother was. For one thing, I didn’t grow up in an orphanage, but also attitudes about women changed in the last few decades, and I have had the resources of therapy and antidepressants, and I have been willing to accept help.

In the 1950s, you toughed it out and sucked it up. Too bad for you and your children.

Anyway.

Here is the picture of Allie Sheffield and his truck. And his wooden leg. He died around 1977.

Sister died in 1987. Don’t know when Gladys died. Allen died of cancer in 1964, which was a relief for me. You figure it out.

Their youngest sister Genevieve died young. I don’t know how. No one ever spoke of Genevieve. Ever.

My mother was the last of the siblings to go, in March 2001 at the age of 86. Heart disease. I think it was eating at MacDonald’s every day with Armand that got her.

I have relatives in Texas, but I would have to do some serious genealogy searching to find them. I’ve made it so far without them and I’m willing to keep it that way.

As my cousin Nancy always said, “Family! the other F word.”

Life with birds

Sitting at my desk, I heard the sound of a bird flying into an office window. Darn it. It happens sometimes, but at least it didn't sound like it hit very hard. Took me another couple of minutes to realize the bird was in the room, and hit the window from this side.
There followed several minutes of closing blinds so it wouldn't try to fly through the windows again, and opening doors so it could fly through them. One door I opened let the cat in, and he took a great interest in our new house bird.
Poor birdie - it flew up on top of the laundry cabinets, then into and all around the living room with the cat bounding behind in hot pursuit, and me in pursuit of the cat. It perched on the arm of a couch and I almost picked it up but no, off it flew again.
Finally came back into the kitchen and perched up high on an open cabinet door over the stove, and next to the kitchen door where it probably came in. I had parted the bug curtains so that it could fly out easily, and I sat at the kitchen table saying, "You're almost there, you're almost there."
The cat walked by looking disgusted because he had lost the bird and did not look up to see it. Yay.
The bird was looking at the door with the bug curtains, and you could see it was thinking, thinking, thinking, and watching the birds flying around outside.
Finally it bucked up its courage, took off ... and flew into the top of the bug curtain, and spiraled down to the the top of the milk crate where I keep the dog towels.
"You're almost there!" I said again.
It sat there for another minute.
Then it hopped down to the threshhold of the door, sat there a second, and walked out.
Turned right, and that was the last we saw of it.
We being me and the dog.
I think it might have been a female house finch, but the beak didn't look right. Too pointy. Darn. I sit here poring over my bird book and still confuse purple finches with house finches.
But I do believe I saw a ruby crowned kinglet yesterday. First one this year!

Interesting Times

Remember that old Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times.”

The curse is working.

A lot of people are feeling despair over all that is happening – the pandemic and the pressure of being in isolation for so many weeks; the rise of white supremacist neo-Nazis; the murder (lynching) of black people by the police and any arrogant, frightened white person with a gun or whatever weapon is at hand, like a knee, truck, or rope, etc.; the clear not only lack of true leadership from our president but his more and more apparent separation from reality, most recently manifested in tear-gassing and firing rubber bullets into some peaceful protesters so that he could walk across the street and get a picture taken of himself in front of a church, holding up a Bible.

This was such a blatant display of hypocrisy I do not know why that poor abused Bible did not burst into flames. Heck, I don’t know why the guy himself doesn’t burst into flames.

Oh, if only physics had a conscience.

We were taught to love our country. We were told fine stories of great men who wrote and spoke glorious words, who said that all men are created equal.

I am going to repeat myself now, because I have said this in the past: We were not taught that “men” only meant white European men who owned property (some of which was slaves).

Not women, not people with brown or black or any color than white skin, certainly not our country’s indigenous peoples, some of whom owned slaves, and some of whom resent that black activists have not brought indigenous peoples along in their fight for equality.

This is more complex than you think.

Now we are seeing our beloved country getting its poxy white skin ripped right off, especially the skin of white policemen who feel they can kill/murder/lynch black people with impunity and get away with it because that is exactly what they have done for so long.

The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was tumultuous and entwined with the anti-Vietnam war movement. There were riots, assassinations (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, just for starters), war in the streets of Detroit in 1967, and a war in Chicago at the Democratic convention in 1968.

Hubert Humphrey was nominated there. He lost to Richard “Tricky Dicky” Nixon, a smart guy who would have been a much better president if he had not been mentally unstable and had not resorted to criminal measures to get what he wanted. Oh, and he was a right-hand man to Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, chasing Commies, many of whom were not Commies.

Anyway, when the Black Panthers were making white people pee their pants (Black men! With rifles!) and the men of the Nation of Islam stood in long lines in their long black coats and hats, man, I’ll tell you, they were every bit as scary as the lines of bubble helmeted policemen with their kill clubs were then and are now.

After the passing of Civil Rights Acts in the sixties under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (a much despised president who also started Medicare and other social programs that latter day Republicans have been deconstructing as fast as they can), after police murdered black activists in the streets and asleep in their beds, after the Vietnam war was halted, after black actors began turning up in television commercials and shows, and blaxploitation movies became popular, after the advent of busing and affirmative action and college admissions quotas, there prevailed a false sense that racism was beginning to be a thing of the past - at least in the minds of some white people.

Non-white people have always known that was a lot of hooey. Racism only went into hiding for some people. It became visible with a vengeance during the Obama administration.

Black people have politely pointed out that lately we have become aware of the persistent and random killing of black people because people now have cell phone cameras and can make videos of white people murdering black people, as in the case of George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery.

Watching a person die while you hear his voice fade, or you see his body reel when the gun blast hits him, begins to make this centuries old practice of treating black people as animals to be hunted down and killed real, and repulsive, and impossible to ignore or dismiss, and maybe, just maybe, you begin to grasp why people say BLACK LIVES MATTER. Because in the entire history of the settled white European presence on this continent, black lives have not mattered.

Brown and Red lives have not done so well, either, but I have to stop now.