Sassistas! Our dish on the social soup.

My Grief

"This is a vulgar way of putting it, and there are many wonderful things about our culture, but I'm sorry, it is a phobic culture.  People do not want to confront the existential mess that is life.  They want to check things off -- OK, you're OK.  And just because you can talk about your grief, you know," she said, looking sharply at me, "doesn't mean you are in control of it, or that you know what's going on."

--  what a friend said to author Meghan O'Rourke when Meghan lost her mother to colon cancer; from Meghan's book, The Long Goodbye

 

Not many people have the courage to grieve or to sit with someone in grief.  And, actually, who can blame them?  Grief is painful, messy, alarming, and most of all, mystifying. You really don't know what's going on.  A person can lose a parent and feel nothing. The same person can lose a pet and be crippled with anguish.

Losing Gwendolyn saddened, infuriated and then silenced me. 

In yesterday's sass stream, PEACEsista wrote:

Remember, too, what Charlissta told you. Many things are happening, triggered by this grief. It is hard, but good, to sit with it and sort one out from the other. Each of us holds deep sadness inside and grief seems to be a genie which releases it all at once.

Yes, PEACEsista, each of us holds deep sadness inside, but my grief was not a genie.  It was The Sirens; the Muses of the lower world . . . three dangerous bird-women -- abandonment, anger and sadness -- who lured me with their enchanting voices and shipwrecked me and a couple of beloveds.

When I learned that Gwendolyn's life had ended, I was saddened.  When I put the pieces together and learned that she had decided when to end it, I was furious.  When Charlissta gently told me what was really going on, I was silenced.  

This is what was really going on: when I lost Gwendolyn, I lost the Ripley from "Aliens" in my life.  I lost the mother figure who first said out loud to me her version of "Get away from her, you bitch!"  I lost the mother figure who, after hearing my first writing exercise at Ghost Ranch, looked me straight in the face and said: "Your mother really f*cked you up."  I lost the mother figure who consistently over 15 years said, "Your mother f*cked you up, and you have to write it out.  Write it out.  Write it out."

When I lost Gwendolyn (and in the months before anticipating her death), I lost a mother, and I responded in one of two ways: I became a child desperately wanting comfort; or I became my own mother -- an unforgiving, scapegoating, fragile bitch. I never saw it coming. It was Charlissta who said, "Losing Gwendolyn has hooked your core issue of abandonment in a major way.  It has taken you to a very young place."  I honestly had not recognized that place.  Decades later and tens of thousands of dollars in therapy, and I'm still hooked by mother issues? Are you kidding me?

No. That's what The Sirens of grief do.  They lure and hook you. They shipwreck you and your beloveds on the shores of your unresolved core issues which many of us spend our entire lives attempting to avoid. Do you expend more energy than is necessary to stay positive and move ahead rather than what you call "wallowing" in pain, disappointment or grief?  Do you always pull yourself up by your bootstraps and think, "I gotta be strong. It's strength that matters"? Do you consistently and inordinately transfer your responsibility to mother yourself to someone else because you can't see and/or understand your own responsibility?  

That may be grief humming, and trust me, when someone or something you love or count on dies, grief will rear its ugly and all-consuming siren head and sing in your face or in the faces of those you love.

I can't say much more because as Anne Morrow Lindbergh has written, "Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone, her own burden, her own way." But about grief, I will say this:  

Be alert. Be attentive. Beware.

Death is the perfect knowing.

The image at the beginning of this post is a water color by Ann St. John Hawley, the first of several by her in my art collection.  I first saw this painting with Gwendolyn in 1996, who encouraged me to purchase it. 

Freedom Riders

 

Fifty years ago on Mother's Day 1961, a bus full of young people was firebombed in Anniston, Alabama. The passengers were black and white, one of several groups that rode from Washington, D.C. to challenge the segregated interstate bus system.

In 1960, the Supreme Court ruled in Boynton v. Virginia that segregation in interstate travel was illegal. Though federal law had outlawed such racist practices, they continued throughout the Jim Crow South -- the infamous "colored only" waiting rooms and sections of buses were ubiquitous.  Freedom Riders wanted to dramatize this reality and publicly challenge the violent racism just beneath the surface of those waiting rooms and backs of buses.  In the days following the firebombing, other Freedom Riders were arrested by segregationist city leaders in Jackson, Mississippi and taken to the state penitentiary.  Over the next four months, supporters from around the country descended on bus stations, train depots and airports across the South. A total of 436 people risked their lives to face down angry mobs and the Ku Klux Klan.

To view a special photo gallery, "50 Years After the Freedom Riders," please click here.

A week from today, May 16, PBS plans to air "Freedom Riders" a harrowing and ultimately inspiring documentary about these Americans whose belief in nonviolent activism had to have been tested.  The Sassistas! first saw this documentary at last year's SILVERDOCS Documentary Festival and can attest to its power. We were stunned by the commitment of the Riders not to respond violently, even when they were spat upon. If it had been us, hands would surely have been thrown. We highly recommend the film and encourage all to watch it.

Bird's Eye View

What better way to wish HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Chrysosistah, our resident ornithologist, than with an inspiring bird story sassgested by Matissta!  

As Flannista wrote this post, more than 170,000 people around the world were watching a live broadcast of an eagle sitting on a couple of eaglets and waiting for a third egg to hatch. To watch all the action yourself, click here.

Above is a still image from that 24-hour "Eagle Cam" (infrared light allows the nest to be seen at night). It was set up by a nonproft group called the Raptor Resource Project in Decorah, Iowa.  It records the home life of a pair of bald eagles in the nest they built in 2007, in a cottonwood tree 80 feet above a stream called Trout Run.  Two cameras are positioned (and camouflaged) about five feet above the next, one can be zoomed and panned to follow the bird's movements. 

Why does this broadcast have so much appeal?  The miracle of birth?  How cute the babies are?  The attentiveness of BOTH parents (who take turns watching the kids)? What exactly?

We hope you like it Chrysosistah!  And perhaps there will be another "birth" on your birthday!

 

Autograph, Please!

Remember autograph books? A book with blank pages that you passed around so all of your friends could sign it and leave you with wisdom to last a lifetime?

Above is an autograph book that Flannista discovered last spring in her attic.  From the signatures and sentiments, Flannista believes she carried around the book when she was 13 years old.  All of her eighth grade friends seems to have signed it, including all of Flann's sisters.  Here is the sentiment from Karen, the sister Flann lost to multiple sclerosis 10 years ago:

Here is the sentiment from Flann's oldest sister:

"When you get old, and out of shape/Remember Playtex Girdles are only $5.98."  Flann is now old and out of shape, but she suspects Playtex Girdles are more than $5.98.  Heck, do those girdles even exist anymore?

Another sister signed her autograph:  "Dollie, Jr."  Flann's mother's name is Dollie.

One friend seemed to have an inking of what lay ahead for Flann:

"There must be a spark in all that dark."  Yes, there must be.  Here's another sentiment:  "What are little girls made of?  Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of.  Too bad you're a big girl."  Yeah, too bad.

Did you ever have an autograph book?  Ever sign one?  How did you sign it?

November 22, 1963

Today's marks the 47th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, one of the more shocking events in American history.  Did you know that C.S. Lewis (pictured above, left), famed Christian thinker and author of The Chronicles of Narnia and Aldous Huxley, eastern mystic and author of Brave New World died the same day? All three men died within minutes of each other.  Lewis' and Huxley's deaths were, of course, eclipsed by Kennedy's.

All three believed, in different ways, that death was not the end of human life. Suppose they were right and suppose they met after death.  How might the conversation go? One author has tried to imagine this conversation, and has written a play about it. Called Between Heaven & Hell, the play by Peter Kreeft -- a Christian and professor of philosophy at Boston College -- imagines a dialogue between Lewis, representing Christian theism; Huxley, advocating Eastern panthesism; and Kennedy, taking the role of modern humanist, to debate such questions as "Does human life have meaning?" and "Is it possible to know about life after death?"

It's not very good, unfortunately, as Kreeft spends way too much time trying to prove Jesus was God.  Surely these guys had other things to debate.  What might they have been?  

Prior to reading this post, had you known that Lewis and Huxley also died on November 22, 1963?

Animal Speak

 

Today is PEACEsista's birthday and to mark her special day, the Sassistas! want to talk animals; more specifically, the spiritual power of all creatures great and small.

On Monday while walking our dog, Flannista came across the snake skin in the photo above.  While she had previously come across snake skin, Flann had never discovered snake skin so intact. Curious about its meaning, Flann consulted Animal Speak, a 2009 birthday gift from PEACEsista.  Here's what it revealed:

Because it sheds its skin, the snake has long been a symbol of death and rebirth.  It sheds its skin as it outgrown the old.  The death and rebirth cycle is part of what the snake represents . . .

Before the snake begins to shed its skin, its eye will begin to cloud over.  It gives the snake a trance-like appearance.  To many mystics and shamans this indicated the ability of the snake to move between the realms of the living and the dead, of crossing over from life to death and then back to life again.  As the skin begins to shed, the eyes begin to clear as if they will see the world anew.  For this reason, alchemists often believed that wisdom and new knowledge would lead to death and rebirth, enabling the individual to see the world from an entirely new perspective (p.361).

It's not lost on Flannista that during the past week, she has shed some of her own skin.  To come across this beautiful snake skin the first time I ventured out to walk the dog alone since extensive surgery on my nose was Mother Nature's way of letting me know that perhaps I will be able to see the world anew, from an entirely new perspective.  I am grateful for the message.

What tokens -- shells, bones, teeth, etc. -- have you kept from an encounter with the spiritual power of animals?  Today to celebrate PEACEsista's birthday, let's bestow upon her the blessings of animal wisdom.

Grave Decorating

The Sassistas! would like to acknowledge and thank half-a-sista for dishing this special Memorial Day sass.  Half-a also provided the photos featured in this post.

Memorial Day, what my parents called Decoration Day, always fell on May 30 until the Uniform Federal Holidays Act of 1968 moved it to the last Monday of May.  My mother continued to observe the holiday on May 30 in spite of the federal government.

That morning she marched into the yard and devastated the many flower beds with a paring knife and an old pair of scissors.  She placed metal buckets full of peonies, irises, and mock orange branches in the backseat of the car between my sister's and my legs.  "Don't let these tip over and spill the water."

My sister sniffed for most of the trip because of her allergies to flowers, but she kept her legs clamped to her bucket.  I did, too.

We drove 30 miles to the country cemetery where my mother's people rested in peace.  We decorated the graves with the cut flowers, and she placed a dime store cross on her parents' grave.

When I was very young, we went to Aunt Alice and Uncle Doc's for a reunion afterward.  My mom's relatives gathered to eat and tell stories about the dead.

As more and more people died, we didn't have enough people for a reunion.  We decorated the graves and went home.  Eventually my mother and I put flowers on the graves of her parents, her younger sister and brother-in-law, and my father.

These days the kids and grandkids go to the lake for the weekend.  Sunday, May 30, I will be on my way to visit the graves of my parents, my maternal grandparents and my aunt and uncle.  I may even decorate them this year.

Do any of you have grave decorating traditions in your families?  Please share them with the sassosphere today, the real Memorial Day.

Monster Jam!

Drum roll, please!  For the first time in the history of the sassosphere, the Sassistas! are tickled to death to acknowledge and thank babysis for dishing today's sass!

Fueling our anticipation on the way to Monster Jam, the local rock station cues up Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold,” a fitting mood setter for the crowd we will spend the next several hours with. We fork out $15 to park very near the Citrus Bowl, nestling our mini-van among RVs, Hummers, and pick-up trucks blasting train horns every 10 minutes or so.

Our first stop is the long line to ride in Blue Thunder, a monster truck replica of the original, with two bench seats lining the truck bed. There are seat belts and a roll cage, but if you’re over 36 inches tall, you can handle the figure eights and lots of noise.

Our next stop is the Pit Party, featuring all 14 trucks in tonight’s show. You shouldn’t touch, but you can get very close and take all the photos you want. This year we obtained seven driver autographs, adding to the value of our $10 Souvenir Yearbook.

Vendors offer food, drink, and merchandise, but we’ve come prepared. We eat our packed supper in the van, toss the football, listen to music, read, nap, or people watch. On this occasion, my observation shows more drunk rednecks prefer to make love, not war.

Around 7 pm, we walk to the stadium, where the sold-out crowd of over 60K is growing restless.  The National Anthem is sung by the winner of a radio competition, and the introductions begin.  All 14 trucks enter the stadium, engines roaring, and eventually position themselves around a giant oval, electrifying the crowd.  The noise is indescribable, but I called Flann and Matiss to give them the phone version.

The show lasts about three hours, and features racing and freestyle portions, with entertaining filler events of extreme moto-cross jumping and soccer mom minivan demo-cross (see photo left; note that the back of the green van on the far right says, "BABY ON BOARD"). One biker crash landed and had to be loaded into an ambulance, but he gave the universal thumbs-up symbol.  The minivan race had no rules to speak of, and the woman who won exclaimed, "That was the best feeling of my life!"

The final event is 90 seconds of a solo freestyle rampage by each monster truck.  The crowd favorite won convincingly, and is a true icon in the sport after 28 years of competition.  Dennis Anderson, the driver of Grave Digger, thanked the crowd for their faithful support over the years, and reminded us that a night with monster trucks gets your mind off the economy and your troubles.  We had to agree, and felt $104 for four tickets was time and money well spent.

What do you consider a good time for a great price?

To view a Youtube video of the 2009 "Air Force Afterburner Champion" click here.

Facebook Culture

The Sassistas! would like to acknowledge and thank Jerseysista for dishing today's sass.

I commented recently that Twitter, Facebook, and other internet applications are the new unifying media in a time when television is becoming more fractionalized. I called these applications culture, noting that they give us “a much thicker commonality” than television ever did. I think, though, that my characterizing FaceBook as “culture” struck some as profane. Alongside the great arts of poetry, painting, music and architecture how could anyone consider the crass exchange of cyber-cocktails, digital Easter eggs and viral bra colors to be culture?

I do. Culture is that which binds us. It is our shared reference points. It is our currency for communication. I think of an immigrant new to our language struggling with idioms. She would not have a chance of knowing what, for example, a phrase like “pooh-pooh” signifies. In contrast, anyone raised in America (at least in my generation) knows that a person “pooh-poohing” something is “sneering at” it. We know what it means because we swim in that same culture. 

Or consider this crossword clue I encountered last week. The clue was for “grant with grammys.” The answer was a three-letter word that turned out to be “amy,” which I recognized because I live in an American community that shares a common knowledge that Amy Grant is a grammy award-winning country singer and that a “grammy” is a an award, not someone’s elderly relative. 

Those common reference points are becoming much more numerous and pervasive with the spread of the internet and of social networks in particular. They are creating a “thicker commonality” where more people share the same knowledge. A few years ago most of us might have shared an interesting newspaper article with a friend at lunch where, now, we share it with dozens or hundreds online and many of them share it again. Sure, much of what is shared electronically these days is inane but so was the TV content of past years that is now our common touchstone. Much of that TV content, that which was of the least interest, that which did not go “viral” in our national conversation, has slipped from sight but those references that spread and were shared, like those to Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody, persist. We recognize, for instance, a reference to Mr. Rogers changing his shoes when he comes in the door. We know the meaning of “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!” or “Beam me up, Scotty.” And, fear not, you protectors of high culture, many of these, too, will be culled out of culture as memory fades but they are, nonetheless, culture, now. 

In the same way, even though Twitter and FaceBook have a very low threshold for quality, how can we help but be part of a world who now knows who some Scottish matron named Susan Boyle is? The internet, for better or worse, has brought us a common language that did not exist a few years ago. For better or worse, we somehow know what is meant if someone says “BTW, IMHO, that’s TMI, biotch.” Hopefully these are examples of culture that will fade but they ARE culture.

Culture is the touchstone of commonality wherever humans congregate, whether it is crass or refined. Mozart was thought to be crass in his time. Many of Shakespeare’s references are bawdy and profane. Who knows? The future may look back with reverence on our graffiti taggers and, in the mean time, we all can share a common culture that is shrinking our world and our differences. Time will shake out the trivial and leave the great works for generations to come.

NaNoWriMo Anyone?

The Sassistas! would like to acknowledge and thank half-a-sista who dished today's sass.

Have you ever wanted to write a novel but lacked a reason or the encouragement to do it? I have a solution:  NaNoWriMo.

National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 with 21 participants. The goal was to complete a novel of at least 50,000 words during the month of November. The idea proved very popular.  By 2008, 119,031 adults from all over the world participated. 21,683 of them “won” a certificate for writing 50,000 words or more during the month of November. And the best thing? It’s free.

The organization collects tax-deductible contributions to cover costs and to fund specific programs like NaNoWriMo, the Young Writers Program (YWP) and Script Frenzy. YWP offers young writers (17 and under) a place to set reasonable goals for writing during the month and to receive support and advice on writing which has been tailored to their needs. Participants from ages 13-17 can also sign up for NaNoWriMo and the goal of 50,000 words. Script Frenzy is about writing a script in the month of April. To date 4.8% of the Wrimos (event participants) have contributed $418,010. With 6 days left (a countdown clock on the web site ticks away the seconds), the collective word count is over 1.6 billion words.

For the third year I joined. I have written 73,147 words and will reach 100,000 by today, November 30.

The first year I wrote a novel about compassion and reconciliation, a modern day story of Job. Year Two I wrote a novel about a drag queen who becomes the earthly incarnation of the Blessed Virgin. I’m working on revisions and edits and hope to have it to an agent by the end of March 2010, or sooner.

This year I worked on four pieces:  the vampire novel (24,962 words), a story of revenge (12,879 words), a novel about a woman who decides the only way out of her marriage is to die a natural death (10,156 words), and the memoir of the last five years of my mother’s life (16,461 words). I write on one story until I get bored or can’t think of what to write next and then work on another piece. I’ll have over 50,000 on vampires by the end of the month and maybe over 50,000 on the memoir.

Maybe you’d like to join next year? For more information on the organization, check out the website (linked above) and take a look at what it offers.  Have you ever participated in NaNoWriMo?  Have you ever wanted to write a novel, a memoir, or anything else?  Please share!  Write on!