Responsi-damn-bility

I watched Fredrick Wilson II’s rant on the black man taking some “personal responsi-damn-bility,” (posted below) in the wake of the Ferguson/Michael Brown tragedy and I stepped away seriously considering what he had to say. It’s a call from Fredrick to “his people” to stop blaming, take a good look at where they are and fight their way out by succeeding; by getting an education and finding empowerment. He wants them to stop doing the things, or appearing to do the things that are more likely to get them killed or seriously injured. I suppose I could argue either side.

But see, it’s not up to me to argue either side. I’m a sixty-some-year-old white guy living in a country that has been forever run by forty- and fifty- and sixty-some year old white guys. Any black guy who cares even a little bit about what I have to say about racism is wasting time. But just as Frederick Wilson claims that legions of black guys over relatively recent years have created a perception that scares the cops and the white public into responding too quickly with violence, I claim that legions of white guys have created a perception that if you aren’t a white guy, you’re gonna have a lot harder time getting a break and we will do whatever we have to do to keep you “in your place.”

Neither is always true, or even true most of the time, but perception, as Frederick says, is often reality.

So I give it up to Frederick. It’s for the black community, and every other minority of course, to find the best way to help itself and its members lead long and empowered lives.
But in like spirit, I gotta issue the same spanking to white American males. I’d include white females but we’re doing a pretty good job of holding them back also. When a white man who is very close to me asks in all seriousness why we don’t have a TV channel exclusively for white people like we do for blacks, I’m as close to speechless as I get (which is actually not that close.) Jesus, for all of my childhood and a good part of my adulthood that’s ALL we had. Tap your helmet. And speaking of helmets, when some white guy – and it’s always a white guy – asks me if we have to rename the mascots of ALL the NFL teams because we don’t want Nordic folks to be offended by the Minnesota Vikings or people in the meat packing industry to go off on Green Bay’s mascot or cattle ranchers to cringe when Dallas’ football team comes on TV, I wonder if they know how ignorant of the real issue they sound. I don’t think you’d create a lot of ill will walking up to a stranger in snakeskin boots and a George W. Bush hat and calling him cowboy. But I don’t know anyone who isn’t an avowed racist looking for a fight, who would walk up to an American Indian they didn’t know and call him a redskin.

This bigotry stuff ain’t rocket science.

If it’s incumbent on minorities (and guess what, very soon we’ll ALL be minorities) to step up and take responsibility for their reaction to racism, then the same has to be true for us. We, all of us white dudes, should make a habit of walking into Barnes and Noble, heading straight for the “History” section and demanding to know why The Autobiography of Malcolm X isn’t there. When the clerk tells us it’s in the BLACK History section, that’s time to get seriously and loudly indignant. It’s fucking HISTORY, man! It’s ALL the shit that happened! Same thing for women. Latinos. Asians. Everybody. Half the responses to this rant should be about the folks I left out in that last sentence.

You know, a whole lot of white racists who won’t call themselves racists, WILL and do call themselves Christians (and this is not a knock on Christians; it’s a knock on racists). Many are the kind of Christian who believes there will come a time when they stand before the pearly gates to make their case. Up or down. It’s called Judgment Day. Hard to imagine the gatekeeper going light on a history of turning one’s back on political reform that keeps poor people (high percentage of minorities) away from decent jobs and health care and opportunity just because the guy with the idea for that reform was black. Hard to believe the gatekeeper won’t have been instructed to look for folks who, knowing that resources like food and medicine and housing and wealth are FINITE, took as much as they could get anyway. The gatekeeper might simply be instructed to ask and record those men’s definitions of “enough”.

I noticed that the majority of Hoo-zahs for Fredrick W II’s rant came from white people, declaring “Here’s a black guy saying what I’ve said all along.” Go back and watch it again; that isn’t what he’s saying. Clarence Thomas is the black guy saying what you’ve been saying all along. Nothing.
Many credible brain scientists will tell you that humans are hard-wired for racism; that throughout evolution the safe group has been the familiar group, made up of beings that looked like us, and that’s how we learned to gather. But the brain is evolving too, and it should be smart enough by now to understand that evolution doesn’t have a nurturing component. Evolution doesn’t CARE. It’s up to us to comprehend and appreciate simple cause and effect. If you’re a white guy who believes black men are scary and prone to criminal intent, answer this question with the same earnestness with which you’ll approach the gatekeeper. “Did my actions on earth make it harder for any group of people to get a fair shake?” If you think you’re going to need a different answer, there’s still time.

Fredrick Wilson II is one smart young man!

I don't know that I agree that Fredrick Wilson is one smart young man, I just couldn't figure out how to post this without the banner.

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The Big Truth

On Friday, October 31, the fourth victim of the Marysville Pilchuck High School shooting, lost her struggle for life. 

The Big Truth

Her name is Shaylee Chuckulnaskit. She’s fourteen years old, described in glowing terms by family and friends as a “shining light.” The light has gone out. Shaylee Chuckulnaskit is dead. Killed by yet one more “school shooter”, a term that has become in relatively recent years as common as “most likely to succeed” or “class clown.”

One more school shooter, one more dead classmate; a headline on the AOL news site for one day, then gone. Shaylee Chuckulnaskit doesn’t matter. Her family and friends are forever broken-hearted, left to wonder why and what could have been while the American public, from an action point of view, doesn’t give a shit.

We have allowed the National Rifle Association, along with a frightening number of talking-point-driven disciples to promote an argument so foolish, so outrageously absurd, that it almost sounds like an argument (See Adolph Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, et al). They trot out ex-soldiers and police officers, the two groups who should know best the dangers of putting firearms in the hands of the public (and many of whom do) to trumpet the Big Lie that guns equal freedom. They get firearm embracing “tough guys” to call anti-gun activists “pussies.” Well, tell you what: pussies, properly employed, are quite nice, and it’s impossible to BE one.

The next Big Lie is that it’s really not about guns, it’s about mental health. They spew that vapid assertion in the same breath they use to crush any legislation that would fund the slightest increase in mental health services that could begin to address the issue. Plus any honest mental health specialist would tell you that the likes of Ted Nugent or Joe the Plumber or George Zimmerman or the guy who shot the black kid in the convenience store parking lot because his music was too loud, would be the first to lose their gun ownership rights because they carry a gun in hopes of having the opportunity to prove they need to use it, which is fucking crazy.

Truth: Ted Nugent probably isn’t going to shoot anyone; neither will Joe the Plumber. Other Truth: We have no idea who will. Other Other Truth: We know what he’ll use.

Recently I got into a dust-up on Facebook (I know better, but I’m doing it again) with an ex-serviceman who said I had no right to tell him what kind of weapon he could use to protect his family…and that I had an agenda. He intimated that because he is ex-military and I’m not, he is more qualified to pontificate on issues regarding firearms than am I. Well sorry my friend, but I don’t ask race car drivers to make traffic laws, and I don’t ask people with a philosophical love for an instrument designed for the sole purpose of putting holes in things, to decide on how large the holes or how fast we can put them in, because when we put holes in things what is inside leaks out, and way too often what leaks out is blood.

DUH! that I have an agenda, but if I and other anti-killing activists can get enough voters together, then I WILL have the right to tell him what kind of weapon he can use to protect his family. Once again to Gandhi: There is so very little we can do and it is so important that we do it.

This problem has a generational solution, which means I’m not going to be around to see it solved. Self-styled tough guys will call the likes of me “pussy” and gun manufacturers will continue to trumpet the notion that forefathers they can’t even name, meant to pave the way for a nation of thoughtless cowboys. Conventional wisdom will have to change which means someone with a far more powerful voice than mine will have to lead the call to disarms. It may be the voice of the parent of a slain child whose sound will somehow rise above the wails, or more likely, the parent of a shooter, with the courage and the grit to hold the Big Truth up for us all: If your philosophy trumps your decency, you have a fucked-up philosophy, and worse, a fucked-up allegiance to that philosophy.

I part ways with my liberal friends as they peel off to find reasonable arguments for gun ownership that go one inch beyond hunting for survival. I know it will have to be gradual, we have made guns so available to the disenfranchised and the bullied and those in other ways kicked to the curb, that we now feel the need to arm ourselves against those we have armed.

Maybe I’m delusional, but somewhere down some distant road, I have to believe I hear that voice…

So goodbye Shaylee Chuckulnaskit. Your name now disappears into the sea of the slaughtered. Wouldn’t it be fitting if members of your Tulalip tribe - once called savage by citizens of a savage nation – the tribe who spawned both you and your killer, were to find a way to lead that savage nation to grace.

BANNED BOOKS WEEK SUMMARY

Best Questions From A Week Of Banned Books Week Presentations

Q.  If you know your books are going to get banned, why do you write them?

A.  Because I know they’re going to get banned.  Only kidding.  I never write a       book with the idea of getting it banned, but I also never write a book with the idea of not getting it banned.  I tell the story the best way I can and let the chips fall.

Q.  What do you say to people who want your books banned?

A.  “Shut up.”  (That’s my attempt at banning the banners.)  When that doesn’t work, I tell them I was told from early childhood on that America is a free country.  I was told that by my conservative father who had just come back from a war against this German dude who thought mind control was the best way to deal with the teeming masses.

Q.  What are the biggest reasons people want your books banned?

A.  1) Use of “bad language.”  2) Inclusion of a LGBT character portrayed in a positive light.  (it’s okay to include such a character if she or he is a freeway sniper or a serial killer…or maybe a cannibal.)  3) Sexual content of any type (because we know teenagers never think about, or engage in, sex.)  4) Characters who challenge authority (because we all know those in authority always know best).  5) Content that undermines “Christian Values” or pokes fun at Christian doctrine (because everyone knows Jesus couldn’t take a joke).  6) Content that focuses on racism and our society’s general acceptance of it, as long as it’s not called that.  On rare occasions the politically correct left weighs in, demanding the removal of language that is racially sensitive (represented by those who think the so-called “N” word should be removed from Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird.  In my books, racists use racist language). 

I’m sure I’ve heard other rationale for book banning but what I’ve given you covers about 98 percent of it.

Q.  You’ve been speaking out against censorship for a long time and you seem pretty practiced at it.  Have there been times when you walked away thinking you changed the minds of your opposition?

A.  No.  Most often if they come to hear me, they come with a philosophy and a purpose.  They can’t afford to break their solidarity.    I’m as locked into my view as they are to theirs, so the “discussion” is pretty much wasted time, though it can get pretty hot pretty fast, so I guess it’s better than bad TV.  Actually, minds get changed when kids speak up.  Because so often adolescents and adults don’t communicate on more than an “as needed” basis, adults often forget the reasoning power and the passion of those kids.  The rational brain of the adolescent isn’t fully developed, to be sure, but it isn’t fully undeveloped either.  A number of years ago I happened to be within short driving distance of a school district in which my book Whale Talk and Walter Dean Myers’ fabulous Fallen Angels were being challenged.  Fallen Angels is about a Harlem teenager gone to war in Vietnam in the late sixties, told in the realistic language you might expect.  After a particularly long and fruitless discussion among combative adults during which NO minds were changed, a high school senior stepped to the microphone.  He informed the board that he was a 3.8 student who had never received a grade lower than an A in his English classes.  He had been offered both academic and athletic scholarships to several well-known universities, but intended to join the armed forces.  “This time next year,” he said, “I won’t be at one of those universities.  I’ll be in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Are you telling me that if I go there to fight for my country, then come home to write about it – in a true way, like Mr. Myers did – you’re going to ban me right here in my own school?”  The members of the board sat way back in their chairs.  Had that young man been allowed to speak first, we’d have all been home watching Monday Night Football by then.  The most powerful voices trumpeting the First Amendment come from those from whom the material is meant to be kept.

Q.  Are there any books you think should be banned?

A.  No.

Q.  So you believe all books are “worthy”?

A.  Kurt Vonnegut once said something close to, “The problem with standing up against censorship is some of the shit you have to stand up FOR.”  Believing in freedom of expression does not mean you believe all expression has the same value.  Here’s all you need to know.  If one book gets in the crosshairs (to use a Sarah Palin metaphor) all books are in the crosshairs.  This isn’t about evaluating books.  It’s about freedom to choose, plain and simple.

Q.  What about child pornography?

A.  Child pornography is illegal.

Q.  Where do you get your ideas?

           

A.  Pocatello, Idaho.

Q.  You said you are sixty-eight years old.  You don’t look a day over forty.  In your travels around the country, how do you go about fending off the romantic advances of your most ardent fans?

A.  George Clooney and I have talked a lot about this.  Neither of us has come up with a satisfactory strategy.

Q.  Are any of these questions made-up?

           

A.  All questions are made up.

Q.  Okay, I get that, but are any of these questions made up by you.

A.  Well, maybe one…

More on Adrian

ADDENDUM 

I feel compelled to add to what I posted yesterday about Adrian Peterson’s “discipline” techniques.  Somewhere in that post – and it should be just below – I said I thought there was some chance that Peterson was one of those people who might do better, once they knew better.  At the time I hadn’t seen the pictures or heard the accounts of the damage inflicted, or heard his son’s utterances about having leaves stuffed in his mouth and about being afraid to tell what happened for fear of it happening again.  I had also not heard Adrian Peterson say “I am not a child abuser.  I feel bad.”

First off, Adrian, lots of child abusers feel bad.  Child abuse isn’t about how you felt.  It’s about what you did.  What you might have said was, “I am a child abuser.  I feel bad and I will do whatever I have to do to become NOT a child abuser, including making a promise to the God I point to before every game that I will never lay a hand, or a weapon, on a child again.  Ever.” 

Again, I don’t care what the National Football League or the Minnesota Vikings do with Adrian Peterson.  I’m sure that down the line they have enough money to pay enough P.R. people to make this look very different than it was.  For my money, I’ll never take Adrian on my fantasy football team and I’ll never watch another Minnesota Viking game in which he participates.  Believe me, that means dick to the Vikings or to Adrian Peterson but as Gandhi said, “There is so very little we can do and it is so important that we do it.”

Adrian Peterson didn’t “discipline” his child.  Adrian Peterson tortured his child, and ESPN and the rest of the mainstream media need to call it by its name.  If these exact measures were taken on a kidnapped American or an American prisoner of war, it would be decried as torture.  If our government were to take same measures against an “enemy combatant,” they’d go off-shore to do it. 

The dictionary definition of “spank” is “to slap or smack with the open hand, especially on the buttocks.”  You don’t spank a person with a stick.

Charles Barkley said on a pre-game show yesterday, that’s how black folks in the south “discipline” and by these standards every black parent in the south would be in prison.  I’m a big fan of Barkley and I’ll defer to him any time on the actions of black folks, even though I know southern black people who are absolutely appalled at Adrian Peterson’s behavior.  Best I let THEM take Charles on.  But this isn’t a racial thing.  Barkley needs to defer to me on the actions of white folks.  I grew up in rural, lily-white Idaho and this shit was all over the place.  I ran child abuse and anger management groups for twenty years in Eastern Washington and those groups were ninety five percent white and we had waiting lists.  Adrian Peterson may have learned his techniques from a mean black dad, but I can match mean white dads, dad for dad, with anyone who wants to take the challenge.

In his first public statement, Peterson said, among other things, “I’m not a perfect parent.”  Who in the WORLD thinks we’re talking about perfection here?  How about we take that word out of the conversation.

Adrian Peterson says he’s a Christian.  I wonder, if in his WILDEST imagination he can picture Jesus bruising an cutting a four year old child with a stick. 

In case Adrian might consider advice from another black football player who came up hard – a Hall-of-Famer – I give him Cris Carter.

Whacking On Your Children

Whacking On Your Children

Man, the National Football League can’t catch a break.  First Ray Rice punches out his fiancé, followed by two more players with domestic violence cases pending and another benched until his case is adjudicated.   And now Adrian Peterson, an even bigger stud running back than Rice, gets hauled in on child abuse charges for “spanking” his kid with a switch. Geez, you’d think these guys run around getting hit in the head all day.

Running our debate about violence toward other human beings through the National Football League is a little like commissioning Fox So-Called News to lead a national debate on fact-finding, and anyway, it’s a mistake to enact laws or base our judgments on high profile cases.  Keeping Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice et al off the football field will do little to stem the problem of family violence in this culture.  In fact, other than the matter of public visibility, it’s no different than demanding an Idaho lumberjack not go back into the woods or a West Virginia coal minor not go back underground if they’re involved in a domestic violence situation.

But the Peterson situation has ignited an old debate about whether or not it’s okay to hit small children, and by small children, I mean anyone smaller than the person doing the hitting.  Texas, where Peterson is from, and many other states have laws that draw a very thin line between physical punishment and abuse; so thin that for some it’s invisible.  BUT IT’S CRAZY THAT WE’RE EVEN HAVING THIS DEBATE.  Discipline and hitting are not the same thing.  Peterson’s childhood coach said Peterson has told him stories of his father being a “firm disciplinarian.”  His lawyer says he was parenting the way he was parented.  One great failing of this culture is how cavalier we are about misnaming things.  What his coach should have said is that Peterson’s dad hit him. 

Discipline is not hitting, and fear is not respect and until we understand that as a culture, we’re not going to get it about disciplining our children.  We hit them not for their own good, but because we’re mad and frustrated and don’t know what to do, so we revert to what is familiar.  What we DON’T seem to know at that juncture, is anything about child development.  You can be a firm disciplinarian without laying a hand on a kid, and in so-doing give yourself a better chance of an open relationship with them as they grow, one where you can have actual meaningful conversations, during which they learn through interaction with you why you want them to behave as you do.  There are things you can take away and let them earn back; toys, privileges; later on, drivers’ licenses.  They learn empowerment.  I can fix what I broke.  If they act the way you want them to act they can regain what they lost behaving as they did in the first place.  It lets you be proud of them, and them to feel that pride.  It establishes the value of your approval. 

And it lets them learn in a safe environment.

When you hit a small child you’re telling that child that the person who is supposed to protect them from harm, will, in fact, inflict that harm.  Because that is not your intention, does not stop it from being so, IN THE EYES OF THE CHILD. 

In my experience the Adrian Peterson’s of the world have a  much better chance of making changes.  As flimsy as his attorney’s declarations sound, it appears he really MAY BE a product of his environment and there are a significant number of people who, when they know better, do better. 

There are many credible studies showing that punishment, particularly physical punishment, has the least efficacy as a parenting tool.  It stops the behavior quickly but has almost no lasting power and a lot of downside in terms of relationship.  There are no studies, unless done by belt companies or the makers of wooden spoons, that depict physical punishment in a more positive light than the use of strong boundaries through relationship.  The statement, “My old man beat MY ass and I guess I turned out okay,” is the one I’ve heard uttered most often in anger management and child abuse groups.  Go figure.

Piling On

Piling On

Why should I be the only guy in the country without an opinion on Ray Rice KO-ing his fiancé in the elevator of an Atlantic City casino?  I shouldn’t.

I’m happy to see the outrage at Ray’s treatment of his wife-to-be but it’s a little like a whole bunch of people waking up and saying, “Did you hear we have a problem in this country with cancer? Really pisses me off.”

Look, I don’t care if Ray Rice ever plays another down of football - he killed me last year in my Fantasy Football league anyway.  And I’m okay with his becoming the latest iconic representation for entitled bad guys hurting weaker folk; anytime an epidemic that has existed under our noses for hundreds of years is exposed, I’m for it.  But how Ray Rice is punished means dick, if you’ll excuse the expression.  It means dick if you won’t excuse the expression.  In fact, focusing on it may hurt more than it helps.

Serious righteousness abounds right now.  Sports pundits and athletes alike are decrying Rice’s actions from the hill tops.  Keith Olbermann called for the resignation or ouster of everyone from the Commissioner of the National Football League down to the guy who washes towels for the Baltimore Ravens – turn them all into Joe Paterno.  Keith and I are on the same page ninety-nine percent of the time, and his point is solid – a whole bunch of people knew more than they admitted, earlier than they admitted, so there is plenty of accountability to go around.

But maybe some of that accountability lands on US.  Citizens.  Voters.  See, we get loud and righteous and now we’ve made our stand and we can sit back and wait for the next big thing.  And women and children keep getting hurt or killed and a whole bunch of abusers are glad they weren’t the ones to get caught, and most of them tell themselves they aren’t going to act that way any more. They say what Ray Rice said: That’s not who I am as a man. 

Only it is.

And because they’re not famous and because CNN doesn’t care if they get caught on camera in an elevator, and because they have become experts at finding women who, like Ray Rice’s new wife, will keep coming back, and because this Ray Rice thing has a shelf life of about ten days, in the long run nothing changes.

But we all feel better because Ray Rice won’t get to play football anymore.  We like punishment.

Domestic violence isn’t bad only because women and children are its targets.  It’s bad because of the insidious way it keeps itself alive, by showing large numbers in each new generation that physical might trumps all, that a woman is defined largely by her relationship to her man, that love and intensity are the same thing (love hurts), that what goes on inside a relationship is nobody’s business until it’s so ugly the rest of us can’t turn away, which I guess means it gets caught on camera.

On a scale of one-to-ten Ray’s knock-out punch wasn’t a ten.  It was a good shot, probably at least a seven, but in my twenty-plus years working with abuse families, I’ve seen worse.  We don’t need to pay attention to the sensational incident.  We need to pay attention to the epidemic.

And make no mistake, this domestic violence thing is a dance - and don’t get cranked up to accuse me of blaming the victim.  If you’re a woman and you get hit by the man you think you love – or any man for that matter - you’re a victim and it’s his fault.  It’s the fault of the person leading the assault, and in treatment I NEVER let a man pull the She-Knows-What-Pisses-Me-Off card; but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “He wouldn’t get that mad if he didn’t love me.”  So what you do NEXT, my dear victim, is 100 percent up to you.  I know a whole bunch of smart, powerful, self-possessed women who are disgusted beyond repair by Ray Rice’s wife.  She wasn’t his wife, he knocked her out and now she is his wife. 

There may be extenuating circumstances; there usually are.  I don’t know what will happen with the Rices and I don’t care.  What I do know is that most of the people locked in that dance will dance until they get too old to keep up that kind of intensity, or until somebody gets seriously injured or killed.  Some, after an average of seven returns, will break up.  What else I know is that children brought up in the fog of violence learn from what they see, and behave in accordance with what they learn, and that’s why this epidemic seems genetic. 

So your righteousness is lost on me if it’s focused on Ray Rice.  Be righteous with the no-new-taxes crowd who think it isn’t the business of our local, state and federal governments to fund intensive programs that offer real help to families and couples in trouble.  Your righteousness means dick if it doesn’t spill over into public policy.

I HAVE A DREAM

                                                             I HAVE A DREAM...

Or at least I had a dream. In that dream, each person's afterlife reflects what the deceased believed when he or she was alive. For a certain kind of Christian, that means peace, kindness, streets paved with gold, eternal salvation and St. Peter at the gate, calling thumbs up or thumbs down. Now we all know St. Pete wasn’t the brightest bulb in the 12-pac, but he was loyal and decent and certainly a true believer; which made him a good pick to stand at the gate.

In my dream, Peter stands next to a long golden lever, which, when pulled, opens a trap door leading straight to Hell. Those wishing to pass through the Gates to Heaven, must stand on that trap door while they make their case. Should the good saint pull that lever there is a loud KER-CHUCK! followed by the sudden disappearance of said heavenly applicant.

This is where the dream gets good.

Peter: You look forlorn.
Applicant: My daughter… has such a hard life…
Peter: (places a hand on applicant’s shoulder) Tell me.
Applicant: (Deep breath) When she was nine, I took her to a shooting range…
Peter: (Gripping the lever) Yes…
Applicant: …to learn to shoot an Uzi…
KER-CHUCK!

2nd Applicant: I ran a shooting range.
Peter: (Moving hand toward the golden lever) Uh-huh…
2nd Applicant: During our 2 for 1 children’s special…
KER-CHUCK!

3rd Applicant: Good morning St. Peter, my name is Ted Nugent…
KER-CHUCK!

4th Applicant: Good morning St. Peter. My name is Joe. I was a plumber, only not really…
KER-CHUCK!

Beelzebub: Welcome gentlemen. (Unrolls a fiery scroll) I see you’re all scheduled for eternity in the Wayne LaPierre Suites. (Smiles) Only a certain unique kind of human has an entire section of Hell named for them. At any rate, we’ve packed you each a lunch in your own special Charleton Heston asbestos lunch bucket…you have a long trip…it’s MUCH further down. Hurry now, or you’ll miss the first of the infinite screenings of “The Dark Knight Rises.” (Smiles, raises his eyebrows) Spoiler alert: you never see the final credits.

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You Go, Robin Williams

In light of Robin Williams’ heartbreaking early exit, I’ve been asked to repost a blog I wrote just after Christmas of last year when author Ned Vizzini (It’s Kind of a Funny Story) ended what promised to be a spectacular career with that irreversible decision that leaves the rest of us asking questions we end up answering ourselves.  It’s posted below.

Most of the responses I read to Robin Williams’ death were simply of sorrow, of missing and remembering.  A colossal talent was there, then gone.  Millions of us who never knew him took it personally, I think, because of the zany intimacy of his gift.  The guy could say ANYTHING.  And we’d let him say anything because the genius of his comedy was to show us the edges, and our laughter was of astonished recognition.  We appreciate voices of intimate genius because they help define us.  Now he’s gone and we just miss him.

But then the Todd Bridges begin to show themselves, just as they did after Ned Vizzini’s death.  Suicide is selfish.  It’s the coward’s way out, the EASY way.  Life is tough, suck it up.  Life is sacred.  Turn to God.  Well sorry, Todd, but that’s the EASY answer.  The lazy one.  The one that turns a complex situation simple so we don’t have to think about it any more.

If selfish were all bad, I guess we’d all be bad.  No one but Robin knew the cost of elevating us the way he did, or of elevating himself with our responses; all while trying to manage the roller coaster ride of that enormous talent.  Like all of us, only he knew how deep; only he knew how dark.  The nature of depression is that we can’t see out of it.  Medication helps some.  Anger helps some.  Connection helps some. 

Some finally say, enough.

I don’t know what happens next.  Maybe it’s worms and maybe it’s consciousness moving at the speed of imagination, unencumbered by its former container. 

In MY imagination I see Robin out there smiling, throwing an arm over Ned Vizzini’s shoulder: “So these two nuns decide to off themselves…”

Godspeed Ned Vizzini

(New Years – 2014)

Coming into the new year it’s hard not to think of the recent suicide of the talented and tortured YA author, Ned Vizzini, and the emptiness his loved ones must feel.  Little has been left unsaid by my (and his) gracious and articulate colleagues and I am tempted to bow my head and wish his soul a silent Godspeed as it rockets into the universe.  But some of the public responses to his death compel me to add some thoughts.

The folks who suffer the same crushing depression from which Ned must have suffered, understand, and their responses seem the most eye-opening and revealing.  The responses that bother me are those calling him selfish for leaving a young wife and son without a husband and father, or for committing the act from the roof of his parents’ house or simply for committing the sin of taking an early exit.

My years as a therapist working with abuse and neglect families taught me at least one important lesson for my own life.  Never judge until you can see through the eyes of that person you are judging, and then…never judge.  There but for the grace of chance go any of us.  When I was able to help clients who were experiencing what Ned probably experienced – and there were many times I could not – I could only tether myself to all in my life that was good and leap into the abyss with them– provide a witness – secure in the belief that, whether or not we could find a way to their light, my tether would hold.  It always did.

I was lucky.

There are those who believe life is sacred, that suicide is a sin.  There are those who call it a selfish act that doesn’t take into account the pain of those left behind.

But those responses say far more about the responders than they say about Ned Vizzini.  As much as we’d like to think life is sacred, there’s not a lot of evidence for that.  The universe is maddeningly casual giving and taking it.  Nothing about life is sacred until we make it so.  Each of us.  Our own individual lives.  And sometimes from inside that awful blackness it simply isn’t possible.

Rather than think Ned Vizzini stole from his wife, a husband or from his child, a father, I prefer to consider his bravery.  In the face of that dreadful darkness, he brought love to a woman and life to a child for as long as he could.  He wrote stories that allowed many who shared in that paralyzing experience to find connection, and so feel less alone; stories in which his characters found strength he ultimately could not find.

There are fates worse than death.

I didn’t know Ned.  I don’t know if he could have been saved.  I do feel cheated.  When I read It’s Kind of a Funny Story and when I saw the movie, I knew a powerful, embracing voice had emerged in our profession and I wanted more.

But he stayed as long as he could.

So Godspeed, Ned Vizzini.  Your life has been proven sacred by your works.  We know more now than we did before you put words to paper and some of us will use that knowledge to reach back to ease the pain of those who walk in your shoes.

Biopsy Biography II - The Results

The Results

First let me say, this turns out okay.

I shouldn’t have posted my biopsilogical odyssey before I posted a result.  It wasn’t my intention to leave people hanging, though you have to admit, a good suspense story…

When I called for the results – and I admit, I put it off – the office manager told me I needed to come in…they found “a little bit of cancer.” 

I’m the best guy I know to come onto a grisly auto accident or deal with a victim or perpetrator of domestic violence or have to put an animal down, because I have a delayed reaction to trauma.  I separate almost instantly so I can see what can be done, then fold later.  But I do fold.

There was about a twenty-four hour period between the time I got the information over the phone and the time I sat down with the doctor.  I had played around with the possibilities for almost a week following my biopsy, but for that last twenty four hours I had to sit with the WORD. 

I went to the pool and worked out, feeling maybe as strong as I had in a long time, but carrying the irony that this might be stronger than I would feel, like, ever again.  I did what we all do, I think: promised to use my time better, be more embracing of people who irritate me, remember we’re all in this together and slap the Christian Right harder for being so insensitive as to keep wounded kids from reading their truths in our works because they don’t like the word “fuck”, even though that’s not a biblically barred word.

My urologist, whom I earlier characterized unfairly in my quest for comedy (he didn’t REALLY say I wasn’t a Stotan; it was just too good a line to pass up) showed me two areas of my prostate that contained a small number of cells.  He affirmed some things of which I was already aware: that almost any man who lives long enough will encounter this situation, that about fifty percent need no treatment, and that we often over-treat it because of irrational fear of that WORD.  That said, I’m not off the hook.  I’ll be on an “active surveillance” program that gets me into the doc every three months for a blood draw, and will get me another biopsy within the next year to be sure we’ve got an eye on those malevolent little buggers, and can get a leg up on them should they try anything funny. 

Truth is, I’ve been giving people bad news long enough that I know how to take some, and because of my life as a close observer of human mal- and mis-treatment, feel incredibly fortunate not to have received more of that bad news than I administered.

Some good things - even more than a renewed appreciation of my existence - have come of this.  Your responses on Facebook have told me, 1) either the doc messed up with my anesthetics or my body is extraordinarily resistant to whatever they used, and when I sign up for that second biopsy I’ll make mention of that, and 2) I have a delightful connection with a vastly diverse collection of generous people.  For that I thank you.

In the name of full disclosure I need to say one more thing.  Though I appreciate the number of people praying for me because that is how you show your love and regard – and I DO appreciate it - I don’t receive those prayers because if I believed in, and loved, a God who would hear those prayers and save me, I’d have to hate a God who would turn his back on those who prayed for my sister, who died miserably nearly two years ago of pancreatic cancer, and for my old high school quarterback who died almost exactly a year later of the same.  I would argue that each was a far more graceful and deserving human than I.  Instead, I am enormously grateful to a universe that embraces us enough to let randomness rule.  It makes life exciting and terrifying and unpredictable, and sets a course on which each of us has influence over whether we soar or crash.  It is a universe that embraces the ghastly along with the glorious. 

Nothing exists without its opposite.

Again, I apologize for writing that original piece as a cliff-hanger.

Too late to make a long story short, but bottom line, there’s a pretty good chance that my prostate won’t leave me prostrate. 

Biopsy Biography

Biopsy Biography

I’m often asked by teenage students during Q and A after a presentation if I have any general advice for them.  My normal response is, “Don’t listen to me.  I’m an old guy and I will try to get you to avoid the mistakes I’ve made in my life even though I know you have your own mistakes to make and you won’t learn from lectures, you’ll learn from experience.

Still, there’s likely an upcoming situation I think you should be aware of.  I don’t want you to focus on it now, because it could be a source of great anxiety, should you dwell on it too heavily.  Sometime a long way down the road you will start hearing your doctors using words that end in –oscopy or –opsy.  Likely they will tell you that you need one or the other.  What your doctor will really be saying is, “I want to hurt you.”  He will tell you he’s going where no man, or woman, has gone before to examine organs that don’t get a lot of visitors.  He will be going through a door built to open one way.  And he will be going in the other way.  You will be resistant at first because well, that just doesn’t sound fun, but he will use the C word or one every bit as frightening, and you will acquiesce.

I can’t tell you what your experience will be like because we’re all different, but I can say I’ve had conversations with a significant number of people who have gone through one or the other of these processes and the percentage who have described it as pleasant is, well, none.

My own journey began when I got a call from my general practitioner following my last physical, saying my PSA numbers were a little elevated and she wanted me to see a urologist.  I’m not particularly well versed on what any given medical specialist is good at, but I do know this guy works south of the belt line, and that makes me a little nervous.

I sit down in the examination room as he introduces himself and looks at my paperwork. He has a bit of an accent, which he identifies as Romanian.  His articulation is quite precise.  He says, “We need to do a biopsy.”

Now I haven’t spent a night in the hospital since I had my tonsils out in 1952 so I don’t know a lot of medical terms, but I know that one.  I say, “You need a sample.”

He nods.

I say, “Uh is there, like, a sample floating around down in there, or you gonna have to whack off a piece.”

He smiles.  “Pretty much I have to whack off a piece.”  He says it such that we both understand that’s my terminology.  “Ten pieces, actually.”

I remember another bit of medical terminology I learned about ten years ago when another urologist who didn’t seem to know the terms of the Geneva convention decided he needed an up close look-see at something next to my Adam’s Apple and went up the down staircase in through my penis.  I use that terminology now.  “That sounds like it might cause me a ‘little discomfort.’”

“A little bit,” he says.

He is very matter-of-fact.  I don’t know the relativity of “a little bit.”  I mean, who knows, he might be one of those guys who walks across hot coals on weekends, or sleeps on a bed of nails.

Note to the medical community:  A little discomfort occurs when someone farts in a stalled elevator filled with two more people than “capacity.”  A little discomfort occurs when you’re buried up to your neck in a fire-ant hill.  Or when someone runs a screwdriver through your ear.

To his credit, my urologist only lies to me once, and he can’t know it’s a lie.  “This won’t be as bad as you’ve imagined,” he says.

I don’t get a good look at his tool kit before I lay on my side, pull one knee up so he can get a good look at his point of entry – onto which I should have tattooed “Exit Only” -  but looking back, I assume it consists of  a single-hole paper punch purchased for under five bucks at Office Depot. 

The first and second punches leave me speechless.  It is as if he inserted a pair of rectal hornets.  The third has me desperately probing my meager historical knowledge for information regarding U.S./Romanian relations.  By punch number five I’m asking myself, How bad could dying of cancer be?  After six and seven I ask him that.

            “Very bad,” he says.  “We’re almost there.”

            I’m counting backward now, threatening him with Homeland Security between piercing white-hot snips. In perfect cadence with his final soft tissue ambush, I scream “Stotan!” 

           

            “There will be a little blood,” he says as his nurse covers me with the oversized Kleenex she gave me to preserve my dignity.  “Call me if it is excessive.”

           

            Then my doctor says, “We should have the results in 24 –to – 72 hours.  If you haven’t heard by next Monday, you call, okay?”

           

            “Okay.”

            “Do you have any questions before I go?”

           

            “I do.”

           

            He nods go ahead.

           

            “When you were a little boy in Romania, like maybe 10, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

           

            He smiles. “I assume that question is rhetorical.”

            I smile back.

“And now I have a question for you,” he says.  “A real one.”

            “Shoot.”

            “What is Stotan?”

I start to brag a little and tell him it’s the name of a novel I wrote, but I’m not feeling all that conversational.  “It’s an Australian term,” I tell him.  “a cross between a Stoic and a Spartan.”

“I see,” he says. “A combining of terms.”  He shrugs, “Well you are certainly not that.”