Now that I'm done joking with friends that men who vote Liberal should no longer get screened for prostate or testicular cancer, I have to say that I'm still not over the cutting of funding to Planned Parenthood.
I have more than a few friends whose lives have been touched by breast cancer, including one of my closest friends, who lost her mother at age 8 to the disease. My maternal great-grandmother lost both her breasts (not at the same time, either) to breast cancer. She had radiation burns and peeling skin and terrible scars that haunted her until her death in her late 90's. I have heard so many stories about the horror, the sorrow, the loss, of breast cancer. And so I gave every year, and generously, to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Remembering my grandmother Gracie, and my many friends affected by the disease. I bought pink, in more ways than one. I bought into an idea of women sticking up for other women. Of women insisting upon better healthcare for women.
But no more.
Planned Parenthood and Susan G. Komen were both organizations that appeared, for a time, to want to support ALL women's healthcare, irrespective of their race, religion, creed or political stance. However, paraphrasing eloquent Mollie Williams (truly, what a class act this woman is!), the now-resigned top public healthcare official at SGK, put it to The Atlantic, "the divide between the two organization is quite sad". Ms. Williams resigned as soon as the funding cuts were announced. She had administered SGK grant funds. She clearly did not agree with their decision. But as Ms Williams, and Deb Anthony, the head of SGK in Los Angeles who has also resigned, have seen, SGK is putting politics in front of helping ALL women. SGK and the conservatives pressuring it have made a decision not to help women who do not buy their party line prevent cancer easily.
I can see no less immoral, or less petty (but costly of lives) stance here, no matter what the spin doctors for SGK now say.
Putting my money where my mouth is:
I think all women deserve access to cancer prevention information. Don't you?
I've taken the first part of my yearly SGK donation and applied it to Planned Parenthood, which I already supported. I am not alone. According to a report on CNN, they raised more than $400,000 in less than 24 hours after the SGK decision to cut funding was announced. (See video below, with an interview with Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards). I'm sending the rest later in the year, when all the hoopla has died down.
I want to help poor and uninsured women, or really any women who go to Planned Parenthood, know if their breasts might kill them. I don't care if they want an abortion. I don't care if they're poor but Pro-Life. I just want them to know they need to seek care and get guidance on how to get it, and support on how to deal with it.
It might surprise you that some Pro-Lifers are as appalled as Pro-Choicers. As but one example:
I've seen other Pro-Life women, and men, say much the same on the Susan G. Komen page. Thankfully, the folks at SGK appear to have given up on deleting these posts, which I guess are the most frightening of all to them. What can you say about a Pro-Lifer that is appalled if you are at SGK? Miscalculation? The Pro-Lifers that get the fact that this decision potentially affected women who had no other source of ob/gyn health care. Who don't have the luxury of other services.
These balanced, moral, Pro-Lifers understand what the Conservatives pressuring the Board of Komen seemingly did not.
This is a universal issue.
Even people who think differently from you or me deserve early detection and cancer screenings.
Even people who are diametrically opposed politically deserve this piece of healthcare.
Clinical Breast Exam image borrowed from Imaginis.
A. Pro-Choice women don't deserve the Cure or even the prevention. They deserve to get breast cancer and lose their breasts.
B. Poor women, who may or may not be Pro-Choice, don't deserve the Cure or the prevention and and heck, they might deserve to get cancer and lose their breasts.
C. Breast cancer is a disease that shouldn't affect god-fearing, faithful Pro-Life women, but Pro-Life women who can only afford to go to Planned Parenthood (that hellish place!) probably deserve it for going there for their pap smears and birth control. Because Planned Parenthood is like Sodom and Gomorrah.
D. ANY women who go to Planned Parenthood probably don't need, I mean deserve, Clinical Breast Exams or the Cure. They've just got baby-killing on their mind. Who cares about breasts?
You can start with Facebook where I posted the following:
Breast Cancer has no political agenda. Planned Parenthood clinics prevent unwanted pregnancies not just end them, and often are the only clinics that poor women can go to for regular exams and birth control. This decision strikes at the heart of healthcare. Politics has no place in the early prevention of cancer.
You can blast it to the top of your lungs on Twitter.
And finally, you can write to Karen Handel, the architect of Susan G. Komen's downfall from the Righteous Women's Organizations List:
Karen Handel Susan G. Komen for the Cure 5005 LBJ Freeway, Suite 250 Dallas, TX 75244
Let her, and SGK's Board of Directors know what you think of breast cancer being a political disease. Let her know what you think about cutting breast exams for poor and uninsured women.
Is your fetus-bearing uterus more important than your breasts?
You've heard of Sophie's Choice? Now you've got Karen's Choice.
In spite of the fact that my favorite flower grows only in zones 4-8, I have successfully managed to trick some (gardeners call this 'forcing') into growing for me here in Miami, in January in our 78+ F weather, indoors, on the violet cart. Ha! Take that Mother Nature, you sly minx! Longtime readers of the blog may remember part of the reason I'm so taken with the flower and have been since childhood. I'm lily of the valley-ed out over here. And now it turns out that it's my son's girlfriend's favorite flower after she saw some photos of lilies of the valley on the internet.
I wish I could do a scratch and sniff post so you guys could smell these lilies of the valley. So fresh. So SPRING!
Anyway, it's Sunday and since you might have just a bit of time on your hands, I want to direct readers to a new tab on the blog, Be the Change. Rather than that big international list of stuff on Marzie's Favorite Links, Be the Change gives you some resources on things you can do in your own backyard. It could be as simple as volunteering once in a while to read bedtime stories or play games with children in foster care or at your local Ronald McDonald House, the proverbial home away from home for children undergoing longterm medical care. Or maybe you can go and play Bingo in a retirement home, cheering the elderly. Or maybe after reading all my many posts about children in foster care, you're curious about the guardian ad litem program in your area? Or maybe, after hearing about Marina and Serena, my aged out, disabled former GAL youth of whom I'm now permanent legal guardian, you wonder if this, too, is something that you can do? Or maybe you're cleaning out your closet and realize that you have business wear that you don't want to wear anymore but someone else could really use to get and keep a job.
When I started volunteering I was a shy and tongue-tied 15 year old. I eventually decided I liked feeling useful more than I felt shy. My husband had never really volunteered until his early 40's, when I started dragging him to the Ronald McDonald House to play games, of all things, with ill children. (You'd have to know how oxymoronish that whole business seems with my husband to understand...) So it's never too late. And sometimes you surprise yourself with what you're willing to do to make a child or an older person or a lonely person smile.
"History repeats itself..." is a phrase I first remember seeing in an Anne book (one of the Anne of Green Gables books, I think Gilbert Blythe says it in Anne's House of Dreams) and then was amused to see evidently sort of originated with Karl Marx by way (in theory) of Hegel, possibly by way of Santayana. History repeats itself. Maybe it does. But I hope not.
Look at these chimes, then press play below and enjoy for a bit:
video by kwachula
The sound of wind chimes are sounds rooted deep in my memory. I used to associate glass chimes with my maternal grandparents' house. They had a simple set of chimes hanging outside near the back door. (Which everyone always treated as the front door of the house, because it was nearer my grandfather's garage workshop, wherein he created wondrous circuit boards.) I have many memories of falling asleep to the sound of those chimes on hot summer afternoons in a Barcalounger, in their Florida room, which had a wide spanse of jalousie windows, and through which the same welcome breeze that stirred those chimes would occasionally waft. Those lazy summer afternoons, wedged into the recliner with a cat or two, with my grandparents' dog Jeteye close at hand, listening to those chimes while my grandmother hummed as she did her crossword puzzle, defined my memories of chimes, and possibly a sort of bliss, for quite some time. But the association forever changed on April 28, 1997.
I first met my friend Cindy in 1988. We took a microbiology class together. Early in the semester, exiting the second floor of the building, she stumbled on the stairs, dropping a few items. I helped her up and when I asked her if she was okay, she replied in perfectly droll British accent, "I'm not dead yet." I burst out laughing at the reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And thus a friendship was born. On the surface, beyond just the shared love of Monty Python, we had a lot in common. We were both significantly older than our peers in our classes. I was 27 and she was 29. As I look back, it's really hard to capture how engaging Cindy was. She had a marvelous sense of humor, a quick mind and a warm heart. She was a great animal lover, an avid reader and loved science with a passion. We became fast friends and I really adored her. But it became evident, over the next three years as we shared various classes, that she was troubled. Deeply troubled.
Cindy was open about the fact that she was a recovering alcoholic, and that she struggled with depression. She was tall, about 5' 10", and somewhat heavyset. She struggled with a bad knee, and with limited financial options for surgery, was frequently battling pain. She felt bad about her weight, her body and was depressed that it was hard to exercise because of her discomfort. A string of painful personal relationships, strained family relationships with her father, brother and sister seemed to conspire against her. Her mother, almost a mythical figure in her mind, had died when she was a teen. All of it made her sad and made holidays, and any event you'd normally want to share with loved ones, painful for her. She spent a lot of time with me and my mom. After several years of being friends, she confided darker things, buried in her past. She battled personal demons, who gnawed at her self-esteem, her happiness and eventually her sanity. She told me about several years of her being committed, as a teenager, in a well known mental institution, for what first appeared to have been rebellious behavior (a disturbingly common phenomenon in the 1970's and 1980's for teenagers) but then too, for what later was stated to have been about allegations of incest against her father. As in to shut her up. I never knew exactly what had happened to put her there, but I knew what it did to her.
We parted ways in 1991, to go to our respective graduate schools, planning to keep in touch. She headed off to medical school in South Carolina with her cats, Oscar and Keisha, and a Golden Retriever, Bacardi, who had been the beloved pet of a friend of mine who died of HIV in 1988. She had taken him in when I could not. In turn, I had taken in Tiffy, the kitty she couldn't afford to risk keeping because of cardiac problems (the problems were real but Tiffy lived to be 21 years old, so there, you EKG machine you, so there.) I visited Cindy in Columbia over a long weekend in the spring of 1992. She was stressed and agitated, but we hung out with her med school roommates, swilled down massive amounts of coffee and browsed in book and antique stores. That spring I had a setback with my health and returned from Texas to Miami, to restart my PhD. I was pretty shaken by the interruption of all my plans. I'd been very ill with severe allergies, battling unexplained giant hives and cold urticaria and then pneumonia due to immunosuppressing steroid treatments. But I came back to Miami, charged full ahead in an environment in which I'd been healthy, and resumed working on my PhD, trying not to be too downtrodden.
Less than a year later, Cindy's world fell apart, too. Whether due to the pressure of medical school or abuse of pills (all of it, all rolled into one?), she had a psychotic break that landed her in the hospital. Unlike my situation, however, it all but ruined her chances of finishing medical school. After refusing to let her return until she had a clean bill of mental health, the medical school discovered her prior mental health history, which she had not accurately reported. She was dismissed, with little ground, and no finances, with which to fight her dismissal. Being dismissed also left her with a year and a half of medical student loans to repay.
From that point on, there was a steep descent into a depression that was difficult, as a friend, to watch and deal with gracefully. Returning to Miami, she shifted from job to job, borrowing money from family, friends, moving from place to place. She finally landed, in late 1996, at a health insurance company, reviewing claims, specializing in diabetic patients' claims. She hated her job. She lived in a duplex up in Hollywood with her now four cats and Bacardi. We didn't see each other very often. I was busy and plus I felt awkward. She was out of her grad school. I was having success in my research. She loved to give gifts but giving gifts meant she was spending borrowed money on the wrong things, like funny tchotchkes instead of rent, etc. No matter how I insisted that we wouldn't exchange gifts, there she was, Christmas 1996, with presents for me, for my stepchildren, for my cats. I remember feeling like I was contributing to her problem and had increased difficulty dealing with her moods and demands. I felt bad for her but frustrated by her. I was beginning to write my dissertation, with my PhD defense scheduled for mid-March and felt that between my research and my family responsibilities, I just couldn't deal with her. The months slid by and we'd chat by phone but I brushed off getting together. Just about every moment was going to writing my dissertation and preparing my dissertation seminar. By mid-March I was the proud possessor of a 300+ page dissertation and a shiny new PhD. My friend, who had gotten her undergraduate degree at the same time I'd earned mine, sent me an email congratulating me and telling me how lucky I was because she hated her job, her life. It made me sad and I didn't exactly know how to reply. We made tentative plans to get together to celebrate (she insisted celebration was in order) but they got postponed. I went up a week later, though, and we laughed as watched a series of Monty Python skits (Dead Parrot and Cheese Shop were our faves) on videotape for about the thousandth time, went out for Thai food and played with Bacardi. She seemed more upbeat than she had in recent weeks, I thought. But we didn't chat much in the weeks that followed.
On Saturday April 27, 1997 there was terrible weather in Miami. The typical windy spring weather, but heavy rain accompanied it. In the late afternoon, I cryptically received a call at home from Cindy's father, who said that he had received a message from her, asking him to call me, to ask me check on her pets. Why didn't she call me herself, I asked him? He didn't know. I told him I had no idea what that was about but that I'd try to go first thing in the morning, because it was still such bad weather and I didn't want to make a half-hour drive in the dark when it was raining so hard. He said that was probably fine. I slept that night fitfully, wondering if I'd somehow forgotten that she was going out of town and trying to remember where she'd told me she left a spare key.
Bright and early Sunday morning, my husband and I drove up to Hollywood. I walked up the path to the small, white duplex in which she lived and figured I'd start with a knock, since the windows were open. I thought there was no way she'd have left town without locking up better. I knocked but there was no answer. I called out, but still nothing. And then, without looking for that spare key, I put my hand on that aluminum door knob and turned. As it opened, I just... knew. I walked inside, asking my husband to wait outside, in case she wasn't dressed or something. The pets, even Bacardi, were all in the living room and seemed oddly disengaged, barely noticing me. I walked to the right, to the bedroom and there I found her. She'd rolled off the bed, onto the floor, and seemed as if she must have thrashed a bit. Her eyes still open, mouth gaping, it was pure, unadulterated awful. She'd clearly been dead for more than 24 hours. The room smelled of death, a scent as real as roses or toast, if you've ever been around people who have died. The evidence of her quite effective means, which I won't get into because I'm not handing out ideas on the subject, were neatly organized on her bedside table. It was a method I'd discussed with my friend who was dying of HIV, but a toxoplasmosis infection in his brain robbed him of any choice in the manner of his death. She knew about it. She'd used it. And with some care, evidently.
Her brief note was a statement to her family that I was the only person she trusted to take care of her pets. In the weeks that followed, I understood why she'd left a stern note. Though I knew her father to be a rather irascible man, her siblings were something of an unknown quantity to me. They proceeded to tell me every bad thing they could about Cindy. That she was a liar and had borderline personality disorder and that she was a nut job and it was so selfish and it was so typical that she'd done this to them. They were glad I was taking the pets so they didn't have to deal with that on top of everything else. My poor friend. Her broken, unhappy life, finally gone and yet still being ripped apart. I wanted to remember the wonderful woman I met on the stairs in 1988. But all they did was rage on. I heard all of it as I helped them go through her things, as I found good homes for her pets, especially for poor Bacardi, who had lost a second owner. But during those weeks and hours that I helped them with her things, I kept living in that moment of discovery, that awful moment, in her room. I don't think I'll ever be able to forget that moment. The image, the scent, the sound. Ah... the sound...
Through the open bedroom window, I could see, could hear, a glass wind chime tinkling in the still brisk wind. It was one of those Chinese ones, with the painted glass. Very reminiscent of the one my grandparents had. For years afterward, I would hear chimes like that and smell death, or at least relive the moment of smelling death. I used to love those chimes. They were like shattered glass in that moment.
It's taken almost fifteen years to get a glass wind chime, the one you see above, which is called "Ice". Of course, I haven't hung it yet. (That's why you get sound from someone else's chimes.) But I am reclaiming glass wind chimes. I need them in my life. They remind me of my grandmother and grandfather and Jeteye and the cats and those languorous afternoons long ago, in spite of all odds. Well, after much reconsideration, let's say. They were a sound of deep comfort in my memory.
Maybe I need comfort, because in the most bizarre way, history is pretty much repeating itself, in a fashion so eerie, it's déjà vu all over again. Because what are the odds that another friend I met in the same year, 1988, at the same university, in another class, would also have lost her mother, been committed for three years as a teenager for her willfulness, damaged horribly, have a strained relationship with her father, brother and sister, have a nervous breakdown in graduate school a year ago, and now be on the brink of the same choices as was Cindy? Only my family and Les Comtesses have heard this sad story because it is just so achingly painful. My friend is so private. There will be no names that sound like her name. No greater detail provided. But here I sit, writing this at 4 am in the morning, sleepless, wondering if any day now, when I go by her tiny efficiency, if this is going to be the time. Her kitty seems to be her sole reason for continuing with her life and I'm constantly talking her out of putting her cat, who is old but otherwise just fine, to sleep. Every day I talk to her, it's about why she should just take one day at a time.
I like to think I'm doing better this time, both with her and with how I'm feeling about the whole thing as a very real and painful sort of déjà vu. I like to think it's not going to end the same way. But as time moves on, less and less of my beautiful friend is there. It's like a lathe is stripping away layer after layer of the person I've known for so long now. She is barely recognizable as the beautiful young woman I met in 1988, who had such brio. But it's more than just that. Tonight when I got there and called out her name, through her open windows, she started awake and said weakly, "The door's unlocked. Just come in."
I froze for a moment, with my hand on another aluminum door knob, twisting, twisting open.
I've been working on ideas for posts and making some changes to the blog, but want to pop in to ask my readers to please watch this video about PIPA/SOPA proposed legislation that is before the US Congress.
This powerful and ill-conceived piece of legislation diverts the responsibility of digital rights management from the creators of copyrighted property (READ: The Entertainment Industry) to the owners and managers of websites (YouTube, Facebook, Blog sites, YouTube, etc). How does it work? If a single bad link is posted on a website, the owner becomes responsible and without due process the entire site can be shut down. Individuals may be liable for up to five years in prison.
How can all this be exploited?
Since due process is not involved, SOPA and PIPA legislation is tantamount to censorship.
Because of the stringent terms of this legislation, it will become difficult for new internet start-ups and the internet will become less safe.
And simple things, like videos of your child on YouTube, singing "Climb Every Mountain" or "I Believe I Can Fly" will be banned. Because, technically speaking, your child has not paid the royalties to sing that song. (And goodbye YouTube, by the way.)
This legislation takes what is a country that touts itself as a bastion of freedom and censors its internet. Shall we list a few other nations that do that? China, Iran, North Korea.
Should we join them?
Please watch the video above and take the time to contact your congresspersons:
"Reindeer think with the nose, not the eyes. They go with the wind." ~ Nils Peder Gaup
Reindeer, Scandinavia
Photograph by Erika Larsen
This Month in Photo of the Day: Nature and Weather Photos
Sami herders follow the migrations of the reindeer as they move across northern Scandinavia and Russia from their winter grazing grounds to cooler areas during the summer months.
See more pictures from the November 2011 feature story, "Sami: The People Who Walk With Reindeer."
I find it interesting that in the Sami languages, where the work of reindeer walking is called boazovázzi, (my new favorite word- "Don't bother me right now, I'm boazovázzi.") the word for "herd" iseallu; the word for "life" iseallin.
Erika Larsen, you make me feel cool and relaxed with these photos and video. May the Quantum Field be kind to you and your work.
You can see and read more of Erika Larsen's extraordinary photodocumentary experience of living among, and keeping house for, the Sami for three years here.
"This volcano blew up and made a rainbow but then it had to rain because whenever you have a rainbow, it rains. But sometimes, it just rains." ~ Serena K.
A long time ago, when I first became a Guardian ad Litem, in a bookstore in Sebastapol, CA, I picked up a book titled "Nobody's Children" by Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor at Harvard Law School. Bartholet is a pretty fearless figure in my mind. She has championed the cause of adoption, over kinship care or hasty reunification in very troubled families, and has very frankly examined some of the factors leading to the greater representation of African-American children in the dependency system. Her chosen phrase, "nobody's children," for the many children languishing in foster care or with some vague hope of reunification with their parents (and therefore not really our problem) or in the gulag of kinship care with the same kin that may have spawned their present dependency plight, has stuck with me for almost a decade. It truly captures the lives lived by far too many children in foster care and those who will age out, and become "nobody's adults". Nobody's child has... nobody. Just paid professionals and let me tell you, sometimes, you question what you're paying for. I remember as I read the book thinking it was an irony that "Nobody's Children," written in 1999, followed Hillary Rodham Clinton's aspiring ideals set forth in "It Takes a Village" (1996) by only three years. What if you don't have a village? What if you don't have anyone?
I'm sure you notice the edge to that tone in the last sentence, right? Yes, it is interesting how quickly one gets to the point of feeling frustrated with one's fellow humans when it comes to the issue of care for children and youth. Well, I say one, and really I mean me. It's interesting how quickly I get frustrated with the lack of interest so many people have, or their flat-out saying that they don't want to bother with stuff like "all that depressing stuff." Children in foster care? Children who age out of foster care and end up homeless? Disabled children (youths) who age out of foster care, and who have no one really looking after their interests? Why talk about stuff like that? It's such a drag. Don't be such a drag. Don't be so dark. (As an aside, at a holiday party I really didn't want to attend yesterday, I was surprised to meet a couple who really did care. It was... a breath of fresh air, actually.)
To be honest, lately, I feel angry a lot of the time. Angry and really judge-y. As Cynical Nymph would say, I feel like I ought to change my name to Judgey McJudgerson sometimes. That's me, right now. I'm a harsh and judgey critic of the way we treat children in our country who are poor (another aside: what kind of an a$$hole says we ought to relax child labor laws and make children work as janitors in their schools to reduce the number of poor children?) and those in foster care and who age out of foster care. I'm a harsh and judgey critic of people just turning a blind eye, saying it's somebody else's problem. I mean, it's one thing if you're really not at a point and place in your life where you could do anything to help, but don't ignore it. Don't pretend it isn't there and doesn't exist as a serious problem facing many children and youth. Don't tune out and say it's just too big and too bad and too sad for you. These are your effing fellow human beings we're talking about here. The children and young adults of your country, your future. They are still your moral responsibility, even if they make you feel bad and sad.
Yeah, I can officially say this week sucked. I'm recovering from the kidney infection/I-better-do-everything-in-my-power-not-to-build-a-stone. I still feel fatigued and to say I have a lot of stuff to do before December 19 would be like the understatement of 2011, which has so not been a cheery year. But anyway, my week? My week has been splendid compared to that of a few friends and that of one of my former GAL kids. She's former because on Friday afternoon I petitioned the Probate Court to become her emergency legal guardian.
"This girl had to break the glass to get away. Get away from what, sweetie? Bad things. She got away from bad things. But she had to break the glass to get away." ~ Serena K.
It's a really bad thing when an overburdened school, with obviously very overburdened staff, who are so fed up with someone who doesn't want to cooperate with their community-based outing schedule, gets so overburdened that they Baker Act the youth for "suicidal ideation." And that instead of successively calling the people on the youth's contact list, they called the first person and don't leave a message and then skip to number 6, the part-time group home staff person, on the contact list, and report they're in the process of Baker Acting the youth because she's been 'suicidal' for four hours. (*cough* yes, even at lunchtime while she ate she was suicidal)
In this particular instance, part of the really bad thing is not thinking about what it's like when you're an 18 year old girl who spent the first 14 years of her life being incestuously sexually abused by her biological father and two brothers, was then adopted and had the same thing occur all over again with her brother and adoptive father. Because after that, the big burly guys from EMS who come and strap you down to a gurney and take you to you-don't-know-where, where their ward turns out to be full after they start intake, have to sedate you because you're upset, and then call a new ambulance to take you to the new you-don't-know-where might be kinda retraumatizing to you.
But hang on... it gets better. Because then there was the fact that this young woman aged out of the foster care system. I had applied to become her permanent guardian but we are dependent (ha ha, right?) on the wholly overburdened Legal Aid Society in Miami-Dade County to process the Probate application for me to be her permanent legal guardian and therefore... wait for it... There is no one to sign anything for this young woman because she was examined and found incompetent, yet she is legally an adult so we need someone to sign for her but there is no one, oh dear.
To her admitting psychiatrist's credit, he was refusing to release her until he had seen her on her medication. That, as many of you know, and I know all too well, is really, really rare. But at the same time, they weren't giving her any medication, not even medication currently prescribed for her, because there was no one to sign anything and they "couldn't do that". I was informed that she was getting aggressive, and, I know this will stun you, really stressed out. It was Friday morning, when I showed up with (praise the Quantum Field for extended jurisdiction for aged-out dependent youth in Florida, which continues through age 19 if the youth accepts or the GAL recommends for youths who will be ruled incompetent upon age-out) my Guardian ad Litem appointment documentation and documentation showing that Serena (not her real name) was under the extended jurisdiction of the dependency court. That bought me the chance to talk to her doctor, and to see that really, I needed to be her guardian Now. Like RIGHT FRAKKING NOW. Because they wouldn't release her if they didn't think she was stable on meds and since they couldn't (or wouldn't, since she wasn't meeting criteria) give her meds, they didn't know if she was stable. Catch-22 much?
But if she isn't meeting criteria, why hasn't she been discharged, I asked innocently, in the voice with edge and teeth.
"Because she was Baker Acted."
But you just said she isn't meeting criteria. Usually, aren't patients not meeting criteria released?
"But she is aggressive and talked of self-harm. I can't release her like that. I need to see what she's like on meds. I need to be sure."
And I, therefore, need to be this youth's legal guardian, like, yesterday!
Enter Angels.
So there I was, totally and I do mean totally screwing up the day of two Dade Legal Aid Angels, who are in charge of all the freebie probate cases for all the aged out foster youth and the in-general poor adults who have no other legal recourse cases, in all of Miami-Dade County, population 2.5 Million people. They currently have 600+ cases they are working on by the attorney's estimate. Files out the wazoo. Saw 'em. Saw 'em EVERYWHERE in that office. Yet they stopped everything and helped me, because they are just like that. They are just that amazing.
After signing documents at 12:30 pm, I was Serena's Emergency Legal Guardian by 2:27 pm.
Yes, it was truly amazing, especially considering their case load and their working reality. I am sending them both flowers on Monday.
"This is a girl who is bleeding. What happened to her? She got hit. She got hurt. But she wants to fight. Are those fists? Yeah, that's how she fights back. What are those circles near her eyes? Those are her tears. She cried." ~ Serena K.
But, here's the thing. In the course of talking with this attorney, who was, all things considered, incredibly nice about the fact that I had totally screwed up her entire Friday, along with screwing up the entire Friday of her smashing legal secretary, she told me things. Horrifying things. Things that make me deeply question the entire system, top to bottom, everyone involved, from psychologists, to guardians ad litem, to who the frak says things like... the stuff in these reports they have to pore over!
So here's what the attorney told me. You should really be sitting down, especially if you're like a Comtesse or something. Because there will be outrage. Outrage aplenty.
On one case of an aged out foster youth who is intellectually and/or developmentally disabled, the youth will need a guardian because she is not competent as to her own care and needs. No one was stepping forward to meet this need. And so, an evaluating psychologist, a man (I can honestly say) against whom I hold an unbelievably deep and irrevocable grudge* said in writing that maybe the Court should consider the father of her child as an option for guardianship. Mind you, this was, the attorney told me, the man who got this young woman pregnant at age 13 when he was 30ish. That's right. This is what we are coming up with as guardianship solutions in this County? Psychologists who recommend that a now 18 year old be placed under the care of the man who got her pregnant at 13? The man who took advantage of a disabled 13 year old foster child? Yeah. Thank the Quantum Field that this attorney and the head of Dade Legal Aid said that was a big NO. So I guess she went to the overburdened and exquisitely indifferent Guardianship Program of Dade County for all her needs.
We traded stories, this attorney and I. Our horror stories. I told her about Marina's bilobar pneumonia and the doctor that hadn't even bothered to listen to her lungs when group home staff said they thought she was sick and how they pressed on and took her to the ER. She told me that it is a nightmare trying to find anyone to look after these young adults and older disabled adults. And I voiced what I have thought since I became Marina's permanent legal guardian. That I simply do not understand how someone like a guardian ad litem can visit these kids at least once a month, every month, for years, and be indifferent about what happens to them when they turn 18. I just can't do that. I am not built of that same stuff. Personally, now I'm 2/2 of the under-IQ-of-55 clients that I am now legal guardian of. (You'll remember Marina from prior blog posts.) I still think of and occasionally talk to or see Keyonce. I still talk to Snow White and take her to doctor's appointments. I mean... I can't get them out of my head, my heart... I realize that I'm fortunate to be in a good position both age-wise and economically speaking to be able to do the stuff that I do. But I am totally stunned by the indifference of so many people as to the plight of these young women and men that our state took into care, who have aged out, are cut lose, and now... and now?
Nobody's children are now nobody's adults...
"That's a girl with a baby inside. And what happened there? They cut her and took it away. That's blood where the baby was. They cut her."
~ Serena K.
Serena makes incredibly powerful drawings. They take my breath away. Her thinking in them is poignant, often disturbing, but sometimes tangential and even occasionally psychotic. She suffers from PTSD and a Mood Disorder. It is amazing she is still able to express herself so powerfully, after all that has happened to her in 18 short years. Her art is the most vital part of her. They wouldn't let me take stuff to draw with her in the hospital tonight. It made me feel bad. She is so desperate to go home to her group home. She wanted to draw and to listen to music. She was tired and pretty blue when her group homeowners and I left at the end of visiting hours.
She is right that sometimes it rains. It's raining hard the past few days. But yesterday, thanks to Dade Legal Aid, there was also a rainbow.
*This guy wrote an evaluation that resulted in two little girls, who absolutely haunt me, being left in the care of a maternal uncle who had so bullied them and his adult, unmarried sisters with his creepy evangelical ways that I still shudder to think of what their life is like. A former teacher, who later recanted her comments to me when subpoenaed to repeat them in open Court, had told me that the older child had started failing classes she'd liked best in school and was frequently clingy and crying. The girls had been removed from that school and had been placed in a public school setting. The younger child was diffident. The older child was wide-eyed and afraid and just held my hand. I will never forget her and the lingering suspicions I had of incest or its potential there. But this same psychologist said they were fine and happy. Yeah. And 18 year old intellectually disabled girls should be under the guardianship of their statutory rapists.
So today's blog post is short a multiple choice test. Some background information you will need to take this test:
Road to Independence Funding: RTI, in general, provides funds for young adults who have aged out of foster care and who meet requirements of "progress" academically. The funds are intended to help youths complete their education and/or training, providing them with a cushion to allow them to make a start in life as they earn their education and hopefully have food, shelter and clothing while doing so. Monthly stipend for qualified youths in Florida: $892.
The Baker Act: A Florida law that provides for a 72 hour hold for a person who you believe to be a risk to themselves or others, due to a mental health crisis.
Agency for Persons with Disabilities: APD, an organization undergoing severe budget cuts under Governor Rick Scott's inimitable (thank the quantum field) governing style.
Certified Behavioral Analyst: A person who helps develop behavioral strategies for children or adults who have significant behavioral issues due to their mental health status or developmental disabilities.
Total Annual Cost for Level 1 (supervision) and Level 3 (biweekly documentation of plan and implementation reviews) CBA services for a 13 year old child: $4300
Locked Mental Health Unit Crisis Hospitalization, 10 days: estimated cost on state Medicaid dollars, perhaps $2500- $5000 daily? Estimates vary based on the facility surveyed. (please note that it is evidently impossible in most facilities for any patient hospitalized on a 72 hour hold toward the end of a week to be discharged on a Saturday or Sunday. Of course, they get out on Monday!)
And now for our quiz! Excitement!!!
Question #1:
If you wanted to cut costs in your Independent Living Program for your aged out foster care youth, you would:
A. Stop providing bus cards for your aged out youth in good standing in your RTI program.
B. Make youths in good RTI program standing apply for bus cards, and have their applications approved or denied, thereby creating a situation where it is a burden for youths at far ends of your very large county to come in and apply, go home, wait for a decision and then if they are lucky, come back and get their bus card. (Oh, by the way, that would be using the public transportation that they likely don't have a bus card for... Hmmmm.) Hey, maybe they won't bother to apply. That's $$$ saved!
C. A and B.
D. Realize that if students can't afford to get to their classes on public transportation that they may then fail in school and that you can therefore drop them from your RTI program! Yay! You saved money!
E. All of the above.
Question #2:
If you wanted to save money on APD service provision for Behavioral Focus Clients/Consumers, you would lower them off the expensive Behavioral tier of service and:
A. Eliminate their behavior therapy services because they really didn't need them anyway because, hey, they're not on that service tier.
B. Make the staff in the consumer's group home responsible for their own behavioral strategies in working with this client. (Hope they don't get too frustrated or anything...)
C. Provide fewer dollars for the group home owner to compensate their staff for handling behaviorally challenging consumers in their group home. (Hey, those 15% cuts to group homeowners were necessary!)
D. Decide that spending $4300 a year on behavior services is not worthy preventive care. Preventing $50,000+ in 4.5 months on 10 days of crisis hospitalization for 13 year old with lifelong, deeply entrenched behavioral problems, and who has now been Baker Acted twice in the 4.5 months since you eliminated her behavioral therapeutic service is way stupid and not your problem. Besides, AHCA is picking up her hospital stays and that's not money coming directly out of yourAPD coffers! Yay! You saved money!
E. All of the above.
I'll leave it to you to figure out the right answers. M'kay?
In the wake of the scandalous child sexual abuse cover-ups by the Vatican, I suppose that we should be surprised by nothing that adults want to sexually perpetrate on children, nor the extent to which people in power are willing to cover up and/or ignore it anymore. Still, it's hard to absorb the fact that accused pedophile rapist Jerry Sandusky was evidently sexually abusing minors, extremely vulnerable at-risk minors, and coaching staff and administration at Penn State did nothing about it.
Accused Pedophile Jerry Sandusky
(photo credit: Associated Press)
Sandusky, who retired as an assistant coach at Penn State in 1999, founded a group called Second Mile in 1977. It was a perfect grooming opportunity for his victims. Second Mile serves disadvantaged and at-risk youth. You know, kids unlikely to complain, or to be taken seriously when they complain, about being molested or raped. Virtually every reference to Sandusky, other than the statement now on the organization's website home page, has been stripped from Second Mile's website. They had removed him from their activities in late 2008. I cannot imagine how utterly horrifying it must be to the staff of the organization to think that Sandusky used them, and the children they sought to help, as a means of grooming new children to molest and rape. Only, wait a minute there, it seems that some did know that there was something not quite right about Sandusky. Namely, CEO Jack Raykovitz who you would think should know that Jerry Sandusky shouldn't be showering in the nude with a child.
In spite of my immense cynicism and extensive writing on the Catholic sex abuse scandals, the Centre County Grand Jury's findings that led to indictment of Jerry Sandusky (40 counts of child sexual abuse), Penn State athletic director Tim Curley, and former Penn State Vice President of Finance Gary Shultz are absolutely astonishing to me. Their 23 page report alleges at least nine victims of clear child molestation and/or rape. (The ninth victim was unable to testify to the Grand Jury as he is stationed overseas with the military.) And it is almost as damning a report, with respect to Penn State, as it is to Sandusky.
Recounting the timeline, thanks to CNN, is simply nauseating.
1977 -- Sandusky founds "The Second Mile."
1994-1997 -- According to the grand jury report, Sandusky allegedly engages in inappropriate conduct with three different boys he met separately through the Second Mile program. One boy was 7 or 8, another was 10 and the third was 12 or 13 at the time. According to the grand jury report, the now-grown men said Sandusky engaged in inappropriate conduct ranging from touching to outright sexual encounters, including several incidents during the night before Penn State football home games, when the team, staff and boys Sandusky had allegedly invited were staying at a hotel.
1998 -- Penn State police and the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare investigate an incident in which the mother of an 11-year-old boy reported that Sandusky had showered with her son and may have had inappropriate conduct with him. In a June 1, 1998, interview with investigators from both agencies, Sandusky admits showering naked with the boy, admitting that it was wrong and promising not to do it again, according to the grand jury report. The district attorney advises investigators that no charges will be filed and the university police chief instructs that the case be closed, according to the testimony included in the grand jury report of the police detective who investigated the incident.
1999 -- Sandusky retires from Penn State after coaching their for 32 years, but stays on as a volunteer and retains full access to the campus and football facilities.
2000 -- Sandusky allegedly showers with a young boy and tries to touch his genitals during overnight stays at the coach's house, according to the now 24-year-old man's testimony included in the grand jury report.
2000 -- Tim Calhoun, a janitor at the Lasch Football Building on the Penn State campus, tells his supervisor and another janitor that he saw Sandusky performing oral sex on a young boy, according to the grand jury report. A second janitor reported that he saw Sandusky and a boy leave a shower room and walk out of the building hand in hand. No one reports the incident to university officials or law enforcement, according to the grand jury report.
March 2, 2002 -- According to the grand jury report, a graduate assistant allegedly tells Coach Joe Paterno that he saw Sandusky in the locker room shower the night before, performing anal sex on a young boy he estimated to be 10 years old.
March 3, 2002 -- Paterno reports the incident to Athletic Director Tim Curley, saying the graduate assistant had seen Sandusky "fondling or doing something of a sexual nature to a young boy," according to the grand jury. Later, the assistant is summoned to a meeting with Athletic Director Tim Curley and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz..
While the assistant insists to the grand jury that he told Curley and Schultz that he saw Sandusky and the boy engaged in anal sex, Curley and Schultz told the grand jury they had not been told of such an allegation. Instead, Curley said he had the impression the conduct amounted to non-sexual "horsing around." Schultz said he couldn't remember details, but seemed to recall that "Sandusky might have inappropriately grabbed the young boy's genitals while wrestling," according to the grand jury. Sandusky's locker room keys are confiscated, he is told not to bring his Second Mile participants to campus and the incident is reported to the charity, but no law enforcement investigation is launched, according to the grand jury.
2002 -- The Second Mile learns of the shower incident. Curley tells them that "the information had been internally reviewed and that there was no finding of wrongdoing," the group said in a statement Monday.
2005 or 2006 -- Sandusky allegedly befriends another Second-Mile participant whose allegations would form the foundation of the multi-year grand jury investigation.
2006 or 2007 -- A wrestling coach at the high school where Sandusky was volunteering allegedly surprises Sandusky and the boy "lying on their sides, in physical contact, face to face on a mat" in a cramped weight room. Sandusky jumps to his feet and told the coach the two were just working on wrestling moves, the coach later recalls in grand jury testimony. As time goes on, Sandusky allegedly begins to spend more time with the boy, taking him to sporting events and giving him gifts, including golf clubs, a computer, cash and clothes. During this period, according to the grand jury report, Sandusky allegedly performs oral sex on the boy more than 20 times, and the boy performs oral sex on him once.
2008 -- The boy breaks off contact with Sandusky. Later, his mother calls the high school to report her son had been sexually assaulted and the principal bars Sandusky from campus and reports the incident to police. In grand jury testimony, the principal, Steven Turchetta, recalls Sandusky's behavior as suspicious, and said Sandusky was often "clingy" and "needy" when a student no longer wanted to spend time with him. The ensuing investigation reveals 118 calls from Sandusky's home and cell phone numbers to the boy's home.
November 2008 -- Sandusky informs The Second Mile that he is under investigation, and he is removed from all program activities involving children, according to the group.
September 2010 -- Sandusky retires from The Second Mile, according to the grand jury.
Friday -- The grand jury report is released.
Saturday -- Authorities arrest Sandusky on seven counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and numerous other charges, including aggravated indecent assault, corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of a child. He is freed on $100,000 unsecured bail. Curley, 57, and Schultz, 62, are each charged with one count of felony perjury and one count of failure to report abuse allegations.
Sunday -- Curley asks for and is granted administrative leave to deal with the charges, while Schultz steps down from his post to retire.
How many children has Sandusky violated, one wonders? And how, HOW, could the Penn State individuals who knew of this live with knowing what this monster was doing, and live with their choice not to call the police? Only high school principal Steven Turchetta appears to have acted on Sandusky's suspect behavior, which he termed, even without any further evidence than close physical contact, unacceptable and decided that Sandusky be kept away from his school's children. Only Turchetta called the police! Even the graduate assistant (reportedly Mike McQueary, whose statements, according to the indictment, page 8, were considered to be "extremely credible" by the Grand Jury) who reported his horrifying observation of Sandusky subjecting a child he estimated to be only ten years old to anal sex in a Penn State locker room shower, did not call the police. Instead, he called head coach Joe Paterno, who felt his duty was done when he told athletic director Curley. While I can better understand a graduate assistant's fear of being a whistleblower (more courage evidently, would have been required to ask why Sandusky wasn't then arrested, why he himself was never interviewed by police, even campus police about an incident that was so clearly illegal), I cannot comprehend Paterno's lack of action nor the State's Attorney's lack of charging him with failure to report sexual abuse allegations involving a minor, at a minimum. Joe Paterno had much on his side in coming forward with this illegal behavior. He had a powerful reputation, which is now, justifiably, forever tainted with his cowardice.
As the New Jersey Star-Ledger's Editorial Board puts it:
"He knew this much: Sandusky, little boy, shower, vacant locker room. What more detail did he need to alert authorities that something might be wrong?"
and,
"Paterno insists, “I did what I was supposed to do,” by handing off to Curley, but Paterno did only the minimum the law required. Telling Curley doesn’t absolve Paterno from a moral obligation. He should’ve taken action himself. Failing to do that allowed Sandusky to victimize boys for another seven years."
Calls for Paterno, who has still not been charged, to step down are coming from all quarters, as well they should. As it is, Paterno's own written response is so wholly off-mark that one wonders if he sees anything at all wrong with child abuse.
And Curley and Schultz? Let's be frank about what Penn State's agenda was here and call a spade a spade. This was a business decision for them. They chose their bottom line with donors, who might balk at the idea that the football program had held a sexual predator among its ranks, over the welfare, health and psyches of children of their community.
What was Penn State's basic reaction to the revelation that Jerry Sandusky was raping children in the locker room showers on the Penn State Campus?
Paterno, Schulz and Curley only told Jerry Sandusky that he could no longer rape little boys on Penn State's campus.
And for that, they should ever be remembered as the men who enabled Sandusky's pedophilia.
These men, while not as vile as Jerry Sandusky, are despicable cravens.
Penn State's Shame:
Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, and Gary Schultz
(Photo credits: Little for the AP, Sports Illustrated, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Oh, and talk about irony, six weeks ago, Penn State dedicated it's new Child Care Center in the name of retired Penn State Vice President Gary Schultz. Because, you know, Gary's all about caring for kids.
