Things About Division

"If there is a country in the world where concord, according to common calculation, would be least expected, it is America. Made up as it is of people from different nations, accustomed to different forms and habits of government, speaking different languages, and more different in their modes of worship, it would appear that the union of such a people was impracticable; but by the simple operation of constructing government on the principles of society and the rights of man, every difficulty retires, and all the parts are brought into cordial unison." - Thomas Paine, Rights of Man

I’ve been sitting here, (mostly) quietly, watching. 

Watching, listening. Waiting to see. For two years, since the Man Who Would Be our 45th president was elected, I have watched, somewhat in shock and awe along with the rest of America, wondering what would happen. 

As our nation has slowly become more and more polarized left to right, more and more divided, I’ve watched the hate grow on both sides. I’ve seen extremes grow and become exacerbated.  Political and social swings become more and more violent and the space between grows ever larger.

I’ve been watching, mostly, trying to not pick sides, waiting to let the fruit of our actions as a nation to deliver the verdict. But here we are, at another election and there’s something I wanna say.

We have battles to fight right now. I’m a firm believer that “evil will triumph when good men do nothing” (not Edmund Burke) and I’m a firm believer in moral courage - standing up for what you believe in, and doing the right thing. 

I believe that these battles we face today need to be fought correctly. I believe bringing guns into a fight that should to be won in legislation is wrong. I believe that taking innocent lives in the name of "moral courage" is wrong. I believe that violence against law enforcement and other federal employees is wrong, whether it is radicalized offshoots of the Black Lives Matter movement or ranchers in eastern Oregon that are initiating the attacks.

That’s why I have to say this: I came of age in a “Christian community." I have been out of it for some time now. The belief system in that place dictates that those followers take dominion over the earth for the kingdom of God, beginning in the local community. One of the best ways to do this is by becoming politically involved in local government. That being said, I have a high level of respect for people from the community to which I formerly belonged who have chosen to run for office. I do not agree with their religious platform, but I support their right to believe in it and campaign boldly. 

In the last few weeks I have had to wrestle the demons of my own personal experience to find and understand this for myself. I've had to overcome anger at injustice that I have both witnessed and experienced, and separate my pain from the truth that there is strength in embracing our very different world views.

I won’t vote for them. Heck, I’ll probably lobby against them. But they’re doing it the right way and I will give the ones that do credit for it. Rick Johnson is running for assessor. I won’t vote for Rick, but I support the fact that he is managing his campaign with dignity and I respect him for what he’s trying to do. He's not storming the county courthouse with his guns drawn and I dig that.

This country works because we have different beliefs. If we all believed the same thing, we'd wipe ourselves out in pretty short order (see Idiocracy). We need diversity to move ahead and we need conflict to affect change, but conflict needs to be resolved the right way. Not by killing police officers. Not by pulling guns on federal employees or occupying federal property - but by changing legislation. By voting, by campaigning, by being active in our communities and swaying the vote in a direction that we believe in strongly with powerful words and intelligent actions, while at the same time respecting those across the fence from us.

“I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” - Oscar Wilde

What we’ve lost in the last few years isn’t a moral compass, it isn’t good intentions - what we have lost is respect for each other. We have lost self-control. We have lost patience and understanding with each other. We have taken our own personal hurts and turned them into the reasons that we condemn and judge people who are different than we are. I am as guilty as anyone of this. We lose a loved one to senseless murder by gunfire and all gun owners become our enemy. We lose a loved one to an officer-involved shooting and all cops are bad. Our personal liberties are threatened, new taxes and laws imposed and our frustration becomes personal. 

We have lost sight of the differences that make us powerful. Our founding fathers understood this and set into place guiding standards for our governing systems. 

“... for where there is such a variety of sects, there cannot be a majority of any one sect to oppress and persecute the rest.” -James Madison, Federalist #10.

The pendulum swing of our political climate has become emotionally driven by hyper-excited media and showboating politicians on both sides. We have forgotten that our neighbors are good people, (unless you live next door to a serial killer) and they want what's best for all of us too. 

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.” - Thomas Paine

Vote your hearts out, friends. Vote conservative or liberal, democrat or republican, or howeverthehell you want, and share your beliefs passionately, but find some love in your heart for the ones who challenge your thoughts, because in the end, they can either sharpen your mind and build your compassion or they can make you dull and obnoxious and earn you a hefty filtering on social media. 

Stand up for what you believe in. Do it the right way. Love your neighbor. Be a better human. 

Be a better human, or if possible, a pirate.

“Think as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes.”- Thomas Jefferson

Things About Spilled Milk

Today I am teaching high school. Today, some jackoff in the high school thought it would be funny to put a bag of rotten milk (yes, our milk comes in bags here) in another kid's locker for him to discover. I don't know how, and I don't know why, but the milk, WELL past it's prime, was discovered and aerosolized somewhere in or around the school and the smell has persisted for HOURS. The sickly-sweet-sour smell of rotten, solidified milk. Smashed into the carpet, thrown out on the sidewalk, tracked by dozens of careless feet through every classroom, rotten milk.

This is EXACTLY how bullying works. You think you're picking on one dumb kid. You think it's funny. Then you find yourself staring down the barrel of inescapable stench that YOU CAUSED. Think about this. Every practical joke you played. Every blind eye you turned on the other kids that were being unkind... guess who gets to enjoy the aftermath? We all do.

We teach our kids to be kind to others. We model this behavior. We call them right down on the carpet if we catch them not being kind. Cause if we don't, the next thing you know they're shoving rotten milk in That One Kid's locker and then when That One Kid comes back in two years and shoots everybody in his class, everybody will say, "but why?"

Milk. That's why. The rotten stench of milk. For days. Lingering. Milk on top of all the other practical jokes and mean names and unkind words and just plain heartless behavior. There's always milk behind the why. Just because the smell isn't always there doesn't mean the repercussions won't be.

Even if there's real mental illness, which there might be. Even if they have good parents, which they usually don't. Even if they're smart, or dumb or ugly, or weird... look back in the lives of all of these murderers who are taking innocent lives and you will find milk. Some people find inspiration in the milk and go on to create beautiful things. Lucky for us, only a few of them come back with their rifles. Lucky only a few just kill themselves. But it's a few too many.

Just because it's not your locker. Just because you didn't put the milk there. Just because you weren't involved... you're still smelling the milk. You can't get away from it. Your friends can't. They'll wear the stench home on their clothing.

Actions have consequences. Spilled rotten milk is worth crying over when it's used as a weapon. When it's used to communicate rejection and hate. It's not funny. It's not kind. It's deadly.

We have to see the milk for what it really is, the first symptom of a lethal condition.

Kids will always be kids. That's why we're here, to remind them, to chastise them, not to make excuses for their behavior or justify their poor choices. We're here to help them learn from the spilled milk before it becomes spilled blood.

After all, we're all in this together.

Things That Are Invisible

I learned in EMT class that explosion injuries happen in three phases. The first, initial, or primary impact is direct, impaled shrapnel, burned flesh - the most visible wounds. Then the secondary impact when the force of the blast moves a body physically and slams down or throws it traumatic distances across space. The tertiary, or third impact is the hardest to see, it’s on the inside, when the internal organs of the victim are slammed against each other and against the skeletal structure and damage occurs. These injuries can be the most dangerous because they aren’t readily visible or easily identified. Care providers can be distracted by a bleeding wound when a vital organ on the inside has ruptured and irreparable damage is happening quietly, out of sight.

My heart has been breaking over the last week after the news of the Las Vegas shooting broke. We’ve recently lost guys from the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan, and Green Berets in Niger, and people I care about are losing battles with their own demons. It makes me think about these tertiary wounds. My veteran friends who grapple with the invisible killer of PTSD are now joined by once care-free civilians who held loved ones in their arms as they died outside of the Mandalay Bay Casino. The long term damage that happened when those bullets impacted the victims of the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting is something that most of us cannot comprehend. But some of us can. There were combat veterans in that crowd in Vegas, and we saw them.

We saw them loading bleeding victims into the backs of random pickups. We saw them lay their bodies across strangers to shield them from the shooter. We saw them plugging bullet holes with their bare hands with no thought for personal safety. It wasn’t just the combat vets that were heroes that day, but they were there. And they get the battle with the ghosts better than the rest of us. They get the rest-of-your-life impact of the bullet that didn’t hit you, but the 20 year old girl next to you. They get the survivor’s guilt. They get these things that people who have never enlisted also never expected to suffer. And now some of us, some regular people who lost loved ones, who witnessed the senseless loss, maybe some of us get them a little bit better too.

Country artists are singing about who lives and who dies and who chooses, a heart-cry that soldiers have sought answers to for generations. The cracking pop of a gunshot means something different to more than 20,000 people now - it means the same thing that it has to combat vets for a long time. It means the possibility of death, or even worse, the possibility of survival when someone else dies. It’s a reminder of the wife that you did CPR on while she lay bleeding on the warm Vegas pavement. It’s the nightmare when you can’t find the friend who was standing, running, screaming next to you, only moments ago, down a sidewalk on The Strip or a dirt road in Iraq.  

The battle that all of the victims of the Route 91 shooting face, more than 20,000 of them, is a real one. It’s just as real as the one our combat vets have been fighting for years, and now it’s hit a little closer to home. Las Vegas is a far cry from Afghanistan, and while most of these 20,000+ never signed up for combat, they’ve seen violence mow down the innocent indiscriminately.

It’s a good time to reach out to the vets and victims that are near us, and they are everywhere - it’s time to try to see the invisible wounds, the tertiary ones. It’s time to stop turning a blind eye or a deaf ear and it’s time to seek to understand the pain of watching destiny determined by a force of evil. It’s time to know that the hearts bleeding out invisibly are just as deadly as the shots that tore through that crowd, as vicious as the IEDs that rob of us our sons and daughters on a daily basis overseas. 22 vets a day prove this. Suicides spikes across every demographic scream it out.

Listen. Hold them. Be there. Look for the signs. As these events become more commonplace in our society, the population density of victims grow, and not just the ones who have been buried. They are all around us, next door, at school, at church, in an airplane seat. It’s a good time to start living with compassion for the people all around us, victims of domestic terror, gang violence, combat veterans, and the ones who have faced trauma that we will never hear about and can’t imagine. Trust me, they’re standing right in front of you. Just have eyes to see.

Veteran’s day is coming up. Don’t just thank them for their service. Acknowledge their loss, even as they live good, all-American lives next door to you. Accept their grief. Embrace their pain. Commit to their healing. It’s a good time to stop pretending that we don’t know how to help. It’s a good time to stop pretending it’s all good when it isn’t. We know how to be human, we know guilt, we know pain. We know joy and we can bring it back, but to bring light to the dark places we have to find them first. Find the bleeding hearts. Let’s start looking.

Things About Right Now

My baby turned 14 yesterday. This morning as I hugged her goodbye when she went to school, I was in the middle of writing a story about the shooting in Las Vegas. How many parents hugged their kids goodbye that day - how many husbands kissed their wives... how many friends texted TTYL for the last time that day? More than 59, at least. Each person who stood in front of that stage represented the lives of so many more. Each life lost was an echo of their parents, friends, children... everyone they loved and everyone that loved them. None of them knew it was the last time. None of them had anything in mind except a good time. None of them went to downtown Las Vegas knowing they would die, or knowing they would be asked to act heroically in the face of unimaginable danger.

My Facebook feed is fraught with adamant proponents of gun control and staunch defenders of the second amendment right now, and on both sides of the fence, they are right. It IS time to talk about the issues that are plaguing us as a nation. It is ALWAYS the right time to tackle these things. Take my damn guns away from me if you must, if you think it will solve All Of The Problems, but then can we please, please focus on the hearts and minds of our families and communities? Can we look at how we have moved away from taking care of our own and knowing when something is not right with the person next to us?

We are so interconnected on a global scale that we have forgotten how to connect with the human next to us on a bus, on the playground, at the store, at a concert. We are so good at killing things virtually, and we enjoy the rush so thoroughly, that killing them in real life has lost it's meaning for us. Remove all of the weapons and see how much change we experience. Cain killed Abel with a rock. Men murder their wives with bare hands every day. The tools of our violence are not the problem. The violence of our hearts is the problem. I will hand my guns right over if you will then stop and look at what we have accepted as a culture is "normal."

Murder and mayhem have become our entertainment. We delight in the gruesome and binge on horror as if these things have no effect on us, and even worse, the young minds absorbing everything around them. We are too consumed with the drama of people who have no bearing on real life that we miss the real life drama unfolding next door. Reality TV has replaced reality. We have become content to be observers instead of actors. This is our life. That shooter was our brother, our neighbor. Maybe he went to our church. The victims are all of us.

People have been killing each other since the dawn of time. Until we figured out how to trot from one side of the globe to the other, all of our mass killings took place in tribal genocide. Then we got bigger and better at war and found more intricate ways to justify our violence. Now we don't have the tribes to protect us because we're all so well off that we don't need each other.

Then suddenly we don't know where the shots are coming from, and we don't know who and we don't know why. In that moment, everyone around me becomes either my tribe or my enemy. I will protect, I will defend, I will sacrifice or I will claw my way to the top of the pile in self-preservation. But it's a faceless, causeless war that we fight here in the United States. It is a storm of terrorism with no predictable landfall. It is unmitigated anger, pain and hopelessness. We face the ever-morphing enemies of mental illness, racism, and religious extremism. The ones who take the brunt of this onslaught, we fault for their flawed reactions. We attack our officers and authorities for overreacting while we turn a blind eye to the neighbor or family member who began crying for help long ago. We protest violently against people doing their job who had no part in making the laws that we do or do not want. We're fighting each other - it's the perfect set up.

Half of my friends say removing guns will help. Half of my friends say defending our rights is the only solution. I cannot abide the offering up of more innocent Americans as the divided baby that is King Solomon's solution to an impasse. If giving up my rights creates a pathway to a productive conversation, I would gladly do so, but do we have ears to hear the truth, or more importantly, humility to admit that our shallow entitlement has led us here? Do we have the courage to tackle it one step at a time in our communities and homes and neighborhoods? Are we brave enough to teach our children that actions have consequences and that we are ALL responsible, or will the baby be split in half in spite of my sacrifice?

I do not have answers. I do not have the specific directions that tell us each as individuals which steps to take toward healing. But I do have hope. I have hope in the good people that are there, covering other bodies with their own in a hail of gunfire. People who run into the fray as others are running out. People who value the whole over self. People who do not see in sweeping generalizations. We are not a country of haters. We are a country with a few hateful people. But we are a country rich with good people who have looked away for too long. Good People who have turned to their televisions for answers and only found division. Good People who are growing weary of the endless blur that they are fed. Quit sheltering. Quit Avoiding. Quit denying and protesting vainly and taking your issues out on the only people who are out there holding the lines of order and morality and responsibility. Be the Good People. I believe in the Good People. I hope to God I am one of them.

Things About Independence

I've been a single mom for some time longer than I have had a man around to fix stuff. I've learned a lot over the years about the things I can, and CANNOT do for myself, but it seems like it's a perpetually evolving process that needs updating constantly.

There are some real benefits to being a single woman and Doing It All Yourself.

For instance, during a recent invasion of slugs, and then when a hoard of Giant Hobo Spiders moved into my bathtub, I had the opportunity to up my bravery game and take on the pestilence, head on, sans male protector. I salted the heck out of 6 inch slime monsters and watched them melt like the wicked witch of the west, feeling powerful and courageous. And on TWO different occasions, I battled four massive hobo spiders in my bathtub, with only scorching hot water on my side. The horrific arachnids were so big they wouldn't even fit down the drain, so I had to muster my bravery and scoop them out of the tub and transport them to the porcelain aqua-mausoleum. TWICE.

GIANT hobo spiders. in my tub. showering has just become optional.

And then there is the Rosie the Riveter "We Can Do It" attitude that has me all cavalier and heading off down the road with my Thule carrier fastened to the top of my car BY MYSELF. Except it was fastened entirely upside down and backwards. Miraculously, the thing didn't blow off before I realized that it was on completely wrong, pulled over and reattached it almost completely wrong again. I feel somewhat brilliant that the right way of attaching the thing slowly came to me as I made a 500 mile drive, one step at a time. It's like rocket science, but easier. The 16 year old son-that-isn't-mine shakes his head in disgust at me.

The learning opportunities, folks. They're phenomenal. If I had some doofy guy around doing everything for me, correctly, the first time, think of all of the things I wouldn't learn.

My next undertaking is learning how to shoot. Guns. Real ones. All of them. And I feel kind of awkward about borrowing other people's husbands for lessons, so I am just gonna go out and teach myself. If this isn't the best idea I've ever had, I am not sure what is. I just have to figure out how to load the guns that I have to shoot. It can't be that hard. I will just YouTube dome do-it-yourself videos: How to load and shoot an SKS... What's the worst thing that could happen?

I mean it worked with plumbing. At least until I had to borrow someone's husband to finish the job I was botching royally. The text conversation went something like this:

me: *photo of toilet in pieces
Friend With Useful Husband: oh that doesn't look good
me: I think that one doohickey is the broken part, so Ima just switch it out. But I can't figure out where the whoozit in the left corner goes.
FWAUH: Hold on.
me: *girl from Ipanema instrumental
FWAUH: He says stop. Don't touch anything else. He'll be over after work.
me: I am pretty sure I can do it
Useful Husband direct text: STOP NOW
me: ok

Or there was that time that the hot water heater died. Like 8 times in a row. And I tried to fix it myself.

me to friend's useful husband (notice how the middle woman has excused herself): so if nothing is coming out of the hose and it's making a weird screaming sound, is that normal? Do water heaters ever blow up?
Useful Husband: BRT. Stop touching things.

Of course this is the same Useful Husband that I asked to check the trailer that I hooked up and was hauling home by myself. Guess the thing wasn't even latched on or something. Who knew?

Hey man, I tried.

Someday I should write a book called Useful Husbands and The Friends I Lost By Borrowing Them.

When I lived in Bend and all of my Friends With Useful Husbands were hundreds of miles away, I tried to rewire my dryer and in addition to nearly burning my rental down, I doubt I would have survived the 220 volts I tried to play conductor for. I placed an ad on Craigslist that went like this:

I NEED A HUSBAND

I tried to switch the cord on my dryer from a 4 prong to a 3 prong and I nearly lost my life and burned down the house. I am cramming food for 5 people in my tiny freezer because I don't have the means to tear out a bench to make room for my chest freezer. My six year old is dehydrating herself on a strike against drinking water because we haven't hooked the ice maker/water dispenser on the refrigerator up since we moved in and she insists that the only good water to drink comes from the refrigerator. I need a man, or a woman, who can re-wire my dryer without orphaning my children, make two ridiculously small cuts with a skill saw to take out a bench, and run the water line for my refrigerator. I will pay, or I will trade you for cookies and/or beer, and let you pet my dog, who feels severely outnumbered in a house full of females. If you need a really ginormous and comfy love seat, you could have that too, but either way I am terrified to make another attempt at being an electrician, and I just don't have the tools and/or time to do the other stuff. The last love of my life took all of my tools when he left, bless his heart. Please let me know if you can do these things for me at some ridiculously inappropriate time, since I work 7/ 10 hour days a week. I have the dryer disassembled, the new cord ready to go, and I have no idea what I need for the ice maker. Maybe you do. If you are lucky my 10 year old will give you her impression of a jump-roping pig while you are here. Someone licensed and bonded would give me peace of mind, but I am open to someone with experience. 

Please email me and let me know how much you would charge, and if I should make you dinner. 

thank you,
Liv

Out of that ad, I ended up getting a guy who ran a company called Aspen Building somethingoranother, and by his correspondence seemed less expensive than the only other email I got, from some licensed and bonded dude who, several months later, would end up being my next ex husband (that's a whole different tale to tell). Aspen Building dude charged me plenty for doing about 25% of the work, and proceeded to ask me out. Maybe I really missed something there. Or maybe I should have just tried it again on my own.

All in all, the fact that both I and my children have survived my solo flight as a "functional" adult so far is nothing short of impressive. I continue to learn, sometimes at great expense, and burn out friendships. Because the only thing worse than being a third wheel is being a squeaky one that needs to borrow your grease all the time.

In all seriousness, I am eternally grateful to the Useful Husbands and the wives who have loaned them with no grudge, as well as the brother-in-laws, dads, uncles, neighbors and friends who have saved me from my own independent capabilities more than once. I CAN do it, but it's much easier with someone who knows how.