I will say it again. I am calling B.S.

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” – W.E.B. Du Bois

Every year just before the start of the football season we get  political correctness with the term,  The Redskins.  Okay I can see how the name can be construed to be something offensive but what about tackling poverty rather than worry about the name of a football team or teams?

To put this in stark terms, counties on Native American reservations are among the poorest in the country and, according to the Economic Research Service at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly 60 percent of all Native Americans who live outside of metropolitan areas inhabit persistently poor counties.

http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/ExclusiveCommentary.aspx?id=0fe5c04e-fdbf-4718-980c-0373ba823da7

Tom Rodgers is the president of Carlyle Consulting of Alexandria, Virginia. A Blackfoot tribal member, he advocates on behalf of Native American tribal governments and their people. He was previously a congressional staffer for Senator Max Baucus.

http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1411

Unemployment rates are depressing with alcohol use and violence against women alarming.   The poverty rate ranges from 40-54% with about 10% in extreme poverty.   WASHINGTON—A gap in law enforcement on Native American lands creates an environment in which Native women suffer a higher rate of violence than any demographic in the United States, according to data collected by the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Census Bureau and advocacy organizations.

http://americaswire.org/drupal7/?q=content/law-enforcement-gaps-leave-native-women-vulnerable-rape-and-domestic-violence-1

I saw a program from the reservations where rapes were around 60% of the Native American women?  Do you think they care about a name when they are hungry and subjected to rape so much?   The women there had their little support group,  lamenting the violence and degradation.

Washington Redskins Defend Name With Help From Native Americans

http://time.com/3104775/redskins-video-native-americans/

“It’s a warrior’s name”

The Washington Redskins premiered a video Monday in which Native Americans explain why they don’t think the team’s hot-button name is offensive.

The video, released by the “Redskins Facts” campaign reportedlyfunded by the team, features Native Americans from across the country arguing that the moniker is “a powerful name — it’s a warrior’s name.”

In the Redskins Facts video, Native Americans argue that they have bigger issues to deal with than a football team’s name. “They’ve never asked Native Americans. It’s somebody else who knows nothing about us trying to speak for us, and it’s kind of an insult,” Wade Colliflower, Team Redskins representative from the Chippewa Cree Tribe, said before adding, “If you can help in any other way it would be greatly appreciated.”

http://www.smagnis.com/inside-the-richest-native-american-tribe-in-the-u-s-where-casino-profits-pay-1m-a-year-to-every-member/

Sadly though that money does not help those in dire need.   Have you seem some of the Alaskan Wilderness show?  Or Alaskan Troopers?   Some of those homes are barely big enough for one,  let alone a family.    And yet some tribes get one million per as the article above relates.

So yes, Native Americans are rightfully mad but that anger should be redirected to get help to the needy and not create another caste system in this country.

The drinking and violence is staggering and being homeless over a year ago,  I know the plight that faces people without a place to stay!!!

Fix the pain and suffering and then we’ll see how I feel about women and children suffering and men with no hope and no future….

Prozac Nation. Your thoughts! The Long and winding Road.

As I watched the movie Prozac Nation,  Christina Ricci is sitting naked on the bed while her mother comes into the room and opens the window tells her to get going.    Ms. Ricci is going yard.   She is off to Harvard to ply her skills and hone her narratives on life as she experiences life away from mom and dad.     Her home life was idyllic in the sense of having nice clothes and a supportive mother but she did not like people because she assumed they did not like her.

She of course had her drugs,  mainly medication for her behavior but she added X,  LSD,  Marijuana and Alcohol to her mind bending menu.    She had a narcissistic,  womanizing  father who avoided her  during her early teen years and a madly manic’ mom whose insecurities rubbed off on her talented but troubled child.

After the first party her own manic behavior corrupted her friendships and she was openly antagonistic at the worst moments.      She already had an emotional problem and the sense her life was going to be short.   She was also a cutter and obsessive about her writing.

On a personal level her behavior is NOT necessarily outrageous given her medical,  yes medical condition.   Depression and anxiety is not cured by psychotropic drugs because cognitive and awareness therapies can redirect some of the more harmless inclinations.    Those treatment modalities may not cure and so the right medications will help fix some of the neurochemical issues.

When I first started taking Citalopram it was not effective so was switched to the drug Sertraline which did alter my awareness around me.    Initially my family and specifically my brother indicated I was more aggressive.   I may have been but I believe a lot of that was a change and the change was discomfitting.    I resolved that I was becoming more aware of what was eating at me.    My comprehension of my behavior and thoughts became my own.

The sheer terror of public speaking is a theme that caused me a lot of anxiety as a kid and was not helped by the constant threat of violence in the schools.    Corporal Punishment hardly phased the hard-butted strong-willed student but to the good kids,  it became an obsession and fed into my own distrust of 99% of people.

I understand Elizabeth’s (Ricci’s) impulses and her lack of control and the desire to please everyone long enough to find an egress from a social situation.  Hers was self-medicating.   I was fairly skilled in language and was a prolific speller with a great vocabulary.   I read college text books in fourth grade because they were fun.     What I hated was the spotlight.   I really loved sports and always felt like people who were watching were judging me.    By the time I was in my early twenties I went back to the high school and played basketball during recreation at the school  and a childhood nemesis who said,  “Damn you are talented.”    I tell you,  for a moment in the social context that was a homerun.    I did practice and I shot threes with touch.   I prided myself getting lost in a place I felt safe.    Both scared and excited was when I made my first bucket in a game.   I remember like it was yesterday.   A high arching shot and nothing but net.   That was an ice breaker of a kind but too much is a bad thing.

Retreating into my own little Universe I groped for safety without a safety net and the feelings of being judged,  even by family.    My hypercritical thinking makes me a very good weather forecaster but the downside is that skill causes me confusion and alarm.    I have overcome a lot of things educationally but extreme anxiety has rendered me inert in many situations.    I sometimes hate myself,  question my own sanity and perceived stupidity.

The exact origins I am slowly rooting out.   I am reconnecting with friends from my own class of 74 and finding out that the girls thought I was cute and so on.    But this is a slow process and reconciling the pain and anguish is hard.  My cats help and we share a symbiotic connection that I believe benefits us all.

So her behavior is not unusual and her journey through the darkest abyss is a journey that we must take.   The therapy, drugs and finally a modicum of self-acceptance.    We are what our neural pathways allow for.   Mine is a hardwired hyper-awareness.

Chills, Spills and other things. Roads to now. Are you here?

I felt the sun’s virtually as unabated heat in the white sandy beaches of the Florida  panhandle and the smell that permeated that area from a nearby Paper Mill.   It’s sickly sweet smell hung in a florid sky and the aftertaste of scallops made me feel nauseous and trapped.

The Frozen Rainbow.

 

I guess things happen for a reason and behind the doors of our dreams are cryptic answers too complicated to comprehend.  Especially for a child.   The Northern Lights breathed a luminous landscape in the night skies and the cold winds were a knife with a lethal cut.

Sad moments made the frosty chills breathtakingly painful and unforgettable.  The lonely heart of my many nightmares both real and dreamt cascaded over me,  sealed by the ice and recorded in fragments of memories.

The Rainbows here were made of AU with Santa’s helpers nearby,  ready to conference with that white-bearded Totem handing out candy and coal.

I was lost one day in a row of sleepy trailers which billowed out smoke from wood-stove fires and dangerous old space heaters which either warmed us or ignited other kinds of fire.

My Journey seemed to have no end.   With a runny nose and rubber boots I languished in this maze,   seeking out some answers from a random neighbor.    This story somewhere between a dream and my fear of being permanently lost.   The smoldering ruins of a fragmented world.   Like elevators in towering skyscrapers chased by Gremlins and the free fall of a damaged psyche trying to make amends for being hurt.   To be hurt less or no more.

Life always seemed to be changing.   Starting over again and again with the approach of a train, a car or a bus,  we were Gypsy’s not long for anywhere.  And each mode of transportation offered Rockwell scenes,  with pop tarts,  Corn Chips,  Sandwiches and Koolaid.

 

Texas was the land of tumbleweeds, tornadoes and tacos,   where watermelon festivals and PTA meetings and Open Houses happened in a school with disagreeable teachers and paddles with holes in them strategically located in plain site.

At our home in Burkburnett we had a storm cellar and one day a boy who is a few years older than us wanted to show us younger kids something.   He showed his ass (literally).    Getting upon a large electrical spool inside the storm cellar, he showed us his wares,  so-to-speak.   Or the lack thereof.  (underwear).   I had to be careful with that term.   LOL.

Now as far as his crime,  it was not his own but the influences around him.  Probably at home or somewhere else.  Nothing wrong with the human body,  especially the coming of age stuff.

When you’re an adult and violate the vulnerability of your kid or someone else’s,  you set in motion a disaster.   Roles are confused with adult behavior in a life whose coming of age is thwarted for a time.

   Anger bleeds with wounds so deep you fail to thrive.  Your life is bits and pieces and crashing bells.   You cry silent tears of rage and people getting too close makes you want to fly away to a place no one else can land.   You dream of leaving on a train like the Box Car Children or in a clean space station dressed in white where angels cannot find.  You dream of stories where you are the hero and you can control the volume and the brightness.

Sad songs make you happy because at least they are real and the clouds and the dark skies are a kind of revenge,  control over the storms.    You cheer the rain and people wonder at your skills to know but what they do not know,  that these are your sanctuary.    Snow Days are a thrill, a hedge against consensus. A road painted in white,  radios calling it a day.

One night you wander in your dreams, falling down to the Earth and walking back to the camper where you hung out.   The next morning your bleeding hand started to heal and the following night you punch out a window.    Your dreams and your reality clash and the rebel yell resounds.    Heart beating to rhythms unheard cloaked in allegory.

The ending of a story with buildings punctuating the end.   Times will never be the same.   Love?  Happiness?  Your own shame,  mix in a vortex of purple and green hues.   The Cowboy left bleeding in the sand,  his hand no longer the fastest,  the mask going gray along with the retreating clouds.  The wary veteran reporter no longer finds a smiley face but a dearth of wisdom and the prickly thorns of conscience.

 

My two cats are my sentinels and they know the sounds to make with purrs laced with loyalty and a home where a home might not be.   A car,  an alley or a truck stop day room,  your car at least has your friend.

She’s very very very smart, but she is bad at drugs?

I am actually proud of this young lady because she is smart but it was pretty evident that she suffered a lot of abuse at home and yet is surviving.   One of the most significant choices was to not go back home because as she said and I am paraphrasing,   “too much temptation”.

But at the same time looking back at her past on A&E,   she said,  she should be thriving.    She said that.  And this kind of talk most undoubtedly came from social workers,  guidance counselors and self-help books.  She was thriving as a young girl but the demons that haunted Ma and Pa Needle made that foundation shaky.

The mom said she was one of the greatest people that she has ever known?  A teenager who has Gollum’s ring tethered to opioid dreams and where Meth is always more.   A boyfriend who gets to sow seeds deep and in a haze find a love that no one else could possibly can.    While deserving souls are denied pain relief and all in the name of a fix or fixes,  overdoses and quantum mixes.

And getting to how very very very smart she is,  the cumulative amount of verys invariable make her very very very smart.  So let’s break this down.   This attractive intelligent young woman is held hostage to a drug-induced state while disconnected parents with brick telephones hammer I Love yous in a staccato deception.  This very very very very smart girl  is doted upon unhealthily and the father says she is not good at drugs.   Well that is a goal,  I guess? Iron Oars on a rusty canoe.

That picture actually give me seizures.  Who needs drugs?  Ban pictures too!

I believe the father has other secrets too.   We may or may not know one way or the other,   and probably do not need to,  especially as this young woman continues to actually grow up.    The patchwork quilts are replaced with yarn,  replacing burned-outs bulb with Neon.    She is a champ inspite of the nesting cuckoo birds who cooed lies on brains filled with chemical Metaphors.

Good luck and God’s speed and while I know her parents are just human too,   the objectification of her youth and intelligence invariably vanishes.    She is arty woman and interesting too,   but let this very very very very very smart woman who is not good at drugs,  to forever give them up.

It seems to me that we are reverting back to a time we do not want to go.  Things happen in life,  you can not control the tick of a clock anymore than you can control people.  In the next moment creative art will be inhibited as politicians talk about things they never experienced and if they did,  they just lie about it.