Hate, Murder, and Small Town Football

On July 12, Luis Ramirez was viciously kicked and beaten by at least six white teenagers in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. The attack left him bleeding, convulsing, and foaming from his mouth. He died of head injuries two days later, the imprint of his crucifix still indelibly stamped into his chest by an attacker's boot. He was 25 years old.

Three of the attackers were finally charged for the crime on July 25th. Colin Walsh, 17, who punched Ramirez in the face, causing him to fall and hit his head, and Brandon Piekarsky, 16, who kicked him in the head after he lost consciousness, were charged as adults with homicide, ethnic intimidation and related offenses. Derrick Donchak, 18, who apparently chased Ramirez down and tackled him, was charged with aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation and related crimes.

Luis was engaged to Crystal Dillman, with whom he was raising three young children. Luis supported his family by working two jobs: one in a factory, the second picking strawberries and cherries.

Despite the fact that there were eyewitnesses to the brutal attack -- including a retired police officer and Arielle Garcia, a friend of the couple who went to school with the attackers and named them to police -- it took two weeks for charges to be made.

Each of the eyewitnesses heard racial slurs directed at Ramirez throughout the fight, yet town officials were not convinced that the attack was racially motivated.

Retired Philadelphia police Officer Eileen Burke, who lives on the street where the fight occurred, told The Associated Press she heard a youth scream at one of Ramirez's friends after the beating to "tell her Mexican friends to get out of Shenandoah, or you're going to be laying next to him."

~The Morning Call

Now, you all know my dad was a cop. Cops, in general, don't go around telling tall tales about racially motivated attacks in their communities. They'd prefer that racial disputes never happened, regardless of their personal views on anything. They are not prone to go around crying wolf about this, trust. So if a cop says this attack had racial motivation, guess what? Most likely, she's not saying that just for the hell of it.

The investigating officers, though, were not so keen to listen to witnesses, even those who could actually identify the perpetrators. Check out Democracy Now's interview with eyewitness Ariella Garcia. She went to school with the attackers. Knew them by name. Saw where they ran.

The police, however, decided to stay and search her husband's car for guns. Her husband is also -- you guessed it -- Latino. So instead of going after the white attackers whom an eyewitness named and pointed out the direction of escape, the police stayed to search the witness's car for a nonexistent gun, and rough up her Latino husband a bit.

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Shenandoah is a small coal town of 5,000 about 80 miles from Philadelphia. All six of the young men who carried out this crime were on the high school football team.

I went to high school in a small farm town of about 6,000 in southern Ohio. Football was big doin's, let me tell you. Friday night lights, baby, nothing like it. Of course there's high school football where I live now, and I'm at most games because of the kids. But here, it's just a high school thing. Most fans not directly connected with one of the high schools are more interested in the Seahawks or the Husky-Cougar college rivalry.

Small town football though, that's different.

It's a community thing. The whole town comes out, every Friday. In my town, there was the fish fry early in the season, second only to the county fair as far as social events. Later in the season, even the smaller surrounding towns would turn out on Fridays to watch us march our way to State, game by game. Our football team was the pride of that town. Hell, the county. Those boys got free tickets at the local movie theater, and free pizza slices at the Wig-Wam, so named to match our high school's mascot, the Indians. (I know. That's another post.) Anyway, our football players were local heroes. If they got caught driving too fast while cruising on Saturday nights, the cops - whom we all knew by name - would issue a stern warning with an admonition to "pay that off with a win this Friday, y'hear?"

The basketball team enjoyed notoriety too, but there's just something about football in a small town. The marching band, the lights, the crisp, cold air, moms and dads reliving the glory days in their own letter jackets from 20 years back. In a small town, thing is, all the adults graduated from that same high school. They all knew each other back in the day, and they know everybody's kids and grandkids now. They all remember sitting in those stands or riding the away-bus. When the town turned out to that field on Friday night, there was connection. Pride. History. Shoot, you didn't even need to go to the class reunion; just show up on Friday night.

I don't know that I can even properly explain what football means to a small town. Truth be told, I'm not sure I can fully understand it, seeing as how I wasn't "born and raised". I think that's one reason my parents were still seen as "the new folks", even years after we'd moved there, and sis and I had long left home. Not being raised that way, they didn't quite get the thing about Friday football. They didn't have any kids on the team or the cheer squad or in the band, so why would they go freeze their butts off in the stands? Didn't they go to all my concerts and watch me sing? Daddy could watch the Bengals on Monday night from the comfort of his own chair. Real football. They thought it was just a high school thing.

But it wasn't.

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So, back to Luis Ramirez and the young men who killed him. As I read different articles and the comments to go with them, all of those memories came rushing back. Folks in Shenandoah are not only reeling from a brutal murder in their town, they've also been blindsided with the fact that it wasn't a bunch of thugs who did this.  Hell, it wasn't even the white trash who live in that sorry shack out yonder on Route 24 past Pine Ridge Road, no, these were football players. The good boys. The quarterback even, who's off to college come fall.

Seriously people, this is a big fucking deal in a small town.

So it didn't surprise me that the charges were so long in coming. It didn't surprise me to read that the beating was not recorded in that night's police log. Yes, I'm serious. "Standard practice", according to police. It didn't surprise me that "despite the witness statements, Borough Manager Joseph Palubinsky said he doesn't believe Ramirez's ethnicity was what prompted the fight," or that the police chief doesn't think it has anything do with racism either. (AP)

I have reason to know the kids who were involved, the families who were involved, and I've never known them to harbor this type of feeling.
~Borough Manager Joseph Palubinsky

From what we understand right now, it wasn't racially motivated. This looks like a street fight that went wrong."
~Police Chief Matthew Nestor

I think any time there's a fight, and any time you have one ethnic group fighting another, there's going to be racial slurs. I've seen that since I was a kid on a playground 20 years ago, but they never called it ethnic intimidation until very recently.
~Roger Laguna, Walsh's lawyer

All quotes from the Associated Press

A street fight that went wrong? Really? Boys will boys. I wonder, Mr. Laguna, if school-yard scuffles would have been called "ethnic intimidation" in your day had someone died on the playground?

Damn. I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling real confident about justice being served here, people.



Neither did it surprise me to read the horrible, hateful comments following the local articles, though in fairness, they were balanced by plenty of folks who were horrified by the blatant racism and cruelty, shocked at the hate that's crawled out into the light for everyone to see.

That's another thing about life in a small town. Things can seem fine on the surface, especially if you're white. Underneath though, it's very, very carefully balanced. As long as everyone acts right, life goes along just fine. Folks are friendly. And if you're making big yards for the football team, it doesn't much matter what color you are. Whoo-eee, that boy sure can run, cain't he? Only color anyone sees when you're driving down the field with that ball tucked under your arm, is the red and white of that uniform.

Until you start dating Judge Hapner's niece. Then it matters a whole lot. Folks see color real quick then.



I bet a lot of people in Shenandoah truly do not understand how this possibly could've happened in their community. They're good-hearted, well-intentioned folks who have never had to see things any other way because life has always gone along according to their way, and they don't even know it. I can well imagine how this has torn through this little town.

I also know there are plenty of people there who know exactly why this happened. People of color who have to be hyper-aware of their white neighbors' approval and comfort level every day of their lives. You can bet they're under no illusions. But there are also people who left comments like these in the local paper's accounts of the story:

TNT: Nothing he did in the U S was legal! Now my taxes are going to investigate his death and prosecute his assailants > Parasitic even in death!

Mary: Illegals...the name says it all ...goodbye and good riddance!! Those kids did us a favor, too bad they will have to face unpleasant consequences

Deer Hunter: Follow the leads of the good Sherrif and Hazleton's honorabe American leader. Nobody wants these illegals in town. Nobody! ... They have no rights. They are in your town and are bleeding it dry. Shenandoah residents should legally carry cocealed weapons to protect themselves, their property and their young women.

Tina: If these children were such cold blooded murderers they would have killed him there he died later on, yes because of the injuried these kids inficted on him, but they did not intend to murder him, it was an accident.

ddd: These boys are not cold blooded killers it was just an unfortunate mistake. Yes they must pay for their actions but if you knew them and their parents you would not be making such harsh statements against them.

John: Every city in America has a bad section. It usually has a high amount of minorites. When minorites move into a predominately white, safe and quiet town like Shenandoah, people are only assuming the worst because their reputation speaks for themselves.

Dakota: heres my 2 cents the big question ...Does his being illegal mean he deserved to be beaten to death.... YES!!! HAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!
~Comments from articles in the Pottsville Republican & Herald

You get the idea. Tip of the iceberg. Many seemed to regard the death as secondary, with Luis's immigration status firmly establishing itself as the real topic of discussion. In a nutshell: if he weren't here illegally, they wouldn't have killed him.

Again, other commenters did talk about how much more difficult the immigration process is now and how it's not really possible to "do it like our grandparents did" any more. Some local commenters even brought up globalization and US corporate colonization as the real issue behind modern immigration. These commenters condemned the beating and the boys responsible; they called it out as racism and were candid about the ongoing racial tension in their town. I was somewhat relieved to see a number of comments in this vein.

In the end though, it comes down to the fact that people were justifying murder of a human being because they disapproved of him being in the US. A man was killed by some angry racist teenagers with Town Hero complexes, and the biggest discussion point was the dead man's immigration status.

There's something very very wrong with that.

House Apologizes for Slavery & Jim Crow

The US House issued a formal apology today for slavery and Jim Crow.

So everything's fine now. Move along, nothing to see here.

My gut reaction: Gee, mighty white of them. An apology. That helps.

On the other hand, they can either apologize or not apologize. It's not like the choice is apologize or ... go back in the magic congressional time machine and just nip that nasty little horror in the bud before it starts. Oh, and while you're back there time traveling, guys? Don't colonize. Just don't colonize this time around, mm-kay?

Unfortunately though, that's not the choice. The choice is to apologize or not. And we will not be able to move forward to address the system born from that "peculiar institution" until we publicly acknowledge our part -- as a nation -- in slavery, and the fallout that still affects our nation today. So let me put my disgust and cynicism aside for a minute and say yes, I'm glad they apologized. It's a step, as they say.

After stumbling across this news online, I made the mistake of trying to find out more. Inevitably, there were a whole lotta online comments. Those in the "against" crowd, predictably, had the same tired arguments. Like these:

I believe the blacks owe America an apology for tearing our moral, economic and social fabric. The illegal immigrunts can join them.

My ancestors owned slaves and I have no desire to apologize for the actions of my ancestors. In fact, I think that the federal government should give me reparations for the lost assets caused by emancipation and the confiscation of my ancestors' lands as a result of the War of Northern Aggression. How about that?

Wonder what the black folks in Africa think of the living conditions of blacks in America? They might say you were done a favor.

How many times do these people have to be apoligized to? They were apologized to at the end of the Civil War, they were apologized to during civil rights movements, again during the intergration of schools and all other places. I never owned slaves and neither did my parents. I don't think anyone alive today was ever a slave. It seems to me that the race card is being played only by the African-Americans who just want more and more free handouts from the government. I am sick of it.

Tell all those a-holes to vote to drill for oil and forget about the apology.

I haven't done anything to apologize for. Blacks have got it made here in America and they know it. Everything gets handed to them. They work for nothing and I'm sick of it. Like someone else said here, where are the "thank yous" from these people.

These people couldn't care less about equality, they want DOMINANCE!

Who gives a rats-rear what happened to the slaves over 150 years ago. Where is my apology from them for me having to listen to this bullsh-- on a daily basis living here in Atlanta? . . . Get over it. The Civil War is over. Get a job. Get a life and stop throwing slavery up in my face. You may not like what you hear if you don't. Idiots...

We are going to make a black man king of America. When is enough enough.

You White people better wake the hell up or youll be the next American 'negros'.... Im not apologizing and I'll laugh at the faces of these inadequate and inept beings and hope it ****es them off enough so I can practice my second amendment against them. What a glorious day that will be!!...

You get the idea.

So the argument of the day is -- say it with me, boys and girls:
I didn't own slaves, my grandparents didn't own slaves, I had nothing to do with slavery!

Any time the subject of race relations comes up, so too does this argument. Even "nice white people" use this one. I used it too, back when I believed myself to be colorblind. Why, I remember when the Bohemian was a four-year-old little tyke, and we were reading My First Book of Africa from the library. Everything was fine until we turned to the double-page spread of a slave ship cut-away. I was not prepared to see my daughter go very quiet, touch the pages with her little fingers, and ask, "But ... who would do that to people, Mommy?" So, in trying to explain this atrocity to my four-year-old daughter, my African American daughter, I heard myself saying, "... but Mommy's family didn't believe in that. Remember, Mommy's family came from Norway? Well, they settled in the North, they came much later, after slavery was over." Then I launched into how lots of white people were abolitionists, lots of white people fought against slavery, not all white people's families were slave owners ... ad nauseum.

I needed to justify it. I needed to remove myself, in my daughter's eyes (and my own), from that horrible history. It was important to me that she know that I, and by extension, she, had nothing to with this. It was those bad white people what did that. The racists. Not us. Not me.


Here's what I didn't understand: it is not about individuals. It's about a system. It's about laws.

Let me be clear -- this is about the legalized system of oppression put in place by our government, not about whether individual white folks owned slaves or not. If you think we became a superpower so quickly because we're just that good, think again. We got here by stealing Native land, working it with free human labor, and enacting laws to back it up. No start-up costs, no overhead, just pure growth and profit. That's what put us on the fast track to superpower status.



Here's what else I didn't understand: if you are a white person in the United States, you and your family have benefited from this system.

It doesn't matter whether Grandpa Beauregard's granddaddy owned slaves or whether his house was a station on the underground railroad. The laws were on his side. Grandpa Beauregard, if he so chose, could read. Go to college. Live where he wanted. Get a loan to buy land, a house. Pass that property down to his children who then start off a little bit farther ahead in life than he did. And Grandpa Beauregard likely wasn't worrying about being lynched, either.

Land and education. White folks had access to it, Black folks were legally excluded from access. Property equals wealth. It appreciates and is sold for profit or passed on. Education equals opportunity and increased wealth. It raises the probability that your children will also be educated. Now, would you rather be the great-granddaughter of the guy with access to the land and education (not to mention better health care), or the guy who didn't have jack shit and wasn't allowed to build it? Which side of that system would you choose?

Oh, please. Don't even play like you're hesitating.



Which brings us to our next recurring theme: They just need to work harder and quit expecting handouts. Nobody gave me a handout; everything I got, I earned with hard work and effort.

I'm sure you do work hard. And I'm sure you believe no one ever has given you anything. Did your grandparents pass property on to your parents? Did your parents go to college? Do they own a home? Do you? Do people really believe that two men -- one black, one white -- both equally motivated and working equally hard, would get the same results while operating under the legal confines of this system in 1910? How about 1940? 1960? Today?

What about the 2000 Housing Discrimination Study? They sent out 4,600 pairs of testers, separately, in 23 US cities. The testers were identical on paper, but one was white, the other black. Consistent preferential treatment for white testers occurred 21.6% of the time.

Now ... if you rented an apartment tomorrow, you'd have no way of knowing if a black applicant with your same qualifications had been turned down the day before, would you? You'd have no way of knowing that you'd just benefited from a racist system, would you? You didn't choose to benefit from it, you didn't put it in place, you may even be outraged by it; but that doesn't matter. You'll sign that lease thinking you got that apartment solely on the basis of your good credit and consistent work history. But did you earn it? Did you earn it any more than the black applicant who was told it "wasn't available", or who was quoted a price $400 higher than yours?

And did we really work for everything we have? What about unearned wealth?

[As of 2002], 24% of whites receive an inheritance, just 11% of blacks do so. Among those who get an inheritance, whites receive $115,000 on average compared to $32,000 for blacks.15 And these figures do not reflect the gifts children receive during their parents' lifetimes.
To illustrate the significance of these disparities, whites on average are more than twice as likely as blacks to be able to provide a healthy down payment on a home even in the nation's most expensive housing markets or to pay tuition for four years at almost any college or university for one child from an inheritance.

~Gregory D. Squires, Reintroducing the Black/White Divide in Racial Discourse

Okay, I know some of you are like, "Shoot, I never got $115K, or even $30K, you're crazy!" We're not talking about individuals -- everybody has a story -- we're talking about a system set up to benefit some and oppress others over time.

My own story, you all know: I'm a single mom, three kids, money problems, yada-yada. But even with all that, I've benefited from a system that has historically been better to my family than families of color. My dad lent me money to put down on my house. Without that, I never could've owned a home. And without his college education and occasional loans from his parents when he was young, he probably wouldn't have been in a position to loan me that down payment. No idea how I'm going to pay him back now that the market has tanked, and I can't imagine ever being able to help my kids like that, but I'm in the house. I was approved for a loan, even though I probably shouldn't have been. (excellent credit, shit for income, but hey, white! Just don't let Citimortgage see the kids.)



How about this one: Okay, things may have been bad after slavery, or even in the '50s, but now there's affirmative action! Now I'm the one discriminated against! Where's my apology? A white man can't get a job these days!

Right. Check out the 2005 Princeton University study in which they had white, black and Latino men with comparable résumés apply for jobs. You know what they found? Employers would hire a white convicted felon before they would hire a black man with a clean record. Yes. This was 2005, people. That playing field is not level.



And then there's the always-dependable: Slavery ended 143 years ago! It's over! Why can't they just move on and get over it?

Yes, technically slavery ended in 1865. The system did not magically change with that announcement, though. Matter of fact, new laws were put in place to strengthen the system! Slavery was over, but it gave birth to segregation, unequal education, Jim Crow, sundown towns, redlining, and lynching.

Michael Donald was lynched in 1981. This was during my lifetime, people, not ancient history. It was my 15th birthday to be exact. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. I was obliviously blowing out my candles in small-town Ohio, comfortably deluded in the belief that slavery was over and things were fine now, the day 19-year-old Michael was hung from a tree in Alabama. In 1998, James Byrd Jr. was chained to the back of a truck and dragged for miles until he was decapitated. One of the guys who did it had a tattoo of a black man hanging by a noose. In 1998. Just ten years ago! This was during my youngest child's lifetime, people. 1998.

And the President vetoed the Hate Crimes Act just last year. Slavery might be "over" but the fallout poisons our country to this day. Is a lousy apology really too much to ask?



Anyway.

Today's apology is not about whether individual white people owned slaves or not. It is about our government acknowledging that the racial inequities existing today are a direct result of slavery and the legalized system of oppression that came from it.

It's about how that system has affected people over the course of generations.

It's about facing the uncomfortable reality that some people continue to benefit from this system today -- whether we choose to or not, whether we consider ourselves racist or not, whether our people owned slaves or not.

Judging from the last four statements from our online commenters above, it's also about fear, power, and not wanting to shift the existing arrangement. Usually the people wanting to keep a given power structure in place are the ones sitting on top of that structure. Just sayin'.

That's why this apology was so long in coming, and why some people feel so threatened by it.

Beelzebub's Minions

There is a nest of bees under my back deck. I use the term deck loosely, as it brings to mind an elevated structure that one can actually get under. The only thing that fits under my deck are dog toys. I often find myself in the prone position, scraping out a rubber ball or bone from under the "deck" with a rake. You can imagine the difficulty this presents in addressing the bee problem.

A friend of mine has a deck. Her husband built it. By himself. It's huge, overlooks their yard, and could be featured in a magazine. You know those pictures with the flowers pouring out of the pots on the deck in a cascade of color? Like that. Also planted by said husband. He also trims the gorgeous tree with the dark purple leaves that create a canopy over a portion of the deck, and he handles the grill action, also located on the deck. Yeah. If you're going to have a husband, folks, find one of this guy's brothers. They're in California. I asked.

Could you imagine what a different experience life in This Old Motherfucking House would be with someone possessing those mad skillz in residence? Neither can I.

So anyway, bees under my deck. Porch. Whatever. These bees are vicious. I consulted The Internets to see if the feared Killer Bees had made it up to WA state. (They haven't.) No, we have a strain of regular old bumblebees, Bombus Vosnesenski, which, according to The Googles, spend their lives merrily droning from bloom to bloom like hairy, diminutive Goodyear blimps. Under normal circumstances, they're all about the pollination, and are not vicious.

Unless you are close to their nest. Seeing as how their nest is located right at my back door, they're getting a might testy.

The other day, several of them had targeted me for annihilation. After busting out a few ineffectual Bruce Lee moves I didn't know I had, I somehow made it back into the house. Damned if the little bastards weren't furiously flinging themselves up against the glass door, still trying to take their ounce of flesh from my hide. The next day, The Bohemian got stung on the cheek, and Mason got stung on the leg.

The Internets advised bee dust, applied with a bee duster at dusk. My hardware store didn't carry these items, so on the advice of some guy sporting a buzz cut and a red apron, I settled for wasp and hornet spray. I'd thought to go for this foam stuff instead, but Mr. Aprons insisted that wasp and hornet spray was the weapon of choice. The can claimed a 27-foot directed stream. This, as you may have guessed by the name, is intended for wasps and hornets, which tend to build their nests up high, like in the eaves of your house. One can stand well back, direct a stream of potent potion at the nest, and run like hell before they know what hit them. Bumble bees, however, tend to nest down low, like under a board or a cheap-ass, low-rider, wanna-be deck.

The only way to hit this devil's brood would be to settle into the prone position on the opposite side, shine a flashlight under there with one hand to mark my target, let loose with the 27-foot directed stream (which, given the size of the "deck", would be reduced to about six feet), deftly get to my feet and make like a gazelle back over the nesting site without falling on my ass before they swarm me.

I wasn't really feeling this plan, being nowhere as nimble or quick as I was before moving here and getting my fat on. Also, according to The Googles, these guys can lock on to the flashlight beam and use it to hone in on one's ass like a squadron of pixie-sized stealth fighters, so I'd need to have the presence of mind to turn off the flashlight during all this. Better yet, just drop it, like deploying chaff and flares to draw the little bastards to a false target.

Regardless, I needed some protection. Not owning a bee keeper's suit, I made do with what I had lying around the house.

I dug out the camping poncho I'd once bought during a miserable, rainy "summer" vacation on the lovely Washington coast. In lieu of an apiarist's veil, Male Offspring kindly provided the protective headgear seen to the left.

Grabbing my flashlight and Mr. Aprons' aerosol can of death, I went to do battle. I stretched out on the grass, clicked on my light, and -- surprise -- my "deck" was apparently built over what used to be a small concrete porch. My beam reflected back at me from a concrete barrier wrapping entirely around the area where Beelzebub's minions had made their land claim.

I'd underestimated the enemy.

They'd chosen a fortress from which to make their stand. This would be close-in, hand-to-wing combat, requiring me to stand over their entry point and aim the stream directly down between the narrow cracks of the deck. Miraculously, my aim was true and I made it back in with no stings, being closer to the door and having avoided the prone position.

This morning, I found my weaponry was deficient. Mr. Aprons clearly needs to refine his pest eradication skills. The bees are not resting in peace, but are plenty pissed off. Instead of waking to find a field of wee casualties, I found instead a whirling dervish of frenzied, collective rage. Berzerker Bees, if you will.

I'm going back this afternoon for the foam.

Vivisection

Do you all remember The Rat? If not, click and go read -- absolutely essential backstory for today's tale of intrigue.

What? You think I don't see you trying to skip ahead? Please, I can hear the heavy breathing from here. You probably read Cliff Notes as a kid. To quote the Brady Bunch dad, You're only cheating yourself Bobby; and cheaters never prosper. In fact, sometimes they end up divorced with an ex-wife who suddenly develops a penchant for voodoo dolls. That's right, Bobby. Think about it.

I'll wait.


Okay, so the other day I come home from work, open up the fridge to grab a beer, and come face to face with ... The Rat. Like you didn't see that one coming.

Yeah, okay, you got me. Ha, ha, very funny, son. But wait ... what's that red ... holy scalpels, Batman! The Rat had been stitched up like a grisly FrankenRodent! It's true. The Rat was sporting an I-incision with bright red stitching, complete with decorative beadwork. Apparently, my eldest and my youngest spent the afternoon in a study session reviewing Male Offspring's freshman biology lab notes.

Here are the gory details. My kids are nothing if not creative. And twisted.

Warning: This presentation is intended for mature audiences and contains disturbing elements of extreme violence, blood and gore. Animals were definitely harmed for this presentation. Procedures not carried out by licensed medical personnel.

The Never-Ending Story

Cloudy and 52* with light rain this morning here in Seattle. Looks like the rain and chilly temperatures will be continuing throughout the week, so don't put away those umbrellas yet!

It's apparent to me that weather announcers here in the Puget Sound region are either 1) from here, and this seems normal, 2) are getting paid obscene amounts of money to chuckle and sound cheerful, or 3) are operating on heavy doses of Prozac.

Theoretically, they could also be sun-hating, fun-sucking vampires.

There's pretty much no other way to explain how a person can actually chuckle and engage in light banter about this situation. Like it's normal. Since moving here, what's become normal for me is to flip obscene hand gestures toward my radio and loudly curse it while driving through drizzle in my always-on heated car seat.

My personal reaction to this morning's weather report was to grab the plastic butter knife in my desk drawer and start sawing away at my wrists, but it wasn't very effective, and the weather gods apparently don't give a shit that I'm about to flip the fuck out because it's still raining.

They're probably up there chuckling too.

So I tighten my winter scarf (thanks Tony), turn on my sunlamp and check my email to take my mind off things. Oh look, some friends have written -- let's see what RG has to say, he's always good for some conspiratorial bitching. What's this? Oh ... it's a link to Boston weather ... looks like folks are getting sunburned and having sweatfests there. Thanks, RG. That's fucking great. Hope you had fun at your softball game. Sun, beer, and hot guys ... this isn't helping, goddamnit. Watch it buster, or Cheery Radio Bitch won't be the only one on my short list for a healthy bitch slap.

At least he took up a "sunshine collection" for me on his site. It's not working, but hey, it's the thought that counts, right?

Salt in the Wound...

Also, this morning I attended a staff meeting in our coldass conference room where I had to take my blanket (yes, we keep blankets at work here), and learned that a colleague who has been on sabbatical for the last academic year is not coming back.

She's staying in Costa Rica.

Hide the sharp objects people, I'm about to hit my limit.

You Wanted a Rant?

Still raining this morning in the Seattle area, we're expecting a high of 56* today, with clouds and continuing showers throughout the day.

I am about to snap here, people. I'm am seriously feeling fucking foul. As in a weird version of claustrophobic, no joke. Like I'm on the verge of suddenly breaking into a full out scream and running until I pass out or hit sun.

I think we all know which would happen first.

I'm not kidding. I wonder if I'm skirting around the edge of a panic attack. I've never had a panic attack, but if it's something like you want to jump out of your skin and the whites of your eyes are visible and there's a scream stuck in your throat which keeps you from breathing, then that's it. How stupid would that be? "Seattle area woman's panic attack resulted from excessive rain." Right. I handled divorce and all other kinds of shit, but no, it's the never-ending, wetass grey that's about to put me over the fucking edge. How lame is that. I don't need anti-depressants, I need some sort of sun pill.

I know you all think I'm extreme on this subject, but come on -- we are exactly 14 days from Summer Solstice, and we were arguing about turning on the heat last night. If it weren't so goddamned expensive here, I'd seriously have it on at least 10 months of the year.



I was watching Candy Crowley on the news last night. It's the middle of the night there in DC.

There were bugs flying around her.

That means it's hot where she is. As in actual summer.

It looked weird. Just seeing those few little bugs flying around made me think of warm nights on my old terrace, where at 11pm the big tiles still felt warm under my feet, and my beer would sweat, and the bottle would feel good against my forehead, and I could sit in the chair in nothing but shorts and a strappy top, and the chair wouldn't be wet or cold, and the breeze was warm, not wet and cold, and I could spread out and breathe without having to pull into myself and wrap up in something. It even smelled warm there.

That was back when I owned a fan.

Anyway, I was surprised at how seeing those bugs flying around at night hit me, how foreign that looked to me now.

Such a little thing. I wouldn't even have noticed it before.



This morning as I was getting out of my car, fumbling with my book bag, purse, coffee, umbrella, and car keys, feeling my hair go limper and flatter by the minute while a big drip of water slid down my neck, I had the urge to just sit down in the parking lot and cry. "Fine! I give up! You fucking broke me, Seattle! UNCLE for fuckssake, now just bring out the goddamn sun. Please."

Of course, I didn't. But that's what I was thinking. You never know what's going on inside people, do you?

I make it into the building, feeling so foul and discombobulated trying to hang on to everything and close my umbrella at the same time that I only glare at the three flights of stairs and head straight for the Fat Woman's Sanctuary, aka the elevator. Which only makes things worse.

I'll never make it until Male Offspring graduates.