Last month and this, I did what I have tried to do every winter in the country called Upstate New York, travel to a beach, located in a warmer clime. This year – I went a long way, to Hawaii, where I never expected to travel, and where I enjoyed a really great time on the beach, in a very nice hotel, and on the streets of Honolulu as well as on the Big Island, where – it turns out – my cousin has a house, and works part-time on a coffee plantation. I don’t drink coffee, but hey, who’s asking? I’ve been to a tea plantation, why not visit the cuz and see one that produces coffee.
Why Hawaii? I read a book, a series of books, actually. The first is called Molokai, and it was so good, and so absorbing, filled with history and love, I had to see Hawaii for myself. I read the second and third almost immediately, they’re not as good, but they’re good. And so, ten hours after leaving Atlanta – where the cold was almost as intense as in upstate NY – I arrived in Hawaii. Gorgeous. Sunny. Humid. Diverse. Gorgeous. Lucky me. Thanks, Mad, for having Molokai in the lake library.
The trees in Hawaii, the flora in general, are magical.
*worth noting, perhaps, that the ten hour flight to HI after freezing my arse off in GA almost almost killed me…
*I took this picture because Diego makes me laugh, sitting on his rear end on a slope like this, but also because the perspective almost succeeds in making him look small… which he most definitely is not. Today the temps were in the 10 to 20 degree range, with a wind chill that made me put on two pairs of glovies for our late afternoon walk. Glorious out, the air so clean and fresh, but – omg brrrrrr…
*a poem by Donna Ashworth, posted here for many reasons, not the least of which is that I find condolences letters and cards to be the single hardest things to write. The inadequacy of words, the fear of being or seeming at all insensitive, or sounding rote, or even slightly callous, or unconcerned at a time of suffering and pain, is real…I am also, truth be told, feeling sad and upset at the death – the murder – of Alexei Navalny in Russia. I was an admirer of his, of his incredible bravery in, returning to Russia after being poisoned by Putin’s regime and nearly dying. He was only forty-seven, and a heroof democracy, and of resistance to authoritarian power. One of his quotes I love (and will paraphrase here) is that Putin doesn’t have to convince you that the opposition (Navlany) is corrupt, he just has to convince you that everyone is, and therefore, why not support the corrupt devil you know? May he RIP, and may his memory be a blessing.He leaves a wife and two children.
And, moreover, why should we care? Well, there are several reasons why Mason Herring is notable. He’s an attorney, in Texas, and the soon-to-be ex-husband of Catherine Herring (what I’ve researched about him doesn’t include the updated details of their marital status but read on…). Texas, as we are all aware, has a very punitive abortion ban on their state’s law books, SB#8, including criminalizing women and reproductive healthcare providers, who can be sentenced up to life in prison for seeking or giving abortion care. Yowsa. So, it’s a tad surprising, astonishing, gob-smacking (except that it’s Texass) that Mason was given only one-hundred and eighty days, days, in jail and ten years of probation for attempting to abort the baby his wife Catherine was carrying without her knowledge or consent. He did this, by the way, by giving her, in multiple doses, one of the two drugs used as an abortifacient, Misoprostol, during her third trimester. Repeat: third trimester.
But let’s dwell for a moment on the one-hundred eighty days again. Six months versus, if you’re a woman seeking an abortion, or a doctor giving abortion care, up to life in prison. Six months. Kinda makes you think the law is sexist, don’t it? Or at least written and meant to be applied in a wholly sexist manner. I also cannot get enough of how Ms. Herring finally confirmed her suspicions that Mason was poisoning her, which was when she checked the garbage after he took the trash to the curb for disposal, something he never did as Mason Herring didn’t, ever, do chores around the house.
You can’t make this shit up.
‘Their’ daughter, born prematurely, is now eighteen months old, has developmental delays requiring physical therapy in boatloads, all of which is down to the drugs her mother was given by her husband while their unborn child was in utero. They have two other children but I gather Mason was having an affair, and was concerned that a third child with his wife would make him look like a schmuck to his girlfriend. Nice guy, eh? He still has his law license, which is another stunning fact in this case. He specializes in personal injury, by the way. What a schmuck. He wasn’t happy about the pregnancy, but giving your wife abortifacients without her knowledge is next level shitty behavior, don’tchathink? But the state of Texas doesn’t giveafuck about the unborn, I guess, or about abortion drugs, when men are doing the choosing and drugging? Huh? I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not.
*This is a fragment I started In 2005, which – oh, maybe I’ll build on, one day? Who knows. Thanks for being here, and reading!
In my late teens and twenties, I believed in reincarnation. This worried a bit me in that I was not a Buddhist or from India (or at least I thought that was the religion and country that had the whole reincarnation thing going on) and I couldn’t imagine myself wholly embracing an idea I wasn’t part of in a cultural way, as my mom did with her Irish and German Catholicism. I don’t know what I read, can’t remember, but I know there was a book or two that turned me onto the concept of reincarnation, and I know now that part of this interest (hell, most of it) was a deep desire for a ‘do over’. This was primarily because my Catholic mother was, how shall I say it, not rational about me and I was not happy being her daughter. In truth, I was not happy being me, period, and never had been so yes, let me have another life, please, please, please.
While I cannot identify the moment or series of hours or days during which I initially became aware I was not happy in my own self, in my own skin, I do know that I initially thought about killing myself when I was fourteen, during my first year in high school. I was president of my class and we were a volatile, divided group. It was nineteen seventy-three and my older sister, my mom’s favorite, was also a freshman, but in college. This loss, of her company (so mature, so well-behaved, so quiet) was a huge one for my mom. I was what she was left (stuck) with, despite having two other children at home, and that was not good.
Additionally, my sister’s education, at Rhode Island School of Design, caused a good deal of stress in my parents’ marriage. My mother was determined she would get the best education that money could buy, and my dad went along with it (he had bought a house without telling my mom, several years earlier, so he ‘owed’ her) but it was hitting him like a ton of bricks as her four years there, with no scholarship or financial aid, cost them their entire life savings up to that point. Although my mom adored my dad, who owned one of the two small, independent pharmacies in town, when there were issues between them, when she was angry with my dad, or disappointed, it was toward me those feelings were expressed.
My mom’s other children, others still at home, those who were not me, were well-behaved (better behaved than me), quiet types (quieter than me) but the loss of her favorite, at the tender age of seventeen (a year early!), to a schmancy art college in a big city, was devastating. Plus, my sister was dating a person of whom, however well-connected and educated (he was at Yale when my sister was at RISD, his father was a surgeon), she did not approve. He was dark. He was hairy. He was male. He was dating my spoiled blond princess of a sister and while I couldn’t and can’t stand the guy personally, the truth is I doubt any man would’ve been good enough in my mother’s eyes for her perfect daughter; yet, yet, that it was this guy, with his unruly hair, barrel chest, and arrogant manner that never aimed to please, merely added insult to injury. It was as if her blond goddess of a daughter was being defiled, drawn into the underworld by the lord of the dead, when in fact the guy was merely half-French, half-Egyptian, and as a consequence hairy as fuck, as well as being smart as fuck and insecure to a degree I can only characterize as off-the-charts, which led to his appearance of arrogance. But! At least he was Catholic, my mom knew that, but he claimed he was an atheist, that all of their future children would be raised atheist, which – you have to laugh – did not happen.
In fact, his children were all raised in the Catholic Church, and one of them, their eldest, is – on all issues – to the right of the Pope on all issues. Conservative as fuuuuuuuuck. Any sex that isn’t procreative is the work of the devil type horseshit, y’know? Fun guy, if you like the type (I do not).
