Author: Anne Orsi

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Gun Control

In the last couple of years I’ve changed my stance on gun control.

I don’t like guns.  They scare the hell out of me, and I see nothing “sporting” about attacking unarmed animals with them in the woods. I don’t own one and I’ve never been comfortable with the notion of having one in my house, despite the fact that my ex-husband had a hunting rifle and a boyfriend had a pistol.

I’ve represented kids with criminal charges involving guns.  I’ve seen bullet holes in children’s bedroom walls from drive-by shootings. I’ve represented women who were threatened with guns by their husbands, boyfriends, and even their sons. I’ve been to funerals of people killed by guns.  I’ve held and hugged a weeping grandmother when a stray bullet in a gang shooting left her favorite grandson, a good boy with an “A” average and college-bound, dead on a dark street in a small town in southeast Arkansas.

I don’t like the attitude of the NRA. It comes across as arrogant, shrill, and combative – not the kind of attitude a responsible gun owner/handler should display, especially around guns.

This is going to sound stupid, probably, but one of the things that tipped the scales for me against gun control was a movie.  It wasn’t just any movie.  It was a movie based on a comic book. Bear with me.  I’ve watched V for Vendetta, a film by the incomparable Wachowski Brothers, multiple times, and I find no fault with its future history philosophy.

Perhaps the helium in my brain is showing, but the point that disarming a populace oppresses the citizens makes sense to me.

One of the very best quotes from the movie is, “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”  Why?  Because the power to change government, to oversee government, and to demand that government be accountable lies with the people.

There is a poignant scene in this movie in which thousands of unarmed citizens in Guy Fawkes masks confront the well-armed military. As they pour into the open areas on this auspicious night, the astonished military doesn’t open fire. Perhaps it is the sheer numbers of people; perhaps it is the eerie, surreal fact that they are costumed like that seditionist of the past, but for whatever reason, the armed forces of the government holds its fire and allows itself to be overrun. Perhaps it is because the members of the armed forces are citizens, too, and the whole point of the movie is that citizens must require and compel change in the government.

And then there’s this quote, the source of which I’m desperately seeking:

“An armed society is a polite society.
An unarmed society is a police state.
A disarmed society is a tyranny.”

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Dolphin Saves the Whales

Despite Geraldine’s Ferraro’s possible claims to the contrary, there is no racism among cetaceans.

There’s a bottlenose dolphin called Moko who frequently splashes and plays with swimmers at Mahia Beach on the East Coast of New Zealand’s North Island, in a region known as Hawke’s Bay.

Hawke’s Bay is sort of the Napa Valley of New Zealand. The region is famous for its wines and fine accommodations. The peninsula is a scenic reserve, complete with hiking trails and camping.

Moko the dolphin is a real-life “Flipper.” She plays with swimmers, pushes kayaks through the water, and comes close to boats so the people in them can pet her. Although dolphins don’t normally seem to be afraid of humans, interactions between humans and dolphins in the wild are fairly rare. Conservation Department workers speculate that Moko is isolated from her pod and gets her social contact through her interactions with the bathers and boaters off Mahia Beach.

Moko the dolphin does more than just play with the bipeds in Hawke’s Bay, though. She’s a true hero, and Monday she proved it.

On Monday, a 12-foot mother pygmy sperm whale and her 4-foot calf became stranded in a shallow area frequented by swimmers at Mahia Beach. Conservation Department workers did their best, but could not get the whales pointed in the right direction. They got a sling under the mother and the baby, pulled them off the sand bar, and pointed them to deeper water. The whales were frightened, though, and kept getting beached. They were apparently afraid of the shallow waters near the beach and could not find their way amid the many sand bars back to open water.

The animals kept getting beached on the shallow sand bars that surround the swimming area. The Conservation Department workers freed them four times, but each time the whales become grounded again, unable to swim to deep water and safety.

Malcolm Smith, who had been in the chilly water trying to free the whales for well over an hour, described the rescue by Moko as “amazing.” “I was starting to get cold and wet and they were becoming tired. I was at the stage where I was thinking it was about time to give up – I’d done as much as I could.”

Giving up means euthanasia. If stranded whales cannot be freed and sent back into open water, the Conservation Department spares them the long, agonizing death that results from the whales being impossibly stuck on a beach or on a sand bar.

Suddenly, though, apparently in answer to the whales’ distress calls, Moko the friendly dolphin showed up. Juanita Symes, a Conservation Department worker and rescuer, told The Associated Press that “Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales.”

The dolphin and the whales communicated. The rescue workers saw Moko’s actions and heard her whistles, and heard the audible response of the pygmy sperm whales. Moko then led them about 200 yards along the beach, through a narrow channel, and out to the open sea.

London’s Daily Mail quoted Smith as saying, “Moko is a real heroine because there is absolutely no doubt she learned of the whales’ plight through some kind of telepathy and then got them out of trouble.” Moko led the whales about 200 yards parallel to the beach, then turned into a narrow channel the whales had not been able to find on their own. The whales followed Moko to the open sea and have not been seen since in the Mahia Beach area.

The mother and calf were extremely lucky. Most of the whale strandings at Mahia Beach end up with the whales having to be euthanized. Perhaps when other whales become disoriented and stranded in the shallow waters, Moko will again come to the rescue.

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Eye Cancer

One morning in 1999 I went to my optometrist for a routine eye exam. It was time to check the strength of my glasses and contacts. With my pupils uncomfortably dilated, Dr. Randall Teague peered into the depths of my right eye. He looked into my left eye for a quick moment, then looked into the right again. He looked for what seemed like a very long time, since he was shining a light directly through the pupil onto the retina.

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a freckle in your eye?” he asked.

I was a little startled. In fact, my neurologist had asked the same question when I was last in his office for a visit for my migraines. I told Dr. Teague this.

“You need to see a good ophthalmologist,” Dr. Teague said. He turned and reached for a phone book. “I’m going to call to make you an appointment.”

This was certainly an unusual thing to happen during an eye exam, I thought. As I sat in the darkened room, in the exam chair, I watched as Dr. Teague called the office of Bill Mabrey, a very respected Little Rock ophthalmologist, and asked to set an appointment. “She needs to be seen this afternoon,” he told the person on the other end of the conversation. I began to worry.

“Why this afternoon?” I asked. I had other plans for the day, but Dr. Teague exuded a sense of urgency.

That afternoon I went to see Dr. Mabrey, who, coincidentally, was the son of my in-laws’ neighbor and close friend. Over the past ten years, I had heard of Bill Mabrey’s professional progress from his mother, who loved to talk about how well he was doing and the awards and recognition he received as an extraordinarily accomplished ophthalmologist. I knew that he was one of the best in Little Rock.

“You have a choroidal melanoma,” he told me that afternoon. He explained that the “freckle” in my eye was similar to a mole on the skin. It was essentially a growth of pigmented cells in the part of my eye just behind the retina. Some people have small “freckles” in their eyes, just like they have freckles on their skin, and there is no problem. When the freckle grows, though, it is considered to be a malignant tumor that has to be removed surgically.

Only 5 in a million people have choroidal melanoma. That means about 1200 people in the United States have this condition. It is rare. And when “surgical removal” of that melanoma means removing the eye entirely, well, it is scary as hell.

A choroidal melanoma can metastasize, or spread to other parts of the body, usually to the liver or the lungs. Aggressive action to eradicate the tumor is necessary to prevent the spread. The eye is removed to prevent the melanoma from spreading. “You will most likely have to have your eye removed,” Bill Mabrey told me. My world rocked.

I have always had a fear of blindness. When I was first given glasses at the age of 9 I was told that my eyesight would continue to decline. “How bad will it get?” I had asked the eye doctor. He replied, “Oh, eventually you’ll go blind.” He thought I understood he was kidding. I didn’t, and it wasn’t until several years later that I came to understand his remark to be flippant. But in the meantime, I was sure my eyes would soon fail me completely and I would be in a world without books, without sewing, without the fine details that I loved to give to things.

More than anything else, I use my eyes. I read. I write. I sew. I make miniatures. I cannot possibly imagine life without eyes. I can lose my hearing and be okay. Yes, I love music and movies, but losing hearing would only handicap me. Losing my sight would make life much less worth living.

The fear of blindness that had permeated my childhood and adolescence came roaring back into my life. It arrived with a powerful blow and knocked me senseless. I didn’t hear the rest of what Dr. Mabrey said, but as I left I was told to make an appointment to have an MRI done on my eye.

The only place in the state that had the equipment to do an MRI on my eye to determine the size of the tumor was the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), which is located in Little Rock. Pursuant to instructions from Dr. Mabrey’s office, I called for an appointment. It would be six weeks before they could fit me in. I made the appointment.

The next few weeks were hell. This was the second time I had been diagnosed with a cancerous condition. Jack was three years old the first time. Now he was eight. The notion of this cancer metastasizing terrified me, not so much for me but for my son. My dad had lost his mother to leukemia when he was a teenager and never recovered from the blow. I didn’t want this to happen to Jack. I was 36 years old. My grandmother died at the age of 39.

I walked around in a daze. Depression froze me. I spent a lot of time just going through the motions of life. Going to my law office, going home, making dinner, sitting in a daze waiting for the next blow to fall. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I spent a lot of time just staring into space. Blindness, a cancer metastasizing, the possibility of my child growing up without his mother. I couldn’t even cry. I was numb.

It’s hard for me to write about those months of my life. Even now, nearly a decade later, I can’t think of them without tears. That time was easily the lowest I have ever been, and I’ve had plenty of lows.

My sister, Susan, recognized the fact that I couldn’t function. My husband didn’t. My sister, though, didn’t hesitate.

Susan researched the diagnosis. She started making phone calls. She found that there were five clinics in the US that treated choroidal melanoma. One of them was at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, just a two-hour drive away. When she told me she had found the clinic, she joked that she had hoped we’d have to go to New York, where the shopping was better. I managed a smile. I was so numb I really didn’t care.

Susan got me an appointment at the clinic in Memphis two weeks later. She canceled the appointment at UAMS and got the records from Dr. Mabrey’s office. She was ready to drive me to Memphis when a few days before the appointment my husband said he would take me. He had said before that he really couldn’t take a day off, even for his wife’s cancer.

Ophthalmic oncology is a tiny subspecialty within ophthalmology. There are approximately 147 ophthalmic oncologists in the world. Getting a second opinion would be virtually impossible, and would most likely be done at my own expense. It wasn’t practical. If the ophthalmic oncologists at the University of Tennessee, which was also associated with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis couldn’t save my eye, it wouldn’t be saved.(Remember the plugs actor Danny Thomas used to make for St. Jude’s on television? He founded the hospital.)

That day I waited in the crowded reception room with about 40 other patients. Not everyone had the same problem I did. There were some who were blind, some who were obviously frail and feeble, and others who appeared just as healthy as I did. After what felt like a lifetime my name was called and I began a series of tests.

After an ultrasound of my eye, photographs of my retina, and two doctors peering through the enlarged pupil of my right eye, Dr. Barrett Haik told me that the spot was most likely malignant and that there were just a couple of options for treatment. One was that my eye would be removed and I would get a glass replacement. If the second option didn’t work, that’s what would ultimately happen anyway.

The second option was a radical new procedure. A tiny laser beam would be aimed through the clear pupil of my paralyzed eye and the melanoma would be burned to a pile of ash. The blood vessels feeding it and helping it to grow would be cauterized by the laser, too. The procedure had rarely been done before, and never by Dr. Haik. However, Dr. Matthew Wilson, his associate, had seen it done. It was experimental. If I did it, I might still need to have radiation treatments on the eye. Despite the laser and radiation, I might still lose my eye. Was I willing to try it? I shrugged. Sure. Anything was better than sacrificing my eye.

It could not be done that day. The doctors would have to get the necessary equipment from St. Jude’s campus. I should come back in a month. New measurements could be taken by ultrasound and by photograph at that time to confirm that the spot was malignantly growing inside my eye.

I was still numb. When Skip and I explained the options to our families, the consensus was to go for the laser surgery. I was still in such a state of shock and denial that I couldn’t pick up the phone to call for the appointment. My sister came to my rescue again. She called the office in Memphis. I had an appointment to have the surgery.

This time the reception area at Dr. Haik’s office wasn’t as crowded and I was ushered in almost immediately. The pupil of my right eye was dilated with drops. Measurements were again taken with the ultrasound and the photographs. I was seated in an examination chair and given a painkiller.

The team knew what they were about to do to me would hurt and they warned me it would be uncomfortable. Still, I was unprepared for the excruciating agony of a paralytic agent being administered to the muscles around my eye by a hypodermic needle. The shot and the searing agony seemed to go on forever. When it was finally over I asked if it was a boy or a girl. I hoped, for that much pain, I had a baby girl to show for it. Jack was, alas, sibling-less.

While they waited for the paralytic drug to take effect, Doctors Wilson and Haik talked and joked with me. I have never met a doctor whose bedside manner was better than Dr. Haik’s. He was constantly patting my hand and arm in a fatherly manner, soothing me with his soft voice, and putting me at ease with every word. He explained each step thoroughly.

He was also honest about the fact that he had never attempted the procedure he was about to perform on me. Dr. Wilson had done it, and would be supervising him. The two medical men readied the laser and talked with me and each other about what was happening. Dr. Haik bent over me and aimed the light through my pupil onto the part of the retina where the melanoma was bulging through the choroidal layer of my eye. As soon as he was confident of his aim, he activated the laser. I felt nothing.

For several minutes he directed the laser into my eye. He explained that he was burning not only the melanoma but the blood vessels that were feeding it. Cauterizing those vessels was paramount: if they could still deliver nourishment to that tumor, the spot would continue to grow. All the cancerous cells had to be eradicated.

At last, he finished. He moved aside and Dr. Wilson took a look. He readied the laser and burned a little more of the area. Still, I felt nothing. Dr. Wilson backed away and removed his mask. “I think we got it all,” he grinned. I smiled with relief. It was probably the first time I had smiled in over two months.

Four weeks later I returned to the clinic for a checkup. The tumor wasn’t growing. There was just a mountain of ash where it used to be. I had a blind spot in my vision where the laser had seared the retina and damaged it permanently. A small black spot in one corner of my vision is such a small price to pay to keep my eye. Nine years later, I don’t even see it. In fact, even when I look for the blind spot I can’t find it. (I guess I’m blind to it – right?) My brain has compensated for the small gap in my vision.

I now go to Memphis once a year for a follow-up exam. Last year Dr. Haik was on sabbatical and I really missed seeing him. Dr. Wilson was there, though. I adore these two men who saved my eye.

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SWEET!

You’re at a cocktail party and the conversation around you has waned. People standing around you are looking over your shoulder hoping they see someone more interesting to talk to.

You’re on a date – the first you’ve had in months – and suddenly you’re tongue-tied. You can’t think of a single thing to say.

The debate around your in-laws’ dinner table has become heated as your wife’s younger brother defends displaying his latest nipple piercing (the one on his girlfriend) and you desperately want to change the subject to something more innocuous, yet interesting enough to distract the rest of the family, thereby making you the in-laws’ favorite hero and guaranteeing you some action with the spousal unit later.

You’re wishing you had a fun fact to know and tell.

Wish no more. If you lean closer, refill your glass of wine, and settle in for a bit, I’ll share one with you.

You’ve heard of Death by Chocolate.

You’ve heard of Death by Hari Kiri, or Seppuku.

There is another manner of death by which we never think we might die. It is, however, a sweet death.
It’s death by molasses.

“Death by molasses? You’ve got to be kidding,” I hear you say. I am not kidding.

Molasses is really kind of healthy, for being super-sweet. It’s made when the juice of sugar cane is boiled, similar to the boiling of maple sap to make maple syrup. After boiling, the sugar crystals we are familiar with are removed from the resulting syrup with centrifugal force.

Sugar cane is grown mostly in the West Indies (in the Caribbean, for those of you who don’t know), and was exported to the American colonies and then to the US, where it was the primary sweetener until the late 19th century.

The cane juice is boiled three times. Light molasses comes from the first two boils, and can be the color of honey to a medium amber shade. The third boiling of the juice yields blackstrap molasses, which is the dark stuff that traditionally sweetens ginger cookies and baked beans.

In addition to the benefit of being a natural sweetener, blackstrap molasses is just chock full of minerals and vitamins. In fact, several tests have shown that the more blackstrap is boiled, the higher the concentration of iron. This is something every anemic ought to know. Depending on the brand and the quality, up to 25% of the RDA of iron can be found in blackstrap. How about using it instead of an artificial sweetener in your coffee or tea? The 16 calories per teaspoon are counterbalanced by the other health benefits, in my opinion.

And while no self-respecting writer such as myself would hold herself out as a doctor, I am always looking for herbal remedies and cures. The Earth Clinic website excitedly claims to “have emails from our readers about blackstrap molasses curing cancerous tumors, fibroid tumors, anxiety, constipation, edema, heart palpitations, anemia, arthritic pain, joint pain, and acne, just to name a few. It has also been reported that molasses turns gray hair back to its original color and is a wonderful skin softener!”

I shall be washing my hair in molasses this evening, just to see if the gray fades as Earth Clinic’s readership claims. I hope the disappearance of the gray isn’t due to the blackstrap sticking to the hair and gumming it up. (Actually, it’s the copper in the molasses that does the trick. A copper deficiency is usually to blame for prematurely gray hair.)

Molasses has been credited with curing tumors, cysts and other benign growths, cancerous growths; arthritis; ulcers, dermatitis, eczema and psoriasis; high blood pressure, angina pectoris and other conditions related to the circulatory system; constipation, colitis and other digestive disorders, including gallstones and bladder problems; various types of anemia; nervous conditions; and even the effects of menopause. It is said to strengthen nails and hair, and, as I said before, reverse premature graying of hair. It speeds healing after surgery. Yeah, this molasses is some healthy stuff.

It even makes certain herbs more potent. For example, certain growers of marijuana claim that molasses binds the nutrients to the soil more efficiently than other agents, so they use it to grow better weed. Far out. (Anybody got that guy’s number?)

And speaking of mind-altering substances, no story about molasses would be complete without a reference to all that makes being a pirate worth being a pirate (in addition to the booty, of course): Rum!

You didn’t think all that sugar cane was grown just to sweeten some colonist’s tea, now did you?

“That’s all well and good,” you object, “And all this rot about molasses is fascinating. But, you promised us a story of death by molasses.”

And so I did.

When Molasses is stored, it’s is kept in great round tanks, similar to those that store oil. I’m going to tell you a story of one such tank, which once sat on a pier in Boston Harbor.

It was noonish on a weekday, January 15, 1919. The temperature rose that day from a frigid 2 degrees Fahrenheit to about 43 degrees. As it did, the air inside a tank holding 2.3 million gallons of molasses expanded. Because of the speed with which the air temperature rose, the air expanded faster than the poorly constructed tank could let it off. The tank exploded.

A wave of molasses 15-40 feet high soared and sloshed its way across two city blocks near the pier at about 35 miles per hour. A housewife was crushed to death in the debris of her house, which was demolished by the wave of molasses. The molasses ripped apart nearby elevated train tracks, nearly taking out a train. Gluey death captured people, horses, and dogs in its sticky ooze, finally settling two to four feet deep in the streets near the north Boston pier.

In his book Dark Tide, Stephen Puleo wrote,“Anthony di Stasio, walking homeward with his sisters from the Michelangelo School, was picked up by the wave and carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he were surfing. Then he grounded and the molasses rolled him like a pebble as the wave diminished. He heard his mother call his name and couldn’t answer, his throat was so clogged with the smothering goo. He passed out, then opened his eyes to find three of his sisters staring at him.” A fourth sister died, and Anthony himself was found among those thought to be dead.

The Boston Globe reported that people “were picked up by a rush of air and hurled many feet.” That rush of air tossed people, animals and debris in every direction outward from the exploded tank. A truck was picked up by the sticky deluge and thrown into Boston Harbor. A gathering of municipal employees on their lunch break in one of the buildings were caught in the flow as the building shattered around them and pieces of it hurled as far as fifty yards. A fire station was destroyed by the force of the blast and one of the four firefighters was killed. Three others were injured. Carts, wagons, and trucks were overturned and a number of horses were killed, unable to regain their footing in the sticky flood.

Approximately 150 people were injured, and twenty-one people died. Some were crushed by debris and others became mired in the molasses and asphyxiated. At least two of the dead were not found for several days, and were so bruised by the pummeling they had taken in the molasses wave that they were unrecognizable.

The cleanup took months. As volunteers traveled to and from the site of the disaster, molasses stuck to their shoes, clothes, tools, and skin. It was transferred with them through the trains and transports of the city, and soon all of Boston, from the waterfront where the horror had taken place, to the suburbs where helpful volunteers lived, was covered in a sticky veneer.

On a warm day, the smell of molasses still permeates Boston.

So if anyone ever says you’re moving as slow as molasses in January, you can smartly respond, “So this is what 35 miles per hour feels like!”

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Tornadoes in Arkansas

Arkansas isn’t technically considered part of the region referred to as “tornado alley,” but we certainly get more than our fair share of these powerful, capricious storms. Two days ago one twister stayed on the ground in Arkansas for an astounding 120 miles through 6 counties and carved a mindblowing path of death and destruction.  The town of Atkins, Arkansas, about 45 miles northwest of me, practically doesn’t exist any longer.

I have a friend in Iraq.  He hadn’t caught me online since the storms and actually managed to call me today – yes, he called me from Baghdad – to make sure I was okay, even though he knows I’m in Little Rock, an hour’s drive south of the storm’s path.

Friends from all over the globe have emailed, IMed, and called to make sure my family and I are safe. We’re fine. I lost a few shingles in the storms that rocked our world Tuesday. They match the few I lost several days earlier when strong straight-line winds came through.

I take tornadoes seriously. I’ve seen firsthand what they can do. Little Rock was hit hard twice in the late 1990s by tornadoes, one of which leveled communities in the southwest suburbs of Little Rock, and another of which smashed a horrific swath through the Quapaw Quarter, little Rock’s oldest historic neighborhood. There were a lot of poor people living in these areas, people without luxuries like renter’s insurance. They lost everything, and there was no money for recovery. Years later they were still trying to put their lives back together.  There are still homes that have not been completely repaired even a decade later.

I’ve seen twisters dip from the sky and my stomach has dipped and twisted along with them. Once, when I was a teenager, I was riding a horse in the country and saw a storm front to the north of me.  The clouds looked ominous, so I headed for home. It wasn’t raining where I was, but I could see that the rain was pretty powerful not far away.

To my horror, a sideways rotation dipped down from that cloud, called a beaver tail.  I didn’t just gallop home.  My horse ran.

Tornadoes are the most capricious storms that have winds to blow. Miracles of survival and stories of bizarre damage seem to come from every storm.  Truthfully, when they have the power to blow an entire house off its foundation leaving no trace behind, toss fully laden transport trucks around like plastic toys, and drive 2×4 planks through the trunks of 40-inch oaks, nothing short of caprice allows a jar of pickles to sit, apparently unmolested, on a concrete slab, or blows 40-year-old letters hundreds of miles without damaging them.

This picture was the Astronomy Picture of the Day on June 13, 2005.

The storms that hit Tuesday in Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama were killers.  More than 30 people died in Tennessee. The last news report I heard said we lost 13 here in Arkansas. Kentucky lost 7 and Alabama four. These deaths are the most in one day from a thunderstorm system spawning tornadoes in a decade.

Search and rescue operations lasted throughout yesterday. Rescue workers went door to door checking houses that were barely standing after the storms.  They also walked around debris-filled lots where houses used to be and the fields near where houses used to stand. Many of these lots and fields were filled with toys. In Tennessee, searchers came upon what they thought to be a doll at first. The doll moved, though, and searchers realized they had found a living miracle. The eleven-month-old baby’s mother was found in the same field.  She did not survive.

This story is achingly familiar to me.

On the night of Friday, November 10, 1995, the National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm warnings for Arkansas. The worst of the storms were supposed to hit Des Arc, my hometown, around 11:30 p.m. The storms moved faster than expected. Some families took cover. Others slept through the warning, only to be awakened by their windows breaking as the angry winds pummeled their homes.

At about 11:30, Jeff Calhoun called his father, Butch, because something large had blown up against his house. Despite the storm, Jeff’s sister Heather and her husband Lance Stallings decided to drive over to Jeff’s to check on things. When they turned up the country road leading to Jeff’s house, Heather said, “Lance, stop. I can’t see Donna’s house.” Rather than going on to Jeff’s, the pair turned around to check on the home of Donna and Keith Walls. It was gone. Donna was Heather’s aunt.

Lance and Heather stopped at a fish farm where several men were working to call Heather’s dad to let him know that his sister’s house was gone. Then Heather and Lance returned to look for Keith and Donna.

Emergency and law enforcement personnel came to the scene despite the storm still thrashing around them.  Most of the debris from the house was scattered in a wheat field northeast of the home site, so that is where the searchers began looking for the young family. A firefighter called to the others that he thought he heard an animal whining in a field of rice stubble to the west. Rice had been cut weeks before, but the field had not yet been readied for the next spring’s planting.

The source of the cries was not a puppy. It was six-month-old Joshua, face down in a tractor rut full of mud, water, and rice stubble, pushing himself up on his sturdy little arms and wailing. He had been there for 45 minutes or more.

The men and women who found the baby knew that he had to be suffering from hypothermia. A deputy sheriff wrapped the baby in his jacket and gave him to another searcher, who happened to be a cousin of little Joshua’s on his mother’s side. (We’re all related in these small farming communities, especially when our families arrived together in covered wagons in the decades just before the Civil War.) Then, because the rain and wind still lashed them with the fury of the storm, the deputy led the baby’s cousin through the field to a paramedic.

The paramedic, Linda McIntosh, stripped Joshua’s wet, muddy clothes and wrapped him in the warm towels. Holding the baby in her arms, Linda got into the car of Des Arc’s police chief, Leon Moon (a schoolmate of mine) and they rushed the baby toward the nearest hospital. They were met by an ambulance at the county line. The ambulance crew took the baby the rest of the way to the hospital.

When he reached the hospital, Joshua’s body temperature was 90 degrees. His arms and legs were literally blue from the exposure. The trip to the hospital had probably taken the better part of 45 minutes, so Joshua’s body had regained some of its warmth by then. He was probably only minutes away from death when he was found.

Meanwhile, back in the rice field searchers found Keith about 10 feet from where the baby had been lying. He was dead. Donna’s body lay a little further away. Along with the debris from their house, the family had been blown about 270 yards – yes, the distance of almost three football fields. All that remained of the frame house were a few scattered cinderblocks from its foundation.  Many of the family’s possessions landed miles away from their home.

Keith Walls was my cousin. When we were kids we skated at the roller rink his parents owned. It was the hot spot in our little community for kids who weren’t yet old enough to drive but who were too old and too social to want to stay home on Friday or Saturday nights.

I saw my brother and sister the next day. We hugged a lot. We talked a lot about Keith. We all had good memories of him. He was a sweet kid, and he grew up to be a kind, compassionate, good man. We didn’t know Donna as well. Donna was older. We knew Donna’s family, though. There are a lot of Calhouns in the Des Arc area.

Josh is a sweet kid, just like his dad. Keith’s parents have Josh, and he is a source of light to them.  Both grandparents smile joyously when they talk about this miracle baby, who is now a teenager. Both the Calhoun family and the Walls family have a wonderful legacy from that tragic night: Josh survived.

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Migraines

I have chronic daily headaches.

My migraines were diagnosed when I was 9 years old.  I don’t remember the first one I had.  I have always had what we called “sick headaches.”   My head would pound to the point where I couldn’t speak or think, and my stomach would lurch.  Then I’d lose everything I’d eaten in the last 24 hours. It might last a few hours, or it might last 3 days. However long it lasted, the hours and days were simply written out of my life.

My migraines came at irregular intervals.  I would get three, four, or perhaps five a year. They were manageable with pain medications, which would help me to sleep despite the pain.  Without the meds I would lie curled up and moan.  Tears, unbidden, would leak from my eyes, which were screwed tightly shut to ward off light.  I was prescribed codeine.

When I was in boarding school no drugs were allowed in our rooms.  Even aspirin had to be deposited with the school nurse, who was there only from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. The nurse didn’t believe my headaches were real.  She thought I was a druggie teenager seeking narcotics when I asked for my medication, so I kept a bottle of pills in my room and another in my purse.  Had they been discovered, I would have been suspended or maybe even expelled.  They were the only way I could even partly function when the headaches were their worst, and sometimes even then I couldn’t. I hoarded and guarded those pills.  There was no way they were going to be used recreationally.  Those pills were more precious than diamonds.

The world often seems brighter, louder, more active, and more intense just before a migraine hits.  Sometimes before the pain begins colors suddenly take on an energetic quality, smells become more pungent,  and sounds seem louder. Activity around me makes my heart beat faster.  I don’t perceive it as a threat, just as too much energy that makes me uncomfortable or edgy.  I get irritable. This is my “aura.” I don’t hallucinate. I don’t see anything that isn’t really there, unless the increasing intensity of my senses counts.

Sometimes a migraine hits with no warning at all. I may be calmly walking to my car and be slammed with a 2×4 to the brain. I fumble in my purse for the triptans – drugs that are designed to abort a migraine – knowing that it may be an hour or more before the pills begin to work. Another slam, and I wonder if I can drive my car home.  I have to.  That’s the only way I can get there.  Digging back into my purse I come up with the Vicodin ES my doctor prescribed for pain that isn’t alleviated with the non-narcotic triptans. It still takes an hour before I can drive, and I am thankful I don’t have to drive far.  It’s not just for my sake, either.

I call these headaches “Mike Tysons.”  With the first sudden blow I am reeling; with the second I am almost unable to move, talk, walk, or look at anything.  I curl into a fetal position in a small, dark, cool place and wait out the pain. I am oblivious to my surroundings except for the sounds and lights that assault my senses.

A car accident a decade ago made them worse.  The headaches I got perhaps five times a year suddenly became several times a month, then several times a week, and now are almost daily.

My triggers include physical stress to my cervical spine (sleeping wrong on my pillow), soy, corn, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, the weather, seasonal allergies, irregular sleep, stress, irregular meals, alcohol, and aerobic exercise. Being in a crowd where I can’t hear well causes a headache, too – I’m talking about football games, crowded parties, and noisy restaurants.

Emotional surges can induce a migraine.  When I was told my father died, one hit me immediately.  Great joy can induce one, too.  Winning a tough case makes me feel wonderful, and is always followed in just a couple of hours by a splittng headache.  The shouts of boys playing inside on a rainy day, the birth of my favorite oldest niece and both of her siblings, a favorite song cranked to top volume, the satisfaction of a difficult job done well, the pleasure of a story completed after wrestling with the plot and characters for so long – all of these things make me feel wonderful, and all leave me with a hatchet striking my frontal lobe repeatedly.

In college, I would always get a migraine after the exam or after the term paper was turned in.  I call it my neurological let-down.  Once the period of stressful high productivity was over, my body and brain knew they could rest.  Before I embarked on another project,  a migraine would force that rest on me.  The same thing happens still.  I finish a brief, I’m through with a settlement conference, I leave a hearing and my head throbs.  The stress is over; the migraine is just beginning.

I lose the ability to speak coherently.  My brain fumbles for the right words.  My fingers fumble with the Imitrex packaging.  What sociopath at Glaxo-Welcome designed that packaging, anyway?  It’s hard enough for someone without a migraine to open it, but someone with a migraine, who suddenly has the strength of a kitten and the coordination of a newborn has an extremely difficult time getting to the stupid pill!

Migraineurs know exactly what the ice pick in the eye feels like.  We have experienced a head that literally feels about to explode, and we pull our hair in an effort to force the explosion to completion or we squeeze to hold it in.  Other time we feel the vise tightening around our skulls, squeezing until we think the bones must shatter… but there’s nothing there.

Migraineurs have experienced soft pillows that are too hard. Walking up or down stairs is excruciating. Any movement causes a swell in the degree of pain, a giant THROB that suppresses all reason.  Each footstep across a room creates those throbs, as does turning over in bed and sitting up to accept the glass of water and pill from someone kind enough to bring it to me. Turning one’s head during a migraine can be agony. Every migraineur understands exactly why decapitation would be a relief.

I’ve tried biofeedback, meditation, acupuncture, chiropractors, cupping, Chinese herbs, oregano, and magnesium supplements. I’ve tried several drugs that work for others, including Neurontin, Topamax (the gastro side effects of this drug were horrific), Verapamil, and Atenolol (Beta Blockers).

I’ve stopped working full time to reduce my stress levels, and moved my law office home so that I can take a nap when I need to. My bedroom is painted a dark mossy green and I have blackout curtains. I am careful to take cases that will not cause undue stress. I got out of a stressful marriage. I don’t drive more than an hour at a time because even on cloudy days the glare gets to me.  Forget driving in the rain, too – windshield wipers are like strobe lights to me.  They induce a headache in a very short time.  Even the long shadows falling on the road through the trees in the late afternoon are enough of a strobe effect to set me off, and it only takes a few minutes.

In an effort to avoid soy and corn additives to food , I am now make almost everything I eat from scratch – I can’t eat any of the prepared meals from the frozen foods section of the grocery store, and practically no canned or packaged foods other than fruit or vegetables.  My bread machine gets a great workout.  I read food labels religiously.

My migraines are manageable with my current regimen of drugs, which includes an anti-seizure medication.  Triptans like Imitrex, Maxalt, Zomig, and Relpax usually break off the headache.  I use Vicodin ES for extra help in reducing the pain. I use Phenergan suppositories to quell the nausea. I take a mild muscle relaxer before bed to help keep my neck supple. I use ice packs, heating pads, and naps.  I listen to cool jazz even though I really want to hear Foo Fighters.  I never go anywhere without my medications. The pain killer, the triptans, the anti-nausea… I am a traveling pharmucopia.

I have also discovered a fantastic massage technique.  It’s expensive, and my insurance doesn’t cover it, but once a month I go to a masseur who does myofascial release.  I follow that appointment with a deep muscle massage.  I have found that the massages not only help relieve muscle tension, but they help relieve stress.

Learning to live with chronic daily headache doesn’t mean giving up the fight against it. I go to my neurologist every three months, and I am always up for trying new procedures, drugs, supplements, and techniques to alleviate the pain and prevent the headaches from happening.

I am realistic about what I can do, though.  Because I can’t be relied upon to be at functions (crowds stress me, and a headache is guaranteed), I do the behind-the-scenes stuff at my son’s school and for two historical societies I belong to. I wish I could do more, but I have learned the hard way that I usually have to say “no.”

Even the things I want to do will be torpedoed by a migraine. A coffee date with girlfriends, a dinner out, plans for the theater – all of these get derailed by migraines occasionally. My friends don’t understand. It’s just a headache, after all.

I’ve had people tell me, “Oh, you have a magnesium deficiency.” Nope, sorry.  I tried magnesium and saw no appreciable difference in the frequency or severity of the attacks.

“Oh, you need to relax more,” I’m told.  I have eliminated all possible stress from my life. It’s not just stress.

If I could tell you the number of times someone has told me about Topamax, or fever few, or acupuncture, or some other remedy! And even friends who suffer common migraine with aura don’t seem to get it. Mine occur almost every day, not once a month with my period (that stopped at 32 when the plumbing got yanked for cervical cancer). Hearing that this treatment or that treatment will “definitely” work amounts to a platitude. I want to say to them, “Don’t condescend to me.  You have no idea what I’ve tried and what I’ve gone through.”

I live life one day at a time.  The rare day without a migraine – today! – is a treat.  I accept it with cautious pleasure. Tomorrow the drugs may work, and I’ll be able to function.  The next day I may be in bed, wishing the Red Queen’s executioner would hurry up.

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The Invasion of America

America – both the Americas – were not so much settled by Europeans as they were invaded.

Sixteenth and seventeenth century European attitudes toward the “virgin” land of the New World implied that they believed that the continent was theirs for the taking, as if it had been waiting millennia for some white people to come along and civilize it.  This attitude persisted until very recently, and may not have been annihilated even yet.

The idea behind the Crusades in the eleventh century still held for the sixteenth and seventeenth century Europeans.  Any war fought for the purpose of expanding the Church was considered justifiable (jihad, anyone?), and with European attentions turned to the American continents came the profound realization that there were more savages who needed to be exposed to Christianity.

Christians tended to view the indigenous Americans as non-religious because they did not recognize elements of their own religion in the environmental religions of the natives. American Indian religious myths, legends and rituals emphasized the peoples’ relationship to the environment.

For awhile, the natives and the European colonists found a use for one another.  The basis for the relationship was trade, and trade was something neither side wanted to lose.   Indians were enthralled by the wonders of steel blades, guns, and European textiles. Both sides wanted each other’s support against hostile neighbors. In the beginning the Europeans required the assistance of the natives just to survive in what they perceived as a wilderness.  They also wanted pelts, wampum (which was accepted as currency in the colonies), handcrafts, and the personal service of the natives.  Most of all, though, the white people wanted land.

As Indians realized what wonderful objects they could obtain through trade with the Europeans, intertribal trade decreased.  Since the white people demanded furs in trade, native energies were devoted to acquiring more pelts than the next tribe down the trail. Overkill disrupted the balance of nature.  The Indians’ diligence in getting furs for the Europeans resulted in self-destruction as they wiped out the wildlife upon which their lives depended.

White populations grew, and so did the demand for land. The colonists and their sponsoring governments believed that American soil was lying unused.  They believed that since the same ground could support a denser population of white people that somehow the white people had a more valid claim to the land. They disregarded the fact that disease brought to America by Europeans had effectively depopulated the Americas; in fact, had they acknowledged such a thing it might be seen as God’s judgment upon the heathen savages, and further proof that the land should be in the possession of those who would put it to obvious use rather than those who would allow it to remain largely untouched.

At the root of all native-colonist relations was the hunger for land.  Colonists believes that the natives did not utilize land to its utmost because there were, as the Europeans saw it, vast tracts of land left wild, uncontrolled by agriculture or towns.  The European colonists did not consider that the indigenous people obtained a great deal of their food from hunting and gathering. To assure the presence of game , the game’s habitat must be preserved.  Only with the practice of conservation would the game continue to multiply.

Something the colonists did not understand then, and which has largely been ignored in history, is that the native Americans farmed to feed their people.  Although many foods were gathered as they grew wild, and animal husbandry was introduced by Europeans, agriculture was widespread in both of the Americas. The natives grew surplus crops and stored them for the winter.

Had the Plymouth colonists not stumbled upon stores of these surpluses, and then been given more, they would probably not have survived their first winter.  Jamestown colonists were also kept from starving by gifts and purchases of surplus crops already grown and stored by the natives.

Arrangements between Europeans and Indians to share the land were made with the ultimate intention of the part of the white people to dispossess the natives.  When land was conveyed to an European, whether by a deed or by some other kind of agreement, the European assumed that the tribe gave up rule over the area in question. Imagine a Dutch family buying a home in New York City today and claiming that the law of the Netherlands, and not of the United States, prevailed! This is exactly what the Europeans did, though. Furthermore, when Europeans claimed land in the Americas, they would claim that the natives living in that territory as their subjects.

Wars fought between white and native peoples were generally fought over land rights.  Whether the disputed land was claimed by both natives and Europeans, or by competing European countries, the Native Americans ended up fighting, either to support their own claims or to support the claims of the European community with which they did the most business.

Effectively Indian populations became the vassals of the colonial governments and then later of the American government.  They never saw themselves in this light, however. Sovereignty became the single major issue between white and native populations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and was an especially bloody concerning the Iroquois, whose lands were claimed by the new governments of  State of New York and the United States.

The colonists abused inter-tribal feuds for their own purposes, too.  They spread rumors about enemy tribes among friendly ones in order to cause suspicion and war.  After the tribes battled, the Europeans moved in to enjoy the spoils.

The colonists also used the spread of Christianity to pit the natives against each other. As different European nations established colonies, the religious men of those colonies taught the nearby natives their own brand of Christianity, ultimately pitting Catholic against Protestant.  Once again, when the bloody battle was over, the white man moved in to enjoy the spoils.

The French and Indian War is an obvious and famous example of how useful the native was for European warfare. French and English traders bought the loyalties of different groups of natives then threw them into battle against each other.  It was a war for European dominance that the Europeans barely had to fight.  They could be relatively detached and observe while the natives unwittingly substantiated European claims to what was actually native land.

Europeans saw the natives as lawless.  They did not recognize the form of government under which the indigenous peoples lived.  They saw the chiefs and sachems as tyrants, or they discerned only anarchy from council gatherings.  For example, the Iroquois did not recognize a central authority as a governing device.  Consensus, in a very democratic manner, created the authority by which the tribes operated. On the other hand, Europeans saw sovereignty as a means to an end.  The goal was control.

At first, the colonists paid little attention to native protocol in intergovernmental relations.  As they became more accustomed to Indian ritual, they adapted themselves to the native style of diplomacy.  Treaties in the northwest portions of New England eventually followed the government model of the Iroquois Five Nations, and eventually the colonists, in their break from monarchy, adopted a mix of European and native democratic protocols.

Because the native governments did not conform to what the Europeans historically understood to be government, the colonists felt justified in forcing their values and institutions on the natives.  They considered the Indians uncivilized and therefore outside the sanction of law and morality, so they were not ridden with guilt as they extorted the Indians’ lands from them and subjected them to an alien form of government.

The Europeans went to great extremes to bring the natives under colonial jurisdiction.  Often natives would sign away their lands without understanding the terms of the treaties.  Colonists would deliberately mislead the natives as to the content of the agreements, making certain that the tribal leaders or individuals they treated with did not comprehend the meaning of the papers they signed.  This practice was continued by the new government of the United States.

Some of the more nefarious practices included not informing the natives of the terms of the treaty, then penalizing them for violation of those terms or of terms which the white men retrospectively wanted the treaty to include. The Europeans would extort great sums of currency from the Indians knowing the natives could not pay, then loan them money with the land as collateral.  When the tribe failed to come through with payment, the colonists would confiscate the land and declare the tribes on it to be under colonial jurisdiction.

It is hardly remarkable that upon entering a reservation today, the sovereign Native American nation posts a sign explaining that those who enter are subject to tribal law rather than to American law.

White men later extorted money from natives in other ways.  When Charles A. Eastman, a mixed-race Indian activist and lobbyist around the turn of the 20th century, learned that the United States government had shorted the Sioux nation by about $10,000.00 on a treaty payment for their land, the government called in an inspector.  The inspector agreed with Eastman’s assessment.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs elected to discredit the inspector’s report, however, and sent another inspector.  This inspector found no wrongdoing, and the tribe was denied its money.  In yet another case, the Sioux were to have received payments over a period of fifty years for their tribal lands.  Only nine payments were ever made.

Propaganda to the contrary, tribal customs in war were not nearly as brutal as those of the Europeans or their American children.  Indian war philosophy was not constructed along plans of conquest and subjugation.  At the next peaceful meeting of the native tribes, gifts would be exchanged and the other side would be honored.  Only after repeated exposure to European-style warfare did the natives engage in mass slaughter. European warfare, on the other hand, was always about wiping out the enemy and taking all that he had, rendering any survivors unable to survive for long.

The indigenous warriors tended to kill only in battle and stopped fighting after relatively few deaths.  European soldiers had no qualms about massacre as long as they were using it against the natives. Prisoners of war were treated with much more compassion among the Indians than among the colonists, and the use of torture in all its depravity was more common among the English than the Indians until the English use of it became so widespread that the native captors employed it as well.

The tribes did not tend to destroy crops during warfare.  When they fought intertribally, they were steeling feuds with people, not wildlife.  However, white soldiers routinely burned crops and stole livestock.

Part of what Europeans mistook for native lawlessness was that Indians recognized fewer crimes and therefore punished fewer.  If a white person felt he had been victim of a crime committed by a native, he normally insisted that the native be brought to justice under the terms of the white government.  If a native were the victim of a crime committed by a white person, though, he could not hope for justice to be delivered to the offender under the white government.  If a white man asked that an Indian be punished under tribal laws, he was much more likely to get results.  The tribal leaders were all too aware that if the white person was not satisfied with his redress, he would be avenged on the native’s entire town or tribe.

After learning to live in the alien land of the Americas, Europeans began to distribute the tools that made survival a part time job.  Traders knew that the goods most in demand were practical ones.  The natives were just as happy to receive these tools as the whites were to receive pelts.  The difference lay in the fact that the Indians taught the white man their techniques of preparing hides, but the white man neglected to show the Indian how to make his own blades, guns, and other factory-made products.  The white man came out ahead once again, and the Indian destroyed his livelihood by over-hunting to be able to purchase the goods he could not make himself.

Inter-tribal trade was also transformed by the new goods available through the Europeans.  New commodities replaced the old.  The collapse of inter-tribal trading increased the hostilities because tribes began competing with one another for European products instead cooperating with each other for mutual survival.

Trade and loyalties to opposing groups of Europeans are only a part of what disrupted harmony between tribes.  Following the example specifically of the English, Indian sachems such as Uncas of the Mohegans became territory-hungry.  Contact with Europeans added new motives for war, introduced new weapons, and increased the number of wartime casualties drastically, even in wars the Europeans did not fight.

The Colonies often moved without the permission or even the knowledge of their sponsor governments. Each colony was autonomous and competed with its neighbor for claims to lands to the west, for the best locations for trading posts, and for tribute from local tribes to buy the peace.   There were vicious disputes between colonies for land, and the real losers were the real owners.

When the first serious English settlers arrived in North America in the 1620’s, many sachems welcomed them. Schoolchildren today are taught about the kindness of the Wampanoag chief, Massasaoit, to the Pilgrims when they first arrived and were starving. That initial kindness was not returned by the Englishmen, as can be seen in the sequence of events leading to the struggle for dominance in the Connecticut Valley.

This was the land of the Pequots, and both the colonies in Massachusestts and Connecticut coveted the land.  What resulted were the Pequot Wars, in which the Massachusetts colonists paid the Narragansetts to fight against their neighbors, the Pequots. The Narragansetts agreed, unaware that no warriors would be in the Pequot village when they arrived. The women, children and old men left in the Pequot village were massacred, mostly by the Englishmen accompanying the Narragansetts. The English depravities horrified the Narragansetts, and the surviving Pequots fled north and west to tribes friendly to them.  An entire tribe was now out of the way and English settlement could proceed.

The natives did fight back, but never very successfully for very long.  Natives were eventually herded onto reservations that became smaller and smaller over time. Resettlement was another option the U.S government pursued.  In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thousands of natives were sent hundreds of miles away from their homelands to places like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wisconsin. They became refugees at the mercy of the United States and host tribes.  Displacement of the native population contributed not only to physical hardship, because the people were forced to adapt to a smaller and sometimes alien territory, but to mental anguish as well.

During these times some natives responded with religion.  The Ghost Dancers among the Sioux and their neighbors, and the followers of the Code of Handsome Lake among the Seneca were prominent.  Especially during the nineteenth century, many native prophets and messiahs appeared.  Their teachings were peaceful and advocated a revival of native customs that had been ignored, forgotten, or neglected.  They were nevertheless perceived as threatening to the United States government. Ghost Dancers disappeared after a paranoid against mistook their celebrations for an uprising and called in soldiers, who massacred an encampment at Wounded Knee Creek.

The Code of Handsome Lake survived the test of time, though.  It still has followers on Iroquois reservations in the United States and Canada.  Handsome Lake, brother of the great Indian chief Tecumseh, taught the old Seneca ways.  He also advised his followers to take from white society things that could benefit Indian society.  He began a revival of Seneca religious traditions and rituals and at the same time he lobbied for education and agriculture.

Now the Native American lobby is gaining power.  Will the wrongs ever be redressed? It is highly unlikely. Money and education may help, but I doubt anyone one can imagine a North American continent in which the descendants of the Europeans are displaced and the descendants of the indigenous people control the government and the economy.  Well, perhaps we can imagine it, but we expect it will stay “safely” in our imaginations.

Selected Bibliography:

Charles A. Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization (Little, Brown, 1916)
William M. Fowler, Jr., Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754-1763 (Walker, 2005)
Patrick Huyghe, Columbus Was Last: From 200,000 B.C. to 1492, A Heretical History of Who Was First (MJF Books 1992)
Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America (Norton, 1976)
Robert Leckie, “A Few Acres of Snow:” The Saga of the French and Indian Wars (Castle Books, 2006)
Malcolm Margolin, The Ohlone Way, (Heyday, 1978)
Ted Morgan, Wilderness at Dawn: The Settling of the North American Continent (Simon & Schuster 1993)
Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War (Viking, 2006)
Arthur Quinn, A New World: An Epic of Colonial America from the Founding of Jamestown to the Fall of Quebec (Faber and Faber, 1994)
Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Harvard University Press, 2001)
Edward Spicer, ed., A Short History of the Indians of the United States (Van Nostrand, 1980)
Christopher Vecsey and Robert W. Venables, American Indian Environments (Syracuse University Press, 1980)
Anthony F.C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (Random House/Vintage books, 1972)

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Nagge and Foy

   “Tell us the story of the Hruang, Grandmama!”

The boy’s plea made Ciannait smile. Her great-grandchildren never seemed to tire of her stories, and at every meal they asked for a favorite. Sometimes she was able to remember a new tale for them, or even to create one out of fragmented memories of the tales told to her by her own grandmother.

“The Hruang? That beast that was captured and brought into the marketplace when I was younger than Foy?” Ciannait grinned at the children, then wet a corner of her apron and wiped Foy’s face. “I don’t think you washed up properly before breakfast, young man.  Did you even bathe last night?”

The eight year old boy ducked his head. “I did, but the water wasn’t wet enough to get all of the dirt off,” the child explained.

Ciannait laughed.  “Minna, the boy says water isn’t wet enough to clean him,” she said to her granddaughter, who set a bowl of warm cereal on the table.

“It may not be, Grandmama. I think he paints himself with grime every day.”

“He doesn’t paint himself with it, but he does roll around in it,” remarked Nagge, Foy’s ten year old sister.  She reached for the ladle and filled both her bowl and her brother’s, then sat down at the table.

Foy grinned.  He picked up his spoon and began eating with enthusiasm.

Ciannait filled her own bowl, and one for Minna. Minna came back to the table with a pot of tea, pouring for all four.

“I’m going to the orchard today to help Ben,” said Minna. “Children, you’re to help Grandmama here at home after your lessons.”

“How is Hanh?” Ciannait asked. “Is she getting any better?”

“No,” answered Minna. “And Zocha won’t say so to either Ben or Hanh, but she’s completely stymied. She thinks perhaps the illness is in Hanh’s mind more than in her body.”

“An illness of the spirit,” nodded Ciannait. “ It’s rare, but not unknown.”

“What happens when your spirit gets ill?” asked Nagge.

“You die!” yelled Foy.

Nagge rolled her eyes.  “No, you don’t, silly.  You only die when your body dies, not when you have a spirit sickness.”

“I thought you didn’t know what happened when a spirit got ill,” her mother teased.  “Didn’t you just this instant ask what happens?”

“Well, I know enough to know your body doesn’t die.  What does happen?”

“Spirit sickness is very serious,” answered Ciannait. “The person with spirit sickness wants to die, but cannot.  It makes the people who love her very unhappy, too.”

“Can they catch the spirit sickness?” asked the girl.

“No, child.  Spirit sickness is rare.  It isn’t like a cold or the seasonal ills. It happens when the spirit and the body become separate,” her great-grandmother explained.

Nagge wrinkled her nose, thinking. How does a spirit separate from a body?”

“When you die!” Foy made a choking sound and pretended to fall off his stool.

His sister rolled her eyes. “Really, Grandmama, how does it happen?”

“No one is quite sure. There used to be healers who could call the spirits back to the living bodies they had left, but anyone with that knowledge is gone now.”

“When a spirit leaves a person’s body, what happens?”

“The person gets sick, and sometimes cannot even move or talk.  It depends upon how close the spirit lingers.”

“Can you see a spirit when it leaves the body?”

“You have more questions than appetite this morning, Nagge!  Eat your cereal.  You have lessons today and you’ll be learning about the orchard plants.” Old Ciannait rose from the table. Over her shoulder, she admonished the children,”Eat well, because you’ll get hungry talking about the food plants of the farms.”

The children grinned at each other, knowing that their grandmother would make the lesson fun.

 

* * * * * 

    After their lessons, the children were released to play.  Their great-grandmother’s only requirement was that they bring back one piece of fresh produce from the market for each of the four people in their home, and that each had to be different.  They were told to talk to the market vendors about each fruit or vegetable, and to report to her what the vendor said about it.

The children raced each other to the open market near the great wall that surrounded the city. In the shade of the north wall farmers had stalls from which they distributed their produce.  Crafters such as the potters, weavers, and basket makers also maintained stalls.

Their first stop was for a peach.  Both children loved the sweet, juicy fruits and even when they had not been assigned the chore, in the warm months they might find their way to Momo’s stall where he sweetest, juiciest peaches sat waiting for people to claim them.

Momo’s stall was closed when they arrived, and the bent old woman was nowhere to be seen. The stalls on either side of hers were doing a brisk business, though. Neither vendor had seen Momo and both were too busy to talk to a pair of children. Nagge and Foy visited several other stalls.  Knowing that Ciannait would expect them to bring home four completely different items, they visited the root seller, the bean vendor, and the squash seller. The children were determined not to go home without peaches, and asked after old Momo at every stall.  No one had seen the old lady.

“I think we should go to her house and check on her,” Nagge said after they had exhausted their search of the market for knowledge of the peach vendor.

“She’s probably in the orchard with Ben,” Foy said.  He was unconcerned about Momo herself, but his mouth watered for the sweet peaches. “Maybe Mama will bring home peaches today, since she’s helping Ben, too.”

“Maybe.”  Nagge’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think Momo goes to the orchard much anymore.”

Foy shrugged.  “Then let’s go check on her.  You want to, and you’ll keep talking about it until we do.”

Nagge grinned. “Yes, I will,” she admitted.

Momo’s apartment was east of the marketplace, down a wide street that at night was lined with the barrows of the farmers. The walls of the homes were as white as the wall that surrounded the city itself, and the staggered rooftops of the buildings rose and fell with no perceivable rhythm.  Each rooftop was planted with a garden, a place for the inhabitants within to grow herbs and a few vegetables for quick harvest for their dinner tables.

Interspersed among the buildings were slim towers, some narrower than a man’s shoulders, and some with more that one peak. The towers were made of the same mud-covered stone as the walls of the dwellings, but looked like the weathered remains of brittle, leafless trees, resting for the winter even against the blue skies.

The children made their way across the city’s north side, stopping to speak to the adults who greeted them. They raced each other the last few steps to the old peach seller’s door, but the old woman’s home was shuttered and the children’s calls went unanswered.

“She must have gone to the orchard,” Foy proclaimed.

“Momo hasn’t been to the orchard this year at all,” objected Nagge.

“Where else would she be?”

“How should I know? Maybe she’s gone to visit a friend.  Maybe she’s just sleeping.”

“Sleeping? In the middle of the day?”  The notion of a nap was completely alien to the boy.  Even if Momo were sleeping, it seemed only logical to his eight year old brain that their calls would summon her since their cries always got the attention of  Grandmama, who was older than Momo.  The fact that old Momo might not have Ciannait’s health would never have occurred to him.

“I think perhaps we should check on her.” Nagge’s troubled expression arrested Foy’s attention.

“You think she might really be sick?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

The pair of them looked at Momo’s door, this time with a little trepidation.

“So, open it,” urged Foy.

“Let’s call her again.”  They called. Still there was no answer.

Nagge reached out and touched the door. Just as she put her hand on the handle, Momo’s voice sounded from within.

“Here, now, what’s all the racket about?”  The old woman sounded gruff and hoarse. She pulled open the door and blinked in the sunlight at the two children on her stoop.”Nagge? What are you and Foy doing here? Come in, come in.” Momo left the door open and without waiting for an answer turned and shuffled back into the dark interior of her home.

The children exchanged a look, then followed.

“We looked for you in the market.  We wanted peaches.” Nagge told her.  Foy looked around the apartment, obviously hoping to spot unclaimed peaches lying around loose, waiting to be given to him.

“You’ll not find me at the market today,” muttered Momo. “Nor are you going to find me there tomorrow. Or ever again.”

The children looked aghast at each other.  “Never again?  Why not? Aren’t there any more peaches?” Foy’s high voice wavered with momentary panic.

“Of course there are peaches, silly,” Nagge said quickly.  “But, Momo, why aren’t you going to be in the market?”

The old lady snorted. “Ben says he wants Hanh to take over those duties.  Not that she’s likely to get her lazy backside out of bed long enough to set the peaches out for anyone to see.”

“If Hanh’s going to be in the market, what will you do?”  Nagge liked visiting with Momo, and was glad the old lady was there to give children extra fruit.

“I don’t yet know. I may help with tutoring or with the creche. I may just stay here in my apartment and enjoy my peaceful old age. Hanh won’t last long.  She’ll sleep in the stall, if I’m any judge.” Momo sounded disgusted with her daughter in law.

“Mama went to the orchard to help Ben today,” Foy offered.  “Do you have any extra peaches here?”

Momo raised an eyebrow, twisted her mouth into a grimace. “Ben better know what he friend he has in Minna,” she said.  “Here, boy.  There are always peaches in this house.” She handed both children a plump, firm fruit. “Now what are you doing here and not playing somewhere?”

“Grandmama told us to find four different foods from the market,” Nagge explained between bites of the juicy, sweet fruit.  “We decided one of those ought to be a peach.”

“Oh? And how will she know you found a peach at all?”

“We’ll bring one back, of course,” said the little girl.  Then Nagge’s eyes widened. “Only we’ve eaten our peaches!”

Momo laughed. “So you still need a peach for Ciannait, do you?”  She grinned at the children’s solemn nods. “Fortunately for you I happen to have extras. Here.”

With grateful smiles the children accepted four more peaches and tucked them into the pack with the other food from the marketplace.

“Now get on with you,” scolded Momo, and watched the children cheerfully bounce out of the apartment and into the sunny street. “Mind you, don’t get caught by the Hruang on the way home!” she called after them with a smile.

Nagge and Foy had heard the stories of the Hruang.  Their great-grandmother, who was one of the oldest people in the city behind the Wall, claimed she had seen one many years ago as a child herself.  It was this story Foy had begged for at breakfast.

The beast had been captured by a band of hunters, and had died in the central marketplace from the stones thrown by angry old men and women who remembered the days of terror brought by the Hruang. When she told the story the old lady described the horrific claws and fangs of the beast, its bulging muscles and its naked flesh, but at the same time her tale evoked sympathy for the beast, captured and dying alone, injured, uncomforted, never itself having done wrong to its killers.

The frightening creatures had not come close to the walled city of Gaerwyn in generations. The wall was too intimidating to them, according to Ciannait.  They would never bother, or dare, come close now. According to Minna, the children’s mother, such a beast was the stuff of legend, if it had ever roamed the world at all.

“Let’s go to the orchard,” Foy suggested, his mouth once again full of peach. No one was supposed to go outside Gaerwyn’s walls except on business, and children were never to go out without their parents. Since their mother was at the orchard, though, Foy and Nagge might be able talk the adults at the gate into allowing them to pass.

The rhythmic calls and movement of the people in the market provided the children with cover to slip out the city gate.  The adults nearby were engaged with their bartering and bickering, their gossip and their industry.  None paid attention to the two children.  Nagge and Foy walked confidently near the opening in the great white wall.

They watched the dyemakers and the threadmakers, whose stalls were near the gate. Practiced in the art of sneaking out of the gate, the children asked questions and talked with the spinners who eventually told the children to move on and stop bothering them.  The timing was perfect, as far as the children were concerned.  They had seen the dyers toss their dyes into the boiling pot and knew that they would be shooed away from there, too, as they dyers were busy dipping the fabrics and threads into the steaming cauldrons.

As expected, the dyemakers shouted at the children to move back as they brought bolts of plain cloth over to the big pots for dipping in the hot dye. Nagge and Foy edged around the unguarded opening in the wall, sidestepped around its corner, and once out of sight of any adults ran to the great gray boulders that served as steps down to the valley where the orchards lay below the city.

The boulders had been left there by mysterious giants of the past, in a convenient formation that allowed relatively easy passage down the steep hillside to the fertile river valley below. Small, twisted trees grew amid the granite outcroppings. The stone was worn smooth by the passage of generations of feet.  It was debated among the sagamen as to whether ancient chisels actually carved either the boulder steps or the base of the great wall that surrounded Gaerwyn.

“I am the leader of the Hruang, and I demand treasure!” cried Foy, making his child’s high voice deep to growl at his sister, standing on the boulder above his sister, glaring down at her with his small fists on his hips.

“The Hruang never demanded treasure,” objected Nagge, her status as the elder making her all-knowledgeable.  “They just attacked and killed people.”

The boy stuck his chin out defiantly. “Well, this time I want treasure.”

Nagge grabbed a stick fallen from a nearby scrub tree and waved it at her brother. “Never!  We will fight to the death!”

Foy saw a larger stick lying half on a granite step below in, to Nagge’s left and out of her sight. He made it to the weapon just as his older sister found her way to the side of the boulder where he had jumped.

They sparred with their weapons, shouting, growling, and happily banging their sticks.  Foy had the better, stronger weapon.  Nagge’s scrubby stick was older and drier, and a power thwack by Foy’s fresher weapon disarmed her.  She shrieked.

“Admit defeat!” roared her little brother.

“You have defeated us, oh mighty Hruang!” cried the girl, crouching and covering her head with her arms.

“You must bring me treasure or I will take it myself from every home!”

“Will you attack our people if we give it to you?”

“No.  I’ll take your things and go back to the other side of the mountains.”

“Sure,” said Nagge, standing slowly and assuming the persona of the Gaerwyn City Leader.  “Drop your weapons and come close, and we will give you what you ask for. You have to promise to go away forever, though.”

“Give me good treasure and I won’t have to come back.” The small Hruang-boy’s avarice gleamed in his grin.

“Oh, we’ll give you the best. We promise.  But you have to leave your weapons to come get it because we’re too afraid of you otherwise.”

The boy dropped the stick he brandished as a sword and took two steps closer to where his sister spread an imaginary pile of gifts. The girl bowed low to her brother, hiding her smile. “Please, honorable Hruang, take these gifts and leave us in peace!” she cried.

Foy swaggered closer, holding out the skirt of his tunic so it could be filled with riches. Nagge described each handful of leaves, each rock, each cluster of twigs as another impossibly desirable treasure.  “A crown of silver, sparkling with precious gems. An ivory hunting horn, carved with scenes from legend. A bolt of the finest cloth, worked with threads of gold. An ancient scroll containing the secrets of the ages. Rare medicinal herbs. A vial of delicate perfume, guaranteed to make even Hruang smell pleasant.” Her litany of valuables brought a superior smile to her brother’s eyes as each item weighed more heavily in the stretching fabric of his outstretched pouch.

“Take more!” pleaded the eager treasure giver, piling the small boy’s Hruang arms full of leaves and twigs to represent the choicest of plunder.

When his skinny arms were full of the promised treasure, the Nagge leaped on Foy with a leafy branch, swatting at him with it. Howling, the boy dropped the leaves and twigs and leapt toward his own discarded branch.

“You cheated!” he yelled.

“I did not! I tricked you!” his older sister retorted gleefully, swatting him with a new branch she had surreptitiously retrieved during the treasure collection process and driving him backward along the rocky path.

The boy’s battle cry was another howl of indignation. Being older and stronger, his sister was able to drive him back further, laughing as she did so. The fierce duel of the branches brought them along the path to a flat place that overlooked the valley and led to another hill. Nagge stopped her attack long enough to catch her wind, and Foy ran up the path to the top of the crest beyond.

He stood upon it, throwing out his chest like the bravest hero of battles, bellowing his outraged superiority to the empty land beyond the whipping wind and throwing wide his skinny arms.  His sister laughed and jumped to her place beside him.

She struck a mocking pose with one hand on her hip and a graceful arm outstretched to accept the adoring cheers of imaginary crowds.  She bowed deeply.  This time her brother laughed as well.  The children jumped from the rocky crag to greet the throngs of their admirers.

In sudden panic they seized each other.

To be continued…

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Fear of Addiction

Recently a friend of mine wrote a blog about addiction that touched my heart. A friend of her children’s died as a result of his use of mind-altering substances.

I have a cousin.  He’s 66.  He’s a medical doctor.  He is currently serving six concurrent one year terms in jail for six DUIs he had in the last 14 months.  Two of the incidents where he was arrested involved accidents.  In one accident someone was hurt, although I’m not sure how badly. It’s amazing to everyone in the family that he hasn’t killed himself yet.  He lives alone when he’s not in jail. He drinks alone.

I had an aunt.  She was an Olympic class equestrian.  She and her horse fell in the early 1970’s  at a practice for the Olympic trials. Her horse had to be put down and she never rode competitively again. She took solace in a bottle and in the prescriptions she was given. For more than 30 years, alone and angry because her dreams were dashed, she drank and medicated herself.  She was hospitalized at least 20 times for detox, overdoses, and various problems with her health due to her alcoholism. When she died her blood alcohol content was .430. Yes, she drank herself to death. She probably didn’t mean to, at least not that day.

Alcoholism runs hard in the genes of my family. I can point to almost any member of my grandparents generation and say, “He was an alcoholic” or “She was an alcoholic.” The alcoholics are fewer in my parents’ generation, but they’re there. I remember swearing to myself growing up that I would never drink alcohol. I hated what it did to the people I loved.

But I did drink.  In college I realized that I drank too much and too often.  I thought about the alcoholics in my family. I slowed down. I slowed further in law school, and then when I married and had a baby I realized how hard it was to change a smelly diaper with a raging hangover.  I slowed drinking even more.

In 1997 I was in a serious car accident. As a result of that accident the migraine headaches I have had all my life became worse. Ten years later I have a condition called “Chronic Daily Headache” or “Intractable Migraine.”  I have to take drugs to combat it.  Most of the drugs don’t alter my mind, but occasionally I have to take muscle relaxers and painkillers.

Because of my headaches I have stopped drinking alcohol almost completely.  Two drinks and I can guarantee myself a migraine.  The margaritas aren’t worth it.  I may go out with friends and sip one drink for three hours.  I may drink it faster then switch to soda water. I almost never have more than one drink any more.

But there’s another problem. You see, addictive behavior runs in my family, and I have prescriptions for addictive medications for the pain I have almost daily.

I am afraid of these drugs.  I hoard them; I use them sparingly.  I don’t want them to control my life.

Yesterday and today have been a bad days. My headache started early yesterday, but I was focused on something I was doing and didn’t take a break to get my Imitrex. By the time I was through with my project, I could barely sit at my desk.  I wanted to curl up under it in a fetal position. Unbidden, tears fell down my cheeks.  I staggered downstairs. The movement exacerbated the pain.  I could barely think.

I fumbled for the device that contains the most powerful dose of Imitrex. It’s an injection, and thankfully it works quickly. I can use the injection no more than twice a month. I use it only when I can’t bear the pain.  By the time I reached for the device, I was unable to form a coherent sentence.  My thoughts were disjointed, and overlying it all was a little girl crying plaintively in my mind, “It hurts!  Make it stop!”

I gave myself the shot.  I took a muscle relaxer.  I went to bed.  I slept for three hours.  When I woke, I still had a horrible headache. I took a painkiller.  My head still hurt. Yet I still had to function.

I am a mother; I run a business. I have to take care of myself so I can take care of my child and my office.

I worry that I will become addicted to the painkillers.  I worry that I take too many prescription drugs. I take three pills every morning in a futile attempt to control the neurological aspects of my migraines.  They have helped.  I shouldn’t say it’s futile.  The headaches would be worse if I didn’t take them.  Then there are the triptans – the drugs that actually stop the migraines. I can’t take them more than three days in a row, or I risk rebound headaches.

On days like today, when my head feels like it is split in two and one side is three times the size of the other, when a throbbing pain goes from above my left eye over the crown of my head and down into my left shoulder blade, when the pain is so bad I can’t sleep even with the soporific effect of the drugs, I despair of ever feeling good again.

The drugs don’t make me feel good.  They just mask the pain.  It’s still there; I just  don’t care as much.  I can laugh and joke and carry on a conversation with the drugs.  I hate them.

I am terrified of addiction.

Posted on

Procrastination and Common Sense

I am as the American Colonies were in 1775.

I know you all want to know how I could possibly be like the American Colonies were in 1775. “The simile is a stretch,” you think.

You are wrong.

It will require a bit of a history lesson, so get out your notebooks and pens and pay attention.

Two hundred thirty-two years ago today, a man in Philadelphia began distributing copies of a pamphlet he had published anonymously at his own expense. The man, known as Tom Paine to his friends, had emigrated to the colony in America from England only two years before.

By the time he fortuitously met Benjamin Franklin in 1774, Paine had failed at everything he had ever done in life.  He failed out of school at the age of twelve. By 19 he had failed at his apprenticeship to his father, a corset maker, and had gone to sea. He failed at that and returned to land work for the British government as a tax collector. By the time he was 32, he had been fired twice from that job, the second time because he agitated for higher wages, inciting others with his essays and leaflets to demand more money.

Once in Philadelphia, Paine began writing essays and contributing to a local magazine.  He was a popular writer, and was widely read.  He became a success.

Philadelphia’s air was full of anger and resentment against England when Paine arrived. The colonists in America felt that England was abusive towards them and despaired of Parliament even granting them self-rule.  Ten years before Parliament had reined in the quasi-independence that had previously existed for the colonies on the other side of the Atlantic.  In repealing the Stamp Act, which was despised by the colonists, Parliament passed the Declaratory Act of 1766, and claimed for itself the “right… power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to bind the colonies and people of America…in all cases whatsoever.”  Successively more restrictive laws were passed, and rebellion was imminent as 1775 turned into 1776.

For some reason, though, there had not been a formal rebellion against England in the colonies.  As angry as the colonists were, they didn’t rise up and take arms against their English overlords. There were skirmishes here and there, and demonstrations and the like, but no organized, armed rebellion. We look back on it today and wonder, “What were they waiting for?”  It’s hard to see why they wouldn’t take action.

Paine believed he knew how to package the idea of an armed rebellion so it would be more palatable to the colonists who might be sitting of the fence when it came to the issue of separation from England. He thought he had a way of convincing them to get off their dead asses and rebel.  He had a way to stop them from procrastinating any longer.

And now we come to how I am like the colonies.

Hello.  My name is Aramink. (Hello, Aramink.) I am a procrastinator.

I have lousy time management skills.  I let things without deadlines linger on my desk, hoping they will go away.  They never do.

I am a procrastinator.  Like the American colonies in 1775, I am sitting on my dead ass doing nothing (playing online) when I should be doing something constructive, something like writing, working, paying bills, balancing my checkbook, cleaning out closets, making my bed, taking a nap… well, maybe not taking a nap, but the other things certainly should be done.

The colonists were sitting around, complaining about taxes, about soldiers eating them out of farm and home, and unfair laws, just like I sit around and complain that I’m not getting out and getting things off my desk. Something had to shake up the colonists enough to actually do something about what they enjoyed complaining about so much.

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, lit the colonies on fire.

The pamphlet appeared on January 10, 1776.  Over 150,000 copies were sold almost immediately.  Through many reprintings throughout 1776, as many as six million pamphlets reached readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Not only did Paine write the argument that won support for the rebels among farmers and educated businessmen alike, but he also discussed naval strength and set out a model for the new government of a country called America.  He set out a plan of action for the colonies to take so that they could wrest their independence from England.  It wasn’t until the third edition of the pamphlet, published February 14, 1776,  that he set out this plan, but by the time the plan was proposed, the ideas in the pamphlet had already planted seeds of rebellion in very fertile ground.

Perhaps you’ve never read this famous pamphlet, which is credited with starting the American Revolution. How did Paine stop the colonists’ procrastination and propel them into action?  He focused them on the bad guy.  He identified King George III as the enemy of the American Colonies and he laid out a plan for getting rid of the yoke the king had clapped on the neck of the colonies with the passage of the Declaratory Act of 1766 and those successively restrictive laws aimed at strangling the autonomy of the colonies in America.

Why did it take ten years, from 1766 to 1776, for the colonists to act?

The same reason it took me a week to go to the doctor when I knew full well that the cranberries I was consuming in mass quantities were only giving me disturbing dreams and not curing my… indisposition.

Procrastination.

What stirred the colonists to action? Thomas Paine giving them a target and a plan.

What stirs me into action?  Deadlines.  When I don’t have one, I get nothing done whatsoever. I have no Thomas Paine to stir my passions into action.

I am a procrastinator.

Yesterday I was talking to my friend Katie about stuff I want to do but haven’t gotten around to doing.  I had a laundry list of things.  She laughed at me as I added more and more things to the list.  “You’re a procrastinator!  She declared.  I admitted as much.  I’ll deny anything until presented with incontrovertible proof.  She had the proof.

Then she gave me an assignment.

“This afternoon, do three of these things on your list,” Katie commanded. She was kind enough to specify which three, and I was grateful. “I’m going to check with you later,” she warned.

It was about 2:30 and my eyelids were getting heavy. I had dealt with Book Club drama for two straight days and I was sleepy. I went to take a nap.

I woke up about 5:00 and returned to my computer. Oh yes, I remembered my assignment.  I had to make two phone calls and mail something. Those were my tasks. I yawned and poured myself another glass of cranberry juice. Then I got a message from my friend Shawn.

“I understand you were supposed to accomplish three tasks this afternoon,” he said. He had been talking to Katie!

I stammered. I hemmed and hawed. I did those things at least as much as one can possibly do them in a Messenger conversation.

“Are they done?”  Shawn asked. I could tell by the tone of the letters he typed that he was about to get serious with me. (No, the font didn’t change. I could just tell.)

“Ummm…”

I dialed the phone. I made the first phone call.

“I’ve done one,” I told him.

“Only one?”

I hung up and dialed the phone again.

“I’ve done two,” I reported.

“You’re tardy on those two,” he advised me sternly, and then noted that I hadn’t done the third one at all.

“But I took a nap!” I whined, hoping for leniency since Shawn is known to be fond of naps himself.

No luck. He remained stern and even got Katie into a messenger conference with us.

Katie pronounced punishment. “You have to do what you didn’t do, and you have to write a blog post about procrastination,” she decided.

“But I have another post planned for tomorrow,” I protested, thinking about how I hadn’t finished my blog about Thomas Paine and his pamphlet, Common Sense.

“You must post your procrastination blog by 6 p.m. tomorrow,” Katie commanded.

Katie is a formidable mistress. I felt like a naughty kid. Shawn was probably laughing at me, but he was at least pretending to be stern, too.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said meekly.

Guess what happened.

Uh-huh.

I procrastinated.

I didn’t get my Common Sense blog written last night, so it wasn’t ready to be posted this morning. And I had to do this procrastination blog, too. Today is the anniversary of the publication of Common Sense, so I really need to post that blog today, but Mistress Katie says I have to post the procrastination blog today, too.

That’s why I am comparing my procrastination with the inaction of the American colonies prior to the publication of Common Sense.

Thomas Paine set out a plan for rebellion and independence, and Katie told me I have to set out a plan to eliminate procrastination from my life.

These parallels between me and the American colonies are just downright uncanny, aren’t they?

Here’s my plan:

  • I will read my email first thing in the morning and respond to it all.
  • I will write the rest of the morning unless Jane is here, and in that case, I will write unless Jane has other work for me to do.
  • I will break for lunch and actually eat somewhere other than over my keyboard.
  • I will check my email immediately after lunch and respond to it all.
  • I will run errands and get other things done as my list dictates (see below).
  • I will read and write some more, as time permits.
  • I will make tomorrow’s list by 5:00 every day.
  • I will then allow myself to play online.

It may not be as good a plan as Thomas Paine’s was for rebellion, but it will probably help me to stop procrastinating.

I wonder if I should sign out of Messenger, too. I mean, I’m normally invisible, but I’m always here.  If I hadn’t been on Messenger before 5:00, Katie might never have given me that assignment in the first place, and I might not have had to figure out how to combine a blog post on Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and procrastination.

It’s worth considering.

Me, in My Thomas Paine Costume, Making My List
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