I am a trained historian and one of the things I was trained to do was to avoid throwing my hands in the air and screaming that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. It is more difficult to do this summer than in most times I can remember. The problems date back to the previous winter and events that are much further in the past. Putin of Russia has spent the time since Boris Yeltsin died stirring up nationalism in Russia. When the Ukraine was offered political ties to the West that would be in their long term interests, the government said yes. Then Putin pulled on the leash that this puppet Ukrainian president wore in exchange for vast material wealth. In a move that surprised everyone, Ukraine overthrew the Kremlin dominated government first by voting and then in the streets when the constitutional steps were ignored. Ukrainian security forces first attempted to repress the people and then refused to engage in more than a certain level of violence against the people.
No one was surprised when Putin made the face saving step of occupying the Crimean Peninsula. Russia has considered that ground worth a war since the aptly named Crimean War in which poor communications caused a certain Light Brigade to charge the wrong hill. I can't help but throw these little historical lessons in when I can. The British commander on the ground had a big hill blocking his view of the battlefield when he ordered his light brigade of cavalry to counterattack a hill where their enemies had not yet consolidated their defenses. Instead of attacking that hill, they were slaughtered attempting to capture a much better defended hill that their commander could not see.
My information on internal Russian politics is outdated since I've been fighting my own war since the end of the Soviet era but I am better informed than some. What seems to have happened is that the nationalists who helped Putin hold on to power for this long insisted that Russia retake Ukraine. It is too far away from the United States to gather military strength there quickly, it has been considered within the Russian sphere of influence since the Cold War began - I had to delete Soviet twice before I managed to type Russian. - and it had not yet begun to be considered European especially by the regular people of Europe. Putin's nationalist critics must be proud because Putin chose well.
Then the Ukrainians failed to fall in line and recognize that they had been checkmated on the chess board of Great Power politics. I expected Russian troops to have occupied Ukraine by now in all honesty. With NATO allies on Ukraine's other borders, there was not much further the Russians could go without triggering Article 5 of the NATO treaty. That would have meant a war that Russia could not win if it were pursued in earnest. Forget the US Armed Forces for the moment. Russia could have been stalemated by Lithuania, Poland and Germany using weapons already supplied by the United States. The historian in me sees Great Power politics at work: Putin wants a buffer zone against those NATO countries I just mentioned and eastern Ukraine would do yet the traditional American in me sees an underdog defying a bully and wants that bully's nose to be bloodied. Chances are that diplomats will find some face saving measure for Putin that doesn't include annexation but might include a demilitarized zone or some other creative idea that most of us haven't considered. Sanctions will work given time because they are targeted at the nationalists pushing Putin.
Here's the fun part. Writing about Gaza will have friends leaving flaming bags of dog "waste" on my front step and I can only hope that they stick with the metaphorical kind. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict seems to have no beginning so it seems to have no possible end. This conflict predates the printing press for sure and, in some ways, can be said to predate common use of the written word. It doesn't help much to limit things to the modern (1948 - now) version of the conflict. I could give you three or four well regarded accounts of how the modern conflict started and not one of them will be in complete agreement with another. Right now, a murderous regime gained power in Gaza thanks to a vote that the region was not ready to handle. One major reason why this murderous group (Hamas) gained power is that the Israeli right wing cannot stop itself from doing whatever it can to provoke anger from the common man on the Arab street.
As recently as the 90s, both sides were committed to peace. On the other hand, both sides agreed to let the looniest person they could find drive the bus. The agreement was that the Palestinian Authority would crackdown on anti-Israeli violence in exchange for the means to do so. Israel agreed to pull back its borders and allow a contiguous state to exist there. The weakness in this agreement was that there were parties on both sides committed to killing. Telling a crazed murdering type that he can prevent peace by a simple act of violence was insane. I'm not claiming that Israel had only one crazed murderer to deal with but the principle is the same. On the Palestinian side, you had suicide bombers infliction gruesome death and destruction on the Israelis which makes it sound as if the Palestinians were at fault.and Israel was completely innocent.
That ignores the all-out economic war that Israel has carried out around the same time as the suicide bombings started. Israeli settlement (ironically driven by Jews fleeing persecution in the Soviet Union in the 80s when they were allowed to leave) has choked off Palestinian economic development in a number of ways. Every time a settlement has gone up, it has taken the most valuable land they considered available. That means things like access to drinking water in that parched land. It means armed settlers putting up barricades that cut off access to vital resources like water on one extreme and the seemingly innocent delays required by having to pass through checkpoints on the other. If you have ever spoken to an American commuter, you know how angry traffic can make someone. There would be riots if something like the unexplained lane closures on the George Washington Bridge lasted long enough. It's like that in places on the West Bank daily.
Despite the fact that I have never been a soldier under fire and I've never faced artillery, seeing the carnage in Gaza has triggered PTSD symptoms in me. The helplessness I endured during my summer of robberies has joined my Chiari symptoms in making me react badly to loud noises. It sounds so stupid but fireworks send me cowering and pain is only part of it. I find myself barely consoled by Melissa's soothing words and the fact that my cats run to me when startled. I look at the violence on one level and know that Israel must respond to bombardment of their territory and that Hamas has been emboldened by the blocked that Gaza has suffered for seven years. Blockades are considered acts of war. I want to scream at someone in an Israeli consulate to use a more effective military strategy against Hamas. Give Gaza port access again and find some way to make it clear that Israel and the Palestinian Authority accomplished this despite Hamas. Otherwise, I want some adults to come in and collect all the weapons being used by both sides.
It felt like a last straw when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, MO. It may not feel this way but the worst atrocities were committed at the very start. This all took place after the NYPD choked an unarmed man which caused him to die of complications. I have a horror of not being able to breathe. That man having his chest compressed against the sidewalk and his neck compressed in the choke hold hit the sweet spots in my personal health fears. I believe that I would die from such mistreatment even without considering the Chiari. First, there is the unpardonable act of police murder where Michael Brown was killed. That first night, there was some looting and destruction of property which can be replaced. A strong police presence that included justice for Mr. Brown's family was required Sunday night. Instead, pictures that seemed to come from Iraq, the Gaza Strip and Ukraine started up. After the community suffered a small riot, the police rioted for three nights. All I wanted was for some adults to come in and take control. Couldn't the National Guard disarm this police department? All that choking gas in the air which a reporter suffered on live TV routed me. My coping ability shut down and I just sat there all night barely able to look away long enough to sleep.
Actually, no disarming was required that we know of but the Missouri state Highway Patrol came in and set a shining example for us all. An order from the governor (that a critical local official had the gall to call unlawful) was all it took. It seems that President Obama may have made some strong hints about nationalizing the Missouri National Guard but Governor Jay Nixon did step up. It was almost as much relief as a dose of pain medicine when I saw clear air where there had been tear gas and angry but orderly protestors where the police had rioted. I had my first taste of relief last night since Robin Williams died. It was not total relief from physical pain by any means but I was able to sleep.
It won't last but I could think of it as my own 12 hour humanitarian truce. My dinner made no threats to come back up and I had no nightmares. I did not mention ISIS in this entry because my mind was already overflowing with horror. They have their place in my nightmares despite the lack of direct presence. Perhaps that story will work out as well. Ferguson could still go badly, Gaza could fill our TV screens again and Putin could decide to invade the Ukraine. Sometimes, all you can ask is for a pause in your personal horrors.
A lot of these problems are related with no more than a few adding up to the Shrub's policies coming home to roost. Let's overthrow all the dictators and hold elections so that violent fundamentalists can seize power. Then let's make deals with Putin to use his influence to calm the falling regimes and sell them weapons. I need to go before I'm overwhelmed by disgust again.
Friday, August 15, 2014
When We Lose One of Us
In case you've been vacationing somewhere under a rock, there has been another tragedy in a summer full of them. Robin Williams killed himself as he lost his battle with severe depression. Yes, I do mean that Robin Williams. That man who brought so much joy to so many of us has fallen in a war with which I am all too familiar. It's not surprising by the standards of losing yet another human being. He suffered from depression which is a disease that can turn deadly without warning. I do not blame him or seek to find fault in anyone. The fact is that he held on as long as he could and then he died.
My first reaction was fear. Fictional depictions of suicide threaten to knock me off my personal window ledge. My second reaction was defiance. I am alive. I am surviving my personal war for another day and not an easy one. It was pain doc day and I was screaming, crying and moaning from the physical pain. I know what happened. My sleep cycle failed me the way it usually does on a pain doc day and I spent time riding in the car. Since then, the pain has subsided a little because I threw the book at it but I hurt too much to sleep which is what I probably need the most. I long for the medicine my mother would give me when I had these horrible attacks of painful nausea. That medicine would make me vomit, settle the pain and put me to sleep all in the right order. I doubt this medicine would do me any good today since I was carried to bed in many of these memories. That suggests a somewhat lower body mass.
I was miserable before I learned of Mr. Williams. I'm not being cold. I don't refer to strangers by their first names and he will always be a stranger to me now. Sometime in the third hour of awful news, I told Melissa that I'd had enough. I needed to do something without the TV on because the tragic news would be on every channel. I knew that she would agree because I told her that this sort of story sets me off every time.
After all, there are cracks in my defenses. I make my share of mistakes or more. Learning that someone has killed himself puts pressure on all those cracks. What if he had the right idea? (He didn't but I'm making a point.) Chiarians are only a few among the many chronically ill patients who wonder every day if we can ask our caregivers and loved ones to put up with us for another day. It's not easy telling myself each day that I will survive. What must it be like for the caregivers who must have doubts that we truly require this level of care?
I'm done with the hypothetical points for a while anyway. My New York family gave me another perspective on the subject today. As regular readers know, Barbara, my sister-in-law, had thyroid cancer. There was a relapse scare but the truth was that radiation is required to eradicate thyroid cancer. Barbara is going through the stress of being sick without Melissa being there to care for her. Judy is filling the role of mother which is appropriate since she is their mother!Melissa. She includes taking care of of her sick daughter.
This probably would have gone on longer but I hurt to the point of being forced to stop. The news from Ferguson, MO has dragged my energy down further. All those poor people who wanted to express their pain were beaten down and gassed. I should just get this posted and rest some more.
My first reaction was fear. Fictional depictions of suicide threaten to knock me off my personal window ledge. My second reaction was defiance. I am alive. I am surviving my personal war for another day and not an easy one. It was pain doc day and I was screaming, crying and moaning from the physical pain. I know what happened. My sleep cycle failed me the way it usually does on a pain doc day and I spent time riding in the car. Since then, the pain has subsided a little because I threw the book at it but I hurt too much to sleep which is what I probably need the most. I long for the medicine my mother would give me when I had these horrible attacks of painful nausea. That medicine would make me vomit, settle the pain and put me to sleep all in the right order. I doubt this medicine would do me any good today since I was carried to bed in many of these memories. That suggests a somewhat lower body mass.
I was miserable before I learned of Mr. Williams. I'm not being cold. I don't refer to strangers by their first names and he will always be a stranger to me now. Sometime in the third hour of awful news, I told Melissa that I'd had enough. I needed to do something without the TV on because the tragic news would be on every channel. I knew that she would agree because I told her that this sort of story sets me off every time.
After all, there are cracks in my defenses. I make my share of mistakes or more. Learning that someone has killed himself puts pressure on all those cracks. What if he had the right idea? (He didn't but I'm making a point.) Chiarians are only a few among the many chronically ill patients who wonder every day if we can ask our caregivers and loved ones to put up with us for another day. It's not easy telling myself each day that I will survive. What must it be like for the caregivers who must have doubts that we truly require this level of care?
I'm done with the hypothetical points for a while anyway. My New York family gave me another perspective on the subject today. As regular readers know, Barbara, my sister-in-law, had thyroid cancer. There was a relapse scare but the truth was that radiation is required to eradicate thyroid cancer. Barbara is going through the stress of being sick without Melissa being there to care for her. Judy is filling the role of mother which is appropriate since she is their mother!Melissa. She includes taking care of of her sick daughter.
This probably would have gone on longer but I hurt to the point of being forced to stop. The news from Ferguson, MO has dragged my energy down further. All those poor people who wanted to express their pain were beaten down and gassed. I should just get this posted and rest some more.
Sunday, August 3, 2014
When Plans Fall Apart
Things were going too well. I won't pretend that's anything other than an excuse. More accurately, I need an angle to write about things so let's just pretend that I believe things going "too well" is a bad sign. Things are much better than they were last summer. Last summer was bad on an epic scale that I hope to never see again. The pain was screaming pain all the time with record amounts of stress keeping me from resting. It turns out that sleep is somewhat important to successful pain management.
There was a moment over the winter or Spring - I do not remember which - when the pain was so bad that I was either asleep or in agony. At the same time, MSN decided to make me jump through hoops in order to use email here on my PC. I tried to jump through the hoops but failed miserably. At the same time, settings changed on my tablet email which is also through MSN. I took months to figure out that my email was disappearing out of my email inbox after two days whether I'd read it or not. Considering my mental state of the time, it slipped my mind that I should have been getting certain bills. I was just too sick to perform those duties that I'd assigned myself and too sick to ask anyone else to do it.
Eventually, I reached a point when I felt a little better. It might be more accurate for me to say that I was worried enough to jump through extra hoops to find the information that I needed. We can skip ahead a bit to the point where I had ditched the provider who had managed to jack up prices two to three times while I was current on my bill. That phone call might have been funny if I hadn't been in agony the entire time. It turned out that I needed to renew my special fixed rate plan every so often and the phone person would not accept that I cannot depend on my ability to pay close attention to these things. I refused to enroll in a plan that would save me money for 90 days or something like that and then become absurdly expensive unless I remember to renew after that. Eventually, I resorted to rudeness and informed the phone person that she would either cancel my plan so that I could go back to the normal plan (with another company) and deal with mild price fluctuations or she could get her supervisor to do so.
Eventually, I found myself with a gigantic bill but with a foolproof plan for dealing with it. The first plan that unraveled was the plan to use email to stay current on bills and my technology just couldn't keep pace with my increasing disability. The second plan was to use my giant tax return to pay off the unpleasantly large bill. It was upsetting to know that I wasn't going to have enough money to replace the furniture for which the insurance adjuster never approved either a list of replacement items or gave me a dollar limit on. My brain is already falling apart so it's not surprising how that slipped.
I was already accepting the terms of no replacement furniture, no vacation and no splurging shopping trip when that plan fell apart. After a decade or so of being able to garnish Melissa's part of our federal tax return, the Department of Education chose this year to carry out the threat. I might not have noticed in a normal year but this wasn't the best year for me to take responsibility and handle things. Some people would relish the chance to say they told me so but I would simply hang up on them or shut my door in their faces. This was the year of serious complications and serious downturns in my health. I defy you to figure any of this out with a screaming headache and vertigo so bad that you fell out of chairs a couple of times. That left us with no money to pay off debts or pay our property tax bill for the year. That's not even including another bill I can't run down but suspect the "I told you so" people might have taken care of it. The shame of that mere possibility is almost enough to kill me.
Nonetheless, it takes more than that to beat me. In 2012, we took out a loan against Melissa's 401(k) plan and we're scheduled to pay it off this year. (The payments were so small that I never noticed the automatic payroll deductions.) So, we can take the money we do have/will get in the next seven days and pay that off half a year early. This makes us eligible to take out a new loan of the same type with no nasty liens on anything. We can borrow enough money to pay everything possibly even including replacement furniture and pay it off relatively painlessly. That's better than effectively taking out loans from the county and the power company at the maximum interest rate allowable by law.
As you can see, I have a backup plan for this which you might call Plan C. Let's just ignore the fact that Plan C will not even get me to where I should have been at this time last year. Let's ignore the fact that I'm in absurd amounts of pain. (Pay no attention to the spike being driven into the side of your head, the swelling in your joints and the fact that your persistent cough gives you whiplash style pain.) I have a plan to survive today and make it to tomorrow. That's progress.
There was a moment over the winter or Spring - I do not remember which - when the pain was so bad that I was either asleep or in agony. At the same time, MSN decided to make me jump through hoops in order to use email here on my PC. I tried to jump through the hoops but failed miserably. At the same time, settings changed on my tablet email which is also through MSN. I took months to figure out that my email was disappearing out of my email inbox after two days whether I'd read it or not. Considering my mental state of the time, it slipped my mind that I should have been getting certain bills. I was just too sick to perform those duties that I'd assigned myself and too sick to ask anyone else to do it.
Eventually, I reached a point when I felt a little better. It might be more accurate for me to say that I was worried enough to jump through extra hoops to find the information that I needed. We can skip ahead a bit to the point where I had ditched the provider who had managed to jack up prices two to three times while I was current on my bill. That phone call might have been funny if I hadn't been in agony the entire time. It turned out that I needed to renew my special fixed rate plan every so often and the phone person would not accept that I cannot depend on my ability to pay close attention to these things. I refused to enroll in a plan that would save me money for 90 days or something like that and then become absurdly expensive unless I remember to renew after that. Eventually, I resorted to rudeness and informed the phone person that she would either cancel my plan so that I could go back to the normal plan (with another company) and deal with mild price fluctuations or she could get her supervisor to do so.
Eventually, I found myself with a gigantic bill but with a foolproof plan for dealing with it. The first plan that unraveled was the plan to use email to stay current on bills and my technology just couldn't keep pace with my increasing disability. The second plan was to use my giant tax return to pay off the unpleasantly large bill. It was upsetting to know that I wasn't going to have enough money to replace the furniture for which the insurance adjuster never approved either a list of replacement items or gave me a dollar limit on. My brain is already falling apart so it's not surprising how that slipped.
I was already accepting the terms of no replacement furniture, no vacation and no splurging shopping trip when that plan fell apart. After a decade or so of being able to garnish Melissa's part of our federal tax return, the Department of Education chose this year to carry out the threat. I might not have noticed in a normal year but this wasn't the best year for me to take responsibility and handle things. Some people would relish the chance to say they told me so but I would simply hang up on them or shut my door in their faces. This was the year of serious complications and serious downturns in my health. I defy you to figure any of this out with a screaming headache and vertigo so bad that you fell out of chairs a couple of times. That left us with no money to pay off debts or pay our property tax bill for the year. That's not even including another bill I can't run down but suspect the "I told you so" people might have taken care of it. The shame of that mere possibility is almost enough to kill me.
Nonetheless, it takes more than that to beat me. In 2012, we took out a loan against Melissa's 401(k) plan and we're scheduled to pay it off this year. (The payments were so small that I never noticed the automatic payroll deductions.) So, we can take the money we do have/will get in the next seven days and pay that off half a year early. This makes us eligible to take out a new loan of the same type with no nasty liens on anything. We can borrow enough money to pay everything possibly even including replacement furniture and pay it off relatively painlessly. That's better than effectively taking out loans from the county and the power company at the maximum interest rate allowable by law.
As you can see, I have a backup plan for this which you might call Plan C. Let's just ignore the fact that Plan C will not even get me to where I should have been at this time last year. Let's ignore the fact that I'm in absurd amounts of pain. (Pay no attention to the spike being driven into the side of your head, the swelling in your joints and the fact that your persistent cough gives you whiplash style pain.) I have a plan to survive today and make it to tomorrow. That's progress.
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