Sam's summer: Summer of '77

“Who are you? He asked me in a perplexed but flirtatious voice.
“Who are you?” I asked the older man who had been waiting outside my apartment door when I came home from night classes at The New School.

My long brown hair was up in a ponytail; I wore a thin cotton summer dress, not too revealing which wasn’t usual for me, and brown platform sandals. That summer of Sam, no girl wanted to stand out or look anything like a potential victim. It was hot; it had been hot for weeks and my apartment lacked air conditioning. But I was young and didn’t feel heat like most people did. No matter how fast I walked and I walked like I was dodging bullets because maybe I was, I never sweated.

The man’s suit jacket was off as was his tie. His thin white shirt glistened from sweat. “Let me in,” he said.

I looked at him, confused. “Why?”

“You’re one of Reba’s girls. I can tell. You have that sweet school girl look.”
“Oh, her. She retired down to Florida last year. Sorry, don’t know anything about her. I live here now.”

I wasn’t sure if I should say that last part but didn’t know what else to say. Nobody had schooled me in the art of telling men that I wasn’t what they thought I was, in this particular situation or others.

“Sure you are. I can always tell who Reba’s girls are.”

I was getting angry. I wanted to go in; it had been a long day. I worked in a store in Queens, prime Sam country and the temperature had hit 90 long before noon. My nose was stuffed; I needed a shower.

He put on his glasses and examined me from head to toe.
“Even if you’re not one of Reba’s girls; you must have sublet the apartment from her. She’d never give it up. Reba’s too smart to give up a rent controlled Fifth Avenue apartment.”

“Look, sir,” I said, emphasizing the sir—a title I would never use in real life. “This isn’t quite Fifth Avenue, just off it, and the apartment’s no longer rent controlled. It’s stabilized and my husband and I live here now.”

I was wearing a wedding ring though I wasn’t married anymore. Anything to make me look unavailable; anything to ward off the evil that ran through New York that hotter than hell summer. I waved the ring in his face.

“My husband should be home any minute and he’s the jealous type.” Lying didn’t come naturally to me, but lying about men was something that did come easily that summer. I had put on my street face; the one that could turn men into stone, and he looked at me with a little less arrogance.

Nobody lived in the apartment right next to mine then, and a crazy psychiatrist with hair that stuck out all over his body and a look that could frighten Sam and frightened me lived in the other apartment on the first floor. The man who lived above me walked into the building.

“Oh honey, you’re home,” I screamed to my perplexed, older WASP neighbor. He had recently been listed as one of Manhattan’s ten most eligible bachelors. Frankly I thought he was gay because he was always smiling when he saw me and was usually with another man that I thought was his lover and the reason for the smile. Boys and men and anything in between had been smiling at me since I was sixteen. There was something about his smile that almost engaged me. It was more real; more something, than most male’s. But I did think that he was gay, and I wasn’t the short haired male with Docksider shoes on, type.

My neighbor, Roger, began to understand, stopped heading for the stairs, and came over. He kissed me, a wet passionate icky one that I forced myself to endure.
“Honey, this man thinks that I’m one of Reba’s girls. You know the madam that lived here before us.”

Roger was a bit tipsy. He put his arm around me, and said in his lazy WASPY voice so different than my fast somewhere in the North East one; “honey, I keep telling you we should put a sign on the door, ‘Reba doesn’t live here anymore.’”

“Oh Roger, I keep telling you that’s so classless. People will learn eventually.”

I unlocked my door; Roger followed me in. As I closed the door, the man said;
“I don’t believe you. Reba would never give up this apartment. You two don’t look like you belong together. Is he your appointment?”

I almost lost it. “I’m not one of Reba’s girls. We’ve been living here for a year and seven months almost to the day. And Roger and I are very happy. Aren’t we sweetie?”

I knew that was overkill but couldn’t stop myself.

The man handed me his card.
“If you ever change your mind.”
He was a vice president of an oil company. Years later he would become world famous in some now forgotten scandal.

“Okay Roger,” I said, “you deserve a drink for saving me. God, just thank god it was you and not, the shrink, or Al or that useless cab driver.” Al smoked cigars and looked almost old enough to be Roger’s father.

The cab driver had been born in the building; well, in a hospital I assumed, but close enough. He lived in an apartment two floors over Roger’s, and was famous for bringing in garbage to the building. Stacks and stacks of garbage: Newspapers; magazines; empty boxes; half-filled ones; anything metal. Once I passed his apartment when the door was open, and went into shock. I’m not the neatest person in America but his apartment defined the word Colliyer Brothers. I had lived in tenements in The East Village with my boyfriend, and had never seen one that sickening. They had all been very clean. Unless I lived in them; I wasn’t exactly a natural housekeeper. Though I aspired to be.

I passed the cab driver’s apartment while on my way to sleep with a local TV talk show host who lived in the larger apartment next door. He would talk about me to his shrink on the show. My ex-husband, who wasn’t working would call and tell me all about the show. It was kind of flattering as he never said anything bad about me. Quite the opposite actually.

Megan lived above Roger. Periodically she would turn the gas on and try to end her life. She always managed to try just before a delivery was scheduled, and just after the piano player she liked to think was her boyfriend dumped her. She was really in love with Roger, and whenever there was a break-in, in the building or a New York Times was missing from an apartment door, she would tell the super that I had done it.

He would laugh as he knew I had separation ideation problems over The New York Times. I was clueless when it came to housekeeping but I liked having company over so it would always look good.

Roger accepted the drink. When I had moved in my father, the almost tea toler, took me to a liquor store and insisted that he buy me a full bar worth of liquor. It was the proper thing to do in 1976 when most people drank hard liquor and smoked. My family, except for me was perfect. Fun, sociable and never smoked nor drank.

I poured Roger a glass of Stoli from a bottle in my ancient almost ice box freezer. It was gross and had to be defrosted every three months with tons of boiling water. After that summer, I bought a new refrigerator. That would have been sad had it not been so necessary, because I had to take out the wooden Pullman doors. When you walked into my apartment, you walked straight into the kitchen and saw the refrigerator, sink, and ancient stove with an oven that seemed not to have been cleaned since Reba had first moved in. I bought a new convection oven, and never used the real one.

Roger asked where I got the Hunter Ceiling Fans as he had never seen them in the city before.
“The Bowery, near where I got the butcher block table and chairs. Hey, do you mind if I…”

I walked through the kitchen, past the huge archway into the giant studio, and went to a silver case on the coffee table filled with joints. Years before, while seeing Jane Fonda in Klute, coming home from work, (yes like Reba’s girls), going to sit at the kitchen table with her legs up, and smoking a joint, I thought a woman who could offer people joints and who seemed so satisfied with her own life was the height of feminist sex appeal.

Though Roger was in his late 40’s, he’d occasionally buy drugs from the super, who was the building dealer. It was much cleaner that way, and you never felt like you were doing anything illegal. The Rockefeller laws had gone into effect the year before but it didn’t affect people like us. The Rockefeller’s lived across the street, but I never saw them. I must have passed famous people each day but I could have bumped into Woody Allen in a phone booth and not noticed.

They were my streets and the only place I could get lost in thought was while walking, so I walked everywhere, in all seasons. That summer I had promised my parents I wouldn’t walk much by myself at night, and would take cabs everywhere.

All my girlfriends had long brunette hair, and we all felt vulnerable. While we sat at my kitchen table, Roger asked me what if felt like to be a young, brunette girl in the city.
“I’m not going to stop going out. I have to wear my hair up; it’s too hot not to. No girl’s been killed in Manhattan and I work in one of my parents stores in Queens, and they won’t let me work past six. It’s just a summer job. I’m going to visit my college roommate in Geneva for six weeks in late summer, and fall….”

Roger and I talked through the night and then didn’t socialize again for twelve more years. Just before I left for Europe there was a black out with much looting. My sister lived on West 72nd, and it was very rowdy. People threw beer cans at the apartments all night, and I spent the night on the phone talking to her.

The next day my best friend Shelby and I hit the Second Avenue Upper East Side bars about noon. They were afraid of food going bad, and both food and drink were on the house. It felt like a snow day in the summer; we didn’t think about the neighborhoods that had been looted; we didn’t think about much but ourselves and the boys we were dating. We forgot to feel scared about Sam that day. Like most people we staggered home somewhere around midnight Al’s next door neighbor, Mrs. Herrick, passed out in the tiny elevator. She did that often.

While I was in Bern, Sam was captured, and Elvis died. I couldn’t really care about that old fat man, but Son of Sam. My god, he looked familiar. He wasn’t; just had a look.

My super, my building, my mom and me

As all three of my regular readers know I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a place I fell out of love with awhile ago.

My apartment’s pretty, in a quasi-luxury apartment building, but it doesn’t have a real kitchen. Sacrificed that so I can be insulted by my doormen. Most of the old doorman were “encouraged” to retire, and they made this young street kid, head doorman over Fernando who has been here 20 years and has just had his seventh child.

My personal feelings on that subject are beside the point. I like Fernando. Once we were talking:
“In my country…”
“Uh, Fernando, you were born in the Bronx.”
Fernando thinks for a second.
“Oh yes, I was. In the country of my parents….”
Didn’t say, “And you graduated from a city high school.” It probably reflects more on the school system then him.

The thing is that doormen are essential to the life of a New Yorker. They help make life a bit easier. Fernando might not be the brightest bulb on the planet, but he’s a good doorman. He cares.

Most of the doorman think that we work for them. When I couldn’t leave my apartment I arranged with FedEx to pick up a package from my apartment. The doorman wanted me to bring it downstairs. The Super hand picked him; he picks all the new doorman, and made this idiot who snubs everybody head doorman. The Super made new rules: the doormen aren’t allowed to be friendly to the residents. This is the only building I know where the residents are supposed to take the burden off the doormen. I’m all for helping people but opening doors and helping residents is their job.

Hello, this is New York. Some people only have doormen for friends. I’m not about to name names, but I know that because I see them talking earnestly to the doormen. Okay Fernando tells me about the lonely residents; my neighbor and I are starting something to change that.

I live in the only building where the Super rules the Board of Directors and thinks he can just run into my apartment when he feels like it. When I tell him New York State law on that subject he just spits, in my apartment. Very sanitary. Makes me take out the bleach and bleach everything possible.

He doesn’t spit phlegm; he just makes a face like he’s about to, and does the pursed lip almost spit thing which is even worse.
After 9/11, my mom died suddenly, and my apartment was besieged by floods. I couldn’t be vigilant about checking for floods as the memos stated because I didn’t cause them.

I’m the only person I know to have a major flood that was caused by the apartment below mine. That’s right below mine. My building is one of the many Upper West Side buildings that had a non-eviction plan when it went coop. Personally I would have begged borrowed or stole to buy a six room apartment for under $40,000 in 1989, but they didn’t and live most of the year in their country home. My apartment is their kitchen, maid’s room and dining room. They have two huge bathrooms, one small one, a 30 foot entryway, a large living room and two large bedrooms.

I have a ten foot entryway with kitchenette, a small living room, huge bath off the living room, tiny bedroom with a very tiny entrance hall and a miniscule half bath in the bedroom.

Apparently they weren’t being vigilant about possible floods because I kept on smelling something that smelled a lot like mold, but I could never find the source. That’s because it was emanating from their apartment—the pipes had been corroding for years, and one fine Sunday they just burst. Somehow exploded up into my pipes and somehow I came home to a perfect circle of sand in my bedroom. Not thinking, I took the phone and went into the living room where I spoke to a friend for about an hour until I realized that there was sand in my bedroom.

I could take all the activity for the first week but they kept on finding more and more things to do—and the Super would have his hand out all the time—which meant not $20 tips but $100 ones. My super thinks big.

I would say it wasn’t the money that bothered me but I would be lying. More than that I just needed my apartment. All two rooms—the board insists it’s a three room apartment but I’ve never found the third room.

“Look,” I finally said to Super, “my mom just died. I need my apartment. If you could give me a schedule of when people will be here, I’ll take my work and go to Starbucks.”
“My nephew died in The Trade Center.”

I was truly sorry but it was one more instance of me finally saying something about my mom’s death, and being put in my place. Can’t mourn an old lady who fell; got to get with the program.

So many people came right out and said it; “How can you mourn your mother knowing that so many younger people died?”
“Because she’s my mother?”
“But she lived a long life.”

Yes and those last fifteen minutes when she was conscious and crying to some stranger on her Companion Button that she had fallen into her bathtub and couldn’t get up, I’m just supposed to forget that?

Maybe I’ve lived a sheltered life. That was the saddest thing that ever happened to me. I had never really mourned my dad’s death. Was working at Social Security, and drowned myself in work so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the reality. Had to keep him alive for my mom who had worshipped him.

I worshipped them both. The day of my mom’s funeral, The New York Times had an article about people who had loved ones die after the attack and how isolated they felt.

I’m a licensed social worker; then I was certified. I approached agencies to see if I could begin a support group for people like me. Nobody was interested. Had to help the families of 9/11 victims. I could always join that ever present support group “Losing a parent is hard at any age.”

Would you join something that sounds like it’s for pre-K.? I could just see Marlo Thomas singing the refrain, “hard at any age, yes any age.”

I’m the first to admit that I have unresolved anger that usually doesn’t hurt but sometimes when the super comes up, unannounced with one hand out and makes that spitting noise, I want to kill him.

What happened to The Trade Center and the almost 3,000 people in it was beyond my comprehension, but I’ve grown tired of being politically correct.

I’m beginning a revolution in this building because I’m sick of a super who runs it like a small fascist country. And I’m never going to apologize for missing my mom again. Never.

Christmas 1983, The Turnberry Club, Miami

I' ve been under an enormous amount of stress lately, and seem to have lost the best part of me; my sense of humor which has helped me throughout life.

It really didn't occur to me that a four hour dental implant surgery carried inherent big risks, plus we're talking teeth. I'm the girl who stayed at The Turnberry Club in Miami--Christmas, 1983, at my best girlfriend's, from my first college, condo.

There seemed to be an abundance of available dentists, who had their Silver Shadows driven down from New York.

I'm not impressed with fancy condo/hotels or Rolls Royces; I was more the Saab (let's get real broken down Bugs) and tenement in the East Village type.

The dentists named me The Ice Princess; it wasn't the first time I had been called that.

I might have given that impression because I didn't want them to look closely at my newly bonded front teeth. I'm very near sighted, and can see any imperfection, imagined or not, as if I'm using a magnifying mirror when I look closely in the mirror.

I cheated myself out of many good experiences because I tortured myself over imagined fault lines.

Shelby's boyfriend had just begun serving three years in a Federal Pen for running an oil lease boiler room, and I had just gotten rid of the bum, for good, after too many years of watching every move I made to see if he was stalking me.

I will always be indebted to Dominic Dunne who tragically lost his daughter, Dominique, to the hands of her boyfriend. Before Dominique Dunne's death very little was known about abused women who lived in the best zip codes. The police wouldn't even let me fill out a restraining order.

Shelby's jewelry had been stolen the year before and she asked me to come to Miami because the burglar who had left her with a slightly damaged brain had been apprehended, confessed, and told the general vicinity where the jewelry was supposed to be hidden. As her very best friend, and probably only friend, I felt obligated to help her search a wooded area in Northern Miami. One thing you can always find in Miami is metal detectors and it was fun renting them from a store that was filled with customers who all qualified for the senior citizen discount special. We heard all the buzz on what beaches you could find the best lost jewelry.

Shelby had probably been one of the two most beautiful girls in school; the other being my other best girl friend, Corinna. While everyone loved Corrinna, nobody but me and her boyfriend ever liked Shelby. She was the only other girl as sarcastic as me. I would have felt badly about her mild brain damage but she hadn't used her brain in years.

She had gone through most of her inheritance, and didn't take money from any of the rich guys she lived with. I wouldn't have taken money--but I wouldn't have gone through my only inheritance. When it came to Shelby I wasn't the compassionate kind person most people mistook me for. I almost liked watching her get hit over by life.

I knew that I wasn't the ugly girl some girls pick to be their bestfriends to make them look better. Shelby made almost all women feel diminished when she walked into a room. I hated her at times. Once, in college, we threw books at each other and ended up in a cat fight. I refused to speak to her for the next year.

We were like lovers in our frenzies. Like doomed lovers we always found our way back to each other for awhile until we couldn't stand one another again.

Shelby was jealous of me. I was the one who got the serious marriage proposals; not one man had ever proposed to Shelby.

I couldn't understand it. I was the worst house cleaner in the world; Shelby was one of the best. She actually cooked; I did omlettes on occassion. If a man she was involved with asked her to do something she did it. I usually refused on general principle.

Shelby seemed confident; she wasn't. I was even less confident, but few people knew that. We understood that about each other. Shelby was only as confident as the man she was with let her be; I was only confident when I liked my teeth.

Yet I heard the same two sentences from four different men. "I can't live with you. I have to marry you." I was always tempted to ask if he was pregnant but always managed to refrain as they were serious.

My life revolved around my obsessions and marriage played no part in them. I was obsessed with being perfect. My boss called me Princess Perfect. I never considered that a compliment. I wouldn't settle for anything less than perfect work sent to clients; if I had to I would do the work over myself. I was obsessed with many things but it was my teeth that drove me crazy. The thing about my teeth is that they weren't bad. I thought that they were too small.

I was always smiling with my mouth closed. After they were bonded I thought that they looked a little too perfect.

I hadn't meant to write this story. It somehow came out. Shelby and I had a big fight. Her mother, who technically owned the condo came over, and asked me for money for staying there.
I was so shocked I gave her a check and then stopped it.

I never saw Shelby again and haven't spoken to her since 1989. My life still revolves around my teeth.

One of our own

See Courting Destiny.com

See the thing about being adopted or adopting kids is that open records doesn't solve everything or even most things. How are open records going to help a person who was adopted from an orphanage or some other place in a country that's not the USA? How are open records going to help a family where a child was kidnapped (as was common in Mexico and South America?)

Open records is an ideal; open records should happen. But it's not relevant in many stories and doesn't need to be pushed all the time.

I do feel defensive writing this. Yesterday when I read this article in the Sunday New York Times Style section, I thought a lot about why I've been feeling so adoption sensitive lately.
Is it because I had to carry out my own search without a lot of help except from my dad, who accidentally found my birth mother while reading something about her nephew?

There were adoption support groups available but I found the lack of respect for adoptive parents to be reprehensible. But I welcome the change. I've included links to two adoption dictionaries and an article by members of the adoption triad talking about their experiences. I always try to remember that we all bring our own experiences, world-view, and much more into the picture.

I don't always succeed. I do get angry when adult adoptees talk about always being a child under the law. If you can legally vote and drink you're no longer a child. Calling yourself one because of sealed records only serves to diminish you. I know that's not a popular view.

But is there a person on this earth who was born and grew up problem free? Isn't constantly talking about how you're not considered to be an adult only adding to the problem?

I'm not the model adult adoptee, nor would I want to be. I believe in open records because it's every person's right to know their background. I don't buy the "can't have open records because some people were products of rape" argument. Married men have been known to rape their wives and children were produced out of that. Marriage might give the child a cloak of respectability but in truth might those children have more problems than a child of rape who is adopted by a loving family?

And what defines a "loving family?" Don't all families have problems? This isn't a perfect world, and isn't it time that adult adoptees begin thinking that we are adults, and that we do have certain pains associated with not knowing our roots but that as functioning adults we have certain responsibilities and duties?

Right now I'm much more concerned with The First Amendment being tampered with, as that will in the end also affect my right as an adoptee to find my birth father--should I decide to look for him.

But I never really "fit" in the adoption movement because I was always asking questions people deemed to be superfluous or even stupid. Why should my questions be considered irrelevant just because they didn't fit the program?

Because that shows the problems I have and refuse to conciously accept or come to grip with.

Sorry, don't think so. I think it shows that I had been thinking about adoption and had talked about it often as a child (a real one) with my parents and sister.

Maybe that makes me more representative of the generations that are coming up now where adoption is often openly talked about in the family. Children ask questions; parents answer them to the best of their ability and the child's understanding. You never feel like a "child adult adoptee" because you've always been treated with respect by the people who count the most when you're a kid--your parents.

It's not just people in the adoption movement who bother me. The article that got me thinking about this is about a married couple where the woman is a carrier for a genetic disorder that doesn't diminish brain functioning but the child is born with no sweat glands, teeth buds and sparse hair. It's the inablity to sweat that's really dangerous.

I thought that this was a brave article, and I thought that the author was brave when she said that she couldn't have an abortion after testing at twelve weeks of pregnancy. What got to me was the reasons she didn't want to adopt:

"Why don't we just adopt? This is an unsettling question because it points to what must be our selfishness. But the idea of creating a life from our two bodies seems to us a consummation of sorts. Maybe this means we need to work on our relationship - that we already, dangerously, see having children as a way of fulfilling something missing between us. But then, something is missing: our echo through time.When Dan and I visited the gravesite of his great-great-grandparents, I remember thinking with awe, These are the ancestors of my future children. History is the only purchase I have on my life - knowing the stories that meld to make my story - and it seems like a fulfillment of some kind, a continuation of narrative, for a child to know real biological melding of Dan and me."

While I find the author brave, I also find her selfish. As a child I spent much time thinking about ancestors. My grandmothers were my grandmothers because I knew them; my grandfathers' were my grandfathers because they had been my parents' fathers and my grandmothers' husbands. I could even rationalize my great-grandparents because they had been known to my grandparents. At what point does my parents family stop being mine?

Then I realized something. My mother knew almost nothing about her family outside the immediate relatives; my father who could talk for days without stopping, couldn't talk about his family past his grandparents. Not many Russian/Polish Jews could.

When I really began listening to other peoples stories I realized that the only people I knew who could recite their linage with any precison were WASPS, and somehow their familes all came off the Mayflower, were heroes in the Revolution, fought on the right side of the Civil War (depending on the part of the country they were from.) Somehow the perfect lineage stories ended with the beginning of the twentith century when their families suddenly became impoverished or the stories ended because their great grandfathers were the black sheep of the family, or their family lost contact with the rest of the family, or....

I began to realize that many people were reciting both true and made up stories that had been passed down through the generations until the generation became too close and their ancestors couldn't make up anymore stories, because of better record keeping, or the family had become too poor, and how could they say that their great grandfather was a hero of this or that when the family was just regular middle class?

I began to listen to the gaps in the stories. Yes it's nice to be able to go to a cemetry and see your great grandparents and maybe even Alexander Hamilton was a relative or Thomas Jefferson--but do we really want to get into Thomas Jefferson's lineage?

In the end what matters is the family we love; and the family that we remember either first hand or through stories by people who knew them. My neice will never meet my father but she will always know him and so will her children if she choses to have any. Maybe I'm rationalizing but I truly believe that since we're all the products of evolution, and since my birth mother was also of Russian/Polish Jewish descent somewhere along the line we had the same relatives. Maybe even in the nineteenth century.

But I have no desire to trace her family lineage and my family lineage to prove this. I'm not a big believer in visiting cemeteries. I carry my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents in my heart where they belong.

I began to understand this as a teenager; I truly understood it when my father died. It would be nice to know more history about my family, but is it necessary for my ego or was it necessary for my parents' ego? Thankfully, no.

Our family had a firm foundation and that foundation was based on love not genes. I am truly blessed.

See Courtingdestiny.com

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Last post for real on Blogger--personal responsibility

We have a president who talks about accepting personal responsibility. But he doesn't have to as he answers to a higher father who apparently does the accepting for him.

My last post talked about my cousin and how because he was an adult, and could be "normal" maybe if he took his meds, the responsibility for his life was shifted back to him. Many family members tried and failed to help him.

They accept, perhaps too much, personal responsibility for his problems, life and death. We were all taught throughout our lives to give back to our country because it gave us much.

I can send like Al Franken doing his "we can own land; we can vote...."schtick. I don't want to sounnd like him, and am the first to laugh because it sounds so dumb but is so true--and funny.

Many if not most people of all races and religions were taught to give back. Though maybe not as dramatically as Al Franken (or I) sounds.

My problem is, and will always be with the people who confess their "sins" and/or problems publicly, and feel that is enough. They don't have to rectify the problem because they stated it.

I'm not trying to be disrespectful: I'm trying to understand.

Why is publicly coming forth at Churches or other forums enough?

Why is answering to a Higher Father enough?

It doesn't help, say, a case worker who has a case load that should be divided among four people, after he makes an honest mistake and is the one to shoulder the blame.

It doesn't help the one family out of a hundred, he screwed up because he's under a time constraint, and couldn't observe closely enough.

It doesn't help the case worker's immediate superior who also has too many case workers, and not enough time.

It doesn't help that person's superior.

Yet they will get the shaft because they failed to take enough personal responsibility.

Or they might put it back onto the people lower than them because they don't have to take personal responsibility for a case that was much lower on the chain then them.

I'm using mental health as an example because it's on my mind now. It could be anything else.

I try so hard to understand how personal responsibility becomes the fault of the victim and I can't.

If anybody can explain this to me; I would love to understand.

I will be putting my post titles on Blogger with a redirect to WWW.Courtingdestiny.com

Feel free to answer at either site for now.

Cranky Liberal Speaks--my first guest columnist

Beyond what the Founders may have thought about church and state entanglements - which is what they were trying to avoid - the courts have consistantly ruled that the first amendment bars government action that leads to the endorsement, repression or entanglement with any religion. Government is defined as any agency of the state including schools, city hall, the court room or the DMV.

It is a misnomer to say that God cannot be mentioned in the school system. The courts have ruled that religion can be discussed as it relates to holidays or histroy, if it is germane to the overall discussion. That is why you CAN mention that Christmas is the story of the baby Jesus and his brith, and that Chanuka celebrates the oil lasting 8 days etc. They have also ruled that as long as religious holiday songs are part of a broader, SECULAR holiday celebration then it is ok. Same with the menorah or creche' at Christmas. In and of themselves they are not illegal as long as they are part of a Secular display.

Notice in every case the state is not endorsing RELIGION (note the government is NOT allowed to endorse the concept of religion over non-belief), rather including religious beliefs with other beliefs. Even teaching ID, if carefuly done probably will fit the bill on legal issues - though an scientific issues its kind of like showing cavemen with dinosaurs.

I really wish those on the fringe left would understand what the courts have decided and quit baiting those on the other side who just want to be happy with their faith. More so I wish the blow hards like James Dobson, Pat Robertson and the like would understand that in this country they get to choose for themselves and NOT for me. When both sides respect the other and play within the rules then maybe we can move off of this issue and onto the very real problems facing the nation.

National Religion

I don't believe that there will ever be a national religion in this country.

I also know the history of the First Amendment and how James Madison's original proposal for a bill of rights provision concerning religion read: ''The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed.''

I understand the debate that followed, but I think that Madison, and Thomas Jefferson who influenced him made their intent crystal clear.

For all of you who think that I don't check my facts, and that you can call me on things, oh but I do.

The first version of The First Amendment clearly stated that no national religion should be established.

The end.

On a roll

My computer's been drinking not me. Sorry Tom Waits I just love corrupting "my piano's been drinking not me." Been corrupting that song title for 25 years now, and most people never get it.

I could probably write a whole post just using song titles and phrases by Tom Waits, and Warren Zevon. It would read beautifully, and nobody would get it, including me.

Sorry had a pity-party type of day, and I need to entertain myself. I enjoy my own company, and am not in the mood for TV, movies, reading, company or anything fun but writing in my blog(s).

As I have already said somewhere, I'm a perfectionist who can't do anything perfectly. I'm a true obsessive/compulsive, but I hate being obsessed about things so I indulge my compulsive side by letting myself write until the cows come home, which is pretty difficult in the Upper West Side, of Manhattan.

Also I have never found a medication for obsessive/compulsives that doesn't have side affects such as depression and massive weight gain. I hate being depressed, and I was always kind of known for my looks, so I enjoy being hyper now. It lets me be productive and lose weight at the same time.

What does this have to do with my computer, the recovering alcoholic? It began crashing often months ago. Then it became corrupted with spam that I kept on finding everywhere. It was like sweeping shattered glass; I kept on finding more things for weeks. I installed a heavy duty virus program; it became much worse. I had always kept up with maintenance, it had all the latest Microsoft patches.

Bad moves. You can never really uninstall all of the programs, and they can play havoc. It took me awhile to understand that my computer, like me, is no longer 30, in computer years.

My computer is a thing of beauty with its 20 gauge steel chassis, okay LCD screen, mouse with charger, and streamlined cordless keyboard that does many things. When people see it for the first time they're amazed by its beauty, and how it blends into my surroundings.

I had the earliest version of XP; after a disc reinstall I now have the newest version. It's like having a new computer. One that actually works, and has new icons and features that I've never seen before.

But there's the me factor. I'm the person who can write great training manuals, but can't follow directions. That was the reason I was so good at writing manuals; when I first began training people I had one of the few eureka moments in my life.

I realized that other people thought sequentially and in steps. This had eluded me for 27 years. I only began doing well in school in my last two years of university when I took interdisciplinary classes in Urban Studies. It was then that I discovered the magic that writing a good paper brings.

But the knowledge that other people thought in sequential steps was probably the biggest thing I ever learned. I learned to put directions into their most simple form. I began to write like Hemingway if he had lost the machismo, and didn't tell stories.

I was a project supervisor in a project that had begun with 240 employees, was reduced to a 120, in a giant lay-off, none of us will ever forget as we partied for days. I still feel the hangover.

the project was expanded to over 1200 employees. There were 80 groups with a supervisor and fifteen employees. I was close with everybody in management. The human resources manager swore that they interviewed one person and another person showed up. We had some rather unique employees. God it was fun at first.

One day I asked the human resource manager aka Elena, one of the original Blenderbusters, if the project manager watched the new employees and picked out the ones who were (truly, sadly) brain damaged, and the behavioral problem employees, and saved them for me. Elena, who has a wicked sense of humor, just laughed.

It couldn't have been more obvious, because as soon as somebody learned the job, they were transferred out of my group. I have to say that I was one of the five highest paid supervisors--we were paid $8.39 hour. I did a lot of overtime so I made a half decent salary. I was the lower, hourly rung of management.

In 1979, apartments were affordable and I could actually live on the money but I was supporting the bum aka "the union organizer coder with the supervisor girlfriend," as The Village Voice called us.

He only came to work when he had to. Because he was my boyfriend, he was given special privileges and allowed to do what he wanted to do. That usually entailed staying home, drinking Dixie Beer, and smoking joints. Sometimes he would come to work and spend the day organizing for the union. Could I, granddaughter of garment center cutters, Socialists, and Communists; daughter of a couple who had attended ever session of Alger Hiss's trial (and told me about it in detail forever; though my father's recollections were going to change incredibly) object to the bum's behavior at work?

Yes I could and I did. None of you have ever had about 200 coders, and all of upper management, come up to you one day and say the same thing:
"Where I come from, they say 'don't piss on my leg and call it rain.'"

Nobody would explain it to me until Elena was finished giving the company's side about the union. Once again she couldn't stop laughing:
"He said 'where I come from...'"

The bum didn't have many friends in New York, but he loved mine who loved him in return. I felt left out of this giant lovefest as I had begun to hate him.

I haven't really gotten off track. This is the long explanation, and my being humble, about how much both my company and our client wanted me to be happy. Because Pia could do her manager's job and train the other supervisors in her division in new methods and procedures.

My manager called me Princess Perfect because I would do things over 20 times. There were many things that I couldn't do like keeping a good inventory, but I knew how to pick the one person in the group who could do it perfectly. I'm not untalented.

Through the years I've constantly challenged my brain by learning new careers, going back to school, and doing everything I can to stave those working neurons from short circuiting. I went to grad school in part to learn how to live a more successful older age. I'm not near there yet, but I believe in being prepared for everything.

My dad would have understood. When I was in my 20's he tried to get me to take a class on death and dying with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, herself. on the grounds that I had absolutely no interest in death or dying, and wouldn't be caught dead taking a course with my father, as it could have impeded my socializing, I refused.

Okay, now that I've established I was intelligent, still am intelligent, and since I began taking Strattera, I'm even more focused on my work, why can't I learn how to link to blogs?

It's driving me friggin crazy. I got rid of all the kinks in my computer; I know how to do it from Blogger; I just can't do it. The spell check's working; it had stopped working after the glass sharded. I know each step yet it never works. Lucia learned it in five seconds today and is going to teach me this weekend. I will learn it.

Blog Roll told me that I had reached the maximum number of free hyperlinks before I even inserted one; today when I tried paying the $19.95 it kept on rejecting my form without giving me a reason. I found that a bit insulting as i checked and re-checked the information, and on no line did that familiar red mark show up telling me what I had left out, or it didn't like.

I will have my links and my new-site to my liking by next Monday. It's almost there and filled many with categories so I can indulge in all my contradictory interests, some do go together. My compulsions won't let me write my more escapist fun things until the site's good. So it will be done this weekend.

First Amendment again and again

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Many people interpret this as meaning that people are free to practice any religion that they wish to. I totally agree. The second part of the, first part, of the sentence specifically states that.

What I disagree with is the inference that, therefore, separation of church and state isn't specifically spelled out.

IT IS IN JAMES MADISON'S ORIGINAL DRAFT. HE WAS INFLUENCED BY THOMAS JEFFERSON {Read National Religion)

I believe that the first part of the sentence means that the government plays no part in establishing a religion. If that doesn't separate church from state,what does?

Is the new argument going to be: my religion is already established; the government had nothing to do with establishing it, therefore the government should subsidize it, and declare it to be the national religion?

Or: all religions have already been created outside of the government and therefore each religion should be subsidized prorata to the amount of their members? I really can't see anybody arguing that and yet it could be a valid argument. Think about the amount of national holidays we could get. Don't forget all the displays outside the courthouse.

Okay that's really sick, but...So I decided to take the phrase apart.

What does the word "respecting" mean in that phrase?
I went to the oldest dictionary I could find Merriam's 1913 edition\Re*spect"ing\, prep.
With regard or relation to; regarding; concerning; as,
respecting his conduct there is but one opinion.

Choose a definition. Usually we would use the first two, and they both fit. I personally like the third:

We are of one, and only one opinion that Congress shall not pass a law establishing a religion.

We've already established that the second part says that people are free to practice any religion that they choose to.

You're right, all of you who have corrected me, it doesn't specifically separate church and state, yet the intent couldn't be plainer.

I don't often think that I'm right but I sure do in this case. One of the first things that I learned in school was that the United States was founded upon the principle of separation of church and state. All those teachers in Queens NY and Nassau County, Long Island, couldn't have been wrong could they have been?

You mean all my teachers lied to me? Omigod, I have to give back all my degrees and return to kindergarten!

Who's your mommy?

I read a comment this afternoon on www.cantkeepquiet.com post, on Who's Your Daddy on that sickened me. THE COMMENT SICKENED ME, NOT THE POST, that I loved.

Sorry have the hyperlink on Blogger problem, and can't get back into cantkeepquiet at all. Also probably have the Time Warner Cable-it's-icy-so-we-can't-function-problem, as I haven't been able to get into many sites, and my computer was just fine-tuned and has been acting like new. Now back to the subject....

Wish that I could get into the comment and paste it as I can't do it justice. Basically it said that Mulligan of Cantkeepquiet.com had prejudged as classless, a Fox show where a woman would pick her birth father out of eight possibilities.

The commenter, Matt T, (remember the name,I hope; won't give him the satisfaction of a complete namea and a Google entry) said that it was a very classy show where the woman not only met her birth father but three half-siblings (think there were more people) but had chosen to, and Mulligan should concentrate on more pressing matters like the Tsaunmi, the state of the world, world peace--you know all the important things.

A little lesson for Mr. T: Life, is made up of everyday happenings, and in times of tragedy, life goes on for the rest of us. We can feel the pain, we can give until it hurts, we can risk arrest for protesting the current administration, but we still live.

We still work, eat, sleep, get married, get divorced, have kids, lose people to natural death during disasters. In New York we learned that all the hard way.

Currently we are wondering why we even care about answering a comment by somebody who finds anything on Fox classy--except maybe The OC.

Because as an adoptee, I find it adoption "reunion" shows to be pandering, disturbing, unrealistic,insulting and the ultimate in classless behavior.

Occasionally I would tape an Oprah reunion show. They made me sick--especially when Oprah would smile at the camera and say, at the end, "not all reunions end like these."

Nor should any sane adoptee, who had "decent" parents want them to. They're feeding into a fantasy that should have ended somewhere in adolescence. I'm not a Cabbage Patch Doll.

Maybe I was lucky; my parents told me that I was adopted along with my name. They shared the story as they had been told it with my younger sister and me. They did leave out the illegimate part until I was twelve and would have figured it out soon.

I was going to turn this into a homage to my mother, but that will be in her own post. My mother was my best friend; we could communicate without speaking. She had an uncanny ability to know what I was feeling before I even realized it. I left home at eighteen, but our friendship continued to blossom, and became one of equals. It's been over three years, since she died, and I still go to call her when something, or nothing, happens.

My parents encouraged me to search for my birth mother so I always felt empowered, in many ways. They were my parents in every sense of the word.

I have nothing against meeting birth parents. I think it's normal to be curious and it's good to find out as much as I can about my DNA.

I've only had one set of real parents, and to meet a birth parent on TV, and "feel a sense of completion I've never felt before," would be a lie. How could I meet people I feel no connection to on TV?

To make these meetings glamorous is cruel to all the people who were adopted from foreign countries and never can meet their bith parents.

It's cruel to everyone who wants to meet their birth parents but won't be able to for some reason or another.

It's cruel to their families.

More than that it's one of the most private of encounters.

Would you want to meet your parents on TV?

People talk about Extreme Makeover being cruel as the people have only two months to make a physical transformation.

Meeting a birth parent entails a psychic transformation.

It can be awkward, scary, and leave a person emptier than before she found her birth parent.

I know. Meeting my birth mother was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. My birth mother is a good woman, but she's my mother in DNA and birth only.

I always thought of my birth father as the sperm donor since she had told the agency very little about him, and what she told them turned out to be made up.

My birth mother can never take the place of my mother, and when we met she began to understand that I wasn't looking for the original. If that sounds harsh it's the truth. i have room for many friends but only one mother and one father.

I'm aware that many people don't like their adoptive parents and/or have had horrible ones. Let me be harsh about this. How many "natural" children don't like their parents and/or have horrid ones?

We don't always get the parents we want or deserve. Nobody is more aware of that than an adoptee.

Adoptees are always aware that it's the luck of the draw. We're, all of us, randomly made. A random sperm meets a random egg--except in modern technology.

I was proud to be my parents daughter; but I knew adoptees who had parents I would want to ditch in a cabbage field.

I knew more adoptees who loved their parents. I went to a progressive sleep-away camp where there were more adoptees than usual. Or more kids who had been told that they were adopted.

I can't imagine what it's like to learn that you're adopted from a cousin or a neighbor. It's difficult for me to imagine parents being so insecure or suffering from other problems that keep them from telling their child. I consider it a form of child neglect.

But is any good served by meeting your parent(s) on TV? You become a public figure. What happens when the relationship goes south and the local newspaper decides to do a follow-up?

Do you refuse to do the interview, tell the truth or perpetuate another lie? I told my friends that I was adopted after we moved to a garden apartment development when i was four. They told their parents. Their parents called mine and asked if I was a chronic liar as I said that I was adopted but couldn't be as I fit in my family too well.

My parents didn't tell me this until I was an adult, but I sensed the undercurrents. Yet I remember how much their friends and family loved me. I was a welcome addition; not somebody who anybody ever thought of as being adopted.

Reunion shows deserve to be talked about.

Over 140,000 people died last week.

For the rest of us, life and all its little wonderful, horrible happenings go on.

Would anybody really want it any other way?

Who am I?

I wrote three posts on me for my new site. The site's up; I'm still feeling my way; this is one of the posts.

I am a study in perpetual motion.
I am hyper. Somebody told me he had found it endearing. I wish I had known that when I was younger.
I’m extremely self-conscious
At the same time I don’t give a damn as to what people think.
I thought that I was fat when I was a perfect size eight
To one person in the world I will always be nineteen and perfect
When I’m bored, tired, anxious, angry, I play with my split-ends. It’s better than yoga.
My mom always told me to be positive. I told her to stop being Miss. Mary Sunshine. Now I understand.
I have turned into, to my great surprise, a very happy person despite the horrible condition of the world.
In eighth grade I had to give a speech. I lost my voice and thought that I would never speak again.
I can be a compulsive talker
I thought that I was the most unpopular person in the history of the world in Junior High.
People made fun of me a lot then. They called me names and much worse.
I got more than revenge in high school, the later years, and college.
I’m physically awkward though it seems to bother only me
People like to make fun of me (in the good sense) because I can act like such a ditz
Then I give it back to them
I’m a perfectionist who can’t do anything perfectly.
I have fooled many people into thinking I’m a paragon of perfection
They confuse compulsion with perfection
I want to get married again when I’m in my 60’s. I have awhile to think about that
My parents were convinced that I was going to become an actress. They neglected to tell me until I was 40
My father was more into finding my birth parents than I was
He was naturally curious about everything
So am I.
Oh yes, I was adopted. I’m glad my family (adoptive) and I found each other.
I strongly believe in a woman’s right to choose. So did my mom.
My mother thought that a perfect mother-daughter activity was shopping at Loehmanns. I begged to differ as I hate shopping for clothes
I have always been known for the beauty of my best girlfriends; I wonder what that makes me?
My parents thought I was the most incredible baby and kid on earth except for my sister.
I peaked at eight
I have multiple learning disabilities that weren’t diagnosed until I was in my 30’s
Disabilities don’t make you a better person; they’re not a different able or any stupid cute expression.
They do make you stronger.
I had three serious marriage proposals by the time I was 21, I had been on about ten real dates in my life.
We didn’t date then, we hung.
I lived with a crazy man—well he was crazier than the others
I like making people laugh, and that’s good as I seem to do it without thought.
Sunday night is TV night; it’s the only time I watch live-not DVR’d TV.
I make exceptions for weddings, Bar and Bat Mitzvah’s and funerals.
I’ve never been to a funeral on a Sunday night
My hobby is collecting sky miles. Somebody already wrote a book about that.
I love to take long walks. When I go on vacation I walk a minimum of ten miles a day.
I should be in great shape.
I’m sort of fit; I guess that’s something