By the Numb-ers

I was half listening to the news last night and there was a whole lotta coverage about the Texas AR-15 who executed a whole bunch of people in a house and managed to get away. Children survived this massacre because mothers threw themselves over their children. 

The cops were almost surprised the kids were alive. You see, when a bullet from an AR-15 goes through you, it's probably not one bullet, more like 30 based on how fast the gun fires. And they leave a big, gaping exit wound. If you really wanna know, watch this: AMERICAN ICON THE BLAST EFFECT This is how bullets from an AR-15 blow the body apart. 

From GUN VIOLENCE ARCHIVE

That's why it was so hard to identify the kids at Sandy Hook. There wasn't much left to recognize. 

In April alone, there were 54 mass shootings. That's more than one-a-day. 57 people were killed, 247 were injured. Most of the mass shootings since 2012 involve AR-15 rifles. 

Still not convinced? On March 29th, Senator Dick Durban (D-IL) addressed the Senate Judiciary Committee on the subject. He was beyond eloquent . [Click the link above to listen to his speech. It's devastating.] 

"The events this week in Nashville, Tennessee, are still fresh in our minds.  The thought that a shooter went on the campus of a Christian school, a school for children, little children, this person who went on that campus blasted her way into the building and then took the lives of three, nine-year-old children and three adults… It is heartbreaking to think that we are reliving this scene over and over again where our children who are sent by their loving parents off to school, lunches in hand, never came home. Never. Came. Home.”  

I believe it's pretty safe to say the response is sponsored by the GOP and their handlers, the NRA. Wanna read what they have to say about "Assault Weapons" / "Large" Magazines," folks. Read it for yourselves.  Try not to vomit into your coffee cup. 

No other western country allows this kind of stuff to happen. 

And speaking of other countries, the march of death does not end with guns....it extends to women across this country...and I'm not even talking about actual abortions here. I'm talking about access to reproductive health care in general. 

Maternal Mortality ratios

This is about maternal mortality. That's when a new mother dies shortly after giving birth. It's really a function of lack of prenatal and postnatal health care. One would think in a country that claims to have the best health care in the world, we wouldn't be falling somewhere between Palestine and China. Actually, there are 84 countries on the list, and the US ranks 65th. Not exactly a good position, eh? 

But it's not a surprise either. In February, the NY Times posted an article about rural communities lacking labor and delivery facilities.  

From 2015 to 2019, there were at least 89 obstetric unit closures in rural hospitals across the country. By 2020, about half of rural community hospitals did not provide obstetrics care, according to the American Hospital Association.

The number of hospitals providing that service since 2020 has dwindled even further. And in states where abortion is completely banned, creating a moral dilemma for obstetricians, midwives, and doulas, professionals are departing in droves, leaving women to travel excessive distances to get any sort of care. Emergency care is almost non-existent. According to a variety of sources, rural women who live in an obstetrical desert are 3-times more likely to die during and in the year following pregnancy. 

Idaho, like other states that have criminalized abortion, finds itself with fewer medical students willing to come to a state where they can be prosecuted for providing certain levels of care for women. Boise State Public Radio examined the issue  making it very clear that the impact of criminalization has a massive rolling impact on medical accessibility. Dr. Ted Epperly, director of Full Circle Health in Idaho said:

“Today, it's around abortion care,” he said. “Tomorrow, it may be around gender-affirming care. The day after tomorrow, what could it potentially be about as well?”

Black, Indigenous, and Latina women who live outside of urban centers are at even greater risk. Often un- or underinsured, they go without any prenatal care at all. If they are living in rural areas, not only is there no guarantee a hospital within driving distance will even offer labor and delivery services, putting both mother and child into the high risk category.  Without access to reproductive health care, birth control is not necessarily available, and by extension, an increase in pregnancies will occur. 

What part of this is pro-life? 

Y'know, it may not be the most popular or obvious extension of this particular highway, but does anyone remember all the accusations and assertions made by the GOP that Democrats were practicing eugenics by allowing abortion on demand? That abortion would allow/encourage people to have "designer" babies? That gender determination would cause people to abort an "undesirable" gender/trait? Folks, there are still people out there that believe that stuff is what abortion is about. Never mind the life of the mother when an ectopic pregnancy occurs, or an embryo is so malformed that it is incompatible with life. Those tenuous life forms are now protected in some states, regardless of the health of the embryo or the mother because some jackass thinks it's killing a designer baby.

PBS Newshour did an interesting piece on what's going on in Idaho: Idaho’s strict abortion laws create uncertainty for OB-GYNs in the state. They interviewed both medical professionals and law makers. From the show:

Sarah Varney:

State Representative Mark Sauter, a Republican, lives in Sandpoint. He says he hadn't thought much about the abortion ban.

 

State Rep. Mark Sauter:

It really wasn't high on my radar, other than I'm a pro-life guy, and I ran that way, but I didn't see it as it had a real — having a real big community impact.

 

Sarah Varney:

Then he started talking with local doctors, including Amelia Huntsberger.

 

What I'm wondering is, for you personally, did you think about abortion as it relates to obstetric care for pregnant women?

 

State Rep. Mark Sauter:

No, I don't think I — it's like anything. You get exposed to something and, all of a sudden, you go, wow, there's a different way to look at this. You know, what are we going to do about all this?

 

Sarah Varney:

So, is Bonner the canary in a cold line in the coal mine?

 

State Rep. Mark Sauter:

It could be.

 

Sarah Varney:

With Sandpoint's maternity ward closing, Representative Sauter supported a bill that would have allowed doctors to terminate pregnancies to protect a woman's health, not just prevent her death. But that effort was shot down by other Republicans.

What struck me is that this guy, State Rep. Mark Sauter, knew nothing about women's health care yet he felt qualified to initially vote on a life and death topic. I think that speaks volumes for the core of the problem. Idaho is not the only state where uninformed, uneducated penises are making decisions as if we are living in the 18th or even the 19th century. 

And here's the last piece on the numbers: if you look at the maternal mortality list, you will notice that just about every country but one improved their maternal mortality numbers since 2017. Wanna guess which country got worse?

You can call yourselves pro-life all you want, but these numbers don't lie. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

We lost another mensch last week: Harry Belafonte.

If you want to give yourself a moment of glee, go listen to CALYPSO.

It's totally joyful.

Pissed Off....For A Change

SCOTUS, which is acting more and more like SCROTUM, is hearing 2 challenges to the ridiculously unconstitutional Texas abortion law. The Washington Post distills the hearing this way:

The challengers say the court must intervene to stop an unconstitutional law designed to avoid judicial scrutiny. The Texas law is enforced by private citizens, who are empowered to sue anyone who helps a woman get an abortion. 

The law has effectively halted access to abortion in the second largest state and sent Texas patients across state lines to terminate their pregnancies. 

The cases on Monday center on legal procedural questions. Next month, the justices will review a separate Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks. In that case, abortion opponents are seeking to overturn Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed the right to abortion in 1992. 

A dozen states have passed laws similar to the six-week ban in Texas, which prohibits the procedure after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. Federal judges preemptively blocked state officials from enforcing the other laws.

There is a level of absurdity in these laws. They are supposed to STOP abortion, something they will never do. All they are going to do in send women back to illicit practitioners, coat hangers, and homemade poisons. This is not about protecting women, it is about killing them. 

Yes, I said killing women. 

Before Roe v. Wade, women died in back-alley abortions every day. They killed themselves with coat hangers and homemade supposed abortifacients. Others carried dead babies to term, or babies with such severe deformities that they could not live much past birth. Pre-teen victims of rape and incest were forced to carry those babies to term. Yes, and some women terminated pregnancies as a desperate move to not have a baby. 

These new attempts to control women are nothing more than attempts to turn back the clock to a time when women were chattel. And men controlled women. And our uteruses were not our own, but belonged to a husband. I used to think we were beyond this. We are not. 

The day I see those same righteous folks picked to control men's penises is the day I begin to think this is about saving children. When I see the same folks rallying for a safety net for mothers and children after birth, I'll begin to think they are pro-life. When I see those same righteous folk out there rallying for boys and men to keep their dicks in their pants, I'll consider the possibility that they are serious about preventing unwanted pregnancy.  And the day they put restrictions of Viagra as a recreational drug, I might believe they are serious about sex for procreation only.

Would that it really was all about uterus control. But wait...it's not.

On October 8th, Bill Maher described what is happening in our country as a slow-moving coup. How is it our crack journalists haven't been talking about this as directly as Maher was that night? Do yourself a favor: watch this all the way through. Even if you saw it the first time, watch it again. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cR4fXcsu9w)

I happen to think he is pretty close to spot on. The right-wing of the GOP is already is motion if you can judge the emails going out. 

Thankfully, not everyone is rolling over. After Maher's show,  Liz Cheney, daughter of the Dark Lord Dick, tweeted:

Millions of Americans have been sold a fraud that the election was stolen. Republicans have a duty to tell the American people that this is not true. Perpetuating the Big Lie is an attack on the core of our constitutional republic.

This is not news to me...nor should it be to you if you're a regular reader of this blog. I've been saying it for a long time. 

But here's the thing. The abortion hearings are a test case for setting up SCOTUS to allow the overturn of an election. If the conservative majority can revoke women's rights in the nominative form of access to health care, they can continue with permitting the restriction of voter rights, support of gerrymandering, and repeal of civil rights for the LGBTQ community. Don't say I'm being alarmist here; we know the cases are moving through the courts for those issues. And once the court begins to act on those cases, the election is not far off. As Bill Maher said in that monologue,

Here are the easiest 3 predictions in the world:

• Trump will run in 2024 

• He will get the Republican nomination 

•  And whatever happens on election night, the next day he will announce he won.

It almost worked the first time. There were flaws in the plan. His team is working to fix those flaws as I type. If you need a reminder....click here: The Eastman Memorandums.

It's time to pay attention to the men behind the curtain.

Meanwhile...

Tomorrow is election day. Here in our little village, the only voting taking place is for the school board and the education referendum extension. And if you think that's a no brainer, guess again. Several of the candidates are anti-COVID protection measures of any kind, one sends his kids to private school and has no contact with our public schools, and one has put up Reese's Peanut Butter Cup look-a-like signs because his name is Reese. Judging by the debate, he has the intellect of a peanut butter cup. There are, however, enough sane candidates for which to vote and I will be voting for them and the extension.  

Educating our kids has to be a priority. I can only hope our school board believes our kids are worth educating in a way that teaches them the value of living in a democracy with justice for all. Yeah, I know. It's a stretch.

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Vote. 

Whatever election you have going at the polls on Tuesday,

Vote.

It's your town, your state, your country. 

Vote.

The Way We're Not Anymore

Back when I was a young whippersnapper in high school and still dreamed of digging in the Mideast, I got to have lunch with a prominent woman archaeologist. We had an amazing conversation. She talked about the places she'd been to dig, and I got to ask a gazillion questions. Then she asked me what I was planning for a speciality. Being the idiotic teenager I was, I told her: ancient semitic written language. Oh, she thought that was great, until I told her I wanted tomb walls and buried spaces. She tsk-tsked at me, sighed, and said, "you are ill-equipped for digging in the places you would need to dig."

I was stunned at her response. "Why?"

Her answer was perfectly blunt....and correct for 1968. She said, "You lack a penis." She explained there were other women with that speciality, but they were primarily attached to labs, libraries, and existing sites. None of them were actually digging because they were unable to get local permits. She said she hoped this would change, but probably not soon enough for me to do what I wanted to do.

As luck would have it, I left the world of archaeology in my sophomore year of university to pursue theater. My mother once told me she and dad got whiplash from the switch. Yeah, it was sudden. I decided to leave Oakland University in Michigan (for a variety of reasons) and applied to 6 schools: 5 archaeology programs and one theater program. I got into all of them and chose Skidmore College, still pretty much a girls' school at that time, where I studied directing, playwriting, and swearing-like-a-sailor.

You can't see me, but I'm there

Junior year, I had the unique opportunity to "intern" for a couple of weeks on a major motion picture. (6 nominations, 2 Oscars) and had a grand time doing it. Everyone was so nice and dragged me from meeting to meeting so I could get a real taste for film. Everyone except one actor, an ugly, pimply pig, who hit on and tried to grope me one too many times. The executive producer dealt with him on my behalf. The pimply actor still has acne scars and is a right-wing asshole with a MAGA hat. (Use your imagination; it's not hard.)

I chose the University of Minnesota for grad school because their directing program was supposed to be top notch: brand new theater building (lovingly called Rarig High) and ties to the Guthrie Theater. During my first week at the U, I was asked by three different people who I was going to sleep with for a fellowship. Turned out all the girls were asked the same question by the same three guys in basically the same fashion. A friend from Skidmore was a year ahead of me and I asked her if she had been asked. She said yes, but to ignore the assholes that asked me. Then she added that if I liked any of the assholes who had sway in any of the programs in which I was interested, fucking them would, indeed, help to speed any application. 

While there still may be place in the Mideast where owning a penis is a requirement for heading a dig, the other stuff is gradually fading away....or so we would like to think. 

Donavan's Reef (1963)

Rejecting sexual harassment is a pretty recent phenomenon. Women have been treated as chattel, objectified, abused, threatened, brutalized, and humiliated simply for being women. Women attempting to get ahead these days may not be as readily abused, threatened, or humiliated in the workplace AS MUCH, but it happens and tolerating that class of behavior is becoming increasingly unacceptable. This is a good thing. Depicting that kind of behavior in art is not as easy as it once was. How do you tell the story now? Do you wipe away film and plays which show women being treated as they once were? Anything with a rape scene is forbidden? I'm not sure what you do with the past, much less how to tell a story in the future. 

Do hugging, air kissing, and shoulder squeezes constitute sexual contact and harassment? I suppose if you are uncomfortable with close physical contact from huggers, then yeah, it does. If you're okay with a hug greeting, probably not. But where is the line? If you're an exuberant hugger, you probably wanna start asking permission to hug. Or is that weird?

But that's not really the question I have in mind tonight as I listen to interviews with Andrew Cuomo's accusers. If some of this stuff happened 30, 40 years ago, I would have to say the climate has changed; what was "acceptable" misbehavior is no longer tolerated and is now deemed criminal. Should Andrew Cuomo be held accountable for his inappropriate actions? Hell, yes! He portrayed himself as a champion of women while his hands were doing exactly what his mouth said should not be done. There is a contradiction here that must be reconciled by not just the citizens of New York State, but by the court of public opinion in this nation.

[UPDATE: Governor Cuomo has resigned.]

Everyone knows at least one hugger and probably at least one squish-hugger. You know what I mean. And there are some people you really don't want to hug for a variety of reasons, and you shouldn't have to apologize, explain, or feel weird about stating as much. You learn to deflect and avoid. Everyone should have that skill...even little kids. If they don't want to be on either the giving or receiving end of a hug, they shouldn't be. That's their right as a sentient human being. 

But what do we do with the portrayals? GONE WITH THE WIND has huge problems, but in 1939, civil rights had not moved into the forefront of our national collective conscience. Is it still a good movie? Do we reevaluate it from our perspective? What about THE BIRTH OF A NATION, with its black-face performances and treatment of the Klan? Does that these were even produced and were popular in their day require reevaluations? Yes, but not to ban them. 

If you've never seen the 1939 version of THE WOMEN, you should find it and watch it. For women of the 21st century, it's 2 hours and 20 minutes of non-stop mixed messages. Norma Shearer is a joy to watch, you want to kill Joan Crawford, and Rosalind Russell is bonkers. It's a total period piece and the ending sets me off every time, although it's supposed to be a comforting, happily-ever-after kinda thing. But what's important about this film is that it captures rather succinctly the condition of upper middle class women of the period quite well. You get a glimpse into a different kind of life with expectation. Hardly modern for us, but at the time? It was a total leap forward. How do we judge those characters? By their standards...or by ours?

There is a certain amount of necessity in watching old movies to see how the relationships between men and women unfold according to the period. There are going to be scenes that are intolerable today, but do we discard the images, or just note that the portrayal is not reflecting modern values? I keep thinking about Debbie Reynolds popping out of the cake in SINGING IN THE RAIN. The subsequent scene with the cake is really funny in context, but scantily clad women popping out of cakes is objectification, is it not? Just because we don't pop outta cakes these days, does that mean we have to give up the Good Morning dance scene?

Which brings me to the last station on this railroad. Is there a cutoff for prosecution? Is there a point before which we just have to accept much of that questionable behavior as normative? I'm not talking about rape, violence, or sexual slavery; I'm talking about the casting couch, the "friendly" groping, and involuntary squish-hugging. I'm not suggesting they were okay at any level, but at the time they took place, was an action normative as opposed to aberrant? 

I cannot see me marching into Minneapolis City Hall with a complaint about being propositioned 40 years ago. Yes, it was as despicable then as it is now, but the difference is back then, it was SOP: Standard Operation Proposition. Did I complain about it back then? I was warned off of that scenario. On the flip side, when my MFA degree application was declined because I was "another Jew in the department" I did take action, and yes, I have an MFA. While similar in harassment and verbal abuse, the antisemitism thing was actionable. The sexual innuendo was not. At least not at that time.

In coming to grips with today's expectations and environment, one has to come to grips with the past, recent and long term, as well as the present before a future for behavior can be standardized. This may sound simple, but it's not. I believe there needs to be demarcation in the timeline for culpability. 

At the same time, I believe if we are going to move forward as a culture, a community, and as human beings, we need to set our sights on current positioning and future behavior. Teach the kids, accept nothing less than fairness and equitable behavior from our leadership, and most of all, stand up to walk the walk. Talking isn't good enough anymore. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you have a 23 years old furnace and air conditioner,

have them checked routinely for safety.

Being proactive saves time, money, and lives.