Mother’s Day
This is my mom at 14. Queen of the drag race. A hot number by anybody’s standards. And only 14. We make a big deal out of the Miley Cyrus’ and the Jamie Lynn Spears’ but just look at my mom at 14. My mother is mostly strong but like the rest of us, occasionally breaks. She has a gift for saying exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time but mostly, she means well. She can’t handle a crisis and often loses it with intense dramatic flair. She is foul-mouthed most of the time anyway but during a crisis the cursing reaches a fever pitch — “cocksucker” and “asshole” were used quite frequently during my childhood.
What I admire most about my mom is how she turned her life – a pregnant teen high school drop-out – into what she’s become today – a smart business woman and property owner. She can’t spell to save her life, knows next to nothing about history, math or science; her education has come from living, struggling and watching a lot of TV. Self-educating sometimes builds more interesting people. My mom is one of a kind – no one who knows her would dispute that. It was a hard life for us. Four kids to a single mother back in the ’60s in Topanga – one creepy boyfriend after the next – no money, no new clothes – but somehow we’re all here anyway. My mother ain’t perfect. No mother is. And like most will tell you, once I became a mother I understood how difficult it must have been for her, with four of us. She screamed and yelled, threw things, smacked us around – and now I see how, no matter what your hopes and dreams are, despite everything you wanted to do somehow being a mom feels like complete failure from Day One.
So Happy Mother’s Day to my mother, my crazy, imperfect, unique, mess of a mother – in truth, I’m happy I had one at all.
Storm Over Everest Not a Moment Too Soon
With my obsession with all things Everest continuing without pause, I am happy to report that Frontline will be airing Storm Over Everest this Tuesday night, May 13. Dang, talk about timing! The doc was made by David Breashears, who was the guy on the mountain back in 1996 on the IMAX team. His team ended up helping many of the stranded climbers, especially when the hideous South African team failed to offer up any help at all. Breashears has summited Everest 11 times by now but he says that tragic day in 1996 continues to haunt him. I’m not sure if Jon Krakauer or Sandy Hill will be interviewed. Hill was a bit of a joke in social circles after Krakauer’s book outed her to be a socialite only there to get Scott Fischer some publicity. She was seen being short-roped up the mountain at a crucial juncture.
At any rate, good old Beck Weathers will be interviewed. This is a guy who laid in the ice and was left for dead. Snowblind and frostbitten he somehow rose from near-death and walked back to camp. It was for Weathers that a brave pilot chose to fly up there and risk his own life. What a night that must have been to live through; it is no wonder that Breashears and others remain haunted by it. I myself am haunted by it anyway. I’m trying to prevent myself from re-reading Into Thin Air. Emma, my lovely child, re-reads books all the time. I think she’s read The Deathly Hollows at least three times. My younger sister also has been known to re-read her favorite Stephen King books. I don’t think I’ve ever re-read a book. I’ve certainly watched films repeatedly.
I probably will read the Krakauer book again in case I missed some crucial details the first time. And anyway, there isn’t a lot of information about that Everest tragedy. A few movies and a couple of books. The TV movie of Into Thin Air is pretty awful. Someone could make a magnificent one with enough money, although it is pretty sad. The sinking of Titanic was sad too and look how that turned out.
When Obama Wins…
Okay, I’m jumping on the bandwagon and reporting on the funny ways the phrase “When Obama Wins” has spread throughout the net. Kottke is the first place I read about it. He’d made a microsite of users comments of “When Obama Wins.” And there’s this. And then there’s Adaptive Path, who pointed me to the buttons.
It’s funny to me because so much hope is being pinned on Obama I cannot imagine the pressure. He’ll fix this, he’ll fix that – he’ll change the world! It seems a set-up for some kind of fall from grace, eh? He’s the best we got, though, so we might as well join the fight.
Stupidity on Parade
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, referred by Richard Dawkins, the Creationists:
…Have spent years working school boards, with only minimal success. Now critics of evolution are turning to a higher authority: state legislators.
In a bid to shape biology lessons, they are promoting what they call “academic freedom” bills that would encourage or require public-school teachers to cast doubt on a cornerstone of modern science.
A handful of states have considered such bills in recent years, but backers are now organizing a national movement, with high-profile help from actor Ben Stein. His new documentary, “Expelled,” argues that educators suffer reprisals if they dare question evolution; in an attempt to spur action, he has held private screenings for legislators, including a recent showing in the Missouri statehouse.
The academic-freedom bills now in circulation vary in detail. Some require teachers to critique evolution. Others let educators choose their approach — but guarantee they won’t be disciplined should they decide to build a case against Darwin.
This is not a matter of questioning authority; this is a time-waster. We have been there, done that. If they want to spend time debunking Darwin they ought not to put the kids in school back a century or two while they figure it out. It seems to me it’s the students who suffer from this needless and unfounded war.
Question Authority
As more details come to light about the Fritzl case, one of the weirdest and saddest stories I’ve ever read, it has reinforced the idea that nothing good comes from being blindly obedient. If you don’t question authority bad people get away with things. I’ve learned it in my own personal life, having been involved with a psychotic man who put up a good front but was so unhinged beneath the surface no one dared disrupt his state of mind for fear of a tantrum at best. Herr Fritzl, however, is a different animal altogether. He truly doesn’t deserve to live. I wish someone would lock him in a dark room for the remainder of his days.
What continues to trouble me is how no one questioned his weird behavior. No one dug deeper when he said his daughter ran away to join a cult. What cult? Where was it? Why not inform the police so they could go look for her? None of the siblings nor the mother nor the teachers at the school seemed to care about Elisabeth’s whereabouts. If one person in the long chain had perhaps they could have spared this poor woman’s wasted life at the hands of a living demon. Neighbors who heard childlike noises in the cellar, a wife whose husband had rape convictions on his record and was a known sex addict yet he never had sex with her, preferring instead to have it with his own daughter — children mysteriously showing up the doorstep, all of whom probably looked a little too much alike…question authority, even if it means risking everything to do so. And while you’re at it, trust only a very few. In some cases, you can’t even trust your own husband, as this case, and many others like it, illustrates.
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About Me
I spend way too much thinking about me.
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