Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Welcome, Winter Light!
As the light returns and the year turns, I wish us all a brighter, happier, healthier 2012. I hope we can embrace connections with all life on the planet.
Here in Florida for the past seven months my blessings abound. I’ve grown closer to Lisa and her world than I ever imagined. Lisa and Cheyenne unfold like high wire acrobats, full of the energy, vitality, and silliness. I’ve relished reconnecting with old friends around the world—visits, phone, email—as I treasure encounters with strangers.
I’ve learned to ask for help—to find my lovely acupuncturist Dr. Marlo waiting for my Jeep to roll up so she can carry my oxygen and bag in, to take the arm of the dental assistant carrying my bags out the door as I tell the receptionist that we’re going out dancing. Because I’ve been forced to slow down and see more, I’d like to believe I‘ve grown in compassion for those enduring far more suffering.
All my life I’ve craved solitude for reading and writing. Now that I have it in abundance I haven’t kept track of all the books I’ve read. When I hit a low point, Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness and the Search for Meaning (or as a Soul Journey in a revised edition) by Jean Shinoda Bolen (Touchstone, 1996) helped me put my own descent into darkness in a symbolic context that consoled me.
I’d enjoyed Bolen’s Goddesses in Everywoman decades ago and was receptive to her mythic approach. She takes Persephone’s abduction into the underworld, the Descent of Inanna, and Psyche’s last tasks as metaphors for what we face living in the shadow of death. These stories light a path to spiritual and psychological growth. Lighten your load. Cut to the bone to find out what and who really matter now. Ask the big soul questions: Why am I here? What did I come to learn, heal, do? Who and what did I come to love?
Illness that leaves you scared and shaky, dependent on others, gasping for breath forces you to slow down and strip down. Inanna’s Descent into Hell resonates for me. The Queen of Heaven and Earth must divest from all her comforts and symbols of power and authority until she’s dead meat hanging on a hook. Only then she can be reborn. How does your soul expand through crises you didn’t choose?
Bolen offers advice for the assertive and curious to resist being obedient patients passively accepting that medical world can fix everything with drugs and surgical weapons. We must strip away people and anything that no longer rings true and create our own healing circles and strategies. I’m still searching.
Welcome, Winter Light and Darkness!
Sometimes I want to howl like the coyotes I remember in the night in Corrales. I miss Doris—seven months living apart. I miss my circle of memoir writers and tarot readers, all my NM friends, parties, political rallies. I miss ABQ theatre, any theatre, performing Mabel, writing play reviews. I miss casually cruising art festivals and galleries, buying jewelry from Native artists, discovering NM culture.
I miss Corrales, living in our beautiful casa, watching the mountains change color, enjoying our Southwest art everywhere. I miss my library and particular books that I had to give away in May. I miss travel just for fun. I miss taking walks, swimming, yoga, going and doing whatever I want whenever. I miss my energy, vitality, independence, autonomy. I miss my previous body and life.
Doris arrives here next week and stays with me 16 days, most of it to, from, and in Durham, NC, where we go for a full week of grueling tests 1/9-13/12. The following week Duke will tell me when they want to see me again or when we need to move to Durham. Duke wants me living in Durham two months before they anticipate doing the transplant surgery in order to get me as fit as possible.
After surgery I'll be in hospital for 2-3 weeks and then at least two months of rehab exercise. They advise planning to live in Durham 5-6 months. After that, we'll move on somewhere, but we don't know where. We'll have time to consider options in that post-transplant period. We must sell the house in NM before we move to Durham so that Doris is free to leave Corrales.
I hate to admit what a news junkie I’ve become this month. I thought I’d ordered the Sunday New York Times only, but the daily paper started appearing—my mistake—and I got hooked. I’ve become embroiled in the insanity of struggles and suffering around the world. Will the wise and good-hearted win over the greedy and cynical? Of course, we all have a bit of both in us. In January I switch to Sunday only.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
My Medicare/Heath Insurance Tale
“Occupy United Health!” I proclaimed, fist raised for edification of fellow cardio-pulmonary patients waiting for blood pressure check at Winter Park Hospital exercise room. “Are they the worst?” asked a sharp-nosed woman in her sixties. My cell croaked its frog ring. “This is Susan from United Health.” Did I conjure her? She researched my problem all day—on her blackberry while driving, missing her turn, spilling her coffee, running late—but by 10 pm had no answers.
In July the Duke financial consultant outlined lung transplant costs--$600K plus for medical alone (not counting drugs or housing in Durham for 5-6 months). I’d have to find a way to cover the 20% ($120K) not covered by Medicare. I thought I had it. My 2012 Wisconsin guide showed it would fund lung transplants, as they hadn’t in 2011. In early October, someone in Madison assured me I’d be covered in 2012.
But on Thursday, 12/1, when I called my current secondary (WPS) just to be sure, they said No. Early Friday I called Madison to discover that my policy didn’t fall under “Retired Wisconsin employees for whom Medicare is primary” (seemed right) but under “Medicare Plus,” which funds bone marrow and kidney transplants but not lungs. No insurance on the menu would pay since I didn’t live in Wis.
Thus I began a frantic search of websites (Medicare, private insurance companies advertising Medicare replacement) and phoning everyone that anybody suggested, jockeying my landline and cell because invariably somebody would need to consult her supervisor who would have to call me back. Humana said flat out that nobody would insure me with a pre-existing condition. Hadn’t that been eliminated under the new health plan? Not until 2013.
A kind nurse at WPH suggested I register a fundraising campaign with National Foundation for Transplants. “Some people give spaghetti dinners,” she smiled. This is what health care in America has come to? We try to finance $120K out of pocket expenses with spaghetti dinners? I understood anew how Americans go bankrupt paying for health care.
Someone of the 6 or 8 I spoke with from a senior line in Orange County, Florida, suggested I ask my doctor. Nobody at my pulmonologist’s knew what insurance other lung transplant hopefuls used, only know what insurance they take for their procedures, not what Duke in NC would take.
As a last resort, I emailed my pulmonologist. Next day I was headed for help. Lisa was going to help me into a senior center with my oxygen tank on my rollator where someone would answer Medicare questions one-on-one at 12:30.
Instead we went to an insurance office five minutes from my apt where I bought Plan F with United Health (ahem!) through AARP. I could transfer from WPS (a Medicare Plus plan financed with an employee trust fund) to another Medicare Advantage Plan without cutting off one form of coverage and starting another and with no questions about pre-existing conditions. I had to FAX a letter to Wis asking to discontinue my policy in order to transfer to a United Health Plan. Premiums for this (Cadillac?) plan plus drug coverage will cost me only about $250 a month but will cover excess and catastrophic expenses beyond what Medicare pays after I have $10 or 15K out of pocket expenses.
Late Wed a woman called from Madison to say she’d just been given my FAX (The 11th Hour) and could do what I asked—discontinue Wis coverage. But did I know I’d lose $18K accumulated in an escrow fund from my unused sick leave? Why would I want to lose all that money changing from a plan already paid for to one where I’d be paying? If I lived in Wis I could get a PPO that would cover lung transplants in Wis. She didn’t get it. I don’t live in Wis, and no hospitals there do lung transplants on people over 60. Could I freeze my escrow funds in case I wanted to transfer back to a Wis plan? What if I move back to Wis? She seemed dubious, but sent a form for my request.
Victory? I’m one of the lucky ones. I can afford to pay for health insurance—even Plan F. I may pay $18K out of pocket in 2012 and may lose $18K in Wis—better than paying $120K. I’m assuming United Health will give me a policy with my pre-existing condition. I won’t know until I get a policy in the mail hopefully before the end of 2011. Why does it have to be so difficult? Why is the USA the only major country with no national health care?
Meanwhile, I completed the first phase of my cardio-pulmonary rehab and “graduated” to the next less closely monitored phase for which I pay $50/month. It’s increasingly arduous to push myself with more and more oxygen through weight-lifting warm-ups, 1.8 mph for 18 minutes on treadmill, 10 minutes on recumbent bike, quad weight training, and cool down. By the time I’m finished I’m wiped out.
Next entry will give my reflections on embracing the darkness of the solstice.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Courting Equality and Barbara Grier
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender equality/liberation should be a done deal in 2011. But apparently not, if a major political party thinks that its nominee for President of the US must be opposed to such progress as marriage equality or women’s rights to control their own reproduction.
The two topics above are converging in my head just now because Pat Gozemba just sent me a copy of the marvelous documentary history of the struggle for marriage equality in Massachusetts that she wrote with her partner Karen Kahn, and Barbara Grier died this week.
Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America's First Legal Same-Sex Marriages (Beacon Press, 2007) would make an excellent holiday gift for every politically progressive home on your list. The photographs by Marilyn Humphries made me weep even before I read the fast-moving text. Descriptions of legal struggles, no matter how important the issues, usually make me yawn. But Pat and Karen have made the tale of winning equality read like a thriller. I couldn’t put it down.
The magic in the fast-paced narrative and heart-melting pictures comes from the stories of real people. The book chronicles the lives of seven couples, plaintiffs in the suit for equality, and their children. Mary Bonauto, the winning lawyer, is the brains and face of the final push, but the whole lesbian/gay community and maybe the whole Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the collective Hero.
Despite outspending by national deep pockets of right-wing fundamentalists and the forever backward Catholic Church and the lies they tell about gay people, Justice prevailed. Everyone wins when everyone has equal rights.
Second, Barbara Grier’s passing this week makes us pause to commemorate a woman who spent her life ferociously focused on promoting lesbian visibility and lesbian literature, finding lost writers of an earlier era and searching out new lesbian writers. Just put her name in your search engine and up will come dozens of obits across the country.
I admire her passion for excavating lesbian literature and acknowledge that Lesbian Nuns wouldn’t exist if she hadn’t pushed us to write it. But my gratitude is still wrapped in a bit of outrage for the ways she sold the book. However, we must not let the controversy about those sales swamp out the historic significance of the book for readers just coming out in 1985 or its lasting impact as a watershed moment in lesbian and feminist publishing.
My personal story in progress tentatively titled Gathering Sisters: My Lesbian Nuns Story will tell what I remember. Perhaps even more important for clarifying the book’s lasting meaning for the scholarly world will be the history of its publication currently in progress by Joanne Passett, historian and award-winning writer/scholar, tentatively titled Lesbian Nuns: Revered and Reviled.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Report from Duke Lung Transplant Center
Doris and I drove to Durham, NC, last Saturday and Sunday (11/5-6) for a second battery of tests all day Monday. Duke pulmonologist Dr. Alice Gray believes that my lungs have “progressed” more rapidly than anticipated in the past three months. The full team will decide next Tuesday, but they may ask me to return in 3-4 weeks for more testing. I hope they decide I can wait until 2012.
When I return they will probably decide when we need to move to Durham. Ideally they want you doing their exercises at the Duke Center for Living five days a week four hours a day for six weeks before surgery. They want me to be in top physical shape in every way before they do surgery. When they think I’m ready for transplant, I’ll be “listed” and given a beeper. When my new lung is ready, I must be on the operating table in two hours. Lungs are the most fragile organs. Size and blood type must be compatible.
I know that my lungs are deteriorating because I need more oxygen for everything. I can walk only a short distance (needing 4-6 liters of continuous flow oxygen per minute). Standing up is an aerobic exercise for me. Doris is helping me find energy conserving aids in the apt. I have a junior chair in the kitchen and a bath chair in shower. I do as little as possible in both places.
I may be unusually debilitated at the moment and hope to regain some energy. I had to take antibiotics for ten days, which left me constantly nauseated and exhausted. The first day off antibiotics we got on the road to NC.
I fetched Doris from the airport on Thursday, Nov. 3. We were both exhausted and happy to just Be Together in what she calls my “tree house.” She loves the pond, fountains, ducks, herons, and especially the turtles that swim right up under my balcony. We ordered Chinese delivery, which may become my mainstay.
On Friday evening the DeVore’s whirled in with their own Chinese take-away and then out in a couple of hours. They regaled us with pictures and stories. Dave and Cheyenne played Chinese Checkers, pointedly not inviting me to join them because I always win. “Can’t you let Cheyenne win?” asks Doris. No, when she beats me she will have learned how.
By the time Doris and I headed northward on Saturday, it was already after noon, but we made it to the Best Western in Florence, SC, an hour after dark. On Sunday I felt strong enough to push my oxygen a short way on my rollator into Trader Joe’s in Raleigh with frequent pauses to sit down. We arrived at the Durham La Quinta about 2:30. After lunch at Red Lobster next door, we did a practice run to Duke Medical so that we could find our way in the morning.
Monday started with 8 am lab tests and ran non-stop all day. We stole half an hour for bfst/lunch by convincing the med psych evaluator rosy-cheeked scholar Patrick Smith, PhD, that he could certify us sane and stable in half an hour—not the full hour allotted. Thus we could grab a sandwich at Subway.
Happily we arrived at my tree house in daylight on Wed. Coughing up gobs of mucus had frightened and exhausted me. I called my FL pulmonologist’s office for advice on the road. I was told to come in on Friday afternoon.
Yesterday I did succeed in pushing myself through most of my exercise routine— 15 minutes on the treadmill but only at 1.4 mph on 6 L oxygen and 10 minutes on recumbent bike with no resistance. After that I met with the pulmonary support group for the first time, but it wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped. Most had been coping with COPD for years, and none required the amount of oxygen I do. The nurse who led the group talked about stress over holidays. Most of the old breathers claimed they’d given up stress years ago.
While I was at WP Hospital, Doris and Lisa went to IKEA. I knew they were both having a good time stimulating the Swedish economy. After meeting up with Doris, we spent three hours at the pulmonologist’s office where I was told to take Zyrtec and Mucinex and come back in four weeks.
It’s a long strange trip ahead. After Doris leaves early Tuesday, I’ll get back to writing. I have all the LN files here now. I hope I can draft my Florida chapters in the next two months before we have to pull up stakes again and head to NC.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Feminist Forum at Rollins College, October 2011
Gloria Steinem drew an overflow crowd to the Rollins gym this past weekend for a surprisingly intimate yet rousing retrospective on the women’s movement—past, present and future. Three Rollins presidents and many of my former colleagues showed up.
In the posed picture of Rollins women, I’m amazed to find myself between Past President Rita Bornstein and Gloria Steinem with Lynda Glennon and Twila Papay, old friends and colleagues.
Veteran Feminists of America, a group of women involved in NOW and other feminist political groups in the sixties and seventies, sponsored the conference to celebrate the 45th anniversary of NOW.
Wendy Brandon enlisted students from her feminist theory class to interview twelve of the VFAs for an oral history project and asked me to moderate the final session on the Legacy of Feminist Activism. What fun! Two other sessions examined history and coalition-building.
In the picture below, you have left to right: Amy Hackett, student Jamie Pennington, RK, women’s studies director Rhonda Ovist, Sally Lunt, Sheila Tobias, students Sarah Spurling and Norma Mangual Price, and Jacqui Ceballos.
Lisa joined me for all Saturday events and pushed me from place ot place in my rollator when I was too breathless to walk. I couldn’t have done it without her. She enjoyed seeing her old profs.
I was thrilled to see so many of my old colleagues who had helped me launch women’s studies at Rollins three decades ago. They said I sounded the same as ever—like the good old days when I was leading the charge. It felt fantastic to be back in the saddle again. Again in 2011 at Rollins we were riding a tidal wave of energy and enthusiasm into the future. Rollins women’s studies gave me a certificate for “pioneering feminist leadership.” Wowza!
Let’s hope this return to Rollins, if only for a weekend, creates new connections and jolts me into writing about those years (roughly 1979 to 92—my forties in the eighties) when we (all my women’s communities) forged onward through backlash. My blocked creativity now for that period is probably rooted in my own conscious memories of pain, strife, frustration, and grief that must be faced if I write the truth. Lesbian Nuns came out in 1985, and my mother died at the end of the year. I burned out. And I found Sisters Everywhere. Truly “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”
Doris arrives tomorrow for twelve days. On Saturday we drive to Durham, NC, where I have another evaluation scheduled next week at Duke Lung Transplant Center. We’ll be back here by the end of the week, but I may be away from email for a while.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Zora Neale Hurston Festival, Jan. 21-29, 2012, in Eatonville
Come to Orlando in January for the 23rd ZORA Festival of Arts and Humanities in Eatonville, the oldest incorporated African American municipality in the US.
Last week I had lunch with N.Y. Nathiri, Director of the ZORA Festival, the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum, and the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community. NY said we were commemorating almost a quarter century of working on ZORA projects. NY grew up in Eatonville, and her grandmother knew Zora.
NY and I met in 1987-88 on a team of activists resisting widening Kennedy Blvd through Eatonville into a four-lane highway, which would have destroyed the community. We had people from the community, local educators, and a socially and culturally responsible FL state representative. We decided to celebrate Eatonville’s most famous daughter.
The first ZORA Festival began in January 1989 with Alice Walker as keynote speaker. Brilliant! The DOT of Orange County Florida never mentioned the highway project again.
The 2012 ZORA Festival will kick off celebrations of the 125th anniversary of Eatonville with a focus on landscape architecture. Click here http://www.zorafestival.com/ for information on the festival and a handy Donate button so that you can be a part of keeping the ZORA Festival alive.
The arts grab people’s hearts and souls more than political speeches do. We know that all arts organizations are struggling to stay afloat right now. I plan to donate $100 or more. Please join me.
Every festival celebrates the arts and culture of the African diaspora. Music, dancing, visual arts, and lots of food from all over! You could simply eat your way through the weekend. And you can visit me here in central Florida.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Home in Florida (back then and now)
Now in the middle of spending ten months in central Florida, I’m remembering my 12-14 years here back then (1979-1993). My heart melts when I remember the sweet bungalow that Lisa and I called home 1981-93 on a tree-draped dead-end street, a two-mile bike ride to Rollins. It was love at first sight. It looked like Home! And it was. Lisa went through high school and college living there. Boys picked her up for dates and prom on that front porch even though I stood, arms crossed, grimly smiling, growling protectively like a mama panther warning them to keep their distance.
Friends and strangers called our Winter Park home cozy and comfortable, meaning small. It was all the space we needed (and could afford) then—two bedrooms, one bath, a dining room large enough for six to cluster around our claw-foot round oak table for family feasts, and a long living room with a wood-burning fireplace where we took off our shoes and put our feet up, held celebrations, hosted meetings and parties. In that big room when I was Prez of Orlando NOW (1981-83 I think) we desperately plotted strategies for ratification of the ERA in FL as time ran out. After we lost that, we shared our lives in CR sessions in our home on violence against women.
I often took my morning coffee and my last-minute class prep out to the glider on the screened front porch. Sometimes I graded papers on the screened back porch while the washer/dryer chugged out clean clothes. Friends gathered in our narrow un-renovated kitchen between the dining room and back porch to chop veggies and gossip. It was on that kitchen wall phone with its coiled cord that I received my first call from Barbara Grier telling me that Naiad would publish “Convent Lesbian Stories,” that Nancy Manahan and must edit—a command.
When Lisa’s friend Lisa moved in with us in 1983 or 84, I moved to the back yard. A friend with carpenter skills converted the garage into a studio apt that I called my “tree house” protected by tall oaks. I stretched a long piece of plywood across two two-drawer filing cabinets and called it a desk. A long clothes poll hung in the far left corner as a closet. I spent most of my time in a comfy wicker chair with reading lamp on the right side reading, preparing for class, and writing in my journal. I had a small bathroom with shower and a kitchen of sorts with sink, tiny frig, and a two-burner hotplate. I slept on a futon in the loft which I climbed up to on a steep narrow ladder.
Friends had two responses to my tree house: “I love it. I want it!” Or “What are you doing living in the back yard when you have a house?” I did join the Lisa’s for dinner. But I loved my private retreat far from top 40 pop music and teen chatter. It felt like a nun’s cell and reminded me of my first room of my own in the Pender Hotel in Nebraska in 1965. I imagined I was still living the spirit of the vow of poverty with the wise words of St Augustine that I still believe: “It is better to need less than to have more.”
Home now in Florida
Now in October 2011, again I have a Florida address and phone, a FL driver’s license, a FL bank account, and a FL voter registration card coming in the mail. I haven’t quite divested from NM where my heart is, where Doris is, where we’re still paying a mortgage. For our realtor’s listing click and scroll down to 316 Morning Sun Trail http://www.robinriegor.com/Realtor_-_Robin_Riegor_-_New_Mexico_listings/index.shtml
At the end of September the DeVore family moved me into my new digs. Lisa wheeled me though IKEA on Oct. 1, for lamps, carts, tables, and a Poang chair. The next day the DeVores came with tools and put it all together. Dave snapped the picture of the three generations celebrating. Today Lisa brought up file crates I bought yesterday and clean laundry. She made lunch and helped me select a dress-up outfit for Rollins events this weekend.
I love it here at 2102 Gachet Ct. #205, Orlando, FL, 32807. My second floor home has a first floor entrance. I can drive right up to my door, take off my oxygen in the car, open my door, immediately get on the home oxygen concentrator which I leave on 24/7, and sit as long as I need on my carpeted stairs to get my oxygen back up before climbing to my space all on the second floor with its many windows and two balconies looking out over trees and a pond with fountains and ducks. When I do cardio-pulmonary exercises MWF at WP Hospital, I can’t do much else that day. I’m pacing myself, trying to learn patience (!)
What’s your story of the month?
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Home to Corrales
I did the wild and risky thing of flying “home” to Corrales (Oct. 4-10) for Doris’s birthday. With my magic wand I waved away altitude and pollution. I never stepped out of Casa Corrales except to admire Doris’s spiffing up the exterior. I told hardly a soul of my quick visit.
Best of all, my entire memoir class from Meadowlark Senior Center in Rio Rancho came to my home on Thursday when they usually meet at the Center. I told Doris five or possibly eight might show up. Fifteen memoir writers swarmed into our great room with stories and home-baked goodies to share. Several read memoirs of the memoir class and me. My stony heart melted (to quote Mabel, which I can’t help doing). I got downright dewy-eyed. We all knew that this really was the last time I’d meet with them, but we stay connected in our low-tech ways.
Home, where the heart and files overflow
At home in Corrales Doris and I dragged out files and clothes. Sorting clothes was easy. Doris has carted off two-thirds of my wardrobe to the League where women returning to work can shop for almost nothing. One small suitcase will hold the few winter sweaters I’ve saved for wherever we might be a year from now. Doris is shipping a mini-trunk to me here with FL winter clothes.
Sorting paper took most of my time. My feminist papers will become part of the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College in 2012. I’ve already sent three cartons of feminist theater memorabilia. Doris will send another two soon. Coming soon to the DeVore address are about eight cartons of my life story, including the LN files. I’ll read the bitter and the sweet, finish writing the story of my life, and ship about five cartons of LN files to Smith, maybe burn the bitter and save the sweet, and be done with re-membering for a while. That might take me through my seven-month lease.
Casa Corrales (316 Morning Sun Trail) will go public on the real estate market next week for $444K in honor of the four directions. Doris plans to stay in our home until it sells. Uprooting her from the land of her dreams will be far more difficult than digging up St Joe, buried beside our bushiest pine, the one you see as you turn in our driveway.
Please send your thoughts on “home.” Is it a location or an idea—a memory or a dream? Is where you pay the mortgage or where you stash your leftovers? I’ve been pondering while being vaguely itinerant. My Jeep has been my only constant remnant of home with its land of enchantment license plate and its Obamanos and “Democratic Women are the Life or the Party” bumper stickers.
I’ve moved five times in five months I’ve lived in central Florida: into the DeVore home for two weeks plus a five-day detour in Florida Hospital recovering from heart attack, into the ocean front condo at Indian Harbour Beach for a month, back in with the DeVore’s for three weeks, into the WP condo for seven weeks, and now into an apartment of my own with a seven-month lease—shortest time allowed by FL law. (Next entry will show my new digs with pictures.)
I must establish FL residency in order to get a third insurance to cover my lung transplant possibly in 2012. NM has cut itself off from federal funding (same as in AZ but with no media hype, just slipped in under the radar by sly Republican gov.) FL is still part of the USA, so I can apply for additional Medicare supplement from here. To do that, I must prove I have a FL address, drivers’ license, etc.
I’ll remain a FL resident while living in NC before and after transplant. From there Doris and I will land in a new home somewhere we haven’t yet discovered.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Celebrating Merlin Stone
“What We Remember Lives!”
Hecate’s Wheel led the forty or so women and four men chanting at the high noon celebration in Clearwater, FL, on Saturday, Sept, 24, just after the Equinox. See http://merlinstone.net/merlin-stone-memorial-florida/ We came from the four directions to honor a pioneer scholar who wrote the book (When God Was a Woman, 1976) that forever shifted our vision of spiritual power. For more on her life and work see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_Stone
Z Budapest came with her partner Bobbie from San Francisco to conduct the ceremony in the ancient (and invented) traditions of wise women before patriarchal conquests. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsuzsanna_Budapest for more on Z.
Women in swirling skirts and flowing capes and scarves came forth with offerings for the simple altar, invoking the powers of the four directions.
Merlin’s partner Lenny lovingly placed her ashes, and Z closed the circle. He spoke of his 34 years loving and living with Merlin with exuberant awe, calling himself her significant other.
Margo Adler, who regularly reports on NPR, came from New York and spoke of Merlin as a sculptor and art historian who brought our vision of the Great Mother into sharp focus. Margo connected Merlin’s insights with the work of Joseph Campbell.
Susun Weed came from her Wise Woman Center in Woodstock, NY, to assure us that Merlin lives on because her power and vision lives on in all of us. Selena Fox, psychologist and writer, came from Wisconsin to rouse our collective spirits to action.
Ruth Barrett, who leads Hecate’s Wheel, described teaching Merlin’s art and scholarship and the art and work of other scholars of ancient matriarchies in her women’s spirituality classes.
Barbara G. Walker appeared as if from a mist in Avalon, a tiny quiet woman of 81 all in black with a pentagram medallion. She spoke of earlier scholarly work, such as The First Sex by Elizabeth Gould Davis. I’ve used Barbara’s books, especially the weighty Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983) as a text in my feminist spirituality classes along with Merlin’s books. I’ve given it away many times for its fascinating research. I was amazed to meet this powerful scholar at last. I’m now reading her new book, Man Made God, which I’ll discuss later. She’s published a dozen feminist books, which I’ve devoured, and another dozen on knitting patterns, which I haven’t touched: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_G._Walker
After songs and chants by Hecate’s Wheel and all of us, Z opened the circle. At the communal lunch we had a chance to meet and reconnect. I hadn’t seen Z since 1986 at the Vrouenfestival in Amsterdam or Susun at her goat farm.
Pat Gozemba flew from Boston to Orlando on Friday to spend five days with me and so we could go together to Clearwater, where we spent the rest of Saturday afternoon with Z, Bobbie, Margot, Selena, Susun, the chanters of Hecate’s Wheel, and friends, and on our motel balcony overlooking the Gulf at sunset.
Left to right in photo: Selena, Ruth, Margo, Barbara, Z, Susun.
Pat Gozemba visits me in Florida
Pat and I have been buddies since NWSA (National Women’s Studies Assoc.) in 1983 at Ohio State when Pat launched the Party Caucus as antidote to our politically correct sisters who were too ready to judge and censure. I hadn’t seen Pat since NWSA 2001 in Minneapolis and up the north shore at the Scenic Café. When I picked her up in Orlando, we resumed what seemed a continuous flow of words with no ten year gap.
Lisa joined us for lunch at a new sushi place in Baldwin Park. In 1987 after an international women’s conference in Dublin, Lisa, Pat and I rented a car and toured the northern UK. We made slow progress because both Lisa and Pat were snapping pictures, Lisa of landscapes and Pat of formal gardens. We reminisced about our first trip to the Isle of Skye shortly after the Solstice where we’d never seen daylight linger so long, the sun melting so slowly into the misty water almost at midnight.
Pat has been writing memoirs about her Irish Catholic childhood in South Boston and her mother’s fondness for the Jesuits. Pat creates witty scenes full of dialogue for the battles she fought with her mother “The Beak.” We read and critiqued each other’s memoirs and talked about our mothers.
Sunday evening Yvonne and Joan came with wine and snacks. We watched interviews from the Lesbian Nuns tour that I couldn’t watch on my own: Donahue, Sally Jessie Raphael, and an odd one on LA TV. SJR, our first national TV splash, was as awful as I remember, but Donahue was better. Yvonne and Pat had seen the original shows, and both had interviewed me in 1985, Yvonne for the Orlando Sentinel and Pat for Gay Community News in Boston. But it was all new for Joan, who exclaimed about how adept Nancy and I were at answering or deflecting rude intrusive questions, how we turned our answers into feminist messages. Experiencing it with supportive friends now inspires me to get on writing my memoirs.
Carolyn Gage forwarded a new interview with Judith Brown (Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy, 1986) which also inspires me to get going: http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/sexandgender/4845/les
On Tuesday Lisa joined us again for an award-winning lunch on Park Avenue in in Winter Park and then for a tour of Eatonville where we stopped at the Zora Neale Hurston Museum or Arts and Humanities. I told Pat how we launched the first Zora Festival back in 1988, and it’s still going strong: http://www.zorafestival.com/
By the time Pat left it seemed we’d circled the globe several times politically, spiritually, emotionally, intellectually with our memories and ideas.
Next entry in about ten days with news: Home: What does it mean? Email your thoughts to rkeefe66@msn.com or add a comment here.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Medical World Update
I’ve spent way too much time with doctors and waiting rooms lately. I’d rather be reading, writing, or pushing a cart around Costco. Nobody to blame but myself. I made the appointments. Seven different doctors in twelve days!
A new pain got my full attention about two and a half weeks ago—felt like somebody stabbing me in the back. I woke in the night coughing with a knife in my back. Lungs? Heart?
At cardio-pulmonary rehab, the nurse taking blood pressure asks, “Are you feeling any pain today?” M, W, and F I admitted I was. By Friday Nurse Paula insisted I see a doctor. My PCP doesn’t work Fridays. She sent me to Centra Care where I spent most of the afternoon in the waiting room with coughing children and twenty-somethings probably lacking health insurance. It occurred to me that it wasn’t a healthy environment for someone with a suppressed immune system.
Kindly Dr Wheatly ruled out fracture and muscle sprain by having me twist this way and that. EKG looked OK. So I finally agreed to a chest x-ray, although I’ve had too many. He looked at it and went into alarm mode: “It’s your lungs! Your lung disease is very advanced. You must go to the ER at Winter Park Hospital right now.” I said I was not going to the ER at 5:30 on a Friday. Did I add that I’d rather tour the lower circles of hell? The pain has persisted for six days now. What can happen in a weekend? “You could die of respiratory failure!” gasps Wheatley. Cheerful guy. To escape Centra Care I had to sign a statement that I refused doctor’s orders.
I called Doris who said it was probably a broken heart from stirring up old memories. I liked this idea much better than respiratory failure. Was it faculty who wanted to stab me in the back as dean or who had? More likely it was old girlfriends from 20-30 years ago when I lived right here. Doris suggested we both meditate for fifteen minutes on removing the knives. You won’t be surprised that I felt much better after breathing, centering, and visualizing knives dissolving.
Monday at rehab, I had to admit that the pain continued. Central Florida Pulmonary fit me in. I spent Tuesday afternoon with my new pulmonologist Dr Layish (who coincidentally had a fellowship at Duke Lung Transplant Center), his nurse, and PA and more tests. CT scan with contrast dye shot in intravenously showed no blood clots in lungs, just some irritation around staples left over from lung biopsy a year ago at Univ of Colorado Hospital. Staples? Can I visualize them dissolving? I still don’t know why the pain, but as it fades a bit, I’m less concerned. Incidental good news: DEXA bone density scan showed I no longer have osteoporosis—just osteopenia. Nurse suggested I might be eligible for new drug trials. Just what I need—more drugs!
Meanwhile that Monday afternoon I had an appointment for consultation on a colonoscopy with Dr Kola. Last thing in the world I want, but it’s on the Duke checklist of exams I must have up to date. I distract myself with a possible limerick: “There once was a colonoscopist named Kola . . .”
As I was making lunch, my oxygen tank went “PFFFFT!” Leaking tank I thought and got out the little plastic wrench to change metal canisters. New one also went Kaflooie. Then I remembered this happening in Albuquerque once—worn out washer. No way to get oxygen supplier to rush out with a handful of metal discs in the next half hour. I can’t go anywhere without oxygen. But I can take my Sequel Eclipse portable oxygen concentrator that I use on airplanes. Portable? A relative term. I forgot somebody else is always hauling it for me.
Dragging it out of the condo and down the steps and hoisting it into the back seat of my Jeep, all the while attached to it by nose hose, I threw my right shoulder out of whack. Major joint pain set it two days later. Now what? Chiropractor? Cortisone shot into the joint? I’d already made an appointment with a new acupuncturist recommended by a woman I’ve never met—a woman who wrote a book about healing with magic wands and other happy woo-woo that was sent to me by a woman of charisma I’d known in WP 25 years ago. OK so the maze meanders.
Meanwhile back at the colonoscopist (a sensible and sensitive guy), I was advised that he can only do screening on me—no removal of polyps, if there are any, since I can’t be off Plavix. He agreed that polyps in colon aren’t my main concern. Must check with Duke. At least I can delay this one a bit.
Tuesday before I went to the pulmonary clinic I found the warehouse headquarters of Lincare oxygen suppliers of Orlando where I scored a handful of tiny metal discs and traded out my canister topper. Once again I could hoist metal tanks on my shoulder. Ouch—not the right one!
Friday morning I saw Cardiologist Dr Hussain out in west Orlando. He had results from the Berkeley blood profile tests taken four weeks earlier. I’ll spare you the fascinating details that go on for pages about controllable and genetic risk factors and mention only two red flags: I do have a genetic predisposition to cardiac problems. (No surprise. My father died of a second heart attack at age 53, and my brother had one in his fifties.) Other red mark: my LDL particles are too small; we must fatten them up with a nightly dose of Niacin. Follow low fat diet, exercise, and come back for re-test in three months. Cut aspirin dose in half in hopes of diminishing the purple patches and bruises that appear spontaneously up and down my arms and legs if I even brush against anything.
Now eastward to the healing ocean. I made it all the way to a surfside bar for a fish taco before I had to turn back into the town of Cocoa and find Dong Ye. I anticipated yielding my bruised and feeling stabbed body into the healing hands of the angelic new acupuncturist. I liked the receptionist and the woman who gives ion foot baths, but the doc herself didn’t look like a healer but in need of healing—weary, unsmiling, lumpy grey unhealthy, no joy or vitality. She took my pulses, examined my tongue, and riddled me with a few needles. I enjoy relaxing on my back, zoning out, giving my healing energy to the needles, allowing my chi to flow as my body heals itself.
The Doc prescribed that I drink her special tea, take her capsules for back pain twice a day, follow her diet, and come back in a week. Another woman presented me with three bags of twigs and dried leaves that I was to brew one bag at a time in a large stew pot with nine cups of water until cooked it down to three cups—enough for a day and a half, since I was told to drink a cup twice a day. I was warned it would smell and taste awful.
The diet to cure internal dampness eliminated everything I’d thought was healthy and loved eating. No fresh anything and no fruit at all. It boiled down to cooked vegetables, meat, fish, eggs, and gluten-free bread. How would my digestive system react if I suddenly stopped my breakfast of fresh fruit and yogurt? I already eat cooked veggies daily and either fish, eggs or chicken. No crusty nine-grain bread? No salads? Not to mention no dairy, coffee, wine, or chocolate ever.
When I relayed the prescribed plan to Doris and to Lisa, they both responded with some version of “Have you lost your mind?” Doris asked if the doc had raked her back yard into the bags. I had no idea what was in the bags or in the capsules. I’d been so careful to give every new doc a full list of my prescribed medications and herbal supplements in order to avoid clashes. Pulmonologists had eliminated many of my herbs as potentially interfering with their potent drugs.
I emailed the Cocoa acupuncturist asking about the contents of her bags and capsules and how they and her diet would help me. She replied that to know the answer I’d need to study 6000 years of Chinese medicine. Most patients come to her dissatisfied with western medicine but feel better after they drink her brew for a week. Her program is cut and dried. Follow it or not. Alas I can’t risk drinking an unknown brew. I’m not dissatisfied with western medicine but needing to counteract the ill effects of western drugs by stimulating my body’s self-healing energies.
Tuesday I had to darken the doorway of another specialist I thought I’d never see again: an Ob/Gyn for a pap smear also required by Duke to be up to date. I enjoyed my hour in a waiting room full of babies but felt a bit out of place.
Wednesday after rehab I went to yet another new acupuncturist that I simply picked off the internet because she looked so vibrant and reminded me of an old friend who’s now an acupuncturist in California. I didn’t get an appointment with the woman (not taking new patients) but with her associate Marlo (named for Marlo Thomas she told me) who also has appropriate degrees and licenses. She reminded me of Lisa—tall, thin, blond, rapid-fire mouth. She reviewed my medical history and medications and listened to everything I said. She was delighted to explain everything she was doing with her needles.
She calls me “Miss Rosemary”—a term of respect she’s learned since she moved South from the Midwest. Most Black women down here—at least in medical world—call every other woman, patient or practitioner, “Miss first name,” but I’d never known a white woman to do it. The shadow of the plantation looms here I know, but I’d like to believe the appellation can be reclaimed in a gentler world of women caring for women. Marlo’s sensitivity to culture charms me. I spent almost two hours of healing at the Harmony Wellness Center of Maitland and will return there. My back and shoulder pain have subsided some since Dr Marlo’s treatment.
I’m calling it quits on doctors for a while. For those who asked how I'm feeling and how’s my writing going, this entry gives you an answer.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Lisa's Granny
Granny died at age 95 on Monday, August 29, at almost midnight. Charles sent friends and family an email “Momma died” at 3:26 am. Lisa called me the next morning.
Lisa flew from Orlando to Little Rock the previous Wednesday when her dad phoned her, “Come now. She’s very close.” He’d said it twice before in the past two years, but when Lisa burst in like sunshine and trumpets, Granny rallied and didn’t die. She rallied this time as well, opened her eyes for the first time in a week and swallowed the sherbet Lisa spooned on her tongue even though she’d refused food for days. Lisa stayed her first five nights alone with Granny at her house, but on Monday she decided her back needed the firmer mattress in the cabin in the woods. Charles slept in the Big House on Main Street. Thus neither only son nor only granddaughter were there when she passed, only the caregiver Tonya.
Granny’s passing is a blessing for all. She’d said she wanted to die. Everyone believed she was waiting for one last visit with Lisa. On Monday of her passing, Charles and Lisa gave her a send-off. Lisa read her Bible: “There’s a time to live and a time to die.” Charles, the outspoken atheist, sat down at Granny’s piano and rolled out a repertoire of old Protestant hymns that he thought Granny would enjoy, especially her favorite “Amazing Grace.”
I remember meeting Granny forty six years ago. Charles took me to Merkel, Texas, to meet his parents after Christmas 1965. He called them Big Momma and Big Daddy. I’d never known anyone remotely like either of them. I’d never seen a town as tiny and barren as Merkel. Silent unsmiling Big Daddy towered more than a foot over Big Momma, a round smiling embodiment of Southern hospitality.
When we wheeled up to his childhood home, she was waiting. Charles swung down from his new blue Chevy pick-up. “C’mere, boy, you not too old to give your Big Momma some sugar.” He craned down from his 6’4” height, same as his dad, so she could wrap her arms around his neck and plant a big smack on his cheek. Then she took me in. “Why, Charles, you done fine. She’s right purty—just like a full-blown petunia.” She almost forgave me being a Yankee. She reached out to me. “C’mere to Big Momma and gimme some sugar.” I learned the ritual hugging and kissing known as “sugar.”
She stuffed us with ham and turkey, fresh vegetables from her garden and peach cobbler. I could barely understand her unusual twist of language, but I couldn’t miss her devotion to her son and her warmth toward me. Before we left, she insisted on getting my measurements. “Always wanted a daughter I could make pretty dresses for.”
A few days ago Charles was going through her papers and came across a letter from me sent in 1969 with Lisa’s latest measurements. Lisa was two years old. He read it aloud to Lisa and she to me on the phone. I’m touched that Granny saved that dutiful daughter-in-law letter all these years, or maybe she just forgot to toss it.
After I left her son in 1971, I assumed she thought ill of me. But in later years when I visited her with Lisa, most recently in May on our drive from New Mexico to Florida, she seemed to accept me as still part of her family.
Lisa got to know Granny as full of fun and vitality on summer visits to Merkel. She remembers picking beans off the vine and stringing them. She enjoyed Granny playing the piano and singing. Sitting on the front porch, they’d eat watermelon and spit the seeds out to the wide dusty West Texas horizon. Lisa wrote down some of these memories and read them yesterday at the memorial at Cherry Street Baptist Church in Clarksville, Arkansas.
Charles promised his momma that he’d take her to be buried in Merkel beside Big Daddy. Today Charles and Lisa are driving his big white van that usually hauls antiques 10-12 hours from Clarksville to Merkel. At 3 pm they fetch Dave at the Dallas airport. I imagine an aerial shot of the van with its four passengers—three living and one in a box—careening down the final stretch of west Texas trailing plumes of dust.
Cheyenne hardly knew her great grandmother in her prime of vitality. But Charles says she looks like Granny at the same age. Indeed a studio portrait of Neta Spears taken eighty years ago in her teens shows the same lustrous dark hair, wise penetrating gaze, full cupid’s bow lips, and a flash of extraordinary beauty with a hint of Cherokee cheek bones.
I will remember you fondly, mother-in-law, Big Momma Granny Neta Spears Curb.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)