Mileage Reports

Sitting in her caseworker's car in the apartment

complex where she was planning to apply for a

new home she noticed the younger woman

filling out mileage records to turn in to her

superiors at the agency of which she herself

was a client--this flashed her back to 10-11

years ago when she'd been working for a

supervisor--an odd, temperamental sort of

fellow for whom she'd felt she'd been

working at sufferance and had been walking

on eggshells--he could be very kind, even

fatherly at times -- but at others could be

rather anal or even meanspirited -- the one

reason she'd put up with abuse -- the feeling

that she could never be sure which "boss"

she'd be dealing with -- was that with her

speech disability and emotional problems

would make it hard to find a new job were

she to quit -- she was tempted to tell her

caseworker how fortunate she was to

have her comlpany pay her mileage because

some companies -- like that she'd worked

for -- don't treat their employees this well --

because back in the late 90's when she'd

been working for this company and had

been filling out and turning in mileage

sheets as everybody else there was able

to do her supervisor lectured her about

filling in these reports -- so even though

she was earning only the minimum wage

and could barely afford the gas, it had to

be on her dime (I know, strange metaphor

the way gas prices are these days) --

she figured that perhaps the accounting

office had spoken to her supervisor about

her handing in mileage reports so one day

when she had to go there for another

errand (the gas for which was on her dime)

she stopped in at the accounting office to

apologize for asking for paid mileage and

the main accountant with whom she'd

spoken had said that was OK -- everyone

there turned in mileage reports and got

paid mileage -- so driving back to the

branch office across the river where she

worked she started crying because now

she felt she'd figured out for some weird

reason she'd been being made an exception

of -- but of course knew she could not

say anything to her supervisor about the

unfaitness of it all fearing his reaction --

snapping back to the here and now after

being flooded by these memories she felt

like crying but instead put on a bravura

performance of a business-like, "normal"

adult apartment-hunting -- knowing not

only would those at the front desk of the

rental office get a bad impression about her

-- she also didn't want to bore and burden her

caseworker with the distressing details of

her past working life because there was

nothing she could do about them now --

because she liked the young woman very

much -- she'd gotten to know her rather

well -- for example, being a voracious

reader the way she herself was (currently

the younger woman's in the process of

re-reading her Harry Potter books -- and

she herself has been into fantasy and sci-

fi lately, but while she's seen a couple of

Harry Potter movies, she hasn't gotten

around to any Harry Potter books yet)

--in fact, this was the first time she who had

decided long ago in light of her emotional

problems that she was unfit to marry and

have children ever felt maternal towards

someone (other than the four-legged furry,

purring creatures with whom she'd shared

her home and her life) -- after her business

for the day was concluded and she made it

home, she got her work done there, ate

dinner, sat down in her favorite comfy

chair, and felt it safe to cry.

There's Got To Be More In Life......

She'd decided, two months

After giving up her '87 Olds

Too costly to fix

One month after her boss

Told her she'd soon

Be released from her job

Which she'd had for

Many years with kind folks

Who'd gotten to be like her family

She'd felt comfortable

In her home away from home

Were she a cat

She'd have purred

But job loss wasn't the worstt

Her final report said she

Didn't play well with others

Too emotional--poor judgment--didn't

Complete tasks quickly enough

Or too many mistakes

Didn't display creativity--

but her job hadn't offered her

the chance to be creative--

she also got a bad mark for

not doing what the boss wanted

because she had a better idea

And the agents liked that better

Poor concentration, poor memory

And she lacked a pleasant

Optimistic attitude. He also

Said others she worked with

Were reluctant to ask her for help

Those very others she'd thought

Had liked her as though they

were family. She realized now,

a dysfunctional family.

At the end of the report the

Boss added something to the

Effect she just didn't fit in

There--or any other office

With "normal" people. Reading

Again the report late one night

She was so distraught she

Thought she'd cross the highway

Between her bus stop and the

Office without checking the

Traffic. But then she decided

She wanted to live. Life still

Had too much to offer. She found

That she enjoyed being on her own

Schedule, rising when it was light

Out, not answering to others,

doing what she loved. Or "her own

thing" as they'd say when she was in

The sixth grade. She thought

There's got to be more to life....

Than paper clips and sticky notes,

Rubber bands and paper reams,

Copiers, postage meters and fax

Machines, and the general daily

Grind. She didn't miss getting up

And going to work before dawn,

And coming home when it was

Almost dark in the winter--

A stressful, fatiguing routine.

And then she decided that there

Was wisdom in the boss's words.

He'd brought up signs that she'd

Been having problems. And she agreed

For for years she'd known something

Was amiss with her--with her extreme

Mood changes and emotional displays

That had been untreated for all those

Many years--she'd thought she could

Handle them on her own. For having

been labelled "Learning Disabled" in

Her youth, she'd wanted to be "normal."

But going it alone didn't help--

For as she'd found it was

Full of dangers and pitfalls.

She decided it was time to start

Healing. She worried about how

Much this would cost, but found

A doctor who didn't charge much

So now she'd getting the help and

Meds she needs. Life still isn't

Perfect--she still isn't up to

A job--but now she hope she's

Finally on the right road.

Louisiana Environmental Disaster: Where Are The MSM?

Back in 1988 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground, I can recall at least a few weeks of steady coverage by both the three major networks and cable news (just CNN at the time) of the disaster, its environmental impact, and efforts to clean it up.

But the fuel oil spill that happened in Louisiana earlier this week proves to be a much larger disaster with farther-reaching consequences--yet for some news briefs I've seen on NBC Nightly News and a couple of cable channels, there hasn't been the major coverage it should be getting. Why aren't the MSM taking it seriously?

And scorpiorising says,

it is somewhat shocking to me, given the size of the spill and its potential impact on fragile wetlands, that there isn't more help coming to help wildlife, and to help with cleanup.

In my view, the fact that the mainstream national media have been keeping coverage to a bare minimum has something to do with the lack of help for wildlife and cleanup.

The dire consequences of this disaster are already being seen: New Orleanians-area residents drink water from the river, so many are now buying bottled water.

Also, the Delta National Wildlife Refuge, where many waterfowl have their home base during the winter, is preparing for the disaster's future effects.

As he piloted his boat out of the refuge's headquarters in Venice on Thursday, manager Jack Bohannan pointed out thick black chunks of oil and multicolored sheens near the river bank. A floating water hyacinth caked in thick black muck floated by.

"Remember this is nothing compared to what's going to be happening," he said. "This is just a sign of things to come."

And I haven't run across anything yet in my sources, but I shudder to think of the impact a hurricane would have on this fuel oil spill.

Below is the comment I posted on NBC's Daily Nightly website. If it doesn't appear there later today, it's been censored:

Bear with me for being off-topic, but an environmental disaster is taking place that needs much more intensive coverage not only because of the difficulty of cleaning it up, but because of its long-term effects.

I mean the oil spill on the Mississippi at New Orleans. I will say that Nightly did headline the spill both last night and Wed., but that was not enough news coverage for such a big disaster. Where's Anne Thompson when we need her awesome environmental reporting?

This oil spill is a bigger disaster than the Exxon Valdez disaster, which received several weeks of steady coverage after it happened. It endangers Louisiana's fragile wetlands and could only add to the growing "dead zone" in the Gulf off Louisiana.

Could NBC be practicing self-censorship by keeping full coverage of this environmental disaster off the air, to make sure the Republicans stay in the White House?

Louisiana 1976

If this comment doesn't appear under NBC's Daily Nightly. it's been censored.

And last but not least, there was this intriguing comment by wordene:

This is the real reason why Grampy McSamepants didn't show up for his photo-op. Wouldn't want the Lazy Media to accidentally report some real news. They haven't filled their daily quota of propaganda disbursement.

This article by Huffpo's Karen Dalton-Beninato provides confirmation of this view, which makes sense to me.

(Bear with me for concluding with a quick rant, but I would have included some photos I found on flickr the way scorpiorising did, but I just can't get them to transfer over to DKos. Under one of her diaries, someone said there's a code you can pull up from a photographer's photostream, but there's no way I can find it? WTF? And I tried to see if Photobucket has anything, but they don't.)

Louisiana's Relationship From Hell: The Sequel

For anybody who thought Louisiana would get a far better deal from BushCo under GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal than she did under Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco, they'd better think again. For Bush's pattern of abuse against Louisiana seems to transcend her politics. According to the Baton Rouge Advocate,

Bobby Jindal, angered over the increased costs that storm-wounded Louisiana must shoulder for construction of hurricane protection levees, asked Washington for more time — and a little fairness.

Under the latest war spending bill, Louisiana must kick in $1.8 billion by 2011 in order to activate $5.8 billion in federal funding needed to strengthen the New Orleans-area levee system.

Jindal said Louisiana’s share for repairs to the 360-mile, federally maintained levee system, is higher post-Katrina, than before the storm. "It seems ridiculous," Jindal said, tersely.

According to this Times Picayune article, Jindal is pressing Bush over Louisiana'a levee costs.

Jindal was quoted as saying,

"We think it's wrong that the state of Louisiana should be required to pay $200 million more in matching dollars than we would have paid (under rules in effect) before Katrina."

The article adds that

President Bush also could issue an executive order to trigger a provision included in the 1986 Water Resources Development Act, which would allow the state to pay back its share of construction costs over 30 years instead of three years, which presents a financial crisis for Louisiana.

and that California and Nevada have gotten such deals.

"We’re willing to pay our share; we just want the flexibility that has been offered to other states,”

Jindal was quoted as saying in the Advocate.

He also said in effect that Louisiana's having to pay such a large share of these costs would force her to make massive cuts in schools, social services, and coastal restoration.

In the Times Picayune Jindal was quoted as saying,

"We've encouraged people to come back to their homes, to their businesses....It would be irresponsible to ask the people of Louisiana to go through even one additional hurricane season without the protection they've been promised by their government. We will keep our word to the people of Louisiana."

According to the Advocate article, Jindal

also issued an ominous warning: “Over the next few years, we as a state have to make generational decisions on areas we want to protect and areas we want to restore.”

He said many federal policymakers have expressed sympathy for Louisiana, which suffered a one-two punch from hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, but that sympathy “needs to be translated into legislative action.”

“The administration can administratively give us the time we’re asking for,” Jindal said of President Bush, a fellow Republican. In the alternative, new language could be included in a congressional housing bill before Congress breaks for its August research.

Bush's discriminatory treatment of Louisiana is especially devastating at a time when storm season is heating up with Tropical Storm Dolly poised to enter the Gulf. While forecasters are calling for landfall at the Texas-Mexico border, this is only July. Who knows what the most active months of August and September will bring?

Also, a congressional delegation has been in New Orleans taking a look at the need still present nearly 3 years after Katrina and the federal flood hit.

For U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson, one member of a congressional delegation touring the New Orleans region, a few images from the opening two days made her wonder, "Do we live in America?"

She recalled a large family in St. Bernard Parish living in a FEMA trailer containing a single twin bed, with a bathroom that would cramp just one adult trying to bathe. The family was recently notified by FEMA that it would have to leave the trailer, according to Richardson, a Democrat from California.

Government has to "stop looking at a manual and look at the people," she said.

"Madness: A Bipolar Life"

by Marya Hornbacher is the shattering sort of memoir about which I've a personal rule of not starting to read before bedtime. Because I won't want to put it down until it's finished.

When we first meet Marya, she's lying on the bathroom floor in a pool of blood, having severed an artery while cutting herself. This is what draws us into the living hell of her condition--rapid-cycling Bipolar I, the worst form of the disease.

We experience Marya's turbulent early life as she tells us about the "Goat Man"--who her mother tries to assure is a nightmare, but 4-year-old Marya knows is very real. She's seen him and felt his fur.

Marya also struggles with serious eating disorders, about which she has written in more detail in the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)

She adds that back in the 70's children weren't diagnosed as bipolar and that even now there's a debate over whether or not children can have bipolar. Also, we learn that the term "bipolar" was first used in 1980--before that, the illness had been called manic-depression.

As a teen Marya abuses street drugs and, in order to obtain them because she doesn't have much money, trades promiscuous sex for them. Also, she begins drinking heavily on top of her eating disorders which prove life-threatening and for which she ends up in the hospital.

She's taken to her mother's psychiatrist who diagnoses her with depression (which those with eating disorders were thought to suffer from then) and prescribed Prozac--the "in" med of the time, but the worst thing you can give someone with bipolar.

Later in life she experiences the surreal roller-coaster of an illness that, even after she's finally been properly diagnosed at the age of 24, she still doesn't take seriously. Because bipolar, like diabetes, is a disease that must be managed throughout one's life. She doesn't take presctibed meds and instead drinks in order to self-medicate. One day she has 17 drinks and still doesn't think she's had too much. Also, she still has anorexia and bulimia at times. This sort of thing ruins her liver and otherwise threatens her life.

In the best of times, she energetically works for a magazine; in the worst she's hospitalized more than a few times--sometimes even enduring electroshock treatment which wipes out large blocks of her memories. And because she's so ill she must endure heavy side-effects from her meds.

Sometimes there's even some humor in her story--like when she mentions being in a new psychiatrist's office and notices that she sees the same magazine there as she's seen in all other psychiatrists' offices. She adds that the pictures on the waiting room walls are the same in every office. This reminds me of Johnny Carson's joke about there being only only one fruitcake and around Christmas everybody sends it to everybody else.

Everyone who has bipolar or any other mental illness needs a steady rock in her life--and Marya's has always been her mother. Her mother visits her when she's in the hospital and, when she has to recover in her mother's home, supports her throughout and treats her with kindness and gentleness.

Such a far cry from my own movie-buff mother who, since I was unable to deliiver the "Oscar-winning performance" of tight emotional control she demanded, verbally/emotionally abused me for years as I was growing up--but that's subject for another diary that I'll write when I feel up to it. I don't feel like it now.

I can, however, relate to many other things Marya went through, although so far I've escaped the substance abuse, self-injury, and promiscuous sex, and never have had it badly enough to be hospitalized. But in ways, my life has been just as surreal and disjointed between the disease and its fallout as was hers. I've been coming down from a manic or high hypomanic episode and mentioned this to my psychiatrist who said I should up the Depakote to 4 a day--so I'll give that a try. Wish me luck!

"Madness" reads like a novel and is a very fast read. It'a a must read whether you've bipolar and want to know about another person's experience with the condition, know someone with bipolar and want to better understand what they're going through, or just want to learn about bipolar. You won't want to miss it.

Yes, There Is A Double Standard......

going on regarding what politicians and other people have been saying about this current flooding and what they said after the federal flood about New Orleans and those it impacted. I was cynical enough and had had my suspicions as I noticed that something was missing.

To wit: Nobody, even though some of the currently-affected communities along the Mississippi which had also been affected in the flooding of 1993 have been flooded again, has been telling the folks in these communities that they should not rebuild......

While, regarding New Orleans, people from then-Speaker of the House Denny Hastert on down almost immediately started calling for the bulldozing of New Orleans and turning her into swampland.

According to the author of this LSU Reveille editorial, there has been such a double standard--which confirms my suspicions.

But what the author talks about is only the tip of the iceberg. Because there's more: what got and still gets my hackles up about New Orleans is the fact that the MSM, by showing mostly-black and poor flood survivors, affected American's perceptions of New Orleans, including those of the Bush Administration. This is in spite of the fact that actually people of all races and classes were impacted by the flooding. I know I've said this often before, but it's germane to what I'm about to add.

While regarding Iowa and the rest of the Midwest, while as with the fact that not all impacted by the New Orleans flood were black, not all flood survivors in the Midwest are white, the perception on the part of some seems to be otherwise. Lately a cesspool of disrespect for New Orleans and Louisiana, if not outright racism, has overflowed. It's a replay of the abusive remarks racist Americans would further torture an anguished Louisiana with after the flood.

And Tim Wise adds more about stereotypes and other misconceptions about both the people of Iowa and of New Orleans, which have been even now working to New Orleanians' detriment:

there's Rush Limbaugh, who has decided to use the flooding in Iowa not to demonstrate compassion, but as an opportunity to make derogatory statements about poor black folks: specifically those caught by the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005.

This week, as folks in Iowa, Indiana and parts of Illinois have watched flood waters rise ever higher, Limbaugh took to the air to contrast these supposedly good and decent people who have joined forces to help each other, with the presumably evil, lazy and violent folks of New Orleans, who we are told, did nothing but foment criminality and wait for the government to save them during flooding there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Thus, we have his statement of a few days ago, in which he noted that in the midst of the devastation in the Midwest:

"I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property...I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters. I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street...I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America."

Well, we all know Limbaugh is an Extremely Annoying wingnut gasbag with racial attitudes that are more than a little questionable, but Wise adds:

Sadly it isn't only Limbaugh who has been making these kinds of comparisons. Millions of us have also been subjected to the e-blast missives making the rounds, which seek to contrast the law-abiding, God-fearing, and (let us not forget) mostly white farming folks of the Midwest to the black, urban, and congenitally defective folks of the Big Easy. If you haven't received something like this from a friend, relative or co-worker yet, just wait, because you probably will soon.

But what all of these like-minded rants indicate--whether spewed to 20 million pliant sheep via the airwaves, or posted on a pathetic little blog read by no one--is the dishonesty of those offering them up. Either that, or the fundamental ineptitude of the same when it comes to doing basic research, fact-checking, or merely paying attention to the fundamental differences between the flooding of New Orleans and that of rural and small town Iowa communities.

Examples of racist and otherwise anti-New Orleans comments by other Americans can be seen in the comments under these posts in Sean Hannity's forum and in Black Spin. Take a look at the negative, stereotypical remarks on this forum where Iowa's relative paucity of crime is discussed. Fortunately they're interspersed with those of others better informed as to what happened in New Orleans during and after the flood as well as the differences (e.g. population density) between New Orleans and Iowa communities.

Wise lists the major differences in how the federal government handled the New Orleans disaster, and in other aspects. He mentions that not only were there very few escape routes out, residents were actually prevented from escape by armed police from a neighboring parish. And how many didn't have access to cars they could use for escape. He reminds us of how tens of thousands were jammed into the Superdome and the Convention Center. Last but not least, he tells us not only how the Department of Homeland Security kept the Red Cross from entering New Orleans, FEMA itself didn't show up for several days. None of which happened in Iowa.

And I'm going to add that I predict that Iowa and the rest of the states impacted by this flooding will be better treated by BushCo as long as they're still in office, than was Louisiana. If anyone needs more evidence that BushCo has been attempting to carry out ethnic cleansing, if not outright cultural genocide, in Louisiana, this is it.

Wise adds later in the article:

So consider Limbaugh's formulation, where he says, "I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street."

Fair enough. Those things aren't happening in Iowa. Yet, according to multiple post-Katrina investigations, and stories written up by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the Guardian (London), the New York Times, Popular Mechanics, Reason Magazine and the American Journalism Review, they weren't happening in New Orleans either. Reports of shooting at helicopters, or rapes or murders were almost entirely false. There were no murders in the evacuation centers, few if any sexual assaults (and none on the street as Limbaugh claimed), no helicopters fired on, and no police officers shot by residents. Yes, there was looting, although by a distinct minority of persons trapped in the city, and overwhelmingly for necessities like food, medicine, water,and clothing to replace the rotting, soaked rags people were wearing after wading through waist-deep water. And according to persons on the ground in the flood zone, even the luxury items taken were typically used as barter chips, to get rides out of the city for oneself and one's family when it became obvious that large scale assistance wasn't going to arrive any time soon. In other words, reports of widespread thuggery in New Orleans during the flooding have been greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated, and have only remained believable to millions because of the race and class biases that allow people to believe the worst about poor black folks even without a shred of actual evidence.

Oh, and not to put too fine a point on it, but the notion that there has been no looting in the Midwest, presumably because white rural folk are more civilized than their black and urban counterparts is demonstrably untrue. There have been several reports of theft in Columbus, Indiana, for instance--mostly people taking things out of folks' front yards that have been left out to dry--and in Cedar Rapids, police recently made their first looting arrest (though there have been other reports of theft as well), of a white woman who was stealing alcohol from a local bar.

(I hope I didn't quote Wise too extensively, and bear with me if I did, but he was an excellent source who put everything into perspective. It was from reading Wise that I learned of crimes that had happened after Indiana and Iowa flooding--when in contrast, during and after the New Orleans flood, you heard all over the place about violent crime in New Orleans--then weeks later when such stories were debunked, there wasn't much about that in the MSM--so the more ignorant still have the impression that New Orleans was something like a Thid World trouble spot back then>)

Back to New Orleans--HuffPo's Georgianne Nienaber reports that a new call has been made for an 8/29 Commission. Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu had drafted the legislation, but per Nienaber

To this date, Republicans have blocked the bill and it is languishing in committee.

I hope some of these Senators, probably racists who want to blow off New Orleans because they erroneously see her as a "black" city, are from states affected by the current Midwest deluge--that would be karmic.

I'm frustrated and discouraged........

because for the last three months I've organized a NOLA/Gulf Blogathon on Daily Kos to call attention to the fact that, although Katrina and the federal flood happened close to three years ago, their lingering after-effects and the recovery of New Orleans and the other communities haven't been getting the attention they need to be getting. From such people/groups as the mainstream media, politicians (including presidential candidates) and others.

The last time I organized a Blogathon, it was hard to get people to sign up, and the latest time I announced one to sign up for, nobody other than me signed up. And even worse, I can't even think of anything really new to write about--which makes me reluctant to try to get others to commit for this month.

So I decided it would be a good idea to hold off on any more Blogathons until Wed., Aug. 27--Thurs. Aug. 28, figuring that around that time, between 8/29's anniversary and the picking up of hurricane season, there would be more of an interest.