Anti-Trump People, How's Your Health?

My tension level was high during most of the presidential campaign. Even though I thought Trump wouldn't win, I couldn't believe someone like him could actually run for the office and be taken seriously. It was wildly frustrating to hear people (some of them friends of mine) talk about how he was going to make America great again, while I saw him in a completely different light--someone I wouldn't even want to have dinner with.

Now that he's the President-Elect, my blood pressure is almost as high as my tension level, and the fibromyalgia I've had for decades has kicked into high gear. I was awakened several times last night with hip and knee pain, and it was a tough job persuading myself to get out of bed this morning. It's time to get proactive about my health, even though it seems there isn't much I can do about the White House.

My blog post today comes to you from Dear Prudence, a.k.a. Mallory Ortberg, who writes the advice column for Slate. I hope it's okay to post an excerpt here, crediting both Ortberg (I mean Prudie!) and Slate. I have the feeling lots of us can use her advice right now.

Dear Prudence,
Do you have any advice for we who opposed a Trump presidency? Now that we fear seeing Roe v. Wade overturned, worsening climate change, hatred and bigotry stirred up? Discovering that our neighbors, colleagues, and acquaintances voted for this racist, xenophobic madman? How can we cope, and what can we do in our own small part to resist this? I for one feel gobsmacked. Do you have any suggestions for taking back our power? (Please don’t say, “Just give him a chance”—because we don’t want him to get a chance to implement all his vitriol.)

—How to Cope in the Post-Trump World

I do not think “give Donald Trump a chance” is a useful piece of advice, although plenty of people who ought to know better have suggested it over the last week. I think Donald Trump has had a more than adequate chance to demonstrate his values over the decades of his life as a public figure; we have all the information we need to make an informed assessment of his character. I think he did not initially disavow his endorsement by David Duke and other white nationalists because he did not wish to, because his very political existence depends upon their support, and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous. I think he chose a running mate who supports LGBT conversion therapy because he does not care about the safety or well-being of queer people, and I think he called for a national database of Muslim people because he doesn’t care about religious freedom and is happy to profit from Islamophobia. I think he mocked a disabled reporter because he doesn’t care about people with disabilities. I think he is exactly the person he has presented himself as. I think there is no reason to expect him to suddenly display restraint after being given presidential power.

As for what you can do as an individual right now, a few suggestions:

Donate whatever time or money you have available to organizations like the ACLU, the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Campaign Zero, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, the Trevor Project, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Contact your local mosque or Muslim Community Center and offer your services as a volunteer and tell them you support them. Contact your congressperson/representative/state legislators and offer specific calls to action, whether that be that they vote for or against a proposed legislation, whether you want them to sponsor a bill, or make a public statement. (In many locations, representative’s offices are required to read all physical mail; consider calling or writing an old-fashioned letter before sending an email.) Offer support to the people in your life whose safety and well-being are particularly threatened by this white nationalist wave. Challenge racism and obfuscation of motives when you see it (“I’m so economically anxious I had no choice but to vote for a misogynist bigot”); do not use euphemisms and gentler language for the sake of comity to describe the ugly things you know to be true.

The Information Age Sucks.

If you know me, you know I've embraced parts of cyberspace with enthusiasm. I enjoyed CompuServe back in the 1980s. I've been on Facebook for some years (thank you, Maureen) and have posted many hundreds of my dad's photographs and my own. I don't text often, but email is my favorite form of communication. I've been in online writing groups, and I'm a devotee of GardenWeb (now Houzz). And on and on. But I wish we'd never been given any of it.

When I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s, we had Democrats and Republicans as we do today, but there the resemblance ends. I remember when no one had television, and I remember when we got our first one. (My dad gave me a choice of a TV or a puppy. I chose the puppy, but somehow he morphed the dog into a 12" Admiral console.) The news was broadcast on TV, but most people got their news from the newspapers.

My dad read one paper in the subway on his way to work in the morning, and another (the New York Herald Tribume) in the evening on his way home. People communicated with each other in person, or on the phone, or by letter. This is how we got our information. All of these methods allow for error, of course. Newspapers have never been 100% accurate 100% of the time, and as for talking to each other, do you remember the children's game "Telephone"? We all have our internal filters, some more . . . um . . . interesting than others, and what goes in doesn't always come out the same way.

But most of the time informational errors back then were relatively minor ones, and differences were subtle. The contrast with today is dramatic. And disturbing.

Today we are swamped with information, and depending on who you are, a great deal of it may be completely untrue. Crazy fiction. Dangerous stuff. We've heard quite a bit of it in recent months, but the fact is even in non-election years the emails go round and round, spreading stories most of my friends would never believe, but there are people who believe every word. President Obama wants to change the National Anthem to "Kumbaya"? Syrians punish their children by pouring boiling water on them? I read both of those things in forwarded-many-times emails sent to a friend.

And then there are the websites. NPR interviewed a woman who used to run a website devoted to challenging the "conspiracy theory" websites and their like, but she gave it up when she could no longer keep up with the huge number of them.

People pick up what they read on these websites, what they get in forwarded emails, what they hear on "hate radio," and they post it on social media, where it goes "viral." Wonderful. Never in the history of the world have we experienced this. Where it will lead, I have no idea. But I'm not optimistic. On "All Things Considered" this afternoon, there was a feature on an organization that talks to people around the country about Islam. We heard one of their speakers address a group in Montana. He spoke like a reasonable person, but the NPR reporter had to point out over and over that what he was saying about Islam wasn't true. Building on what the speaker said, a woman in his audience stated with conviction that Muslim refugees want to come here to convert us or kill us. Others in the audience agreed with her.

I Need a New Relationship

I broke up with Doxycycline last night. We'd been together nearly four months—this time. We've had an on-and-off relationship for years. He swore he could help me get over my painful experience with Lyme, and for a while it seemed that he did. But he was so controlling . . . dictating what I could eat and when . . . and abusive too! My gut bacteria hasn't been the same since we met.

So last night I decided that I'd had it with him. (He took it surprisingly well.) But you know me . . . I'm not about to sit home alone with only Lyme, Babesiosis and Bartonella for company. I'm going to get in touch with Herb. Actually Herbs, plural. (Why settle for just one?) And that handsome hunk, Homeopathy. He's been good to me in the past.

Balls (said the Queen, "If I had 'em I'd be King.")

It was a rite of spring in the Queens neighborhood where I grew up—and in every other NYC neighborhood, I suspect: The annual trip to the corner store to get a pink Spalding (often pronounced "Spaldeen") Hi-Bounce rubber ball.

In this ritual, you didn't just pick up a ball and pay for it; you had to test them first. Trying several, we'd bounce them on the wood floor of the store to see which one bounced the highest. Some of us tested them by dropping two of them at the same time from the same height. The judging criteria was always the same: highest is best. Once that was determined, we'd plunk down our 25¢, and spring would begin.

I still think think about this, maybe even every year, although it's been a very long time since I ventured out to buy myself a pink rubber ball. I went looking for one today though. My older grandson is four, and I am itching to play catch with him. The way I see it, he will reap the rewards of all the ball games I played as a kid. I hope he'll see it that way too. Thanks mostly to my dad, I love having a ball in my hands.

Because of age and the damage done to my shoulder from pulling a lawnmower cord, I can no longer attempt the perfect football spirals of my youth, or indeed any overhand pitch, but I can lob a gentle underhand to a 4-year-old. And I can still pluck balls out of the air a fair percentage of the time.

My shopping expedition was limited to Walmart and Dollartree this morning, and there was not a Spalding to be found. Walmart had a couple of glitzy looking supercharged balls, infused with helium in some fashion, guaranteed to travel farther by kick and higher by bounce, confirming that "simple and basic" just doesn't appeal to the masses anymore. Or at least the marketing geniuses don't think so.

Dollartree had a Spalding wannabe called Pinky Hi-Bounce. I bought one for a dollar, but it doesn't have the same feel. And it doesn't have the same smell. We always sniffed our brand-new Spaldings. It was the only time they would have their distinctive smell—no surprise when you consider how often we bounced them on the city sidewalks, gutters, and vacant lots.

When I got home I looked online and found that Amazon sells the Spaldings for $6.20 apiece. One of the commenters said they cost 25¢ back when he was a kid in his NYC neighborhood. Someone else said they're available in sporting goods and toy stores for a lot less than Amazon's price. I see a trip to Dick's and Toys R Us in my future.

Tick Tock . . .

I just scanned this slide of me (I'm the big one) with my cousins today and my first thought was, the good old days, when we didn't have any ticks to worry about. Then I saw an article about a study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine this morning. It found that long-term (12 weeks) antibiotic therapy doesn't help Lyme symptoms. I can't say I'm surprised, as so few people on Lyme message boards ever seem to get completely well. The study concluded:

"On one side of the schism stands the evidence, which grows stronger by the day, that persistent symptoms attributed to Lyme disease are not amenable to longer antibiotic therapy; and on the other, there is a multitude of patients suffering from debiliating neurologic, cognitive, musculoskeletal or even multisystemic symptoms. Standing witness at the tug of war between these two sides, we still do not have an answer."

I'm on long-term antibiotics, and I hate it. They mess with my good bacteria, despite taking probiotics, and deplete my serotonin, draining my energy and enthusiasm. No fun. And I haven't noticed any improvement in my symptoms, which are mostly neurological (thanks to being bitten in the back of my neck). So I won't be sorry to stop, but I wish there were an answer to "Now what?"

The outdoors has always called to me this time of year. I love living close to nature, and I love growing things. But after six bites last year, despite all sorts of precautions, and numerous bites in previous years, my beautiful property no longer welcomes me. It has become a threat.

Two Days at the Dodge, 14 Years Ago

In 2002 I spent two days at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in New Jersey. Two years earlier I attended for all four days, but this time I was distracted by my flooded basement. I carried a notebook in 2002, and jotted down notes. Here they are:

Trying to estimate how many bales of hay it took to cover all the acres of mud.

Moans from new arrivals as they read that Billy Collins is absent.

Sharon Olds radiant as she described the “beautiful, healthy spiders” that thrive on Duke Farms, and calling the main tent “a temple to Ariadne.”

Shuttled 10 minutes to our parked cars.  Getting off the shuttle bus, and then getting back on when we realize we have no idea which parking lot our car is in, but this one isn’t it.

An attractive middle-aged woman, normal enough in her jeans, sporting a black cardboard mustache.

The annoying reality that in every panel discussion there will be those in the audience who use the occasion to mount a soapbox of their own, taking up valuable time—usually to describe an epiphany we experienced 20 years ago.

Ceclia Vicuña’s accent so strong, and her voice so soft, that it is many minutes before we realize she is saying, “Clit, clit.  Growing.”

The food tent:  $8.00 for a little package of eight sushi.

A drink at the Marriott:  One pinot noir and a Virgin Mary = $18.00.

A massive undertaking:  the basement/foundation for a Duke mansion that was never built.  Room after subterranean room.  A maze, really.  And then the owner died.  Covered now with mud and moss, and the remains of trees that fell in.  I stare and stare, unable to turn away.

Staring, too, at the simultaneous readout of the poets’ words in the main tent.  It is there for the hearing impaired, but I am fascinated by its creativity.  It must be done with a voice recognition program, monitored by someone scrambling to correct its mistakes.  When Vicuña speaks of mist being “the semen of the mountain,” it comes out seaman.  “Burlap” is burr lap. My dog sometimes has a burr lap.  A mother with a burr lap would have unhappy children. 

Franz Wright giving new meaning to insufferable, Pulitzer or no Pulitzer. 

Two “church ladies” clutching each other for support as they scuttle out of the “Sacred and Profane” panel discussion, faces rigid with the realization that Mark Doty is reading a blow job poem.

Big soft dog asleep in the grass next to our workshop tent on the river.  Sun glinting on the water.  Sun soaking into the long, golden brown fur of the dog.

Sharon Olds saying she had a desire to give everyone in the room a cookie.  C. K. Williams quipping, “Give ‘em a car.”

Port-a-Potties that flush and sport mini-sinks with foot-pumped running water.

Being blown away by a poet we’d never heard of (Aahron Shabtai).  Telling him later, “You must have a very happy wife.”

Marilyn Chin reading a poem about a bad date, explaining that displaying the mangled sword of Hirohito is not a strategically good thing to do if you want to impress your Chinese girlfriend.

Two blind men with their dogs.

Friends raving about Jane Hirschfield, whom we didn’t hear.

New Jersey:  More near misses on the highways in two days than I had in the past five years.  Fast food restaurants that ask, “Cash or credit?”  Waiting in the middle of a line of 12 cars at a Wendy’s drive-through at midnight.

Yusef Komunyakaa reading his poem about the mice that died of fright at the sight of an owl:  “…the shadow of its wings was like a god passing over the grass.”

Mark Doty reading his poem, “Migratory:”  “Only animals make me believe in God now…so little between spirit and skin.”

The long, long line at the coffee concession.

The even longer lines at the book signing tent, spilling out the door onto the grounds.

Komunyakaa softly saying if a poem contains too much information “the passion of participation is denied.”

Mark Doty describing 99-year-old Stanley Kunitz as “constantly open to change and transformation.”

Wiping away tears as Joyce Carol Oates read her prose poem about her mother’s heartbreaking childhood.

Olds quoting Langston Hughes:  “To some people, love is given—to others, only Heaven.”