Look out for me

Not sure whether womazzle will continue.  Google seems bent on making access to it difficult.  

I will try to keep the site open, but this might just be my last post for now.   

I will be around though.  Somewhere.  

Look out for far out bits and pieces about this world and the one to come...

... IF.

The Greedy One

The bully, the diva, the tyrant, the ruthless deal-pusher - what they all have in common is a great fear.  

Like terrified two-year olds they clamor for control, because they fear that otherwise their survival is at stake.  The bully dominates the class room, the diva controls anyone who comes into contact with her, the tyrant is obsessed with security and the arm twister, the greedy One Percent of this world, tries to control it all. 

Psychology would point to a fragile self-image, possibly a damaged parent-child relationship, while spirituality might suggest a tormented soul working its way through these sad biographies, but what is striking above all that there is a recurring theme.  In every society, the air gets thinner at the top.  

There seems to be a cynical element as well, since there over time any human group develops hierarchal structures.  Just like chimpanzees we huddle around the one who is actually the most scared simply because we know what he is capable of....  

In human society there seem to be certain leveling events, which have a tendency to temporarily shake up social structures, moments throughout our history, where that hierarchy eroded and where the middle came to be strong and wide.  Natural or human catastrophes, such as war, starvation, disease, migration initially form strong liens between survivors.  Cooperation between all ensures the survival of the group in the aftermath of such an event.  But eventually, individual interests take over and the all to common pattern reshape themselves as one witnesses the formation of pyramids where few at the top control the lives of many at the bottom.   

And so over time, any tribe, any organization, any economy tends to go pear shape once the dust of the founding years has settled. 

Just check out the tenets of the latest free trade agreement between the US and the European Union (TTIP) and witness how the greedy 1% is trying to take control over entire economies and manipulate their legal frameworks and democratic principles.   

If this treaty passes there is no stopping the tyranny of the most fearful!!

Click to inform yourself!!

Not a Piece of Pie

For a while now I have been concerned about recurring headlines on sexual child abuse cases involving major British institutions including the BBC, Labour and, most recently, The Coalition Government.  

In fact, Patrick Rock, a long time friend of David Cameron and the very person put in charge of designing online filters that would bar offensive sites, has stepped down recently because he has become the focus of a child pornography investigation. 

News about this scandal only broke yesterday.  Another cover up as in the case of the BBC’s decades of turning a blind eye to the ghastly pederast, Jimmy Savile?  

Two days ago, I stumbled over a sweet acronym - PIE - the British Google site, only to find out that it not only stands for a rather disturbing network by the openly depraved name “Paedophile Information Exchange”, but also demonstrates how awful realities hide behind seemingly benign appearance in this country.

One begins to wonder about the boarding schools where Britain's scions are welded... 

Offense

Al-Shabaab is offended!  

After all, how could the media possibly allege that there was a woman among the mujahideen militants who attacked the Westgate shopping center in Nairobi and killed sixty-two people including children??

A spokesman for the Somalia-based terrorist group spluttered with rage: ”It’s a groundless lie that a female was among the mujahideen attackers. It is all about propaganda disseminated by western media outlets." 

Tissue? 

It just so happens to be that there is reason to believe that there was a low-ranking female primate amongst your chest beating lot.

Sorry...?!

Hand me those Shoes!!

After years of married life with children, I have, despite my most fervent determination to the contrary, morphed into a doormat. I am seeing everyone off in the mornings and welcome them back at night. I patiently attend to the grubby side of family life - the underbelly of a well-tuned family saga of clean sheets, matched socks, starched shirts, and folded laundry (most of the time anyway). I am on the scene before anyone else and I rest only once all is as it was before the little steps and clunky big ones have all passed through my gateway. Unnoticed in the corner I sit and reflect on the tenacious nature of gender based inequality and its manifestation in an age that has brought forward the atomic bomb, climate change, hydraulic fracturing, mass shootings and record number genocides, as well as ubiquitous digital images of sexual domination and an unsustainable population growth. Oh well, but luckily when the mood tanks, there is always another pair of shoes to dote on...

You call that News?

Since we moved to the UK, I have tried to warm up to the much beloved and internationally acclaimed BBC.

For the first two years, when we still had a TV, I used to tune into its numerous roundtables and panel discussions while all the time wondering how slowly stuffed up males could talk and still be paid for it. 

I watched endless History programs on World War II and I tried to see the benefit of turning old horrors into news without adding any more insights.

Very occasionally I still am adventurous enough to tune into the morning news like today  when I was once again reminded why I usually shun the media. It’s always the same story, just in a new wrapper.

Here it is: men sexually abuse whenever they get a chance - most often their targets are women and girls.  The way this "news" was tailored this time was that "eighty percent of rape victims in war zones are children under the age of sixteen, both boys and girls." The men committing these horrible acts were, however, carefully shrouded by refering to them as "combatants" as if they were some kind of abstract figure, like a Darth Vader.

But then, one would not want anyone to draw any connections to the scandal about the sexual abuse of minors that was so skillfully covered up by this most venerated institution for many decades.

Here is the the news - the only one really worth reporting: We still cannot admit that there is a problem with men although they regularly use violence (on varying levels) as a means to achieve their goals.

Quench your tears....

...’cause you gonna run dry at some point, dear Americans. Newton, Connecticut is another sad event in the American history of violence, but it was predictable and predictably there will more of that as long as we let our boys grow up in environments that lead to reduced impulse inhibition (see the many studies on the effects of computer gaming for instance) and...did you guess it already...GUNS!! Really, it’s pretty simple - no need to talk about the multiple causes, aggravated circumstances, and aspects of what just happened AGAIN. Also, no need to talk about how target shooting is a fine sport! Wake up guys - and gals. This is embarrassing!!!

A funny thing happened...

Susan, my dear friend back in Costa Rica, is quite attached to the word “funny” - especially when it relates to the many unforseen events that life keeps shoving her way, you know, all that stuff that happens while one is busy making other plans...

It seems that having kids exponentially contributes to the amount of “stuff” that can happen any given moment. From little things like scraped knees and barfing pets to bigger stuff such as broken hearts and teeth all the way to the really big crap such as messed up relationships and empty coffres and then, of course, the general horror scenarios of sickness and inevitable death.

And while we usually keep a tight lid on the last category, it tends to linger quite effectively in the back of our minds to make us just a that bit more pathetic when dealing with the lesser upsets.

In fact, having kids and being responsible for them 24/7 is one big lesson in mind control.

So, when dealing with Addy’s Downs Syndrome and a non-supportive con ex, “funny” is probably a healthy way of putting it.

I love you, woman. Hang in there!

Twenty-four Seven

Where did you store that one-liner? You do remember it, don’t you? A couple of days ago, when Yahoo’s main page popped up on your screen, it was right there, the second news headline from the top.

I instinctively turned it into a ratio: Forty-eight women every hour is approximately 1 every 72 seconds...

What I didn’t do was click on the link to read on. I realize that I should have and if only in order to fully acknowledge both the horror of this ongoing atrocity and the researchers’ effort to reach our awareness.

But I was afraid. Afraid of the rage that would surge in me while reading details of the study that puts a cold number to the brutal fact of humanity.

Forty-eight women and girls in Congo are raped every hour, 24/7.

There it was. Information readily available to be locked away in a dark corner of our human experience. A truth to be ignored.

A few years ago a study done by a couple of US professors concluded that rape is not unnatural among human males. The study came under a lot of criticism and after a while I lost track of whether the public and academic outcry was about the sober conclusion, or whether it showed our inability to accept another truth or two.

Gunshots

About a week ago I tuned into BBC Four for a report about Ivory Coast. We listened to a group of women who had gathered in a square demanding to be heard. This filled me with joy and I was cheering them on from our kitchen with Zoe joining in. Not that often women risk their lifes and that of their loved ones to speak up against wrong doings. But every astonishing time that they do it, it fills me with great pride. However, our chanting came to an abrupt end when rounds of gun fire could be heart. It felt, as if I we were under fire as well. My heart stopped for a moment and I looked over to Zoe. She had tears in her eyes, unable to utter a word.

Good-Byes

To this point, I have avoided funerals, because the one I went to, my grandpa’s, just made things worse. From the onset the pastor had taken over our thoughts and memories and ran off with them. Although he had never met my grandpa, he seemed to have a lot to say about him. Trite sentimentalities and pseudo insights into the complexities of a wonderful person. I had never felt so alone in my life.

So from that point on, I stayed away from final good-byes.

But with J. I felt, I had to make an appearance. For one, it probably wouldn’t have been any good to tell the family that I was probably going to hate their funeral service; and then I didn’t feel good about lying to them either. So, brave little Julian and I went. And I am glad we did.

It was a simple ceremony. Her husband had written the eulogy. And with very few frills and elaborations, he managed to bring her back among our midst. And so what made that terrible day good in a way was that, not only for the first time in my life I had arrived on time for something, which would have made her proud, but above all that everyone who had come was able to reunite with her through these few words, which would have made her very happy.

103

Three days of being out with one hundered and three is the best that has happened to me in a while.

Of Things to Come

Jules took the news of his best buddy’s mom dying, as a five-year old would. With extreme poise. Death to him is like a vague other-world, one that adults move around in that is infinitely less interesting than his own universe, which is inhabited by gnomes, talking ants and himself among other cool creatures. And to make us all feel better about his friend’s grim lot in life, he added, “When Ricky’s mom dies, she will come back as a little boy to play with him.” When I told J. that, she said that Ricky had come up with a very similar account of things to come, and that she was looking forward to it.

Dale of Sorrows

My head hurts from hours of silence. Of not crying.
The children have all seen it before, the swollen eyes, the quivering chin.
The days, maybe hours, while J. is still alive.

Bringing it home...again

Every time Fred comes up for breathing, I shoot him down. It's not nice, but I can't help it.

This time he was bemoaning the effects of outlawing DDT in the 1970s. Decades later Malaria is on the rise, people are dying. That awful Ms Carson and her ridiculous egg shells!!

True.

Maybe Rachel and Fred should rather team up and advocate outlawing patriarchy.
In the end, if you put two and two together, that's the leading cause of death in women in underdeveloped and/or muslim countries.

Think about it, if given a choice, which woman would want to subject herself to pregnancy and childbirth in unsanitary and often unsafe circumstances?

Childbirth is the leading cause of death of women.

Good luck with that book!

Life with a Smile

There is something to be said about taking things down a couple of notches, unwinding the coil a bit, and stepping back. I am trying to get to that point and although
still a few light years away from the perfect ‘omm’-state, I can report that life is beginning to look up.

J. is doing well with her last attempt at chemo and for the time being, nobody is mentioning books entitled “My Life without ME.” More and more, I have started to listen and relax. The initial outbreak of frantic problem-solving activism has given way to a more restful mind set. Life is never in our hands, not completely anyway. And although I have no flying idea in whose hands it is ultimately cradled, I am fine with the certainty that neither I nor anyone else have the ultimate say in matters of life, luck, happiness, and health. All we can do, whether as parents, doctors, policy makers, big time money makers and fellow human beings is to give it a good try.

It takes a long time to become a MENSCH. But everyday, we should try anew. It’s worthwhile. An aware and at the same time humble human - no more and no less.

In To-do Mode

After my friend was diagnosed with cancer last year, I tried to be there for her and her son as much as I could. Together with her parents, who flew in from Japan, and her other friends, I tried to turn the summer into a series of happy diversions for the little guy while his mom went through chemo and radiation.

And although she seemed tired and overwhelmed at times, she never let on, just how serious her situation was. And all of us, I think, gladly believed her. We wanted to hold on to our delusional state as long as possible, and she was generous.

I don’t know how she did it. Now that I know the type of cancer and the stage, I am a wreck.

About six weeks ago, we had a couple of long conversations just before she had to undergo major surgery and shortly after. While we sat at her dining room table, we talked about options for treatment and I promised to dig around in recent publications and on the internet. I signed her up for the MayoClinic cancer newsletter and found a clinic near her hospital that complements the therapy with holistic treatments.

On our more realistic days, I began looking for a box to fill with objects, letters, and smells that will remind her son of her, and she ordered the book “My life without Me.” Together, we have tried to grasp the incomprehensible by managing it in a to-do format. Everything is a project, and for every problem, there is a solution.

Except there isn’t.

She has started the next round of chemotherapy, a very aggressive 41/2 month program that will leave her body weak and bald. Not a good, but alas a last chance.

Shortly before Christmas, a few weeks after her second scan which came back negative, we had toasted to her recovery.

...

J. has gone away over Easter. She is spending a few days on the sea. Tom's family will be there. I don't know whether they will talk. His mom is wonderful, but everyone is in shock. And then there is Ricky. He must not know. Life must go on. Eggs must be found and relished. He does, of course, know something. But that knowledge is feathery. Obscure and shapeless like coins at the bottom of a fountain.

I will be doing some research this coming week. I have got some ideas for treatments from preliminary research. Thanks also to you all who gave me pointers. I will be sorting through them with J. once she gets back. Her oncologist wants her to go for a second round of chemo. Five months. A last chance maybe.

HELP !!! ANYONE, PLEASE !!

My friend is dying. Her cancer has spread. She has ADENO CARCINOMA. She has done 5 courses of the chemo drug CISPLATIN, but it spread into her lower intestines. I cannot believe this is happening. She is 36 and her son just turned 4.
Please, anyone, drugs, pain killers, therapies, medical trials, alternative medicines...please pick your brains. Also, any ideas about good books on bereavement for children? Do you know of anyone else with this type of cancer...or online resources, groups, things to do? All I have been doing for the last thirty-two hours since she told me is fighting back tears and I am not doing such a great job. Actually I am probably the worst friend to have in a situation like this. But I am working on it. Please help, if you can.