Ebola: Run for Your Life

I have a question this morning: Why are we allowing the free transport of people with Ebola virus into the United States of America? Thus far, we have had zero reported cases of Ebola in the United States of America. Now we have two. 

This one question leads to a list of others:

1. How did they get here? Commercial flight? Private?
2. What precautions were taken on the flights?
3. What was done to clean and clear the planes after the flights?
4. Were those planes put back into commercial service here in the US?
5. Who did the cleaning?
6. Where, when, how, and by whom were the cleaning materials disposed?
7. How many people were on theses flights?
8. How was their safety considered?
9. How did they come into contact with the Ebola victim and his/her caretakers?
10. How were these people protected from contracting or carrying Ebola?

This is just a short list. This is a list that back in the olden days before journalism rolled over and died in favor of supporting pet causes and political favoritism would have been the questioning line to the government, to the Centers for Disease Control, to the airlines, to Homeland Security, and to anyone else a real journalist could pin down and ask a pointed question.

We cannot look to the president of the United States for answers, because he is not a serious man. He waves off the work of his office with dismissive hand gestures, lame attempts at hip humor, and whining about the hatin' haters who are hatin' on his folks who tryin' to get the work done if not for the hatin' haters. In a less serious scenario than importing a deadly virus with no cure that delivers an horrific death to its victims, this might be a way to address thing other than the topics of state. 

We cannot look to Congress, right or left, because they are so polarized by the unserious president and their own concerns for power and control, we might as well not have Congress. 

If Ebola doesn't frighten a body it's because we are first worlders and we haven't a clue how it is to watch a person die from it. For years, we have watched and read, and heard about it as it flares up in some far flung unfortunate African nation--so remote from our understanding that we don't even say a prayer that it doesn't jump to someone outside that country, hop a plane to Atlanta, and land in a busy flying hub in the United States of America. Will never happen, we muse. They won't let it. They? They are all of a sudden not only letting it--they are purposely allowing it--actively permitting and facilitating the possibility of infection of thousands and horrific deaths of American people. 

We have no collective memory in this country of uncontrolled death by contagious disease on a large scale in this country. No one remembers the Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1919 that swept the world--including the United States and took out millions. Whole families in every little community of this country were wiped out. You can go to just about any cemetery of an older town and find the 

pandemic victims of that era laying in their quiet graves with headstones side by side indicating a lost family. We have no memory of empty streets and the few people on them even in our largest cities walking around with their faces covered for fear of contracting the flu. We don't know the grief of death. Modern life, medicine, and better living through chemistry has eradicated the way death stole into communities and took down the healthy and the weak--the young and the old without distinction. Many people have only the experience of losing a grandparent--someone whose time had come, and rightly so. We have been comfortable in the natural order of death: the old, the sick, the weak, the suffering. Throw in an accident here and there, the inexplicable cancer in a the young friend of a fiend of a friend-but by and large, we can explain the death we encounter these deaths and so--we do not know death

We think we are in no danger of an Ebola pandemic happening to us now--Ebola only happens in Third World countries where they don't have running water and internet connectivity. It's over there. It will run it's course before it gets to over here. A few doctors, nurses, and other admirable souls who care will die ministering to the victims over there and then it will die out and we won't hear of it again until later.

Only not this time. The government of the United States of America has brought Ebola to us, landed it in one of the busiest airline hubs in the country, has exposed the entire community in Atlanta to this horrific sickness and death with no cure, and is also apparently allowing it to stream over the border along with untold other diseases that we have handily controlled in this country for the last 75 years.

I hope we don't have to learn the lessons of stupidity and hubris and grief and suffering that our government has brought to us--a lesson that was learned by our ancestors almost one hundred years ago. 

Review: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is one of these movies that could have ended so much sooner and without a lot of bloodshed for the humans and the apes if only people and apes could trust each other, sit down to talk one on one, share books, life stories, heal each other's hurts, learn to get along and in the end--to love one another.

Sound familiar? 

Hollywood has this penchant (Avatar for the most glaringly obvious) of deploying this admirable and wishable dream on the rest of us. The bad guys are bad because they are both tormented and tortured--usually by members of their opposing tribal members. In this case, humans of course have tortured the apes and thus the apes cannot love nor trust humans with good reason, right? We put them in cages and allowed Maybelline and Revlon and Umbrella Corp., and the Military Industrial Complex to torture them for centuries. On the other hand, the Simian Flu that escaped a lab and caused the almost extinction event for humanity caused pain and torture to humans who now cannot love nor trust the apes. Except there is always one guy and one ape that try to rise above all this and learn to love and trust again so everyone can live in peace. Throw in your rogue, hillbilly, ape killers opposing your rogue tortured ape with a revenge fantasy and that's pretty much this whole movie. Why can't we all get along?

There are serious flaws in this movie:  Apes and humans have lived for ten years not knowing of each other's existence even though the City compound (SanFrancisco dystopian style) and the ape village are pretty much within sight of each other. Yet, both humans and apes are totally shocked to run into each other in the forest--the humans looking to reach a defunct hydroelectric facility. Along for the ride is the one guy, armed of course, who used to work at the facility. This guy also has a shaky trigger finger and hates apes. Chaos ensues from there, even though the one human and the one ape leader try to make it work. Why does the crazy guy with the gun always have the mystical powers to make the plan work? Why can't he be the guy with the mystical powers who is disarmed? Why is the leader of the humans hell bent on a war "to save humanity" when the other option is just to take a beat and try talking to the apes whose territory humans must cross to get to the hydroelectric plant? Isn't there another route around the apes? How did they know the hydroelectric plant was there, but not the ape village? When the crazy American leader calls in an air strike after making contact with other humans (an air strike, really?) to eradicate the armed ape forces--why doesn't the good guy call off the air strike? Why does every single human hate and despise the apes in the first place? Sure it was a Simian Flu that escaped the lab--but it escaped the lab because of a human--not the hapless apes and monkeys. Were the humans riled up into hating the apes--was that in the other movie? Are there no humans in the City that would say--hey, wait a minute--let's not jump the gun here. Let's ask the apes if we can cross through their territory, do what we need to do at the hydroelectric plant and then we can all live in in peace. Hydroelectric plant? Can one crazy guy with the apparent education and apparent abilities of a Walmart garden area employee get this defunct thing to go again? How is it that the City is so heavily armed ten years after the extinction event in the first place--because "FEMA" left it all behind for them? Where did they go? Why is the human leader suddenly made to 

be a crazed, gun toting wild-eyed, war monger, when for the first two hours of the movie he was not? Maybe I missed something by not watching the previous installment of this series? Finally, with an airstrike impending upon the City--the ape leader declares to the human guy who is his friend that they will stay and fight because humans cannot forgive. As far as I can tell, there is still time to call off the airstrike but not enough time to get all the humans and apes out of the city. The crazy leader called down the strike on his own position. Shouldn't both humans and apes be running the hell for the forest? Quite honestly, they're all about to take the hit from the airstrike. If someone, somewhere has the capabilities of making an airstrike called in by unknown persons--why would they--and further, why had they not discovered the  City of SanFrancisco by doing fly overs to see if there were any humans left? Huh? How about all that?

The ape CGI and all the industrial light and magic was very well done. The script was lacking. I'm not sorry I saw it--I'm kind of put out that it was so filled with cliches and improbabilities, predictable  characters and stereotypical good/bad guys; plot holes and convenient occurrences driving the movie 

forward.

Spring Semester Begins

The Spring semester arrived, finally, for me this Friday at 10:10 this morning when I drove up to campus, purchased coffee, stamped my frequent flier's coffee card, and met with my first student. There have been a few delays and a cancellations due to the extreme cold and snow--but finally I am back at my tutoring table and my students. What a relief, I must confess. It is the island of normalcy in my current life of exile.

Warning: Sentimental, crispy-crunchy, granola, made in California style, new agey, teacherly emotions ahead. Curvy curves ahead. No guard rails.

On the first day of teaching in each semester, I go through this thing where I feel connected, suddenly, with all teachers everywhere in all time, space, and dimension. Also, I get all maudlin and remembrical about my former students. This may come as a shock to non-teachers, but I sometimes miss my former students--even after all these years. Some of them left quite the impression, but that is what happens in teaching. It's not like selling car insurance, where you work the paper and make people safe from their own selves or the caprice of fate or the stupid actions of others. Oh, you do that in teaching, to a degree, but by and large, I spent a great deal of the most productive years of my life so far teaching people where to put a comma, the right word, sentence, and/or piece of research in a writing project. I also taught people where to cut and on which line for construction paper art projects. Child: Is this right? Teacher: No. Did I say to cut on the line or on the fold? C: The line. T: And where did you cut? C: The fold. T: Now what? C: Another tree dies in the forest because I cut on the fold again? T: Yes, that's correct. Now then, go put that in the scrap barrel for another non-cutty, 
foldy project we might have in future and let's cut one together on the line.                                                    
    

The connection I feel is palpable. It comes from memory and chalk dust and magic fairy dust. It    comes from hearing myself say things my most revered teachers have said to me, it comes from        
    seeing my student lean into her work and come up with invention, outline, thesis, paragraph. It comes from the voices of children, Miss Teacher, can you help me? It comes from assignments that angered  me, confounded me, gave me life. Then, of course, there are the books, the papers, the pens, the parts, and the pieces of the profession. Write my name on the board, say: I am Miss and I am your teacher. I pause in the silence of the moment and I let that sink in for my students. It's suddenly a covenant and we all know it. Turn a page, make a point that lands and flourishes in the mind, stumble upon the thing that works, that generates the thing that sparks the thought that opens the door that was closed and the writing comes out with the query: Is this it? Is this any good?  And sometimes it is so good it's spectacular.

Today, I spelled out Amontillado in phonetics so a student could say the title of Poe's work without being embarrassed in class. Oh, she said, I can say it! Sure you can, I said. Why had a teacher not taught this student to say this word before college? It took less time to teach this than it did to say
skip it and keep reading...      

Today, I walked past students who lit up when they saw me, Hi! I have you! Some of these students I            
 have been tutoring since 2007. That's the nature of teaching in the CC. We hang out here together, sometimes for years. It's what the government pays both of us to do, afterall. I can think of worse things the upon which the government spends money. Sadly, I can think of better, too, for both of us. Some of these students I worked with last semester. They were all but shredded the last time I saw them. Some did not pass their class, I see. They have readjusted their outlook, shouldered another failure, and it looks like they are getting on with it.

The snow and delays have purified and made new the school year. Whatever came of last semester is long gone.  Some are repeating what is gone. They are happy and shiny about it. The angst and misery of just a month ago is barely a memory. There is a scar from it, to be sure. A failure scar registered in there inside them, yet here they are. They are ready to go back to it, to try to get the words and the thoughts in the order that the instructor insists they must go while trying to push back on and overcome the things that hinder that from happening. They are ready to try and slay the
dragon again.          
                             
My students feel tiny, tiny and the dragon is huge. They have a pen and some paper. The dragon has everything else. I am like the second, I stand behind the dragonslayer with my own pen and paper and experience in dragon slaying. They check to see that I am there. I nod. They step forward. The dragon bellows. I cringe a little, plant my feet. Shudder a little, myself. They do not see me. I am the teacher, afterall. No fear, no crying in teaching. They look back at me and I nod and say Do it! They step forward again, and the pen goes down on the paper. We both lean forward into the battle.

Spinsters Upon the Day of Reckoning

Sixteen Reasons Why Spinsters Will Survive the First Wave of the Zombie Apocalypse

1. Spinsters are used to surviving on their own. 

2. Spinsters have well-stocked pantries.

3.  Spinsters have access to weaponry and ammo--and have often taken classes to prepare to defend themselves.
4.    Spinsters are natural born leaders, teachers, healers (moms, teachers, nurses/docs.)
5.    Spinsters have a network already established which connects them to other spinsters. Some spinsters communicate telepathically...but most will rely on walk-talkie and short wave, once the com goes down.
6.    Spinsters are brilliant strategists and organizers across any number of disciplines (see number one.)
7.    Spinsters kill their own spiders.

8.    Spinsters keep their cars and homes in working order and have gardens (oftentimes on rooftops.)
9.    Spinsters have a huge supply of candles, matches, batteries, wind-up radios and flashlights on hand.
10.  Spinsters have large supplies of chocolate, brownie mix, wine, gin and tonic, narcotics, motrin, excedrin migraine medicine, toilet paper.
11.  Spinsters have patrol cats already in place who monitor the perimeter of their residences and act as early warning devices in the instance of zombie and/or malefactor incursion.
12.  Spinsters can provide counseling to each other as well as to their small or large band of survivors in order to keep the community mentally alert and prepared to fight to stay alive. Spinsters also have a working knowledge of most anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs once these things are secured from abandoned pharmacies and hospitals.
13.  Spinsters often have medieval weapons such as crossbows, swords, battle axes and maces hanging on their walls--formerly used as show and tell pieces for when they taught Arthurian legend--now perfect for zombie eradication.
14.  Spinsters have large libraries.
15.  Spinsters have an endless supply of paper, pens, and assorted art supplies.
16.  Spinsters have ready made armies prepared to die for each other while protecting the community of survivors: current and former students.

Credo in Unum Gigi

Welcome to The Spinster's Compass, I am The Gigi. Come on in and sit you for a spell. There’s tea brewing, biscotti on the table, and a beautiful black cat with mystical green eyes in here who is checking you out while in stealth mode.

Who is The Gigi and what is contained in her manifesto thus far? I am someone who always has something to say about something. I have a wide variety of interests, perhaps some of my interests will intersect with yours and you will want to follow along. You like to hear yourself write, said my ninth grade English teacher—and then I won a Scholastic writing award about a post Civil War era spinster who is driven crazy when her beau never returns from the war. Miss Mamie Walton meets Miss Havisham..and there it is. I am a post Civil War spinster (after a fashion) as it turns out, who also was an introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving little Bean in the ninth grade, too. These things have not changed.

I have writing and books cred going back to age 13 when I wrote an intensive review of Mary Queen of Scots, by Antonia Frasier and then delivered a 30 minute presentation on the review. I was enthralled by both the writing and being on stage. Everyone else, including my teacher, marked me as a brown-haired, glasses wearing, nerdy nerd, chubby girl. I got an A on the paper and the presentation, but I wonder if the cost was a bit too much. Let’s just say that children are cruel. Children from small western PA steel towns with a football fetish and a dislike for those persons not born at the local hospital (we moved there when I was 8) are exquisitely cruel. This is not the last you will hear on this topic, be assured. Silence will end on what I saw, heard, and experienced growing up and attending my public school system. I grew up to become a writer and a teacher to right some wrongs, shall we say.

To counteract the trauma of the public school system, I researched and discovered a woman centered, centered women’s college where I attended to read literature, write, and study history in peace. No, seriously, that is exactly why I went to college--and some notion of wanting to be a writer and see the world. More important still, I went to college so as to no longer deal with a boy centered, centered boy system of public education. That college ceased to exist in the late 80s when it began admitting men. A few years later, it became a university, got a football team (the horror), and also lacrosse, tennis, and of course basketball. Gah. There is much to be said about a woman centered, centered woman college run by nuns and former nuns. My writing is of course informed by that experience.

Academically, I missed the last thirty years of literary “Theory, big T”, as they say. However, when I finally went back to study for my Master’s degree a few years ago, I was thrown into it head first. I felt like Sleeping Beauty, awakening to a changed world. It was strange, it was surprising, it was enchanting, it was addictive. In short, I loved it. So I wrote a paper about it. The experience was most excellent—all due to a wonderful group of women professors who really have it going on up there in the English Department and a smart, sharp, great group of persons reading and writing papers along with me for the degree! Delightful!

Politically, I am a fiscal conservative. This means I am pro social programs as long as they are in the budget and can be paid for without huge amounts of money currently being printed in the basement of the Fed and debt passed on to my young nephews. Unsecured personal and governmental debt will be the downfall of this country. I also believe social programs of the Great Society need to be reviewed line by line for costs v. effectiveness. Then we can jettison them out of the airlock once we see that they are worthless except to ensure politicians a secure a voting base. I believe that we could do without the IRS, NASA, the NEA, the EPA, Head Start, and the Education Department. All education should be administered locally. The military? Yes, as much as we can afford, because there are bad guys out there who mean to do us harm.

I believe in many things over which my Liberal friends blow a vein in their foreheads when I post on Facebook. The feeling is mutual. I’m not sure how we got on opposite sides of that aisle, we didn’t seem to start that way. However, to paraphrase my least favorite American president, there is more that unites us than divides us, right? In case they forget, I will list what unites us: books, tea, GandT, writing, talking, talking, talking,shopping, spending four years in nuns' cells while not actually being nuns, breaking international maritime law, drinking, debauchery, witnessing each others troubles and trouble making...well, for a long time now...thirty years, actually...and the stories, of course. There are so many stories as one might imagine there being--all tucked up on top of a hill in a turn of the century former ladies only college that resembles to this day a turn of the century insane asylum.

 I believe in God and am a Catholic and have been indoctrinated as such, but like that great line from Lost Boys, a fabulous 80s vampire flick: The one thing I hate about Santa Carla, is all the damn vampires; the one thing I hate about the Catholic Church is all the damn pedophiles. And the con men. And the power hungry people in and out of clerics. I believe in the dogma, most of the doctrine. I adore the ritual and the bell, book, and candle. I’m all old school liturgy in Latin. Unfortunately, due to a run in with the pedophiles, the con men, the power hungry in and out of clerics, and most especially their lawyers, I have been on the outside looking in for more than a decade or so. Again, the Catholic thing in all its pomps and all its empty promises sometimes informs my writing, as does that Jesus guy (as my friend Mamie, the atheist, would say), his mother, Our Lady, and of course, St. Joan of Arc. I have been feeling rather sentimental about the old place (as it were)--because Catholicism is a place, too, as well as a practice. It is also a culture. A way. A journey. See? Just when I think I am out...

I am a Kennedy Conspiracy Theorist. I am one of the founders and card carrying members of the Dead Fathers Society, age three upon membership.  I wonder if we really landed men on the moon when I was six. False flag events? An alarming rise in those. Aliens? Yes. Religions that intersect with aliens, their planets and their technologies? No. Second amendment? You betcha. History? Yes. Lots of that and stuff we are doomed to repeat if we don’t turn it around.

I am all about tradition. I was born in the wrong time and in the wrong place. I like simple elegance in design, with a dash of Alice in Wonderland. Mid century Modern (MCM) and the 70s—I lived through it survived it. Meh. I’m all about Arts and Crafts…anything built before 1925 in furniture and architecture. I like the idea of pretty hats and gloves. Anything people wore at the time of King Edward VII going forward to the Titanic (but not the undergarments—yikes!). Slap the Union Jack on it and you’re good to go. Shrine building all over the place--no longer Catholic in theme, but literary. An icon here or there from the Oriental side of the Church. The apartments of Sherlock Holmes meets Downtown Abbey, meets Auntie Carmella’s house on a good day. My house is a museum to me and things that comfort me—that is when I have a house. I am currently in exile. Alas.

What will The Gigi be explaining to you? Life, memories, experiences, moments, religion, history, garments, food, taxes, politics, and people. That encompasses a lot of stuff. Things that irk me, strike me as being wrong, ridiculous, noble, perverse, fabulous, intriguing, chaotic and entropic will probably end up here, as well. And zombies. And, of course, vampires.