and so what now?

Yesterday, after not having slept for a very long time, I published long pieces here on the blog written from a place of despair. I deleted them but one thing remains: rage.

I am an angry woman, and I have been angry for longer than even I imagined. For this moment I am going to set aside my gratitude and relentless pursuit of God's grace and voice the darkness alone, without trying to balance the madness with words of hope. I am going to falter, maybe for just a moment, in my faith that what God asks of me is good works, and that even the smallest good works meet that mandate. I am going to rage against powerlessness. I am going to doubt out loud that there is a higher power who can hear prayer, any prayer; those spoken with grand passionate volume or the silent and softly whispered prayers of the naive, straight from the pure heart of just one child.

I am so angry at the greed that clearly infected an entire generation of what should have been vetted financial geniuses, greed that endangered shareholders and every citizen of an entire nation, greed that brought us to an unprecedented financial collapse, a collapse that will require a unique description, not "recession" or "depression". I am infuriated that there is even a concept on the table in Congress that any of these people would have any kind of "parachute". They should go the way any of person caught stealing..."please leave your keys and your badge on the desk, security will escort you out. We will send you your personal belongings after we have searched them for evidence of any further wrongdoing."

I am angry at the suicide death of a man who I have always silently believed saved my life. This man was a good man...a brother, father and husband. I only had a couple of opportunities to wander around the woods and rivers of Connecticut with him and a crew of others, and now he is gone we have lost a person who taught many about the wonders of nature with his own contagious wonder. I am the only one who knew he saved my life once. He did it so deftly and with such skill that my fear was instantly evaporated. I wanted to appear cavalier about what happened, and so I did not laud his heroism...I kept the depth of peril to myself. I only spoke of it in the abstract...rules of the river or other fast water. Those closest to him fought for him valiantly, but the disease he and I both have took his life anyway. Perhaps he will have saved my life twice...his suffering and that of those around him may have led me to a path of safety from suicide, and his death will heighten my vigilance against the symptoms that can sweep me swiftly into dangerously fast water.

I am angry that another family, stewards of our agricultural heritage, could not set aside their differences, differences I understand very well, and save a farm. I am angry that farmers are dying breed. I am angry that as much as I love the land and the Connecticut River Valley's rich and fertile soil I could not, physically or financially, grow food or flowers for a living.

I am angry that my personal struggles keep me from waging war to preserve open space for agriculture and nature...and that in my town more taxpayers think that we can magically keep development away by simply pulling the "no" lever on every budget vote. I am angry that some of our best and most skilled citizens and staff can be silenced, chased and beaten away by those who believe everything can stay the same as it always was.

I am angry we can only shrink what we teach our children in schools strapped financially, we can not expand or explore progressive education designed to nurture the skills our next generation will need to win the battles we are losing now. This kind of education must be smuggled in the back door, by teachers and leaders who bravely teach their best, always refusing to leave any hope for any child behind, despite the hurricane force winds of a national education crisis that has broadly painted all who educate incompetent, or even more ridiculous, greedy for pay. I am angry as I watch children skimmed off the top of urban schools and whisked off to new magnet schools. The progress "no child left behind" has made is that only the poorest of the poor, the most educationally needy, will be left to flounder in schools labeled "failing". They will have lost their only entitlement, their right to an equal education.

I am angry that few understand poverty is and will remain the powerful undercurrent at the bottom of every crisis we face globally and locally.

I am angry our health care system is broken, not by the greed of medical professionals, but by the insane costs of monstrous government bureaucracy, greedy pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists, and insurance companies who have needed to keep their profits high enough to invest in now failed financial institutions. As a country we are nowhere near prepared for the costs medical advancements have made that lengthen our lives, longevity we should celebrate, but that will force more and more of our elderly into unresolvable poverty and perhaps even a longevity that severely diminishes any quality of life.

I am angry government has cost all of us our individual rights, at the hands of a political party built on the value of individual rights and LESS government interference. I am angry the same people set back science in our country, not just on one front, declaring any single human cell life, and at the same waded in to a marriage, into the sanctity of a "proper" marriage, to deny a conversation between husband and wife is not enough to fulfill an expressed desire, a right to die with dignity, after all hope for a meaningful life is lost. We are not free to choose what "meaningful" is. As we battle over single cells, entire species are wiped away and climate change is declared a myth~ just climate change, just pure empirical data, before we even begin discussing what is fueling it. Individual rights and scientific pursuits, swept away, perhaps unrecoverable for a lifetime.

I will never stop being angry at the spectacle of watching poor people die days and days and even weeks after Hurricane Katrina had long passed through. It was a national shame I hope we will never repeat.

I am angry our larger health care advances have been to repair brains and burns and the lost limbs of soldiers who would still serve their country given a chance.

I am also selfishly angry. I live with the kinds of chronic illness there are no big fundraisers for, that have no cool little rubber bracelets, the kind we don't talk about, the kind that people whisper about. I am angry that there is some reason pharmaceutical companies spend huge money to advertise anti-psychotic medications. Are there enough psychotic people out there to warrant that kind of advertising? Then again...do you have any idea what these medications cost? Who is the intended target of these advertisers? I am betting your average psychotic joe or jane isn't rushing to the doc to get a script...not like, say, the little purple pill.

I am angry at the new assaults on my body. They are temporary and should resolve in a few months, but they are side-effects of my treatment, not new disease.

I am angry I must depend on the generosity of others, like my parents, who should not have to be caring for their 46 year old daughter. They drive me around when I can't drive, and launder money for slow-to-pay insurance companies, enabling me to keep seeing the specialists who help the most, specialists who must employ huge staffs so they can accept insurance, but who must pay themselves and their people this week...not in 90 days or six months or even, in some cases, more than a year.

I am sad that this will be my last blog entry. My desire to work and sell what I am good at is under assault...by the economy, by my health, by my desire to make art AND still teach. That art and the students I tutor must come first. Teaching any subject feeds my soul in the same way making art does. I have surveyed those who have purchased from me, those who are my friends and any one else I could ask. The message is clear: the easiest way for them to see exactly what is for sale is a website. This week I also learned that one of the other tools I use for marketing is technically flawed. I will keep journaling, on my own, and maybe someday find a way to write something more useful. I have a lot to say.

Maybe there is one bit of gratitude that will surface here. Thank you, Helene, for reading and encouraging me. Your words are not lost on me and they will keep a dream of mine fueled for a different time. In the meantime, to my great fortune, you are right next door.