Letters from NYC

YOU'VE HIT A NERVE MICHELE!

I get quite a few emails from readers who don't post comments because they don't feel comfortable being that open with their views. well this week I recieved 2 emails that particularly stand out for very different reasons.

Read on....

The first email was received in response to my GOOOOOAL post, where I expose NBC's biased coverage. Tthat produced and incredible response, 13 emails and counting. Here's the email that encapsulates the majority of the emails I received.

"NBC's coverage of the Olympics SUCKS! I'm pining for the days when ABC wide world of sports w/Jim McKay covered the Olympics. Those were the days. I turn off the coverage every night and watch Law & Order repeats because I get so bored and so sick of the commercial interruptions (it loses all dramatic build-up). Women's team sports always get short shrift unless they are wearing swimsuits, tight leotards or thongs like the beach volley ball competition (yawn). (American)women's soccer, basketball and softball teams are or will be gold medal winners and yet the men's teams get the coverage. YOU'VE HIT A NERVE MICHELE!!"

The 2nd email came by way of a redirected link where my French Revisionism post was mentioned at a bi-lingual French blog. It was short and very vile. I include my response for the benefit of history and truth. Please note, I don't believe in cursing at a person for their ignorance, I simply stupefy them with my intelligence.

"Ben Laden n´a jamais commis d´acte de terorisme : seulement de l´auto-défense. Que sont les 3000 morts du WTC comparé aux dizaines de milliers de gens massacrés par Bush?"

My translation: "Bin Laden has never commited an act of terrorism, only [acts] of self defense. What are 3,000 dead at the World Trade Center compared to the hundreds of thousands massacred by Bush"

Henri must either be uneducated or unread. It is unfortunate that he doesn't realize that he, along with all his country men are the enemy of Bin Laden. Or perhaps in school they never covered the atrocities and opression perpetrated by the french against arabs long ago! [Morocco, Algiers, Mozambique and in France currenlty against Muslim women] I can see that French revisionism is not limited to WW2, but also French history.

Dear Mike - Happy Birthday

You’ve been coming up in conversation quite a bit lately. My mom and sister, forgetting you were dead, asked how you were during my last visit. Being tired and stressed out from cuddlebunny being very sick, and being run down from round the clock care and giving meds didn’t help. I simply couldn’t answer at first. Instead of formulating the words “he’s dead�, as I’d done before, I just simply broke down and cried. They panicked for a bit, because I really couldn’t talk for a while. I think that my reaction brought your death home to them. I don’t think they’ll be asking for you again.

Up until that point I hadn’t realized how much I’ve missing you. After each interview I wished I could have called you to let you know how things had gone. Instead, I got online and visited my blog family and sprinkled comments everywhere. You would like all of them. They're funny, smart, and interesting. Some have the same sense of humor you do. I have to say that in your honor I’ve been visiting one site in particular called Madfish Willie’s Cyber Saloon. It kind of defies description. It’s the kind of place you used to drink with your buddies before you left the Fire Dept. You know, the bar you’d ask me not to go into but instead to meet you at the corner. Yep, it’s that kind of a place; all are funny, some are bawdy, the drunks are surly, and a very few are lewd. While their outrageous humor shocks me just enough to not visit too often, most jokes are not so naughty that they prevent me from laughing.

Visiting all these wonderful people has helped me stay in the land of the vibrantly living and moved me beyond the present and looking towards a brighter future. I’ve even begun forming close bonds with a few. The blessing is that it's slow going and at a distance. You know how I am, mostly a solitary creature; if it hadn’t been for you adopting me we probably wouldn’t even had become friends. Well, last summer I was adopted into this family and they’ve all helped with my healing since then. It all started with Sgt Hook posting the letters I sent to him. Shortly after that, Harvey read them and found me living in some lousy conditions at this awful blogging ghetto and helped find me a nice new home. Nice digs don’t you think! I eventually grew on him, as you used to say - like fungus, and he adopted me. I guess I would have eventually started coming out of the dark on my own. But as you know, writing just helped me heal faster than most. Since my first site incarnation I’ve managed to really come into the light with their help.

In rereading this letter I realized that this post, in a way, is like our birthday celebration. Your 46, my site is 1yr old, and me, well, I’m still young at heart. Though I will not be going to the circus, and I will not be picking up cupcakes from Mrs. Beasley’s to celebrate, I will do something fun in your memory. Still can’t think of what it might be, but it will be a remembrance nonetheless. Maybe I’ll get some help setting up a page for a 24hr online jokathon like you once wanted me to do to benefit the MS and Leukemia societies. But although I was stumped back then as to how to collect money online, I just thought of a possiblity that might work. Hmmmmm, gotta think about this some more. Wow, thanks for the idea kiddo. I can see you’re still telling me what you want me to do!

Well, I hope you continue watching over me from heaven, because as you’ve seen, I can still get in over my head sometimes here on earth. Oh by the way, HAPPY BIRTHDAY sans le cupcake!!!

Loving you always!
M/

A Big Hello Texas Style

Below is a letter I received from my displaced NOLA friend.

Dear Michele:
I went to the State Fair of Texas, as I told you, and here is what I did and saw:

1. Cowboy Troy - Dallas Fort Worth's own country rap artist - you just knew it had to happen, didn't you, that someone would combine those genres? He was really very good. Yaay, Cowboy Troy!

2. Pig Race - Hosted by Pork Boy Elroy - wonder if he is related to Cowboy Troy? Three races of four piglets each - it was so popular they had to turn people away. They lure the pigs with a cookie to get them to run around the track. One tried to make a break for it, and they lured him back - he fell for it, then squealed and squealed when they picked him up and put him back in the pen. He seemed to be saying, oh, curses I almost had it, and foiled by my appetites again.

3. Livestock Barns - These could be found without visual cue, if you know what I mean. My Ugg's may never be the same - ugh. But I saw the largest pig in the state of Texas - the size of a sofa, I kid you not, tumped over on his side, snoring away - beautiful velvety black cows, mules, horses, very loud and obnoxious sheep - BAAAAAHHHH - , weird little goats, and a miniature donkey that hated humans so much he SCREAMED a hee-haw whenever someone came near his pen, which was about every thirty seconds. Wow. It was more like a monkey cage in there. Eee, eee, EEE!!! I had the chance to pet another small burro, but said no thanks, based on the example of the hysterical one. Yes, it was small and seemed placid, but it, too, had hooves. And teeth.

4. Elvis - The fair would not be complete without the King, and he was present in a collection of his personal memorabilia - which was extremely fascinating: his crushed red velvet bedspread from Graceland, his draft notice, his Love Me Tender necklace that he gave to his Grandmother Minnie Mae, etc. - and also as a butter sculpture. Yes, sculpted in butter. That was really, really funny.

5. Elsie the Cow - I met Elsie the cow and baby Beau at the Borden milk booth. Maybe you have caught that the main theme of the State Fair is agricultural. Yes, indeed. Elsie was a very placid large brood cow with big sad eyes, and very curly horns. They must have done a talent search, because she and Beau looked just like the milk carton. Very cute. He was passed out the whole time. I guess too much milk.

6. Food - I ate a snowcone the size of my head and some cotton candy, which though it consisted of a bed pillow size bag of sugar, billed itself as 'Low Fat!' They have no shame. But I passed on the fried cheesecake, fried Twinkies, fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches in honor of the king, french fries, etc. If you can fry it and put it on a stick they serve it and someone will eat it.

7. Big Tex - I overheard some preteen boys heckle Big Tex, the animatronic State Fair mascot since the fifties. He stands near the entrance, with size 86 pants and a ten gallon hat and his scary clown face, and says things like Howdy Pardner! We made fun of him when I was in school, and the tradition seems to be going strong - these kids called him Big Dork.

8. Home grown arts and crafts - The Embarcadero Building houses the winners of an annual statewide arts competition. There is amazing stuff in there, ranging from beautiful tatting and beadwork to macrame and paint by numbers. I have liked looking at this since I was little. It ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous.

A fine time was had by all.

Dear Jon,

I’m so glad you wrote this post. These are excellent questions and some which are currently being discussed in Congress! I’m going to share my views and knowledge as it takes my mind off of my damned move!

You ask “is it different than say, Ford producing a car in China… than what Google is doing?�

Well, that’s a very good and complex question. In one sense, there is a difference as Ford’s production of cars in China’s turf does essentially 2 things: it produces an American product cheaply enough to compete in a huge new market being opened up to foreign (American) companies; it provides the Chinese with the rudimentary knowledge of how a capitalist manufacturing plant operates and prepares for the future.

China, is a country that until recently was closed off from any foreign knowledge, except that which would enable them to maintain some competitiveness in the marketplace and enable them to perpetuate their political system. In the late 1990’s Microsoft, and technology companies, began to make inroads through the manufacture and sales of their products in China. This impacted how Chinese knowledge was stored, organized and disseminated. It was these companies that helped fuel the imagination, hopes and dreams of students in The Tiananmen Square uprisings. They knew there was more and they wanted the knowledge that was available to the rest of the world.

Today, the Chinese old guard (party members) have seen the financial effects of Communist style secrecy and lack of information on their economy and its population during the spread of SAR’s in 2003. Their economy lost revenue in the millions. They now realize that transparency, openness, and information are keys to their economic survival and competitiveness in a market economy.

The Chinese are an extremely cautious people when it comes to change. Evidence of this has been seen in how they’ve adopted manufacturing concepts and ideas as opposed to technology. As they begin to take steps to gain membership in the World Trade Organization, their society will need to become even more open and transparent.

The Ford’s and Microsoft’s have done much in the last 5 years to help fuel the economic boon the Chinese are now experiencing. Chinese personal income and capital has nearly doubled over what they experienced exclusively under their Communist economy. So to answer your question, yes, even with limited censorship, the spread of information to a previously closed society does more for our socio-economic and political system than theirs. Of course you won't hear any of this in the MSM.

Google’s entrance into their world will do 2 very important things: it will provide the Chinese population (in the billions) with huge amounts of information they never had access to before (what they're blocking are key phrases like Tianamen Square and Free Speech); and, through the exposure of this new knowledge, they will gain understanding to western cultural values, capitalism and personal freedoms. All concepts they will eventually be able to embrace and adopt. In the end, it will not only be better for China, but it will also be better for Ford, and ultimately all of us.

As for your meta-question: "Is Communism in China ... worse than any other... ?" We need only look at Vietnam and see the economic and political changes in their country over the last 12 years to see that trade with open markets countries leads closed societies to seek out more prosperity and eventually greater freedoms.

Dear Joe

Dear Joe,
It was so wonderful to get your letter on Friday. I thought reading your funny cheerful letter would be the perfect way to end a really stressful week at work. and start my weekend on a positive note. At first I thought it strange that one of your men would write me directly, but after reading his letter I'm really grateful he did.

Sorry about writing my response here, but I just had to write and thank you for the pictures of the men and your girls and share some last thoughts with you. I cannot believe how much they’ve grown since I first saw them at the end of your first deployment. How time flies! I can believe it’s been a little over 3 years since we first began corresponding while you were in the middle of your first tour in Iraq.

I want you to know that since that time I’ve grown to appreciate you more each time and now consider you more like a younger brother than a close friend. I never really thanked you when you and the guys called me for mother’s day last year. I thought it was the sweetest most touching thing you’ve done and a memory I’ll treasure forever. Of course I still think you all sounded like wailing cats, but it’s the thought that counts, eh?

By the way, I finally started using the Schaeffer fountain pen you sent me for Christmas. I LOVE IT!!! It's possibly the best present I've ever gotten. I didn’t get a chance to tell you before because I only started using it Friday night to write in my journal.

It’s strange to be typing this letter because we always handwrote our letters to each other. In that way you and I were very much alike, old style communicators. I was really glad I decided to keep your letters, because I’ve been re-reading them and laughing all over again at some of the silliness in them. I finished the most recent ones this morning and have been thinking of sending them to your Aunt so she could hold onto them for when the girls get older. I think it would be great for them to see how much you loved them and how proud you were of them. Since you write so much of them in every letter, and they express your thoughts, hopes and dreams for them, I thought it would be fitting for them to have. God I’m going to miss your letters.

I want to thank you for being a persistent pain-in-the-a$$, and making me your friend. In writing my letters I was able to start giving my soul a voice once again. It helped me enormously too because I began to reach out and slowly let you into my life in a safe way. Believe me, I didn’t want for us to become good friends because I really didn’t want to have to mourn yet another person in my life. But you were insistent and reminded me that in changing the person I was, the free spirit, the adventurous, the risk taker, I was closing myself off from the possibility of experience moments of happiness and joy. As you said, being on the front lines straddling the line of life and death forced you not to piss away life’s precious moments.

For over a week now I’ve been thinking about my life in terms of what you said and what Tammi wrote in her blog about "taking risks". I was once again wondering if I should make an effort and get to know the people from work by socializing with them afterwards. What’s the risk? The risk is getting close and then losing them, and having to endure and mourn the loss of someone else. Yeah, yeah, I can almost hear your voice saying: “Abso-freaking-lutely! Because without the opportunity to experience pain, there is no opportunity to experience joy!� I remember you saying that during our first internet call during your 2nd deployment. I can still hear your hearty laugh when I asked you did you become a “F*^king Sufi-mystic.� You laughed so hard you fell off your chair and we nearly lost our connection. That still makes me laugh! I think of it every time my son starts tipping his chair.

Joe, I’m going to miss you! You were a brother and a friend that helped me start on the road to healing. And I will keep the promise you asked for in your last letter. I will remember only the laughs and good moments we shared through letters and not on the fact that you’re gone. I also promise that someday I’ll make it to Wash State to meet with the girls when they’re a bit older and explain the importance of why you were there, why you sacrificed as you did, and how much you loved our country.

Kiddo, please know that I loved you very much! Although I never said it while you were alive for fear that you’d confuse it with something else, the brotherly love I felt for you was very strong and grew with every exchange we had. My muse wants to thank you most of all for the encouragment you gave me while writing, for reading my little stories and for all the feedback you collected from your men.

I know that you are smiling down on me from heaven and possibly cracking everybody up with your jokes. Know that I believe your light has not been extinguished with your death but has grown brighter with our love and appreciation for you having been in our lives. Yes, you will be missed, but you will be remembered much more and with greater love. God Bless You Joe, and thank you for having been in my life for the short time you were!

Echoes of Silence II

"Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.
-- Robert Service - The Call of the Wild

Strange ruminations are going through my head. But they are all I have in this darkness for company. So what is my lesson Robert? Have I not learned it yet or well enough? Is there more to come my way?

I'm very tired tonight. Tired and upset at coming to terms yet again that I’m far and wide from the vision I had of where I thought I’d be while I was growing up. Or is my dissatisfaction with life and self simply a convenient way to turn the focus off of the circumstances that surround me and which I can't control.

What I do know, is that it was a very long and challenging day riddled with occassional missteps and mistakes. It began at 7:30am with a Pediatric CPR refresher course in which I just couldn’t get things right. Had a life depended on me this morning they surely would have died. Yes, this was a vastly different result from the life I saved last month. Go figure.

At some point in the afternoon I received a call from my boss, who pointed out the one little thing I failed to follow through on. Of course he did this while forgetting my current living circumstances and the fact that I alone did all the prep work and analysis for his meeting with the Governor, which made our firm shine. Instead he took that tone on my voice mail, the tone that told me that one F@#$ing thing was more important than all the analysis and positioning work I did this past month in advance of his trip.

My lovely afternoon culminated on the eve of day 8 without power, in a futile 6 mile search on foot for a store that might have carried anything that I could possibly buy to feed my son for breakfast and wouldn’t spoil in the warm temps overnight. My blistered feet only added to the constant reminder of my failure.

As I picked up my son from summer camp, I came across the Power Co. Reps and the American Red Cross setting up their tables by the subway train entrance we had to use. As we passed by their tables my son broke away from me and ran up to the front of the line that was forming to politely ask for something cold to drink. As he felt the coldness of the water bottle in his hand, he lifted it up and looking to the heavens exclaimed: “Thank God… finally a ice cold drink!� While everybody smiled or laughed my little heart sank.

In that moment, I felt the heavy weight and successive accumulation of the entire day’s failures. As tough as things got for me when I was barely 17 and living on my own; as difficult as things can get for a single parent without support, as challenging as a professional job can be, I have never, ever, felt like a failure or disappointed in myself. A huge lump knotted in my throat for a good long while.

I know these feelings will pass, I know they are temporary and linked to this never-ending pervasive darkness that I find myself in, but damn if it isn’t wearing on a person’s soul. I’ll take dealing with mice, snakes, zombies and spiders all day long rather than dealing with one more day in which I cannot: clean the dishes, do my laundry, take a hot shower and be able to rinse my hair, or make a really nice salad W/lots of FRESH VEGETABLES!

It’s not like I have never lived without power before. I did many, many years ago, as a relief worker in Mexico after a huge earthquake that killed thousands. I lived in dusty tent with no power and primitive facilities for almost 3 months without even a thought to what I was enduring. It takes the extreme awareness of a loved one dealing with deprivation which I can’t fulfill, to finally bring down my spirit.

I think a good long hot bath and a good night’s sleep will help me get a new perspective and start fresh again tomorrow.

Maybe if I end with a picture of tonight's sunset, that might help start my night anew too.

Update: I just got a a wonderful email with a picture from my favorite group of guys, Babylon Renegades if you will, who made me laugh heartily, cry intenselly and smile endlessly all in one letter. Yes Sgt, you are a handsome group of "Mothers"! And you're right, I am grateful not to be dealing with desert spiders!

I will share the picture with you once I get permission from these great and brave men! Somehow they always manage to give me what I need ; )

Permission having been granted, I share with you my favorite men in the whole world. They are an awesome group of guys who always seem to have the right timing! This picture is one I had asked for long ago. It includes one of my faithful correspondents who is no longer with us. Lt., I got to know you through your letters and learned to highly regard and admire you through the words of your men, especially young Crpl Eddie, who admired you so much. Know that you will be remembered and will always remain in my heart!

To My Muse

SONNET LXVI

I DON�T LOVE YOU... Because I Love you
and from loving you to not loving I arrive
at waiting while not waiting,
all the while, my heart going from ice to fire.

I love only you because it is you I love.
I hate you endlessly and hating plead
to the measure of your temporary love
never to see you or love you blindly.

Perhaps your cruel streak
will consume my heart and inner light
stealing with it my eternal peace.

In this story it is I who die
dying in my love and need of you
loving with passion blood and fire only you.
~ Pablo Neruda, 1959 - Translation my own

SONETO LXVI
NO TE QUIERO sino porque te quiero
y de quererte a no quererte llego
y de esperarte cuando no te espero
pasa mi corazón del frío al fuego.

Te quiero sólo porque a ti te quiero,
te odio sin fin, y odiándote te ruego,
y la medida de mi amor viajero
es no verte y amarte como un ciego.

Tal vez consumirá la luz de enero,
su rayo cruel, mi corazón entero,
robándome la llave del sosiego.

En esta historia sólo yo me muero
y moriré de amor porque te quiero,
porque te quiero, amor, a sangre y fuego.
~ Pablo Neruda, 1959

My Muse has gone

It's been away for far too long
and has that which I hold dearly
all my love for my creativity.

I winced at hearing myself read how awful it was outloud. After a very long pause, her first words were “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?� She said this in a somewhat weary tone that belied the disappointment and frustration she felt underneath her sweet southern Tennessee accent. Artists have very fragile and insecure egos, so she was very careful in walking the line between former teacher and creative mentor. I knew her well enough not to waste either of our time with vane excuses.

“What else you got? Because I know you, you've probably been sitting down writing and trying to force yourself to come up with something instead of painting or reading or doing something else that might free you up creatively.� She was right. After they cyber attack destroyed my pc and I lost my new poems, I got frustrated and stopped writing, my heart no longer in it. The looming deadline was the only thing that forced back onto a page.

“Well, you better come up with somethin’, ‘cause your name is already in the program and you’re closing the show. Otherwise that silence you hear after your name will be forever owned by you. It will resonate within you for years to come, and you’ll never be able to take it back.� [This is writer speak for disappointed the audience with a creative void. The punishment for such a sin is a deafening silence.]

So after hanging up the phone, I called the sitter and asked her to pick up my son so I could take a very long walk by the river. By the time I stopped and inspiration had struck, I had walked 6 miles. But in the process I found the first few lines for my poem and a back up plan. The theme I was assigned was ‘My Warring Muse’

After a dozen or so false starts, these are the first few lines that I’m finally content with:

Amor… te anoro.
Mi alma busca de nuevo conocer
la sublimidad que es tu ser.

Update: My translation is below
My Love... I long for you.
My soul is searching once again
to know the sublimity that is you.

I think I�ll have enough time to compose a poem. But if I don’t. I won’t be the first one to read a work in progress from a notebook. In the meantime, in the next post you can read my back up plan. A translation I wrote of a Pablo Neruda poem that speaks of the love/hate relationship writers have with their muses.

Open Letter to Army Wife Toddler Mom:

Dear AWTM:

Tammi and I were discussing how competitive and vindictive some women can be. I see that doesn’t stop at the workplace. I have seen your picture and you are a very beautiful woman, so in my estimation the only motivation for her to say that was to injure you where it hurts women most – our self-image.

My guess is that she did that out of anger and seething jealously. She is so unhappy with her small unproductive life, that she resorted to mean childish behavior.

Earlier this week my female boss removed me off a project saying I lacked the sophistication, polished image and experience to organize the event. At every turn when she’s done similar things in front of others she has looked awful in their eyes. Today, we were to meet a couple of ‘full birds’ of high rank to do a run-through for the upcoming event my firm is hosting. In the meeting she belittled me in front of these men and my peers, while simultaneously batting eyelashes and acting like a desperate school girl towards them (all men). I said nothing, instead I left her to her fate.

Well, Fate came walking through the door not 15 min. later in the form of our Chief Operating Officer (who remembers me from when we worked in DC) claiming his conference room. She tried to exert her alpha pseudo male authority, not only by cutting him off before he was finished, but also by inferring it was an accumulation of my errors that probably led to the room’s double booking.

As he walked over to stand behind me, he said to her with a smile “That’s not possible...” and placing his hand gently on my shoulder, continued, “Michele is one of the most efficient people I know… she even puts me to shame.”

Ahhhhh, the taste of retribution is even sweeter when things take care of themselves!

So I suspect Fate will take care of that woman’s nastiness for you. You keep being the very witty, incredible woman that you are, while she sits at home in her narrow existence, not being published, not being sought for commentary and not being admired the way you are, for the love and hard work you put into your family. While you continue to inspire she will continue to repels. I have nothing but pity for the people in her life!

An Email from Hillary

Stephen, a fellow Munuvian over at Hold The Mayo, recently received a short email from Hillary on her "Roadmap Out of Iraq". He gives her an equally brief, albeit interesting, response. All in all, a quick interesting read, so go check it out.

Dear T1G

I can be ditzy at times and this was one of them. In your post you asked for questions for your interview and I shared my experiences in job searches and interviews. I also alluded to a great article and forgot to post the link. DUH! Sorry! But there's a part that was so funny, I thought I'd share it with my readers, and also keep it on my blog as a reminder for when I do my next job hunt. Here's one section of the Q & A, that I thought you'd enjoy!

Question: How should I prepare for an interview?

Answer: An interview is a test you can study for. So memorize answers to the fifty most common questions. Most interviewers ask standard variations on standard questions, and there are right answers to these questions.

Another way to prepare is to go to the gym right before the interview. It doesn’t matter if you never go to the gym—although you should, because people who workout regularly are more successful in their careers. You should go right before an interview because people judge you first on your appearance, and if do heavy lifting with your back and stomach muscles you will stand up much straighter in the interview. This will make you look more confident, which is half the battle in being judged by appearance.

Also check out Question 12. GOOD LUCK!