Archive for the ‘The Serious’ Category

Unless you literally live under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the death of Trayvon Martin. If you read the news you may also have heard about John Sanderson, who was shot and killed at Mississippi State University last weekend.

The facts we know about Trayvon’s death are minimal. We know he was walking around his dad’s girlfriend’s community. We know George Zimmerman called 911 and was told not pursue him, and that he pursued him anyway. We know that Trayvon was wearing a hoodie and carrying skittles and iced tea. We know that an encounter occurred and that Zimmerman killed Trayvon, we do not know why, exactly how, or what happened the minutes before that.

There is talk about Trayvon not being a good kid. About him tagging lockers at school and about him being suspended for a baggie that contained traces of pot. There is a very weird smear campaign starting against Trayvon that completely mystifies me. I could literally not care less if he was student of the month or an absolute delinquent. If experimenting with pot in high school is an offense punishable by death, then I’d imagine a pretty significant number of you deserve to be dead now too.

I don’t know what happened that night, but I know that a 17 year old kid is dead and his death deserves a proper investigation. If that is too much to ask, well, then clearly you and I will never see eye-to-eye.

Details are still emerging from this weekend, so admittedly, I know even less about the Mississippi shooting. I know the man killed was white and that according to police, 3 black men are responsible, at least one, possibly 2 of which are in custody right now. I don’t know motives, I don’t know circumstances. I know that a college student lost his life.

And I know that these deaths should not be political.

These deaths have nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans. They are not a talking point for candidates, nor should they be a place for candidates to criticize the president. What news stories have a profound effect on you or me is no one else’s business and the fact that President Obama spoke out about Trayvon’s death should not have been an invitation for Republican candidates to make him into a racist. And yet, that’s exactly what happened.

I just cannot even wrap my head around this.

Two young men are dead. Two imperfect human beings were killed recently. I don’t care what color their skin was. I don’t care what political affiliation their parents are. I don’t care why they were shot, I don’t care how, when or by who. I care that we stop making this into a crazy political, racist circus and instead focus on these families who are grieving the loss of their children and the law enforcement officials who are trying to do their jobs to make sure that these deaths are properly investigated.

I cannot even believe that we are so concerned with politics now that we cannot see how insane this is. That we use a child’s death as a way to criticize other politicians. That we try to act as though we should be more or less upset about one death over another.

Two young men are dead tonight, at the hands of others. We should be outraged, but not with one another, not with political parties, but with the state of humanity. With the fact that young men are dying and instead of mourning them, we’re using their deaths as a political platform, as a racist platform, as any platform at all.

Let these boys rest in peace. Let their families grieve their deaths. Encourage law enforcement thoroughly investigate. Politics have no place here, it’s time we all slow down and remember that real lives have been lost.

This isn’t a game, it’s a tragedy.

So, it hasn’t necessarily been headline news with all the election stuff going on, but things are bad with the New Orleans Saints right now. An investigation recently revealed that they are doing a “bounty” program, where players and coaches offer defensive players money for big plays. And by bit plays I mean sacks, interceptions and plays that injure players on the other team.

And look, I need to be clear here, this practice is totally despicable. It’s awful and I am horrified by it. Nothing that I say after this will change that fact. It is totally and completely wrong and they should be punished.

But, I just cannot take the NFL seriously right now. First, can we all stop pretending that this is something that only the Saints are doing? Plenty of teams, including ones in OTHER SPORTS, have admitted to the same bounty programs. I feel like the New Orleans Saints are basically the new USC Trojans in that the NFL is making an example out of them even though everyone knows they aren’t the first or only ones committing this sin. And that sucks for the Saints just like it sucked for USC. If wrong is wrong, let’s punish everyone instead of acting as though the Saints are a big band of thugs.

Or rather, the only big band of thugs.

But besides that, I think we need to stop pretending that anyone in the NFL has anyone’s safety in mind right now. Because I’m sorry, but I call bullshit on that. It is a game that praises big hits, a game that excuses unsafe hits. A game that has become all about who can be bigger, hit bigger and harder. That’s the culture of the NFL right now. We’re all responsible for that.

Currently, an egregious or injurious play in the NFL results in a fine after the fact. And yes, $20,000 sounds like a lot of money to all of us who live in the real world. But to someone who makes 3 million dollars a year, 20k is not really anything they’ll miss. It’s a slap on the wrist for something dangerous.

If you want to protect players, how about taking a hard line on unsafe hits? Football players are professional athletes. Their job is to play football. If a surgeon went into surgery and made the same totally unsafe mistake time after time, would we just fine him? No, we’d fire him. We’d take away his medical license. But if you’re known for being a dirty player, for hitting unsafely, for hurting other players? We celebrate you. We pretend to punish you with measly fines. Yea, I’m shocked that people keep getting brain injuries.

If the NFL wants to get serious, they need to make helmet to helmet hits an automatic ejection from the game. There’s absolutely zero reason that a player cannot avoid that type of hit. Next time there’s another egregious face mask penalty that threatens to injure someone’s neck, eject the offender. Instead of fining them $20,000 or some other menial amount, take their yearly salary, divide it by the number of games in the season and fine them an entire game’s worth of pay.

If it’s really so unacceptable for players to play dirty, then put a stop to it. Put your money where your mouth is and do something to stop it. Punishing the Saints might stop other bounty programs, but it’s not going to do anything to protect football players, because that’s not at all what the NFL cares about right now. They care about money, they care about viewers, they care about advertisers.

Hopefully they’ll start caring about their players before any more of them suffer devastating and preventable injuries.

It is amazing to me that tomorrow makes a decade. 10 years. I can’t believe it’s been that long and I also can’t believe it’s only been that long. 10 years ago, I lost my Grandma.

I say lost, because that’s how it feels now. I grew up in a family that was incredibly tight knit. A family who celebrated even little holidays like Labor Day with backyard barbecues filled with cousins, aunts and uncles. A family that was centered around one woman. And for 10 years, we have lived without her, grown without her and changed without her. I often wonder if she would even recognize us now because somedays I’m not sure I do.

More than a third of my life has passed without her wisdom, without her love, without her special brand of crazy. Without her I’ve gone through my college graduation, a cross country move, a religious journey (she would totally not approve of), my wedding, and soon my graduate school graduation and the birth of my son. Much has changed in these 10 years.

Most days now I can barely remember what her voice sounded like. What her hair looked like. The words to the swinging song. The way she read Caps for Sale to us whenever we stayed the night at her house.

She’s lost in my mind, in my consciousness. But my heart still feels raw with missing her. My memories may be increasingly bare, but my love for her remains and the love she gave is still tucked in my heart as well.

As I approach parenthood, I begin to understand so much of her that was a mystery in my childhood. My grandma worried more than any person in the history of the world. There was no worst case scenario she didn’t consider, no event she didn’t fear at least a little. She still enjoyed her life tremendously, but now when I look back, I am starting to see bits of myself in her.

It wasn’t that she was crazy, though we always thought she was. She was afraid of losing what mattered the most to her: her family. Which is funny now since it was us who lost her. But I am now really understanding this fear for the first time. Yes, she was frequently irrational with her fears, she was occasionally absurd with her rules.

But what she was really being was a mother.

I don’t know that I’ll go to the extremes of worrying that my grandma did, honestly, I hope I don’t. But I do hope that when my family looks back several decades from now, they know that in all things, I loved them and protected them. That sometimes my decisions seemed irrational or unfair, but they were all motivated by love. They were all centered in concern for the thing that matters most: family.

For there were many lessons my grandma taught me, but loving and cherishing family was the most important. And it’s one lesson that I’ll never forget, no matter how many more decades I endure without her.

Last night on twitter, people were tweeting wildly about the Grammy’s. Since they hadn’t aired yet on the West Coast and I really don’t care about them at all, I wasn’t paying much attention. But a tweet from my friend Daisy caught my eye.

“I’d like to know why Kelly Clarkson’s weight is important or worth discussing.”

It also contained the name of the person she was replying to, but I won’t include that here because I have zero desire to cause more drama. And because I liked the tweet, I retweeted it. I know, it’s pretty horrible of me.

Within a minute I received a tweet back from the guy in the tweet asking me if I had read his joke about Kelly Clarkson or if I had just “mindlessly retweeted” what Daisy had said. Which as a matter of fact, was exactly what I did. I didn’t give a single tiny care what the guy had said, I just agreed with Daisy that Kelly Clarkson’s weight should not be important or worth discussing. My intention was not to admonish the guy in the tweet, I was just retweeting a message I believe in.

Needless to say, a totally absurd argument followed. I mostly refused to engage and kept my composure, but he kept insisting that twitter was not serious and that all he had done was make a joke, which is entirely true. He did make a joke, but because you call something a joke doesn’t mean it can’t also be offensive.

I’m always going to find jokes about anyone’s weight, celebrity or not, offensive. I just don’t think there’s any need for that. I’ve had my weight mocked multiple times in my life. I’m sure the kids who made fun of me in elementary school thought they were making jokes too. And I wonder how funny they would find them if they knew that I’ve fought an eating disorder for a decade now, largely because of their jokes.

What I find even equally horrifying are some of the people who supported this guy and the way he conducted himself. One such supportive tweet read that Daisy had tweeted, “so her pack of ravenous, overweight friends can rush to her defense.” Because the only people who could ever be offended about fat jokes are overweight people, obviously.

I don’t care if twitter is meant to be serious or not, I don’t care if speaking up makes me an idiot, part of an “army of morons” or pathetic, all of which I was called. I don’t care if it was meant to be a joke or not. It’s unacceptable for adults to publicly make fun of anyone’s weight. Period.

I feel like we shouldn’t need to have this conversation, like I shouldn’t need to write this post or have had that argument. But somehow, here we are. I am begging of you, please, please stop. Please stop making fat jokes. Please stop making thin jokes. Please stop making jokes or comments about anyone’s weight period. People are more fragile than you think and even if your jokes don’t bother you or your friends, you never know who they might hurt.

If you have nothing more interesting to say or tweet than a fat joke, then please, just be quiet. For everyone’s sake.

My heart is heavy tonight.

Earlier today I learned that Susan Niebur, who I had the pleasure of meeting a few years ago, passed away today after a long fight with breast cancer. She leaves behind a husband and young sons, and a collection of friends who span the globe. I did not know her well by any means, but my heart breaks for her family today as they start a new chapter of their lives.

And more personally, my friend Jackie received some very bad news today. Jackie has been fighting brain cancer for several years and the results of her scan today showed that her tumor is growing again, which means that the last treatment available is no longer working. I’m absolutely heartbroken for her, for her family and for all of us who love her. Reading her news tonight was nothing short of devastating.

I don’t really know what else there is to say. No one should ever have to face what Susan, Jackie and their families have faced and will continue to face. No one should have to be as brave as them, and somehow, they make their bravery look effortless.

Please join me in sending love to Jackie and to Susan’s family tonight. Wrap them in love and support and remind them that no matter what happens next, they will never, ever be alone.

When I wrote this, it was initially intended for someone specific. But as I read over it, I realized that it may speak to many people in my life, and some days to me too. I hope it speaks to some of you as well.

Dear Loved One,

I know you are struggling right now. I know that nothing is as easy as it seems like it should be. I know that getting up each day, going to work, going through the motions of life is nothing short of exhausting right now. I know and I’m so sorry.

You tell me that you’re not sure you can do it, but I know you can. I know you can because I see what you don’t. I see the strength that you have, the strength that will get you through this crappy day or week or month. I see the tenacity and perseverance that you can’t feel anymore, because you’re too deep in this cavern to find it.

You tell me that you feel like you’re losing control of your life, but you can’t see that by reaching out, by asking for help, by trying to move on, you are exerting control. By choosing to get out of bed and going to work, even though it’s going to suck and feel awful, you’re in control. By choosing not to just lay down and let this anxiety, this depression, whatever label you need to put on it, by not letting that run your life, you are more in control than you have ever been.

And yes, it feels awful. I know it does because I’ve been there too. There are no words to describe how awful it feels to be where you are today, or where you were yesterday.

It will get better.

I’m not blowing smoke up your ass. I care about you, and other people around you care more about you than you’ll ever know. And we’re going to help you get through this. It will get better because you are strong. It will get better because there are people who care, including me. It will get better because you have too many great things ahead of you for it not to. There simply is no other choice and you have to believe that too. You have to accept, to trust me, that this really will get better.

You need to know that you are loved. You are cared for and about. You are never alone in any of this. Even when you think that no one is there, there is always someone thinking about you, praying for you, loving you. You are never alone.

I just wanted you to read this, to know that no matter how bad you feel today or tomorrow or next week, that it will be okay. It will get better. Even if you can’t see how, people like me, people who love you, can. And we will be here for you because we love you too much to ever walk away.

Lean on us. Let us carry you when your burden is too great. Let yourself fall sometimes, because we are here to catch you. And then when you’re ready, get up and try again.

I love you dearly, we’ll get through this together. I promise.

Katie

For those who haven’t seen, last weekend a group of UC Davis students staged a sit-in, you know, where they sit and silently protest, and were sprayed in the face with pepper spray by police for not moving. If you haven’t see the videos, watch below and be prepared to be appalled.

I could not care less if you agree or disagree with what these students are protesting, because that doesn’t matter. And for the love of God, stop making it about politics here, because what happened here was not really about politics at all. It was about an abuse of power by the police. These kids were sitting, silently, non-violently, protesting something they believe in. You know, that first amendment right to assemble? They were exercising that.

And yes, they had been asked and told to move.

They are being civilly disobedient, that is the whole point. You defy authority, non-violently. And truly, I would have had no issue if they were arrested for their protest. That’s fine, if they’re truly breaking laws, arrest them, make their parents come get them. But I cannot in any way, shape or form, understand how the police thought it was appropriate to use pepper spray in the faces of those college students.

You do not meet non-violence with weapons. You don’t walk up to college kids and spray toxic crap in their faces because you want them to move. This is totally unacceptable to me, and God I hope it’s unacceptable to you too. It’s a horrible abuse of power by those policeman and it’s just lazy. They had too many other tools they could’ve used, and patience would’ve been a good one to try.

As someone pointed out to me on twitter yesterday, it reminds me of the pictures of fire hoses being aimed at civil rights protestors in the 1960s. It was horrible then, and this is horrible now.

I’m not going to lie, I have no problem with pepper spray being used on violent protestors. If you come at the cops with violence, you should expect an unpleasant reaction. If you’re a threat to a police officer’s safety, you have to expect that they’re going to use things to protect themselves. On the other hand, a non-violent protest should NEVER be met with violence.

I feel for these cops who are trying to maintain control, but I also see how nonchalant they are about the use of pepper spray on these kids and I am completely appalled. They didn’t pose a threat to anyone, they weren’t being violent or aggressive. They were sitting, completely still and quiet. And instead of handling things like professionals, like adults, those police officers used weapons. They caused bodily harm when there was absolutely no cause for it.

I don’t know who deserves to be punished at this point, but I know that we have to stop this. Just because you disagree with a cause does not mean that peaceful protestors should be harmed for supporting their cause. I firmly opposed every single Tea Party Protest, but I never would’ve been okay with police using pepper spray to control their non-violent protests. And you can argue that they were more respectful of authority and all that crap, but non-violence is non-violence, and these kids were not a threat to anyone.

I just feel like we all need to take a step back and look at what’s happening here, because I think too many people are not shocked by this, and we should be. We should be upset, we should be angry, and we should be making sure that this can’t happen again.

Last night someone on twitter mentioned something about a boy named Jamey Rodemeyer. I hadn’t heard anything, so I googled his name. And my heart sank.

Jamey was a 14 year old boy who had just started high school. He was gay. And last weekend he killed himself because of bullying.

I cannot say enough how incredibly wrong this is. How wrong it is that a 14 year old boy is bullied so mercilessly that he feels that the best choice is to end his life. Can you imagine how horrible you have to feel to make that decision? Can you imagine feeling that way at 14? It just shatters my heart into millions of pieces.

The article I read quoted something that another student had written on one of his social media sites. And it makes my blood boil. “I wouldn’t care if you died. No one would. So just do it It would make everyone WAY more happier!”

Besides the horrific grammar, there is a sentiment that teenagers should not know. They should not know how to goad someone like that. They should not have that kind of power. My anger grows.

That child did not come up with that idea on his or her own. The only way a child is able to come up with something like that is if an adult has facilitated that kind of thinking. Children don’t learn to bully on their own. They follow examples in their lives. They hear their parents use foul words to describe someone they don’t like and they repeat it. They hear that homosexuals are wrong and weak and stupid, and they believe it and they spread that to others.

As much as I want to find the child who wrote that and prosecute them to the absolute highest extent, I also want to find their parent and punish them even more so. I don’t care if you think homosexuals are pure evil, I don’t care if you are the biggest racist on the earth, give your child the freedom of mind to make up their own decisions. Don’t call people names in front of your kids, don’t lose slurs or bully others. And if you do that, YOU are the problem. You have this boy’s death on your hands.

And if you have ever heard bullying and walked away, you shoulder a little of it too. Because Jamey said that he was being bullied. He told people, and nothing changed. This is unacceptable. It is unacceptable that there are no repercussions for those who bully. For those who torment.

It is unacceptable that the world is without this boy because of bullying. That we know that this has happened all around this country and we still haven’t done something to make it better. That we still haven’t made a change, haven’t talked to our kids, haven’t listened to them.

I do not understand. And I don’t know how anyone can. We have to do something. We have to make a change because this simply cannot keep happening. We cannot lose more children, more adults to bullying.

It can really only get better if first we do better.

On a couple of different sites this weekend, I heard people putting others down for sharing their story of 9/11. The first time I read it from someone, I kind of ignored it. The second time, I replied and asked why it was so wrong to talk about it, and the third time I just got annoyed.

The common thread behind the anti-sharers was that people who weren’t in New York or who didn’t lose anyone were being self-involved for assuming anyone cared where they were 10 years ago. After all, we weren’t a part of the tragedy. Some insinuated that we were making light of the tragedy of that day by sharing our trivial memories. Okay, maybe I added a little extra negativity, but that’s the gist.

But I disagree. I mean, you probably knew that since I just wrote about where I was that day, but I disagree even with that aside. I don’t think that people’s stories are trivial. Yes, most our lives were not changed like those people who lost loved ones that day, but our lives WERE changed. Everyone’s lives were changed. In many ways, that memory of where we were that day was one of our last memories of a life that no longer exists.

My dad sometimes talk about the Vietnam War, but he didn’t serve in it, does that mean that he’s being selfish in telling his stories? My grandma used to talk about the Korean War, but my grandpa made it home fine, does that mean that she is being self-aggrandizing in sharing her memories? No, they’re recalling an important time in their lives, just the same way that people have been talking about where they were on 9/11/01.

September 11th was a collective turning point in the lives of all Americans. Everyone who was older than 10 years old remembers where they were, remembers what they were doing. We all get the same horrible pit in our stomachs when we see pictures of the planes hitting the towers, when we see pictures of the rubble. We are all moved to tears at the clips on tv because it changed all of us. It changed this country.

I think that it’s more backwards to tell people not to share, not to remember, thank it is to share. I think that discouraging us from sharing our stories is the opposite of what we should be doing on 9/11. We should be remembering. We should be coming together and talking about what happened. We should be remembering life before these wars, before terror. We should be reminiscing. We should be REMEMBERING. Just because we’re not remembering a loved one who was lost does not mean our stories aren’t real. It doesn’t mean that our memories are insignificant.

9/11 happened to us as a country.

Remembering what we were doing that day does not make light of what happened. Talking about where we were when we heard doesn’t diminish anyone else’s personal tragedy. Sharing our story does not make light of others. It’s a way we remember. It’s a way we commemorate.

And personally, I think it’s far more selfish and self-aggrandizing to think that you should tell anyone else how to feel on any day of the year. That you should put people down for talking about something that meant a lot to them. That changed them, just because it didn’t change you the same way.

A small bit of compassion on such an anniversary seems appropriate, if not entirely needed.

Sunday will mark a decade since the terrorist attacks on New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania. In some ways, I cannot fathom that it’s been that long, in other ways, it seems like it was a lifetime ago.

I was a freshman in college 10 years ago and I walked into my 8am Econ class to find my usually jovial professor looking angry. And he had scrawled across the board, “Don’t let the bastards shut us down.” I had no idea what he was referring to at the time because I hadn’t checked the news, as I recall, I had barely made it to class on time after oversleeping my alarm.

When class was finally over, I ran to a tv and watched, slack jawed as the video played on endless loop. One plane hitting one tower, a second in the other. And then they fell. I couldn’t stop watching, it seemed unreal. It seemed like a horrible nightmare that played over and over on the news. How could that have happened?

I remember the next day crying as I read the newspaper, as I saw the pictures of people jumping out of the towers to escape from the fire. Those images still send shivers down my spine. I didn’t know anyone in New York, no one I loved was in danger, no one I love was hurt. But I hurt for this country, for people I didn’t know thousands of miles away. I was geographically removed from the tragedy 10 years ago, but my heart, my soul, was as entangled in the tragedy as it could possibly have been.

I was barely an adult when those towers came down, and 10 years later, it feels like the whole world has changed. And I think maybe it has.

My children will grow up in an entirely different world than I did. A world that has lost its innocence. We no longer wonder what awful things could happen, we remember them. We no longer wonder if an enemy will strike at us, we wonder which one, we wonder when and where.

The world has lost its peace, it has stood on the brink of war, if not in the middle of war, for 10 years. It hurts my heart to think of all the lives that have been lost overseas, fighting battles that will never be won. Fighting wars where there will never be winners. Only more tragedy. Only more loss.

I hold onto hope that someday we will rediscover peace in this world, that we will stop collecting foes and instead, learn to live and let live. I hope that war becomes a distant memory and that my children can live in a world where they don’t fear far off enemies. Where they love one another, love their neighbors and are loved in return.

September 11th will always be a day that we as a country come together to remember a great loss. A loss of lives, a loss of innocence. A loss of peace. And I can only hope that one day we can rediscover some of what was lost that day.

And even if that never happens, we still remember. We remember the men and women who perished in the Twin Towers, in the Pentagon and all those on the plane in Pennsylvania. We remember the men and women who have died for this country in wars since then. We hold their families close and we come together as a nation to mourn the day our collectives lives changed, the day we lost so much as a country.

We remember. Always.