#amy telling david he would be in hospital for a few weeks when we know he was there for 6 years was a gut punch

[air--so--sweet]

Just watched Chapter 14 of Legion. Amy was an underdeveloped character who was completely forgotten about until mid way through the season (to the extent I at one point thought they had actually literally forgotten about her) and as a result her death in Chapter 13 lacks the emotional punch it could have had; it's devastating to see David's reaction to the loss, but we don't see enough of Amy to fully feel her loss ourselves.

Chapter 14 is clearly an attempt to rectify this - with David trying a failing to create an alternate version of reality where things for Amy and him are better (which is not at all clear, I only know this is the case because I read a recap after, watching it I thought it was just a peek the multiverse as a random framing device). We still largely see Amy as how she related to David and don't really learn more about who she was as a person outside of theur relationship. However, the thread that does run through all the different versions of her we see (bar the version in the millionaire David universe) is the love she has for her brother and how she will do all she can to try and care for him. Is it a bit of a gimmick to try paper over the problem of our lack of connection to Amy rather than fixing it? Yes. Did it still absolutely get me emotionally and cause me to cry? Also, yes. Not least because of Katie Asselton's excellent performance. Say what you will about Legion, the acting is all round phenomenal. I don't think I've watched a show before where I've ended up googling the actors because I want to see more of them.

On a different note - knowing now these are alternate realities created by David, I have so many questions about the reality where he's almost attacked by droogs. Does A Clockwork Orange exist in the Legion universe and if so is David a fan? Was that reality a self insert fan fiction? If it doesn't exist does this mean David is the author of it in the universe of the show. I know it is a fun homage and reference not meant to be analysed and that's how I took it when I thought it was a standard multiverse scenario. But David creates these realities and that casts the reference in a very different light (I'm not criticising btw, I think more multiverse media should throw random homages to creators favourite films in there)

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A ‘twisted’ experience: How KY’s abortion bans are depriving pregnant patients of health care

BY ALEX ACQUISTO

On the way to her 20 week ultrasound, Amy English texted her family group chat inviting guesses on her baby’s biological sex.

“Baby boy English muffin!” her father in-in-law texted.

“I thought boy at first but I’m thinking girl now,” her sister-in-law said. “My official guess is a girl :).”

It was December 28. Earlier that morning, Amy, 31, her husband David, and their 20-month-old daughter Annie had celebrated a belated Christmas at their house in Louisville with family visiting from out of state.

Amy and David had planned this pregnancy, and it was, in a way, perfectly timed. Their baby’s due date was five days after Annie’s birthday. Her children would be two years apart almost exactly to the day — a reality Amy was “ecstatic about.”

Sitting in a fluorescent-lit room inside Baptist Health Louisville, Amy looked for familiar shapes on the screen as an ultrasound tech probed her abdomen. Familiar with radiology in her career as a physical therapist, she has a baseline understanding of how to read ultrasounds: gray shapes usually indicate fluid, and bone shows up as white.

Amy remembers seeing her baby’s arms, legs and the curve of its back. But there was no recognizable outline where the skull should be.

“I couldn’t see the top of my baby’s head,” Amy said in an interview with the Herald-Leader. “I kept waiting for the tech to move the probe in a way where we could see what we should be seeing. I could tell she was searching for it, too.”

Amy had also learned in school about anencephaly, a severe fetal birth defect impacting the brain and skull. A lack of folic acid early in pregnancy increases the likelihood of this happening. This possibility flashed in her mind but she quickly batted it down; she’d been taking her prenatal vitamins, rich in folic acid, for months even before discovering she was pregnant.

The tech paused, then spoke.

“What we’re looking for here is an outline of the baby’s head, and right now I’m not really seeing that,” the woman explained before calling in Amy’s longtime OBGYN.

Over the next few minutes, Amy remembers the room blurring as she heard her doctor use the word “acrania,” which is when a fetus matures through pregnancy without ever developing parts of its skull. It can spur anencephaly, when the brain, too, is underdeveloped and partially missing. Pregnancies with either of these conditions are nonviable.

Amy’s baby, which they learned was a boy, had both. He would not survive into childhood, likely not beyond a few minutes after birth.

This, alone, was devastating news. Her dismay was compounded the next day when she learned that terminating her nonviable pregnancy, even by way of an early induction — a commonplace and provider-recommended method of treatment for such a diagnosis — couldn’t happen.

Even though Amy’s baby would never survive outside her womb, the pregnancy still had a fetal heartbeat — a technicality, considering the diagnosis. Coupled with the lack of immediate threat to her health, her doctors explained they couldn’t induce labor, much less give her an abortion. Kentucky laws forbade it, they said.

“I don’t know what was more shocking: to find out the baby had anencephaly, or that I would have to go out of state to get this care,” Amy said.

Kentucky’s abortion bans do not legally permit the standard of care treatment for a nonviable pregnancy like Amy’s. As a result, doctors must refer patients needing otherwise medically-recommended terminations out of state in droves, along with people desiring elective abortions, according to interviews with seven providers across four hospital systems. Providers who terminate pregnancies in violation of the trigger law can be charged with a felony in Kentucky.

Though this scenario is increasingly common statewide, it’s one arbiters of the state’s laws have yet to remedy, and one lawmakers are not publicly working to resolve.

Kentucky’s trigger law, enacted in late June 2022, criminalizes abortion except to prevent a “substantial risk of death,” or to “prevent the serious, permanent impairment of a life-sustaining organ of a pregnant woman.” The fetal heartbeat law also includes these exceptions but otherwise bans abortion except in a “medical emergency” once fetal cardiac activity begins, usually around six weeks.

Any time a pregnancy is terminated, each law requires a provider to document in writing why it was necessary to, in the case of the six-week ban, “prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman.”

The law permits the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to audit any licensed health care facility to make sure its abortion reporting requirements are “in compliance” with the law.

Both bans allow physicians to use their “reasonable medical judgment” when deciding whether pregnancy terminations are medically necessary. But providers interviewed for this story said that guidance is antithetical with the rest of the law’s limits, which only permit terminations in medical emergencies. There are no exceptions for fetal anomalies, or for the gamut of conditions that may make a pregnancy nonviable but don’t pose an immediate or emergent health risk to a pregnant person.

Moreover, the lack of uniform guidance from the state on what’s considered an emergency means definitions across hospitals sometimes vary, the Herald-Leader found. This has created a legal thicket for health care institutions. As a result, the final say on some critical medical decisions affecting pregnant patients is falling not to medical experts, but to hospital attorneys and administrators, who are worried about legality, liability and reputation.

The Herald-Leader asked the University of Kentucky, UofL Health and Baptist Health for insight into how their respective risk management teams and providers are navigating the laws. None responded to multiple questions about respective protocols for deciding when terminations are legally defensible, or how risk management teams, administrators and providers go about deciding.

“Clinicians have a responsibility to provide compassionate, evidence-based care and counsel to their patients, and also comply with the law,” Baptist said in a statement.

“UofL Health is committed to provide comprehensive health care to all its patients and their families,” UofL said in a statement. “In the case of a nonviable pregnancy that poses a health risk to the mother, we explain options for care while complying with all state and federal laws.”

“Although we cannot discuss when or how our legal counsel gives advice,” UK HealthCare said, “in Kentucky, state law prohibits the University’s physicians and staff from performing abortions except when the mother’s life is in danger. In the case of a nonviable pregnancy, our health care staff work with patients to determine the best course of care for the patient that is consistent with state and federal law.”

‘WE COULD NOT PROVIDE THIS SERVICE HERE’

The morning after Amy learned her baby likely had a fatal birth defect, the diagnosis was confirmed at a second ultrasound with a high-risk specialist. The buoyancy and excitement of the prior day was replaced with dread and grief. Amy remembers the quietness of the room during the second ultrasound, the hollow clicking of the keyboard keys and the intermittent clicking of the computer mouse.

Baptist Health refused to make Amy’s doctor available for an interview. But their conversation was outlined in Amy’s medical records, which were provided to the Herald-Leader.

“I discussed this finding with the patient and offered my sincerest condolences — that this was not compatible with life and that I am so sorry she and her husband are in this situation,” the doctor wrote in her notes. “She was understandably tearful.”

Amy listened as her provider explained her two options: Amy could carry her son to term and deliver him via C-section. He would immediately be taken to palliative care, where he would live a few minutes, maybe hours. Grief counselors would be on standby.

Her second option was to terminate the pregnancy early by way of an abortion or preterm induction. “Choosing not to continue the pregnancy: we discussed that this is also a loving choice for a baby that will certainly not survive,” her doctor wrote.

Pre-trigger law, termination under these circumstances would’ve happened in a hospital, and Amy’s health insurance likely would’ve covered it.

“No part of me wanted to be pregnant anymore,” Amy said. “Every flutter and kick he gave felt like a literal gut punch reminder that I would never get to take him home.”

Strangers were already approaching her at the grocery to ask to touch her stomach. Her patients at work often asked how far along she was. It seemed emotionally unthinkable to continue subjecting herself to a life where, at any moment, she would be forced to repeat that her growing body was nurturing a baby that wouldn’t live, she said.

Termination was what Amy wanted. She erupted into sobs when her doctor told her that under her current circumstances (her life wasn’t immediately threatened, and there was still a fetal heartbeat) it wasn’t an option.

“We discussed that due to our current Kentucky laws, we could not provide this service here,” her doctor wrote in her records.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Amy remembers the specialist saying.

She gave Amy a list of hospitals and clinics in surrounding states that might be able to terminate her pregnancy. Her doctor recommended calling Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, or another clinic in Illinois, where abortion is widely available.

“Am I just supposed to Google the number, call the front desk and ask, ‘How do I get an abortion at your hospital?’” Amy remembered thinking.

Over the next few days, she, her husband and sister-in-law cold-called a handful of clinics to request a dilation and evacuation abortion, common in the second trimester. But a combination of abortion restrictions in Indiana and Ohio, including gestational limits on when abortion is legal — Amy was 21 weeks along at this point — left her with few options.

Then, Amy’s sister, a nurse anesthetist at Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital in Dekalb, west of Chicago, stepped in. Her hospital lacked the equipment for a D&E, but they agreed to induce Amy.

On January 4, after driving close to 400 miles, Amy was induced and gave birth to a son she and her husband named Solomon Matthew. He didn’t cry. His heart beat for about two minutes before it stopped.

‘NOT KNOWING WHAT TO DO’

The Republican-led General Assembly has made no moves to amend or further clarify either abortion ban since both took effect seven months ago, even though the combined impact has harmed patients, doctors have told lawmakers.

The Kentucky Supreme Court still hasn’t issued a preliminary opinion on whether either law infringes on a person’s constitutional right to bodily autonomy and self-determination. Deciding so would temporarily block one or both bans from being enforced. Convened for a regular session through March, the Republican supermajority has yet to file any bills related to reproductive health care access and likely won’t until the high court weighs in.

In the meantime, there’s disagreement about whether or not either ban infringes on providers’ ability to dole out the standard level of care to pregnant patients.

Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Michelle Keller and former Deputy Chief Justice Lisabeth Hughes raised this point during November oral arguments in the pending court case from the state’s two outpatient abortion clinics challenging the constitutionality of both laws.

The trigger law “doesn’t recognize an exception for women who are under the care of a physician who tells them that the standard of care would be to terminate the pregnancy,” Hughes told Solicitor General Matt Kuhn, arguing on behalf of the Attorney General’s office.

As a result, “What’s really happening is physicians in (hospitals) all over the commonwealth are calling the risk managers and attorneys for the hospitals not knowing what to do,” Keller added. “You’re obfuscating what this trigger statute says. There isn’t a strict life of the mother exception.”

The law’s proponents, including Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, have cited the provision in the law that allows for use of “reasonable medical judgment” as protecting doctors’ autonomy, and that any challenge to that fact is overblown.

“The law has an explicit health exception, (which) depends on a ‘reasonable medical judgment’ from physicians,” Kuhn told Kentucky Supreme Court Justices that day. There’s been “a lot of misinformation” suggesting the law doesn’t adequately protect a pregnant person’s health, he said, citing two advisories Cameron’s office has issued since both measures took effect. Both clarify that in vitro fertilization, and abortions as treatment of miscarriages, preeclampsia and ectopic pregnancies don’t violate the law.

As for the host of other conditions not mentioned, “we are continuing to work with Kentucky doctors giving guidance on that,” Kuhn said.

But no written evidence of that guidance appears to exist. In response to an open records request from the Herald-Leader, Cameron’s office said this week it had no written or electronic records of communication between the Attorney General’s office and licensed health care facilities or providers regarding the trigger law or six week ban.

‘AN UNNECESSARY PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RISK’

It was mid June when Leah Martin, 35, discovered she was pregnant with her second child.

Pregnancy at ages 35 and above is considered geriatric. Aware that her age meant she faced a heightened risk, she opted for genetic testing early on to gauge any abnormalities.

Her first ultrasound didn’t raise any alarm. At just over nine weeks, Leah took a prenatal genetic test. The results a week later showed “low fetal fractal numbers,” she said in an interview.

That result, her OBGYN told her, could mean there hadn’t been enough material collected to show a clearer result. It could also signal an abnormality.

Leah, wanting to be judicious, got a more exact genetic test just before 12 weeks. She quickly learned her fetus had triploidy, a rare condition that causes the development of 69 chromosomes per cell instead of the regular 46. It causes not only severe physical deformities, but triploidy stunts development of crucial organs, like the lungs and heart. It means a fetus, if it even survives to birth, will likely not live beyond a few days.

What’s more, Leah was also diagnosed with a partial molar pregnancy, which causes atypical cells to grow in the uterus and, as Leah’s doctors told her, could lead to cancer.

It was mid-July, and Kentucky’s trigger law and six week ban had been in effect for barely two weeks. Leah was familiar enough with what both laws restricted and assumed that because her pregnancy could cause her cancer and was nonviable, she would lawfully qualify as an exception.

So, she weighed her options with her doctors at Baptist Health Lexington, who included Dr. Blake Bradley, her longtime OBGYN.

Similar to Amy’s diagnosis, Leah’s doctors told her that even if she opted to carry the pregnancy to term, her baby “would live a short life in palliative care, most likely never leaving the hospital. It would really be a quite painful existence,” she said.

“I have a 2-year-old at home, and I’m 35, weighing how I would like to expand my family. It seemed like the safest option for me and the compassionate choice for my unborn child was to terminate the pregnancy,” she said.

Like Amy’s, a medically-necessary abortion under these circumstances would typically take place at a hospital, doctors interviewed for this story said. Leah’s health insurance had already agreed to cover it. It was also the quickest way to help Leah to her end goal: getting pregnant again in order to birth a child that would survive.

It was July 21 and Leah was just over 12 weeks pregnant when she learned that Baptist’s legal counsel had blocked her doctors from giving her a dilation and curettage abortion.

“I was told the hospital refused to perform the procedure while the case was being litigated. I was dumbfounded,” Leah said. Hospital lawyers cited an ongoing lawsuit from Kentucky’s two outpatient abortion providers that’s pending before the Kentucky Supreme Court.

According to Leah, hospital providers, relaying the message from administration and risk management, reportedly said if her fetus died on its own, doctors would be able to terminate her pregnancy. But their hands were tied as long as it had a heartbeat.

“People minimize that pregnancy, even under its best circumstances, is associated with life-threatening risks, life-altering risks and emotional impacts,” Bradley told the Herald-Leader. “So, to compel a woman to continue a pregnancy that is by everyone’s assessment, doomed, by definition places that woman at an unreasonable and unnecessary physical and psychological risk, period.”

Baptist Health refused to make Leah’s high-risk doctor available for an interview.

The following Monday, July 25, Leah had an ultrasound at the hospital to confirm what she already knew. As an ultrasound tech probed her abdomen, a wheel of dizzying emotions spun in her head: she desperately wanted a baby, but she didn’t want to birth a child into a painful existence.

Already faced with a gutting dilemma, she felt further burdened by having such an intimate choice ripped from her. And she was furious at now being forced to remain pregnant despite there being no chance for survival, despite the risks continuing such a pregnancy posed to her own body.

She remembers staring at the ultrasound screen waiting to hear the muffled heartbeat of her fetus, racked with guilt because she hoped she wouldn’t.

“It was such a twisted experience being pregnant with a baby I desperately wanted, lying there hoping its heart had stopped,” she said shakily. “It was horrible to have to wish for that in order to receive care. It just felt so unsafe and cruel.”

Leah had already arranged to drive to Chicago to get an abortion when a Jefferson Circuit judge issued a preliminary injunction on July 22, temporarily blocking the state from enforcing both bans. She immediately called EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville — one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the state — and made an appointment.

On Wednesday, July 27, almost 13 weeks pregnant, Leah paid $950 out of pocket for her abortion. Her insurance wouldn’t cover it, since it was considered elective. The following Monday, the Kentucky Court of Appeals overturned the circuit court injunction, reinstating both abortion bans.

After Leah’s abortion, she sent a message to her high-risk doctor. Her doctor responded the following day. Leah shared that correspondence with the Herald-Leader.

“You’ve been on my thoughts a lot,” her doctor wrote. “Words cannot express the dismay I feel right now. I’ve spent my whole adult life learning how to care for mothers in heart wrenching or dangerous situations like yours, and the politics now make it not only impossible, but to work to take care of patients like they deserve — with compassion and science — in these horrible situations is wrong and immoral.”

“I hope your procedure yesterday was smooth, though I know it was hard,” her doctor wrote. “I’m so sorry we could not (were not allowed, rather) to take care of you here.”

[jazy3]

Thoughts on Grey’s Anatomy: 18X01

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

I was really excited for the Premiere and I have never been so disappointed in my life. It took me a few days to write this review because I’m just so unimpressed. I feel like the only interesting parts of the Season 18 Premiere were the Meredith and Hayes FaceTime call, Levi in that outfit and Jo with that hair, and the interviews. That's it. I mean Teddy and Owen’s two weddings were interesting if you’re a Teddy and Owen shipper, but I never have been so that didn’t really do anything for me.

The pacing of the episode was super slow and it was just altogether boring. There were also just so many inconsistencies. For example, Teddy and Owen originally planned to get married at the park with just Megan, Farouk, Evelyn, Leo, and Allison which doesn’t make sense because prior to their break up they were talking about planning their dream wedding. Now they finally get married and Richard didn’t even know about it? They asked Megan to fly in, but they didn’t tell their friends at the hospital after they just all attended Maggie and Winston’s wedding two weeks earlier?

It’s also not clear if Meredith knows that they got married which is weird because she’s the main character of the show and was an integral part of Owen’s previous two weddings one of which was held at her house. Also, Amelia and Link weren’t there and it’s not clear if they even knew about the wedding which is weird because Meredith, Amelia, and Link were all present when Owen proposed to Teddy at Christmas at Meredith’s house and they are all co-parenting Leo together.

While I appreciated the shift to a lighter tone and that they chose to have this season exist in a post-COVID alternative universe where we can see the actors faces again without the PPE and return to escapism the Premiere didn't pack the punch I was expecting. The premieres are usually super shocking and action packed and this one just wasn't. It was just boring and all of the most interesting stuff happened off camera during the two weeks between the Season 17 Finale and the Season 18 Premiere which is just stupid.

I saw the priest getting hit by one of the cyclists coming a few minutes before it happened based on the promo and the context of the scene and there wasn't a big shocking event like there usually is. The pace of the Premiere really felt off to me. My friend Amy who I watch with every week described it as the pacing you usually associate with a nice stroll through a moonlit garden. Fine for episode two or three or a connecting episode but not the Premiere. I feel like they really misjudged what fans were looking for and I’m hoping that they do the work and course correct now that the Premiere has aired and the completely dismal fan reaction as come out.

One of the few bright spots for me was the introduction of Peter Gallagher as Dr. David Hamilton. I love him as an actor! He's great! His recent roles in Grace and Frankie and Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist were fantastic! I was super excited when I heard he was coming to Grey's. I like Dr. Hamilton so far and I'm interested to see how his relationship with Ellis and Meredith having dreams about her mother following her battle with COVID will play into the story this season. While it would be interesting to see Meredith work in Minnesota temporarily like Cristina did back in Season 9, I don't want her there permanently. Seattle is as much a character in the show as any of the main characters we've come to love, and something would be missing for me if she moved.

To be perfectly honest, it doesn't make much sense to me for Meredith to move to Minnesota permanently when she only knows a few people there. Who would watch her kids? If she's going to move to me, it makes more sense for her to move to Kansas where Alex is or Switzerland where Cristina is. Her kids have already lost their father and so many other caregivers and Meredith has stuck it out in Seattle for so long after everything that's happened that her moving to Minnesota for me would be bonkers.

Also, where were her kids in the Premiere? All of the interviews that came out prior to the Premiere talked about how Meredith’s focus at the beginning of the season would be on her work and her kids, but they were nowhere to be found in the Premiere and it’s not clear whose watching them while Meredith is in Minnesota. The interviews also made it seem like Meredith and Hayes would still be circling each other at the start of the season with quotes about how timing hadn’t been on their side, that they still needed to have an official drink and go out on a date, and that while Meredith wasn’t looking for a relationship one might find her.

That had literally nothing to do with the Premiere we saw whatsoever! The kids were MIA and it turned out that Meredith and Hayes started dating off screen following Maggie and Winston’s wedding and we didn’t get to see ANY of the firsts they talked about so much over the last two seasons. So stupid. The Premiere was a total rip off. I hate that Nick Marsh is back and I’ve never gone from liking a character and an actor to hating them in such a short period of time ever. My God. I’m so pissed off about this. What the hell were they thinking? Why did they think we would want this at all?

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Nick Marsh as a character and Scott Speedman's portrayal of him when he first showed up in Season 14. I was all ready for him to be Meredith's next great love and I was on board. But then he disappeared and was never heard from again and it was reported that Speedman wanted to take a break from TV for a while so I mourned the loss of what could have been and moved on. I sat through the out of character nonsense that was the DeLuca storyline in the belief that eventually that storyline would end, and Meredith would get a real proper love interest that made sense and would be her post-Derek endgame.

So, I was really excited when they introduced Hayes and I have really come to love his character and his budding relationship with Meredith. I feel like I've been waiting forever to finally see them go on a date and I am super pissed off that we didn't get to see it. I would have loved this storyline with Nick if they had introduced it at any previous point in time, but now after they've spent so much time setting up Meredith and Hayes it's just infuriating. I feel immense rage over how they handled Meredith and Hayes and Meredith and Nick’s storylines in the Premiere. I'm so angry. The whole thing just made no sense. That Premiere should never have aired. It never should have gotten past the draft stage. It was that bad. The first date and all of the firsts that come with a new relationship are the most exciting parts of a romantic storyline for me and I love seeing all of that on screen. They hyped Meredith and Hayes’ relationship up so much and even had the two of them talk about 'firsts' and dating after death so for their first date to happen off screen along with Austin's panic attacks and bad reaction to his Dad starting to date again is just such a rip off.

I have stuck with this show through thick and thin and for them to reward that loyalty by having the most interesting parts of that storyline happen off screen while showing a bunch of stuff on screen with other characters that they could have just told us about? So ridiculous. I was so excited for this season and now I'm just angry. I'm hoping that they are building to a big mid-season finale where Meredith is going to return to Seattle and by that time Bailey will have helped Hayes out with Austin and the two of them will finally get together on screen but I'm starting to feel like every time I get invested in one of the Meredith's new love interests, they pull the rug out from under me and I'm getting really fed up.

In other news, I'm not too surprised that Megan and Riggs broke up off screen only because Virgin River, which I love, just got picked up for two more seasons and I imagine Martin Henderson is busy filming that and it looks like Megan is going to be around for a while and they had to explain it somehow. I loved Meredith and Riggs together and I hated how they ended that storyline so I'm not sad about them breaking up off screen.

The Premiere also broke my heart over Amelia and Link’s storyline. It’s just so stupid. It’s drama for drama’s sake that’s all it is and it’s tired. When did marriage become so important to Link? In the span of a few months, he went from being totally fine with not getting married and checking in with Amelia every few weeks on how she felt to convincing himself that Amelia wanted him to propose so he did so at her sister's wedding and used her dead brother's children to do it. Amelia's right the whole thing was super messed up and manipulative and she was right to say no.

Link decided marriage was important to him and that fostering Luna would be totally fine without ever talking to Amelia. Yes, Amelia should have shared her thoughts with him too, but he also should have paid attention. Now their otherwise healthy relationship is over because she doesn't want to participate in an archaic ritual that involves signing a contract and exchanging vows? That's just stupid. I hope they find a way to work it out and get back together because I really like them as a couple.

I like Dr. Michelle Lin the new Head of Plastic of Surgery that Bailey and Richard are looking to hire. I thought for sure after that photo of the other guy made the rounds on social media that he was going to be the new Head of Plastics, but then he said that he doesn't do "free" and I knew he was out. I'm excited for there to be another female surgeon of colour on the show as the gender and racial balance on the show has been more white and male as of late and I think Grey's is at its best when you have a roughly equal number of women and men and as many different races being represented as possible.

I think it makes the storylines more interesting and authentic and personally gives me more characters that I can identify with. This new doctor seems driven, determined, and could have a potentially interesting dynamic with Richard and Bailey. She’s also giving me some Cristina Yang vibes and I’m all for that. I love Cristina. Always have. Always will. That being said, I'm a bit confused as to where they are going with Jo's storyline as I thought for sure the new Head of Plastics would be a guy and her new love interest. But Bailey did say they still needed to hire a new general surgeon and a new neurosurgeon so maybe one of them will be for her?

I can't really say that there was anything I loved about the Premiere which is disappointing. Jo's parenting hair dye mishap was funny, Levi's outfit cracked me up, and I liked that Bailey agreed to help Hayes out, but that's about it. The thing I was most excited for coming into this season was Meredith finally being back on her feet and seeing the romantic storyline between her and Hayes finally come to fruition.

Finding out that she's going to be in Minnesota for the foreseeable future, she and Hayes started dating off screen but had to call it quits because seeing his Dad date someone new caused Austin to have panic attacks, and finding out that Nick Marsh is back? I hated it. I don't understand how the same person who wrote the Season 16 masterpiece “Snowblind” with that amazing snow scene between Meredith and Hayes wrote the Premiere. I just don't understand. I really hope they're not going to do a love triangle with Meredith, Hayes, and Nick because that would just be so stupid.

She's a forty something award-winning surgeon who's a widowed single mother of three. Love triangles made sense when she was young intern, but at this point it's just dumb. I also didn't feel the chemistry this time around between Meredith and Nick like I did the first time. It felt forced and flat. I like Maggie and Winston together, but I didn't find their storyline in the Premiere particularly engaging. I'm glad that Amelia stayed true to herself, but I hate that Link has decided marriage is the only way forward and that they're still fighting.

The only moment that really made me laugh out of the hour was when Jo opened the door and Levi was in that ridiculous outfit. I loved the FaceTime call between Meredith and Hayes, but I hated the context. Honestly, I'm not really excited about any upcoming storyline this season which makes me really sad. I'm usually super positive and hopeful when it comes to this show, but this episode just stomped all over my dreams. All I can hope for now is that they pull a twist and everything I was hoping for happens in the mid-season finale otherwise I don't think I'm going to like this season very much.

Until next time!

[eleventhdoctorsangel]

I’m coming apart

Summary: When the Dover's older daughter gets taken along with Joy and Anna but gets tired up in the RV and locked in the bathroom. She was found by detective loki when Alex crashed the RV. Her clothes were torn. After being found and seeing how hurt her parents and the Birch's are she soon starts to feel guilty. She feels like she can't confident in anyone. It wasn't until she started to talking to detective loki did she feel the weight start to leave her.

It’s been just about five years since everything happened. Dad ended up not having to go to jail. The judge said he would have done the same thing in he was in dad shoes. Joy, Anna, and dad showed no after effect to the drugs that they were force to take. Anna and Joy still get nightmares from time to time but other than that they are back to normal. As for David and I we have been married for four years and we have two children with a third on the way. One child just turned three and the other was almost one both of them are girls that were named Amelia and Clara this time David and I are really hoping that this one was a boy. I was getting the girls ready to go see their grandma and grandpa since it was thanksgiving. David had to work but he was going to try to get off as fast as he could. I was putting on my shoes as Amelia walked into David’s and I room. “Mommy can we go now?” Amelia asked. “Mommy’s almost ready then I just need to grab a bag for your sister than we can go.” I said. “Is daddy coming?” Amelia asked. “You know daddy had to work today princess. But he told me that he is going to get off as fast as he can so he can be with his princesses.” I said as I poked her stomach. This made Amelia laugh. I finished putting my shoes on and got up. “Wanna come at help me finish getting your sister ready?” I asked holding out my hand. “Yeah!” Amelia yelled grabbing my hand dragging me out of the bedroom and to Clara room. Clara was staying up in the crib and started laughing when she saw Amelia and I.  “Is my baby girl ready to go see grandma and grandpa?” I asked as I walked over to her and picked up from the crib and went to go change her. After I got her changed I put her down on the ground. “Stay right her girls I just need to get a bag.” I said. Amelia came over and stood by Clara. “I’ll watch her mommy.” Amelia said. “Thank you baby.” I said as I quickly got Clara a bag. I put it on my shoulder and picked Clara up.” “Come on girls.” I said. “Yay.” Amelia said as she grabbed my hand. We walked out of the house and I locked the door then we walked to the car. Amelia opened the back door so I could get her and Clara buckled into their car seats. I got Clara into her seat first then I got Amelia into her. I closed the back door and went to get into the driver’s seat when my phone started to ring. I pulled my phone out of my purse and saw that it was David. I smiled as I answered it and brought it to my ear. “Hey baby.” I said. “Hi baby did you get the kids ready okay?” David asked. “Yeah I did.” I said. “Well I was able to get off it was slower than we thought.” David said. “Well that was good Amy was asking if you were going to come.” I said. David let out a small laugh. “She’s a daddy’s girl.”  David said. “Yeah she is. Do you want me to tell her or do you want to surprise her?” I asked. “Let it be a surprise.” David said. I laughed a little. “Alright we’ll see you at my parents’ house.” I said. “I can’t wait to see my girls. I love you.” David said. “We love you too.” I said. “See you guys soon.” David said. “Bye baby.” I said and hung up opening my door and got in. “Was that daddy?” Amelia asked. “It was.” I said as I put my seatbelt on. “Is he coming mommy?” Amelia asked. “He got to do one more thing. But he said he was going to get done as fast as he can.” I said as I turned the car on. “Yay.” Amelia said as I could hear her kick the seats. “Sweetie what have I said about kicking the seats.” I said. “Sorry mommy.” Amelia said. “It’s okay baby.” I said as I pulled out of our driveway and drove to my parents’ house.

I pulled into the drive way of mom and dad house. I turned off my car and pulled the key out putting it in my purse as I unbuckled then got out. By then Anna burst out of the house and ran towards me. “Sissy!” Anna yelled as she jumped into my arms. “You need to stop growing.” I said hugging her back. “Do you need help honey?” Mom asked as she walked down the steps. “Yeah can you help me with the girls?” I asked as I opened one of the door. Mom came over to the other side to get Amelia out as I got Clara out. “Grandma!” Amelia yelled as she threw arms around mom. “Oh how’s my baby.” Mom said hugging her back. I got Clara out of the car and grabbed her bag. “Where’s David?” Mom asked as she got Amelia out of the car. At that same time David pulled into the driveway behind me. “Daddy!” Amelia yelled and started running towards his car put mom stopped her. “Wait till he turns the car off first baby.” Mom said. Amelia looked up at her and nodded. David turned off his car and opened the door getting out of his car. “Daddy.” Amelia said breaking away from mom and towards David. David smiled as he leaned down and picked her up. “Mommy said you had to work.” Amelia said as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I did but they didn’t need me so I decided to surprise you and your sister.” David said and then kissed her cheek. Then he walked over to Clara and I giving me a quick kiss then kissed Clara on the head. “It’s nice to see you again David.” Mom said as she came over and gave him a hug. “You too Grace.” David said hugging her back. “Daddy I’m cold.” Amelia said. “Well why don’t we go in huh.” Mom said.

We walked into the house and Amelia started to squirm in David’s arms when she heard dad’s voice. “Alright. Alright princess.” David said as he put her down on the ground. “Grandpa.” Amelia said as she ran into the kitchen. “Careful Amy.” I said. “She is getting so big.” Mom said as she came over taking Clara from me. “She really is.” I said. “Are you two planning one having another?” Mom asked. “I’m actually pregnant right now.” I said.  “Oh honey that’s great.” Mom said. “What’s great?” Dad asked as he carried Amelia back into the living room. “David and I are having another baby daddy.” I said smiling. “A boy this time I hope.” Dad said as he came over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “We’re not sure yet. I’m almost 3 weeks. Is Ralph coming home?” I asked. “I was just about to go and pick him up.” Dad said. “Can I come grandpa?” Amelia asked. “Not this time princess.” Dad said. “Aw okay.” Amelia said. “If you came with me who’s going to stay here and make sure that Grandma and mom is doing the cooking while I’m gone?” Dad asked. “Sissy.” Amelia said. “Clara is still a little too small.” Dad said. “Me?” Amelia said. “Can you do that for me princess?” Dad asked. Amelia nodded excitedly. “That’s my little princess.” Dad said as he kissed her on the cheek then sat her down. Then dad went over to mom kiss her then kissing Clara on the head then left. “You heard grandpa mommy.” Amelia said as she came over to me wrapping her arms around my legs. “Alright sweetie you stay in here while grandma and I cook alright.” I said as I sat Clara bag in front of the couch. Mom sat Clara down on the couch. “Do you two need help?” David asked. “Oh no David we can managed beside Keller won’t be long.” Mom said. “Besides watching the girls is harder work than cooking.” I said laughing a little as mom and I walk to the kitchen.

“So have you two come with any names yet?” Mom asked. “No not yet. We wanted to wait to see what we’re having first.” I said. “What are you two hoping for?” Mom asked. “We are really hoping for a boy. But if it is another girl we don’t mind.” I said. “As long as the baby is healthy right.” Mom said. “Yeah. David does get nervous around this time of year especially if he has to work.” I said. “I can only imagine. He loves his girls. Your father is the same way he won’t let Anna out of his sight and since you had the girls it makes him more worried.” Mom said.

Dad was back in about an hour. He had came into the kitchen so I could go and talk to Ralph some. When I walked into the living room Ralph was holding Amelia as she was telling him something and Clara was sitting next to Anna watching TV but I didn’t see David. But then he came back from outside putting his phone away. I walked over to him to see what was wrong since he looked at bit worried. “Is everything okay?” I asked. “Just some guy I helped put away awhile back had to be rushed to the hospital.” David said. “Are they worried he might try to make a run for it?”  I asked.  “That is a concern. I just want to make sure it doesn’t happened.” David said. “That’s understandable. If you have to go in it’s fine. The girls will be fine.” I said. “But if it is nothing I don’t want to miss spending time with you and the girls.” David said. “Did they say if they needed you to come in?” I asked. “They said as of right now it wasn’t necessary and if it changes they’ll call.” David said. “Alright. Did they sound worried to you?” I asked. “They didn’t but I’m worried.” David said. “I’m sure it will be fine.” I said as I wrapped my arms around his neck and he wrapped his arms around my waist. “Just promise me you’ll protect the girls.” David said. Now this seems to be more than just some random criminal. “Is there something I should know?” I asked. David nodded. “We can go to my old room and talk. Ralph can you watch the girls for a few minutes David and I need to talk about something real quickly.” I said as I took my arms from around his neck and turned to look at Ralph. “Yeah you bet.” Ralph said. David and I walked up to my old room that kinda became the guest room. We walked in and David closed the door. “What going on David?” I asked crossing my arms in front of my chest. “The guy that they had to rush to the hospital hates me.” David said. “And all the other people you helped put away doesn’t?” I asked. “No baby it’s more than that. This guy used to be real heavy in the cartel and then would kill the members because he hated what they did and thought if he killed them thinking that no more drugs would get into the US. When we finally caught him he’s family had to go into witness protection and when he found out he blamed me. He swore that he would do the same to me. But I didn’t think or worry about it much because.” David said but stopped as I saw tears filled his eyes. “Because it was before me and the girls wasn’t it?” I asked.  David nodded as he grabbed me and pulled me into him. “It’s going to be okay. The girls and I are going  to be fine.” I said. “Because I’m not to let anything happened.” David said putting his hands on my face as he kissed me. Then Amelia came into the room. “Grandma and Grandpa says it time to eat. Are you okay daddy?” Amelia said as she walked over to us. David wiped the tears away from his face and picked her up. “I just love my girls.” David said as he kissed her cheek.

We walked out of my old room and walked down the stair to the kitchen where Mom was getting Clara situation and David went over getting Amelia situation. As he got Amelia her food while I was getting Clara’s after that we sat down and Dad said they pray. After that we ate.

We stay for a few more hours after we ate  But when the girls started to get tired David and I thought it would be best to head home. But as we were about to walk out of the door David’s phone rang. “I’ll be right back.” David said as he rushed out of the room. I tried not to act worried. Then a few minutes later David came back into the room. “Is everything okay?” I asked. “They just need me to come in is all but I’ll help you get the girls in the car but I head off.” David said as he picked up Clara. “Do you have to go Daddy?” Amelia asked as she grabbed my hand. “I’m sorry princess but I have to.” David said. We said bye to everyone and walked out and to my car. David helped me getting the girls into their car seats and gave them each a kissed. Then he came over to me wrapping his arms around my waist. “He got away didn’t he?” I asked. “I’m going to catch him again I promise you and the girls. I’m going to send some officers to watch the house and make sure nothing happens. I want you to take the girls home and lock the house down okay. Try not to let them see you worried.” David said. “I know.” I said nodding. He gave me a kiss then opened my door and I got in. “I love you girls.” David said. “We love you too daddy.” Amelia said. “We’ll see you later.” I said. “I might get home late so don’t wait up.” David said. I nodded and I closed my door. “Wave goodbye to daddy girls.” I said. I saw David waving to the girls. I let out a breath as I pulled out of the driveway and started to head back to our house.

I pulled into the garage. “Okay ready to go in girls?” I asked. “Yeah mommy.” Amelia said. “Alright I’ll come and get you girls.” I said grabbing my purse and got out of the car and went to get Amelia out first then Clara. I gave Amelia Clara bag to carry inside. I unlocked the door that lead in to the house. After we got in I locked the door. “Alright Amelia let me go put your sister down then I’ll get you ready for your bath.” I said. “Alright mommy.” Amelia said. “Go pick out the jammies you want to wear.” I said. Amelia handed me Clara bag then rushed off to her room. I went to quickly put Clara in her crib so I can lock up the house like David. Once I put Clara down I rushed around the house locking every door and window. Then I went to get Amelia to give her a bath.

I went to get Amelia out of her room. “You ready baby?” I asked. “Yeah mommy said as she came over to me. She followed me to the bathroom. I started to run the water then went to go grab a towel. “Alright baby let gets you clean.” I said and poked her stomach which made her laugh. I undressed her and got her into the tub.

After I got done with her bath I got her ready for bed when I heard my phone ring on the counter. I stood up and grab it. I saw that it was David I quickly answered it. “Hey baby.” I said. “Is that daddy?” Amelia asked. I smiled and nodded at her. “Hey baby so a couple of officers are heading to the house.” David said. “Mommy can I talk to daddy?” Amelia asked. “Amelia wants to talk to you.” I said as I handed her my phone. “Hi daddy.” Amelia said. I smiled as I patted her head. “Mommy is getting me ready for bed. I love you too daddy.” Amelia said. Then handed me back my phone. “Well I’m going to get her off to bed then get Clara washed up.” I said. “Okay. I don’t know what time I’ll get home. I’m going to catch him. He’s not going to hurt you.” David said. “Alright I love you.” I said “I love you too.” David said then hung up. “Alright you ready for bed?” I asked. Amelia looked up at me in smiled.

I got Amelia put to bed and then got Clara washed up and I put her back down. I looked that the time to see that it was a little past seven. I let out a sigh as I went to change my clothes. I decided to watch some TV and tried not to dose off. It was almost ten when I heard gun shots. I quickly jumped from the couch and ran to Amelia’s room and got her up from bed. “What’s wrong mommy.” Amelia asked tiredly. “Baby you have to do as mommy says okay.” I said running into David and I’s room and sat her in the closet. “Mommy?” Amelia asked. “Stay here I’m going to get your sister okay. I need you to call daddy okay.” I said as I unlocked my phone then handed it to her. I closed the closet door and ran to get Clara. When I grabbed her and ran back to the bedroom. I opened the closet door and sat Clara down next to Amelia. “Mommy daddy said he’s on is way.” Amelia said. “Okay whatever happens do not open this door okay.” I said. “What’s happening mommy?” Amelia said at the same I heard the front slam open. “You girls gotta be quiet for mommy okay.” I said as I quickly closed the door and rushed to turn the lights off  and locked the door then got under the bed. I could hear footsteps getting closer. I put my hands to my mouth as tears filled my eyes. “I know you’re in here darling.” I heard a southern voice said. I started to hear the doorknob started to move. I was praying that the girls wouldn’t make a sound. The door was kick open making me jump as tear rolled down my face. “Come on now darling I just want to make that husband of yours to feel what I felt when he took my family from me.” The man said as he turned on the lights. Please don’t go towards the closet please. Come on baby hurry and save us. I felt him grab my ankles and he yanked me out of under the bed. I let out a scream as he got on top of me. “Well now aren’t you a pretty little thing.” He said as he used a gun to stork my face. I started to thrash trying to get him off of me. “Now now where are those girls of yours?” The man asked. “No. No please don’t hurt them.” I begged. “Now come on darling your husband took my kids away why can’t I take his?” The man asked. “He didn’t take them away. Witness protection did.” I said. He grabbed me by the hair and slammed by head against the floor everything went back.

No One’s POV

Once Y/n the door to the closet door of her and David’s bedroom Amelia looked for David contact and pressed in bring the phone to her ear. “Hey baby.” David said answering the phone. “Daddy.” Amelia said. “What are you doing up baby?” David asked. “Mommy put me in the closet of your room. She told me to call you.” Amelia said. David’s heart started to beat rapidly. “Baby where’s mommy?” David asked as he ran out of the station and to he’s car. “She went to get sissy. She told me to do as she says.” Amelia said.  David got into his car and turned it on speeding out of the parking lot and to his home. “Baby can you be a good girl for daddy and try not to make any noise and make sure your sissy does too?” David asked. “I think so daddy.” Amelia said. “Daddy is on his way.” David said as he hung up.

“Come on. Come on.” David said to himself as he speed home to save his family. He called for as much back up as he could get. “If you tough them I’ll fucking kill you.” He said as his tic came back. Which seemed to disappear after he met Y/n. He pulled into their drive way quickly getting out without even turning it off. The front door was kicked up. He quickly drew his gun as he slowly walked into the house. “Y/n?” David called out. He started to look through every room praying that they were okay. But he didn’t but he knew that she had put the girls in their closet. When he saw that the door was kicked in his heart dropped. “Baby?” David asked. “Daddy.” Amelia cried out. David rushed over to the closet and opened the door. Both Amelia and Clara were in tears. David kneeled on the ground as the girls rushed to him holding on to him tightly as they continued to cry. “It’s okay. It’s okay daddy’s here. Daddy has you.” David said. “A man took mommy.” Amelia said cry. “I know. I know baby but daddy is going to find her.” David said kissing their head. He was going to find Y/n. He was going to find Jack Daniels and make sure that he never has to be worried about him and his family again.  

Dun dun dun.......part 2 coming soon.....ish.....

[readingthediaspora-blog]

Why ‘Reading the Diaspora’? (what’s this thing all about?)

(The photo above is one I took myself at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art. It’s titled Hommage a Bessie Smith by Iba Ndiaye, a Senegalese artist. It’s one of my favorite pieces there, and I visit it often.)

I came up with the name of this “blog” at least five years ago, maybe more than that in the hopes of reading through the diaspora, i.e. read work by scholars, thinkers who are of the African diaspora and/or write about the diaspora. I came up with the name during a time when I had just formally given up on completing a graduate degree I had started but not finished. I still held out hopes, though, of completing some magical, wonderful project that would allow me to successfully reapply and complete that degree. The fact that I’m even calling this a blog (and using this platform, sorry Tumblr) indicates just how long ago that time was and how long I’ve let this space languish.

I’m writing three months into when the U.S. finally started to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously, i.e. the weeks of March 9 and 16, 2020. So much has happened with respect to race:

COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black and Brown communities, as these communities are more likely to have pre-existing conditions, e.g. hypertension, diabetes, asthma, which make them more susceptible to having more intense symptoms and more likely to die, if they contract the disease. They’re more likely to have jobs deemed essential, e.g. they’re hospital workers, grocery store workers, janitors, postal workers, thus increasing their chance of exposure. They’re also more likely to be of lower income—because of the jobs they hold—which means increased likelihood of not owning vehicles and thus more reliant on public transportation. This last point caused me so much distress during the first three to four weeks of lockdown, because my nearly 70-years-old mother and my sister, and my 80-year-old aunt, rely on public transportation to get around. I also had an uncle who nearly died from this disease. He lives in Manhattan, and we believe he contracted it when he took the bus home after grocery shopping.

Once the public health, medical, and scientific communities released the news that Black and Brown people were dying from this disease at higher rates, states under lockdown started to protest the lockdown orders. Coincidence is not correlation is, I think, the statement you make before “Correlation is not causation,” but the coincidence was not lost on many Black people. And, in white supremacist America, to ignore this coincidence is foolish.

Fatal instances of police and white vigilante violence, á la Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and Sandra Bland, have become prominent. Protests kicked off the week of Memorial Day when a Black man in Minneapolis, George Floyd, was murdered by a police officer while three other officers looked on and civilians begged the officer to take his knee off of Mr. Floyd’s neck. Mr. Floyd was under that cop’s knee for 8 minutes 46 seconds; he continually stated “I can’t breathe;” and as he approached death he called out for his mother, which breaks my heart every time I think of it.

George Floyd’s death was not the only death during pandemic/quarantine times. Breonna Taylor, an EMT from Louisville, Kentucky, was shot to death by police officers illegally executing a no-knock warrant. Ahmaud Arbery was followed/hunted and eventually killed by two white men (a father and son?) who said they were on the lookout for a burglar. Mr. Arbery was out for a run in his own neighborhood.

There was also the case of Christian Cooper, a Black man and avid birder from New York. He was in Central Park doing his birding thing in a part of the Park known as the Ramble. He encountered a woman, Amy Cooper, who had her dog unleashed. He asked her to leash her dog, per park regulations. I’m not sure at what point Mr. Cooper decided to start filming the interaction, but thank goodness he did. What we see on the recording is Amy Cooper trying to weaponize the police against Christian Cooper. She very clearly said she was going to call the police to tell them that an “African-American” man was “harassing” her in the park. She then calls the police, feigning hysteria and emphasizing Mr. Cooper’s Af-Am identity. If you’re reading this, you know how things played out, and that Christian Cooper is still, thankfully, alive.

As I’m writing, we’re entering the third week of Black Lives Matter protests across the nation, precipitated most immediately by the murder of George Floyd, but in response to all of the Black death that has happened over the past few months, as we all sit in lockdown as many face, including, disproportionately, Black people, face economic uncertainty in addition to mortal uncertainty. To add on top of all of this there have been more Black deaths in the wake of the protests—David McAtee for example—and the deaths of Black trans women which continue to go unnoticed outside of the trans community even amongst all of the talk about Black Lives Matter(-ing). (Another “as I’m writing note:” I’m listening to Weekend Edition Sunday, and I’m hearing the stories of Robert Fuller, a young man whose body was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale, California, and the fatal police shooting of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man shot outside of a Wendy’s in Atlanta, Georgia. Mr. Brooks was approached simply because he was sleeping in his car, and the interaction continued because he failed a sobriety test. I can only assume that Mr. Brooks was sleeping some alcohol off, and I’m amazed, but sadly not surprised, that he died at the hands of police because of it.)

All of this is a long preamble to the thing that most directly ties to this post. I started diving into some Stuart Hall books I’ve had sitting on my shelf for months. I’m currently reading a series of lectures Hall delivered at Princeton in 1994 (The Fateful Triangle: Race, Ethnicity, Nation). He’s talking about how slippery the notions of “race,” “ethnicity,” and “nation” are. I’ve only gotten through the race and part of the ethnicity lecture, but terms that have stuck with me are “sliding signifier,” “regimes of truth,” and “chains of equivalence,” which speak to how the discourses of race (and ethnicity and nation, I think, once I get through them) have shifted since the European “encounter” with populations unlike them in Asia, Africa, and the America. They also speak to how race has somehow become rooted in the “biological” (despite their being no biological basis for it) and how ethnicity and nation have somehow become rooted in the timeless “natural.” From  those biological and natural starting points, regimes of truth and chains of equivalence have been built to cement our minds in understandings of essential racial, (ethnic, and national) difference. What Hall is ultimately trying to do in unpacking these terms, I think, is highlight the ways in which the persistence of race, ethnicity, and nation speaks to an inability--for Euro-descended persons in particular--to equitably navigate difference. It’s important to note, although, I won’t dive into it now, that capitalist critique is central to the rise of these terms as signifiers of difference.

I’m struggling with/trying to work through my own understandings of race at this time, specifically what has been circulating discursively in the wake of COVID and the protests. I’ll write more as I progress on working things out in my own mind, but I wanted to get this out there first, because it’s been percolating for a while.

If there’s interest, feel free to comment below. Racist screeds (as I deem them) will be deleted.

[ETA: This blog is actually eight years ago, according to a Tumblr email I found. Go figure!]

[newagesispage]

                                                                            MARCH    2020

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 The Stones are touring the U.S. again.

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Paul Reubens is touring with Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

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Al Franken is touring.

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Keenan Thompson and Hasan Minhaj are bringing comedy back to the White House Correspondents dinner on April 5.

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Days alert: There is some casting news but most of this won’t show up until the fall. Word is a couple of newbies will be Remington Hoffman who will play Li Shin, son of Mr. Shin and Emily O’Brien may join the cast. Nadia Bjorlin (Chloe) may be on her way back. Let’s bring the original Phillip back for her!!! Brandon Barash (Stefan) will return as well as Louise Sorel ( Vivian )and Alison Sweeney ( Sami). Judi Evans is headed back. Will she play Adrienne or Bonnie?? It looks like Casey Moss (JJ), Freddie Smith (Sonny), Chandler Massey (Will) and Galen Gering (Rafe) mill head out for awhile.

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It looks like Friends freaks will finally get their reunion on HBO. I am glad they aren’t bringing the characters back and are just getting together to talk about their time together.

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Downhill hit theatres on Valentine’s Day with Will Ferrell, Julia Louis- Dreyfus and Zoe Chao. The film was written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.

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The more I see of it, the more I LOVE Stumptown, the best show that nobody seems to know about. Please renew ABC!!!!!

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So.. Rush Limbaugh got the Medal of Freedom.  Oh my.

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Shadow Inc. owned by former Clinton and Obama staffers made an app that thoroughly fucked up the Iowa caucus. It was good at calculating the results but not delivering them.  And hey.. Wolf Blitzer, stay off the phone with people that are trying to get those results. Let them just do their job!!

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Brooklyn 99 is back and Vanessa Bayer is there!!!

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Rod Blagojevich is out and hitting every show that will have him. Trump pardoned him along with 10 other criminals including Ed DeBartolo Jr., Mike Milken and Bernard Kerik.

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Forty thousand kids won’t get free lunch because Trump threw them off food stamps. The two usually go hand in hand. Getting food stamps automatically sets a kid up for the free lunch program.

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Over 1000 former DOJ officials have asked Bill Barr to resign.** 70 former Senators have written an open letter to congress to tell them they are not fulfilling their congressional duties.**” Yoo Hoo! Bush, Clinton, Carter, Obama, you’re up.” –Patricia Arquette

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Pete Davidson and Kaia Gerber have split.

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Indiana Beach is closing after 94 years.

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Denny Hamlin won the 2020 Daytona 500.

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Can’t we get some real gigs for Rainn Wilson and Curtis Armstrong? Ok, so Cyrtis Armstrong was on Stumptown so thank goodness for that! They can do better than Dominoes and Little Caesars ads. And how funny is it that Dominoes, known for its very Chrustian owners use a Risky Business ( a film about prostitutes) ad for their product. Hmm.

*****Hey.. Comics, quit bringing up Trump and his former womanizing. It didn’t work with Clinton and it won’t work here. People just don’t seem to care. Focus on the real damage he is doing.

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Scary Clown is working on opening nearly a million acres of land in Utah for energy exploration that had been a National monument. Redford and Romney can’t be happy about that.

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A new animated series from a brand new production company owned by Natasha Lyonne and Maya Rudolph looks promising. Look for The Hospital.

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Southern Illinois University is giving Bob Odenkirk an honorary degree.

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Ukranian immigrants Lt. Col. Vindman and his twin brother are out. Ambassador to the EU Sonland is out.

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The Democrats had a debate on Feb. 7 . At Andrew Yang’s first chance to speak, he rehashed his stump speech. I mean, c’mon give us something new. There really seemed to be a restrained nervousness on the stage that night. Klobachar seemed too needy but she got great reviews. Biden called Buttigieg ‘a friend ‘ a couple of times. Mayor Pete did quite well. ** Deval Patrick is out** Andrew Yang is out.**Michael Bennet is out** Another debate was on Feb. 19.** Bloomberg/Yang? Is this true?

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Check out the new series, Hunters. It is awesome, funny and terrifying!

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Dozens of Native American women and girls have disappeared from Big Horn county, Montana over the last few years. The victims were later found dead and Trump has put a federal task force together.

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Grassley and Wyden are trying to get lower prescription drug prices but Moscow Mitch won’t bring the proposal to the floor. Others are looking to get some traction on HR3.

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JSW Steel has sued the Trump administration for refusing to exempt it from paying the levies on slabs of steel that the company imports.

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64 women have filed sexual harassment or discrimination lawsuits against Mike Bloomberg. I’m not a fan of the guy but it does seem sort of coincidental.  It does not seem to matter cuz all his ads seem to be working, he is picking up steam. Tom Steyer is gaining a bit of momentum as well.

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The corona virus has brought us Covid 19. 600 people are being held in quarantine camps that the military has set up.  Italy has new cases and the disease is spreading. Scary Clown is trying to spin it all.

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ICE is being sent into sanctuary cities to cause trouble for immigrants.

*****

You have to check out Horse girl with Alison Brie, Molly Shannon and Matthew Gray Gubler on Netflix .

*****

Rapper Larry Sanders AKA LV is letting us in on a miscarriage of justice he has had to live thru. LV, best known for his work on Coolio’s Gangsters Paradise, was approached by police and later put on the Calgang database. The practice put about 80,000 mostly African Americans on a sort of gang list. In a 2016 audit it was found that there were many inaccuracies including the names of babes who could not possibly be gang affiliated.

*****

Nature does not need people. People need nature. –Harrison Ford

*****

The Clark bar is back. The roll out has started in Pittsburgh and will soon spread across the country.

*****

Scientists have found some turtle fossils that are the size of a car in South America.

*****

U can donate to the Trump campaign and may win a yaqut and hunting trip with Don Jr. The Beach Boys will perform.

*****

The Oscars were held Feb. 9. Brad Pitt and the production design team won for Once upon a Time in Hollywood. Woo Hoo! Word is that Pitt has hired a speech writer to write his acceptances. JoJo Rabbit won for adapted screenplay. Little Women won for Little Women and Toy Story 4 for animated film. Laura Dern won best supporting actress. Renee Zellweger and Joaquin Phoenix too home the top actor prizes. Parasite surprised everybody and won best pic and got Bong Joon Ho a best director statue. My best dressed were Billy Porter, Antonio Banderes and his date, Janelle Monae ( her opening seemed to make some in the audience uncomfortable), Robert DeNiro, Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Geena Davis, Regina King, Charlize Theron, Adam Driver, Joanne Tucker, Cynthia Erivo, Scarlett Johansson, Natalie Portman and Kathy Bates, I don’t know what Kristen Wiig and Idina Menzel were thinking. Wiig always has a unique style so I have to admire that. ** The ratings were down. I have heard people saying they just don’t watch award shows or late night shows anymore because they are afraid things will get political. Funny, that is part of the reason I watch!

*****

Tom Papa was pontificating about a real dog show that should have REAL dogs. It would make a great weekly show with people bringing on their dogs.

*****

The goalies of the Hurricanes were out of commission and David Ayres, the Zamboni driver was brought in to help and the won against the Maple Leafs. Woo Hoo!!

*****

Hooray for New Hampshire and their use of paper ballots. Things in the campaign got a little shook up with Bernie taking the top followed by Pete and Amy.

*****

2 years of research in Canada has brought the announcement of a new discovery. Skull fragments  that were cleaned and collected about 10 years ago have been named Thanatotheristes or the reaper of death. The discovery helps us all learn more about the early times of Tyrannosaurids, a sub group that includes T.Rex.

*****

New Jersey has a ban on self- serve pumps and another state is talking about getting in on the action.  The gas station attendant act has been proposed in Illinois.

*****

Van Jones was right when he said we shouldn’t give Trump any press coverage for a week. He would hate it. Trump loves the old adage of bad publicity is better than none because he just must have attention. It would never work for they just can’t resist.** Joe Mcguire is out after he warned of Russian interference. If you want to keep your job in this administration, do not tell the truth. Now at the Department of National Intelligence is Johnny Mcentee , a 29 year old former football player who worked on the campaign. He immediately called department heads and said he wanted lists of never Trumpers in their offices. ** And who is in charge of weeding out the people in the government who may be disloyal to Scary Clown? Well, it is none other than Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence. She calls it the list of snakes. Trump is now saying he even wants liberal judges on the Supreme Court to recuse themselves when it comes to “Trump related cases”. It just keeps getting worse.

*****

Trump had fun in India. He should, his business has 5 projects going there right now worth 1.5 billion.

*****

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of rape and criminal sexual assault. He was not found guilty of all the charges that included predatory behavior.

*****

Andrew Yang is a new correspondent at CNN. He tells us that he is getting word from former donors that Bloomberg is calling those big donors. Allegedly he is telling them they do not have to donate to his campaign because he can afford his own campaign but he still won’t forget them. He would like them to save their money and not give money to other democrats running either.** And I am so sick of talking heads trying to tell us to play it safe. We are not as stupid as we look, thank you!! ** Now there is a firestorm about Bernie telling the world that the education program that Castro implemented was a good thing. I understand the anger and it could not have come at a worse time and he did it to himself. BUT..  We are adults and we have to be able to talk about things as they really are, not in sound bites. Castro sucked and history teaches us that bad people do good things occasionally and good people do bad things once in a while. ** It seems that everyone was in agreement that we would all gather behind the winner of the democratic campaign to beat Trump. Suddenly when it could be Bernie, everybody is bitching.

*****

This month held 2 more Democratic debates. The Nevada debate got pretty heated. I see that Mayor Pete and Bloomberg are lefties (left handed that is). Pete always looked poised and articulate which I appreciate and he got in a good one when he mentioned that the party should choose someone who is actually a democrat.  Bernie seemed a little rattled by that. Later Pete really dressed down Amy Klobuchar and made himself look like a dick. Joe Biden jumped in with his credits occasionally but often seemed a bit lost. He slammed back that they were all talking about the health care plane he helped to create and that he himself had dealt with the Mexican President. His name came up after it was mentioned that Amy could not remember the President’s name. The gloves were off with Bloomberg as Elizabeth Warren called him out on Billionaires and NDA’s. I loved the interaction but realistically Mr. Mike can’t just release people from agreements they made in an NDA, especially if it did not involve him. Bloomberg sounded pompous and clueless about the world outside of his company. He got a moan when he said he couldn’t exactly use turbo tax and when he said he may have told a few jokes that women didn’t like. He brushed off his taxes much like Trump does. The former mayor of NY called out socialists as communists. Klobuchar had the best comeback of the night when she was told her health care plan could fit on a post it. She proclaimed that the post it was invented in her state of Minnesota. Again, there were people shouting from the audience as Joe tried to talk. C’mon give everybody an equal chance.

*****

The South Carolina debate was fiery as well. The CBS debate was hosted by Gayle King and Norah O’Donnell. Bloomberg was booed right off the bat about Russia helping Bernie but he late had many cheers. He and Biden and Steyer had some real support there. Tom Steyer was actually quite impressive and seemed well spoken.  He was the only one who brought up the impeachment. He had a great point that we all know that republicans who did not convict Trump are complicit in the Russian meddling. Then he ruined it all by being alarmist with his fear. He warned us off the former republican and the socialists. I loved Bernie’s ideas about small business’s getting in on the marijuana business and not letting big corporations taking it over. He is also the only one in debates that I have seen consistently bring up Native Americans.  Biden again kept jumping in to tell us that he did this or that. Amy disagreed about a bill he claimed to have written. Warren said “dig in” numerous times. She went for the jugular with Bloomberg when she said a former female employee of his said to “kill it” in response to her pregnancy. He denied it but it sure is memorable. She did make great points that he has given much money to Linsey Graham’s campaign as well as other republican runs including against her. BTW he also gave 2.3 mil to Rick Snyder, the Gov of Michigan after the water crisis was well known.  I love that Amy is always saying that we shouldn’t fight amongst ourselves but she just does not have the votes so she needs to go. Bernie got some boos about guns for he seems the softest in that area.

*****

Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary in a big way.

*****

Dick Van Dyke, Sarah Silverman and Public Enemy among others will be at the Bernie Sanders rally in L.A. on March 1.

*****

Just think what the 400 million that Bloomberg spent on his campaign could have done for the debt of the average American.  Instead of a campaign for a presidency that he can’t win, he could have helped so many get a leg up.

*****

I don’t understand why “respected” journalists like Chuck Todd don’t throw W H reps off the set when they disrespect him or his colleagues with fake news jabs.

*****

Bob Moore of Bob’s Red Mill is giving his company away to his employees. Now, that’s a boss!!

*****

Bone, Thugs and Harmony have made a deal with Buffalo Wild Wings to rename themselves Boneless thugs and Harmony. The publicity stunt is to promote boneless wings.

*****

NASA is hiring.

*****

Scotland has made feminine sanitary products free!!

*****

Is this true? There were pigeons in Nevada with MAGA hats glued to their heads??

*****

The final Criminal Minds has aired. CBS often aired double episodes which made it seem like they really wanted to get rid of it. Kirsten Vangsness and Erica Messer wrote the final episode which seemed to give special attention to Penelope and Reid as they were the originals. The other characters seemed a little overlooked but they all had happy endings. Where was Reid’s new girlfriend?  I was hoping to see Shemar Moore but it was great to see Reisgraf and Howell which are old favorites.

*****

Animal Kingdom returns to TNT on May 28.

*****

So there is a bit of a mess with the Roger Stone sentencing. Trump is hopping mad about the long sentence recommendation, Barr is said to be pretending to spar with the Prez, the DOJ is backing down and people are resigning.

*****

R.I.P. Shirley Jean Cade, Robert Conrad,  Katherine Johnson, Lyle Mays, B. Smith, A.E. Hotchner, Bashir Jackson, Ja’net Dubois, Pat Agee, victims of the Molson Coors shooting and Orson Bean.

[writingmilo]

The Saddest My Chem Song

Chapter 1

Read on ao3 here

TRIGGER WARNINGS: CANCER, HOSPITALS (let me know if there’s anything else I should add)

Let me tell the story of how Eve’s life changed.

Eve had gotten up early that morning, having felt ill through the night. Her skin, pale and sickly, was covered in a thin veil of bronzer and blush to maintain her healthy glow before she left the house for school. On her way down the front steps, she waved to her neighbor, Virgil, who she took the bus with everyday. 

"Hey Virge."

"Hey Lena. You look as bad as I feel today, what's up?"

"Oh nothing, I'll be coming down with a bug or something from school, I'll be fine!" She gave him a hug and they linked their hands together as they walked to the bus stop.

Eve had never enjoyed the bus ride to school, but that day it felt less bearable than usual, and being squashed between Virgil and the window was cramped instead of cosy.

School went by in a blur, lessons dragging and smudging together, until it was almost the end of the day. By now, Eve’s head was pounding, her blood felt like gum in her veins, and having had two nosebleeds already, Virgil finally convinced her to go to the school nurse. Standing up to leave the classroom, the treacle blood rushed to her head, and before she could move away from her table, she was crumpling to the floor.

A few hours and scans later, Eve woke up in a hospital bed. Her parents by her side, a strong unit that could outlast anything. 

“Evie!” Her mum, Maisy, exclaimed, shuffling towards her daughter and squeezing her hand tightly. “How are you feeling?”

“Foggy...” She tried to lift her arm to rub at her heavy eyes, but it felt like lead. “What happened mum?”

“You passed out at school baby. They had to call an ambulance because you wouldn’t wake up. They took some blood tests and scans to find out what’s wrong, but you’ll get through it because you’re our strong and beautiful baby girl.” She planted a gentle kiss on Eve’s forehead before moving back to her husband. 

“The doctors wanted to know when you woke up, they’ll be here soon to explain everything.” David, Eve’s dad, sat down next to Maisy, and everything felt peaceful. Until the doctor came in.

“Hi Evangeline, I’m doctor Granger. How are you feeling?” Despite being a tall man, doctor Granger wasn’t imposing, and he stood semi-awkwardly inside the door.

“Icky,” Eve half laughed, “and heavy.”

He scribbled it down on a clipboard that was folded inside the tray at the foot of Eve’s bed. “I’m sorry to hear that Eve. I’m also sorry that right now I don’t have a lot of answers for you either. Your x-ray shows some swelling in your chest, and you have some abnormalities in your blood test results, so I have referred you to a haematologist who will be able to get to the bottom of the problem for you.” He smiled kindly. “They should be here to see you by tomorrow, but in the meantime we are going to keep you in overnight if that is okay, just so we can keep an eye on you. Great! I hope to see you fighting fit tomorrow ready for discharge.” Placing the file back in its place, doctor Granger left.

“What does he mean? Why can’t I go home?”

“I don’t know kiddo,” David comforted, “But we’ll stay with you all night.”

“We will, but I’ll also go home and pick you some bits for the night. Is there anything you want?” Maisy stood.

“Can you bring me my bear?” 

“Of course sweetie. If there’s anything else you think of, let your dad know and he’ll text me. I’ll be back soon. I love you so much.” Another kiss on Eve’s forehead and Maisy left. Whilst she was gone the haematologist came to see Eve.

“Hi Eve, I’m doctor Brown, but you can call me Amy. I’m going to be your haematologist, so I’ll be investigating the abnormalities that appeared to get to the bottom of what made you pass out today. If you would like, I can go over in a bit more detail what we found that we want to investigate?” David nodded, Eve starting to drift asleep. Noticing, Amy started to talk to David instead.

“Okay, so the x-ray returned that there was some swelling around her chest and neck, specifically where we would consider her lymph nodes. This in itself isn’t a huge worry, but there was also a deficiency of red blood cells in her sample. Again, on its own this wouldn’t be anything to worry about, but because of her age, we just want to rule out some more severe possibilities. At this point I would say it is too early to be worrying too much.” She smiled reassuringly. 

“What are these possibilities?”

“Well, mainly cancer. The symptoms demonstrated are parallel to those of a specific form of leukemia, but it is extremely rare, so it’s most likely no cause for concern.”

“Okay...” David was slightly in shock. “What’s the course of action now, then? There’ll be more tests?” Amy nodded.

“Yes, in the morning, I’ll be back to talk it over again with Eve and Maisy as well, answer any questions they have, or that you may have thought of, and I’ll take a sample of bone marrow from her hip before she is discharged. I understand that you are going to be worried, but try not to, as of now there is no real evidence that it is leukemia, we just want to rule it out as quickly as possible.” Another friendly smile before she left David and Eve alone. Maisy returned to a sleeping Eve and a crying David.

Amy returned the next day to take the sample of bone marrow, which she did quickly, and she took another sample of blood for further analysis. Then she was gone again. And then came dr Granger, who discharged Eve from the hospital, with a time arranged for when her test results would be back so they could be expecting a phone call.

Eve continued to bounce through the days, half maintaining her usual energy. It was her phone that was meant to get the call, so all day she carried around the note, brandishing it to each teacher at the start of the lesson. And eventually, at eleven forty seven AM, it rang in the middle of french. Dashing out of the classroom, Eve answered it.

“Good morning, is this Evangeline Miller?”

“Yep, that’s me.”

“Hi there Eve, it’s Amy Brown. I’ve got your test results back today. If it isn’t too much trouble, I would like to talk them over with you in person, if your parents could bring you through?” Why couldn’t she just say it over the phone? Didn’t that mean something was wrong? If everything was okay why would she have more to say?

“Yeah, yeah they’ll bring me. What time?”

“As soon as possible, if that’s okay?” Something was definitely wrong if she was urgent.

“Yep, I’ll be there soon. Thank you.” The line buzzed silent, until it rang. Her mum would be able to help. 

“Mum?” A lump had formed in Eve’s throat.

“Evie baby, what’s the matter?”

“It’s the doctor, she wants to speak in person, asap. Can you pick me up?”

“Of course, I’ll be there in ten.” Once again the phone went dead, leaving Eve in the silence of the corridor. She was going to have to go back into the class eventually. Nobody knew, but she was still scared of being asked what was wrong. But it was barely a few minutes until her mum would be here, and she didn't want to keep her waiting, so she balled up the lump in her throat and pushed it into her stomach, trying to imagine it into courage. She had a feeling she was going to need a lot of that. In the classroom, she packed up her things, earning strange looks from her peers and a sympathetic glance from her teacher, who wandered over while the class was working in its groups. 

“Is everything okay Eve?”

“Peachy, I just need to go.” She walked off, not wanting sympathy as if she was already dying. There was still a chance she wasn’t.

Amy met them at the hospital reception, walking them to a private consultation room. It was cramped with four people in there, but Eve felt empty enough to make up for it.

“Okay, the reason I wanted to give you your results face to face Eve is because I didn’t want you panicking.” Eve looked at the paper on the desk, but she couldn’t read upside down. “The sample of bone marrow came back, and it revealed cancerous cells. From the bone marrow and the blood sample, we’ve confirmed that you do have acute lymphoblastic leukemia.” Everything froze, silent and cold. Eve heard her parents stop breathing, she felt the tears welling in her mum’s eyes and the fear in her dad’s mind. But she felt nothing.

“So what does that mean? Is there a treatment?” Maisy was panicking, so much for that plan.

“Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is a type of blood cancer, and it’s quite rare, that makes white blood cells enter the blood before they are ready, taking up space for the rest of the important bits of your blood. But just because it is rare doesn’t mean it is terminal. We have caught it early enough for it to be treatable; the majority of patients live a healthy life for at least five years. We’ll need to take some more tests to confirm the best route of treatment for you, but it will likely be based on chemotherapy and blood transfusions until we can get it into remission.”

“Okay." 

"How long until treatment starts?” More panic. Eve wished that they would stop panicking.

“I’ll take the samples I need now, and then treatment should start within a week. If you would like, Eve, I can connect you with some charities and sources of information that should help you to learn more about what you’re going through?”

“No thank you, not right now. I think I just need to let it sink in. Thanks though. Can we just get the samples taken so I can go back to school? I have drama this afternoon.” It was the most she had spoken, and it snapped right out of her.

“Of course, right this way.”

The sample was taken, and Eve returned back to school just after the start of drama. 

“Sorry I’m late.” She dumped her bag in the corner and joined the circle sat on the floor. 

“No worries Eve. As I was saying, today we are learning about emotion memory and context. Does anybody know what emotion memory is?” A few people put their hand up, and somebody answered, but Eve didn’t pay attention to who. Maybe she didn’t have emotions, that was why she was so calm about all of this.

“Eve!” She looked up to see everyone on their feet in pairs working. She hadn’t even heard the assignment. 

“Sorry sir, what are we doing?” She climbed to her feet, trying to muster the amount of energy she normally had. 

“Right now Eve, you and me are going to have a little chat.” He walked up the few steps to the back row of seating, watching the students pretend to break up and give bad news. “What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing…” That was a lie. “I’m fine.”

“Is it a school thing?” She shook her head. “A home thing?” She shrugged. How could she even begin to categorise what kind of thing was making her upset.

“Is it a thing that a coffee would help?” She shook her head. At least for now, a coffee and a chat sounded like the worst thing in the world. While Eve waited for Mr Derbyshire to think of anything else to offer, she thought about what was happening at home. Were her mum and dad crying? Had they gone back to work, trying to ignore it? Were they sitting with coffee trying to figure out how to tell people close to them that their daughter had cancer and it might be terminal? She didn’t know.

The bell rang, and everyone clambered for their bags. Eve hoped that lesson was the only one of its kind.

[missmal1005-blog]

One of my creative writing assignment stories

“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing that we can do. What we can tell you, is that this is not your fault. Nothing that you did made this happen, and there’s no way to prevent it.  There are grief counselors available to speak with….”

 The doctor’s voices faded out.  Amy kept nodding, showing a small smile, but she wanted them to leave the room. To just get out and let her have a moment to process. After what seemed like an uncomfortable silence that lasted forever, the doctors hastily left.

 The nurse took her clothes and placed them on the edge of the bed.  “Do you need to call anyone?” Amy took a long pause before responding. “No, my mother is in the waiting room”.  The nurse, who name tag said “Jessica” with little butterfly stickers attached, stared at her, trying to gage her emotional process. “Amy, take as long as you need to get ready, and I’m sorry for your loss.”

All Amy could muster up is a half-hearted “Thanks.” She didn’t need the apologizes or the lengthy “It’s not your fault” speeches. She knew it wasn’t anything she could’ve done. Sometimes, pregnancies end. It’s just a simple fact of life. But it doesn’t take away from all the pain. This was going to be her first child. The first child for her and Charles. She didn’t even have the chance to tell him she was in the hospital. He never answers his phone while at work. He claims that he is always too busy to talk. But it’s hard to talk while his mouth was covered with his assistant’s body parts.  

Charles has been sleeping with Desiree since the 20 something year old walked in for a job, and her breasts made an entrance before she did. Most people would have left, but there wasn’t really much to leave with. Charles made sure make sure Amy was taken care of. Weekly manis/pedis, the best personal trainers, a personal chef, maid, and private car to take her anywhere she wanted.  She was newly twenty-one and met Charles at the club where she was celebrating her birthday. He was handsome, older, and more sophisticated then the frat boys that her roommates were sleeping with.  She was a junior in a college and was barely passing classes due to having to work to pay for school. It seemed like an easy fix to marry and not have scrub toilets to pay a tuition bill for a school she hated. At first, she loved living the life she used to watch the famous reality TVs stars have. She herself could have starred in the one of the Real Housewives shows.  

She didn’t notice that since the wedding, Charles was never home. Sure, he would wine and dine her at fancy galas, and take fancy vacations to tropical islands with water so clear she could see her feet when she walked. But his phone was always to his ear, or he had a laptop to glued to his hands. She usually went to bed alone and woke up to him already gone, possibly on a plane or just to his upscale NY office. She only been once in the ten years they were married. It was around their eighth anniversary. He said the office tied him up and he couldn’t make dinner, but would be able to fly her out to any destination that weekend. Amy, being the romantic that she was, wanted to bring the romance back. She made a beautiful lunch, and called his office, and confirmed that he had no appointments for at least an hour block. She would have surprise him with lunch, and a trench coat where she was wearing nothing underneath. She was so excited coming up the elevator. His wooden office door was unlocked, but you could hear the moans before the door was even opened. He begged her to stay that night and promised to fire Desiree the very next day. Yet, two years later, it was odd that his new assistant, “David”, was sending him pictures of his breasts to Charles’s private “work” Blackberry.

When she found out she was pregnant, she was so excited. It was stupid but Charles was so supportive. He got the best doctors in the country. Came to almost every appointment. They even did the early testing to check for genetic abnormalities and to find out the gender. And now, he didn’t even know that his little “baseball buddy” (as he was sure they were having a boy) is no longer existent.

 Amy walked out to the waiting room, where her mom was waiting. Alice smiled at her, until she noticed the tears streaking down her daughter’s face. She quickly ushered her out and helped her into the car.

            “Amy, dear, you’re barely thirty-one. You can try again, you know. If there are issues, Charles can afford the best fertility specialists in the country. Maybe you’ll get twins that way. Your cousin Charlotte, had IVF, and she got triplets. Triplets! Well, it’s not like you can’t afford them, I’m sure Charles will get the fanciest sitters available. Don’t you give up hope yet. Did the doctor say when you could try again? I am assuming that you can as soon as possible…”

 Amy mostly tuned out Alice at this point. Her mother, one of six children, was elated when her daughter “married up”, as she called it. Alice made a point to only have one child to save money, and even then, she wasn’t satisfied with life of living. Amy’s father tried to please her, but Alice only saw dollar signs. Amy believes he worked himself to death trying to compete with Alice’s standards. The only time Alice seemed truly happy with her marriage was when she received the funds from her husband’s life insurance and savings, after his sudden death from a heart attack last year.

 They finally pulled up to the house. The maids had already left for the day, and the chef wasn’t due until later that evening. Alice offered to stay, but Amy wanted to be left alone. She tried calling Charles again, but after it rang for the fifth time she hung up.

 The house, which hosted 7 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms, a pool, guesthouse, and tennis court, seemed too big for just two people. It was filled with high end furniture and the latest tech, but it was empty of people.  Amy couldn’t remember the last party or event that was hosted her. Yet it was cleaned top to bottom each day, as if it was just waiting for people to come and admire it.

Amy tried calling Charles again. This time it picked up on the second ring.

 “Hello, my dear, how’s the little one? I know you are expecting me to be home, but Marvin is trying to have dinner with the staff, and you know I’m up for a promotion…”

           It’s super interesting that Marvin’s wife just invited them out for dinner last week and mentioned that they were in Greece for the next two weeks, but Amy didn’t even bother to tell him that. She could hear Desiree’s laughter from the phone.

 “It’s okay Charles. Have a good time. Tell Desiree I said hello.” She hung up before he could respond. She turned the phone off and took the battery out. The last thing she wanted to do was argue, especially after today.

            She went to the bathroom, crying. She looked in the mirror. Her hair, a perfect light blonde, rested all the way down her backside. Most of the wives her age already had Botox and new breasts, but she had the blessing of her mother genetics. She was still mistaken to be in college and was constant carded. At many events she was asked if she was a model, and most were shocked that with her blue eyes that looked like marbles and her perfectly tanned skin, that she wasn’t.

           After staring long in the mirror, Amy knew she had to do something. The change in her body warranted a change in her appearance. She was tired of looking like the perfect trophy wife. She was tired of being the perfect trophy wife. She wanted a change.  

Amy ran into the kitchen and grabbed some shears. She went to the bathroom and started cutting. Her smile grew wider with each chunk of hair that fell to the floor.  Once her hair reached the length of her ears, she went into the bedroom, and her own private bathroom. She rummaged in the closet until she found it-a box of leftover red/orange hair dye, from a few Halloweens ago. She wanted to go for Black Widow but brought a wig to dye instead of her own hair. Charles was supposed to be Hulk, but he supposedly had to work late.  Once he saw her in that red wig, he was so devasted that she changed her blonde tresses that he slept in the other room. He brought her plane tickets to Paris once he saw her without the wig that next morning as an apology.

 It only took 40 minutes to dye her hair and dry it. She took out her contacts, and picked out her glasses, and put them on. Charles hated her glasses. He said it gave her the appearance of being smart to the point where it was condescending. She kept her glasses in her purse since then, only using them when he wasn’t around, as the contacts irritated more than they helped.

 She smiled in the mirror at her new look. She didn’t look like a trophy wife. She looked like Amy, a person, of her own accord. It brought her back to who she was before she married. The girl who like comics and music, and not balls and tea parties and the country club. She went into her closet, and took out some jeans, and a bright band shirt that was hidden within. A CD dropped, from the band Guns N’ Roses. She hadn’t listened to them in forever. Charles didn’t like that type of music. He told her, “Next thing you’ll do is go get a tattoo or something crazy.” He asked her to put away the band shirts, and the jeans too. The fact that she could fit into the clothes of her youth surprised Amy and made her happy.

 She laughed bitterly at the memory, then smiled mischievously.  She knew what she had to do.

She walked out the front door, where Tom, her driver was sitting in front of the car, having a smoke break. When he saw her, he quickly put it out. “I’m so sorry Mrs. Kelly”.  

 She smiled. “Please Tom, call me Amy.”

 “Yes, of course Mrs.-um, Amy.” He didn’t hide his worried and concerned glances as he opened the door, and let Amy in. He walked around and got into the driver’s seat. “Where to, ma’am?”

 “133 West Market Street in Manchester. And it’s Amy, remember?”

Tom hesitated. “Ma’am, I mean Amy, you do know that area is…. that part of town…. well, you know that’s a tattoo shop, right?”

 “I do Tom. And please hurry, I need to get in before they close today.”

 “Right away”.

 And they drove off, Amy smiling all the way.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#10yrsago Why CNN Struggles to Cover The Economic Panic

Dale Dougherty:

The current economic collapse is a difficult story for TV.  It's a peculiar period in between an election and an inauguration.  This most important story, this great-or-not-so great depression, is also the hardest for CNN to tell.  I have more than enough reasons why in this late-night rant.

1) It's not a hurricane so Anderson Cooper of CNN is unable to position himself in the middle of the storm for optimal drama.  In other words, TV anchors can't get wet and windblown, while viewers worry about their safety. The state of the economy is a disaster but not a natural disaster.  Nobody's leaving the studio for this one.  There's no place to go.

2) It's like a war and we keep losing ground each day.  In the place of casualties, we have falling stock indices but it's hard to show the real damage.  There's only so much you can do with oversized charts to tell a story.  The war on terrorism featured a real enemy.  We've just never been able to find them, no matter who goes after them.  (Maybe it's not so different.)  Campbell Brown ("No Bull, No Bias") should say that what the capitalism's finest did to themselves and to us was worse than any terrorist could have imagined.  

3) Few CEOs, fewer economists, and almost no one in the financial industry, want to step forward and say with conviction what will happen.  A year ago we couldn't get them to stop telling us what great things to expect in the next quarter.  Not now.  They don't know what's coming and they aren't willing to say even that much.  They are MIA.  Insider information is at an all-time low.  

Memo to all American CEOs: don't presume in ten years' time to write business books about your leadership skills; maybe there's a gripping survival story to be told about how you held on to your job.  

We want them to face the music.   Even the Watergate hearings, which had a large cast of characters, were compelling to watch day after day.

4) There is not a President at the center.  Bush is just not there.   Like us, he's watching TV to find out what to think.  Reporting from the White House doesn't have any relevance today.  Moreover, the satisfaction in blaming Bush for everything is diminishing.

In addition, with the election over, reporters can't simply ask the candidates to react to the day's bad news.  It seldom produced much insight anyway but it filled time.   Now Obama is filling time, and he keeps repeating that "there's only one President" but there's really not a President.  There's a leadership vacuum waiting to be filled by Obama.   (BTW, this story is much bigger and more important than Obama's election and I think he understands that.)  Bottom line is we're waiting for a central figure to emerge.  

5) Real experts are hard to find, especially ones with big hair. So over-present talking heads such as Suze Orman ramble on and on in front of Larry King and others.   Here's an incredible ramble from Suze Orman on CNN:

People feel they need medication because they are panicking. It’s as if the economy right now is in the I.C.U. unit of a hospital. We are in intensive care and they are throwing everything type of medication at us to cure what is going on. They are panicking because why? Nothing is working. They tried this, it didn’t work. They tried that medication, it didn’t work. They are running out of prescriptions to give it. We are going to be in the I.C.U. unit for a while. Eventually, I don’t know when that will be, six months, a year, year and a half, we will get out, we’ll be in the hospital then. We’ll stay in the hospital for about a year or two. After another year or two we will end up in rehab and then we’ll be okay. This is a long stretch. People have to stop panicking. CNN link

Makes me think of Amy Winehouse singing "They try to make me go to rehab, I say no, no, no."   Rehab is taking place over on CNBC.

6) Where are the winning and losing teams?   We have learned more about Al Queda cells and Saddam Hussein's Elite Guards than about the people in power behind CITI, Goldman Sachs, Lehmann Brothers, AIG, etc.  We know more about the New York Jets than we do about CITI Bank.  Are the slow-moving Detroit Manufacturers competing head-to-head against the fast-talking Wall Street Financiers?  Please tell us more about these teams as we're entrusting them with such large amounts of public money. Maybe we need to start thinking that, as with football, we care because we're betting on teams to win.  We have our money at stake.

7)  I can almost hear producers wondering each night if there isn't a better story to lead with.  "Isn't there a story we can do on Sarah Palin?  Like her or hate her, people can't get enough of her."  At least that appears to be the thinking behind her getting the most air-time in the week following the election.  Would you rather hear about Sarah Palin pardoning a turkey or David Gergen saying no one knows what to make of the economic mess? At least, the Palin piece will have something interesting going on in the foreground and the background.  

8) "Why can't this be happening to Russia or China?  If it was only happening there, and not here, we would know how to cover it."  CNN would send Christiane Amanpour there.  "Live from...".   We don't have visuals like people knocking down walls, rushing into the streets or standing in lines.  The Fall of the Berlin Wall is the Fall of Communism, the fall of Saddam's statue -- now these are stories of new freedoms.   In America today,  we have a big fall without a distinctive symbol, without a video loop, without an exotic locale.    

Also, how do you explain that China is providing the bail for the bailout?  As David Gergen said tonight on CNN, "China's become our banker."  Even harder to tell that kind of "freedom" story.

9) The problems aren't going away and there's no timeline.  So, where's the equivalent of "America Held Hostage: Day XN"?  Nightline evolved from a special report to become a nightly hard-news program to follow the ongoing story of Iran holding American hostages during the Carter Administration.  Why isn't this economic story played front-and-center in the same way?   Isn't there a TV journalist saying "Holy Christ, this is the biggest story of my career and I'm going to bring it to you every night"?  Ted Koppel, Edward R. Murrow, where are you?

Here's my list of names for a new Nightline-like special series on the economy:

America's Panic Attack

The Joke's on US

Invisible Hand-Wringing

Capitalism on the Ledge

The Economy on the Couch

Future Shock & Awe

Hitting the Wall And Falling on the Street.

America Sucks Right Now

US: Out of Order

10) Lastly, the TV media is no better off than we are at understanding this complex crisis.  On a gut level, viewers know what the story is, that it's about them, their future and their children's future.   They have specific questions that are difficult to answer (see the Suze Orman blog on CNN where it is promised that she'll answer these many, many questions; she doesn't, of course.) and they have general worries (should I panic?) that are hard to resolve.   While we try to absorb as much information as possible, we keep having the same conversation over and over: Q. What's going on? A. I don't know.  It's hard to tell.

https://boingboing.net/2008/11/25/why-cnn-struggles-to.html

[toonice00]

Neighbours star reveals all on David Tanaka’s fight for his life: ‘The accident is BRUTAL, viewers will be shocked!’

Next week’s Neighbours sees a huge stunt hit our screens as beloved character David Tanaka is caught up in a terrifying road accident that leaves him on death’s door.

We caught up with the lovely Takaya Honda, who plays doctor David, to find out all the behind-the-scenes gossip from the Neighbours set.

Neighbours fans will be on the edge of their seats next week as David goes out for a late-night bike ride after a fight with husband Aaron, only to get hit by a speeding car.

Terese Willis is first on the scene after the accident, and David is in a bad way. Injured and unconscious, it is a race against time to get him to hospital before it’s too late.

But when it is revealed that David has lost one of his kidneys it is a race to find him a donor, but as actor Takaya tells us, that’s not as easy as it sounds… “David needs a kidney transplant, but no one around him is a match which apparently is quite common.

“There are three tests that you have to have done, I couldn’t tell you what they are through, because I’m not a real doctor! It is a big waiting game and there are a lot of hurdles that need to be jumped over.”

But while everyone is frantically trying to find David a new kidney, he is flatlining in his hospital bed… “This storyline was a lot of fun to play as an actor – someone being hit by a car and then having to deal with their own possible death is really interesting as it is not one that we usually have direct experience with.”

But according to Takaya there is an upside of your character left fighting for their life in a hospital bed… “I loved it as I wasn’t the one having to say the tricky medical words! But the bad thing for David is because he has his medical knowledge, he almost knows too much.

“Most people might be oblivious to how seriously ill they are, but he knows that his hopes are being shattered and needs to try and not lose his fight.”

akaya also admitted that the crash scenes are so hard to watch that he hasn’t actually seen them himself yet… “I want to watch it at the same time as viewers and see it as they see it.

“Filming was really interesting… it was CGI and digital stuff, which often means you have to film it all in sections, but the small bits I have seen are brutal. The audience will be shocked, I was surprised I didn’t have any broken bones from it!

“It’s a brutal hit and it will be interesting to see how the audience react. There will be plenty of GIFs made of it! Lots gets watered down in Neighbours because of the time we are on, but this is a real measure of what the audience was willing to watch. It’s not very Neighbours!

Whether or not David’s loved ones manage to find him a kidney remains to be seen, but things don’t look good for the character in the lead up to Christmas. And Takaya has admitted that he would miss his character should he ever get written out… “It’s hard not to love David,” he jokes.

“But I will admit that he infuriates me with how easily he forgives people. It doesn’t take long before he is the one apologising to them… he is just so nice!”

link

Neighbours spoilers: Will David Tanaka be killed off as star teases ‘possible death’?

NEIGHBOURS favourite David Tanaka is going to be embroiled in a tragic storyline in upcoming episodes as he becomes a victim of a horrific cycling accident. However, will the incident lead to his untimely death? 

David (played by Takaya Honda) has been a pinnacle of the Neighbours community since he arrived on the Channel 5 soap back in 2016 alongside twin brother Leo Tanaka (Tim Kano). As the long-lost sons of Paul Robinson (Stefan Dennis), the pair have featured in many climatic plots. With his character set to endure tragedy in upcoming episodes, soap star Takaya, 32, has hinted death could be on the horizon for the doctor.

The drama begins following the creation of a cycle group David is a part of with his husband Aaron Brennan (Matt Wilson), Karl Kennedy (Alan Fletcher) and Pierce Grayson (Tim Robards).

After an argument with his beloved, the doctor believes the best way to clear his head would be to go for a bike ride in the dead of night.

Unfortunately, the Ramsay Street resident becomes the victim of a car accident when Kyle Canning (Chris Milligan) falls asleep at the wheel.

With fans set to see his character fighting for his life in light of the tragedy, Takaya has teased “death” could be on the cards.

In an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk, the actor explained some of the ramifications of his character’s ordeal as he described the tragedy as an “extension” of Leo’s departure from Erinsborough.

“There will be quite a few times we’re really not sure whether David is going to make it or not.

“Which goes into exploring really interesting stuff for me as an actor.

“To play the character going through the ups and downs of having hope and then having that hope taken away from you and having to deal with the concept of contemplating your own mortality and possible death.”

However, could the idea of death come to fruition if the beloved character is killed off in such tragic circumstances?

Whatever happens, the backlash on Kyle is likely to be huge following his already troubled relationship with Paul and the fact he is dating David’s sister, Amy Williams (Zoe Crammond).

Could the doctor’s death lead the lovers to split as the Erinsborough heart throb is sent down for killing Aaron’s husband?

Takaya also opened up on what it was like to film the crash scenes and teased what viewers can expect to see.

“It’s a pretty brutal scene so I’m really interested to see how the audience reacts. I think they’ll be quite shocked by it.”

With the soap venturing into the darker realms of late and featuring gritter storylines, the soap actor also gave his take on the new direction.

“Audiences are craving it in a way,” he began.

“They want to see how the psychology of these situations play out, rather than just seeing the situation itself play out.”

Takaya continued: “As actors, we love that, we love getting a chance to really dive into a character in a situation and not have to move on really quickly from it.

“I think it’s a really great step forward for the show.”

Viewers will have to stay tuned to see how David’s latest plot unfolds, but will his time on Ramsay Street come to an end?

How will Aaron react if the love of his life is cruelly snatched away from him in the lead up to Christmas?

link

Neighbours star Takaya Honda reveals life-or-death Christmas plot for David Tanaka

Will he survive?

Neighbours star Takaya Honda has revealed that David Tanaka will be among the characters taking centre stage at Christmas this year.

Viewers will see David's future remain uncertain over the coming weeks, as he's told that he needs a kidney transplant in the aftermath of his hit and run incident.

After being knocked over while riding his bike one evening, David is rushed to hospital and one of his kidneys is removed as part of the efforts to save him.

David is later told that his remaining kidney is failing, which means that a donor needs to be found as soon as possible.

Confirming that this plot will run all the way until Christmas, Takaya told Inside Soap: "The whole family's Christmas wish this year is that David survives.

"His condition is serious, and his loved ones spend a long time not knowing whether he'll make it or not. It's a big rollercoaster of emotions – but David is trying to remain positive."

Asked about the possibility of a long-lost relative being a match for David, Takaya replied: "I reckon that he'll take what he can get right now! David is very open-minded and forgiving, and willing to give people second chances.

"So if someone is willing to provide him with a kidney, that's a sign that there must be something good in them."

Meanwhile, Takaya already has a suggestion on what could be ahead for David and his husband Aaron in 2020 if he makes it through his ordeal.

He said: "A baby storyline of some kind is what the audience is begging for – and we as actors are really keen for that too. There are so many different avenues to explore, like surrogacy or fostering – or maybe someone could just leave a baby on the doorstep for them!"

link

[frazzledsoul]

A late night insomnia induced post in which I try to justify the second most upsetting event in Gilmore Girls history

. . . . I am of course, speaking of the Gilmore/Hayden marriage experiment.

(Disclaimer: if you’ve written any of the stories I refer to below, understand I’m not judging you. I mostly wrote this because of a very upsetting story I read which directly suggested that Lorelai would have been wasting her life with Luke if she didn’t give him that ultimatum. It made me think of a lot of the fanfiction trends I’m not comfortable with, but as always, it is just my opinion).

Fan fiction is always a unique experience.

First of all, you have to reach a particular level of insane obsession to even know what it is or to attempt reading it, and as far as I’m concerned, I have to go significantly past the route of no return before I even attempt it. You have to put up with a lot of sentimentality and bad porn to get to the good stuff, and if you’re reading fanfiction for a genre show, forget it. There are some weird ships out there, and stuff that bears no significant relationship to the show it’s supposedly about. The fact that Fifty Shades Of Gray emerged out of such a phenomenon is not shocking at all once you’ve waded into it, and that’s actually on the milder end of things.

I’m not even going to talk about the Walking Dead Negan/Glenn slash I accidentally read on here. Or some of the stuff I accidentally stumbled on about David Archuleta back in 2009 or so. Trust me, you don’t want to know.

I’ve noticed a few trends in reading fanfiction for Gilmore Girls’s’ core couple. First of all, there’s a lot more of it than I expected. People were passionately writing these stories three, four, five, six years after the show ended, and this is long before anyone even thought of a Netflix revival to continue the story. Second of all, a lot of it is actually really good. Third, this is a fandom that loves to go AU and “correct” certain plot events, and while that’s really not my thing, I’ve read quite a few of those stories and I’ve liked them more than I thought I would. However, there is one particular genre I’m not crazy about.

It appears that when revival spoilers came out that Luke and Lorelai were not married for at least part of the revival, it inspired . . . some angst. Quite a bit of angst. Even among writers I really liked. Nothing positive had changed in the Luke/Lorelai relationship. Luke still won’t commit or let Lorelai into his life. She’s still mournfully gazing at the engagement ring or the wedding dress and hoping things will change and he won’t budge. Sturm und drang. It’s season 6 all over again.

This appears a little funny in retrospect after reviewing what actually happened in the revival. Lorelai was clearly in the driver’s seat when it came to the marriage discussion this time around. She’s the one who decides to hold off for nine years: she’s the one that decides when it’s time to finally make that final step. The parental duties are kept mostly separate, but this was at Lorelai’s insistence (this doesn’t stop people from blaming Luke when he lives up to his end of the bargain, but I guess old habits die hard), and as Luke points out, he just went along with what she wanted. When Lorelai re-proposes, it’s Luke who comes running with the old engagement ring he’s held onto for a decade just in case she was ever ready for it again.

If anyone’s longingly looking at that ring, it wasn’t her.

Of course, there was a time in the show’s history when Lorelai was that person, and it’s not a time period any of us remember fondly. The sixth season finale is one of the most upsetting events I’ve witnessed in many years of obsessive TV watching. I think the only thing that really comes close for me is watching Jon Snow get murdered and seeing Glenn and Abraham get turned into human oatmeal earlier this year. We knew about Glenn and Abraham way ahead of time, and we got Jon Snow back two episodes into the next season. But I don’t think any of us anticipated the level to which Amy Sherman Palladino would sink her show.

The thing that upsets me most about the break-up in that episode is that Luke has been running around looking for Lorelai for days, clearly concerned about her welfare. He keeps trying to get her to sit down and discuss the situation rationally, and she won’t have it. She’s going to have a loud, noisy, public meltdown in the middle of the street, and he’s going to have to deal with it. Yes, there were real issues in their relationship that they needed to hash out. Maybe he wouldn’t budge in the end and she would still decide she wanted marriage and kids on her timetable more than she wanted him. But screaming in the middle of the street and stomping off and sleeping with his worst enemy when he wouldn’t immediately agree to her crazy plan wasn’t the way to have that discussion. There were very real issues affecting the custody of his child that partially caused Luke to act the way he did, and those issues would not be solved by the quickie wedding that Lorelai insisted that they have at that very moment. Not everything revolves around her and her biological clock, and if she insists on behaving in this manner, she’s not really of a sound mind to embrace marriage or motherhood, anyway.

(Oh, and a more apt metaphor for ASP and her approach to contract negotiations is pretty much impossible to find compared to this one, but I suspect this is the point).

That said, despite all of this, I kind of get it. Luke’s behavior gets really bad in the latter half of season 6. I feel I can’t judge him too harshly for prioritizing his kid, but it’s not pleasant to watch. I understand why Lorelai felt at that point that she had to break up with him, and why she married someone else after a few months.

I’m a 36 year old woman from Alabama. I have seen this situation play out in my own life more times than you know. The concept of a woman in her late thirties breaking up with a long-term partner because he isn’t ready for marriage and kids and quickly marrying someone who is is something that is very familiar to me. And in real life, these marriages actually last. When you get to a certain point, it’s easier to settle and compromise because you want the same things. Sometimes life isn’t fair, and you have to choose your best options.

When Luke justifies to himself that he and Lorelai were never meant to be together and tells he’s going to stop being angry and just move on, he basically gives her his blessing to pursue other options. She’s still devastated, but when Christopher shows up and makes his big romantic plea, it’s immensely appealing to her. Sure, it’s not the epic, passionate love affair she wanted, and she’d rather be hearing this stuff from Luke, but Christopher is doing all the stuff she wanted Luke to do. He lets her be involved with his child. He wants marriage and kids. They’ve been involved for 20 years anyway. So when he pushes for it in this ultra-romantic setting, she goes for it. Wanting the same things will be good enough to justify this decision, right?

Of course, it’s an epic disaster for the six weeks or so that it lasts. Christopher is weak, pathetic, and utterly useless to anyone who might have the misfortune of needing to rely on him. He let Lorelai participate in his child-rearing decisions largely because he was incapable of making them himself. Lorelai isn’t in love with him and she’s never fully committed to this life together, but she convinces herself that because they supposedly want the same things, it’s good enough. 

However, Christopher isn’t good enough, and never will be. The character reference that Lorelai wrote laid out all that Luke was capable of, all of the love and devotion that he lavished on Lorelai and Rory over the years, and of how special he was to the both of them. Lorelai didn’t sign the letter OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE, but she might as well have. When Christopher read the letter, he knows that Lorelai still loves Luke because she will never be able to say those things about him. No one will ever be able to say those things about Christopher. He knows that he’ll always be nothing more than a very inferior replacement, and that Lorelai is never really going to be able to love him that way. 

Eventually, Lorelai realizes this too, and ends this torturous marriage experiment once and for all.

As far as Luke is concerned, I think he allows his family to talk him into the idea that he and Lorelai were destined or failure as a way to live with the situation. If he allowed himself to think of everything that went wrong, he would go insane. And he can’t break down and do that, because he’s got a daughter to take care of now. It’s his way of stepping up and being the bigger person. The show starts building him up again, and they really, really needed to do that. He becomes a great guy again, and we needed him to be that guy.

I don’t think the reality of the situation really hits Luke until Lorelai shows up in the hospital with the wedding ring. Then he has to admit what he’s lost, but even then he can’t give up. He’s got a kid he’s got to fight for, a new infant niece, a very pregnant employee/surrogate daughter to look out for. When the letter’s read out to him, he allows himself to have a tiny bit of hope. And when Lorelai needs him, he drops everything and runs to her side, because he still loves her and would do anything for her. He’s worthy of everything in that letter at that moment.

I think what this brings us all to is that Lorelai ultimately learned that this set plan she had for marriage and kids was not what was going to make her happy. I think what both she and Luke came to realize that what they really wanted was each other, not some arbitrary expectation of what life was supposed to be like for them. Giving up on Luke was not the right decision because he couldn’t be replaced, and what she needed most of all was simply to have him in her life, and for him to be in hers. Both of them figured out that marriage and parenthood were going to be a lot harder than they thought they would be, and neither of those things mattered more than being together. Their life together was a good life, and it made both of them happy. Ultimately, Lorelai did decide that she did want to be married, and Luke wanted that, too, because all he ever wanted was her. However, that doesn’t mean the previous decade didn’t count because it didn’t live up the previous ideal. It did.

As far as the kids issue goes, I think for Lorelai it was mostly a vague afterthought. I think it was different for Luke, at least at first. It’s not an accident that he has so many surrogate kids. He did want to be a dad in some way, but having April gave him that opportunity, and it wasn’t a very pressing need after that. Besides, it’s not like he’s going to run out of additional offspring any time soon, either.

Life can be good, and deep, and meaningful, and worthy, even if it doesn’t live up to a Norman Rockwell ideal. I think Lorelai learned that when she tried to substitute someone else for the person she really wanted.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry

David Aguirre jumped in his truck and drove toward the hospital in the predawn darkness the minute he got the news: His 91-year-old mom was being rushed from her Texas assisted living facility to the emergency room.

Estela Aguirre would be one of five residents to die and six others to be sickened by the novel coronavirus at The Waterford at College Station, part of a financially strapped chain of assisted living sites called Capital Senior Living.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person. People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul,” said Aguirre, who lost his mother on March 28. “Some days, I’ll sit down and have my heart cry.”

Assisted living complexes, home to more than 800,000 people nationwide, have quickly become a new and dangerous theater in the coronavirus war. Challenged by deepening financial pressures, sicker residents, limited oversight and too few employees, they now face a crisis that could force companies into bankruptcy, roil the industry and even close some facilities — putting frail seniors at greater-than-ever risk.

More than 700 cases of COVID-19 at assisted living facilities had been reported in at least 29 states as of Wednesday, according to public health authorities and news organizations.

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Capital Senior Living serves as a prime case study of the new dangers facing the assisted living industry and the people they serve. The Dallas-based company, which owns or operates more than 120 senior communities nationally, told investors on a March 31 conference call that residents at three of its facilities had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Even before those cases struck, though, the company was ailing. Its stock had plummeted 80% since late February. Last week, the company disclosed a 2019 loss of $36 million. Officials said on the conference call they had sold complexes in recent months, even before the surge of COVID-19 cases, to improve the firm’s financial cushion. Recently renegotiated leases will also help, they said.

The pandemic looks poised to exacerbate its finances further, as residents lose their ability to pay amid the faltering economy and costs rise to care for them.

And fragile economics compound the threat of the virus that rages through assisted living facilities, which are much less regulated and medically equipped than nursing homes but serve tens of thousands of America’s most vulnerable elders.

Estela Aguirre died on March 28 after being sickened by the novel coronavirus at an assisted living facility in College Station, Texas.(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Problems Magnified

When Georgia officials inspected Capital Senior Living’s Waterford at Oakwood facility in February, their report said it “failed to provide watchful oversight consistent with the residents’ needs.”

Employees and residents told inspectors more staff was needed, and a review of the call log showed it sometimes took more than half an hour for workers to respond to residents, according to the inspection report.

Company officials said in a written statement that they can’t comment on individual cases but that “our top priority is always the safety of our residents and employees.”

The company lists at least 650 job openings on its website, many for credentialed positions such as certified nursing assistant or certified medical assistant. But a Facebook post on an Iowa facility’s website says: “If you are interested in a nursing aid position, you do NOT have to be a CNA and will be trained on site.”

With 6,300 employees, the company said, it “always has several hundred job openings.” As employees are furloughed in other industries, it said, it “has accelerated its activities to seek top talent.”

Staffing levels have grown in importance — and become harder to adequately address — in assisted living facilities as people increasingly “age in place” and try to avoid expensive nursing homes.

“In many ways, today’s assisted living residents are yesterday’s nursing home residents,” said Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “You have a perfect storm, with the needs increasing while [regulatory] requirements have not kept up with that.”

Grant said virtually no federal standards for assisted living exist, as they do for nursing homes. “We have a patchwork of regulation. In some states, you have more robust protections. In some, they are weak and inadequate. For residents, it is the luck of geography.”

As the pandemic grows, advocates for seniors worry that conditions will worsen as employees stop coming to work because they fear COVID-19 or must stay with children whose schools have closed. Or they may contract the coronavirus themselves.

“We’re really concerned about this when residents need more staff than ever,” said Tony Chicotel, an attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “We’re gonna have the opposite.”

There are more than 25,000 assisted living facilities across the country, and the median monthly cost to live in one is $4,000, according to the National Center for Assisted Living. Residents, more than half 85 or older and often with arthritis, memory problems and depression, need help with daily tasks but receive less medical attention than in a nursing home. That’s because assisted living staffs are typically smaller and the workers have less health care training than those at nursing homes. And fewer than half the states have minimum staffing regulations for assisted living communities.

Sheryl Zimmerman, a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said only about half have a nurse on staff, and many workers are personal care aides, not certified nursing assistants. Staffers don’t receive as much training about things like the use of gloves and masks as do nursing home workers, even though they often help residents with eating, bathing or using the toilet.

“It’s not a health care workforce,” she said. “In general, they do not have the level of infection prevention you would hope to see.”

Staff shortages exacerbate this issue, and the surging economy and low unemployment before the pandemic meant many senior communities were already struggling to hire employees, said Amy Orlando, a Connecticut attorney specializing in elder law.

Rising wages to attract or retain workers and fierce competition fueled by a building boom a few years ago led to financial challenges at many assisted living facilities, said Beth Burnham Mace, chief economist for the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, a nonprofit research organization.

Financial Straits

Capital Senior Living is among the companies under extreme pressure.

As the company’s stock price has fallen to a few dimes, investors fear a possible bankruptcy filing, financial analysts said in interviews. They are worried new residents will stop moving in as others leave or die, hurting revenue. More than half its communities are below 90% occupancy, according to an executive on the conference call. Analysts say that level is roughly the minimum needed for profitability.

“I have confidence in our ability to continue delivering great service and a warm, caring environment to our residents,” Brandon Ribar, the company’s chief operating officer, told stock analysts on the call.

The company declined to make executives available to KHN for an interview but said it is “exercising extreme caution” and “following strict disinfecting and sanitizing guidelines.” Among the safeguards are screening anybody entering a facility and quarantining new residents for their first 14 days.

But one analyst raised a dire scenario if the pandemic worsens: the theoretical closure of facilities.

“Is there a certain rule of thumb, where if occupancy hits a certain point you just say, ‘Hey, let’s just shut down this facility, because we’re just going to lose too much money?’” Steven Valiquette, of Barclays Capital, asked executives on the conference call.

CEO Kimberly Lody, who was brought into the company last year, dismissed the concern, saying Capital Senior Living has “strong flexibility” to reduce staff and other costs if the number of residents decreases substantially at particular facilities.

Assessing The Quality Of Care

Several relatives of the facilities’ residents said they put their trust in staff members because they’ve generally been happy with their loved ones’ care.

Barry Curtis, whose 85-year-old mother, Orvaline, lives at the company’s Sugar Grove facility in Plainfield, Indiana, said he knows staffing can be a problem for communities but hasn’t seen much turnover at Sugar Grove or heard complaints about staffing from his mom. But the pandemic has revived old, haunting memories of her father telling her about pulling carts down Arkansas streets to pick up bodies during the 1918 flu.

Debbie Gilbert, whose brother Donald Bussey lives in assisted living at River Crossing in Charlestown, Indiana, said staffing has also been “pretty consistent” at the site. “They’re doing the best they can out there,” she said.

Assessing the quality of care is difficult. There’s no assisted living resource comparable to Nursing Home Compare, a federal website that includes star ratings, staffing levels and inspection results for nursing homes.

A KHN review of online inspection records in nine of the 23 states in which Capital Senior Living operates found dozens of problems in the past five years, including instances of insufficient staff, inadequate infection control and failure to screen employees for criminal violations. However, it is difficult to compare the overall quality of the company’s facilities to those of other companies within most states or around the country.

But within California, records show the company’s Garden Court at Villa Santa Barbara had 16 substantiated allegations since mid-2016, more than four times the average number among licensed facilities with at least one.

For example, inspectors last year found the facility contracted with an outside agency that could show no proof it was certified to provide home services to residents. Inspectors also found that staff members contracted to provide care had no records of training or licensing as skilled professionals such as registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses. The facility pledged to ensure staffers have basic training and that outside agencies have credentials before starting work.

The company added it has a “rigorous Quality Assurance program” and has instituted new leadership across the company that has “positively impacted operations and resident care.”

COVID-19 threatens to erode oversight and transparency even more. Long-term care ombudsmen, who traditionally went to facilities and talked to residents, now must assess care from afar because of restrictions on visitation. And COVID-19 has removed another type of helping hands and watchful eyes.

“We know when family and friends are visiting, they’re monitoring, seeing the condition of their loved ones,” Grant said. “They are now without those additional ears and those additional eyes.”

And there’s always a foreboding, a sense the virus could find its way into the facility — as it did in Texas.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person,” says David Aguirre (standing, right) of his mother, Estela Aguirre, pictured with her family. “People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul.”(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Aguirre said his mom was in relatively good health for her age. She had memory problems, congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease, but her symptoms were mild.

Aguirre said his family was pleased with the care she got at the Waterford. The Brazos County Health Department said the facility had taken steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by restricting visitors, screening staff and using “enhanced cleaning procedures.”

“I still hold very high praise for the staff in the facility,” Aguirre said. “They’re doing all they can with everything they’ve got.”

By the time a hospital doctor broke the news to Aguirre of his mother’s positive COVID-19 test, there was no way to save her because her lungs were so badly damaged.

The doctor offered him the chance to say goodbye if he wore protective equipment.

But Aguirre, 67, said he feared being sickened by the virus or spreading it to his family.

So he missed seeing her draw her last breath.

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[dinafbrownil]

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry

David Aguirre jumped in his truck and drove toward the hospital in the predawn darkness the minute he got the news: His 91-year-old mom was being rushed from her Texas assisted living facility to the emergency room.

Estela Aguirre would be one of five residents to die and six others to be sickened by the novel coronavirus at The Waterford at College Station, part of a financially strapped chain of assisted living sites called Capital Senior Living.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person. People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul,” said Aguirre, who lost his mother on March 28. “Some days, I’ll sit down and have my heart cry.”

Assisted living complexes, home to more than 800,000 people nationwide, have quickly become a new and dangerous theater in the coronavirus war. Challenged by deepening financial pressures, sicker residents, limited oversight and too few employees, they now face a crisis that could force companies into bankruptcy, roil the industry and even close some facilities — putting frail seniors at greater-than-ever risk.

More than 700 cases of COVID-19 at assisted living facilities had been reported in at least 29 states as of Wednesday, according to public health authorities and news organizations.

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Capital Senior Living serves as a prime case study of the new dangers facing the assisted living industry and the people they serve. The Dallas-based company, which owns or operates more than 120 senior communities nationally, told investors on a March 31 conference call that residents at three of its facilities had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Even before those cases struck, though, the company was ailing. Its stock had plummeted 80% since late February. Last week, the company disclosed a 2019 loss of $36 million. Officials said on the conference call they had sold complexes in recent months, even before the surge of COVID-19 cases, to improve the firm’s financial cushion. Recently renegotiated leases will also help, they said.

The pandemic looks poised to exacerbate its finances further, as residents lose their ability to pay amid the faltering economy and costs rise to care for them.

And fragile economics compound the threat of the virus that rages through assisted living facilities, which are much less regulated and medically equipped than nursing homes but serve tens of thousands of America’s most vulnerable elders.

Estela Aguirre died on March 28 after being sickened by the novel coronavirus at an assisted living facility in College Station, Texas.(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Problems Magnified

When Georgia officials inspected Capital Senior Living’s Waterford at Oakwood facility in February, their report said it “failed to provide watchful oversight consistent with the residents’ needs.”

Employees and residents told inspectors more staff was needed, and a review of the call log showed it sometimes took more than half an hour for workers to respond to residents, according to the inspection report.

Company officials said in a written statement that they can’t comment on individual cases but that “our top priority is always the safety of our residents and employees.”

The company lists at least 650 job openings on its website, many for credentialed positions such as certified nursing assistant or certified medical assistant. But a Facebook post on an Iowa facility’s website says: “If you are interested in a nursing aid position, you do NOT have to be a CNA and will be trained on site.”

With 6,300 employees, the company said, it “always has several hundred job openings.” As employees are furloughed in other industries, it said, it “has accelerated its activities to seek top talent.”

Staffing levels have grown in importance — and become harder to adequately address — in assisted living facilities as people increasingly “age in place” and try to avoid expensive nursing homes.

“In many ways, today’s assisted living residents are yesterday’s nursing home residents,” said Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “You have a perfect storm, with the needs increasing while [regulatory] requirements have not kept up with that.”

Grant said virtually no federal standards for assisted living exist, as they do for nursing homes. “We have a patchwork of regulation. In some states, you have more robust protections. In some, they are weak and inadequate. For residents, it is the luck of geography.”

As the pandemic grows, advocates for seniors worry that conditions will worsen as employees stop coming to work because they fear COVID-19 or must stay with children whose schools have closed. Or they may contract the coronavirus themselves.

“We’re really concerned about this when residents need more staff than ever,” said Tony Chicotel, an attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “We’re gonna have the opposite.”

There are more than 25,000 assisted living facilities across the country, and the median monthly cost to live in one is $4,000, according to the National Center for Assisted Living. Residents, more than half 85 or older and often with arthritis, memory problems and depression, need help with daily tasks but receive less medical attention than in a nursing home. That’s because assisted living staffs are typically smaller and the workers have less health care training than those at nursing homes. And fewer than half the states have minimum staffing regulations for assisted living communities.

Sheryl Zimmerman, a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said only about half have a nurse on staff, and many workers are personal care aides, not certified nursing assistants. Staffers don’t receive as much training about things like the use of gloves and masks as do nursing home workers, even though they often help residents with eating, bathing or using the toilet.

“It’s not a health care workforce,” she said. “In general, they do not have the level of infection prevention you would hope to see.”

Staff shortages exacerbate this issue, and the surging economy and low unemployment before the pandemic meant many senior communities were already struggling to hire employees, said Amy Orlando, a Connecticut attorney specializing in elder law.

Rising wages to attract or retain workers and fierce competition fueled by a building boom a few years ago led to financial challenges at many assisted living facilities, said Beth Burnham Mace, chief economist for the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, a nonprofit research organization.

Financial Straits

Capital Senior Living is among the companies under extreme pressure.

As the company’s stock price has fallen to a few dimes, investors fear a possible bankruptcy filing, financial analysts said in interviews. They are worried new residents will stop moving in as others leave or die, hurting revenue. More than half its communities are below 90% occupancy, according to an executive on the conference call. Analysts say that level is roughly the minimum needed for profitability.

“I have confidence in our ability to continue delivering great service and a warm, caring environment to our residents,” Brandon Ribar, the company’s chief operating officer, told stock analysts on the call.

The company declined to make executives available to KHN for an interview but said it is “exercising extreme caution” and “following strict disinfecting and sanitizing guidelines.” Among the safeguards are screening anybody entering a facility and quarantining new residents for their first 14 days.

But one analyst raised a dire scenario if the pandemic worsens: the theoretical closure of facilities.

“Is there a certain rule of thumb, where if occupancy hits a certain point you just say, ‘Hey, let’s just shut down this facility, because we’re just going to lose too much money?’” Steven Valiquette, of Barclays Capital, asked executives on the conference call.

CEO Kimberly Lody, who was brought into the company last year, dismissed the concern, saying Capital Senior Living has “strong flexibility” to reduce staff and other costs if the number of residents decreases substantially at particular facilities.

Assessing The Quality Of Care

Several relatives of the facilities’ residents said they put their trust in staff members because they’ve generally been happy with their loved ones’ care.

Barry Curtis, whose 85-year-old mother, Orvaline, lives at the company’s Sugar Grove facility in Plainfield, Indiana, said he knows staffing can be a problem for communities but hasn’t seen much turnover at Sugar Grove or heard complaints about staffing from his mom. But the pandemic has revived old, haunting memories of her father telling her about pulling carts down Arkansas streets to pick up bodies during the 1918 flu.

Debbie Gilbert, whose brother Donald Bussey lives in assisted living at River Crossing in Charlestown, Indiana, said staffing has also been “pretty consistent” at the site. “They’re doing the best they can out there,” she said.

Assessing the quality of care is difficult. There’s no assisted living resource comparable to Nursing Home Compare, a federal website that includes star ratings, staffing levels and inspection results for nursing homes.

A KHN review of online inspection records in nine of the 23 states in which Capital Senior Living operates found dozens of problems in the past five years, including instances of insufficient staff, inadequate infection control and failure to screen employees for criminal violations. However, it is difficult to compare the overall quality of the company’s facilities to those of other companies within most states or around the country.

But within California, records show the company’s Garden Court at Villa Santa Barbara had 16 substantiated allegations since mid-2016, more than four times the average number among licensed facilities with at least one.

For example, inspectors last year found the facility contracted with an outside agency that could show no proof it was certified to provide home services to residents. Inspectors also found that staff members contracted to provide care had no records of training or licensing as skilled professionals such as registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses. The facility pledged to ensure staffers have basic training and that outside agencies have credentials before starting work.

The company added it has a “rigorous Quality Assurance program” and has instituted new leadership across the company that has “positively impacted operations and resident care.”

COVID-19 threatens to erode oversight and transparency even more. Long-term care ombudsmen, who traditionally went to facilities and talked to residents, now must assess care from afar because of restrictions on visitation. And COVID-19 has removed another type of helping hands and watchful eyes.

“We know when family and friends are visiting, they’re monitoring, seeing the condition of their loved ones,” Grant said. “They are now without those additional ears and those additional eyes.”

And there’s always a foreboding, a sense the virus could find its way into the facility — as it did in Texas.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person,” says David Aguirre (standing, right) of his mother, Estela Aguirre, pictured with her family. “People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul.”(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Aguirre said his mom was in relatively good health for her age. She had memory problems, congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease, but her symptoms were mild.

Aguirre said his family was pleased with the care she got at the Waterford. The Brazos County Health Department said the facility had taken steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by restricting visitors, screening staff and using “enhanced cleaning procedures.”

“I still hold very high praise for the staff in the facility,” Aguirre said. “They’re doing all they can with everything they’ve got.”

By the time a hospital doctor broke the news to Aguirre of his mother’s positive COVID-19 test, there was no way to save her because her lungs were so badly damaged.

The doctor offered him the chance to say goodbye if he wore protective equipment.

But Aguirre, 67, said he feared being sickened by the virus or spreading it to his family.

So he missed seeing her draw her last breath.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/covid-19-crisis-threatens-beleaguered-assisted-living-industry/

[newagesispage]

                                                            OCTOBER                2020

PAGE RIB

 The Stones opened Rolling Stones # 9 on Carnaby St.** Bill Wyman auctioned off many unique items for the Prince’s Trust.**Wyman’s bass used for groundbreaking records in ’69 and ’70 broke a record at $384,000. The famous amp that got him into the Stones went for $106,250 and the most expensive toilet seat cover sold at auction with the tongue logo went for $1,142. Brian Jones Rock and Roll Circus guitar sold for $704,000.

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VOTE!!!!

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In San Francisco people can order dinner and drinks delivered with a drag queen performance.

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Joaquin and Rooney had a baby that they named River.

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Real Time has been renewed thru 2022.

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The new film, No Sudden Move about 1955 Detroit will star Don Cheadle, David Harbour, Benicio Del Toro, Ray Liotta and Kieran Culkin.

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Shep Smith is back with Just the Facts on CNBC.

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The Presidential debate: Well, Good Biden moments-“You don’t panic, he panicked.”  “It is what it is cuz you are what you are.” “Everybody knows he’s a liar.” Wouldn’t know suburbs unless he took a wrong turn.”  “Will you shit up man?” “Get out of your and trap.” Imagine if Bernie or a younger candidate with real energy were there. Imagine someone quick on their feet because we need that.  The bully style of scary clown 45 does fluster a normal person as it supposed to. Joe held his own and had real dignity though. It is hard to not respond to the President’s ridiculousness but he needs to be ignored.  Trump and son both seemed like they were about 8 Red Bulls into the day with all that pent up anger.  Who should be drug tested? Biden?  Trump went on about forest management but most of that land belongs to the Federal government.  ** I have never seen my mailperson trying to sell ballots.** Trump said that bad things are happening in Philadelphia. Biden should have showed some love for the state. He is on a tour of it now though. ** Chris Wallace said, “Why you not?” Was that a real question?  45 said, “I was a private business people.” They all had a little trouble talking. It is exhausting the way people put up with his manners.  **As soon as the debate was over, the Trump army wasted no time reaching out to goons to be poll watchers. Do they know that you just can’t show up randomly for that??**Apprentice insiders say Trump abuses Adderall.

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The other day when Trump took the podium for a rant, an open mike caught a someone saying, “Oh shit” On Fox.

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For those who insist Trump is a religious man, I’ll grant you he pays taxes like a church. –Stephen Colbert

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Letterman is ready with My Next Guest Needs no Introduction. This season includes Robert Downey Jr., Lizzo and Dave Chappelle.

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There are about 9 million feral swine in this country known as super pigs.

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There is talk of Levar Burton replacing Alex Trebeck when he retires. YES!!!!

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Cigar Afficionado magazine has named CBS Sunday Morning the greatest show on tv.

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The U.S. built tunnels under Trump’s wall to let water, garbage, DDT and other toxins flow thru. Millions were spent for nothing and now millions more will be spent to address this problem that empties into the Pacific Ocean.

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Days alert: Melissa Reeves is being replaced. Is it that she does not want to commute from Nashville or that she is a bit too conservative or something else? Is it an end of Days with old side characters and replacements of the stars??** Ava is coming back, JJ is back, Eric and Sami are gone. ** Absolutely loved the pic of Abigail 1 that confused Abigail 2. Funny!!!! It reminded me of the OLTL moment during Asa’s funeral when Blair saw the 1st Blair in a flashback.

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“Smaller than expected” would probably explain a lot about the proud boys. –Andi Zeisler

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Why does anyone listen to Christie or Rudy??

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Looting isn’t part of protesting just like murder isn’t part of arresting.

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A judge has said that Florida has created an “unconstitutional pay to vote system.” This has now been overturned. What are the things that can be termed felonies to keep one from voting? The list includes releasing helium filled balloons, driving without a license, catching the wrong lobster and disturbing turtle eggs. Amendment 4 was originally put into effect to stop freed slaves from voting. But SB7066 makes sure that felons complete the terms of their sentences. The fines, fees and restitution can be hard to navigate. There must be proof before they can vote but all counties keep their own records and there is no organization statewide.  Mike Bloomberg, John Legend, Michael Jordon and others are paying off millions of dollars in debt for felons in Florida so that they can vote if they can unravel some of the puzzles. Now Florida Republicans are saying that that is also illegal.

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Two thirds of the world’s wildlife has disappeared in the last 50 years.

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At our own peril, we have to step up or everything is lost. –John Batiste

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Michael Jordan will start up a Nascar team with Bubba Wallace.

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Laraine Newman signed up to be a poll worker. How do you get people to vote? Celebrity poll workers? Hey whatever works as long as the masses don’t gawk and hold up the lines.

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A refrigerator sized asteroid is headed to earth and may arrive about the time of the election.

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So the coronavirus relief funds were funneled by the pentagon to defense contractors.** What kind of a selfish fucking world do we live in? At least we know which people in this world give a flying fuck about the rest of us. Rally and fair participants, relief money scammers and mask protesters, we hear you loud and clear!!

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The Emmys went on thru the week of the 14th thru the 20th. Winners included RuPaul, Don’t fuck with Cats, Leah Remini, The Apollo, Eddie Murphy, Last Week 2nite, SNL, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Crown, Better Call Saul, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Archer, Hollywood, Maya Rudolph, Dan Harmon,  Bad Education, Cherry Jones, Regina King,  Julia Garner, Mark Ruffalo,  Uzo Aduba, The Last Dance and Stranger Things. Schitt’s Creek (and practically the whole cast), Dave Chappelle and Succession took home the big ones. Norman Lear became the oldest Emmy winner ever. Letterman ‘hitchhiked’ to the Emmy’s to present an award. I was really rooting for Amy Sedaris!!

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Bill Murray and Rashida Jones will star in Sofia Coppala’s On the Rocks.** The Doobie Brothers want Bill Murray to stop using their music to sell his golf clothes.

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Danny Trejo and Jessica Tuck will star in ‘The Shift.’

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Illinois is pulling down statues including Chris Columbus. Woo Hoo!!

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13 mummies have been discovered in a well, stacked one on top of the other. The Egyptian discovery from about 2,500 years ago has been well preserved.

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Hysterectomies on immigrant women in detention camps?? Really??

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Scientific American mag is 175 years old has never endorsed a candidate but Joe Biden id their man.

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Word is that in Indonesia the anti- maskers are forced to dig the graves of the Covid 19 victims.

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The Breonna Taylor case continues with a settlement and too few charges.

*****

Scary Clown 45 announced he will call in to Fox and Friends every Monday or Tuesday but a host told him that they were not committed to that.** The Scary campaign put up ads with “Support Our Troops” but the problem is they are Russian troops and jet fighters.** Trump did a phone interview on Fox Sports and talked about golf.

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It is a shame that Hillary lost the election and many more of us would be alive if she were running the show. But, I can only imagine the shit they would have given her.

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Brad Pascale, Trump’s former campaign manager, went to the hospital after being taken into custody in Florida after threatening suicide.

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Just remember , 1619 Project: Good   1776 Commision: Oh my! Why do these rich old fucks want us to stay as stupid and uninformed as they are? Haven’t we been in the dark long enough? They are the fake news masters.

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Jim Carrey will play Biden on SNL. Chris Rock will be host the season 46 opener on Oct. 3. New players will be Lauren Holt, Punkie Johnson and Andrew Dismukes.

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Gulf War Syndrome is a chronic and multi symptomatic disorder that has affected military personnel from the Persian Gulf War. The DOD is resisting the strong evidence and needs more of a spotlight. The possible exposure to chemical weapons may even have been passed on to their partners through sexual contact. All of this came to light in the mid 90’s thru complaints that were told to Ross Perot. Let’s hope Tammy Duckworth looks into this further.

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Amy Coney Barrett has been nominated to the Supreme Court. Her previous statements tell us she believes the ACA is unconstitutional, abortion is always immoral and the country should undo marriage equality. She is a member of People of Praise.** If she was a Muslim and everything else was the same regarding her beliefs and associations, Republicans would call her a religious extremist and never let her step near the Supreme Court. –Wajahat Ali.** Notorious A.C.B. ?? Do they have one original idea other than new ways to cheat and steal??

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Finn Wittrock has a funny little Emmy Uber ride on Funny or Die.

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Breonna Taylor’s neighbor’s wall got more justice that Breonna herself. –Jordan Uhl

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Go Stevie Wonder!!!

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Dax Sheppard went off the wagon for a while.

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A Giant Gundom? Really?

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A fun prank would be if we stopped this from becoming a dictatorship on Nov. 3rd and whatnot. –George Wallace

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Sen. Kevin Kramer has been acting a little crooked on building the Wall.

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The Metropolitan Opera has cancelled the whole season.

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Happy Doomscrolling

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Can dogs be trained to detect the coronavirus?

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Rand Paul is an idiot. Birx and Atlas have ruined reps. Give ‘em Hell Fauci!! ** Everything Atlas says is false. –R. Redfield

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Eric Trump must testify in court about the Trump business’s a judge has decreed. The Trump biz has made about 19 billion in the last 3 years.** The world is gobbling up the news about the Trump tax returns with tales of debt, the $72.9 milliion refund and foreign influence. How does the IRS let a refund like that happen? How bad of a businessman do you have to be to lose that much $? National security threat. One of his fans will probably bail him out.

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Bet we’d all own houses if we stopped eating so much avocado toast and committed tax fraud. -Kashana

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Mary Trump has sued The President and his siblings for fraud.

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Ellen is selling off $10 mil in art.

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61% say we should abolish the electoral college.

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The Netflix series, Challenger :The Final Flight reminds us that like The Titanic, the arrogance of man can change so many lives.

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Wilderness of Errors is a great doc. It proves just how right the book and mini -series got it.

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The remains of the 1644 warship, Del Menhorst have been found off the Danish coast.

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Everybody is talking about Jeff Daniels in The Comey Rule. The actors were upset when Showtime was going to push back the release until after the election. The actors said they wouldn’t promote the film so the film has premiered.

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David Tennant gets better and better and now he is giving us DES on ITV. Quality AND quanity.

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Independent prosecutors are not going ahead with a case against NE Patriots Robert Craft for soliciting prostitutes.

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America has no memories. –Wallace Shawn

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Tyler Childers has released ‘Long Violent History”. Give it a listen.

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Does it seem like the administration gets a word of the week and they really push it? Caravan-Herd-sedition-looters- Antifa. It is like they all share a brain and do not have a thought of their own.

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Chris Petrovski `will star in ‘Listen’ about a young Israeli soldier.

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On a personal note, I love the way that Autumn makes my brain feel. The spring allergies are gone, the hot muddled summer thinking fades and everything opens up.

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Gubler is back and in the video for Future Islands ‘Moonlight’.

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Niecy Nash wed Jessica Betts.

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Check out the Curious life and death of… on the Smithsonian channel.

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Conan is looking hot with his grown out hair.

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I just love Mel Rodriguez and Weijia Jiang. Some people just don’t get enough credit.

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Vet’s crisis line: 1-800-273-8255

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Donald Trump is taking page out of Charles Manson’s playbook. Start a race war, then convince the public you alone can end it. He’s a lying racist piece of garbage. –Rob Reiner

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Serious Question: Would good Christian conservatives have mounted a Go fund me for Timothy McVeigh? –Michael Mckean

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Old Navy will pay employees to work the polls on Election day.

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Trump is the most effective anti -liberal in my lifetime. –Newt Gingrich

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Tommy Chong does not seem too happy with Joe Rogan.

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Anna Faris is leaving CBS’s Mom as it heads into its 8th season.

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Q Anon should take advantage of the ACA. –Joe Biden

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Word is that the White House told Federal agencies to ban race based sensitivity training.  The thinking is that Un American propaganda training sessions have no place in Federal Government.

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I wish I lived in a country where John Kelly, James Mattis and John Bolton had at least half the balls of Sally Yates, Maria Yovanovitch, Fiona Hill, Reality Winner, Christine Blasey Ford or Stormy Daniels. – Andrea Junker** If only Mad Dog Mattis had the balls of Olivia Troye – Michael Mckean

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38 million Americans live in poverty.

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80 year old Sam Little with a possible 93 murders has now been called the most prolific serial killer in the U.S. and he has a photographic memory. Whoever takes this on, please let David Alan Grier play him in the movie.

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You must check out the album, the Angel Headed Hipster.

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Everybody is talking about Cottage Core.

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The Trump campaign can’t help themselves with things like playing ‘knockin’ on Heaven’s door’ and ‘Fortunate son’ at rally’s. It was like the time my Grandfathers young wife brought a purse to the funeral that boldly stated ‘Jackpot.’ True Story.

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Glenn Howerton and Seth Meyers should play brothers on something.** Also Meyers and Larry Wilmore wondered if the cancellation of Wilmore’s show was a reason for the racial unrest and terrible results of the last election. Hmmm.

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Can we remember this election enthusiasm for all future elections?  We need to take things seriously EVERY time.** So many say that even with our divide, we all want the same things in the end. I do not think that is really true. It seems that in this divide, we have different ideas about what we want this country to be.

*****

Harry Styles has replaced Shia LaBeouf in Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling.

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Cat Cora has filed for a restraining order against her ex- wife, Jennifer who it seems has been stalking her.

*****

Showtime’s The Comedy Store sounds interesting with stories like Jimmie Walker who claims that Freddie Prinze wanted to kill John Travolta.

*****

Maplecroft, Lizzie Borden’s last house sold for about $890,000.

*****

A woman ref in the NFL?? It’s about time!

*****

Doc Martin will end after its 10th season.

*****

Kelly Clarkson is being sued by her management firm.

*****

Pope Francis refused to meet with Mike Pompeo.

*****

R.I.P. Tom Seaver, Sophie Farrar, Kevin Dobson, Toots Hibbert, Stevie Lee, Bruce Williamson, Ben Cross, Diana Rigg, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Rev. Robert Graetz, Ron Cobb, Gale Sayers, Dan Dettman, Kevin Burns, Mac Davis, wildfire casualties, Covid victims and Helen Reddy.

[stephenmccull]

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry

David Aguirre jumped in his truck and drove toward the hospital in the predawn darkness the minute he got the news: His 91-year-old mom was being rushed from her Texas assisted living facility to the emergency room.

Estela Aguirre would be one of five residents to die and six others to be sickened by the novel coronavirus at The Waterford at College Station, part of a financially strapped chain of assisted living sites called Capital Senior Living.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person. People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul,” said Aguirre, who lost his mother on March 28. “Some days, I’ll sit down and have my heart cry.”

Assisted living complexes, home to more than 800,000 people nationwide, have quickly become a new and dangerous theater in the coronavirus war. Challenged by deepening financial pressures, sicker residents, limited oversight and too few employees, they now face a crisis that could force companies into bankruptcy, roil the industry and even close some facilities — putting frail seniors at greater-than-ever risk.

More than 700 cases of COVID-19 at assisted living facilities had been reported in at least 29 states as of Wednesday, according to public health authorities and news organizations.

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Capital Senior Living serves as a prime case study of the new dangers facing the assisted living industry and the people they serve. The Dallas-based company, which owns or operates more than 120 senior communities nationally, told investors on a March 31 conference call that residents at three of its facilities had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Even before those cases struck, though, the company was ailing. Its stock had plummeted 80% since late February. Last week, the company disclosed a 2019 loss of $36 million. Officials said on the conference call they had sold complexes in recent months, even before the surge of COVID-19 cases, to improve the firm’s financial cushion. Recently renegotiated leases will also help, they said.

The pandemic looks poised to exacerbate its finances further, as residents lose their ability to pay amid the faltering economy and costs rise to care for them.

And fragile economics compound the threat of the virus that rages through assisted living facilities, which are much less regulated and medically equipped than nursing homes but serve tens of thousands of America’s most vulnerable elders.

Estela Aguirre died on March 28 after being sickened by the novel coronavirus at an assisted living facility in College Station, Texas.(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Problems Magnified

When Georgia officials inspected Capital Senior Living’s Waterford at Oakwood facility in February, their report said it “failed to provide watchful oversight consistent with the residents’ needs.”

Employees and residents told inspectors more staff was needed, and a review of the call log showed it sometimes took more than half an hour for workers to respond to residents, according to the inspection report.

Company officials said in a written statement that they can’t comment on individual cases but that “our top priority is always the safety of our residents and employees.”

The company lists at least 650 job openings on its website, many for credentialed positions such as certified nursing assistant or certified medical assistant. But a Facebook post on an Iowa facility’s website says: “If you are interested in a nursing aid position, you do NOT have to be a CNA and will be trained on site.”

With 6,300 employees, the company said, it “always has several hundred job openings.” As employees are furloughed in other industries, it said, it “has accelerated its activities to seek top talent.”

Staffing levels have grown in importance — and become harder to adequately address — in assisted living facilities as people increasingly “age in place” and try to avoid expensive nursing homes.

“In many ways, today’s assisted living residents are yesterday’s nursing home residents,” said Robyn Grant, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care. “You have a perfect storm, with the needs increasing while [regulatory] requirements have not kept up with that.”

Grant said virtually no federal standards for assisted living exist, as they do for nursing homes. “We have a patchwork of regulation. In some states, you have more robust protections. In some, they are weak and inadequate. For residents, it is the luck of geography.”

As the pandemic grows, advocates for seniors worry that conditions will worsen as employees stop coming to work because they fear COVID-19 or must stay with children whose schools have closed. Or they may contract the coronavirus themselves.

“We’re really concerned about this when residents need more staff than ever,” said Tony Chicotel, an attorney with California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform. “We’re gonna have the opposite.”

There are more than 25,000 assisted living facilities across the country, and the median monthly cost to live in one is $4,000, according to the National Center for Assisted Living. Residents, more than half 85 or older and often with arthritis, memory problems and depression, need help with daily tasks but receive less medical attention than in a nursing home. That’s because assisted living staffs are typically smaller and the workers have less health care training than those at nursing homes. And fewer than half the states have minimum staffing regulations for assisted living communities.

Sheryl Zimmerman, a professor in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said only about half have a nurse on staff, and many workers are personal care aides, not certified nursing assistants. Staffers don’t receive as much training about things like the use of gloves and masks as do nursing home workers, even though they often help residents with eating, bathing or using the toilet.

“It’s not a health care workforce,” she said. “In general, they do not have the level of infection prevention you would hope to see.”

Staff shortages exacerbate this issue, and the surging economy and low unemployment before the pandemic meant many senior communities were already struggling to hire employees, said Amy Orlando, a Connecticut attorney specializing in elder law.

Rising wages to attract or retain workers and fierce competition fueled by a building boom a few years ago led to financial challenges at many assisted living facilities, said Beth Burnham Mace, chief economist for the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care, a nonprofit research organization.

Financial Straits

Capital Senior Living is among the companies under extreme pressure.

As the company’s stock price has fallen to a few dimes, investors fear a possible bankruptcy filing, financial analysts said in interviews. They are worried new residents will stop moving in as others leave or die, hurting revenue. More than half its communities are below 90% occupancy, according to an executive on the conference call. Analysts say that level is roughly the minimum needed for profitability.

“I have confidence in our ability to continue delivering great service and a warm, caring environment to our residents,” Brandon Ribar, the company’s chief operating officer, told stock analysts on the call.

The company declined to make executives available to KHN for an interview but said it is “exercising extreme caution” and “following strict disinfecting and sanitizing guidelines.” Among the safeguards are screening anybody entering a facility and quarantining new residents for their first 14 days.

But one analyst raised a dire scenario if the pandemic worsens: the theoretical closure of facilities.

“Is there a certain rule of thumb, where if occupancy hits a certain point you just say, ‘Hey, let’s just shut down this facility, because we’re just going to lose too much money?’” Steven Valiquette, of Barclays Capital, asked executives on the conference call.

CEO Kimberly Lody, who was brought into the company last year, dismissed the concern, saying Capital Senior Living has “strong flexibility” to reduce staff and other costs if the number of residents decreases substantially at particular facilities.

Assessing The Quality Of Care

Several relatives of the facilities’ residents said they put their trust in staff members because they’ve generally been happy with their loved ones’ care.

Barry Curtis, whose 85-year-old mother, Orvaline, lives at the company’s Sugar Grove facility in Plainfield, Indiana, said he knows staffing can be a problem for communities but hasn’t seen much turnover at Sugar Grove or heard complaints about staffing from his mom. But the pandemic has revived old, haunting memories of her father telling her about pulling carts down Arkansas streets to pick up bodies during the 1918 flu.

Debbie Gilbert, whose brother Donald Bussey lives in assisted living at River Crossing in Charlestown, Indiana, said staffing has also been “pretty consistent” at the site. “They’re doing the best they can out there,” she said.

Assessing the quality of care is difficult. There’s no assisted living resource comparable to Nursing Home Compare, a federal website that includes star ratings, staffing levels and inspection results for nursing homes.

A KHN review of online inspection records in nine of the 23 states in which Capital Senior Living operates found dozens of problems in the past five years, including instances of insufficient staff, inadequate infection control and failure to screen employees for criminal violations. However, it is difficult to compare the overall quality of the company’s facilities to those of other companies within most states or around the country.

But within California, records show the company’s Garden Court at Villa Santa Barbara had 16 substantiated allegations since mid-2016, more than four times the average number among licensed facilities with at least one.

For example, inspectors last year found the facility contracted with an outside agency that could show no proof it was certified to provide home services to residents. Inspectors also found that staff members contracted to provide care had no records of training or licensing as skilled professionals such as registered nurses or licensed vocational nurses. The facility pledged to ensure staffers have basic training and that outside agencies have credentials before starting work.

The company added it has a “rigorous Quality Assurance program” and has instituted new leadership across the company that has “positively impacted operations and resident care.”

COVID-19 threatens to erode oversight and transparency even more. Long-term care ombudsmen, who traditionally went to facilities and talked to residents, now must assess care from afar because of restrictions on visitation. And COVID-19 has removed another type of helping hands and watchful eyes.

“We know when family and friends are visiting, they’re monitoring, seeing the condition of their loved ones,” Grant said. “They are now without those additional ears and those additional eyes.”

And there’s always a foreboding, a sense the virus could find its way into the facility — as it did in Texas.

“My mom was a sweet, kind person,” says David Aguirre (standing, right) of his mother, Estela Aguirre, pictured with her family. “People really felt like they’d known her for 100 years. She was just that kind of soul.”(Courtesy of David Aguirre)

Aguirre said his mom was in relatively good health for her age. She had memory problems, congestive heart failure and Parkinson’s disease, but her symptoms were mild.

Aguirre said his family was pleased with the care she got at the Waterford. The Brazos County Health Department said the facility had taken steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by restricting visitors, screening staff and using “enhanced cleaning procedures.”

“I still hold very high praise for the staff in the facility,” Aguirre said. “They’re doing all they can with everything they’ve got.”

By the time a hospital doctor broke the news to Aguirre of his mother’s positive COVID-19 test, there was no way to save her because her lungs were so badly damaged.

The doctor offered him the chance to say goodbye if he wore protective equipment.

But Aguirre, 67, said he feared being sickened by the virus or spreading it to his family.

So he missed seeing her draw her last breath.

COVID-19 Crisis Threatens Beleaguered Assisted Living Industry published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[guidetoenjoy-blog]

What makes celebrity meltdowns entertainment instead of tragedy? | David Ferguson

New Post has been published on https://entertainmentguideto.com/must-see/what-makes-celebrity-meltdowns-entertainment-instead-of-tragedy-david-ferguson/

What makes celebrity meltdowns entertainment instead of tragedy? | David Ferguson

Spurned in the Grammy nominations shortly after a hospital stay, Kanye West is just the latest celeb whose mental health is tabloid gold

When I was in my 20s, I remember my therapist patiently listening to me complain about how out-of-my-depth I often felt around other gay men. I was asking her why they always seemed so effortlessly aloof and cool, whereas I was and to some extent, still am a slobbering golden retriever of a person, quivering with eagerness to be your new best friend.

Youll waste a lot of time and spoil a lot of happiness comparing your insides to other peoples outsides, she told me.

I think about this a lot when I see famous people rock stars, celebrities, politicians going into meltdown mode. Trainwreck TV is one of our cultures most avid pleasures. In the words of Edina Monsoon from Absolutely Fabulous, Its the only blood sport they havent banned, darling.

Right now, everyone is waiting to see what the next eruption from Kanye West will be now that hes out of the hospital after months some would say years of erratic behavior, bizarre concert spectacles and public meltdowns. Its almost expected, since the Grammy nominations were announced this week and West was again shut out of the major categories.

A few years ago the spectacle du jour was Amanda Bynes, and before that, Britney Spears when she shaved her head and ended up under psychiatric care.

Weve shaken our heads and tutted over the breakdowns of Mariah Carey and Courtney Love, Amy Winehouse and Gary Busey, Katt Williams and Dave Chappelle, Lindsay Lohan and Anna Nicole Smith any celebrities who have had the misfortune to exhibit symptoms of mental illness while living in the public eye.

We take a certain sanctimonious pleasure in these peoples public disintegration and show shockingly little compassion, as though their wildly successful careers and personal fortunes make their pain more acceptable than that of mere mortals.

If a random woman we dont know starts babbling nonsense and getting hysterical while were out shopping, its tragic. We avert our eyes. We tell our families when we get home how unsettling and upsetting it was. But when Spears does it, its a Rolling Stone cover story that we consume with the eagerness of kids tearing into a bag of candy.

Its the same mentality that allows a racist troll like Milo Yiannopoulos to airily wave away the steaming, reeking mountain of harassment his followers and supporters firehosed at Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones, mostly on Twitter. Leslie Jones is a rich and famous actress; who cares if people say nasty things about her on the internet?

At what point do we stop valuing celebrities humanity?

Is it an income-level thing? Kanye West has got a lot of money. Hes one of the most well-known performers on the planet who isnt Beyonc or Beyonc-adjacent. He has broken paradigms and yes, over-extended his brand, as it were, in a couple of areas, but hes also a creative young person with a young family under tremendous pressure who lost his beloved mother nine years ago.

He has written openly about his love for liquor, cocaine and other intoxicants. It does not take a tremendous amount of imagination to piece together what may have happened here to a stressed-out artist in pain.

Lets pretend for a moment that it isnt Kanye West, but Keith West, who you knew in college who works for a life insurance company now. What if his mother died in surgery and he began a multi-year downward spiral?

Would you be gawking if Keith got placed on involuntary hold in a psychiatric unit? Would you be sharing links about Keith on Twitter and Facebook and marveling that someone could become such a mess?

Kanye West may be, as President Obama once said, a jackass from time to time. But hes also still a person.

Millions of dollars in the bank doesnt mean anything when you want your mom and shes gone, I suspect, any more than the significantly less princely sum in my own checking account does. You cant buy five more minutes to be with your dead mom for any amount of money, large or small.

So, maybe the next time you start to click on that Perez Hilton link about whichever celebritys mind has most recently hit the big bug-zapper, take a second. Ask yourself how youd feel if your lifes most humiliating, confused, disoriented moment was out there for public amusement.

If the person suffering at the other end of that hyperlink was Keith and not Kanye, would you still click it?

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us