What are the words?

So, while at work the night before last, we got called for a shooting. Not unexpected, especially the area mentioned, it's right on the border between our two gang factions. The short story is that a family's watching TV in the living room when they hear the first shots of a drive-by. The daughter runs for a closet, but a bullet comes through the window and pierces her left breast. What is a potentially lethal injury manages not to puncture lung and miss her heart, etc. However, bullets are notoriously erratic and this one decides to make it's route lower. It's path of destruction opts for the girl's spine, transsecting the spinal cord (T11) and paralyzing her from the waist down. So she'll have survived what should've been a fatal shot, but will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She's 12.

While we're doing our thing and working to get her and us out of there, her father jumps in the back of the truck. He is frantic to know how she is before they remove him so we can work. And for the first time in a very long time, I found myself without the words to say to him.

Understand that I have the words for just about everything when it comes to my job. I can gently explain to you that your family member is beyond my help and has passed on. I can bluntly tell you that your family member is dying but that I'm doing everything I can. I can reassure you with confidence that your family member will recover, or that it will be alright -- it's not as bad as it looks. So when he looked to me for that, I turned and faced him out of years of practice ... and failed utterly. I didn't have the words.

How do I tell you that because of this random, violent act your daughter is now a paraplegic. That on the verge of her maturity she will never walk down an aisle under her own power. That her life (and yours) just became infinitely more complicated. Financial strain, emotional stress, everyday things will now be daunting challenges to surmount and overcome. What if she hadn't had stood up, what if she'd hit the floor instead, turned right instead of left -- where would the bullet have gone then? What if you'd moved to a safer area when you thought about it last year? Yes your daughter will live, but she will never walk again.

Some things you just cannot mend with words.

And how was your night?

Well, let's see ... it was dark and chilly.

Around 3:30 am we go to someone short of breath, we lug our 100 lbs of equipment up five flights of stairs to find a man having an asthma attack.  No big surprise there, this is the land of asthma & seizures.  Now, there are different grades of asthmatics, and he's one with a somewhat strong history -- meaning he should not screw around with it.  But of course "he ran out" of his medicines, all of them, at least a day or more ago.  So we start treating him and he pronounces that he will not be going to the hospital.  That he's fully aware that he could die and that he has other things to take care of first.  He just wanted a breathing treatment to tide him over till morning.  So now we change to playing mobile clinic.  Because he's an AMA (refusing against medical advice), now we have to get the tour supervisor involved and the doctor on the radio blah blah blah.  End result, we leave, he's still wheezing.  He might be dead by now.

So back down the five flights of stairs and out to our truck, put away the equipment, get ready to leave.  I glance down between the seats and notice my little cooler is flipped over, and Chris's is missing.  Simultaneously he notices my backpack is gone.  We're in an older truck, not all the doors auto-lock, so it's accessible.  Apparently, sitting there with it's lights on at 4am, some son of a bitch decided to reach in our truck and grab what he could and split.

I've worked in the inner city for a long time now, technically there wasn't that much of monetary value in that bag and surely nothing that couldn't be replaced.  The upshot is that they grabbed mine and not his, because his phone and such was in his.  We both know we'll never see our stuff again, but we do a search of the surrounding blocks hoping they tossed it when they realized there was nothing of resale value in it.  Police report won't help and the hospital doesn't give a shit unless it's their stuff that was taken.  Dejected and feeling victimized, we get back to quarters, only to have one of the freakin chiefs come down on us about the locks on the truck.  What an awful feeling, how nobody gives a shit.  Not your employer, your supervisor, the police, not even the fucking people who you bust your ass for trying to prolong their miserable existences.

If that bastard ran from stealing my shit and got nailed by a car, it'd be having to scrape him up.  I have to deal with that concept now and I hate that.  Again, it's nothing that can't be replaced technically.  It's only things like ...

• The Littmann Master Cardiology stethoscope I got when I first became a paramedic and is engraved with my certification number.
• A book on Scotland my husband got me for Christmas.
• My meager collection of make-up, which contained the tube of lipstick I wore for my wedding and small items from my honeymoon.
• My favorite hair brush.
• My ear muffs and decent cold weather gloves, so I can handle standing out on a blustery highway at O dark thirty.
• Oh yes, the worst part -- I decided to wear my contacts tonight, so they got my glasses as well.  Which I'm fairly dependent on.

So no, it's not earth shattering and heart breaking.  But just the thought of some skell rummaging through my personal items just to abuse them or throw them away turns my stomach.  I can replace it, but it will never take away the disgust and feeling of disrespect that I have.

And I have to go back there tonight and pretend like I give a shit.  This will take a little while to get over.

Witchy Woman

While cleaning up my old links, I came across this.  This is quite possibly one of the funniest digs on modern views of Wicca I've ever seen.  It's worth reading and doesn't even require commentary. 

Barbie The Hot Pagan Witch
It's the bimbo blond doll's latest Wicca-like incarnation, ready to "poison" young girls' minds.

Wednesday, October 29, 2003
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
 
Listen up, naughty girls.


Do you long to be an "ordinary schoolgirl" by day who "transforms at night" into some sort of scary pink-robed glittery giggly perky blond pseudo-witch "magical enchantress" thing, perusing your "book of spells" with its plethora of "mysterious compartments" that "hold your secrets," along with recipes for concocting real potions "you can actually drink?"

You do? Well Jesus with an orgasmic wolf howl and some heavy goth eyeliner, are you ever in luck.
Because just in time for Halloween and just in time to make a few thousand hyper-Christian parental brows furrow with consternation and spiritual constipation, and just in time to make any true Wiccan roll her eyes and flick this story away like so much bad juju, here comes Secret Spells Barbie.

That's right, it's Mattel's latest Wiccan-flavored mutation of the famous and famously obnoxious pneumatic blond dingbat, joining the likes of Barbie Loves Spongebob Squarepants and the Barbie Romance Novel Giftset and Princess of the Portuguese Empire Barbie and Spirit of the Earth Barbie (all genuine items, alas).

Not to mention the long-desired Manic Depressive PR Exec Divorcée Barbie and Resentful Proctologist Barbie and Bloated Don't-You-Freaking-Touch-Me PMS Barbie and Desperately Lonely National Security Advisor "Condi" Barbie, with bonus Spinning Head feature. All, presumably, coming soon.

Hey, witches are cool. Everyone knows witches are cool. Way, way cool. Willow from "Buffy" was cool, and the vaguely lesbian witchly threesome on "Charmed" are ostensibly cool (in a bitchy backstabbing black-mascara mall-hopping sort of way), and even "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" is passably cool if you're, like, 12, ditto the entire whack "Sailor Moon" anime universe, because anime is just way cool, just by default.

And of course Harry Potter, the king himself, is still despoiling millions of young minds with his blasphemous heathen wizard spells and preteen angst and secret burgeoning lust to discover what magic dazzling transformational enchanted wunderfrump lies beneath Hermione's knickers.

Yes, Secret Spells Barbie is a witch. Sort of. But not really. Even though she is. But Mattel would never dare call her that, of course. Barbie just, you know, dabbles. Plays around. Casts a "spell," then twirls her hair and pops her gum and giggles a lot and then goes shopping. This is what Barbie does.

Nothing seriously Wiccan here, nothing remotely intelligent or in depth or knowledgeable about true witchcraft or magick or Wiccan belief, of course, because were Mattel to venture too far and dare to actually educate or inspire young maidens to shun church and embrace nature and dye their hair black and change their name to Raven Wolfdancer and start holding slumber parties/yoni awakenings on the winter solstice, why, terrified Christians would almost certainly rise up and light torches and march on their local pseudo-Christian Wal-Marts, which would immediately stop carrying the demonic lesbian Wiccan dolls that only masquerade as oversequined sanitized blonds with the equivalent of 39-inch chests.

No, SS Barbie apparently takes witchcraft about as seriously as, say, a hair barrette. About as seriously as the caulking on the Dream House. About as seriously as Ken's deeply repressed desire for a Barbie-size strap-on and a serious S&M whipping.

And yet. Apparently there's a TV commercial for this new doll, one that instructs Secret Spells Barbie fans to gather "at a secret time, in a secret place" to enact these "secret spells."

And then it cuts to a shot of our fair witches-in-training "secreted" away at the library mixing "potions" and "doing spells" and one rogue girl perks up and asks whether the spells actually work, and sure enough right then a hunky teen boy appears and strolls right up to the girl who has the Secret Spells "kit," and she grins all knowingly and enchantingly and giggle titter wink ooh isn't this wacky witchcraft fun?

It is just so cute. And it is just so sad. Because you could argue that Secret Spells Barbie signifies the ultimate saccharine dumbed-down heavily bleached mainstreaming of witchcraft and Wicca, sucking poor little Harry Potter dry and embarrassing even Sabrina and deflating all the joy and sexiness and funky chthonic wonder out of witchcraft and magic, and for this Mattel can rightfully be jeered at and besotted with night sweats and made to wear the Cursed Necklace of Dhzarzebub. Or something.

And, furthermore, you could say that Witch Wanna-Be Barbie exemplifies a deep and rather obnoxious insult to true Wiccans everywhere, the equivalent of Mattel launching some sort of perky bare-thighed Islamic Fundamentalist Barbie or maybe Frigid Catholic Nun Barbie or Wide-Eyed Rosicrucianist Barbie or even Creepy Cult of Scientology Barbie with Deluxe Tinfoil Hat and Fanatical Grin.

You could say that. But it's not really worth it. Because more than anything else, you just have to say that this incarnation of the world's best-selling virgin, this premolded hunk of insidious white plastic that inflicts the initial lashings of the American beauty myth on millions of young girls, is utterly, shamelessly useless.
Secret Spells Barbie is, despite her potential and much like every one of the 150,000 weird sub-subniche Barbies on the market, entirely pointless and disposable and, unless the girls who end up with her somehow tap into their inner badass witchiness and suddenly get inspired by some divine funky moonscream to rip off Barbie's arms and paint her hair bright red and tattoo her nipples with a Magic Marker and impale her on a red-hot hair pin and suspend her upside down from a dreamcatcher, well, she does nothing to further the cause of funky gorgeous goddess-thick witchness and nothing to further the cause of earthly luscious pagan interconnectedness or divine feminine power.

Not that she claims to. Not that this was ever Mattel's point, or Barbie's raison d'etre, really. And I suppose it's sort of wildly unfair to hope that Barbie might actually inspire girls beyond the hair-twirling saccharine fetishism of shopping and friends and cars and boys and shopping and money and dye jobs and shopping and fake careerism and shopping.

But in Secret Spells Barbie, there was a glimpse. There was a glimmer of hope that underneath her massive drapery of blond follicles and beneath that massive melon chest and beneath that huge pink cheap sequined magic robe beat the raw red heart of a latent pagan priestess, just dying to bust out of that whitebread virgin faux-Christian Botox world and get it on with the divine, even a little. Alas, it's not to be.


Oh, Barbie. When, oh when, will you strip down and writhe in the woods and howl at the moon?

Cherry Blossoms

The city where I work has one of the largest collection of cherry blossom trees in the US outside of Washington D.C. For a few weeks every spring there's this riotous display of every shade of pink, an oasis of beauty in the middle of a sprawling urban wasteland. As magnificent as it is, it is a brief as a proverbial shooting star. Within days the petals float to the ground and the park sheds it's glorious plumage for another year. Terribly symbolic for that whole circle of life thing. ;)

While I was away, I had a very vivid dream. Someone handed me my father's wallet, referring to him in the past tense. A large billfold, I knew it was his from the little packet of photos in it. The first was a school photo of mine from kindergarten. It's a very ... distinct picture, for some reason my mother felt that bowl bangs and a head full of ringlets would be just the thing. Anyway, each of the photos were ones I knew of and have seen before. Until the last one. The colors in it were exceptionally bright, and as I looked at it it became larger, until I was holding at least an 8x10 in my hand.

It was a cherry blossom tree in full bloom on a gorgeous sunny day. Next to the tree stood my mother as she is now. She was holding my son in her arms, and had the most beautiful look on her face -- I cannot even describe the expression. As I was studying it, the picture animated. A gust of wind kicked up and all those beautiful petals began to fall, a shower of pink and white swirling around my mother and my son. It was so incredibly poignant that I woke up sobbing. As Chris pointed out, there's not much interpretation needed for it, but it has stuck with me for days.

Last night while I was working on an event, an old friend contacted me. He told me that one of my mentors had died yesterday morning after her very long fight with lung cancer. MW was an amazing woman, tough as nails with a sincere laugh and great sense of humor. Straightforward, she didn't hold back what she was thinking. Nor did she care if it made you angry, so long as you understood the point. She was instrumental in my aspiring to be a strong instructor and animated speaker. She never failed to give feedback for good or for ill, and always let you know that she was on your side.

She was beautiful, and all too brief.

The other shoe (boot) falls...

Well they're finally going to do it.

After five years of working together, apparently now the fact that we're married is an issue. We got an e-mail saying that they're going to split us up and make us work seperate units because we're married.

Allegedly they're having problems with a couple of other married staff members, so in typical knee-jerk fashion now they will bring the hammer down on all of us.

I know we're the exception to the rule, being able to work together without killing one another -- but when have we ever been normal?

This is nerve-wracking, we're entering into a fight I never wanted. I like our new coordinator and now we're going to have to go head to head on this as an unfair practice. Working together is one of the reasons we still manage to stay sane at work, and now that's going to be gone.

Bahston & the Breakfast Nazi

After stressing about James for the better part of last week, we managed to pry ourselves away and drive north. We got to our friend's house in Somerville by dinnertime. While relaxing over the meal, we hear Doug scream from the back room. He had suddenly noticed that he'd misread the concert tickets, and that the show starts at 6pm, not 8pm like he'd thought (It was around 7:30 at this point.). So after some mass hysterics over his discomfiture, we piled into the car and headed for the show. Luckily they had two bands go on before their set, so it worked out well -- we arrived just at the beginning of their set. The show was at the Avalon Ballroom, across from Fenway Park. Having never seen either before that was pretty neat.

The DropKick Murphys fall into the punk category, or Celtic/Irish rock I guess. If you like Flogging Mollies, Black 47, the Pogues etc, then this is right up your alley. Their latest CD, "Blackout" is known by heart by everyone in the house, it's fantastic. If you ever get the chance to see them perform, I highly recommend going. The atmosphere in the show is controlled chaos, folks get rowdy but not out of hand. Everyone of all ages seems to know all the words to every song, they belt them out along with the band and are encouraged to sing along and even with the bandmembers. There's no fancy costumes or stagesets, and they seem to be exactly what they portray -- a bunch of Irish brawlers who are having a good time. It was a blast. They're playing on the Jimmy Kimmel show on St. Patrick's Day.

Saturday morning (well afternoon really ) Doug insisted on taking us to breakfast at this place called SoundBites. He had us read a menu before we left because he said they're ... kind of funny about wasting time there. We get to this tiny hole in the wall to find a line waiting to get in that goes all the way up the block. Everyone seemed to take it in stride, sipping hot coffee, reading the paper and chatting. Never mind the fact that there was a huge diner not a half a block away. Doug (who eats there several times a week) tells us that it's run by some Moroccan brothers and that they're famous for their breakfast, but that they have some quirks to keep it all running smoothly. Get your own coffee, but don't make a mess, waste, or use more than you need each time. Know what you want when they come. Be prepared to leave as soon as you're done. All I could think of was Seinfeld's "Soup Nazi."

It must work for them, since we moved through the line in about twenty minutes and were seated at a table in the cramped quarters. The staff all knew Doug and were very friendly, even bringing us a fresh fruit bowl. All I can say is OMG -- the food was unbelievable. Chris had french toast made on thick challah bread, that was stuffed with cream cheese & fig preserves. I had a version of Eggs Benedict with real Hollandaise sauce and smoked salmon . We got to watch a few shocked patrons get informed that there will be no cell phones during other people's meals (hooray!). In short it was fabulous and quirky and a kick. But boy, as SOON as my fork was down on the empty plate, the table was cleared and the check on hand. It gave a new twist to fast food. If you're ever in the Somerville area of Boston, bring your appetite but leave your cell phone in the car or "No eggs for you!"

Saturday night we went to The Sunset Grill for dinner, they have an astounding array of beers. The highlight was one called Samichlaus. Brewed in Austria, it's considered one of the rarest beers in the world. They only brew it one day a year -- December 6th. It's one of the strongest lagers in the world, averaging 14% alcohol content. It was syrupy and damn, really good. And I am far from an afficionado. We then went to a pub called Burn's for some traditional Irish music before calling it a night.

Now that I've thoroughly bored everyone to tears, all I can say is I NEEDED THE REST. ;)