Category: Random Stuff

I woke just after 3:30a.m., barely 4.5 hours of sleep.  Not nearly enough.

Yes, I know *why* I’m up (stress and anxiety about shit I can’t do a damn thing about) but I’m also surprisingly sore all over, so I’m sucking a coffee to help encourage the ibuprofen to work faster. Maybe I can sleep some more.

New yarn cones and new dyes are both scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, so that’s a good thing. Between now and then I need to knit a piece about 100 stitches wide and about 100 rows long, knit at an angle. Simple enough, for sure, but not easy if my hands aren’t cooperating.

I’ve been active on Facebook and not posting here on the blog, mostly because I don’t get a lot of interaction here.  That needs to change because social media itself is changing.   I have a few somewhat idle days ahead so I can use the time to make a few changes myself.

Sin is defined as a transgression or violation of divine law.

We have all sorts of problems in this world and people hurting each other all the time, sometimes intentionally and sometimes accidentally.  Civil rights are violated with regularity as well.  But there is no ‘divine law.’  That is a religious construct without anything to back it up.

It’s been 19 years since Hurricane Katrina permanently altered my life.

It was early in Monday morning when Katrina came on shore just east of New Orleans.  The Friday before that I was unaware a storm was coming, and only caught wind of it over the weekend.  Everyone I knew was either hunkering down or evacuating.  I didn’t have a car, but I had a big dog, Hazel.  She was a Labrador/Chow-Chow mix, big and beautiful and plenty furry.  I had only gotten her that spring when my friend Jackie Smythe moved back to New York to work at Lion Brand Yarn Co.  She was a big heavy dog, but was dwarfed next to the big elephant ears growing in the back yard.

Anyway, one of the neighbors offered to let me ride along as they evacuated, but nobody was willing to let a big dog ride along, so I had little choice but to just stay put with Hazel.

I had woken up and gotten a pot of coffee made when the power went out as the storm moved in.  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but Hazel and I hunkered down underneath a table, listening to the wind whipping trees against the house.  It was terrifying, and contributed to my storm-related PTSD which rears its ugly head every time we get a big storm even now.

When I finally dared open the front door, either later that day or maybe Tuesday morning, there was silence all around and evidence that something terrible had happened.  The streets were basically void of traffic, although I did see some kids trying to break into the little gas station down on Magazine Street.  One of them yelled, “It’s the end of the world! Take what you can.”   I left them to their own pursuits.

On Wednesday, as I was walking up Constantinople St., I met some other people who had also stayed to weather the storm.  I ended up staying with them as we heard rumors of the levees breaking and the city flooding.  The flooding came up as far as St. Charles Avenue, just another block or two from where we were.

In a day or two, the National Guarded started driving through to check on people and bring MREs and potable water.  Military helicopters were flying a grid pattern overhead all night long, almost every night, looking for people trapped on rooves or needing rescuing.  We were in the very narrow part of New Orleans that didn’t flood, so mostly the National Guard would just come around to check on us but mostly left us alone.

We had broken into someone’s private yard and discovered an above-ground pool, which became a source of toilet-flushing water as well as a place to somewhat bathe.  And the National Guard team went and approved it as an above-ground pool.  They rejected in-ground pools, but we were okay to use this one pool.

Finally, the next Thursday (if I remember correctly), the National Guard was coming around with huge ‘people-mover’ type open top trucks, into which we were all suppose to board, for them to carry us out of the city.  There was a phone at the place I was staying, and I had made some calls to arrange a different escape.

Hazel would go with someone else to a big property somewhere between Covington and Baton Rouge, since they had enough property and animals that she would be cared for.  I snagged a ride with a stranger who carried me to Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center in Baton Rouge, where I would be met by another co-worker who took me to her place on Opelousas, and then my son-in-law drove there to bring me to Houston.

Because of my work as the administrator for the Louisiana Cancer and Lung Trust Fund Board, I knew the CEO at Mary Bird Perkins and he said I could come there as a stop and meeting place for Jesse to pick me up.  I’m sure I was a sight — unbathed and unshaved for a week and a half, walking into a sterile prim and proper cancer center with my granny cart of essentials like clothes, a pillow, and other things.

Why did I have my granny cart?  Before discovering other people in the neighborhood, I had intended to load up some essentials, including dog food, and Hazel and I would walk the bike path along the river until I got into Jefferson Parish or whatever else I could find for me and Hazel.  It wasn’t a well-thought-out plan, but being alone I couldn’t see another choice.

The people who carried me to Mary Bird Perkins turned out to be some well-known judge from a parish up north, who had driven in on his official credentials to check on one of his relatives who lived on that street just a block away from us.  I told him I needed to get to the cancer center and I let him assume I was a patient and not a state employee.  Whatever.

I ended up staying with my daughter and son-in-law until October 15, when I got the all-clear that my neighborhood had water and lights again.

On August 29, 2006, I officially moved back to Houston to stay.   There’s a lot more I could say about it all, but for now, it’s just a day to remember how my life was permanently changed.

Oh!  As for Hazel, she stayed on the property for a while with the people who had taken her.  At one point during my stay in Houston, they called to let me know Hazel was doing okay and was learning to bark in French.  It was a heavily Cajun family there.  She moved on to live her best life on a big property in Alabama, if I remember correctly.  I never did see her again.

Long, long ago, like around 20 or 25 years ago, I bought myself a cool hat made of a sort of twill or denim fabric.  It’s been in my closet since I moved here 18 years ago, and I just pulled it out this past week.  I used to wear it semi-often when I lived in New Orleans.

It looks really bad.  Dusty and dirty.  I am amazed it has mostly kept its shape, which gives me a little hope.  What I need to know, however, is how to properly clean it without destroying it.

My baseball caps can go into the washing machine and survive.  There’s no way in hell I would put this hat into the washing machine.  I need to get a proper hat brush and get most of the dust off, of course, but it really does need a deep clean as well, but I don’t want to get it soaking wet.

So….. what do you recommend?  Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions in the comment space below.

Many people know that I spent almost 13 months with my Mother in Denver, apart from my siblings who were still in Santa Barbara with our father.  How that happened is a story for another time.

And many people know it was a horrendous time during which I saw things no young teen needs to be aware of.  Hardly any teen of any age wants to be conscious of their parents’ sex lives; certainly teens approaching puberty are curious about sex in general, but shudder at the thought of their own parents doing it.

While in Denver, we lived almost entirely in one-room locations, most often in transient hotels downtown.  These were the type of hotels where you have a room with a bed, a dresser, maybe some other furniture, and a little sink in the corner.  A couple of locations had actual bathrooms connected to our room.

Mother wasn’t working. And I, being just 13 years old (I turned 14 while there) certainly wasn’t working. Mother would meet a man, most often in a bar, and would end up convincing her prey to let her stay the night, which often meant both of us staying the night in whatever accommodations there were.  Sometimes, the guy would actually get a hotel room.

One guy in particular had a larger Oldsmobile or Buick.  Mother had taken me into a bar, and she got pissed that she was carded.  She was about 35 years old then, but she got her drink and got me a soda of some sort and told me to go sit in a booth while she sat at the bar.  Next thing I know, I’m being told to go sit in this guy’s car.  After a while we went driving around, and then we ended up at a hotel.  This hotel offered a full-size bed for them, and (if I remember correctly) a roll-away cot for me.  Mother and this guy were making so much ‘noise’ I quit trying to go to sleep and ended up taking my pillow into the bathtub so I could sleep with the door closed.  It made sense to me at the time.

Another time, we were at the Shasta Hotel (another transient hotel) with a basic room, with a shared bathroom down the hall.  Mother was out  somewhere for the evening drinking, I was sitting on (again) a roll-away cot.  Mother came in told me to quickly get into bed, that someone else would be coming in shortly.  So I did as I was told, and soon enough a tall man tapped on the door.

I should interject here that the Shasta had a rear emergency exit down a flight of stairs to a door opening on a side street from where the main entrance was.  Mother would go open that side door for someone to come in without being seen at the front desk.  She didn’t know that every time that exit door opened, a bell would ring at the front desk.  I don’t remember if there was actually a closed circuit TV camera or not, but one day the manager told me to tell Mother to stop using that door to let other people in.

Anyway, so this guy comes in, I’m lying on my side facing into the room but pretending to be asleep, and they get busy doing what they’re doing, with the light off but street lights shining in the window were enough to see plenty.  When they were done, Mother put something on and went to the bathroom down the hall, while the man stood there with his manhood proudly swaying, and I’m trying to not be obvious in my observations since I was supposedly asleep.  Mother came back and the guy slipped into his trousers (commando for the time being) and also went to the bathroom down the hall.

For some reason this guy had emptied his pants when he undressed, so when he went to the bathroom, I watched Mother dip into his wallet.  OMG.  I must have coughed or something because she dropped his wallet back down and told me, “Close your eyes, roll over the other way, and go back to sleep.”   So I rolled over.  The guy came back, took his trousers off, got himself redressed, and slipped out into the night, returning down the back steps the same way he’d come in.

Similar events happened over the time I was there in Denver, different men in different locations, especially with Ralph with whom we stayed 6 or 8 months at several locations.  I would usually be sleeping in some ancient smelly overstuffed chair or something similar.  And I could not help but observe, through firmly squinted eyes, whatever was happening in the night.

And more than once I would cough or shift or otherwise accidentally let the adults in the room  remember I existed.  And more than once Mother would say, “Close your eyes, roll over the other way, and go back to sleep.”

And I kept thinking, “Closing my eyes will not make me deaf.”

I heard as much as I saw that year in Denver.

This is me, my class picture when I was in 5th grade.  Big smile, but this was roughly the time when I was discovering Live wasn’t always fair or nice.  This was also the beginning of troubles that would follow me for decades, not entirely of my own making but largely the impact on me of my parents’ alcoholism (mostly my mother).

Over the years, off and on, I have considered writing a book. My early years were so incredibly fucked up, especially my teen years, that when I share some of the incidents that became part of who I am, people have told me, “Ray, you need to write a book.”  And, other people, when hearing the events of my youth, say “you shouldn’t talk about that.”

Okay, writing a book is a daunting task. What do I have to say? What message do I want to share? Who would benefit from my story?

And then there is another set of questions: Do I start at the beginning and write in mostly chronological order?  Do I pick a topic and follow the thread through overlapping incidents along the way?  Do I try to address all the many issues in my formative years?  Or just a random collection of short essays, each one independent and sufficient to stand alone if necessary?

And should it be a real book? Or maybe 500 words a week or every other week?  Or brief 10-12 minute weekly chats on YouTube?  Should I compile it and then present it as a finished volume, or make it subscription or on Patron?

Both of my parents were alcoholics, and they had their own mental health issues as well, which obviously had an impact on me when I was a kid and for some time afterward.  I don’t believe my father’s drinking and other issues put me directly in harm’s way (other than being emotional unavailable), but my mother’s drinking absolutely put me in harms way multiple times.

I’m not a relationship expert by any means, and I have no special advice to give to others who may have gone (or may now being going) through situations similar to mine.

Because resources in my youth were few and far between, mostly I am now a less-messy mess of a person than I was previously. If such things were available when I was in school, I would likely have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD, and possibly somewhere on the autism spectrum.  But because those resources weren’t available back then, I have struggled most of my life and created my own coping strategies and survival techniques.  And I am pretty sure that whatever skills I may have developed on my own, these would not be the recommendations of professional child psychologists and other experts in creating emotionally strong, mentally stable, well-adjusted young adults today.

And, at almost 70 now, I realize I don’t have a lifetime ahead of me to figure it out.  It is weighing on me.

Anyone aware of the Constitution recognizes the value of the wall of separation between religion and politics.  It is written into the First Amendment.

Basically, it means that the government established for the good of ALL the people cannot rightly be controlled by the dictates of one or another particular religion. Allowing government to be controlled by one religion sets it up to be controlled by some other religion if a new religion gains popularity.  At the same time, individuals are free to believe as they wish in the affairs in heir personal lives, so long as they aren’t harming others in the process.

I no longer hold to any religion.  I am completely atheist.  “No gods, no masters.”

Having said all that, I think my “religion” and politics are the same:

— Extend the others the same rights I want for myself.

— Do as much good for as many as I can while doing as little harm as possible to others.

It isn’t difficult to do this.

This morning my head was filled with a phrase that has always annoyed me for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

“If I can do it, anybody can do it.”

And that is just plain bullshit. Stop saying such ignorant and offensive things.

It is often intended on the surface to be self-deprecating, but it is also insulting to others who literally can’t do whatever it is I’ve done.  By putting myself (or my achievement) down, it can make others feel like there is something wrong with them.  That is insulting, because there really is nothing wrong or bad about them or their abilities, and there is no excuse for making others feel bad about not doing the particular thing I’ve done.

It is okay to own your own level of skill at a particular thing, and to be proud of it, but there is no reason to lord it over others because they have their own skills that I cannot do.  Why should it matter than I might be a world-renowned concert pianist if I can’t break down and reassemble an eight-cylinder combustion engine?  (For the record, I can’t do either of those things.)

Certainly, most people could do whatever they want, but that doesn’t mean everyone has the particular talent or temperament for a given skill, or they might simply not have any interest in doing that thing.  There’s no shame in that, either.

Another aspect of this sort of self-deprecation is that it dismisses one’s own accomplishments.

If you know me, you know I don’t like Big Storms.  Really, really don’t like them.

Tropical Storm Beryl had reached Hurricane status at one point, category 4, but it was projected to hit Mexico just below the Texas border.   Now, however, it was downgraded to tropical storm status, but will be moving into open water over the Gulf and it has taken a turn aiming almost right at Houston.   I’m hoping it remains a tropical storm.

Thankfully, my new phone is able to log in to both this Web site and Knitivity.com, so if shit gets real I will have access to post updates.   AND I recently bought two power banks, each of which will charge my phone at least 2 or 3 times each.  Since I don’t use the phone too much, I expect I will be fine even if power does go out for a day or two.

Frankly, I am more concerned about trees falling on the trailer, but there’s nothing I can do about that now, I suppose.

I woke early in spite of having a gummy at 8:30 last night and being in bed at 10:00.  It was an uncomfortable sleep; the kind where I know I was asleep, but only just barely.  I woke just around 3:00a.m. and within 10 minutes felt a nap was in order.  That will come this afternoon, surely.

One of the first posts I saw on Facebook when I opened it was from a local online friend.  He’s been through a lot of crap and in recent days is recovering from the horrible storm we had a month or so ago.  The place he lived had significant damage and he is now in the process of securing a different sort of abode.  That, of course, is entirely his own story to share, but I was struck by one section of his post: (I have edited it down for brevity and relevance.)