Never Again, the Iron Lung!

One of my favorite friends in Utah was a sweet elder man who lived life in a wheelchair.  He had the biggest, most beautiful smile, with an enormous heart and a handshake that all by itself conveyed that he cared!  As a 19 year-old man, he loved to run, and had a college track and field scholarship.  He was engaged to be married to his high-school sweetheart.  Then came the morning he woke up unable to move his arms or legs.  As he lay there in a hospital bed, unable to move, he was stunned to discover that his wife-to-be had every intention of getting married to him--no doubt, no hesitation.  They lived the sort of life that touches thousands. 

The year he spent in the hospital in an iron lung was the year that they came out with the polio vaccine.  Should all healthy children be vaccinated?  Go to Logan, Utah, and stand by Richard's grave, and ask him if vaccines are a good and necessary thing.  Post-polio syndrome hit him, in the early 2000's, when Richard was only 65 years old.  Once it finished taking away the use of his arms, it moved on to his lungs, and before he lost the ability to breathe, he said good-bye to the love of his life, and to his five children.  He passed away too soon for all of us who loved him.  If you think any of this story is sentimental or sappy, fuck that.  I miss him.  He was good to me when I was a young, lonely, low-income single mother, and very few other people in that religious neighborhood treated me like a real neighbor.  

Polio Ward from the 1953 Epidemic 

I was born with rubella.  No one knew what was wrong with me as I fought for my life; then, a week after I was born, my mother broke out with the disease, and at least they figured out what was going on.  I was damned lucky that my mother caught it so late in her pregnancy; the consequences of having rubella in the first trimester usually include birth-defects such as blindness and microcephaly (undersize head and brain). 

I caught chickenpox at age 14.  With an immune system more like an adult's than a child's, I was at high risk of having it go into my mouth, nose, and possibly into my lungs.  Once in the lungs, the mortality rate is 70%.  Allow me to say; I'd have preferred the vaccine, which at that time did not exist.  It didn't go into my mouth, but it hit the insides of my ears and one of them still has a thin, sensitive spot in the cartilage where it was eroded by a pock. 

My daughter caught chickenpox, twice!  The first time, she was only two months old.  Can you imagine the miserable incomprehension of such a tiny infant, still less than nine pounds, unable to control her arms or legs--trying to get away from her own itching, hurting, feverish skin?  Today, with a commonplace immunization for chickenpox, she would not have gone through that, thanks to herd-immunity. 

She caught it again when she was four years old--her immune system as an infant hadn't been advanced enough to lock in immunity for life.  My four year-old handled it pretty well.  However, many of the pocks became infected, causing scarring that is still visible today (nothing that impacts how cute she is, thankfully).

 

Secondary infections like the ones she had to suffer through will become increasingly dangerous as antibiotics become less and less effective--I remember the thick green pus in sores that were half as large as a dime, and if that grosses you out, just think how much more pleasant it would be if she and I had never had to deal with it, either.  If she hadn't had the chickenpox as an infant, I might have tried out the brand-new vaccine for chickenpox, that came out only one year earlier.

I have been affected directly by these diseases that can be avoided.  My kid is as immunized as she can be--including the HPV vaccine, thank goodness.  I will not lose my kid to cervical cancer in her 30's.  I am well-immunized against those things that I frankly wouldn't want to have to deal with, even if they don't cause many lasting side-effects.  We're damned lucky to have those vaccines available today, at little cost, at any clinic in the city. 

If you could talk with any parent of children in the 1940's; yes, getting those diseases was a rite of childhood, generally considered to be no big deal for healthy, well-fed children.  But sometimes, children DIED. Sickly children died. Pregnant mothers died, or lost their infants, or gave birth to blind, deaf, mentally impaired children. What of parents in the 1930's? When the Great Depression created an entire generation of malnourished children? Yeah ... those kids DID die at high rates from all of those "childhood diseases." Measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox ... and polio. 

Polio is the second greatest dread-disease facing the world today.  Not Ebola--that's lethal but it's not nearly as transmissible.  Not smallpox--we've actually eradicated that particular bugaboo.  Polio--godds forbid that monster should ever escape from the few remote villages where it still remains endemic.  Got a problem with Islam?  Well, it's one of the things that might help eradicate polio once and for all, the way smallpox has been eradicated.  People who hide their children from Doctors Without Borders and WHO volunteers who try to immunize their children are encouraged by local mullahs to abandon their fears and superstition, and get their children immunized. 

Measles outbreaks are bad enough--science-forbid we might ever see polio return to the United States!  With tuberculosis on the rise again, a horrifying and lethal disease that spreads like wildfire and against which a vaccine may never be developed, why in the HELL can't we get rid of every other type of illness we possibly can??? 

Person of Interest

Brown, black, tan, red, yellow
Waiting for
Christian, Muslim, White Supremacist
Waiting for
Anti-gun, anti-religion, perhaps he doesn't like runners
or children, or cats. 
Waiting for a description
a motive, a creed
Waiting to find out who we should hate
this time. 
some wait to gloat.

When I was a child, at the back of the garage
was a mystery, forbidden, a dark
room where film turned into photos
my father sat at the nexus of chemistry
carefully crafted images, he showed me
how to use a pretty filter,
just the right amount of light,
bring the image up. 
This was his vision, what he saw through the camera's lens
to begin with.  Before anyone else. 
"Can I use your picture for a story?"
My face, an eight year-old, in negative.
the story, on child-abuse;
no one would recognize me.
White was black, black was white
my pupils glowed from the gray pulp-paper. 

Wildfires, car wrecks
dead whales on the beach, earthquakes
tragedy, inspiration, crying people, a flood
a spider's web outlined in dew
lightning storms over the city, over the ocean. 
My childhood view of the world,
horrific, fascinating, awe-inspiring, beautiful
at a professional distance, like chemicals
in the dark
filtered
dot-matrix images on gray-pulp. 

Person of Interest:
white male, black male, Asian male, Arabic
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Mormon, Janist
waiting to hate
Two-inch high type, gray-pulp, cell-phone videos
Boston Marathon
bright red blood on the pavement, explosion in realtime, and screams
Person of Interest
I see from a Distance. 


Kathlean Wolf
16 April 2013

In the Same Coin

I want to be vibrant—

multicolored and excited, dancing

in my leather and feather and wild

feel alive, ferocious

heart pounding, hands

beating an African drum. 

I looked into their eyes and remembered

What color was; is. 

Heard the drum, the pounding of hundreds of

Rhythmic feet against the dirt

Feather and wild in her hair, in her walk

Ferocious. 

“I’ve made new friends,” I told him, all excitement. 

“How do you know they were friends?” he asked. 

Gave some answer; later, realized.  He was out of context.  Or I was. 

Friendships are small economies. 

Wet lands, dark soil, cold winter.

Pale people come, they stay.  No reason to leave. 

Grandfathers baled hay together, 

favor piled on favor,

like the paint on the old oak barn. 

Everyone knows everyone;

same schools, family names, small towns. 

Friendships, like barter. 

I’d thought that I was the one

who’d lost my color, no friends,

trying to buy friendship with foreign coin.

Where are you from?  What High School did you go to? 

My answers are all wrong. 

There are dry lands to the West. 

White soil covers rock; no reason to stay. 

Travelers, truckers; wanderers. 

Airstream trailers, RV’s in the desert. 

Semis are sailing ships,

Carrying goods across the ocean of the Great Plains,

long, lonely miles. 

Lonely.  Restless. 

Friendship; small investments

Variable interest rate, easy credit

High yield.  Dividends, bonds;

Day traders. 

Nebraska, truck stop, empty; 11 a.m. 

Broken, lonely eyes; roll-over stomach

sitting in a cab all day, blotted with sweat. 

Waiting for his shower number. 

“Mind if I sit with you?”  I put down my tray. 

Pretty girl, he with a roll-over stomach. 

Life’s story in forty minutes:

Driving out of Los Angeles, cross the Mississippi,

south to Georgia. 

Wife in New Jersey.  Three kids. 

Sex with men on the road;

other truckers.  “Lot lizards.”  Homeless boys. 

“Not as uncommon as you think,” I told him. 

He bought me coffee.  Minimal good-bye’s. 

We drove on. 

Floods in Cedar Rapids, I-80, underwater. 

Two hour wait: I leaned against a truck-cab,

talking to a stranger. 

He could have been another Dahmer, I wouldn’t know. 

Road college.  The professor explains lesbians. 

Road college.  The professor explains flood-insurance. 

His family waits for him, evacuated;

2300 miles ’til home.

I walk ferocious. 

Sniff out sex-offenders, eat them alive:

Whither men’s testicles back inside their bodies

With my ferocious Glare. 

GRONK! 

Pretty girl bites hard. 

 

Open-road favors paid forward.  Road justice.  

Windshield-wiper flown off into the dark;

Four hours driving blind;

Black couple driving back to Christian college

Gave me and my gas-can a lift. 

Two years later, my turn.

A man in a gray run-down Honda, twin boys,

I left him with a spare gas-can

and the stuffed bear from my back window.

Road-rage is senseless, leap-frogging across a continent. 

Slick silver sports-car zips around

a bright yellow Peterbilt,

hauling two trailers full of swine. 

Middle finger; face buried in a cell-phone. 

Six hours later, he stands by his steaming high-status engine. 

No one stops to help.  Road justice. 

           

Four dogs, two hitchhikers sleeping in a tent

on a Nebraska interchange;

winds of fifty miles an hour, biting cold. 

Dogs in the back of my U-Haul, humans up front,

out of the wind, grateful company for 800 miles. 

Headed for Florida, homeless alcoholism—

No frostbite. 

The trucker who bought me coffee in Nebraska

waved good-bye on the east side of the Mississippi River. 

Wife waiting in New Jersey. 

His youngest son was two. 

He feared he might have AIDS. 

I turned north, headed home. 

            “I’ve made new friends,” I told him, all excitement. 

“How do you know they were friends?” he asked. 

I don’t have to trust everyone else; just myself. 

I recognized them instantly.  Friendship economy. 

We use the same coin. 

Kathlean Wolf

5 March 2013

No Other Gods

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 

            Nine year-old girls, instigators of mischief;
            Known inventors of gods? 
                        Let’s call one Mithras, one Valhes, one Osiris
                        Ishtar, Astarte, Robyn, LemonCreamPie
            We memorize the admonition.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the loard. 

            Would I have favored another god? 
            One who did not reserve vengeance to himself, 
            none forthcoming, no justice either 
            Oh fatherinheaven oh father on earth why are you deaf? 
                        Perhaps the goddess Robyn would have saved me. 

                       

He so loved the world that he sent his only sun. 

            Mixed messages: 
            You tortured god. 
            God loves you. 
            My sister tortured me. 
            I am not Jesus.  I do not love my sister. 

And be, hold a virgin.  Bore a child. 

            What mad scheme, male gives birth to a male, who is himself. 
            Male, like one who raped me
            Forever separated by the soft fleshy thing between his legs
            Never again are males human beings
            Monsters, with vengeful little gods tucked into their pants.

Robyn threw mighty lightning-bolts and plagues, if she were real. 


~Kathlean Wolf, 28 January 2013

Waiting for Light

I grow a little smaller every year. 
When December blows in on snow-clad feet,
damping the sun
and all the earth seems to shudder, hunker down
bracing against the snow,
the long dark. 

I grow a little smaller every year.
All the summer sun revealed in me,
all that was kind, outgoing, exuberant,
is hidden in shadows, light-starved
I do not remember my good heart
only all that I have failed. 

Trees entrenched against the cold
wrap the deep earth around themselves,
let loose their leaves to save them from
the deadly weight of snow,
limbs flying free
I watch them from my window,
waving in the wind, limned in crystals of white.
Watch squirrels prancing branch to branch,
bright black eyes, simple lives
Finding food, feeding tiny babies hidden
somewhere. 

I grow a little smaller every year,
Watching out my window, years
Darkness, years. 
Forget, ignore, avoid, distract, make flight;
The dark, the memories, cruel, biting. 
Each December scars collect on scars
And I wrap myself around them,
Holding tight, bound,
to tissue that might burst apart
if I let go. 

Bound, tight; I grow a little smaller every year. 

Kathlean Wolf, 29 December 2012

Sounding Sleep

He takes out his
robot ears at night,
and cannot hear
the sounds of the house;
soft cracks, groans
of pleasure as it
settles into the heavy winter earth.
Cannot hear
the sound of books,
rustling pages, weight and depth
lying all on their sides, in strata,
cover touching cover, like old friends,
whispering
of stories, of time and whimsy, mystery;
thoughts strewn out with pens
held by hands
living, and long-gone. 

And I, with my scarred drums
listen;
shattering booms of
mice quick-stepping inside my walls,
trees tapping rhythms against each other
accompanied by waves of air,
hum and moan of machinery,
gurgling water wandering through
lonely pipes in the basement below;
I with my scarred drums,
sit staring into the clamorous darkness,
hear the fog creeping in gently
between the trees,
sleepy browsing of deer, teeth
rasping against the bright cherry bark,
and envy
deafened sleep. 

12 January 2013
~K. Wolf, for L. Bosworth



Points of reference:

This was written following a visit to the home of my new friend, Lewis, who wears hearing aids.  He is a bibliophile--a biblioholic, in fact, with a home full of books.  Full.  Truly. 

Throughout my childhood, I had ear infections that ruptured my eardrum several times a year.  Nothing remains of the original eardrums; however, because loud noises have always been painful, I've protected my hearing more than most people do.  Now that the ear infections have stopped, I hear everything. 

Finding Solace in Atheism

Something terrible has happened, and a community sits tonight in a church-building, coming together for comfort and safety, coming together to spill out their grief in the presence of all their loved ones.  I have complete respect for this; the church provides ritual and place to accompany the community, and has for centuries, and I don't see it as a religious event so much as a humin one.

However, I want to take this opportunity to share a different form of comfort, one disconnected from religion.  The comfort an atheist takes in science, and also the comfort an atheist takes in the idea that there are no supernatural explanations or influences at play in tragic events.

Religion will say, "That man is in hell," and "Those children are in heaven."  Both of these thoughts are a relief!  The children aren't really dead; they're just somewhere else.  And that bastard ... he's being punished the way we wish we could punish him for hurting us all so deeply.

Atheism can't offer anything so comforting, and if all of the social pressure to believe in religion were removed entirely, I believe that this lack of comfort alone would send some people in search of the supernatural.  All we can say is, that man doesn't exist.  If he thought he would be famous, he was right, but when he thought that, some part of him probably had a narcissistic vision of watching everyone talking about him.  Nope.  He's just another dead animal right now.  At the same time, there is comfort in knowing that there really are no unseen, evil influences loose in this world; there are no demons, no evil spirits that might have caused him to do what he did.  Because we know this, we also know that we need not be afraid that a perfectly normal person will become possessed--a common fear of the pre-scientific age. 

Religion asks, "Why did this happen?"  Some of the answers will be, "Satan tempted the man," "God allowed it to happen in order to test your faith," "God couldn't stop human agency," and "It's a sign of God's wrath."  One of the more costly tolls taken by religious thought is an extra-heavy burden of blame in the wake of any tragedy.  If only we had pleased god more, angered god less!  If only we were more perfect in our faith, less tempted, if we prayed more, sinned less often! 

Atheism says, "Nothing those children or adults did brought it upon themselves.  No benevolent being decided to make it happen, or to avoid preventing it from happening."  No one but the killer had an influence on where and when this event happened, on who lived or died.  It was random. Randomness is terrifying.  Randomness means that Hurricane Sandy can sweep good children out to sea; it means that I could be struck tonight by a bullet shot by some idiot in a car driving by--or by an asteroid, for that matter.  Randomness means that I am not safe, not really, not ever.

Really?  ME?  I'm not special, I'm not safe because god loves me?  If danger comes into my life, no magical being is going to rescue me?  It takes some getting used to--even now, over a decade free from religion, I sometimes find myself resorting to a religious type of pattern-seeking, trying to read the future, but without a god to turn to for reassurance that my "prediction" is correct, I wake up to the fact that I won't know, can't know how things will work out.

On the other hand, the randomness of existence goes hand in hand with an appreciation of the fact that I am alive.  A thousand incidents of potential lethality have not killed me, from the garden-trowel incident when I was 18 months old, to the ear-infection when I was 14, to the bizarre encounter with a crazed drug-dealer a decade ago.  My parents, likewise, were not killed before I was born, nor was I one of the hundreds of eggs that went exactly nowhere in their reproductive attempts.  Instead, I am alive--one tiny little animal among 7 billion of the same species, surrounded by a carpet of beautiful life on one hell of a lucky little planet.  My own UNimportance in the grand scheme gives me great comfort, as well.  My actions do not reflect well or ill on some Grand Plan.  I am not responsible for events on some Celestial Sphere.  I'm just me; this is merely my life. 

The heroism shown by teachers, the principal, the school psychologist--that was "just" them.  The legacy of their lives was in the protection of their children.  They live on in memory; only for a few generations, granted, but no god was required for them to be good, and I am more in-awe of them, feel more joy at their having lived, because their actions were not the result of any influence but their own strong protective instincts. 

Why did this happen?  Religion answers "God" and "Satan" and "Sin."

Atheism looks to science for answers.  What do we find?  Mass shootings are almost universally committed by angry, young, depressed males, who are most likely to be white.  There are more violent gun deaths where there are more guns.  There are not more violent gun deaths where there is more "mental illness"--there is no evidence that this shooter had a "mental illness."  Both murders and suicides are often followed by "copycats."  And the United States has the greatest percentage, hands down, of both gun deaths and mass-shootings.  A brief survey of news coverage also indicates that, when white males commit mass-shootings, the term "mental illness" (a term that is essentially as meaningless as "physical illness," which includes everything from hangnails to cancer) comes up repeatedly, while non-white murderers are more likely to be called violent criminals. 

Why did this happen?  Because a depressed, angry white male had easy access to guns (his mother was a gun-buff), wanted to kill himself, wanted the nation to know about it, and knew from other, recent shootings that a sure-fire way to become "famous" would be to do what they had done.  Or one step worse.

Religion asks, how do we keep this from happening again?  Religion answers, "Pray."  I can only point out that, statistically, at least 70% of the victims will have been Christian, and most of them will have either prayed or been prayed-for sometime recently. 

Atheists ask, "How do we keep this from happening again?" and starts looking for ways to change one of the proven factors in the chain of causation.  Take away guns, screen for and treat depression, deny media coverage to these evil pricks--that last one won't happen, but I can wish.

Despite horrors like the one that just happened, we live in a time of reduced violent crime and murder.  Can we thank religion for that?  Are there more churches?  Do more people pray?  Has this become a monotheistic country, all worshipping the correct deity in the correct way?  No.  Sorry.  The change has come due to science; psychology, sociology, and psychiatry have all contributed to education, law enforcement, and mental health care, and we live in a safer, saner world as a result.  We focus on teaching children empathy, we're addressing bullying in our schools and workplaces, and we've torn down a lot of the -isms at the heart of many violent crimes. 

There is a common humin morality encoded in our genes, one that long predates the Christian god: "Do to others what you want them to do to you."  In other words, act with empathy.  Think about how what you're going to do will impact everyone around you.  Science has helped to expand on this idea, allowing us to include more and more "others" in our view of "people who feel like me," and starting in on extending this empathy to other creatures on the planet.  Perhaps we'll extend it far enough, fast enough, to find some way to turn the tide of extinction that we've set in place.  If not, I take comfort from a fossil record that shows that, though massive extinctions have threatened life on earth at least five times in the past, life will go on--without us, perhaps, but all the beauty that is here will rise again.