We are Family

[curt]

We don't need another / a new discussion to prove it.

It is as it is.

Let this "fred" (discussion thread) live under the theme .......

long live this family

brothers, sisters, brethern, dogs, cats and birds, ants and flees, water and air and gas and Clare and Jim and him and the window Simm (??) and you and me and he and she and we and them and us and puss (???) and fish and the dish (it's on) and paper and pen.

Yip.

[BO]

Blowing my own horn because I just finished replacing a 30 YO toilet and I put in a new dishwasher this weekend. I'm beat. Figured I better get some shit done before I can't get off the floor anymore -- which is right around the bend, pun intended.

Finding out it's hard to be bi-polar when the body can't keep up. But I so enjoy fixing stuff.

And oh, the stories I could tell about my encounters at Lowe's with the most incompetant people on the globe. Since the housing crash, Lowe's has eliminated all their knowlegable staff and replaced 'em with Macdonnald's workers. Used to be a few competent old guys on staff who knew their stuff, because typically they were retired tradesmen working at Lowes for pocket money. But they're long gone now. Very sad to see.

And the merchandise they sell now is unbelievable. Total crap. Used to be you could get 25 years out of an appliance. I'd say we're now down to about 5. 

I do feel sorry for the younger generation. Old farts like me get to critique the collapse from my poorly applianced sanctuary while the younger gens are actually trying to survive the eye of the storm. It's hard to imagine the shit they have to put up with now.

[pan]

Bob, point your son towards becoming a master electrician.  That is a great gig.  Unless you are afraid of heights - the electricians in our first building in Tacoma were crazy, standing on top rung of a step ladder with one tip-toe foot while straining to reach the conduit.  I like wiring, I'm confident that I am good at it.

Plumbing, otoh, I hate with a passion.  I've done it a few times but reseating a toilet is really annoying when it doesn't work.  Last time I did it I think I went back to the hardware store four times to buy another wax ring.  I did a pretty extensive drip irrigation system but, since it is outside it doesn't freak me out as much - any leaks just go into the soil.

[pan]

Hannah,  As hard as having a miscarriage was and how long that grieving process lasted, I can only imagine how horrible losing a child must be.

[stonefruit]

Hi guys and gals. I quit for awhile because I needed to but I needed to come back too. This forum is "just" parasocial, but it is social. We can deal with grief and crazy making here, in a way we can't elsewhere. Because we are reality-based. And reality often sucks.

I saw a ghost, found out some of my family were gangsters, and my dog died. it has been the shittiest week since my divorce.

I needed to come back and process it. Because we are family

[stonefruit]

[Cal]

This little guy is so cue Stone.

I've been thinking that if he ate everything that came his way he probably got something wound up in his intestines or stuck there - doesn't sound like he got a bug or a virus. 

My big dog does that - swallows bones as large as my fist, plastic bags ... anything that'll go down.  I never noticed it until recently & I'm really not sure that it's ever all come out the other end.  When I clean up the yard I've found pieces of bone shards in the 'dog pies' that any self respecting stone age man would have been able to kill a mammoth with.  Fortunately he is large - but after I started asking around I heard a lot of people have lost pups that way.  Emergency surgery called for & even then survival is iffy if it's something that pierced the intestinal wall.

My oldest doggy 'died' on me last week.  He had a fit & fainted & I knew there was no heart beat or blood circulation - I'd heard about gums & tongues going blue - that's the first time I saw it.  I shook him around & pumped his chest & whatever 'life' is crept back into him.  There's an almost indistinguishable but very definite line between alive & not alive.  Anyway, he came back for now - but won't be with me for much longer I intuit.

I could barely cope with that.  As you say - how do the families in war torn places survive their horrors.  I was reading 'Noonday Demon' by Andrew Solomon recently - described as an 'atlas of depression'.  I have severe depression almost all the time - but when I read what people have survived in places like Cambodia I feel like a spoilt child & a fool.  My life is good in so many ways & even unemployed I will last financially for 2-3 years ( the months are passing alarmingly quickly ...).  But in the face of the losses I see around the world & the ones I've survived & the ones that lie ahead I battle to shake the 'learnt helplessness' of the hapless laboratory dogs.  Very few people can look those kinds of things in the face & hide behind their mental blocks .... which protect them & ironically allow the suffering to be perpetuated.

[BO]

Ghosts and gangsters. Do tell.

RIP, Stonedog.

[stonefruit]

(We start with the dog)

 

My dog died last night. Well, he wasn’t my dog. He was my brother’s dog. But I was his uncle. Our family lives together. That is a bit unusual, especially for Caucasians (or haoles as we call them in Hawaii). But it is not unusual in Hawaii. Partly because it is just so expensive to live here. Many generations of the same family live here together because of that. Sometimes they live together like that because they like it. They are used to it. Haoles are a minority here. Asia-Pacific races are the majority. Multi-generation families are no big thing to them. Maybe we live together because of this economy. This economy isn’t doing too good.

 

Almost everybody here in Hawaii is a “poi dog.” All mixed up racially. My brother is haole. He is my half-brother, but that doesn’t matter. He is my brother. But he is also ¼ Portuguese, which I am not. I think this might be the race in his background he most identifies with the most. I identify with being Irish. His Portuguese background and so many other things make him “local” in a way I am not, but to even describe what “local” means would take another article. But our family in this single house isn’t all haole. His girlfriend is half Micronesian and half various types of haole. Her little daughter is even more poi dog. I think she has some Hawaiian, or something. I don’t know.

 

They live together downstairs in our duplex. Rents here are expensive here. Real expensive. It is real expensive in paradise, even if you grown here, not flown here. They need the help. So they live downstairs. It causes some friction in the family now and then. She hurt him a while ago, but she is back, because he loves her and her daughter. The dog came just before these two ladies arrived back into our lives again after they had a brief hiatus on the “mainland,” what some of us here call the other 49 states. But if you love Hawaii, you would call Hawaii the “main land.”

 

I’m 44 and living in the old room of my boyhood 20 feet away from my mom. I was downstairs with my brother, but I wanted to give his instant family just add water their space, and full inhabitancy of it. In some ways it seems a step back for all of us. Because we brothers, grown men, are still essentially haole. Still essentially European. We are well aware that it is “not the done thing” for haoles elsewhere in Amerikkka. But it can be the done thing here. Because rents are expensive, families count, and haoles are in a minority. This is the only state where that is so. In Polynesian, Asian, and Pacific traditions, this is not so strange.

 

We are an occupied nation in Hawaii. Hawaii was and is a sovereign country. Amerikkka took it over because it wanted to. Nobody seems to notice or care, except a bunch of Hawaiians. But it happened. We have great beaches. People like to come and spend their holidays here. We try to keep them in Waikiki and by and large we succeed. Sun, sand and surf by day; party by night. What is not to love? Tourism and military spending keep us going. That is our economy, I guess.

 

I was born and raised and in a colony. This gives me a different outlook than most citizens of the empire. I am “with” but not “of” it. The U.S. passport is a good one, and I certainly do a lot of travelling. But beyond that, a lot of what this empire does, I feel like I have no part of it. Amerikkka invaded my country. I don’t give a fuck about Amerikkka. I would not fight to defend it. I guess I am no patriot. I would fight to defend my family, my neighborhood, my island, Hawaii, but not Amerikkka.

 

Say, Obama you were born in Hawaii, weren’t you? It is a rhetorical question. I know you were. We were born in the same hospital. But you had ambition. You knew where power was and you knew how to get it. Congratulations, Mr. President. How is that kill list working out for you? I have heard some people say you that you like to discuss it and put it into action. I guess having the power over life and death must be pretty intoxicating. My brother saw you body surfing at Sandy Beach. I grew up surfing there and so did my brother. He surfed there so much, they used to call him “the mayor.” They never called me the mayor, but I always preferred Makapuu anyway. Less of a shore break. Who wants to get pounded onto 6 inches of water? I saw you body surfing at Sandy Beach on YouTube, Mr. President. You were pretty good. You clearly know what you were doing in the water.

 

But back to the dog. He was a cutie. Half beagle, half weiner. Beige with natural white socks and a collar, in terms of hair color. He loved people and would squeak and yelp to no end if he couldn’t be around them. Claustrophobic? How about the opposite of claustrophobic? He would snuggle up to you in the most intricate and intimate crevices he could find. He just loved people. He loved to be around them. He wanted to love and be loved. And we loved him back for that.

 

My mom is recently retired. I am writing a book. My brother and his girlfriend have regular jobs, so we all have different schedules. Basically, we all took turns hanging out with him all day and night, so we all grew to love him. We said it was so he wouldn’t yelp, but really it was because we loved his company. He was so friendly! He would frolic around after his toys tappity tappity tap with his little four inch legs and slurp you with kisses if you let him. He was still a puppy. Silly, peppy, a ball of energy, a fountain of love and trust. Like puppies are. Like children are.

 

He died last night. Was it the medicine the veterinarian gave him or eating too much toxic Chinese polyester from his chipmunk toy? He was part badger hound. He would destroy any toy you gave him within days. That is for sure.

 

I recently had a bizarre supernatural experience that helped me understand where the lines are between life and death. The dog – Lincoln, he has a name – “Lincoln is a dog but he is shaped like a log” - moved around listlessly for a few days.

 

Around 4:00 p.m. yesterday, I took a study break from writing my book. He came to frolic with me but only for a minute or two, instead of his usual half hour. This was not like him. A few hours later, he came up with my brother’s step-daughter to visit “aunty-Tutu” (my brother and I’s mom). She babysat her, reading homework, solving puzzles, and playing games. The dog didn’t move the whole time. When I came out for another study break, I could tell it was touch and go. Perhaps his last night on earth. I felt it in my bones. I moved him to somewhere more quiet and dark, so he could relax, sleep through the night, and shake it off.

 

He raised his head a few times at various stimuli as I checked in on him now and then. A good sign! He wandered over to his water bowl a few feet away. A good sign! He just stared at it. A bad sign.

 

After the little girl was put to bed, my mom’s maternal instincts took over regarding the dog. She wanted the dog in her bedroom, a room usually sacrosanct and forbidden to Lincoln, lest he make it stinky. But tonight she wanted to know where he was. She felt The Fear. Lincoln felt The Fear too. I could see it in his eyes.

 

“He’s crawling under my dresser!” she called to me in a panic. “He’s crawling under my bed. Let’s take him to the vet emergency room!”

 

“Do it,” I said. An animal crawling away is trying to die in peace. While she was making arrangements with the vet ER and trying to find her purse and car keys, I found him under her bed. He was barely within my reach, but just enough. I pulled him out. It was his second-to-last burst of strength. His paws clung to that rug, each scraping inch saying “don’t pull me out. Let me die alone and in peace.”

 

No. I won’t let you die alone. I will let you will die in peace. But here. With us. With your family. I pulled him out and held him in my arms. I took his pulse with my mom’s iPhone. 135 beats a minute. Not good. He let out a yelp and another yelp too. It was kind of like the bark he used to make, happily and excitedly, when he heard his dad’s truck pulling into our home. But this time it was different. It was The Fear. He was confronting death. Why me? Why now? Why ever? He was only five months old but he was pretty smart. I knew those would be his final words. As I held him, I kept track of his pulse, which suddenly dwindled to nothing. And he was gone.

 

He was so young, so cute, so undeserving to die.

 

How many families have pets and love them like members of the family, which they are? Have much delight do these cute little animals give us! How happy are we too see them and hear their little footsteps! What fountains of love and trust are they!

 

We all love our pets very much and their loss is hard to bear. Very hard. But how much harder than losing a pet is losing other family members, ones who are human. America killed 1.5 million civilian in Iraq. That is a lot of people. Those peoples’ families grieve. 4,000 veterans dead and 300,000 returned home with traumatic brain injury. Those peoples’ families grieve. There is a lot of depleted uranium there too. Some kids are just born like blobs. Maybe they don’t have the right bones, or they are missing some sense organ or two, or one or two of their orifices. I would really be sad if I had a kid born like that. It is not only Iraqi kids being born like that. Even Amerikkkan military kids are being born like that.

 

Multiply all of this suffering by the dozens of foreign adventures instigated by the military industrial complex of Amerikkka since World War II. It becomes death unto millions. Millions of people dead. Dead, injured, all busted up. Dead, injured, busted up for no particular reason. None that I can tell. It is not right. We pay for it. We pay for it with our tax dollars. The non-stop killing spree eats up half of our federal discretionary spending.

 

If our family is this bent out of shape over the death of a dog, how would it feel if it was your mother, your father, your aunt, your uncle, your sister, your brother, your niece, your nephew?

 

But the politicians do nothing. They go along to get along, lest they be labeled “weak,” or simply killed like JFK. Political science calls this “path dependency.” I call it moral cowardice.

 

 Millions of dead people is a lot of dead people. When will this insanity stop? How can we make it stop? We must make it stop. I don’t know how to make it stop. I would like for it to stop. Amerikkka, can you stop killing people please? Please stop killing people. You will be a better country if you do.

 

Is this just a crie d’coeur for my family and I? Is it over a puppy? Is it trite in a way? He was just a dog. Dogs die all the time. No. It is not. We grieve each in our own way and each in our own time. The way I am grieving now, I am grieving for the whole world. My crie d’coeur is a crie d’coeur for the whole world.

 

I don’t want to hear politicians talk about “pragmatic politics” anymore. I don’t want to hear them talk about “incremental change.” I don’t want to hear them talk about how change “during the next election cycle.” I want Amerikkka to stop fucking killing people. Those people Amerikkka keeps killing, they never did anything to me. I don’t want to kill them with my tax dollars. It is not right. We should stop doing it.

 

If it hurt my family this much to lose a dog, what about those endless wars? What about those drone strikes? You kill a few dozen at a pop on those. At weddings. At baby naming ceremonies. At festive occasions. At occasions that are supposed to be festive, but when you see body parts splattered everywhere and you are shrieking with horror, I guess it is probably not very festive. What are they thinking, those left alive? Even if they still have all of their body parts, and are not about to pass out with pain from their injuries, I think they must be very confused and frightened. I bet they must be thinking “What just happened? What did we do? Why did this happened? Why is my aunty is pieces? She used to bake me delicious cookies and stroke my hair when I was little. What did she do? Where did this death come from? What did we do to deserve this?”

 

I have thought about this over the years, all of this geopolitical stuff, this endless fucking serial murder done in my name. Even though I don’t agree with it, it keeps happening anyway.

 

But I thought about it again now, because a cute little weiner dog named Lincoln died last night. I keep waiting to hear him come around again. His little excited footsteps. Tappity tappity tap.

 

Let us be realists. Let us demand the impossible. Not an end to death. Not an end to nature doing what nature does. Just an end to human misery. The kind created by humans. We should start there. We have the power. We should do it. Can’t we? We can. Shouldn’t we? I think we really should. Don’t you think we should? We would probably feel a lot better if we did.

 

Let us be realists. Let us demand the impossible.

[BO]

I assure you. If I had a choice between saving a neighbor from a burning house, or my pet, I'd choose my pet. I respect and love him much more than any of my neighbors. Besides, he IS family.

As to ending human conflict. I s'pose the only way to deal with that is isolate the greed chromosome and do like mendelson, and breed the evil out of ourselves. 

Be thankful you live in one of the most liberal places in the US -- possibly, the globe. A place where you can find some agreement and empathy with your POV. And a place where the idea of 'eating the rich' might actually happen. (thinking of a nice pit-style barbecue)

The US does nothing in my name. Nor, anyone else here. Just because we live on a bit of soil that some asshole politician thinks they rule, does not make it so. Sure, we play the game to stay out of jail, but they don't own our  minds. In time they WILL destroy themselves. Until then, we surf.

[pan]

When we visited Hawaii I felt like we should be there.  It felt exactly the same as when we drove through the Hopi Nation.  This is an occupied nation.  This is not really a part of the United States.  It is sacred land that in ancient and belongs to something else.

Sugar was the first reason.  A flourishing culture based upon taking what you need from the abundance growing there was turned into a sugar economy supplemented by poor Portuguese workers.  And then the sugar left - cheaper to grow somewhere easier to exploit - and all that was left was the military and tourism and poor families living together.

When I was in San Francisco I dated (odd term....that seems so out of date) a woman from Hawaii.  She was Korean/Japanese, a mix one wouldn't find in Korea or Japan.  I took offense the first time she called me a haole.  After taking walks she would be upset about the looks she was getting from the Asians for being with a white guy.  We broke up.  A while later she went back to Hawaii to be there as her mom died.  Carin was an aspiring poet and began mailing me manila envelopes stuff with her writing and drawings.  Our exchange of letters continued for at least a month.  Apart but very connected I forgot why we didn't work together.  I asked her to marry me.  Fortunately she hadn't forgotten how we were together and she said no.

[waldopaper]

believe my 10-year-old laptop is fixing to crash.  backed up all the files i needed,  probably won't be long. 

not nearly as sad as a lost puppy..

however it will be scarce getting another platform on which to work because the "bank" is robbing me.  business as usual.  except now my own disc drive is making noises.  getting the passive-aggressive "i-hate-you-and-wish-you-would-die" vibes from ms. waldo.  i feel like a broken toy. 

went up/down the ladder a few times this morning and now just want to take a nap.  naps last about 12 hours.  ms. w dragged me to the doc a few months ago saying she was "afraid" i might get "violent." (whaaaat??? between naps???) so doc scribed some tranqs and now brain is like an unplugged juke box.  no lights,  no sound.  collecting dust. 

"so when can we expect payment?"  next time you scoop my account clean empty.  bitch. 

[hannah j]

damn, waldo, are YOU afraid you might get violent?

watch those ladders, they are the old geezers bain!

love you!