Deborah Young's Open Salon Blog

The Obvious Double Standard

Thu, 31 May 2012 09:05:24 -0400

If an alien landed tomorrow and glanced at the current political environment, even he would have to admit that the double standard that exists in America today is both obvious and pathetic.

"This truly groundbreaking piece of journalism comes courtesy of the hard-hitting Los Angeles Times. The article, “Ann Romney and Dressage: A Pricey Private World,” exposes Ann Romney’s “passionate engagement in dressage, a sport she believes helps her deal with multiple sclerosis.”

It should come as a relief that the newspaper was able to unearth such a game-changing story before the November elections. After all, we wouldn’t want a horseback riding First Lady like, say, Jaqueline Kennedy.

We'd rather have a first lady who wears $500.00 sneakers for a two-hour photo op at a soup kitchen. Now that is not out of touch.

Ann Romney took up dressage at age 50 as a therapy for multiple sclerosis, but it soon became her passion. Riding, she has said, "sings to my soul."

So we had to sit through the endless blogs and news shows and magazine columns about the 1% who are so out of touch with every day America THEY RIDE HORSES.

And then I pick up my copy of Rolling Stone Magazine dated June 7th and I am reading the article on "The many lives of Adamn Yauch", the Beastie Boy who died of cancer recently.

In Brian Hiatt's article he describes Yauch's final years. "Over the past couple of years, between treatments for the salivary cancer that spread and finally took his life on May 4th, Yauch started riding horses. If you're looking for a final image of Adam Yauch, you could do worse than this one: Thin, white-bearded, a cowboy hat on his graying head, Yauch would slip Western boots onto stirrups, take the reins and ride through vast, peaceful green fields in rural Tennessee." [Later described as One%er Sheryl Crowe's 154-acre compound.]

Conservative: BAD for riding horses.

Liberal: GOOD, BRILLIANT, PROFOUND for riding horses.

:sigh:

And it's never ending.

Romney: BAD for attending exclusive, private highschool.

Obama: GOOD, BRILLIANT, PROFOUND for attending exclusive, private highschool.

Romney: BAD for driving a cadillac

John Kerry: GOOD, BRILLIANT, PROFOUND for owning an enormous yacht he berths in Rhode Island to avoid the taxes in Massachusetts he supports for everybody else.

etc. and etc.

Robert F. Kennedy's estranged wife hangs herself

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:05:37 -0400

I grew up in Massachusetts where the Kennedy's reigned as their own dynasty.

When I was 10 Ted Kennedy and his 12 secret service agents had coffee at our house since my father was campaigning for him. I was woken from sleep and marched out to our livingroom to meet "our next president."

The tragedy that touches the Kennedy's and anybody who comes into their lives shows no sign of abating.

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s estranged wife, Mary, who battled her husband’s rumored philandering by turning to alcohol and prescription drugs, hanged herself in a barn on their Westchester estate yesterday, sources told The Post.

The 52-year-old mother of four — the latest victim of a family dynasty cursed with tragedies — may have taken her own life because she was haunted by her broken marriage, her friends lamented.

“She was deeply troubled, abusing alcohol and prescription meds,” a close family friend said. “She had cause. She was used up and tossed away by Bobby. That was awful.”

Officials refused to elaborate on her death and said it would be investigated with the Westchester Medical Examiner’s Office.

Bedford police responded at 1:36 p.m. to a report of a “possible unattended death” — meaning there were no witnesses — at the estate.

After authorities arrived, they cut her down and tried to revive her. She was found by a housekeeper, ABC News reported."

Robert Kennedy is currently dating actress Cheryl Hines of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Invisible Pain

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:04:04 -0400

We made the journey from Hawaii to Colorado because my husband felt his bones calling him home. We built a log home on the river, 6 acres of alfalfa, magpies and eagles and blue herons follow the river home.

I followed his bones, knowing we had to leave, the doctors in the Islands are 3rd rate, full of shrugging shoulders and glazed eyes. One of his neurologists gave him 300 oxycodone in what I suspect was a suggestion for suicide. It took 3 pharmacies to fill such an outrageous prescription.

A deer carcass, a doe, trapped on rocks in the river now that it's Spring. Our blue heeler keeps wading out trying to drag it to shore. Little Joe waits anxiously on the shore, hopping back and forth, greedy to gnaw on deer bones and later kiss me on the mouth. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Some people handle their illnesses with great dignity and not without melancholia. We handle it with arguments in between days of peace. But then another one erupts and there is anger and denial and self-pity and it's an endless merry-go-round: Groundhog Day. God gives a man M.S. who has no coping skills and that equals disastrous reactions.

Nobody is growing up around here, just growing old.

I fill my days with work & volunteer, singing, church. An attempt to live my life on my own terms cuz if not now, when? He spends his days alone, his thoughts a neighborhood nobody should walk in alone.

The dogs run down the river, shaking off the cold water, drinking it in.

As Greg Correll puts it: "You did not ask for the work of me." I did not ask for the work of him. But thought it would be easier than it is.

Why I am not paying for your birth control

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 08:03:28 -0400

Straw Man Argument: "A sham argument set up to be defeated."

As I listen to both sides argue about this "access" to birth control for women and the need for the Government to pay for it, I don't know if I'm in Cuba, standing in line for my free rice pot, given to each family by their "dear leader Fidel" or what? Hey, keep your laws off my body; stay out of my uterus and what we do in the bedroom is none of your business.

Remember that? The one zone of life that was absolutely sacrosanct to Feminism was our own bodies. The State simply had no business getting involved in "our bodies." Anna Quindlen used to rightly be righteous over the absolute sovereignty of a woman's body.

And now some American Women are demanding the Government pay for their birth control? Why do we need Big Daddy Government to pay for our birth control? What up, Generation X?

President Obama says the insurance companies will just give "free" contraception. But as we all know, nothing is for free. "unless drug manufacturers decide to start handing out free contraceptives, the money to buy them will have to come from somewhere. " That somewhere, of course, is us.

Birth control is one of the most affordable things within the healthcare hierarchy.

The price of a condom in the U.S.: $10.00/box of 36

The price of the pill in the U.S.: 2 kinds of birth control pills can be bought at WalMart or Target for $9.00/month.

The price of a diaphram in the U.S.: $15-$17 at Planned Parenthood.

Sandra Fluke's straw man argument is that over a 3 year period, birth control for women costs $3,000.00. Sorry, ain't true. And even if it was? If you can't afford it? Then you shouldn't be doing it. Big girls can afford their own protection.

What do you want me to pay for next, Sandra? Your Prius? I'm sure you can't afford that either. A dinner at Ruth's Steakhouse? A bottle of good champaigne? Get's pretty pricey, I hear. Organic vegetables for a year? There is no end of things you may want and think you can't afford and therefore will expect me to pay for.

From the ages of 20 - 40 I had no problems affording my birth control. Not as a broke 19 year old college student. Not as an employee with no health insurance. Throw in the occasional vasectomy and the stretches of abstinence, my birth control was a piddly drop in the hat compared to oh, say, rent. Or my first car. That $15.00 diaphram lasts 2 years. The least of my financial woes was the cost of birth control. Good grief, aren't those women demanding that everybody pay for their birth control infantilizing themselves and the rest of us with this sense of entitlement? Are you frickin' kidding me?

We are not babies; we are not helpless. You've just turned the entire Feminist movement on its head. Are we so pathetic as women in the richest country on Planet Earth, we cannot afford our $9.00 birth control pills? Boo friggin' Hoo.

Hey, listen up: I'm not paying for your birth control. I paid for mine, thank you very much. And never once did it occur to me that it was somebody elses responsibility. And I certainly did not come knocking at your door demanding it for free.

The argument goes like this: because you exist, you are owed free birthcontrol/healthcare/college tuition ___________[add entitlement of your choice here.]

Your mere existence creates a debt for me? What did I do to fall into your debt? I can buy my own birth control, how do I owe it to you to pay for yours?

Where does this end? I owe you?

"No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others."

What do you owe me? Seems to me that you have "rights" and I have "responsibilities." If you've created this "social contract" that I must provide things for you and you are the recipient, what do I get in return? Do I get to tell you the kind of man you must date? Must you promise not to take drugs or drink alcohol? Will you come by and wash my windows?

No, I didn't think so. I provide, you receive and you the recepient are not asked to do anything in return. Nice.

Charity is voluntary. Forcing me to pay for what you want is called tyranny.

Hey! Keep your laws off my body. And out of my checking account.

3rd Year Blogiversarry: So much has changed

Wed, 4 Jan 2012 21:01:53 -0500

3 years ago I wrote my first blog about my former boss who made my life miserable and ended up killing herself. It got an E.P. and I was hooked.

3 short years later and so much has changed, while so much has stayed the same.

When I first wrote at my desk at home overlooking Pearl Harbor, my husband was relatively healthy, although dealing with M.S., I was employed full time in my profession and we were enjoying living in Paradise; my son was a teenager still in highschool.

3 years later: we've moved to Colorado, my son is in South Korea in the Air Force and my husband has cancer.

One songwriter says that for the privilege of living each day, we will be given our heartaches, our hardships. Our choices. One cousin just points out that after the age of 50, there's a lot of shit to put up with. Parents aging, getting sick and dying. Our grown children on their own in harms way. Our own mortality on the front burner.

Tonight I got home from my little office in town and my husband said, "let's go on an adventure." He and the dogs had found a buck, dead and decomposing, with a beautiful 3 point rack, on their daily hike. Killed by coyotes and being eaten by them, the head and antlers were still good and in the tradition of True Blood, he wanted to bring that home. Did I want to go and get that in 30 degree weather in the dark? No. I did not. But I said okay and off we went, bundled up against the cold.

We hiked one mile in the sunset; I'm afraid of coyotes, mountain lions, vampires, werewolves and the neighbors large mongrels. In the tradition of Anne Lamott, if a deer looks at me, my nerves are so shot I think it's going to lunge for my throat, instead of mildly chewing tall grass.

But I went. He got his deer head. And we walked along the railroad tracks in the snow, me with the saw, him with the head and antlers. He wanted to take a short cut to our house, being cold and exhausted. But I said, "will you walk all the way with me because I'm afraid?" And he said yes.

And later, in the dark he said, "will you walk all the way with me because I'm afraid?"

And I said yes.