Is It Wrong ...

to eat homemade hollandaise sauce by the spoonful after the broccoli has been finished?

Would be glad to hear of your food sins as we wend our way toward the gorging, er, umm, holiday season.

Tell Women Something We Don't Know

This morning on NPR, former MPBN reporter Jennifer Ludden covered the bloody obvious--my favorite topic.

Women, since about the second I and much of the latter-day Baby Boom started working, continue to make 77 cents to men's dollar. The "news" is that women are much more likely to work jobs without attached health insurance, and that as husbands are laid off due to the Great Recession more and more families are left without health care.

The cognitive dissonance of our corporately controlled hillbilly culture begins to wear. Or maybe it's just frikking November.

What's Stopping Health Care Reform?

We're not stupid. We know the answer. A poll in American Politics Journal shows that we understand it's insurance and big medicine lobbyists, a.k.a. our campaign financing system.
When the heck are we going to do something about it?

Hiatus

I'm taking a little rest from most things internettish. If you want me, catch me old school, e-mail or telephone. Stop in even. I'll be back before you've missed me. Promise.

Yet Another Reason to Read Sunday's NYT

Though I fantasize about spending part of every Sunday reading the NYT and sometimes buy one, it was probably 1998 when I last actually did it.

Articles like this one about the Obamas' marriage by Jodi Kantor make me think about ways to put the Grey Lady back in my weekend. This piece reads a bit like an episode from "West Wing."

The opening 'graph:

Another Washington dusk, another motorcade, another intimate evening played out in public view. On Oct. 3, just a day after their failed Olympics bid in Copenhagen, Barack and Michelle Obama slipped into a Georgetown restaurant for one of their now-familiar date nights: this time, to toast their 17th wedding anniversary. As with their previous outings, even the dark photographs taken by passers-by and posted on the Web looked glamorous: the president tieless, in a suit; the first lady in a backless sheath.

Facebook Blues

Won't go into detail. Suffice to say I had a junior high-esque meltdown at the hands of a "friend's" unintentionally hurtful post and now can hardly bear to look at the pale Wedgwood blue blocks and lettering.

Coincidentally, this morning I was dismayed to learn from NPR that those stupid quizzes people send around are designed to strip information from your FB page. Mostly I ignored them and am generally not that squeamish about sharing information online. That said, I'm not a fan of the under-cover-of-quiz m.o. of the Facebook information gathering.

See ya Facebook. If it weren't for the pictures, I'd delete my account altogether in a minute. May yet.

Swine Flu Beats Vaccine to Maine, Schools Hold Fire

Whether Maine school employees are holding fire, in denial or simply coping as best they can has yet to be determined. In any case, today's news that swine flu numbers are increasing daily accompanied information that less than half the vaccine needed for high risk cases will arrive by early December.

According to the MPBN report, more vaccine will arrive in the first of the year, but the way I'm seeing kids suffering and staying home looks more like mid-winter and the virus is just now getting rolling. Despite my faith in influenza vaccines, I worry that depending on the vaccine alone may not be enough to protect our children. I hope state and federal health officials consider additional methods to mitigate the clearly wicked contagious virus.

It may be we in Maine should not complain. Southern states have been handling the epidemic for weeks with no hope of imminent vaccine.

[update: 16.October.09] Apparently the NYT figured it out too.

Super Local News--Practically Gossip

The Wiscasset Community Center, also to be known, for reasons too Byzantine to explore, as the Wiscasset Recreation Center, has a new website. What is particularly new and wonderful about the site is it appears to be accurate and up to date. Seems like a miracle.

It Helps to Have a Cop for a Sister

Yesterday was hard.

Yes, the weather was beautiful. Yes, I spent the morning in bed, first reading Robertson Davies, then grading and blogging on the computer, my favorite things. Yes, I managed, despite a rotten cold to get out for a short run sans hacking and snot bubbles. Yes, I got a great hair-do at Mia's Shear Perfection. Yes, I got tons of mommy empathy for my plight with Eli and the Millers from Mia who grew up on the St. George peninsula and knows many of the players.

Still, though it was to have been my time with Eli, for most of the day I could not reach him or anyone in charge. Friday, I had said Eli could stay at his dad's because I was headed home to bed after slogging through classes aching, sneezing, coughing and squeaking when I should have been talking. Saturday morning I called and left a message saying I would check in shortly after noon (after my hours of beauty) to see about meeting to pick Eli up.

By late afternoon, after several fruitless calls to Tenants Harbor, I decided to do a favor for my sister who was on duty as a Marine Patrol Officer. She had asked me pick up a bike in Woolwich and run it up Route 1 to Moody's where Corrie would be waiting. (She's not allowed to leave her precinct when she's working.) As soon as I got to Woolwich, my cell rang and it was Joan, Hale's live-in girlfriend, returning my calls. It is impossible for me to convey the hollow, cold bitterness and contempt always dripping from Joan's voice. When I attempted to discern what would work best for her in terms of my picking Eli up, she described my questions as an "inquisition" and hung up on me.

Clearly if I wanted Eli, I would have to drive to Tenants Harbor. This may not seem like a big deal without some history. Suffice to say that in Tenants Harbor the Millers hold sway. There are hordes of them and with little exception they act as a unit. Mia said yesterday, "They're like the Mafia." I am always there alone and Hale always arranges for muscle, relatives or wannabe relatives who do his bidding, to be on the scene. Last week Hale's nephew Josh got dragged into the middle of the mini-drama. Yesterday, it was Hale's sister Anne, though she has generally been an enthusiastic participant.

Last Thursday, when Eli was supposed to come home with me after school, he lied to his teacher, said he had permission to ride his bike home, jumped on his bike and rode to the wharf where his father's boat was tied up at the dock. Eli locked himself in the wheelhouse. Hale was nowhere to be seen.

In my teachery heels and dress I clambered onto the boat to attempt to convince Eli to come with me, expecting Hale to arrive and back me up. (I don't know why, since the number of times he has ever backed me is exactly zero.) When Hale did arrive after about a half an hour, he said he did not have a key for the wheelhouse, though he eventually, after another 20 minutes, got Eli to open the door.

Hale is big, over six feet and 250 pounds of mostly muscle. He could have slung Eli's 104 pounds over his shoulder and set him on the pier, or next to my car for that matter, with a minimum of effort. Instead, he let Eli have his way. Hale sat and empathized with Eli for having to go to his horrible mother's house for the better part of a half an hour, before emerging from the wheelhouse saying, "He won't go. You see if you can get him to go."

Intending to reach in for an ear or a trapezoid--my sister having recently reminded me of our mother's instant discipline move--I boarded the boat again. By the time I got on deck, Eli had jumped down forward and was lying on the bunk with his feet flailing. After getting hit in the chops a couple times I looked around for something to restrain his feet with so I could reach an arm or ear. On the floor of lay several feet of a thick synthetic line, maybe two inches in diameter. It was brand new, stiff as wire and bright white. I grabbed a section and lay it over the top of Eli's ankles and attempted to pull the line together under his feet so I could lean in and pull Eli out of the bow of the boat. At this point, Hale, who had been watching this unfold from the wheelhouse door, moved in to stop me. Mind you, he never told Eli to stop kicking or hitting me, nor did he offer to help get Eli off the boat. In the most menacing voice he could muster, he threatened to report me for "tying up your child" and put his substantial corpus between me and Eli. I could do nothing.

I suggested that Eli was in charge and that someone had to be a grown-up and make him do as he was asked. Hale ordered me off the boat and the property. I said I was not leaving without Eli. Because Josh was there, Hale could not escalate the already heated exchange, so I retreated to my car while the two grown men negotiated with a whining eight year-old about following simple instructions. They failed.

Josh, God bless him, eventually convinced Eli to come talk with me--by this time I had celebrated this festival of eight year-old power-mongering for over two hours. Sadly, the detente was short-lived. I declined the offer to have Eli stay another who-knows-how-long to eat supper and have Hale deliver him to Alna. I'd been down that road before. More than once, including a particularly memorable Thanksgiving, Hale has called to say he couldn't get Eli in the truck. To avoid that likelihood I restated that I was not leaving the wharf without Eli. Josh's work was done. Looking somewhat weary, he went home to his own family.

That left Hale. The best he could do was tell me he was taking Eli home to eat supper, then would bring him back to the wharf. This would get me and Eli home in time for a late bedtime. Again, I had no choice. After another 42 minutes, three minutes before I had promised myself I would give up and go home, they returned. Eli dragged himself into the car and we left. I gave him a lecture about never running away from me again and also told him that if he were roaming the town without adult supervision both he and I were accountable to the police.

Desperate to avoid a similar scene yesterday, I begged my sister to come along. She assented, though hardly enthusiastically. No one wants to wade into the fray that is the Miller/Roberts psycho-drama, least of all my somewhat guarded sister. I was grateful in the extreme.

We arrived at Hale's house at the time I had left on the answering machine--as far as I can tell no one but Eli ever answers the phone there--to find only Joan home. She said Hale's sister Anne had taken Eli to the wharf to "see his father" who had just returned from lobstering. This too is a favorite household pattern. I say when I'll be there and Eli is nowhere to be found when I arrive.

I pulled the pick-up onto the wharf next to Anne's truck. Eli was on the barge next to Hale's boat about 60 yards from the dock. Corrie and I sat and watched for a moment before getting out of the truck. At about that moment Eli jumped in his skiff and began rowing for the dock. When he saw me and Corrie, however, he spun around and headed back to the barge. Apparently his father told him to keep going, row back to the dock and pick up another skiff so Hale could get back in after mooring the lobster boat. Oblivious to this plan, Corrie and I made our way down the pier and onto the ramp where Anne stood blocking our progress with an arm on each railing.

Corrie pulled in close behind her and they began to talk shop. Anne, Eli's school nurse also works as a sternman on her father's boat. My sister's work in the Marine Patrol gives her both status and information. Few fishermen ignore or insult her overtly. As Eli neared the float, Corrie pushed past Anne and descended to the bottom of the steep ramp. I, in wooden clogs, teetered down to where Anne was standing, said hello and stopped. It was clear that Anne was not going to voluntarily lift an arm for me to pass. I moved closer and said, "Excuse me, can I get by." Anne left her hands on the rail and stepped down the ramp ahead of me, saying, "Well, we'll see. He may not even be coming this way."

Eli did come our way, though, and Corrie spoke to him first. "Mayday, Mayday," she said, alluding to his rowing speed and docking ability. "We've been waiting," she added. Realizing to do otherwise might reflect poorly on her, Anne told Eli to get out of the skiff and go with us, though she kept herself between me and Eli. "They have a schedule," she said. I said nothing. Eli tried whimpering, said he had to pick up his dad, and could not conceal his contempt for the idea of going with me.

Eli stepped out of the skiff. In a demonstration of reason and cooperation hitherto unseen and almost certainly for Corrie's benefit, Anne said she would make sure Eli's life-jacket got back on Hale's boat and the bike Eli had ridden to the wharf would get in the back of Hale's truck.

As it is impossible to prove a negative, I cannot say with complete authority that this exchange would have gone south had my sister not been there. Nevertheless, it has been my experience, almost without exception, that when I am alone in Tenants Harbor and anywhere but at Eli's school, my uppermost agenda, i.e. raising a smart son who loves and respects his parents, falls off the radar screen. Too often it becomes an opportunity for Hale to dismiss me and any of my concerns in front of Eli.

I'm guessing because we may be heading back to court, Hale has also begun a campaign of disinformation. He sent the following e-mail to my school e-mail account and CCd his attorney. Except for the one bold addition, I did not edit it.

Lee;
It seems as though you threatened Eli with the police last week after he didn't ride the bus last Thursday. He said something to both me and Joan about how you would call the cops to come get him. I didn't quite believe him but today when he got to the house [after not getting on the bus as he had been instructed] he was scared about the police and he was talking to Peter about it when I got home. He was visibly upset about it.He also told Peter he wanted to see the divorce papers.Bribing Eli to ride the bus on Friday with an icecream at Dormans if he does it is one thing although that is not real good either. After last weeks antics of you on my boat trying to tie Eli's feet up to get him to come with you and now this your conduct has really gone beyond the pale.I suggest you learn to control your temper better and act with a lot more discretion when dealing with him.

[edit: 21:57 Sunday] Forgot to include, speaking of tempers, that Hale sped into the dock in his lobster boat just as I started the truck, stalked up to my window and accused me of some horrible crime by not letting Eli take a skiff out to him. He was waving his arms menacingly and pointing his fingers and calling me his usual litany of names. I responded quietly that there were plenty of people on the dock who could help him get back, including his sister. I did not point out that it was really Anne who decided Eli would have to bend to our schedule, nor did I mention that I had been waiting since 2:30 to get in touch with Eli and it was after six o'clock. I just left.

If I agree to a proposal laid out Thursday by Hale and his attorney, Eli will spend approximately 30 more nights with Hale during the school year than he does currently--Eli and I lose all our Thursdays night turkey dinners at the Alna Store. In exchange, Hale will allow the summer schedule to go from the three days on three days off nightmare the judge ordered when Eli was still nursing, to seven days on seven says off. Also, I will have one extra week in the summer and Hale's current one weekend a month will begin Friday, not Saturday morning as it does now.

If I don't agree, or cannot come up with something Hale agrees to, we head to court, a choice I can ill afford on a long term substitute's wage. That said, to give up on finding a solution that puts Eli's overall needs first is irresponsible. Oy.

Any thoughts my friends?

California Dreaming

This morning it seems the only person who ever really understood me was my mother. Or at least she loved me whether she understood me or not. Suddenly, I miss her terribly.

I don't have too much more to say on this, except that I am afraid my own son may never comprehend the nature of my love for him thanks to the nightmare his father and I along with the inimitable Maine Family Court have conspired to create. Hale continues use the courts to reduce the time Eli and I have together. The worst part is Hale and his minions have also shown remarkable skill at eroding the quality of the time Eli and I do have.

Maybe I should chalk this sadness and sense of loss up to shortening days, a terrible cold and not enough sleep. Or maybe I should consider moving closer to the equator.