CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO: GOLF, PROSTHETICS, DEATH AND POLITICS

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO:  GOLF, PROSTHETICS, DEATH AND POLITICS

February 13, 2016: I’m watching the Pebble Beach Pro Am, as the fog rolls over the golf course and the waves crash on the shore. Alan should be there with Abbie and Holden, but so far the camera is fixed on the likes of Mickelson, Kang and Rose, as well as Wahlberg and Timberlake. The greens look really bumpy – that was Tiger Woods’ reason for not entering this tournament most years. Maybe that’s why Mickelson’s putting from relatively short distances looks so bad. Justin Rose just took the lead, rather is tied for the lead, at 13 under on the third day. I don’t know the other golfer in the lead (Hiroshi Iwata?). Tomorrow is the annual Together With Love 10 k run/walk for the Monterey Rape Crisis Center. I started that race with Linda Childs more than twenty five years ago. What a joy to wake up at 5 am in order to schlep over to Lovers’ Point in Pacific Grove to set up for the race. When I return to California, I just might run/walk in that race next year. It’s for a very good cause.

Speaking of running, the Admiral and I went to Tampa this past week and met with Jason and Loi of Prosthetics Design and Research. Jason says he can design and construct a better prosthesis for me. Hallelujah!! His technique involves a vacuum pump that forces out all the air and pushes the leg below the knee out to the sides of the socket. With the leg pushing against the sides of the socket – all the way around – Jason says that my thigh will be doing most of the work of carrying the weight while walking. He said it’s too much to ask my little PRL (partial right leg) to carry nearly three hundred pounds of weight. I thought so too. All these months I have been struggling with pain and intense pressure on the end of my leg, at the bone and on the sides, as I got used to the pin style of prosthesis. I got the pin style in September. It has been an improvement over the suction style, which I wore from the end of May until September. But it still ends up putting most of the weight and pressure on the end of my leg, which is not ideal for walking, let alone running. Jake has challenged me to run a 5k with her in October of this year. I get to pick the race. I’m hoping the new prosthesis will make my participation possible. Jake is already in training, having run 2 miles in 20 minutes. Since my best time for the mile – with both legs – was about 9 minutes in the 10 k races I ran, I would say that Jake is almost ready for the challenge.

I spent several hours today mourning the death of Jonathan and Renee’s 9 year old daughter, Saige, who died suddenly this past Tuesday morning. She had been sick with the flu, just like everyone else in the family, including her 4 year old brother and both parents. There was an autopsy, but I don’t know the results. She had not been ill before she got the flu, and she had no chronic disease that weakened her. She was a healthy, talented artist and poet at her tender age. The Catholic Church where the funeral service was held was packed. Everyone who lives in the Keys must have been there. The priest noted that the crowd was much larger than what he normally gets for Sunday mass. There were a lot of young girls and boys who were Saige’s age. One young girl sat in front of me. She and her family had just returned from a New Hampshire ski vacation with Saige and her family. This young girl had been hospitalized for two days this week, having also been hit by the flu. She survived. Saige died. No one tried to make sense of this death, but the priest and the fellow who did the eulogy assured us that Saige was now an angel in heaven looking over all of us, especially her family. She sounded like such an amazing person, a “bridge” between family members and friends, wise beyond her years. The eulogist said that God wanted her with Him because she was so special. Well, hold on there, God. Wait your turn! Don’t you think her parents and her brother want her and need her a little bit more than you do? I guess not. And for those who believe in eternal life, Saige is now enjoying eternal life. I hope her parents have a very strong faith. I would be very angry; in fact, I am very angry that Saige was arbitrarily taken from them. And I’m still angry that my sister, Jean, died at the age of 55 in 1996 and my nephew, Doug, died at the age of 37 about ten years later. I’m angry for my mother, who wanted to celebrate her 100^th birthday, but died in August, 2009 at the age of 99 and ½. Yes, she had a good life, but why couldn’t she be a centenarian? Was the gift of eternal life so pressing? How about another couple of years on earth, so she could continue to serve as a role model for how one “grows old” while keeping one’s intelligence, judgment, wit and humor?

I almost envy people who have a firm belief in everlasting life, the rapture, the tribulation, the millennium – the whole nine yards of Christian belief, as spelled out in Revelations and by various prophets throughout the Bible. Of course, I would love to see my sister again, and my nephew, mother and father (who died at 46). But my sister was cremated, as were my nephew and mother, so what body will they return in? This is where belief in reincarnation may come in handy. I don’t mean to be glib, but I do have a lot of questions. Would my mother return in her 99 and ½ year old body, or in a newer model? Would my sister still have lymphoma? Would Doug have medulloblastoma? Their bodies were ravaged by their cancers. Are they entitled to get healthy, new bodies before they return to earth with Jesus Christ? We are supposed to be very close to the rapture, because we have so many wars going on in the Middle East. As soon as all the nations join into the Middle East wars, the rapture occurs. I kid you not. Read Target: Israel. It’s dense reading, but it spells out all the prophecies and how many things have already come to pass, just as predicted in the Bible. This is not my usual reading fare, but a fellow boater lent it to me, and I always finish a book I’m reading. It was an eye opener regarding the critical role that the nation of Israel plays in the return of Christ to earth. I had no idea.

If you’re wondering, I believe I’m agnostic, but there is a part of me, based on all my years of Sunday school teaching and based on observing my mother’s faith deepen through the years, that really wants to believe in God, Yahweh, Allah, Buddha – an all-powerful being with a grand design for humans.  But then one of my close family members dies, and my quest for faith gets a huge setback again. Each death seems so cruel. And the cancer before the death is devastating. So I get angry at the unjust treatment of my loved ones. They are/were extremely good people – they deserved to live longer. They deserved to be healthy. My sister had a strong faith in God. My nephew was a brilliant electronic engineer who never hurt anyone. Let me say that again: my nephew. Never. Hurt. Anyone. He helped a lot of people, who talked about his great support for them at work and his ability to explain difficult problems so that they could solve them with him. When I had shoulder surgery, he came from his home to mine – a drive of 4 hours – to help me curl my hair in the mornings. Really. It was unbelievable. He didn’t even know what a curling iron was before I showed him mine. He had already undergone a ton of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. But he wanted to help me. So I don’t get why he died at 37 years of age. I just don’t get it.

It’s Saturday night on President’s weekend at the marina, and one very drunken man is screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. What a way to celebrate a holiday! Washington and Lincoln would be so proud. I wonder who he supports for President. Don’t get me started. On the other hand, start me up. I think I wrote a rant about the adjective “untrustworthy” and how it is wrongly applied to women. You may remember the history of criminal laws, where women are the victim. No man could be convicted of the crime of rape, for example, unless there was evidence to corroborate the “untrustworthy” woman. Women were not allowed to be witnesses or jurors for a very long time – they were too “untrustworthy”. Everyone should take at least one class in the oppression of women down through the ages – in high school. Then perhaps we would not have female college students telling national political reporters that they do not support Hillary Clinton because she is “untrustworthy”. I place the “untrustworthy” label at the door of the men and women who still believe that most women are “untrustworthy.” Now most of these female college students have no clue about the history of this word and how they have been gulled into regurgitating the old sexist view that women, in general, and Hillary, in particular, are untrustworthy. They would feel a bit foolish, I hope, if they knew how they had been duped. Or not. It’s extremely hard to prove that a woman is trustworthy, after the “untrustworthy” label has been affixed to her. It’s so sad that they do not even realize how sexist this term is, as applied to women over the centuries.  Give Bernie Sanders his due: he knows how to go after a female adversary without appearing overtly sexist. Or he just picked up where the Republicans left off with their impugning of Hillary’s reputation.  Hey, no one wants an untrustworthy person for President of the U.S. So I guess we’ll never have a woman President, so long as every new generation buys into what the older generations have been selling for years. This is what Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright need to be talking about.

Hillary Clinton is the best candidate for President, hands down. She happens to be a woman. And just like every other woman, she has been subjected to discriminatory treatment all her life. Why should the Presidential campaign be any different? I knew that women would be her toughest critics, especially young women with no history of the women’s movement – how can they call themselves feminists? Women have always been tougher on women than their male counterparts. Try to pick a jury in a domestic abuse case or rape case – women jurors frequently feel superior to the female victims and vote “not guilty” because THEY would not have gotten beaten or raped, so why believe the women victims who are supposedly pouring their hearts out on the witness stand – everyone knows that women are UNTRUSTWORTHY. There it is again.

How many times in the past 5 decades have I heard: “I support women, just not THIS woman. There is always something wrong with the woman in front of you, who deserves to be believed. But since birth, you have been ingrained with the notion that women should not be believed. Maybe one day a woman will come along in whom you can believe, but that’s unlikely. At any rate, you know for sure that you cannot trust THIS woman. In politics, I hear some women say they would support Elizabeth Warren – we’ll see. If a Bernie Sanders type opposes her, and she is perceived as “untrustworthy”, the women will flock to the more “trustworthy” man – again and again. Those women who now support Bernie most likely supported Barack Obama against Hillary too. He was for “hope and change.” And Hillary wasn’t? Look, I’m not saying we should rally around any woman who runs for office – Sarah Palin is a very good example of a woman-hating woman who should not garner our votes. Hillary is the opposite. She is not a queen bee. She has fought for women’s equality and racial equality all her life. She is a very good person. She is also super intelligent. And she came from a rock-ribbed Republican family. But once she saw how the world treated women and minorities, she started to work to improve our positions in society. She is the real deal. There will never be a better woman candidate, ever. There may be women candidates who are equally good, but they will not be better than Hillary. My first image of her is in Founders parking lot at Wellesley speaking out forcefully against the Viet Nam War – 1966. It wasn’t easy to do that, but she had the courage of her convictions – and she still has the courage of her convictions. I know we want women candidates to be perfect – she should have voted against the Iraq War. But we certainly don’t hold male candidates to a standard of perfection. Remember Bernie’s writings about raping women? Oh, it was just a fantasy, that’s right. And it was so long ago. Certainly, he has changed his attitudes toward women. Maybe he has. But that’s not the point.

It is time to stand up for Hillary. She has earned our respect and she has earned our vote. Please don’t reject her with the sexist term “untrustworthy”. This just shows your lack of historical perspective on how that word has been used to keep women down and to keep them out of public service. If you are going to call yourself a feminist, know the history of feminism and learn about the battles we have been fighting for all women for the past 50 years. Is it time for a woman President? Of course, it is. It’s way past time –we should have women Presidents going back to the era of Gold Meir (originally from Wisconsin) or the times of Margaret Thatcher. Not just any woman president – not former Governor Palin – but dammit, when the most qualified person in the race is a woman, and that woman is Hillary Clinton, VOTE FOR HER! You need to be able to tell your daughters and sons that you did the right thing in 2016 – for yourself and for them.