Subject:	Forest Grove School District v. T.A.
From:	Abby
Date:	Mon, Jun 22, 2009 9:15 pm
To:	Zadik

THE SALVATION ARMY
3695 1st Street, Riverside (Near Library)
Phone:  951.784.3571
(M-F, 9-12, Food Box Delivery Every 90 Days, Gov. Commodities Once A Month)
For 92501 & 92506
(Call 8-4 To Find Out What To Bring)

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CHURCH OF CHRIST MAGNOLIA CENTER
6160 Riverside Avenue
Phone:  951.686.4343
(Call To Check Availability)
(Bag Of Canned Goods)
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ALL SAINTS EPISCOPAL CHURCH
3847 Teracina Drive, Riverside
Phone:  951.683.8466
(Drop In Weekly For Canned Goods)
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CORNERSTONE FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH
1363 Linden, Riverside
Phone:  951.781.8174
(Food every 2 weeks)
Call for distribution time (it was 2:30 pm)

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OUR LADY OF PERPETUAL HELP
5240 Central Avenue, Riverside (parking lot behind sanctuary)
Phone:  951.689.8921
(Food Bank M-F 9-11:30 Am Once Per Month)
(Serving All Areas & bilingual Español)
Bring:  Photo ID And SSN For All Family Members
(our bag had:  vege sushi, 2 small loaves bread, dozen fresh eggs, canned veggies, Ramen, tomato sauce, mac & cheese mix, bananas, zucchini, trail mix bars, dry rice, dry beans, 1# ground beef)

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LUTHERAN SOCIAL SERVICES
3772 Taft, Riverside
Phone:  951.689.7847
(M-Th, 11 am – 3 pm)

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CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
(hot meals Wed 5:30-6:30 p.m. & groceries if available))
3504 Mission Inn Avenue, Riverside
(Take basement stairs)

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ARLINGTON TEMP. ASSISTANCE
(Mon & Wed 11a.m.-4 p.m.
(Tues & Thurs 10 a.m.-1 p.m.) 9000 ARLINGTON, SUITE 112 RIVERSIDE
Phone:  951.689.5620

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RIVERSIDE CITY MISSION
(1 Food Box Per Month Delivered To House)
3878 6th Street, 951.351.5055
Closed Sat, Sun Mon.

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SET FREE
Hot Meals Mon-Sat
2511 10th Street, Riverside
*Breakfast 8 A.M.
*Lunch Noon
*Dinner 5 Pm
*Wed & Fri Dinner @ 4pm

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CALVARY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
4495 Magnolia Avenue, Riverside
Dinner Sun 5:30 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bible portion this week is about Miriam.  Prophetess, big sister to Moses & Aaron, dancer, musician, midwife, feminist…3,321 years ago who lived 126 years. Sister and disser of Moses, apparently.  The verses do not quote what she said to Moses, only that she “spoke ill” of him.  Or rather, she and her brother, Aaron.  Theories include comments about Moses taking a new wife, about God not speaking only to Moses…and Moses’ feelings of betrayal.  (See bible scholars say..., for a more in-depth commentary.)

Jews call “speaking ill” La Shon Ha Ra.  Loosely translated, “the evil tongue” or even more loosely, “badmouthing.” 

Miriam badmouthed her brother, the guy who led her people out of slavery, through the desert, to a Promised Land he never saw himself.  Led by a series of miracles and by a Faith few others could share…he had a lot of critics.  Yet Miriam was punished by leprosy.  And…she miraculously survives and is cured…what lessons are there to learn in this portion?

We have only to look at our daily lives to see that the tongue is mighty.  Words, even without the tone, volume and texture of sound, stir emotion.  Miriam is described as someone who took a tambourine in hand and led the Israelite women in celebratory song after the parting of the Red Sea swallowed up Pharaoh’s army.  This does not sound like a quiet mousy woman.  One gets the image of a vibrant, energetic, loud, dramatic woman, a leader.  Leaders, as we all know, are held to higher standards, as public examples.  So Miriam’s punishment was more severe than Moses’ other critics, even more severe than his own brother, Aaron, doing the same thing as Miriam.  So women are held to a higher standard.  But why leprosy for TALKING?

Because words create attitudes…higher ones, lower ones…with words we have the power to uplift another soul or to bash it further down. 

It seems to me that we use our words most often to focus on what’s wrong.  It’s not just the media, it’s us, mostly the autopilot kind of talking.  To complain…to criticize…to judge others…what Marshall Rosenberg calls “jackling” See NVC concepts...Egos, battling for the spotlight.  Maybe it’s venting, maybe it’s socializing, but the focus is tearing down.

Yet Miriam was forgiven, she was healed, she regained her health and her community’s acceptance. 

The story of Miriam is a reminder that even leaders screw up.  We’re all sinners, on some level.  It’s also a lesson in how powerful words are.  Just before the summer solstice, when kids are out and about, a biblical prompt to use power wisely. 

As we head toward the proverbial Promised Land, my hope is that we will remember it took kind words to get there.  My ancestor was punished, perhaps, because it was hard enough in the hot, dry desert, following an aging man, fueled by faith alone.  Miriam’s community could not tolerate any bad attitude on top of it…fighting among leaders… disunity. 

Is it any different here and now?  We’re in a desert in California.  It’s hot.  Times are tough.  Why can’t we vent a little?  Isn’t it human?  Isn’t it fair? Is asking us not to censorship? Moses is described, at least by biblical scholars as keeping his reactions to himself despite feeling strong emotions.

It’s censorship when leadership imposes it on otherwise free citizens.  So we let it all hang out, but watch what you say, somebody might be recording it.  Cops carry hidden tape recorders.  New cell phones have digital sound recorders; video cameras….I say this not at all to instill fear.  More to instill awareness.  Say what you want, keeping in mind there may be a record of it somewhere, quite literally.  Would you speak the same words if someone showed you a transcript of your day’s utterings, every day? 

Marcella Mayer, founder of Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness and live relay advocate died May 26, 2009.  LA Times ran her obituary today.  See LA Times story

I started using live relay in 2006.  I know I began choosing words more carefully when I replaced voice telephony with live relay, because if I say anything mean or nasty, I’m confronted with my own words when I review the relay transcript before calling back… one benefit of being functionally deaf is a certain increase in self-awareness.

I’ve always thought that teaching via fear is a bad idea.  Nobody’s really motivated to do anything good while driven by fear.  No teacher really feels good about using fear to manipulate students.  So censorship usually works when it’s self-censorship, aka discipline.  Like Moses, keeping quiet when he felt like doing something else.  Continuing to pray even if choked with emotion (as scholars say, see above).

Sometimes I think being quiet when I think I have something I’m bursting to say is just another form of love, a form of giving, tithing…not saying everything we think, not sharing it all, not letting it all hang out all the time.  Secluding oneself in prayer, thought, self-reflection instead of saying everything we think.  If it’s worth saying, there’s usually another opportunity to express the same idea.

We live in a State within a Country, both of which are very invested in free expression.  One expression I hear from college students a great deal starts with…”I am pissed at…”  I even find myself saying it sometimes, then on a good day, I just stop.

It is after all an American civil right to say anything to anyone except at certain designated times in certain places…religious services, crowded theatres, public hearings…there are more places to speak uncensored than there are places where speech is limited in some way.

If you wanna express yourself, as an American, there’s always some public place to do it.  We’re proud as Americans of our Constitution, particularly the First Amendment.  I am proud to live in a country with a First Amendment.  Legally it means you can’t get arrested for dissing someone, you might get sued for defamation, or worse, physically attacked, but you get to say whatever you want.  Police call it a “verbal.”  It’s not a crime to tell someone you feel like chopping them up into little pieces and stir frying them with soy sauce on the hibachi.  That does not mean one must do so all the time.  It’s not a crime to flip someone off on the freeway….does that mean we “should” do it?  Just because we can?  Ugly words are a bit like leprosy, they spread, get uglier, some might argue that the right words directed at the right time to someone who is vulnerable can and do kill some of the people some of the time.

And so it was with Miriam.  Scripture does not say she was arrested, or thrown in jail.  It says she was punished, not by Man.  By God Himself.  With a disfiguring skin disease.  A beautiful, young, vibrant woman, stricken with a disfiguring disease that sometimes kills. 

Still avoiding badmouthing out of fear (of disease) is tiresome, even for the very faithful who believe the scripture literally.  What’s a more positive motivation?

Most faithful people believe in charity.  Some of us think of it as tithing, a number, a percentage, a check that’s written to somebody.  Another bill to pay.  When there’s no money to tithe we can still tithe with our words…with our time…10% about God or something God might enjoy, like a song, an entertaining story, focused attention, or a kind word.  One out of every ten words you speak?  Six minutes out of every waking hour?  I invite you to take up this challenge…try it and see what happens….

Unit 3 Lesson Six

Language Arts:  Composition/Argument

Benjamin Maxwell Ovitsky (with permission of the author)

It was dark within the mind of one Max Ovitsky save for the harsh glow of a single neon light.

Geoff sat on a steel bench with his arms out stretched, watching coolly as Henry paced back and forth. Eventually he grew bored of watching and spoke up, "So... what do you want to do?"

Henry looked up, his already pale face nearly glowing in the light. "What do you mean?" he replied. For all he cared he would rather count specks of dust than talk with his lazy counterpart.

Geoff threw his head back and let out a chuckle, replying, "You do realize I can hear anything you think, right?"

Henry wasn't fazed. "Of course. After all we are the same person." Henry slowed his pace. "What do you have in mind?"

Geoff grinned, "How about we go exploring?"

Henry scoffed. "Nothing to see around here until he wakes up."

"Well, then lets wake him up!” said Geoff.

Henry stood still and stared. "You're insane," he calmly stated.

Geoff smirked, "That's just a matter of opinion. Everyone has some degree of insanity."

Henry raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

Geoff's smile disappeared. "I dare you to defy that logic."

Now Henry was interested. After all, he never backed down from a challenge. "Well, if everyone were insane than insanity would become sanity and therefore none would be considered insane because they would simply be normal."

Geoff scowled. "You and your logic."

Now it was Henry's turn to grin, as he replied, "Hey, you dared me to."

Notwithstanding the irrational ruling in Unus discussed at Suing for Fourth Amendment Violations, the last time I checked, we still had a Fourth Amendment in this country.

If a roommate calls 911 because he or she is not getting their way at home and wants to harass us, and local police show up, the first question for local police should be, "Do you have a warrant?"  If the answer is no, they have no legal right to enter private premises, period.

The fact is, they do, and they did a few weeks ago in Riverside.  In fact, they broke a door down.  Admittedly, the door was off its hinges due to loose screws before they got there, but it was vertical and police action made it horizontal.

I disposed of Riverside PD the same way I have in the past.  The first thing I told them is I am represented by counsel.  This did not stop them. The second thing I told them is I have a PHYSICAL impairment that prevents me from "talking" I have a hearing impairment and I asked at least 10 times for assistive technology.  Riverside PD stated, "we do not have assistive technology."  Riverside PD proceeded to make an arguably illegal sound recording of me begging them to go away because there is no emergency and they proceeded to do YET ANOTHER 5150, by reading questions off a card.  This is the first experience I have had with a cop trying to 5150 someone.  You know what kind of questions, "Do you want to hurt yourself?" and "Do you want to hurt someone else?"  After repeating "No, no, it's just the noise that's bothering me," about 10 times, they finally left, advising me to sue my roommate.  I had another plan in mind, suing Riverside PD for warrantless entry.

I got badge numbers, IMMEDIATELY called the supervisor at their station on live relay and made a formal IA complaint for breaking & entering, excessive force, invasion of privacy, violation of The Unruh Act.  I do not yet know the outcome, but the complaint was lodged despite 2 hours of verbal resistance from the supervisor, a Riverside Police Sergent that after two hours of talking to abby realized they have "an education problem."  I told the supervising Sergent that it was an educational problem in January, when I called then to explain my special needs.  now it's a crime, because they were put on notice in January and committed these acts knowingly three months later.  The crime was committed by the police, and I expect them to be disciplined accordingly.

To his credit, my son stated to police, "I did not hear anything," and stayed out of the conflict with the roommate, who may or  may not have been acting alone.  Calling 911 is not a good way to evict tenants.  It's a very good way to get sued for civil harassment by your tenant.

This is a good site for learning about hyperacusis and for emotional support from fellow patients:  HYPERacusis

Joshua in the Desert

(based on true events; names changed to protect privacy)

Once upon a time there was a man named Joshua.  Joshua lived in a small desert town East of the 215 somewhere in San Bernardino County, in the high desert, where tumbleweeds and at least one Confederate flag can be seen blowing in the wind.

Joshua is what we now call “an aging hippy.”  In former days, Joshua went motorcycling and dirt biking around mountain passes, speeding, ingesting a variety of psychoactive substances along the way.  Now he's divorced, his kids are grown and moved away. Joshua's back hurts,  He stays in mostly surfs the web, watches TV, does not eat much, and rolls his own cigarettes to save a buck.  What few psychedelic memories he has are fading fast.

Joshua’s favorite song is Alice’s Restaurant.  His mom passed away almost two years ago, but it seems like a few days to Joshua.  He still has her sweaters in a bag, hasn’t given them to Goodwill yet.

Joshua had wandered in the desert the better part of 50 years.  It was comin’ round Passover time, Joshua was feeling mighty poor, needed to get some money for propane and to fix some of the things mom did not get fixed before she passed, like the oven, which has not worked in quite awhile.  AAA not paid.  Bills piling up.

So, Joshua read the “housing wanted” ads on craigslist and invited a single mom over with her son and asked them to be “paying guests.”

Following about 20 hours of meetin’ and conferin’ in Joshua’s living room with the boy and the mom, smokin’ cigarettes, eatin’ local Chinese food, and discussing everything from where to store books to the whereabouts of black holes, Joshua accepted the two into his home,  took six hundred and sixty dollars in cash of their child support money and gave them keys to his place.

Admittedly, Joshua preferred the boy to his mother, but thought he could deal with anything for two months, and so he said.  The two months became 2 weeks pretty quickly when Joshua realized he could not stop trying to control his new guests.  ‘Course he would not have put it that way.  Joshua would have said he does not want to be screamed at in his own living room, even if he was doin’ some screamin’ himself.

It all boiled down to wireless.  Josh could not figure out how to split a signal, or how to share a signal. The boy connected to the router, this left Joshua without security he felt he needed, and his insecurity took over.  The mom had screamed, “We’ve tried it your way for 20 hours, for God Sake let the kid do it and leave us alone.”  In fact, the kid had them connected and routed within about 20 minutes.

Joshua said, “Yelling is off limits, but if she’s not gonna try to avoid it neither am.”  This after she managed to avoid it for 20 hours over a two week period.

The boy said, they were too much alike to live together. “Trying not to yell” is highly subjective. 

Besides that someone left the gate open and Joshua’s dog ran out; he hasn’t seen the dog in weeks. Joshua confided, “I would not be yelling if my dog were here.”

By the third week the local sheriff had to come and supervise the “guests” moving out before they had finished moving in, and receiving their money back from Joshua, because Joshua was now telling everyone involved that he’s legally incompetent, feels taken advantage of and confused and that his guests (who still had their keys) were “trespassing.”  The sheriff did clarify this last point, namely a person with a housekey they were given is not a tresspasser, but advised the mom and son to get their stuff and go on their way.

It turns out Joshua also wrote a rubber check.  He gave it to the very tired, frustrated now even poorer single mom as a partial refund and then he called up his bank and asked them to stop payment on it.  Joshua does seem very confused indeed now, but not so confused he cannot figure out how to sign a check and put a stop payment on it before the bank can cash it or return it to him for insufficient funds, as they were likely fixin’ to do.

Single mom wonders how it is that Joshua was mentally competent the day he accepted the cash and mentally incompetent two weeks later, or why this was not disclosed in the 141 emails they exchanged or the 20 hours they sat meetin’ and conferin’ in Joshua’s living room.

Single mom is now down at the local courthouse filing a small claim, against Joshua, since Joshua has refused to honor the check.

Now Joshua is sitting in his mom’s empty home, minus the rent and with a new story to tell, another verse of his version of Alice’s Restaurant.  What’s he gonna tell the judge? Just how confused does one have to be to honor a check?  How sane does one have to be to have a checking account and checks printed with one’s name and address on them?

Life goes on, what’s learned?  We Jews retell the annual tale of freedom from bondage, outgrowing the slave mentality.  What enslaves us?  Our anger?  Frustration?  Need to control others?  Expressing those needs too loudly?  Demanding they be met? Isn’t that better than violence, or is it another form of violence, verbal violence?

Dalai Lama says the main source of our suffering is ignorance followed by attachment.  He paraphrases The Buddah as teaching we are ignorant first, then we suffer.  Attachment to people, to outcomes, to money.  That’s the root of all evil.  Control, attachment, all part of one human mind.  The delusion that we can control others.

Joshua had his share of disabilities.  Some of Joshua’s disabilities were the same as those of the single mom who almost moved in with Joshua, but having the same kinds of physical limits did not seem to produce more understanding, acceptance and connection…no more clarity was gained, just more judgment, along the lines of, “you’re not as disabled as I am,”  and “you’re not listening” (after being told what a sound processing disorder is, the need for written communication about anything of any importance) and “you’re not trying hard enough.”  Sounds like, “My pain hurts more than your pain.”  I do not believe that’s a true statement at all.   It’s actions, not words, that count in the end.  And what goes around comes around.

I shared this story (based on actual events) using the real names with the local DA’s office and HUD, only HUD was interested, the DA said, “post dated checks do not qualify for our bad check program. You need to sue him.  It’s a civil matter."

So, here’s HUD’s link and mission statement, which I embrace, as long as the faith is not IMPOSED on tenants, just encouraged, and as long as faith is not limited to one particular flavor.  I would love to see affordable clean & sober interfaith housing for single parents with teenage kids.

The mom and the kid found another place in Southern California and hope to stay there provided it's quiet enough.

"HUD's mission is to increase homeownership, support community development and increase access to affordable housing free from discrimination. To fulfill this mission, HUD will embrace high standards of ethics, management and accountability and forge new partnerships--particularly with faith-based and community organizations--that leverage resources and improve HUD's ability to be effective on the community level."  http://www.hud.gov/offices/fheo/FHLaws/yourrights.cfm

 

The cost of research & development is often sited as the main reason for rising costs in health care, that plus there are more of us now “using the system.”

I do not, for one, use the system.  I am unemployed and insured by a State that provides me with basic health insurance.  That insurance, Med-i-Cal, pays about 78 cents on the dollar, there are very few MDs in my State who will accept it, UCLA refused it and refused treatment.  So, I do not use the system, because the insurance card in my wallet is basically worthless for all practical purposes, because it pays too little and only for treatments that are too late to do anything to prevent disease.

While Congress debates how to cover employees of small businesses, I’d like to make a few points here:

Environmental health & safety at work and in the home can PREVENT some cancers and chronic lung diseases.  In the past 20 years or so, I’ve seen improvements like:

• A huge reduction in tobacco smoking at work and in residences
• Public education campaigns to prevent new users of tobacco and hard drugs
• Public education campaigns to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, use of condoms, etc.
• Public education about the dangerous of driving while distracted and/or physically intoxicated
• Removal of asbestos from new construction
• Release of a few movies like “Supersize Me” that try to educate the public about nutritional choices

We have a long way to go here in preventing disease, for instance:

• Ban perfume in all public places, particularly work places
• Increase the efficiency of existing ventilation systems
• Insist on higher standards for clean air in major cities
• Better noise abatement standards for high density areas (start ticketing owners of car alarms that do not shut off)
• Insist on higher standards for clean water in major cities
• Hand out nicotine patches as well as condoms
• Public education about the dangers of excess drinking/prevention of liver cancer
• Prevention of residential mold by keeping surfaces ventilated and clean
• Public education about the importance of diet/exercise in preventing obesity

I for one have an extreme sensitivity to sound and sleep apnea.  I was misdiagnosed for about 20 years and given all sorts of expensive “designer drugs” that cost a bunch of money, made me feel worse and may have caused my hearing to be worse.  My new RX is peace & quiet, earplugs and a medical device I sleep with (CPAP). 

The CPAP was not covered by my insurance and my understanding is there are hundreds of thousands of undiagnosed patients out there who could benefit from CPAP.  There are studies now showing that untreated apnea, particularly in men, contributes to violence/illegal drug use.  Those guys only have insurance that pays for ineffective pills, not a treatment for the underlying problem, why? 

Peace & quiet cannot be bought or covered by insurance; they can be negotiated by moving, being flexible and being creative.  The medical solution for Abby was something that should be free, but which is difficult to find in a big city, quiet is costly in LA.

Much political noise has been made about health care reform dating back to the Clinton Administration, yet absent bi-partisan support in Congress, nothing seems to happen beyond debate.  The simplest solutions for health care are prevention, inclusion, nationalization.  Everyone should have basic coverage, whether employed or not, regardless of race, religion, parental status, age, gender, immigration status or overall health/pre-existing conditions, etc.  We are one human race; we all deserve health, for God’s sake. 

Including ALL licensed health care providers, not just those who prescribe pharmaceuticals will increase the diversity of solutions, treatments and likely will reduce the cost.  Pay the providers, give consumers a real choice….this approach will also increase free enterprise and put lots of alternative providers to work.

The only concrete suggestion I have heard from Barak Obama so far is reducing the cost of medical administration by computerizing records.  GREAT, but who’s going to pay for all the new computers, scanners, etc.?  There is no reason to continue killing trees to save humans, and the current system of paper shuffling most often results in prevention of care, or provision of the wrong kind of care, because in 15 minutes a government doctor in a public health clinic cannot possibly know her patient’s entire history, unless that doctor can punch it up on a computer, which he or she does not have at this point. There is no government database of patients. Unless the patient is a member of a large PRIVATE HMO like Kaiser, which does have a computerized medical record system.  Maybe public health clinics should copy Kaiser, here.  It’s easier to get the right treatment paid for in Canada, the UK, even Israel, than it is in California.  There is something very wrong with this picture, since California made the first computers.

Computerizing all medical records may be one small change, but this suggestion is the only implementable one I have seen that is actually new, so far.  I hope to see more thinking outside of the box and more inclusion for all providers of health care services, more education and more prevention, which taken together represent my two cents, my prescription for the sick coverage system we now have.
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When something is broken, throwing more money at to expand it does not really help, hence the Republican opposition….fix what’s wrong with health coverage, has privatization of health care run its course?  Equating medicine with pharmaceuticals?  Giving more people more sick health coverage that does not meet their needs (like an expensive sleeping pill for someone with undiagnosed apnea and sound sensitivities….) only makes the problem bigger and uglier and does nothing to address the underlying disease.  We need to study, as a nation, what makes people healthy, what did cancer survivors and people who make it to 115 do differently than those who did not make it?  What about those countries that have a lower incidence of cancer?  Education, prevention and creativity are needed here, not more of the same.  I applaud the President for making a start in the right direction.

 miracle report:

p.p.s.

Since we did not make it to services this Purim, I re-read Book of Esther aloud (10 short chapters).  What a gal, that Esther....point of story tonight seems to be that turning it around is something we have done before and can do again....