Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Kate Mulgrew Explores Inner Space in "How To Forget"






It is unsparing, this baring of a woman's, and a family's soul. This is an actress. She is well known. I suspect there is a part of the rest of us, though we know better intellectually, that assumes her fame has, or will, spare her the crucible of life and its many sufferings. After all, if you have followed her career, it took off early, in Ryan's Hope, a popular soap opera, a mini-series, The Mannions of America and more, and to the eye of the entertainment consumer, it soared, literally, into outer space with Star Trek Voyager. Of late she has returned to a harsh fictional life in Orange is the New Black. I didn't know of her when she was in Ryan's Hope. I haven't been intrigued enough to watch Orange is the New Black.  I was an admirer of her characterization of the first female Captain in the science fiction of Star Trek. I was working as a prosecutor of other lawyers then, and I wished I had the calm command of my earthbound duties that her character managed lost in a far flung universe. It is easy, watching reruns these days, to imagine that the actress composing the role of beauty, strength and command, was unencumbered in reality by the troubles the rest of us endure. Or maybe it is merely, to quote another famous person, "a consummation devoutly to be wished".  But, of course, the truth is, and we have always known, that being an actor, having fame, having money, these are not talismans which protect from the human condition. Life itself is unsparing, to all of us, whether it is public or not.

What I felt mostly in reading Ms. Mulgrew's book, though naturally my particular experiences have differed enormously from hers (not the least of which because I am an only child and she had and has many siblings) was kinship. There were so many common touch points of emotion, of frustration, of doubt, of being misunderstood, of being too much relied on and too little appreciated, of obligation, of love expressed, and too often unexpressed, of reliving times and places long gone, but having nonetheless the effects of them, good and bad.

Toward the end of her run in Star Trek Voyager, in 2000, Ms. Mulgrew was called home to her family to face that too often diagnosis of the 21st century, the Alzheimer's of her mother, the devolution of which would occur over the next nine years. For much of that time, travelling to and from her work to the place and people that had formed her, she was the health care proxy, the main decision maker. regarding her mother's care. During that slow death would come the far quicker death of her father, in 2004, while she was performing a one woman show about Katherine Hepburn.

The flow of memories wends its way between the most recent reality of lives upended, to the past realities of sadness and fondness. It is the story of gains and losses, of joys promised and the nature of powerful but imperfect love between spouses and among children. I read somewhere that Ms. Mulgrew was concerned about how her siblings would receive her unvarnished rendition of their various relationships, and of her own part in handling the affairs of her mother, and father. I have also heard an interview or two. Ms. Mulgrew (who my contemporary) is articulate and blunt. I am guessing that she doesn't suffer fools lightly. I found myself wondering whether, if we knew each other, we would get along. I think I am pretty direct, and people either like me or dislike me, but are rarely indifferent. She candidly says about her siblings that she wrote (and they were aware she was going to write of them) that it is how she saw it, nothing more. Still, this is a writer who takes risks, in my view. And I guess I like her all the more for it.

Joan Keirnan was an East Coast girl, born in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, a denizen during and after college in New York, Boston and Chicago. She was a girl going places, from my sense of the tale. She had two best girlfriends, one of whom was a Kennedy. She worked for John Kennedy. She was passionate, mentally agile, and creative. Thomas Mulgrew was an Dubuque, Iowa boy, rough hewn handsome and charming. He met Joan, in Chicago. She talked deep, this good Catholic girl, of philosophy and religion and she mesmerized him. He said that she ran out of options as her two friends got married. So she and the Midwestern Catholic boy got together. I suppose he promised her everything, as far as that is possible to any young man for his young woman. But what had begun magically between them was eroded by raising eight children, two of whom died, one at three months, and the other of a brain tumor at 14, and many miscarriages. In so many ways, they came to be at cross purposes. She became less lively, more silent. He withdrew to alcohol and cross word puzzles and kept a careful distance from his children, whom he loved dearly, but for whom such expression was rare.

I wrote, earlier, that there were things that resonated particularly for me, as an only daughter, who always wondered why my own parents ever married and whether my mother ever wanted me.--born nearly nine years after their marriage, about which they told no one for one year.

Ms. Mulgrew writes of her own mother,  "She was a strangely formal woman who had made up a set of rules for herself that allowed her to persevere within the confines of her circumstances. This formality was in itself unusual, because my mother was a lively, intelligent creature who could conduct herself with confidence in any situation. She was not afraid of life, she traveled widely, her curiosity was insatiable, but she was not a conventional mother."

My mother was born in the Bronx, with three siblings, all girls, to two Irish immigrants. She wanted to escape the Bronx, and she wanted to be a model. She was beautiful enough to be one, though probably too short at five foot five. She saw my father, 9 years her senior, a World War Two Veteran, who was mostly self-educated (although she compelled him to go to college on the GI Bill), handsome, charming Greek-Italian American, as something special. He was, but he couldn't provide her need for something she couldn't articulate, perhaps it was the very fame that Ms. Mulgrew found. The difference is that my mother seemed to want her success to come from outside, through her husband. He tried to please her, but she was never happy. And when I came along, though she did all that was required of a mother, and more, in terms of my education and appearance and morality (my mother was Catholic, but I never recall her practicing, and only once do I recall her attending Mass with me, whom she sent to private Catholic school, no easy thing with a limited budget, even then), but I always felt that I was on probation for having done something wrong, and I knew not what. She was also not conventional in dress or manner. And whatever rules she had, you did not necessarily know one until you violated it.  And like Ms. Mulgrew's father, she died of an aggressive cancer, though she took the treatment offered her, without ever acknowledging, or perhaps even knowing, what was going to take her life. These were days when doctors did not tell women they were terminal, because they felt they might not fight. I was 20. I had no idea who the woman who bore me was, and I will never know.

Although not with a relative, but with a long time elderly friend, I have also seen the ravages of dementia. Although she is in a nursing home, I am the one charged with decisions about her welfare. After four years, she has forgotten all of us, family and friends. She cannot find words, some days, not at all. Other days, prodded, she notes her trust in God. Other days, she nods her head side to side, in a way that indicates a disapproval of something--I always think it is that her searching of her diminishing mind and the nodding is a sign of the inability to reach what it is to name it-but when I ask about it, there is nothing she can offer.

So, as you can see, I hope, as I read How to Forget, all sorts of things stirred in me about my life, and my relationships and my losses. And and it was almost as if this stranger writing was talking directly to me and in so doing, we were no longer strangers.

Every life is extraordinary.  And now we know the the ordinary extraordinary lives of Thomas and Joan Mulgrew and the Mulgrew family. It was the right book at the right time for me.





Thursday, May 2, 2019

"The New Normal" Hurts My Head

So, I'm driving along the other day and I see this billboard for one of the now ubiquitous Cannabis sellers.  There you are.  "Welcome to the New Normal", I am commanded.


West Hollywood has gone cannabis crazy. Well, California too. And Colorado. And wherever else. I  don't get it. Tobacco was bad for your health and the health of those near and dear. So cigarettes with the highly addictive nicotine was banned.  And vaping, without nicotine or tobacco even, is banned. But I can't walk a block without the skunky second hand smoke of weed. This is better how? To be fully transparent, I attach a link to an expression by this company on why it is, normal. 


I watched it. Very nice. No down side.  I admit it, though, I had visions of "The Stepford Wives".

Then I start thinking, what does it mean, "The New Normal", not just when it comes to weed, but to everything out there, anything out there?

So I hie myself to Google,which I am suspecting will itself fall into the category of "The New Normal". Well it does seem to be a term adapted from technology, from my reading of the English Language  and Usage Stack Exchange. Agile Development (AD) and Service Oriented Architectures (SOD) represent the "new normal". Or the new standard. Ok, I am leaving IT speak.  Then it morphed. Everything morphs. And it becomes in Wikipedia speak to "imply that something which was previously abnormal has become commonplace."

Here's one from the Urban Dictionary.

TOP DEFINITION
The current state of being after some dramatic change has transpired. What replaces the expected, usual, typical state after an event occurs. The new normal encourages one to deal with current situations rather than lamenting what could have been.
Housing costs plummeting is the new normal.

Having less discretionary income after the stock market crash is the new normal.
She expected to be saddened by his departure and accepted her feelings as the new normal.
Spending less on entertainment is the new normal during economic downturns.
Now that the baby was born, having less free time was the new normal for the new parents.
by earlysnowdrop September 22, 2009

You get caught in a veritable whirlwind when you look up the New Normal, or the New Normal and Ethics, and the New Normal and Morality. 

So, here are a couple of headlines:  "Trump's Approval Rating Is Incredibly Steady. Is that Weird or the New Normal" in FiveThirtyEight, by Geoffrey Skelly from March 2019.

Or this. Are Polyamourous Relationships The New Normal? in Thrivetalk, February 2019

And, "AI is the new normal: Recap of 2018" in azure.microsoft.com.

Here's an article I ran across on a hot button topic. 


April 8, 2018 Minister Ulla Tørnæs
My vision – as a Minister for Development Cooperation, as a SheDecides champion, and not least as a mother of three young daughters – is to help create a “New Normal” for all women and girls around the world. A new normal means a world, where women and girls have the power over their own bodies. Their own lives. Their own futures. Without question. Across the globe, we have witnessed several setbacks for the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of women and girls over the last years. Most prominently was the re-instatement of an expanded version of the Global Gag Rule by the Trump administration. Moreover, conservative and religious movements in many parts of the world have been causing us to worry about the current normal.
The current normal is that almost 225 million women and girls globally have unmet needs for contraception. The current normal is that two million girls under the age of 15 become mothers every year. Around 22 million unsafe abortions are carried out with life as a risk. Every day more than 800 women and girls die from preventable causes related to pregnancy or childbirth. This is the normal for millions of the most vulnerable women around the world. I want to contribute to changing that normal. Therefore, women and girls’ full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and their access to modern contraception and comprehensive sexuality education is a key priority for me personally and for Danish development cooperation. I believe that countries like Denmark have to stand up and fight for those millions of girls and women who do not enjoy the same fundamental human rights as we do. I believe it is my obligation as a minister - with the voice, platform and seat at relevant tables that it comes with - to try to speak for the many women and girls, who cannot be there themselves.
It is my firm conviction that a woman has the right to choose with whom she wants to start a family, when, and if, she wants to have children and how many children she wants. We know that women and girls with access to education, information and health services tend to marry later in life, have fewer and healthier children and to become active citizens, who contribute to their societies.

When women’s potential as economic agents is unleashed, women’s rights take leaps ahead and it creates a ripple effect for societies. Investing in women is therefore not only the right thing to do. We also know that it is the smart thing to do. When we invest in women, everybody wins.

At the SheDecides conference in South Africa in March, we stood shoulder by shoulder - governments, parliamentarians, youth representatives, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) showcasing the broad international support to create a new normal for all women and girls. We need to rally support from North and South – from individuals to states. From the poorest villages in Africa to the highest political levels in the UN. Everyone can do his or her part. And governments can play a key role. Governments can act to create a new normal.
The three pillars of the SheDecides movement are Stand Up and Speak Out, Change the Rules, and Unlock the Resources. Governments can do all three. The way to move forward may differ greatly from country to country. In some cases, there will be a need to adopt new policies, revise legislation or ensure better implementation of existing laws. In other cases, there is a need to change perceptions, behaviours and cultures. And in some to improve service provision. Governments have a role to play in all those cases, but governments cannot do it alone. We must work in strong partnerships with parliamentarians, civil society, private sector and youth-led movements.
In Denmark, most pregnancies are fortunately happy circumstances. Women and girls largely have the power over their own bodies and life. Denmark has come a long way towards gender equality. People often say that this is because Denmark is a rich country. I argue the opposite: It is because of gender equality that Denmark is a prosperous country. As an example, Danish women and men are almost equally available for the labour market - 72 percent of women, 76 percent of men. This is good for our democracy and good for our economy.

Globally, we cannot achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, if women are not an active part of the development of their countries. For this to happen, women must have control over their own bodies.

My vision is therefore a new normal. A new normal where all women and girls have the ability to enjoy their rights, fulfil their potential, and make their own choices in life. The message is as important as it is simple: She decides!


That was one of my questions about "The New Normal" in any arena. Who decides? Well in the case above, "she" does. But what if not every she agrees that whatever it is, is well, normal. That brings me to the definition of normal. 

One dictionary. 
nor·mal
/ˈnôrməl/
adjective
  1. 1.
    conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.
    "it's quite normal for puppies to bolt their food"
    synonyms:usualstandardtypicalstockcommonordinarycustomaryconventionalhabitualaccustomedexpectedwontedeverydayregularroutineday-to-daydailyestablished, settled, setfixedtraditionalquotidianprevailing More
  2. 2.
    TECHNICAL
    (of a line, ray, or other linear feature) intersecting a given line or surface at right angles.
noun
  1. 1.
    the usual, average, or typical state or condition.
    "her temperature was above normal"
  2. 2.
    TECHNICAL
    a line at right angles to a given line or surface.

Here's another Urban Dictionary Top Definition

TOP DEFINITION
A word made up by this corrupt society so they could single out and attack those who are different
Normal is nothing but a word made up by society
by Bill October 06, 2005
Get the mug
Get a normal mug for your Facebook friend 
Well, I gotta tell you, my head hurts. Is society ever without coruption? If a majority decides, what about the minority? If the minority decides, what about the majority? If we bring morality into the equation, well, leave it to the God Botherers to do that. 

If though, the definition involves that which was abnormal becoming normal, then we really are in for a howling tough period. Is there a line? I am sure each of us has one. But what right have we to that line? Right now, a 30 year old teacher having sex with a 17 year old student is a criminal offense. I agree. It ought to be. But what if the 17 year old is especially bright, and is in love (that did happen in more than one case); what if there are a bunch of 17 year olds like that?  Will that ever be The New Normal? I sure hope not, but I don't see how it can be stopped given the evolution of that which is "The New Normal". What about polygamy? Doesn't work for me, but we might evolve as a society, right?

Now, as to the Cannabis billboard that started my reverie. Here's a short article from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Is marijuana a gateway drug?

Some research suggests that marijuana use is likely to precede use of other licit and illicit substances46 and the development of addiction to other substances. For instance, a study using longitudinal data from the National Epidemiological Study of Alcohol Use and Related Disorders found that adults who reported marijuana use during the first wave of the survey were more likely than adults who did not use marijuana to develop an alcohol use disorder within 3 years; people who used marijuana and already had an alcohol use disorder at the outset were at greater risk of their alcohol use disorder worsening.47 Marijuana use is also linked to other substance use disorders including nicotine addiction.
Early exposure to cannabinoids in adolescent rodents decreases the reactivity of brain dopamine reward centers later in adulthood.48 To the extent that these findings generalize to humans, this could help explain the increased vulnerability for addiction to other substances of misuse later in life that most epidemiological studies have reported for people who begin marijuana use early in life.49 It is also consistent with animal experiments showing THC’s ability to "prime" the brain for enhanced responses to other drugs.50 For example, rats previously administered THC show heightened behavioral response not only when further exposed to THC but also when exposed to other drugs such as morphine—a phenomenon called cross-sensitization.51
These findings are consistent with the idea of marijuana as a "gateway drug." However, the majority of people who use marijuana do not go on to use other, "harder" substances. Also, cross-sensitization is not unique to marijuana. Alcohol and nicotine also prime the brain for a heightened response to other drugs52 and are, like marijuana, also typically used before a person progresses to other, more harmful substances.
It is important to note that other factors besides biological mechanisms, such as a person’s social environment, are also critical in a person’s risk for drug use. An alternative to the gateway-drug hypothesis is that people who are more vulnerable to drug-taking are simply more likely to start with readily available substances such as marijuana, tobacco, or alcohol, and their subsequent social interactions with others who use drugs increases their chances of trying other drugs. Further research is needed to explore this question.
This page was last updated June 2018

So, what's going to happen in a few years, I am wondering when this new normal becomes, which I predict a nightmare?























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