Health Inequities Stemming from US Imperialism

I know that this post will upset some people. It looks like I'm a bleeding heart liberal blaming the United States for the people seeking asylum along our southern border. I know that the US isn't the only player in this mess. We would not have been be able to do what we did, and are continuing to do, without the destruction of societies that began with the colonization of the Americas. It is a long arc to get where we are today and I'm only addressing events after World War II to current day. 

Summation of Actions and Ensuing Health Inequities

The United States has a long history of intervening in the affairs of other countries. The official message is that we are the world police, looking to restore order to these destitute places and preventing corrupt governments from swindling their people. In reality we are looking out for our own best interest. Maybe our best interest is in controlling the Panama Canal, taking care of obstacles for large corporations like United Fruit Company which benefits a few very powerful Americans. We fight for policies that lower the price of the consumer goods we purchase, that give our exports the best rates. We also cause our manufacturing jobs to migrate south in a race to the bottom – who is willing to work for the least amount of money and give the least amount of resistance? As manufacturing costs go down, profits for shareholders increases.

While we do have, at long term cost to job stability, benefits from NAFTA and CAFTA, we inflict great harm on Mexico and Central America and we also hurt ourselves by allowing manufacturing jobs to go off-shore.

Because of our many interventions and free trade agreements people are coming to our southern border who are fleeing violence and destitution that, while not 100% the fault of the US, we bear a great responsibility for the instability of our neighbors to the south.

For over one hundred years the US has been actively meddling in the politics of Latin American countries after they gained their independence from their colonizers. Instead of assisting the people in rebuilding their countries, we assist in the destabilization of their countries through our fear of the spread of communism, through our belief in Manifest Destiny, through our belief that we are better.

When these citizens of central American Countries flee the violence of their homes for which we laid the groundwork, they are met with open hostility at our borders. The Trump Administration is slowing the asylum seeking process which is causing a bottle neck at the checkpoints which leave migrants susceptible to criminal elements who prey on the vulnerable.

Immigrants who cross the border and detained are treated inhumanely. Children are torn from their parents. Parents are being tricked into signing away their right to be reunited with their children. Babies and toddlers have court hearings without legal representation. The chain of custody is broken and the link to the parents is lost – children are put in foster care and some are at risk of being adopted to American families.

The trauma of being separated from caregivers and being denied comforting touch causes a sequence of events to unfold that lead to many poor health outcomes. These traumas are called toxic stress. Toxic stress leads to increased inflammatory processes and immune system changes. These adverse childhood events (trekking hundreds of miles in a hostile environment, being separated from parents, being caged like animals) are all adverse childhood events which lead to a 3x risk for developing lung cancer, 3.5x risk for heart disease and up to a 20-year reduced life span.

To make matters worse, the children who experience these traumas and develop these diseases and suffer from poor mental health perpetuate the cycle when they pass on their trauma to their children.

As these groups of people are vilified in the media, by our leaders in government, it leads to strengthen structural racism against immigrants that further leads to their devaluation and poor treatment which further impacts social determinants of health that continue to drive inequality.

Primary Care Providers in Massachusetts noted an adverse effect of ICE on immigrant health and noticed that a theme of fear emerged. Fear of deportation impacted: emotional health, interrupted care, familial separation due to detention/deportation, and perceived barriers to access.

A 2017 study of detention centers in the New York City area found ICE denied medical treatment for serious conditions like dialysis. People needing surgery faced unreasonably long delays and requests for medical care stemming from serious health complaints were ignored. Denied and delayed care often led to greater interventions being taken later: delayed cancer diagnosis, emergency surgery for malfunctioning pacemaker and emergency surgery to take care of gallstones.

Government lawyers argue soap and toothbrushes  should not be mandatory for immigrants in detention facilities. In some detention facilities  that hold 300 children to one cell there are flu outbreaks, lice infestations, no diapers with children sleeping on the floor. The Customs and Border Patrol, who run detention facilities have no plans to administer flu vaccines. A group, Doctors for Camp Closures, offered to give the vaccines to the detainees free of charge  – there would be no cost to CBP – but were ignored.

Children are being kept in squalid conditions in many facilities. Too little food that is not nutritious, lights on 24/7, sleeping on the ground in frigid temperatures with no blankets.

There are two policies aimed at deterring immigration. One was declared an official policy by Trump and his then Attorney General, Jeff Sessions: family separation. They asserted that by separating children from parents that parents would not make the dangerous journey to reach our southern border.

The other, unofficial policy to deter immigration appears to be standard operating procedure: keeping migrants, children and adults, in squalid living conditions.

We have a moral obligation to help people fleeing the violence and destitution because it is our imperialistic hands of interventions, our meddling, our trade agreements that helped to destabilize their homes. Our policies, official and otherwise, helped corrupt governments take hold. It was our fear of communism that lead to the scorched earth campaigns that played into the devastation of whole societies through guerilla warfare and civil wars.

We must face our role in the influx of asylum seekers. Until we see what led to this situation, we will continue policies that perpetuate corruption and power imbalances that leave the average citizen of these countries in dire circumstances, looking north to the land of opportunity for help. 

US Imperialism - "Free" Trade

The last post dealt with how the United States used its military to influence policies that benefitted its own political and economic interests. This post will look at how we used "Free" Trade to benefit US shareholders at the expense of our poorer partner countries and how the deleterious effects of the agreement were almost immediate, long lasting and devastating.

NAFTA – 1994

The North America Free Trade Agreement between Mexico, the United States and Canada was passed in 1994. It promised to reduce immigration from Mexico to the United States because wages would increase as tariffs between the countries would be reduced or eliminated.

For Mexico to be a party to the trade agreement they had to change part of their Constitution. After the Mexican Revolution, plots of land were given to farmers. The land could not be confiscated or sold to pay off debt. Mexico was made to change that provision. Going forward land would be able to be bought and sold, parceled together in large plots and be made available to purchase by large corporations.

NAFTA cut tariffs on Mexican corn, but the US maintained their subsidies on US grown corn which led to Mexican corn prices falling by 66%. This devastated small farmers. From 1993-2005, 1.1 million small farmers went out of business and 1.4 million jobs that depended on the small farm sector also went out of business. That’s 2.5 million jobs lost in one sector. Farm wages are a third of what they were pre-NAFTA. To add insult to injury, the cost of food increased. In the first 10 years of NAFTA the price of tortillas rose 279%. According the World Bank the number of Mexicans who could not afford a basic diet grew by 50% in the first 4 years of NAFTA.

Small farms folded and people moved to urban areas to fight for low paying jobs in manufacturing. Those jobs were short lived because those manufacturing jobs that paid around $5/hour moved to China after it entered the WTO (World Trade Agreement) in 2001 where hourly wages were $1/hour.

In the first 7 years of NAFTA migration to the United States increased 108%. In 1995 there were 2.9 million undocumented migrants in the United States. At the peak in 2007 there were 6.9 million undocumented people. It leveled off after the Great Recession.

CAFTA – 2006

Despite seeing how negatively NAFTA affected Mexico and ignoring the warnings and protestations of Central American advocacy groups and the prediction by Oxfam that 1.5 million livelihoods related to rice production would be lost, the US pushed forward to create another trade agreement. CAFTA was passed in Congress in the Spring 2006 by one vote.

Recently the CAFTA-DR, a free trade agreement between the US, Dominican Republic and 6 central American countries has worked to significantly deteriorate working conditions and wage stability for workers in central America.

Ben Beachy, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch said, “Under CAFTA, family farmers in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have not fared well, the economies have become dependent on short-lived apparel assembly jobs–many of which have vanished, and economic growth has actually slowed.”

Agricultural imports to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has increased 78% since CAFTA was enacted. Is it a coincidence that those three countries that are experiencing economic upheaval and instability are also suffering through great violence and migration?

Summation of Actions and Ensuing Health Inequities

The United States has a long history of intervening in the affairs of other countries. The official message is that we are the world police, looking to restore order to these destitute places and preventing corrupt governments from swindling their people. In reality we are looking out for our own best interest. Maybe our best interest is in controlling the Panama Canal, taking care of obstacles for large corporations like United Fruit Company which benefits a few very powerful Americans. We fight for policies that lower the price of the consumer goods we purchase, that give our exports the best rates. We also cause our manufacturing jobs to migrate south in a race to the bottom – who is willing to work for the least amount of money and give the least amount of resistance? As manufacturing costs go down, profits for shareholders increases.

While we do have a great many benefits from NAFTA and CAFTA, we inflict great harm on Mexico and Central America and we also hurt ourselves by allowing manufacturing jobs to go off-shore.

Because of our many interventions and free trade agreements people are coming to our southern border who are fleeing violence and destitution that, while not 100% the fault of the US, we bear a great responsibility for the instability of our neighbors to the south.

For over one hundred years the US has been actively meddling in the politics of Latin American countries after they gained their independence from their colonizers. Instead of assisting the people in rebuilding their countries, we assist in the destabilization of their countries through our fear of the spread of communism, through our belief in Manifest Destiny, through our belief that we are better.

US Imperialism - Military Forces

My final assignment in my Health Equity and Justice class is going to be a series of blog posts wherein I address US Imperialism in three Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. I will detail how the United States encroached on sovereign nations to further its own political and economic interests. These actions our government executed in the Cold War and beyond have lasting effects on Latin America and the United States to this day. It is my hope that I can connect the actions of our past to the current events affecting the influx of migrants to the US. I will also explore how our actions have led to great health inequities for the migrants coming to the United States. Laying the framework will take up the bulk of these writings. I think it is important to understand how we got where we are today if we are to have any hope of addressing the problems. If we do not understand why the migrants have come to the United States it is easy for our politicians to dismiss these destitute people as lazy opportunists looking for handouts at the expense of the hardworking American taxpayer.

I am looking at a couple of ways in which the US’ policies and actions have worked to undermine several countries in Latin American. After World War II the United States was fearful that communism would spread to our neighbors to the south. To prevent the spread of communism, any actions or ideologies that appeared to lean socialist was squashed. The United States was also interested in advancing its own economic interests. The advancement of economic interests was often supported by US corporations, like the United Fruit Company. More recently there has been the North America Free Trade Agreement and the even more recently, the CAFTA-DR that involved the US, Dominican Republic and six central American countries.

Guatemala

Guatemala held its first democratic elections in 1945 after a revolution ousted the military dictatorship of Jorge Ubico. The newly elected president, Juan Jose Arevalo, granted voting rights, instituted a minimum wage and built 6,000 public schools. In 1951 Guatemalans elected Jacobo Arbenz to succeed Arevalo. In a time of growing fear of communism, Arbenz allowed communists to participate in the political system; in the country of 3 million people, 4,000 registered as communist. This made the US very wary of Arbenz’s political ideology.

Arbenz proposed Decree 900 which would redistribute undeveloped lands held by large property owners to landless farmers, who at the time, comprised 90% of the population. He was looking to end what was essentially a system of feudalism and serfdom but to US eyes it looked suspiciously like socialism. By 1952, Arbenz appropriated 225,000 acres and gave it to 500,000 rural workers and farmers.  The Guatemalan government compensated the landowners from whom the land was appropriated based on the tax assessments of that year. This displeased the large landowners because they had been undervaluing their land to lessen their tax burden.

Up until that point in time, 72% of useable agrarian land was owned by 2% of all landowners. Of that 2% of land owners was the United Fruit Company, a US based business. The UFC controlled 42% of Guatemalan land and paid little to no taxes or import duties. 77% of UFC’s crops went to the US.

UFC had powerful connections to the Eisenhower Administration. The Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was an attorney whose law firm represented the UFC. The Secretary of State’s brother, Allen Dulles, was the CIA director, on the UFC Board of Trustees and a shareholder in the company. Ed Whitman, the husband of the president’s private secretary, produced a film, “Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas,” which depicted UFC as fighting communism. A result of that film, many journalists went to Guatemala, an expense that UFC paid for, and wrote pieces that showed UFC as fighters on the front lines against communism. Those articles were circulated in the US press.

In the wake of the redistribution of land, Eisenhower feared Guatemala would succumb to communism so Eisenhower used the newly formed CIA to back a coup, which was partially funded by the UFC, in Guatemala in June 1954. The CIA broadcast propaganda and jammed the airwaves. American pilots bombed portions of Guatemala City. The goal was to give the appearance a major invasion was going to take place even though the number of operatives was relatively small. Ten days after the assault began the democratically elected Arbenz stepped down. The CIA installed the dictator Carlos Castillo Armas.

This ushered in a civil war that was fought along the old Colonialism lines that pitted the poor majority of indigenous Mayans against the smaller faction of rich Guatemalans of mixed European and Mayan descent. The civil war started with the exiled remnants of the Arevalo/Arbenz governments who fled to the mountains to start a guerilla insurgency. As the government’s responses to the insurgency became more brutal, the more Mayans joined the fight and the further left they moved. Guatemala received millions of dollars from the United States during this period and tens of thousands of people died. When oil was discovered in Guatemala, efforts to remove Mayans from their land increased. Cattle ranching (primarily exported to the United States) increased, too, which placed further demand on Mayan lands.

The US had a scorched earth policy when it came to rooting out communism. By mid-80s over 150,000 civilians had been murdered in acts labeled genocide by a UN commission. For a detailed timeline of Guatemala through the years please follow this link.

El Salvador

In the continuing effort to root out communism, the United States provided the Salvadoran military support in the form of advisors and hundreds of millions of dollars to their army and other forms of military aid to help fight their Civil war in the 1980s. The war pitted leftist revolutionaries vs oligarchs and US backed generals. US provided training for the Atlacatl Battalion at the United States’ School of the Americas in Panama for 3 months. When the battalion returned, they massacred over 1200 men, women and children in El Mozote in December 1981. Of the 75,000 people killed during the war from 1980 to 1992, 85% was attributed to the US backed Salvadoran government. The US was so focused on stopping the spread of communism that it encouraged or looked the other way at human rights abuses. The Reagan administration denied involvement and tried to cover up the atrocities committed by the Salvadoran government.

Honduras

In 2009, democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya was forced out in a coup. Zelaya angered powerful elites in Honduras by pushing to settle land disputes. The United States turned a blind eye to the ouster of Zelaya, whom they viewed as a leftist in line with Hugo Chavez, and instead of trying to re-install him, they pushed for new elections. In the months leading up to a new election, protesters were silenced through torture, disappearances and murder. After the elections, the new government sold off natural resources and over 100 environmentalist activists were murdered. The Honduran economy plummeted as curfews were put in place, murder rates skyrocketed, and the cocaine trade saw as much as 80% of the smuggling flights pass through Honduras.

US Backed Alliance of Dictators

Another stain on Latin America and the United states is Operation Condor  which was described by Al Jazeera as the Argentinian base of “a U.S.-organized alliance between the dictatorships of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, created in 1975 and operational until around 1980.” The United States provided military training, financial assistance and intelligence briefings to the involved countries in its effort to stop the feared spread of communism. This alliance led to the disappearance and murder of up to 80,000 of dissidents and civilians.

This post examined the primarily military aspects of US interventions in Central and Latin America. My next post will look at the ways in which trade agreements led to the current crisis of thousands of people seeking asylum in the US. 

Anti-racism Workshop

If you know me, you know that I’m in school. If you don’t know me, now you know: I am in school. I am nearing the end of my first year in a public health program – next year I’ll *finally* earn my bachelor’s – only 20 years later than I originally thought I would.  This quarter I am taking a class titled Health Equity and Justice and it is one of my absolute favorite classes.

At the beginning of the quarter we were given an assignment to do some form of community engagement. I chose to attend a workshop put on by CARW, the Coalition of Anti-Racists Whites, an organization that “educates, organizes, and mobilizes white people to show up powerfully for racial justice and collective liberation.”

I will admit that I was very nervous about this meeting. Was it going to be four hours of being lectured on why white people are terrible? It was not. It was four hours of learning to recognize what institutional racism looks like, how we can use our privilege to disrupt the perpetuation of racist speech and ideology and how to have conversations around hot button topics (reverse racism, All Lives Matter, profiling…) in a calm and respectful manner.

The event was kicked off by three volunteers within the all-volunteer organization recognizing the land we were occupying had once belonged to the Duwamish. Then recognizing the church, Plymouth Church, that was hosting our meeting has been fighting for social justice since it first opened its doors in 1869. Those two callouts were significant to me, and likely others in the room. We acknowledged we were on land where we pushed the original occupants out. We were in a building whose founders were part of the group that took the land and yet, they still sought to work to protect Chinese laborers and hosting women’s suffrage events.

For the first half of our time we worked through “Structures and Strategies of Hierarchy” which was broken into six components. Basic Hierarchy – someone is in power. Everyone is dehumanized, those at the top with the power and those at the bottom without the power. It is the scaffolding that keeps some people in power via racism, sexism, wealth inequity, etc.

The second structure is labeled: Control and Contain. Means for this are slavery, genocide, colonization and bordering. I know there is a mindset that slavery was so long ago that for anyone to bring it up now as something that is holding them back is just an excuse. This exercise shows that the repercussions of each event (enslavement, genocide, colonization….) didn’t disappear when slavery was banned, small pox blankets were no longer distributed (click here to be linked to letters stating the mission to inoculate Native Americans with small pox via blankets) and the West quit colonizing. The repercussions just became less obvious and they flowed into the next form of attempts to control.

Do you ever wonder why there are areas of cities that are predominantly made up of black people? Why are those areas poor? Is it a sign of racial inferiority? No, it is the continuing legacy of bordering – think redlining and the answer to when redlining was outlawed: steering. Redlining – the practice of keeping minorities within certain geographic bounds, while always a problem, became a legal practice with the  Housing Act of 1934. While it was outlawed in 1968 it is a practice that continues to this day. The NY Times  published an article last week about minorities being directed, “steered” towards “black neighborhoods” or away from “white neighborhoods”.

I’m not going to go into the rest of the structures of the hierarchy because that would make this post longer than anyone would read.I want you to actually read this whole post. I think if the understanding around why minorities are poorer and marginalized reflected reality – they were prevented from buying homes in affluent areas (more tax dollars = better schools) and were directed towards poor areas (fewer tax dollars = underfunded schools; greater distance to “good jobs”, poorer infrastructure – think lead in the water which leads to permanent cognitive impairment and poor behavior which further reinforces the false narrative that minorities are inferior) – all of these factors are pieces to a puzzle that shows a picture of a people who can not easily get ahead because the system is stacked against them.

Here is the difficult transition for white people. We can recognize how those practices are unfair – they are immoral, unjust and keep people from advancing. Those examples illustrate how the saying that people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps only works when bootstraps are available to everyone. White people can recognize that we have bootstraps by which we can pull ourselves up, but we can’t recognize how us having the bootstraps gives us power, or White Privilege.

Having the bootstraps is the white privilege. Acknowledging we have advantages is acknowledging our power. Having that power doesn’t make white people evil but it does force us to confront the privileges we have.

Did you read about the little white boy playing with a toy gun in a park who was shot by a cop two seconds after the cop arrived? Speeding cop car, screeching halt, one count, two count, dead. You didn’t. That was Tamir Rice, a little black boy.

What about John Crawford III who picked up a toy rifle off the shelf in a Walmart? A man called 911 saying a black man was walking around the store pointing a gun at people. Video shows that was not true and the man who called 911 changed his story after the fact. Police arrived and almost immediately upon seeing John, shot and killed him. Ohio is an open carry state.

Jemel Roberson was a good guy with a gun. He stopped a shooting and was detaining the shooter. When the police arrived, people in the crowd told the cops that Jemel, wearing clothes that said “Security”, was in fact, security and not the shooter. Jemel was shot and later died from his wounds.

Here is a video that shows how two men are treated very differently for doing the same legal behavior, open carrying an AR15.  A white man is politely questioned by a skeptical police officer. The black man is forced to the ground at gunpoint and back up officers are called.

White people are given the benefit of the doubt, black people are viewed suspiciously. Sitting in a Starbucks while waiting for a friend, moving into an apartment, killed by police in home while playing video games , barbecuing in public park. It just goes on and on.

After breaking into groups and discussing all of the ways the rules and laws are written for everyone but enforced or not enforced depending on who it applies to. We discussed two ways of confronting statements that perpetuate racism.

First, we can call someone out which often is shaming and causes people to move further apart. It can be necessary to call out in a moment when there is violence or angry, hateful speech being directed at someone.

The other strategy is to call in and connect. It is a softer approach that seeks to build relationship and invite other white people into the movement for racial justice.

Here is an example of a woman using her white privilege to stand up for a woman of color that falls somewhere between calling out and calling in.

We were given guidelines for calling in.

·       Ground yourself and stay connected – racism disconnects; don’t set yourself up for failure by letting a

·       Ask questions, seek to understand. Be comfortable with the quiet. Let the other person speak

·       Tell stories of your change. Show ways you have grown. Don’t shame.

·       Stop when you’ve reached an agreement. This isn’t stop when you agree. No one changes a lifetime of thinking in the span of one conversation. Stop when you come to AN agreement. Maybe you both acknowledge black people proportionally more affected by police profiling. You don’t need to soldier on. End on a good note.

·       Remember the goal is not perfection – for yourself or anyone else. Racism is rooted in perfectionism – white is superior, better than…. We are all flawed and on this journey for the long haul.

After going over the tips for calling in and connecting we broke into groups of three to discuss hot button topics. A gentleman in my group – who turned out to be a mutual friend from my old parents group – ran through a scenario he encounters at work. I practiced the Black Lives/All Lives matter narrative. I sought to clarify that the Black Lives matter movement isn’t saying, Only Black Lives Matter but rather, Black Lives Matter Too. When black people, who make up around 13% of the population, yet account for 33% of the prison population, it is clear black people are treated differently than white people.

Here is a graphic from the Washington Post that breaks down how many people are shot and killed by police: 

It is hard to deny the disparity when looking at these numbers and I think knowing information like the graph shows it will be easier to make an argument that isn’t based on feelings. I am not going to be persuaded by someone’s impassioned argument if there aren’t verifiable fact to back up their statements.

The challenge is to be calm and rational when we are sitting at the dinner table at Thanksgiving and these topics come up.

At the end of the workshop we were challenged to keep growing in our efforts to continue interrupting systemic, institutionalized racism by acknowledging we all have prejudices, we all participate in the systems that oppress other people and to extend grace to people who are not aware of their own privilege and power by gently calling them into conversation.

Viaduct Farewell

Nate and I took a little cruise over the viaduct last weekend after having breakfast with a friend at Hudson. I took a video so I would remember the views from that drive I used to take every morning when I worked on Capitol Hill. I was content with that being my last run on the "nostalgic deathtrap" as my friend Heidi called it. Then I thought about the boys. They don't remember living in Seattle and I wanted them to have a memory of driving on this iconic structure; so, even though we were exhausted, we loaded up the boys for a final, final drive.

The questions started as we ascended the Spokane Street on ramp to the West Seattle bridge. The boys were asking, "is this the viaduct?" and "are we on it yet?" G asked questions at his normal rate, like two or three for the whole trip from West Seattle to the end of our northbound drive. Likewise, Mr. T, asked questions at his normal rate, like two or three per thirty seconds.

How old is it? Why are they shutting it down. What if an earthquake happened at 10:01 pm? Why, why, why, how, why, how, who, where, why, why, why..... Nate pulled up the Google machine and answered as many questions as he could.

We got off at Mercer and snaked our way down to the waterfront to eat at Red Robin. After shared mozzarella sticks and the rest of our dinner we were all dragging. G was talking about how he was looking forward to resting in his bed. Amen, young man. Amen.

We were only steps outside of the restaurant when we heard the honking. T asked why was everyone honking. Everyone is saying goodbye. As we crossed under the viaduct he looked up at me and kind of giggled and said, almost shyly, "it kind of sounds like music." I thought about it and agreed. It did sound like music.

I looked back at Nate and mouthed, "southbound?" He nodded. At least I think he did. It's what I wanted to see. Now was my turn to be giddy, "who wants to go southbound and honk our horn?!"

To get from Western by the Art Institute to the end of the viaduct took about thirty minutes. It was the happiest I've been just crawling along in traffic.

Nate was giving new Seattle/viaduct lyrics to old songs. The boys were cracking up and joining when they could. At one point Nate was dramatically saying goodbye to the viaduct and he turned the camera on Gavin and asked for his best theatrics in his farewell. After a moment he turned the camera on Theo and said, "okay, Theo. Your turn to fake cry."

"I have real tears," said a little voice with no shame. Seeing the Great Wheel, the cranes, downtown in all of its sparkling glory and all of the smiling faces in the cars next to us tugged on his heart strings.

When it was my turn I just waved to the camera and blinked back my real tears. I felt silly being so nostalgic over a hunk of elevated concrete that was a quake away pancaking and killing everyone on it.

Nate leaned over and layed on the horn much to the boys pleasure. I did a call and answer with the horn like you do when you knock on a door - and someone answered back! It really shouldn't have been surprising that someone answered but I was pleased with this weird little bit of camraderie we were experiencing with other motorists.

People were pulled over on the shoulder, standing outside their cars, taking pictures and just reveling in the party atmosphere. Gavin saw the people leaning over a guard rail taking pictures and he said, "that's dangerous. What if they dropped their phone?" Kid has his priorities straight. 

When I was tucking Theo into bed he told me what a great day today was. It was way past bedtime and he was still glowing. It's so much fun to see them understand the significance of something even if it was just a silly nighttime drive. I hope tonight becomes a treasured memory for the boys - the party on the viaduct with strangers who felt like neighbors. 

Lover of Words

I just finished listening to The Book Thief and my tear stained pillow is a testament to the power of words and a wonderfully crafted story. As the gravely voice of the narrator is still echoing in my head I have begun to reflect on my long love affair with words.

My family can tell you that I always had my nose in a book from about 5th grade on. It started with Where the Red Fern Grows. I think it was the first book that caused me to cry. Bridge to Terabithia in the sixth grade was the first to elicit a sob. 

In the seventh grade there was talk about a book in the library that was full of sex so, naturally, I checked it out. It must have been in the Spring because I remember reading it on the back patio. My mom was sitting near me reading her bible while I sat there with eyes as big as saucers reading Clan of the Cave Bears. I just knew she would find out what I was reading. How could she not see my eyes darting from the book to her? She had to have at least heard the loud beating of my guilty heart - my tell-tale heart.

In Junior High books were an escape. An escape from the anguish of a life I felt I had no control over. Fear and dread and loathing melt away when you can immerse yourself in someone else's story. If that story was filled with fear and dread and loathing it was at least not my own. 

All throughout high school I devoured words - essays, poems, autobiographies, novels, cereal boxes, sugar packets. Seriously, anything with printed words that was within reach I consumed. Eventually, I started to let words spill out of me and into a diary and timidly into letters to my grandma Opal.

During my first stint in college I quit reading for pleasure - I was reading textbooks; so many dry textbooks. Unwilling, or unable, I'm not sure which, to read things I enjoyed I had one small outlet: writing. My friend Wendy and I got our first e-mail addresses which was perfect because Wendy was going to school in Bellingham. Our chats on her bedroom floor and under the large maple in her front yard moved to the computer labs at our respective schools.

These last two years since Mr. T started Kindergarten I have hungrily read (listened to) what feels like countless books. Everything from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to Les Miserables.

It has been in the last couple of months that I have taken to writing again - just for me. There is something so cathartic about seeing your words turn blue at the end of the pen as your hand helps give them shape. With a friend, sometimes two, I share even more words in the form of long emails. I am giving a little piece of me that I keep hidden from most everyone - it is the chaotic and messy truth. As the swirling thoughts in my head and ache in my heart make their way to paper, to my journal, to this blog, the confusion clears and the aches of my heart dull a little. 

Sometimes I'm the one receiving the words from a friend. As they speak or write their truth to me and I try on their pain or shoulder a bit of their burden, just as they have done of mine, we are building and reinforcing the foundation of our friendship. 

I wish I was more articulate with the spoken word and didn't have to rely so heavily on writing my feelings down to feel heard and understood. When words fall from my mouth they do just that:  fall. Flat and one dimensional and incomplete. I usually say too much as I think if I throw out enough words I will eventually utter the right ones or I say too little as words elude me. At least with the written word one can write and erase and delete and perfect and polish the thoughts before bundling them up and gifting them to a friend. 

Comedy of Errors

I went to our rental house this morning to wash windows and to power wash a balcony and the fence. While Ryan has been patching holes and working on electrical outlets I have been doing my Cinderella best to clean the two years’ worth of accumulated grime. Last week I exfoliated the bathtub. *shudder* It went from a sickly grey to an off white by time I was done with it. The downstairs bathroom was too horrific for me to describe here.

So, today was an easy day. 

With my audiobook, All the Light That Cannot Be Seen, keeping me company I washed the windows.When the windows were done I moved the power washer to the tiny balcony and went to put on my rain gear. 

After retrieving my rain boots from the car and I turned the doorknob to go back in the house to get something.

$*%^#! It was locked! Dread engulfed me. My purse and BOTH sets of house keys were in the house. All the windows were locked and we don't know the code to the garage's key pad. 

I called Ryan - he usually has good ideas. He asked if either sliding door was unlocked. "Yes. To the master bedroom. I was just on the balcony." Good. There was a tall ladder outside I could use to get to the balcony.

Sweet! Ryan wanted me to find a neighbor to hold the ladder but I was confident the ladder would hold because the ground was level with crushed gravel.

I climbed to the top of the ladder and I saw it move a little. It slid down a little. Not enough that I felt it but it took me no time to scramble back down the ladder to re-position it a little higher.

At the top of the ladder I examined the railing. It seemed sturdy enough for me to haul myself over. Once safely on the balcony I exhaled deeply and went to the sliding glass door. 

Locked!

Dear Lord, I am really good about locking doors.

Oh. No. I would have to climb back down the ladder.

There are two things you should know about me.

1) I hate jumping into water - anything other than a pencil dive from the side of the pool. As a kid I loved jumping from a hay loft into a piles of hay but I just couldn't do the pool. Still can't. 

2) I hate climbing down ladders. Going up? No problem. Going down? No, thank you. 

When I was 4 or 5 my brother Ike, neighbor Mundi and I climbed to top of the play house our dad built in our back yard. Everyone climbed down except me. Mom had to come get me because I wouldn't get on my belly and swing my legs over to the ladder

In second grade Ike and I climbed to the top of the old chicken coop on the property of the house we were renting. I was on the edge trying and failing to build up the courage to jump down. Ike helped me down with a shove to my back. 

So, I peer over the edge of the balcony. I may as well be on the high diving board. I call Ryan. Again. "We have to call a lock smith. I can't get down." 

We try to think of the neighbors who would be home. The neighbors wouldn't do me any good except act as a witness when I plunged to my paralysis. They couldn't get me to climb on the railing and swing my legs over.

"No. I'll try," I tell him as I'm imagining falling and cracking my head open on the first ledge of the retaining wall. I took off my clogs and set my phone in it - Ryan was still connected and listening for screaming or too long of silence.

I swung myself over the balcony and with my toes on the ledge I slowly and surely made my way on to the ladder. Positioning myself as close to the wall as I could I climbed down. 

Alive!

On to plan B. Ask a handy neighbor two doors down if he had any ideas or a hammer. The lock needed to be changed anyway and it would be cheaper to buy a whole new door knob than call a locksmith.

Neighbor wasn't home.

Plan C.

Find a big rock. 

About 10 cracks with the big rock and the knob came off and no one came to look to see who was making all of the noise.

More hitting with the rock before the door would open. Once inside I find the drill and unscrew the other side. The door closed. The knob comes off and the inside thingy fell out. Onto the porch. 

Recap: I'm in the house. The door is closed. Both knobs are off.

I can't disengage the latch. The part that would pull it back is on the other side of the door. The door is stuck again.  

Gah! This is the only door in the house. There is no back door. Ryan suggested going out through the garage and using a putty knife to disengage the latch. 

He sent me a text: "Don't close the garage door behind you." I sent him back a special emoticon.

I packed up everything I wanted to take home and put it in the car and made sure I had the house keys and car keys in my pocket before I closed the garage door. 

The putty knife wasn't working. I examined the piece in the middle and found something to pull back on which disengaged the latch.

Finally. Take off strike plate and remove latch. Stuff hole with napkins because? I guess I just don't like the big gaping hole in the door to let in bugs and cold even though bugs and cold will get in regardless.

Rather than stay and do more work and see what else I could bungle I pull the door shut, engage the deadbolt and go home. The power washing can wait another day.

Insanity

It is so exhausting trying to understand conservative Christians who support Trump. Who, with their actions, hate the earth that their God created.

I can hear it now, "April, we don't hate the earth."

Really? 

I've seen you take pride in your big rig that spews pollution in the air. 

I've seen you give me a smug smile when you throw a recyclable item in the trash. 

I've seen and heard your contempt for tree huggers. 

I've seen you enthusiastically support the current administration who is doing their best to dismantle the EPA. 

I used to be you. I know the disdain and contempt for the hippies in the cities who don't understand the plight of the fisherman, the logger, the miner (granted, I didn't grow up around coal miners).

For the conservative it is:  God > Jobs > People > Environment

That doesn't mean that for the liberal it is: People > Environment > Jobs > God - just kidding, they are all going to Hell since they are a godless lot. The liberal, with the bleeding heart, of course, cares about people and jobs. Lots of jobs are being lost to automation but focusing efforts on growing the clean energy sector could lead to loads of new jobs.

Recently, I was talking to some girlfriends about how we just don't understand how people who profess to love God and consider themselves followers of Christ don't, with their actions, care about the poor or live up to their pro-life stance (pro-gun, pro-death penalty and for the shame they heap on a woman for having a child out of wedlock - if you didn't have such loose morals you wouldn't be in this mess; don't use tax payer money to feed your bastard children; don't use tax payer money for birth control).

We were talking about how we have to choose our words carefully when talking to conservative Christians when talking about things like the environment.

We don't talk about saving the earth. We don't talk about climate change. We talk about how God gave man dominion over the earth and He charged us with taking care of it.

Then the message might get through a little.

I recall one conversation with a conservative Christian who didn't believe there is climate change so who cares about vehicle emissions? Okay, let's ignore the science - I did get him to agree the exhaust coming out of the car is bad for the human body and for life in general.

Shouldn't that be reason enough to care? To do something? To support legislation that aims to keep our air clean?

I don't know why this particular issue struck a nerve with me today but it did. I feel like I'm becoming numb to the insanity that is the White House.

How is it that the people who hated Hillary Clinton with every fiber of their being (email! Benghazi!) aren't up in arms over Trump's association with Russia? With his disdain for freedom of speech? With his conflicts of interest? With his ban on people who have already been vetted to come to our country in the first place?

This is just exhausting and demoralizing.

Alki

Here are a few pictures from our short trip to Alki this morning. It was cold and windy and perfect for collecting beach glass. As we were leaving the beach, G was leading the way and telling me I was taking too long. Theo, on the other hand started helping me find beach glass. And shells, and rocks and seaweed and cigarette filters.

Overlooking downtown Seattle at Anchor Park on Alki

He is as mischievous as he is cute

Anchor Park on Alki

My sweet goofy boy

One of the fifty plus pieces of beach glass I found. My hands were freezing by time I was done but it was worth it.

Looking for treasures

The boys were running from the water.