Kill the Bill

I'm a terrible tourist because old buildings, famous sites, museums, and historical facts aren't nearly as interesting to me as people. So, when I visited Washington D.C. last October, it took me a while to find something that caught my attention. My friends had to work so I explored the city alone.

Several museums later, I spoke with my father who said there was going to be a gathering of Republicans on the front lawn of the Capitol Building. I grabbed my camera and set off, finally having a mission.

I am not an extremely political person. Given my father's adoration for Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and all things Republican, I have been inundated with political propaganda my entire life. I'm tired of it. Even things from the Democratic party. I don't take the time to research every topic deep enough to form my own opinion and I don't want to parrot newspaper journalists or talk show hosts.

I will admit though, I am mildly aware of the current hubbub over health care.

Due to a large amount of effort on my part, I have managed to avoid any hour-long, extremely heated and passionate lectures from my dad on the subject. My defensive maneuvering will definitely not last forever but I hope I figure out what I really think (with some solid facts to back me up) before he finally corners me.

The only thing I really have to draw from at this point is the rally I witnessed in October. I actually thought it rather horrifying. Below, I have posted a few of the photos I snapped while walking through the crowd.

Some people were dressed as Democratic politicians, bound with chains, and covered in blood, intestines and bloody babies. A few scary people in black with masks were whipping them and shouting through microphones, "You'll go to hell for what you've done! Repent of your sins."

Apparently, some section in the version of the health care bill they were going over at the time included government money to be used for abortion. I don't even want to get into that argument but, do you see the face of the child in the photo above? Whether abortion is always right, always wrong, or whatever conditions you want to apply, is it right that this little boy was exposed to something so horrifying? I feel sad when children get caught in political crossfire.

Even though I'm a vegetarian, I don't go around straping deformed chickens to my body and moan through the meat section in the Super Walmart about the horrors of factory farming. I would tell you what I know if you asked me but I wouldn't pick out a child in the grocery store and scare the pee out of him with what I know. It's not appropriate or very nice and that's what I thought about the gathering at Capitol Hill that day. It was a little too extreme to be the beginning of a civil conversation.

Anger

I recently realized I have a lot in common with the tiny space heater in our apartment. We keep that little guy going 24 hours a day. Unfortunately, if we leave it on high, it only lasts for about 15 minutes before giving an audible "click" and shutting down. This feature is supposedly to prevent fires because it shuts down the heater when it overheats.

I realized my commonality with that heater a few weeks ago. In the pilates room of our gym, Zach tried to show me how to do this side-bendy, love handle muscle exercise. It proved to be extremely uncomfortable and difficult for me and when he criticized me for the last time; I gave up. I said, "Okay, I'm just ready to go. You can finish up, just come get me from the couch area when you're done."

For some reason, I never learned how to mask my emotions. When I feel something, giant bold letters scrawl it across my forehead. Zach, of course, can see these signs. He asked me to wait and said, "Hey, what's wrong? Obviously something has changed in the last few seconds. Are you upset? Please, tell me what it is." I told him I didn't want to talk about it but he insisted. So, we sat down on a bench for a few seconds in silence and then I explained how frustrating it was not to be able to do that exercise correctly, how uncomfortable it felt for me, how I felt like a big whiner, and that I just felt extremely exhausted and his criticisms weren't helping.

He apologized for everything but I knew it wasn't his fault. I knew I had put so much into the workout, I didn't have much energy left for patience. I apologized for being such a dummy. We both laughed and then stretched for a bit. I began thinking about what happened and I realized something important.

I don't get angry very often but when I do, it's very difficult for me to verbalize it. For me, anger is this horrible rush of emotion, like a fizzing bottle of soda, that I cap just before it explodes. I don't like to say or do things that will be hurtful to other people. I also don't like fighting. When you say something in anger, sometimes the person will speak back out of anger and things escalate.

I've learned that if I quell my anger in the moment, I can usually talk myself out of it later. I'll put myself in the other person's shoes, realize more fully the situation, and feel glad that I didn't say or do something hurtful. So, sometimes, subduing my anger is a good thing. The only bad thing is when I can't work through it and stay angry for awhile.

With Zach though, he isn't easily offended and won't respond to my anger with anger of his own. Even though I have this stupid, emergency shut off switch (just like our space heater) for when I get too hot with anger, he always wants to work through it. He wants to know what I'm feeling so that we can make it right immediately. And I'm okay with that.

I dated a guy once who had a shut-off switch too but it always triggered like five rows of barbed wire, a few locked steel doors, a couple trenches and a ten-foot thick brick wall to drop down around him. I had to beg, sometimes for hours, to get him to open up again. I don't know if I learned this behavior from him or if it's just me but I'm just glad that it's different with Zach. It's nice to not have to filter myself around him.

Friends in DC

Stephen and Ranajoy

I don't always know what I believe
religiously or politically
but
I do know that I believe in Stephen.

I believe he will use his life to profoundly impact our world.
I believe in his passion and power to make things happen.
I believe he knows what it means to put 110% of yourself into something.
I believe in him and the goodness of everything he chooses to do.
I am inspired by Stephen
and tremendously grateful for his friendship.

A shocking discovery

Last week when I arrived at the hotel, my co-workers informed me that a man had come in a few hours earlier and beat one of our guests with a gun. Apparently, in the afternoon a large man walked through the lobby, up some stairs and into the room of two of our female guests. He pulled a gun and demanded that they give him all their money. They refused so he began to beat one over the head with a handgun. The other girl began to scream and he ran out into the hall.

The housekeepers reported that they saw a black man running down the hall, pursued by a woman very scantily clothed. Another woman, bleeding profusely from the head, stumbled into the hall after them and collapsed; so they applied pressure to her wounds and radioed the front desk. At that point, 911 got called and everyone started looking for the man and his pursuer. The attacker ran outside and almost right into a maintenance man, who dove behind a small building because he knew the man had a gun. Within a few minutes the police arrived but the man had gotten away without a trace.

Neither of the women wanted to press charges and it seemed a bit suspicious. Shockingly, they stayed another night at our hotel. I would want to get as far away as possible, unless I didn't have anywhere safe to go. I reached a conclusion of domestic violence. How else would the man have known what room they were in and why would they let him in? I felt sadness for them because I can't imagine how life might feel when reasonable and legitimate fear of violence is added on a daily basis. I can't imagine being beat over the head with a gun. I'm not too far removed to not experience deep empathy and compassion for their situations.

Yesterday, I found out why reading the entire Nancy Drew mystery novel series in my childhood doesn't qualify me to be a detective. Even though I read all 56 of those books, they apparently forgot to mention the part where prostitutes get a hotel room, advertise themselves on Craig's List, and then get beat up on Sundays, when the drug addicts pose as clients or "Johns" to steal all the cash (which the women have earned during their lucrative Friday and Saturday nights) to buy drugs. What??!? I didn't believe my co-worker when she told me so my manager showed me the Craig's list ad that the detective gave him when they came back to arrest the women.

Either Buffalo is the most violent place I've lived or I'm just more aware of it here. I did some research on prostitution in Buffalo and found out it used to be a huge problem but because of a big change initiative in the late nineties, the streets have cleaned up a bit. Check out these diagrams.

Here's the map of reported prostitution in 1996. No lie, Zach in I live at the very center of the darkest red area or the highest concentration of 911 calls!


Here's after the efforts to clean up the community. The hotel that I work at is just off the map. I don't know what the map would look like for 2010 but I can only hope it has continued to improve.

I don't actually like the phrase "to clean up the community" that I used earlier. I think because it implies that prostitutes and drug dealers are dirt or scum that make the streets unclean. Maybe some people feel that way but I don't think anyone is born a prostitute or a drug dealer and just because I had parents who taught me that drugs are bad, doesn't mean that I'm any cleaner than anyone else. When I'm my best self, I try not to judge people because their life experiences have led them to different places than mine have led me. Sadly though, I'm not always my best self.