The Banning of Maus

A school board in Tennessee has banned the graphic novel, Maus, because it would make students “uncomfortable.” It has nudity and bad language.

Well, yeah. So I pulled out my copy of the two-volume set and started reading it again, for the fourth or fifth time.

The nudity is found in piles of dead naked Jews, skeletal bodies of men (Jews were segregated by gender in the camps). So yeah, dead people who were starving before they died, and on some of them you can see their sad little dead penises. I have noticed that male nudity is considered much more shocking than female nudity. Naked women? You betcha! Bring ‘em on! Naked men? That’s obscene! But I digress.

I do not think the language is anything that kids haven’t heard by the time they are ten, or younger. 

The school board did not mention violence, did it? Only nudity and language as the reasons for banning the book. They say nothing, for example, about where a German soldier picks up a child by the legs and smashes his head against a wall, or other atrocities that are mentioned or illustrated, like a kapo grabbing a prisoner’s cap and tossing it and saying, “Go get the cap.” When the prisoner goes to pick up the cap, the kapo shoots him, reports that the prisoner was trying to escape, and is rewarded with a bonus and some time off. The school board didn’t say a word about those things. Nope. Language and nudity. So American.

The Jews and dissidents and those otherwise considered to be unfit to be pure Aryans were imprisoned, tortured, and slaughtered by the millions, then sent up the chimneys or bulldozed into open trenches. In Kiev, the Nazis had the foresight to dig the trench, send the living Jews into the trench and then kill them, saving the step of pushing dead bodies into a trench. The Nazis were nothing if not efficient.

I think the reality of the Holocaust would be a lot more traumatizing to children than mere “nudity and language.” But what the hell do I know?

Come on – the Holocaust was beyond traumatizing. When you read Maus, you cannot deny that it happened, and if your eyes are open you cannot help but draw the parallel with the dehumanization by one group of people in our country of other people.

Reading Maus this time my breath is taken away by the honesty and artistry of the way Art Spiegelman told his tale. The two volumes are such works of art, both visual and written. It took him eight years to write them, or maybe eight years to write the first volume. I’m not sure. But you can see why it took years to write and illustrate his father’s story. He tried to get his father to tell him as many details as possible, and then he illustrated those details.

What it is to be the child of a death camp survivor, or to be a death camp survivor, is such a deep and lasting wound to the body and soul and the universe. I can witness that in Maus, but I am incapable of imagining it. There is nothing in my life that compares. It is a whole other horrible level of atrocity, treating Jews (Blacks, Latinx, Asians) as the feared “other” who must be eradicated.

Which is why students should be able to read Maus. So they can see what they cannot imagine, be traumatized, and, I hope, become determined that the holocaust will never happen again. That is pertinent to present circumstances – the rising tide of anti-Semitism is full of the mindset of “kill all the Jews.” Many of these people have the same attitude toward Jews and black people – they are not human beings.

Of course there have been other mass murders, murderers of innocents – Stalin comes to mind. Pol Pot, in Cambodia. Vladimir Putin is bucking to get into that club. Maybe he already is.

Us, in our undeclared wars.

We are too far down the slippery slope of fascism and racial hatred here. I keep hoping that the kids are all right and will be so fed up with the mess their elders have made of the world that they will turn it around.

So, Maus. My hat is off, once again, to Art Spiegelman, and all the people who made his graphic novel a reality.

The banning of the book has led to a rise in sales of Maus, which makes me happy. So yay for that. Nothing like a good book banning to increase a book’s sales.

Rick's First Day Back at Work

Photo: Working man having lunch.

Today was the day! Rick went in and did locates for the water system for four hours this morning. Then he came home to have lunch and take a nap. He's going back in on Wednesday. They are starting him easy, which is a good thing, because he sure isn't up for difficult.
God bless you, Water District 19, for standing by Rick and holding his job for him. You rock.
Tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of Rick's being diagnosed with end stage renal disease, and the beginning the great adventure of living with and learning about kidney failure and dialysis. Today is the first time he has worked since then. Now we wait and watch and see how it goes.
Meanwhile, having finished lunch he says he's off for a little lie-down.
In other news, I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies this morning. I replaced half the sugar with Splenda. We are now sampling the cookies to see if they're any good. Cannot make a definitive statement based on one cookie. Must test more.
Splenda may make them less caramelized in taste, but they seem OK to me. While it is good in theory to have less sugar, no one has produced a fat-free Crisco so far as I know. There is no replacement for chocolate chips, either, and there had better not be. Heresy.

A Good Time Was Had by All

Kanout Mfg. rides again! Photo by Ariel Howie
Now that I'm starting to catch up a little, I want to tell you all about Chris & Irene, Ariel & Glenn, coming to visit us in July.
Chris Howie is Rick's old buddy and music partner. They first met in high school days down in Marin County, and they came up here in Oatus, the 1946 Dodge flatbed truck Chris found, in 1970. They built a house on the back, and that was their lodging on that wild ride from California to Washington.
When I first came to Washington I met the two of them and played music with them and decided to move up here. It was sort of like that. We performed as Kanout Mfg. Company for a year or two.
Chris and his wife, Irene, moved over to Spangle, a town just south of Spokane, back in the mid-90s. I think the original impetus for moving over there to a farm was to raise ostriches. Once they got over there, though, they decided to get out of the ostrich business. Chris met people with whom he plays music over there.
Chris's adult daughter, Ariel, lives in Seattle, and she and her sweetie Glen came out with Chris & Irene and they made a day of it here on the rock.
We ate a lot of food that they brought, Irene & I got to visit & catch up, and then all three of us played some of the old songs - songs we sang many times years ago when we were young and took the music for granted. Now it's a blessed gift to be able to play it and sing it together again.
I'm going to try to load some more photos here - blogspot is being recalcitrant! Wish you could have been here. It was a lovely day.

Shh...Things Are Going Pretty Well. Keep It Under Your Hat.

Rick getting ready to hook up to the cycler
Mary writes:
Summer finally arrived in the Northwest a few weeks ago, bringing with it a lightening of attitude with the lightening of the skies, at least around here.
Rick has made the successful change over to peritoneal dialysis, and is even using the overnight cycler machine, which for months seemed like the unattainable holy grail of dialysis. We didn't think it was ever going to happen for a while there, and now it is happening.
So far he is not experiencing the edema he had the last time he was on PD, which is good. He's still a "high transporter" - absorbing the dialysate across the peritoneal membrane into his body instead of the dialysate absorbing toxins across the membrane and then carrying them out of his body. That happens, it's working, but there is a problem with his one manual exchange a day not draining enough when he goes to bed at night.
Soooo...today he goes in to start training with a new dialysate fluid which is resistant to being absorbed by the body. This may mean he won't have to do any exchanges during the day at all.
And that may mean that he can finally, at last, TA DA, try going back to work!
But we won't know for a while. Making a success of peritoneal dialysis seems to require a process of tinkering and tweaking, to get all the procedures, supplies, and machines working as well as possible. It takes time.
Hooking up to the machine at night is a lengthy process which Rick follows step-by-step each night. I stay out of his way so as not to break his concentration. This machine is keeping him alive, and it must be difficult to plug himself in to it, do the protocol for getting started, and then lie down and go to sleep, trusting that the machine will do its job over night and he will wake up in the morning dialyzed and ready to go.
There are hiccups. A couple of nights he forgot to remove the plug from the end of the drain that empties into the bath tub, causing a blow back spray that ended up on the bathroom floor. Our grand daughter noticed one night, and our younger son noticed the next. I can see how this detail could get lost in the process, and once Rick is hooked up to the machine he ain't going nowhere for nine hours when all its cycles are completed, so if that plug isn't removed by then, someone else will have to do it.
Rick's being attached to the machine has led to a little yelling: "OH MARY! OH MARY! Would you do me a favor? Would you...?" whatever it is. Which I am happy to fetch, fix, add, take away, or whatever is required. One night he called my cell phone from his cell phone, which is one way to get a person's attention from 25 feet away without raising your voice.
Once he's on the machine, he has to stay on for nine hours. This is longer than he is accustomed to being in bed and can be tedious for him, but he's working on it.
PD seems to be working, and once he is free from the mid-day manual exchanges, he's going to try to go back to work in some capacity. We've talked about it. He feels like he has to try it. He's not ready to give up and say he can't do it without even trying. I understand this now. It has taken a while for me to "get it," how important work is to him, to most men. Part of the motivation is that we need MORE money, which is always true, no matter how much we have, so I'm not too worried about that. If it works out and he can do it, work part time for the water system, well, hotcha, that will be lovely for him, but his kidneys will come first at all times. They don't call it "end stage renal disease" for nothing.
So we have come through a rather rough patch of feeling PD wasn't going to work, being sued, and my having surgery, and things are finally starting to calm down a little. Knock wood.

A Little Good News for a Change

Picture: Rick is home after the latest surgery
Today, July 13, 2010, was another surgery day for Rick. It was his ninth surgery since last October. Today's procedure was to externalize the catheter that was put into his abdomen last month (surgery number eight).
It wasn't too harsh - we didn't have to be there until 10:30, which is late by surgical standards. I dropped him off at the Swedish surgery intake lobby while I went off to another building nearby to straighten out some billing details - his insurance changed on May 1, and now two offices have billed the wrong insurance, and these things have to be straightened out.
So after that I headed back to Swedish and hung out with Rick for a while before he was taken off to the OR.
I was sitting in the Family Surgery Waiting Room talking with Cousin Nancy on the phone when Dr. Pham, Rick's surgeon, came out and told me that she'd put a liter of fluid in and got a liter of fluid out: "I think it's going to work!" she said with a smile.
This is good news. The PD catheter might work. Woo hoo.
Stay tuned for further developments.

Rick's Log: June 1 to 4, 2010

Picture: Rick prepares to go to dialysis
6-1-10, Tuesday
Dad & Diane sent us birthday money (yay) and I splurged on 5 quarts of oil for the Nissan and a filter which I changed out today, at 208,117 miles on the odometer. Badly needed, too. It's been almost 5,000 miles since the last change. I believe it was the last thing I did before moving to Quartermaster Heights (in October 2007). Never once since I've owned that truck have I treated it so poorly! Shame shame on me.
I stopped off at Jon Knudson's office to give him a retainer and our debt info for bankruptcy proceedings. He wasn't so I stuffed the envelope through his mail slot. I hope we're in time.
As I was leaving I noticed with some surprise that the office right next door now belongs to Height Water! Mary Anne came floating out of the office at the same time and gave me a big hug and a tour of the new office. They've been in there for about a year and Helen has been working about 6 hours a week for WE #19 to help fill in the gaps there. Man, am I out of the loop.
Today the lawsuit was due to come to trial, but got put off until Thursday. We are eager to get this event over with. It has been such a drain on our morale.
6-2-10, Wednesday
I stopped into WD #19 to tell them the latest turn of events involving the PD catheter replacement on June 15 followed by recuperation time. If the new catheter works I can probably get back to work sometime in July. If not, the new catheter will have to come out and another recuperation period will follow. And more delay in getting back to work.
Mary spent the whole day in the courtroom listening to (the people suing us) go on about the loss of quality of life of (the sue-er). Their answers to their lawyer's questions were scripted, so their answers to all questions were identical and pat. When our insurance lawyer cross-examined them, they got a deer-in-the-headlights look, and rambled.
The judge did ask their lawyer how they came up with their figures (what they were asking in damages), a question which stumped their lawyer (Mary's note: I think the judge asked this because he wanted some comic relief, and he certainly got it).
In order to get the trial over today, Mary agreed not to testify, in part because she was so angry she thought she would make the case worse.
Boy oh boy – this is NOT the way I had hoped to face up to my elder years – being plundered while being bled white by dialysis and dying of renal disease. This is the retirement plan from Hell! My tombstone should read, “Dedicated to those who made me what I am today.”
6-4-10, Friday
The big busy day is upon me. Woke up at 0600 and caught the 8:40 boat, wading into the herd of commuters at Fauntleroy. An amazing sight and one not often seen at this hour was the line of cars waiting to catch the boat to Vashon/Southworth. They were lined up almost to the 76 station, maybe ½ a mile from the dock.
It took a half hour to get from West Seattle to the interchange of the Spokane Street Viaduct and Highway 99 (a distance of maybe two miles); then another 25 minutes to get from there to Highway 5 (another mile). Highway 99 and I-5 looked just like the West Seattle Freeway and once I got past the on-ramp to Interstate 5 it was clear sailing all the way to the VA Hospital. The parking lot had volunteer vets everywhere, helping the arriving vets to find available spaces. Wow! I felt I had come home at last! I got there at 0946, 15 minutes early. Vets everywhere! The place was packed and everyone there was guided by the spirit of helpfulness. Everyone there was moved through the lines with speed and efficiency. People helped guide me through the huge buildings the considerable paperwork to be filled out. I got my picture taken for a VA ID card and met Rita W., my case worker. Gone are the days when you had to prove by virtue of witnesses hat you had actually set foot on the soil of Vietnam to prove eligibility for Agent Orange exposure. Now, eligibility is determined by whether you carry the Vietnam service medal or not. Period.
Same thing for PTSD qualification. Turns out everybody in the Navy is presumed to have some symptoms of post-traumatic stress simply due to the fact that ships are dangerous duty stations.
I finished up for now a little before 1300 and headed for west Seattle NWKC. Earlier, while still being processed through the VA, Debbie called from Di-alysis Restaurant to find out if I could come in early today which made a formerly long day become a less long day. I was in the chair bleeding by 1330 and home by 1930.

Rick's log, May 25 to May 30

5-25-10, Tuesday
A surprising front-page headline article in yesterday's paper on, of all things, the art of cursive writing! Formerly known to us geezer types as “penmanship,” it occupied a half-hour of elementary school time every day and comprised a part of the evening's homework assignments as well. Practice, practice, practice was the name of the game. Some got the skill eventually and some didn't and one of the reasons for learning it was to develop a signature as a unique and personal stamp of identity.
Many kids today (Allysan is one) can't read or write cursive and our own adult kids have signatures that imitate it. I had thought the schools had abandoned it long ago and the article says that Seattle Public Schools “encourage” the use of cursive but don't require it.

At last! Dr. Pham called. She has a surgery date set up for me to replace my PD catheter at (gasp) 0530 on Tuesday, June 15.
I have a date at Dr. Oliver's the same day.
Mary called CenturyLink to have our ground line shut off and after all this time and wrangling, the line was dead and gone within minutes. I found this out when I called Dr. Oliver's office to reset the 1100 appointment and couldn't get through. Using my cell phone, I left a message on her office's voice mail to call me back.
Kinda historical. Good-bye forever to 206-463-3327 and 463-1230.

5-26-2010, Wednesday (Art Linkletter passed today at age 97)
Next, we went through the house and boxed up all the cable TV control boxes and remote controls to return them to Comcast, instantly eliminating about $50 from our monthly house operation expenses. This is our first big step in learning to live in senior citizen poverty. Our next step seems to be learning how to wait for my meager disability check from the government which we have waited to receive since last October. It was supposed to come today. It failed to arrive. Although the benefits technically started last month, it's understandable that it would take the government a month to sign it and mail it to us. Anyway, its failure to arrive started a clock ticking for us. Back on Feb. 9 we discovered how Chase bank deals with its customers by making us track our funds down and make requests for them while they collect interest on them...while we wait in frustration for the funds to arrive.
Happy 62nd birthday to Mary. She got funny birthday greetings from Nancy who, along with Charlotte, sang her the happy birthday song while still groggy from her 2nd chemotherapy session.
Boy, did I bleed today! The techie who hooked me up (Cyrus) had trouble placing the needles and one blew out while he was trying to reset the other. Finally he had to remove both of them and start all over which left me in pain for the entire four hour run.
Meanwhile Angela called to tell me she couldn't make it to West Seattle to go over my latest care plan with me. She had several emergencies at Sea-Tac NWKC and while driving north to meet me at West Seattle NWKC had to turn around and go back to help deal with more emergencies that happened after she left.
That's okay. I was busy with an emergency of my own when she called, holding back the tide of my life's blood with a thick gauze pad while Cyrus and several other techies had to swarm a patient who passed out from low blood pressure.
We returned home late to find a worried note on the door from Gregg who had been unable to reach us because our phone had been disconnected. We gave him our cell phone numbers but were too bushed to provide dinner or conversation tonight.
So far we're not missing the phone line or the cable TV. The next thing to go will be the post office boxes. Both of 'em. Another radical move with historical overtones. I've had PO box 238 since the 70s.

5-27-10, Thursday
This is the one day of the year when Mary and I are only 2 years apart in age. She turned 62 yesterday and I'm still 64 until tomorrow.
The ticking clock that started yesterday stopped today when my first meager disability check arrived.
Mary picked up the check at the PO after we went to town to consult with our lawyer on how to declare bankruptcy.
For the moment this will help us quite a bit since the credit card companies have been in harassment mode for a while now. Everyone else in the long line of creditors we've acquired since I became a member of the Living Dead Club has been understanding and helpful but not the credit card companies, of which Discover is the most egregious.
About a month ago Jim Hutcheson (“Saint Hutch” to us) sent us a download from The Washington Post announcing “America's next Great Cartoonist” contest. The web site is about 12 pages long and when I finally got around to reading it today I found the contest closes on June 4th – right around the corner. Mary looked up their website, which contained an online registration form which required an attachment to be...um...attached containing six cartoons for their judges to consider. Unfortunately it's in Word format and Mary's computer doesn't have Word. She scanned six Offshore cartoons and sized them at 6.375” by 2.125” but when she printed them out, each strip's size was about the width of a coffee bean, i.e., nearly invisible. So, if we used their online electronic registration form, the Washington Post would not be able to open the attachment.
Mary printed up their registration form plus the six scanned cartoons so I can fill it out and snail-mail it to the Post. Only trouble is, they didn't include their mailing address but they did include a manager's name, Sarah M., and phone number.
Mary took a break to make dinner and as we sat down, Gregg walked in. Fortunately there was enough food left over for him.
I managed to get a brief bio put together for the Post while Mary experimented with various other ways to try to overcome the formatting problem but the snail mail option may be the only one available.

5-28-10, Friday
Made it to 65! Woo hoo!
First thing today I called Sarah M. at the Washington Post and left a message on her voice mail. Then I realized it's the beginning of Memorial Day Weekend.
Mary took off for the Honda dealership. Yesterday she got a call from Honda that her Civic has a problem in the driver's side airbag that may cause it to spew explosive shrapnel if it goes off. Bad feature so she's off to get it fixed.
Time to go for a birthday bleed.
(later)
I got off early enough to catch the 8:05 pm boat home and was knocked out when I walked into the house and found Allysan was there! Big birthday present! She did some special Allysan birthday cards for me. My favorite (a keeper) was a picture of me hooked up to a hemodialysis machine and her looking at me through a door and both of us thinking, “Dialysis sucks!”
I thought I hadn't gotten a call back from Sarah M. but Mary suggested I check my cell phone's voice mail because she (Mary) couldn't reach me today. Sure enough. The phone had turned itself off and there was indeed a voice mail from Sarah M. She said unfortunately all entries for the cartoonist contest had to be done electronically and wished me luck.
Mary went in, hooked up to the website and filled in all the particulars on the application form and within an hour an answer came back welcoming me to the contest.
5-29-10, Saturday
Allysan stayed the night and part of the day. Who knows how long this gets to go on? We'll just enjoy it while it lasts I guess.
The well-preserved but expensive-to-operate B-17 Flying Fortress that's been hanging out at Boeing Field for the last three weeks made two runs south and then north down Colvos Passage this afternoon. They've been selling half-hour flights to the public for $450 a pop so I grabbed the video camera and went out to see if I could expose some footage late in the afternoon. No luck but it was nice to break away from my usual dialysis patient mode for a change.
5-30-10, Sunday
Another week in the chair starting up tomorrow. Friday will be a tough day to end of the week but only because it'll be so long. I'll have my entrance interview and doctor's exam at the Veteran's Hospital at 10 am, and probably some time to kill before my 1600 to 2000 stretch in the dialysis chair that evening.
Mary notes: had a Skype call from John & Julie tonight. They sent their love and good wishes. Let's see now...if it's 10 pm this evening here, it's about 4 pm tomorrow there.