Author: stevekuusisto

By Laura Castle

So many myths, both sad and dangerous surround the topic of child abuse. As a survivor, I would like to discuss some of them and the harm they can do.

Myth 1. Battered children almost always become abusive parents, or end up in prison for violent crimes. In truth, a small number of us are in prison and some of us do become violent, abusive parents. But, nowhere near as many as the folklore would have us believe.

Excessive withdrawal and timidity is considered by counselors who work with survivors to be a much more common result of severe child abuse, especially among female survivors. And, many of us make a deliberate choice to end the cycle of child abuse through either non-parenthood or by learning to be the best parents we can be.

Myth 2 (This is the reverse of myth 1). Physical discipline is good for a child. It builds character. In the South, where I live, the Biblical words, “Spare the rod, spoil the child” are used to excuse cruelty by far too many parents.

In truth, it is much more likely to cause depression, chronic anxiety, social withdrawal, and, in a small number of cases, extreme hostility.

Myth 3. Child abuse always looks the same. It is always easy to tell when a child is being mistreated.

In truth, there are many kinds of child abuse. The major categories are physical, sexual, emotional, and neglectful. Physical abuse is often easy to identify as belt-beatings, punching, kicking, and biting can leave marks. But the marks are sometimes hidden and some parents know how to beat up a child without leaving visible marks. Neglect can also be easy to identify in a child who comes to school dirty in the same clothes as yesterday and brings no lunch. Emotional and sexual child abuse can be harder to recognize. We may have no way to know that a small, vulnerable human being is being told he or she is no good or stupid, or that a child is being exploited sexually.

Myth 4 Battered children deserve it. They are beaten because they did something wrong and it must have been really bad to result in such severe punishment.

In truth, the punishment is often completely out of proportion to the misdeed in physically abusive homes. Truly bad behavior may be ignored, while an innocent mistake results in a severe beating. Whenever a child is told a beating took place because “she is a bad girl” or “he is a bad boy”, a second crime is committed against that child. No child deserves a beating for any reason ever. Yes, children are difficlut to raise and that is why they need loving, intelligent care.

Myth 5. Child abuse victims need to get over it and stop feeling sorry for ourselves.

In truth, many of us are trying very hard to get beyond the pain and hurt with varying degrees of success. Many of us have been able to tap into a place of strength and confidence with the knowledge that we can face just about anything. And those of use who were lucky enough to receive kindness from other adults as our parents brutalized us, may grow up believing that the human race is basically good and we want to add to that goodness with our lives. But it can be a slow process and for many of us the healing will take a lifetime.

Myth 6  It is none of my business if someone mistreats a child. This is by far the most dangerous myth about child abuse. It absolutely is your business if you suspect that a child is being harmed physically, sexually, emotionallly, or neglectfully and I urge you to take action. When you call your state’s abuse hotline or the local police to report suspected child abuse anonymity is guaranteed. Please do not be afraid if there is something you need to report.

In closing, I send  a heartfelt thanks to all of you who took the time to read this. It is very hard to read about child abuse and I am thankful that you did not turn away, but stayed and read my words. Thank you!

Laura Castle is a survivor of profound childhood violence and an advocate for children and adult survivors of abuse.

Yesterday I proposed that I would eat John Boehner, the minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. This was fatuous and silly of me because of course the whole business of eating human beings is a hackneyed literary theme ever since Montaigne and Swift and besides, who wants to read about a small town literature professor in the American midwest who thinks that figurative digestion is a fit way to handle authentic political disagreements? Silly. And my friends would probably say this conceit is beneath me. But let’s suppose I really WAS going to eat John Boehner? What’s to be done as viand, by way of preparation? 

Like a squid spouting ink Mr. Boehner spurts the word “socialism” at every turn. And like squid ink it does him some good for indeed he vanishes from the world of engagement for a few crucial minutes each time he “lets fly” as they say in the vernacular. True socialism is not in the cards for America even if we adopted Mr. Obama’s health care reforms wholesale like the whale that ate Jonah, and by the way, Jonah was not a socialist either, though he heard voices and could talk to the nether parts of animals which probably made him an anthroposophist which means that he would favor art and architecture that was good for people and I’m certain that Mr. Boehner would smell a conspiracy around that theme for “universal design” might have something to do with socialism–Uh Oh! There goes the squid ink! Poor Boehner, he can’t control his squid glands.

Getting the ink out of a squid is a matter of boiling. Did you know that boiling water is a socialist trick? The water company and the plumbing lines and the gas company are all subsidized by the government–EVEN WHEN they are registered as private companies! Yep! The government works to assure that poor people can boil water in the United States! Uh Oh! There goes the squid ink!

Once we get the socialist conspiracy ink out of Old Boehner we can think more broadly about how to season the man.

I pity John Boehner because when he says “socialism” he really means “solecism” and what with all the ink in his mouth its too hard to say. Kids in grade school who swallow paste often have this difficulty. That of course is a different subject and entirely for another day.

S.K.

A friend of mine (who is an Episcopal Priest) once said: “The only thing better than a dancing Jesus is an edible Jesus.” This put me in mind of the spirit and flesh of sacrifice and then it hit me: I should eat right wing politicians. This idea caused me some further amusement for I promptly imagined the vast quantities of Tartar sauce I would need. I ate Joe Wilson in a recent post entitled “Dear Rep. Wilson” and the man was such a lightweight he went right down my gullet. He required no tonic or sauces. As soon as I put him in my mouth he was all separate particles. He went down smooth. But eating Chuck Grassley or John Boehner or Jeff Sessions–that’s going to call for some serious Tartar sauce and maybe some Adolph’s meat tenderizer. Yes my friends, the City on the Hill will soon be slick with comestibles. Yum!

The first thing to do if you want to eat a right winger is to remove what’s called “the poop shoot” (those of you who have eaten crayfish know how crucial this is) and like a true Republican I will arrange to have a subcontractor take care of this business. (Blackwater can do it, I’m sure of it.)

If “might makes right” you can imagine how long their poop chutes will be. Studies have shown that right wingers have inestimable alimentary outlets. No one knows about this better than Joe Lieberman whose toilet is high as an ocean liner and had many steps to its summit. But enough of these mechanics.    

Stay tuned. I propose in my next post to eat John Boehner.

S.K.

Hobbes: “One Person of whose Acts a great Multitude have made themselves every one the Author.”

Yesterday in Washington DC Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House of Representatives) called for a cooling down of public rhetoric. Recently protestors on the right have appeared in Washington with placards vowing the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Some have brandished weapons.

Politicians on the right declare that these assemblies are merely the outcry of a population that’s opposed to more government programs. But Speaker Pelosi was correct–there’s an underpinning of ugliness and hostility to what is occurring and it’s important to note that these rallies in opposition to President Obama’s policies are largely organized and funded by Republican groups which finance the events. In this manner the GOP is the Author of their Multitude and many in that multitude (small “m”) are engaging in treasonous activity.

Jan Marshall one of our blogging friends in the UK (who writes beautifully about cancer survivorship among many other things) tells of a new hotline in Britain that you can call if you’re being bullied. Of course I immediately wish to call. I want to say: “Help! My democracy is being bullied by Fascists wearing 18th century tri-cornered hats! People who believe that America is the land of commodity fetishism. People with guns strapped to their legs. Oh yeah and they’re homophobic, racist, unlettered, and sub-Cartesian. Thank you for listening.”   

We’re being bullied by the apocalypse crowd.

Political parties are essentially primitive secret societies. A good rule of thumb is to ask which one is the most primitive and stay the hell away.

S.K.

Dear Rep. Wilson:

Last week when you shouted that President Obama was a liar I wondered if you had your sweet little head screwed on straight. I should say right off that until you appeared on my TV screen I’d never seen your sweet little noggin even though my stepdaughter Tara attended the University of South Carolina and vows she’s a “Gamecock” (though much to my relief she doesn’t sport one of those baseball caps that says simply: “Go Cocks” and which the testosterone besotted “gentlemen’s “C” crowd favors down there in your fair state.)

I should also say that being a liar myself I wondered if you were a big league bullshit detector or just an amateur. Our country has lots of the latter and I suspect that you’re just a weekend warrior in the business of outing those among us who spin august falsehoods in legions.

You see, I sir am a liar. I even have a graduate degree in lying–its called a Master of Fine Arts and I got it from the famous University of Iowa “Writers’ Workshop” and everyone knows that the “workshop” is the “bigs” when it comes to exquisite, unattenuated, wholesale bullshit. Why I can tell you why in A.D. 679 a tribe of wild horsemen crossed the Danube from the north and subjugated the Slavonic population of Moesia by forcing them to make guest towels and those darling little “soap on a rope” thingies that probably grace your guest bathroom down there in Gamecock Land, assuming you have a guest bathroom, for a man as credulous and simple as yourself may be virtually saintly (for deeply simple people often are very very simple) and accordingly you may have no need of guests.

I hope it’s true that you require no guests. Indeed, if you are going to study the arts of lying you have quite a lot of homework to do and guests would only eat into your studying time. Dearest Joe, you need to get busy.

The first thing you will need to do of course is wean yourself from the pablum lying that’s the customary addiction of choice for U.S. Representatives. You see, the kinds of lying you and your lobbying pals engage in is the sort of rhetorical gibbering that one sees represented in Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights”–the liars are all upside down, sort of half crucified, topsy-turvy, half conscious, half smiling, and the gist is that they will take whatever they can get. Politicians like yourself Sir, will take whatever polymorphous spray painted half truth they can get, preferring Fools’ Gold to something of higher value. That’s the way it is in Washington. See Mark Twain’s novel The Gilded Age.

Cain (whose name means “ownership” (watch out, I might be a Socialist) slew his brother and became the first murderer and the second liar. You see, the problem is that amateur liars are always interested in property. Dear Rep. Wilson, I urge you to think about this fact.

The Pros in the lying field are not interested in lucre. We lie for the sheer glory of the enterprise. The best liars are to be found in Irish pubs but if you can’t find an Irish pub I recommend that you just go to a poetry reading.

Freud said that all killing is ritual killing. To which I’ll add that all big league lying is headhunting. Skol! Q. How many Congressmens’ heads does it take to hold a pint of beer? A. In the absolute dark of their chambers Congressmen have no heads.

Dear Joe: I’m ego-cosmic. I talk faster than St. Augustine on Pro-Vigil. Did you know that the word “larva” means mask? I challenge you to throw down your larva and meet me in a major league liar’s duel. Scotomisation and logorhythmic dances will be de rigeur.

You stupid twit…

S.K.   

When I was in college I had to write an essay on Moby Dick and I described certain scenes in the book as “vignettes” as I was trying to sound sophisticated and I figured a vignette and a scene had to be precisely the same. My professor (who was thin, tall, fierce, and wickedly intelligent) told me that a vignette was a short narrative with a rhetorical shape—not a scene at all. “God Almighty,” I thought. “Is this what being an English major is all about? Who gives a shit?” Outside the tall window of the professor’s office one could see the maple leaves turning red and down on the “quad” there was a protest shaping up about the “secret war” in Cambodia. “Who gives a shit?”

A scene is something sharp. Its a unit in a story wherein you see a character or characters, or maybe even a landscape “behaving”. The reader is able to spy and draw her or his own conclusions.

A vignette is linked to a pony that wants you to see things the narrator’s way.

Cruel people who disguise themselves as sentimentalists, outright liars, and politicians sui generis love vignettes. Bring us another baby to kiss.

S.K. 

If you write nonfiction as I aim to do you thank the gods and goddesses of ubiquity every day for surely reality beats imagination 9 times out of 10. I found out yesterday that the poet Kenneth Rexroth (seen above in the proper photograph) received the gift of a suit from Al Capone. I love knowing this. I love the fact that a poet who was a true conscientious objector during World War II looked damned good in a psychopath’s clothing. As Carl Jung once observed: “Ultimate truth, if there be such a thing, demands the concert of many voices.” And suits. Ultimate “T” demands recycled suits.

S.K.   

By Andrea Scarpino

Los Angeles

I’ve been told that people who grew up with neat nuclear families struggle understanding the families of those of us who didn’t. I count among my family: blood relations, step-relatives, my partner and his relatives, old friends, and even ex step-relatives, people who are technically no relation to me since my mother and step-father’s divorce. Trying to explain an ex step-grandmother or an aunt who is really a friend to someone who has only known blood related grandmothers and aunts, well, that can get a little tricky. And for many years growing up, I wished my family wasn’t as complicated as it is, that I didn’t have to divide my time between houses and states, explain why my last name was different from everyone else most of the time, or why our motley crew of relatives looked so different from one another.

And our difference has only continued to grow. I have first cousins who are twenty years older than I am, a younger brother who is a foot taller, a Chinese American sister, Korean niece, a step-mom who is married to my step-dad, and a Jeannie, who has been my step-mom since I was nine. . . and this just begins the weirdness. But at a certain point along the way, I realized that our difference is part of what makes my family interesting. And incorporating new people into the family fold, well that’s just part of the fun.

So while I understand the fact that my brother and I have different fathers can confuse other people, I also wish we could open up our conceptions of family a little wider to let more people in. And maybe, in letting them in, we could find more common denominators between us. Because one thing I’ve learned during the past eight months of President Obama’s administration is that racism in America is alive and well, is kicking its feet wildly against a Black President, is stirring up hatreds everywhere it can. And racism is only possible when we refuse to see commonalities between us, insist that our particular way of life is better than another’s.

And I can’t help but wonder if racism’s us versus them mentality wouldn’t be undermined if more people had practice broadening their view of family. If we could move from the rapidly dying nuclear family outwards in every direction, collecting good friends and former relatives, partners of friends and actual blood relations along the way, sweeping them all into a widening cyclone of loved ones. I know this may sound hippy-dippy, but finding commonalities in the midst of difference has only made my life better, has helped me to negotiate and renegotiate my own beliefs, has given me practice questioning and challenging others who hold different beliefs, look differently, come from very different backgrounds. And it has taught me to respect other people, even when I don’t understand their ideas.

Hatred likes to disguise itself as family values, so I like to think of the values my motley crew of a family has taught me: don’t worry so much about blood/skin color/class status/background/ sexuality/ability. Instead, take care of those who will take care of you. Who will have conversation instead of mud flinging, who don’t care so much if you’re really related, who will look you in the eye and say you’re wrong, and then help you cut the birthday cake.

Andrea Scarpino is the west coast Bureau Chief of POTB. You can visit her at:

www.andreascarpino.com

There’s a good post over at “Politics USA” see: http://www.politicususa.com/en/Carter-GOP-Racism that asserts how timely it is that former President Jimmy Carter has spoken up about the evident racism toward Barack Obama that is circulating on the right. As a white man from Georgia Carter knows a good deal about the histrionic codes of bigotry and how the language of hatred moves from symbolism into action. The entire nation should take stock of what President Carter has to say. Right wing blogs like News Busters are crowing that the liberals are falling back on racism charges because their policies are failing, etc. Such garbled analyses are the rhetorical equivalent of what’s called “piling on” in the world of American football–right wingers conveniently forget the people hidden at the bottom of the pile and dramatically throw themselves on top. Human reality is made up of a thousand vulgarities.

But Jimmy Carter is right. The anti-Obama crowd is not generally impressed by facts and accordingly they ain’t debating policy. Joe Wilson’s outburst is a case in point. By describing racist animosities toward President Obama Jimmy Carter has dared to say in effect that sometimes “a cigar is just a cigar” (apocrypha Sigmund Freud).

Contemporary racism differs from its 50’s and 60’s antecedents since today’s bigots are more adept at the exploitation of what Freud called the reality principle. In effect the R.P. is an unreal boundary drawn between the real and imaginary. By “unreal” I mean that the world outside a man or woman is more complex than the psychological limitations that he or she has acquired from experience and education (good or bad). We can think of the reality principle as an electric fence in the human psyche: you must contain your thoughts “in here” because you can’t get to the larger world where you want to be. The way out of this dilemma is by turns unhealthy or healthy depending on your ability to bring intellectual irony to bear on the problem. We are all lead by our emotions. But what do they mean? In what ways do I make symbols according to my emotional state? The latter question is the one that contemporary bigots grasp to the extent that they understand symbolism better than their KKK fathers–they understand that where the ugly reality principle is concerned its not reality that matters but the shape of the thought, the quality of the symbols. The R.P. is a cauldron of symbolic envy and disappointments. It reduces the complicated nature of existence to a handful of suspicions. And these can be manipulated.

Carter’s assertion that those who oppose Obama are driven by a feeling that a black man isn’t qualified to lead the nation is precisely what the reality principle bears and drives forward among people who do not wish for a civil debate but in turn steer toward vicious symbolism.

As the Freudian historian Norman O. Brown once observed: “The real world, which is not the world of the reality principle, is the world where thoughts are omnipotent.” Notice “thoughts” for “feelings”. Only in the real world can you have political debate. Jimmy Carter fully understands this.

S.K.

As a boy I took apart a clock that was hidden in my grandmother’s attic—an activity “just right” for a kid who couldn’t see. Alone in the top of that Victorian house I was like a tree planted by streams of water—I was bearing fruit in due season as The Psalter says—I was sprouting leaves while taking apart a dead time piece. And sometimes I heard wind at the eaves. I was happy doing that work in that time and place. Pulling gears from a clock was my ticket to the future when I would become a person who can make poetry and literature out of nothing or nothingness.

In due season people who believe shall prosper.

The boyhood self, the tinkerer, did not know he had beliefs. Actions are the taproots of subsequent understandings. But you can’t call them beliefs. Beliefs are the verities of acting. Taking action, improvising in the dark, this is the unconscious faith in “due season” as if to say “tomorrow” I shall understand.

In due season I shall understand…

Today in mid-life I am confused. I walk around my house and feel the fatigue of adult life. I want to fix something that’s broken at the university. I feel helpless to do good. Today I do not have faith, knowledge, virtue, temperance, patience. I am a child again. I need to reacquaint myself with “due season”. I must grow in these hours.

“I have been entrusted to you ever since I was born; you were my God when I was still in my mother’s womb.”

In due season I shall understand…

Just as I want to make sense of what’s happening in the minds of others, my friends, my wife, or all those with whom I must work, just so I wish to make sense of my hopes for my soul—my tinkerer’s wish for sense.

The boy in me knew what to do. He took apart an intricate mechanism in the dark.

In due season…

So one of these days the fruits of today’s labors will become clear. Perhaps it will be years from now the signs of a sole moment will resolve before my eyes. I will understand a cloud low on the horizon. Not as a sign. Those clouds will promise rain along a stand of pines. I will recall something then—something that occurred today though I couldn’t know it.

I have only what I hope for.

S.K.