On my Vacation from Writing

I am not one of those writers who can sort things out by writing-- well, not personal things anyway. I can develop my ideas, opinions on whatever, and whimsies with the keyboard or a pen and paper, but when it comes to personal issues and events... my writing invariably suffers while I sort things out.

In any case that is my justification for neglecting my blog for so long :) I guess it's just that I am completely consumed by this pregnancy and all of the things that come along with it, and I don't feel as if I am capable, at this point, of seriously thinking about much else. I also don't want to turn this into a baby blog (I hope to keep it more intellectual etc..) but today I will write a bit about my feelings on how my life will change this October.

One of the most surprising things, to me, is how much I am changing as a result of this event. For all of my life I have felt more a child than an adult, and have reveled in the freedom I demanded. Now, I will have to be more adult than I ever really contemplated... but then again I hope to avoid actually really growing up.

Mostly I see how I consider everything in terms of this child. What kind of music I listen to, the choices I am making and will make, the kind of people I want to expose him/her to, my ideals as a parent. Yes, I'm sure this is normal and that everyone goes through it when they are about to become parents. I guess it's still just coming as a surprise to me how very seriously I am taking this... I'm not particularly known for seriousness.

and there are so many things to consider. I know a few things about the kind of parent I hope to be. I know I want to be balanced; to find the right place between protecting the child and facilitating independence of mind and spirit. I hope to teach him/her to live healthily, to have respect for him/herself and others, to have a good moral foundation etc.. I think I have some ideas of how to accomplish this. I'm not so sure if I know how to achieve the practicalities of this mission though. For instance, I am pretty much opposed to daycare, preschool etc. and hope to be a stay at home mother, at least mostly. I really even want to homeschool-- mostly because I really distrust the ability of schools to provide appropriate (good) education for any child and think I can do much better. But how will I accomplish this as a mostly single mother? How frugal can I be? Can I manage to do this at all?

I think it will be somewhat easier to manage as long as I am still in school... I think. And I generally do find a way to do things... I just worry about doing this right. I won't have another chance to be the best mother I can be to this child.

And also, I am worried about this being a mostly single parent. It really makes me more adamant about being home. If he is only going to be a part time parent, how can I at all justify being any less than a full time one? It seems so unfair, so wrong, to raise a child with two part time parents-- like in the end you aren't raising your child at all, but rather giving that responsibility to strangers. That is something I cannot even stand to consider.

So there are a million concerns and things to think about and I'm sure I will write some more, sometimes, about certain issues regarding parenting here. I will try to stay more to the literary, cultural, art etc issues. But right now they just aren't the things I'm mostly thinking about :)

Snitching and Cassandra

Two years ago, June 5th, my friend Cassandra was murdered.

One night a "friend" of hers beat her to death with his bare hands. She lived in a neighborhood of apartments; buildings which were closely spaced. There must have been dozens of witnesses to her screams and no one called the police.

I've sometimes wondered how that could happen. How long does it take to beat someone to death? Her mother said she was completely unrecognizable, she only knew her by a mole on her neck.

How could people in the homes around her listen to her screams, her cries for help, and do nothing? The police did not know about her death until the perpetrator led them to her body.

So it's been on the news the last few days that 60 mins. did a report in which a rapper, Cameron, was interviewed about the anti-snitching culture. I didn't connect the two, foolishly, until I was almost asleep tonight. That's why Cassandra got no help that night. No one wanted to snitch, and my friend died for it.

You know what, it makes me really mad. And I hate to say this but it is something I absolutely cannot respect about any culture that subscribes to this. Thinking about it... before this realization I would not have really cared too much about the racial composition of a neighborhood I lived in. There are good and bad neighborhoods of every color, but now... now I don't think I could move into a black neighborhood. I would just be too scared that if someone were murdering me no one would help. I know that in every white neighborhood I've ever lived in, a woman's screams bring the police quite quickly.

So I feel bad for saying it, maybe it makes me racist, but it is the truth. I am having a child now and I could not, in good conscience, put that child or myself in a position to be completely devoid of help if we needed it. What is a community, what is a neighborhood, if you cannot even count on your neighbors for a simple thing like picking up a phone if you scream for help in the night?

AMA Halts Executions

This morning I was listening to the news on NPR and they mentioned a little something about the AMA issuing guidelines which would punish physicians who participate or oversee executions of convicted criminals on death row.

Now I'm pretty mixed on my opinions of capital punishment. While I don't particularly care for murder, even when state sanctioned, I also feel that there are some people who are just too dangerous to risk subjecting society to, and I feel that the burden of their life long imprisonment is perhaps hard to justify... so I'll just say I don't know how I stand on the issue.

But, having said that I will say I am wholly opposed to what the AMA is doing. In my opinion they are in effect using their power to license physicians to overrule the power and laws of the state, and I feel that this is a very dangerous precedent to set.

For no matter what your stance is on capital punishment, I think it is dangerous to allow the moral position of any group to dictate what doctors can do. What if the AMA became headed up by prolifers and withdrew the liscenses of doctors who provided abortion, or by strict catholics and punished drs. for prescribing birth control... or radical muslims and withdrew liscenses of male doctors who had female patients?

We may think that these things could not happen, and to be honest the only one that seems to be any real danger now is the abortion issue, since one could argue that since doctors are to preserve life that abortions are unethical (if fetuses are alive) but it is impossible to know what the future holds and how society will change in the years to come.

I think the population is about evenly split on the capital punishment thing, so this is not an overwhelming majority issue... niether is the prolife/prochoice debate.

The potential dangers of allowing any agency who is not accountable to the public (voters) for their actions to determine (effectively) what is done by the state is a danger to all of us.

I don't know what will happen with this, and haven't even been able to find anything about it on the web, but it is something that gave me pause and frightened me a little bit today.

Oh, and sorry I've not written in so long :)