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November 12, 2004
More About Advocacy, Best of Ohio Writing and Other Random Subjects
Every once in a while, a gal ought to be able to reveal the random thoughts in her mind, and where better than in the vast realm of the blogosphere...
About Advocacy
Wednesday night I attended another Arthritis Foundation Advocacy Committee meeting. Nick from the AF had us armed with folders from OHAN - Ohio Health Advocacy Network - and we devised a plan for meeting with out state legislators. All of this is like taking a begining Civics course for me (do they even teach Civics anymore?). It all begins with getting in front of elected officials so they know we are here and who we are. My fellow advocates are all people who have been doing this very thing for much longer than I have - I'm definitely the weak link in the chain - but I'm energized by being around them. And I found my way to contribute! But that will be for it's own entry in the blogosphere... so stay tuned.
Dr. Higgins, the pediatric rheumatologist who is a member of our committee, is always giving me information to ponder, and Wednesday night was no exception. She explained to me that there are only 150 pediatric rheumatologists in all of the United States. Only 150! Some states have no pediatric rheumatologists... kids with dieases like Juvenile RA end up seeing health professionals that may not have the best background to help them.
Best of Ohio Writing
I'm happy to report that Ohio Writer, the publication that puts out the "Best of Ohio Writing" awards has recognized a piece of mine, "Holiday Landscaping." I'll include it at the end of today's thoughts.
Other Random Thoughts
I noticed on the auto-immune section of Health Diaries that there is an alarming fact - 75 % of all auto-immune diseases occur in women.
Mallory, another writer here, gets much more interesting spam than I do. I always get spam for new mortgages and offers to buy medications from Canada. Also, Mallory, congrats on finding Vegan candy corn!
Check out www.arthritis.org about the Jingle Bell Run - you can run, walk or volunteer!
And, here it is:
Holiday Landscaping
I think my mother secretly wishes to be miniaturized.
She is busy decorating for Christmas. Decorating starts on her birthday in mid-November. She hauls up box after box from the basement, from shelves marked "X-MAS, DEPT. 56." The process doesn't take hours, it takes days to complete. She is a Christmas junkie, and I have to admit that after her hair grayed she did bear a remarkable resemblance to Mrs. Claus.
Today she has received a gargantuan box from Bronner’s, the World's Largest Christmas Store. Driving on the highway from Columbus, Ohio begins the every five to fifteen mille barrage of billboards for Bronner's, starting around the exit for Bowling Green and continuing over the state line. Then, driving into town you are greeted by a sign that says, "Welcome to Frankenmuth, Michigan's Little Bavaria," immediately followed by the bigger-than-a-football-stadium sized Bronner's Store. They've taken Christmas and Super-Sized it.
At the corner of the property where Bronner's is situated is a replica Silent Night Chapel with the first verse of the song in about a zillion languages, including Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Swahili and several Native American tongues. Past the chapel, there are signs for parking held by little mannequins of elves, complete with tireless smiles, peaked hats and unrealistically rosy cheeks. At night the area around the giant store is illuminated with ten-foot soldiers, choo-choo trains and evergreens all done up in tiny twinkle lights -- even during the summer months. All of this indicates that these are not the kind of Christmas people to be taken lightly.
Bronner's is part of the reason I think my mom wants to be miniaturized. During a family reunion in Frankenmuth, my mother-in-law (another Christmas junkie, first class) introduced my mom to Department 56, conveniently sold en masse at Bronner’s. Department 56 is an entire empire of miniatures based on Christmas. There are villages with lightly snow-covered castles, factories, houses and bungalows. There are itsy-bitsy people playing in the snow. There are elves training reindeer to fly. There are diners that serve Coca-Cola, as well as Starbucks and Caribou coffeehouses; tiny trees, snow covered fences, and all other effects of yuletide delight in diminutive proportions.
The miniatures are amazingly elaborate. Some are mechanized - gondolas that travel from the Christmas tree to the village, or reindeer that fly around snow-crusted lodges. With "amazingly elaborate" comes "amazingly pricey." To keep the purse strings continually loosed, Department 56 systematically introduces new items, while retiring others. Retired items require immediate purchase. They are now collectables. Mom eagerly filled her cart.
I reminded her that we must all fit into the car at the end of the Frankenmuth visit. Mom was undaunted. She went to a customer service counter and exclaimed, "Ship it!"
Now, back in her own version of Winter Wonderland, Mom places a Lilliputian-proportioned building on one of many shelves now dedicated to her Department 56 pride and joy. The building is a pint-sized factory - a Crayola factory. Its turrets are primary-colored crayons. It has a crayon fence and staircase. Around the Crayola factory Mom places little crayon go-carts driven by elves.
"Look," she says, "they're having so much fun."
I can see she wishes she had a miniature crayon go-cart. She places the Tinsel Factory next to the Crayola Factory, creating an industrial section for blue-collar elves. At the end of the elfin factory row, she places the Egg Nog Pub. The elves now have a place to go after a hard day's work. It's quite thoughtful of the needs of the elves, although she ought to know the effects of too much nog mixed with Crayola carts.
For Christmas my brother and his fiancee will visit; he will bring their Great Danes. The Danes, with their giant wagging tails, are the most perilous natural disaster to face the tiny yuletide landscape according to Mom. I can hear the elves screaming now, "Look out," and "Innnn-commming!" Mom counters the threat of dogs by making available shelving space higher than tail level- not an easy feat where massive canines are concerned. But she will go to these lengths to preserve her perfect holiday landscaping.
Slowly, Department 56 will creep over every free shelf space in the entire great room of my parent's home. My father, who I believe secretly has dreams of minimalism, will be surrounded by Mom's miniaturized holiday hideaway, hindering his ability even to set down his drink.
Christmas is a magical time of the year where clutter becomes all the rage. Perhaps it just wouldn't be Christmas without all this decorating, or as I would call it, crap. It amazes me how taste and preferences don't seem to make their way through the gene pool. I like vast, clean surfaces, usually with one decorative object and plenty of glass or stainless steel. I would be happy with a circa 1950 pink aluminum Christmas tree with bubble lights and nothing else. Mom wrinkles her nose at the thought. For her, holidays and miniatures go hand in hand.
Mom's creation becomes more elaborate after each passing twelvemonth. When she cannot go to Bronner's she calls them with requests and directions to "Ship it!" My father, giving up on all hopes of free space, buys her Bronner's gift certificates for every gift-giving occasion, which at each time received will be considered the BEST GIFT EVER. Implicit in this gift is the ability to purchase more loot for the village.
Gift certificate in hand, my mother scans the Internet, checking out dwarfish domiciles, considering carefully which she would most like to inhabit if she were only 5 inches tall.
Posted by renee at 2:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 10, 2004
Newton's Third Law of Motion
My last science class in high school was Physics. Even though I tended towards subjects like History and English, I always liked Physics too. It was the one science class I truly enjoyed.
The world functions, in part, according of the "natural laws" of physics. They make sense to me, at least, the low-level physics I learned in high school. Gravity, for instance, is a concept I get. It's the reason I can stand on the Earth, as opposed to floating around the atmosphere. Velocity – speed and direction – makes sense to me. But my favorite law of physics is Newton's Third Law of Motion:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
This strikes me as a law with application broader than just as a law of motion. It feel like a social law or a psychic law, something maybe akin to karma. I've been thinking about Newton's Third Law, lately, as I've been writing about RA. Why? It seems like the more I write about having RA, the more I write about why I write. Could it be that my "equal and opposite reaction" is my RA and my writing?
The idea of an equal and opposite effect to a condition like rheumatoid arthritis is a powerful concept to me. According to Newton, in the physical world, whenever objects A and B interact with each other, they exert forces upon each other. So A gets a force and B gets a force and where they meet they create the concept of action and reaction. Action and reaction, working together, create all sorts of good results. A fish can swim through water because of action and reaction. The fish uses its fins to propel itself through water, but the water itself accelerates and helps push the fish through the water.
The more I write about RA, the less power and control it has over me as a person. As I gain control of my destiny as a person, I continue to write and my identity as a writer makes me less susceptible to defining myself through my disease. It almost hurts my head to conceptualize this in the language of physics and yet oddly satisfying and rewarding (more action and reaction working? Could be!).
Think, for a minute, about another application of Newton's Third Law: you can't touch something without being touched back by it. There is something delicate and interactive about this concept of touch and touching. It is the same as writing – the writing isn't complete until someone reads, understands and then reaches their own conclusion about what the writer is saying. Every action does have an equal and opposite reaction.
When I first thought about having RA, it was very one way. There was just the force of it working on me but no opposite and equal reaction. I think in non-physics terms, that I had to choose to be the equal and opposite reaction. And that's what makes people different than the other stuff in the world. Choice. Free will.
So the more I write about RA the more I discover about myself as a writer. And the more I touch things in the world, the more I'm able to be touched back by them.
Physics. Isn't it grand?
Posted by renee at 11:53 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
November 9, 2004
Kindling
And kindle with thy own productive fire. --Dryden.
Productivity. This is the concept that I'm struggling with.
Dictionary.com has all sorts of useful definitions for "productive." Culled from these results, here are a few to ponder:
Producing abundantly; fertile.
Yielding favorable or useful results; constructive.
Of or involved in the creation of goods and services to produce wealth or value.
Effective in achieving specified results.
Bringing into being; causing to exist; producing; originative; as, an age productive of great men; a spirit productive of heroic achievements.
These are all interesting and important definitions of productive. If I felt I was living up to any one of these definitions I'd probably have that feeling of productivity!
I could blame my lack of productivity on the recent cold snap. It's not a bone-chilling cold or even the freeze the little hairs inside your nose cold. It's more of a shiver when you take the dog out to do her business cold, a remember to wear a coat cold, a winter isn't here but all the leaves are knocked from the trees cold. I usually increase productivity in the cold weather – add a gray sky and I seem to be able to get a ton done. I don't know why. Perhaps the warm sunny days are too much of a distraction.
RA is a perfect thing to blame for a lack of productivity. But If I blame my RA, my stiff knees or my stiff wrists, then I've given in to it. Every day seems like another opportunity to slip into that trap of "I can't because I have RA." And this just isn't how I want to live my life. I just can't let myself be defined by RA. I don't want to pull up dictionary.com and see me if I plugged in "rheumatoid arthritis."
It can't be an excuse. A challenge for sure, but never an excuse.
Outside, it is still a shivery 40-some degrees and the sun is trying to peek from behind my neighbor's tall evergreen. Inside, I'm wrestling to peak from behind the shady limbs of a non-productive day.
Posted by renee at 8:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 1, 2004
It Comes From Within
On Saturday, I went to one of my "jobs." I teach creative writing to middle school aged and high school aged students at the Thurber House Writing Academy (www.thurberhouse.org). From 1-3 pm for five Saturdays, I work with these talented young writers. The class I'm teaching is called Breaking Into Print and we work on how to get original works from poetry to plays to short fiction published.
One of the things I remind my students is that in writing, rejection is a part of the life. It's a bigger part than any writer really wants to admit to, but to be a writer, you have to face facts -- more of your work gets rejected than accepted. To really be a writer, you have to love the writing itself. For me, the true satisfaction is in the process of writing rather than the results (although, seeing your name in print can be satisfying too, very satisfying!).
I've been thinking about my students, who are unafraid to try and try again at this writing thing and it makes me a little ashamed to admit my own fear. You see, I've been accepted to the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing at West Virginia University. They've given me a great financial package, which includes teaching. I'll have the time to write, with mentors and a community of other writers. It's such a blessing. It's something I really want to do, dreamt about. So why do I feel like I now have to confess my fear over it?
Fear might be the most natural human emotion. We fear what is unknown. Sometimes we fear what is known. As an RA patient, I'm always fearful of what will happen to my health. What if they find some horrible side effects to Enbrel, the therapy I'm using to control my RA? What if I have a flare up that causes such awful joint damage that it will be difficult to function normally? What if my health care costs go through the roof and I can't afford treatment?
My fears about RA fuel feelings in inadequacy. I think we all have esteem issues from time to time and mine are always linked backed to having RA. I shouldn't feel that I'm not pretty or smart simply because of the disease, but the truth is sometimes those feelings snowball with feelings of fatigue, frustration over not look or feeling "normal" because of RA or just the pain of swelling.
Writing has been my refuge from RA. But now, looking at this MFA and looking to try to advance my small skill, I’m so afraid! What if my refuge becomes a tormentor? But then, if I don't do it, I've already failed at it.
What am I truly afraid of? It's a complex thing. I already write, send out my work and gather lots of "no thanks" letters… many more rejections than acceptances. And I'm okay with that. I already participate in a critique group, so submitting my work for workshop review shouldn't be too scary, and I'm eager to get suggestions and comments. I already teach, so teaching at the university should be the next step in development. When I type this out it all seems so natural, so thought out and reasonable. But the feeling inside is shaky – I have to move, my husband has to find a new job. We have to sell our house, and find a new place to live in a strange town. Should we buy or rent? What if I get there and can’t hack it? What if the stress gets to be so much that my RA goes nuts? What if I get through the three years of the program and still get piles of rejections but my writing doesn’t improve? (Okay, this is among the least rational, but in those moments of quiet desperation, it creeps in). What if the actual experince doesn't live up to my expectations?
Sometimes I shock myself by continuing to move forward, despite all the fears mounting up. I just have to have faith, because I know I want this. Faith is stronger than the fear. Maybe that's how I get through my RA, too. Maybe that's why I can work with my young students and reassure them it is worth writing even if there is lots of rejection. Hope doesn't get nearly the good publicity it should. At the heart of it all, I think I hope for things and my hope pushes me to action. That hope - hope for writing success, hope for a cure for RA, hope for happiness for my loved ones, hope for my young students' success - comes from a place inside me that I can hardly understand, but often rely on. Hope is stronger than statistics or odds.
This morning, I wrapped myself in my cuddly but old bathrobe after getting out of a warm shower. My face still showed the drowsiness of sleep, small purple circles under my eyes. I sipped coffee from a large red cup as I brushed my teeth and ran a comb through my wet, long hair. I went through the motions of getting ready for the day, kissed my husband as he left for work. All of this is the normal and mundane - safe and secure. Routine can make fear seem less potent. But I could wake up like this any day and not change. This change, my fear, make routine seem pretty attractive. But I have a race to begin, not one of speed or distance, but a race against my fear and doubt. Right now I'm just preparing...
One of my favorite movies is Chariots of Fire, and in it one of the main characters, Eric Liddell, an Olympic runner from Scotland has a great line:
"Where does the power come from to see the race to its end? It comes from within."
Posted by renee at 10:48 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
