"A Symmetrical Picture for Brent" by Katie Carleton, age 7 (pastels on paper)

Our friend Brent, a big art lover, had a birthday last month.  Either Katie or I were too sick each time we made plans with him to celebrate.  Katie's jonesin' to give him this present she made for him:

"A Symmetrical Picture for Brent" by Katie Carleton, age 7 

(unframed, pastels on paper)

"A Symmetrical Picture for Brent" by Katie Carleton, age 7 

(framed, with Katie's mother in the mirror image, pastels on paper)

You Can't Judge a Cat By Its Color

"Mom, you know how some people say you can't judge a book by its cover?  You can't judge a cat by its color."

                   --Katie Carleton, age 7, after I explained to her that the reason I adopted our current cranky cat Thatcher is because when he was a kitten he was yellowish, so he reminded me of my old, sweet cat Zach who was that same color as a kitten.

What Katie's Been Up to Lately: Little Snake's House, Neat Penmanship on Spelling Tests, and Reading Logs

Here are some things Katie has been up to lately.  

***warning***this post contains over-the-top blogbragging

Katie built little snake a house out of dominoes.

Katie is showing little snake his new home.

Katie wants you to see how neatly she's learned to write her letters, she adds "even when I have to write fast during a spelling test!"

Katie is proud that it is only October 10th and she's already filled up her monthly reading log.  Time to flip it over and write more titles on the back.

I hope Katie never outgrows her enthusiasm for learning.

Marvin the Paranoid Android

Last night Will, Katie, and I watched the movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  I noticed during the first scene with Marvin the Paranoid Android Katie was wiggling her eyebrows at Will, her thumb pointed in my direction.  She saw me staring, smiled, and said, "That's you, Mom.  You're Marvin."

"Yeah, I know."  I sighed, but it made me smile too, which made Will and Katie both smile even more.

God, those two get my heart beating.

So does the robot.  I love you, Marvin.  You understand.  And I love that my two favorite people love me for who I am, depressed and all, enough to even tease me about it.

My favorite scene is toward the end of the movie when Marvin saves his friends' lives by shooting the villains with an empathy gun, making them all too depressed to continue fighting.  sigh/smile

When I'm experiencing a relapse of my chronic depression, I turn to art to lift me from the darkness.  It helps to know others know how I feel.

Here's Radiohead's take on Marvin--an amazing rendition of their song, "Paranoid Android":



God, these guys get my heart beating.

Cute Katie Quotes: Air and Clouds and Cupid

The other day, seemingly out of nowhere, Katie said, "I wish I was oxygen, because then I could fly."

"Why not wish you were a bird?" I asked.

Katie replied, "Because you can't kill air, Mom."

Then this morning as we walked out the front door to head toward Katie's school, I said, "Oh, look, it's foggy."

"What is fog, Mom?" Katie asked.

"It's a cloud that has come down to earth to hang out for awhile," I said.

Katie was quiet for a moment, and then she said, "I wish the cloud would come down to earth on Valentine's Day."

"Why on Valentine's Day?" I asked.

"Because that's where that baby lives.  You know that baby that shoots arrows at people so they fall in love?" Katie asked.

"Oh, yeah.  You mean Cupid?"

"Yeah.  Cupid.  Cupid can come down to earth with the clouds on Valentine's Day."

Antique Valentine, 1909

Eugenia Martínez Vallejo, "The Monster"

Wow, and I thought fat kids today got bullied.  At least they aren't put on display for the amusement of rich people in power like Eugenia Martínez Vallejo was in 1680's Spain.  Today in the United States, fat kids have Michelle Obama nagging them with her "Let's Move" campaign, but at least she doesn't invite them to the White House to entertain Sasha and Malia like a freak and nickname them "The Monster."

"Eugenia Martínez Vallejo, 'The Monster', dressed", 1680

Juan Carreño de Miranda via Wikimedia Commons

From Museo Nacional del Prado:

This work is an example of the Baroque taste for representations of freaks of nature and the attraction of people with some of physical or psychological anomaly. Here it takes the form of a depiction of a girl of extraordinary size, probably due to a hormonal imbalance. Eugenia Martínez was taken to the court in 1680 and her portrait was painted there by Juan Carreño at the direct order of King Carlos II.

The painter depicted her dressed, but also nude, in a companion painting (P2800). In the present work, her deformity is emphasized by the magnificent flowered red dress that drapes over the huge size of her girl's body. Its color makes the nudity of the companion work all the more explicit. The placement of the model over a neutral background follows the tradition of Spanish court portraiture.

"'The Monster', Nude, or Bacchus", 1680

Juan Carreño de Miranda via Wikimedia Commons

From Museo Nacional del Prado:

A portrait of Eugenia Martínez Vallejo, nude and adorned with grape leaves and grape clusters, making this an allusion to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. 

In 1680, this girl was taken to the court to be exhibited because of her extraordinary proportions. Far from its current negative connotations, this must be understood in terms of the taste for freaks of nature passed down from the sixteenth century and still present in the seventeenth, when buffoons and different entertaining personages lived at the Palace in order to amuse the Monarchs and their children. 

I wish that modern-day rich, powerful people like Michelle Obama would realize that by promoting campaigns to "end childhood obesity" you're telling fat kids that they are freaks who don't fit into your narrow definition of what a child should look like.  Fat kids have been around much longer than TV and video games and Twinkies and McDonald's.  Fat kids are nothing new.  What's new is the idea that individuals deserve to be treated with respect and love.  We no longer bring fat kids to court for our amusement.  But we still make them feel like a joke.  We can't say that our goal is to "end" childhood obesity without fat kids feeling like we want to eradicate them.

Pinocchio Comes from Sawdust

I was home for lunch, regaling Katie and Will with my story about cleaning up some patron's vomitus off the carpet at the public library where I work.

Me: "It was the first time in twenty years I got to clean up puke at work!"

Will: "What'd you use to clean it up?"

Me: "You know, that sawdust stuff.  I think it's called Vo-Ban."

Katie: "What's sawdust?"

Will: "It's dust that comes off of wood when you saw it."

Katie: "Did you know that we all come from sawdust?"

Me: "What?  Oh, you mean we all come from stardust?"

Katie, laughing at herself, "Oh, yeah.  We all come from stardust!"

Will: "Well, Pinocchio comes from sawdust."

The Medicaid Expansion Gap Is a Sick Joke

Via: The Advisory Board Company

Whose sick joke is this?  The less money you make, the more you have to pay to buy health insurance? Yes, unless your state has decided to expand Medicaid, which many of them have not.

 From HealthCare.gov's article, "What if my state is not expanding Medicaid?"

"If you live in a state that’s not expanding Medicaid and you don’t qualify for Medicaid under your state’s current rules, one of two situations applies to you: If your income is more than about $11,500 a year as a single person (about $23,500 for a family of 4, or 100% of the federal poverty level), you will be able to buy health insurance in the Marketplace and get lower costs based on your household size and income. If you make less than about $11,500 a year as a single person (about $23,500 for a family of 4), you’ll be able to get insurance in the Marketplace--but you won’t be able to get lower costs based on your income. If you buy insurance in the Marketplace, you will have to pay full price."

Why?  Because of the Medicaid expansion gap.

"When the health care law was passed, it required states to provide Medicaid coverage for adults with low incomes (up to 133% of the federal poverty level), regardless of their health. Under the law, the federal government will pay 100% of the costs for newly eligible people for the first three years. It will pay no less than 90% of the costs in the future. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that states could decide not to expand their Medicaid program. Some states are choosing not expanding Medicaid for 2014. This means some low-income people in these states are not eligible for an insurance affordability program in their state -- at least at this time. Their incomes are too high to get Medicaid under their state’s rules but too low to qualify for reduced costs in the Marketplace. States may decide to expand Medicaid at any time."

So the people who need the most help paying for insurance will get the least?  We can do better than that.

Kansas friends, please join me by signing this petition to Gov. Sam Brownback asking him to expand Medicaid in Kansas so people who "make too much but not enough" won't have to pay full price in the health insurance marketplace.  If you'd prefer to contact Gov. Brownback yourself, you can do so here.

If you're not a Kansas resident, you can find out here if your state says it will participate in Medicaid expansion or an alternative model.  If your state hasn't said they will, please contact your governor and ask him or her to make sure your state participates in Medicaid expansion.  Here's a list of states that have not yet said they will participate, along with their contact info:

Alabama
Alaska
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Indiana
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

Rawan

I feel nauseated.  I can't decide if I caught a bug, or if it's hormonal.  At age 42, by hormonal I could mean either I'm pregnant or perimenopausal.  It's probably neither.  It's probably the usual suspect: my choice in reading material.  Certainly my choice in reading material this week hasn't been helping my condition, whatever it may be.

Trigger warning: if child abuse, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse, rape, powerful people controlling disempowered people, or any type of human mistreatment of other humans makes you want to vomit, congratulations!  You're empathetic!

Here's another warning before you read on.  Time management warning: if you've got shit to do, like, you don't have time to sit around the house and bawl your eyes out for a week or more, you might want to stop reading now.  Certainly skip this news report:

I mean, look at this bullshit:

"Activist groups and politicians are still trying [to] change the law, but more than 100 leading religious clerics have said restricting the age of marriage is 'un-Islamic.'"

Um, I'm no theology expert, but I think raping little girls is un-Islamic too.

Rawan, the eight-year-old girl featured in the story, is reportedly dead due to internal bleeding.  From a ruptured uterus.  A few days after her father forced her to marry a forty-year old man.

I say forced because, you know, when I was eight-years-old I could barely make up my mind what I wanted to order off the menu at Ponderosa Steak House in suburban Kansas City, Missouri--fries or a baked potato?  Fries were what I wanted, but I noticed grown-ups eat a lot of baked potatoes and what I wanted more than anything was to be a grown-up, because then, I believed, I'd be in control of my own life.  I say forced because at eight-years-old I did not have the capacity to make up my mind over a potato selection in a timely enough fashion that it ever prevented my father from losing patience and just ordering fries for me, let alone the capacity to decide whether or not I wanted to enter into a marriage contract with a man five times my age.

Rawan, the eight-year-old "child bride" featured in this story is--was--one year older than our daughter, Katie.  Our second-grader who is not yet old enough to walk to school by herself let alone walk down the aisle.  Our sweet, innocent girl who still has trouble keeping her shoes tied let alone keeping a home in order.  Our girl who is so fickle about relationships that she comes home from the playground and announces that So-And-So is her NEW BEST FRIEND! and then the next day she returns again to proclaim that So-And-So is "kinda annoying" and that today she just felt like playing by herself.  Our girl who still sits in her daddy's lap as he reads her stories.  Our girl who still wants me to stay by her side until she falls asleep.  She's barely ready for sleepovers at friends' houses let alone a fucking arranged marriage.

Oh, Dear God, why?

Rawan: I would have loved to have met you some day.  I would have loved to watch you and my daughter play together at the playground.  I would have felt badly if the next day my daughter flaked out on you and wanted to wander off and lie in the grass and look up at the sky by herself instead of playing Ponies or whatever little game you two were playing the day before, but I'm sure you, merely one year older, would understand and you'd run off and find someone else your age to play with.  You know.  Like kids do.

But that's my American fantasy, cultural roadblocks blocking my view of your Yemeni reality.  The fantasies and what-ifs won't bring you back, Rawan.  We must move forward and use your story to help protect other Yemeni girls.

Please, take a stand for these girls.  Join me by signing this petition to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, explained here on the WalkFree.org website and below:


ASK THE YEMENI GOVERNMENT TO END FORCED CHILD MARRIAGE

Aged 8, Rawan was sold by her parents, and forced into a marriage with a man five times her age. The injuries her young body sustained from her “wedding night” resulted in her death, and her story has sent shockwaves throughout the world.1

The most shocking thing about Rawan’s story? The fact that to many, her story is not shocking at all. Forced Child Marriage is a form of modern slavery, and in Yemen, there is no law which makes it illegal.

The Yemeni Government has the power to bring an end to Forced Marriage forever; the first step is to ban the marriage of anyone under the age of 18, protecting children from a life of domestic and sexual slavery. 

We know that ending Forced Marriage everywhere poses big obstacles and yet, in the aftermath of Rawan’s death, and with the eyes of the world on Yemen, this may be one of few fleeting moments when we can create change. We’re not going to let down the millions of girls vulnerable to this form of modern slavery. 

Forced Child Marriage is modern slavery and can be stopped. Call on the government of Yemen to ban Forced Child Marriage.

1 http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/15/world/meast/yemen-child-bride/index.html  

Diplomat Girl

Katie: "Sometimes I pretend I have a superpower."

Me: "Oh yeah?  What's your superpower?"

Katie: "My superpower is I can make people not go to war."

Me: "Wow.  That's an amazing superpower.  How on earth do you do that?"

Katie: "I just talk to them and tell them that killing each other is wrong."

Me: "That's called diplomacy.  Your superpower is diplomacy."

Katie: "What's diplomacy?"

Me: "It's when nations have a conflict but instead of going to war and killing people diplomats get together and talk about what they need to do to end the conflict.  Diplomacy is an awesome superpower to have."

Katie: "Yeah, my superpower is diplomacy."

If John Kerry gets sick of his job, I've got a seven-year-old girl who'd like a stab at it.