Category Archives: the Big Picture

There are two kinds of people in the world…

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Living and dead. I spend plenty of time with both. When connected to death from birth, you become very aware of how little a difference life or death makes in personality. Life and death have meeting points. They share us. You never ever have an expected experience when you encounter them.

For me, the more difficult stuff is the day-to-day. Which is why I consider my experiences with the dead, the very thing that scares me the most and that I often wish would just go away, what saved me from a half-life of living up to expectations.

There are living, and dead, that see the world as having two kinds of people: bullies, and victims. This is why ghosts who experienced terrible deaths then turn around and do terrible things to people that cross their paths. It’s why in life, so many women implicitly or explicitly involve themselves in the victimization of other women.

I do not see the world this way. We have other choices, options three, four and infinity. They are not the popular or easy choices, but alive or dead, we have them available to us.

It is not that we have no limits. It is that we ultimately have unlimited in choice in how we choose to behave.

There’s more than good or evil. You will probably have more than one true love in your lifetime, and at least half of those loves you will never have sex with and probably will never want to. Soulmates come in packs, and most are unpleasant. No two marriages, snowflakes, stars, or dogs are the same.

We all have choices, and the ultimate evil is the evil of taking another being’s choice away.

There is more to the world than bullies and victims. When you learn things that some might consider dangerous, unfeminine or frightening, you do not have to learn them for the sake of seeming more power-dominant. You can learn them to evolve, to have tools prepared for when the bullies and victim subscribers cross that line, to do the ultimate magic: make sure nothing happens.

Hoodoo scares the crap out of people. Just mentioning it to some friends causes them to visibly flinch.

I’ve reading about hoodoo, but not for the power. I have absolutely no need to seem more scary.

My involvement in Wicca was never about power-seeking and it actually nothing to do with my feminism. I have always had plenty of power.

Information really is power, and I’m good at getting it.

My wedding guests made it clear they planned to be themselves all the way through my ceremony, so as a preventative measure, I mixed up domination oil. I never used it, as the guardians I work with saw my making it as an indicator of how much I wanted their help. Still, I was advised to hang on to the oi, that I would know when to use it.

One strange evening, a woman who frequently asked me for my magical skills found the  domination oil in my repertoire. She saw it before, knew I had made it, but acted as though I hadn’t. This time, she immediately assumed the worst, because at the time she was looking for an excuse to cast me as a bully and to confirm her continued role as a victim.

It was also projection. To her mind, if she had domination oil, she would use it, and therefore that’s what I would do.

I suspect I’m keeping it around for the next woman who finds me when she needs to get out of an abusive relationship alive. Bullies and victims are quite real, after all, and the bullies and the victims that become bullies are forever fucking up life or frustrated that they aren’t for those of us who are choosing something else instead.

When you look at its cultural history, hoodoo is all about the bully or be bullied mentality. It has undeniable roots in African-American culture, and is one of the byproducts of American slavery.  Hoodoo developed, as did all magic, as a method of survival.

According to Judica Illes, most domination and compulsion work was extreme self-defense, to avoid getting raped, killed or accused of a crime you did not commit.((and sometimes to avoid consequences for crime you did darn well do yourself.))

I turned to Wicca because I was desperate to prevent other people from taking away my future. But I already had power, and I used it to find a way – the way I found was Wicca.

I’m interested in hoodoo because, after years of Wiccan magic, I want to become better at what I do. Hoodoo has follow up, discipline and a worldview of “use what is at hand” rather than “judge what is at hand,” that resonates with me. While I can never call myself a Conjure – my beliefs just won’t line up – I appreciate the artistry and discipline behind the practices that look raw and frightening.

Many hoodoo practitioners are on to options 4 – 1000 themselves and used their magic to make those options. What would a life with magic in it, that allows for possibilities beyond be the bully or be the victim, look like? My own vision isn’t a perfect world peace, more of a society where a lot of people wear “Work in Progress” T-shirts.




Diana’s list of good things in the world

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I’m thinking of making this a monthly or even possibly weekly post. I’m going to look for 4 things that are going right in the world, that are getting better, that show signs of hope, progress, and positive action.

Sunrise Shots

sunrise off building in NE Minneapolis - photo by Diana Rajchel

This is not blind Pollyanna stuff – this is concrete results, people putting forth solutions to problems. This world is not just a place to be seen as a “terrible place,” as so many relish going on about, nor is it a “wonderful place.” The Earth has its miracles, and its tragedies. The human world has, in its morass of injustice, imbalance the possibility for discovery and a wealth of people willing to imagine new possibilities. Without those imaginations, we might not even notice the injustices. This list isn’t “yay sunsets!” It’s “Yay, solutions! Failures! Trying stuff!”

The bad things in the world aren’t static. The bad things are just where the work is to be done. You can’t do all of it. Neither can I. But you can find what speaks to you, what rings through you from head to toe, and put yourself in that one. Every problem does not need every person – it needs the right person, the exact correct number of cooks in the kitchen, the right mindset. You will have to change your mind about a few things every so often  – everybody does, and the miserable people are the ones that refuse to.

So I give you four good things happening in the world, as people take on solutions to the world’s problems:

  • The worldwide infant mortality rate has dropped dramatically. It’s still a work in progress – but there is progress.  This includes drops in maternal death rates – except in the southern United States, where women’s mortality is rising because male legislators and certain brainwashed counterparts are making the very things that save the lives of women and children illegal in the name of more white babies to adopt. (Let’s not lie to ourselves about that one.)
  • King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia will allow women the right to vote in 2015.  I’m cheering for him, and if his mother lives (I hope in excellent health), I’m thinking of sending her a thank-you note.
  • Elizabeth Warren is an actual senatorial candidate to vote for, speaking out against the GOP’s whining/faking being the victim for dominance accusation of class warfare. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own – nobody.” Exactly – somebody had to spend money on your stuff, and thus far it seems that liberals and conservatives agree on the necessity of stoplights.
  • The Grameen Foundation empowers artisans in 3rd world countries to create income for themselves, slowly making inroads into world poverty. Actual lives have been changed.

Some weeks it may be harder than others to find good things, but right now – this is what’s out there, and it’s good.




the Mechanics of Respect and Misogyny by Generation

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Some people just expect respect.

Let me rephrase that:

I sometimes find myself in situations where a person, having just met me usually in a social context that walks up to the line of my own privacy, expects to assume authority over me.

This leads to some very bad stuff in relationships with me, as I don’t care how old you are, what relative of yours I’m sleeping with or how much money you have. I do not fear being hated. It loosens up the lines on where and when I abandon courtesy.

If you try to assume an authoritative role with me rather than an adult-to-adult communication, I’m going to be very consciously and deliberately frustrating to you because as far as I’m concerned, you’re in the wrong for trying to be authoritative with me.

I was not a rebel in high school at all. I turned in my homework. I showed up for class. I only ditched once, on senior ditch day, and even then I was on the “random” call and check list. I went to an institutional prison and I lived in one, and I behaved like the model prisoner.

When I turned 18, I knew which rules were there for a reason, and which ones were only about “telling ‘em whose boss.”

That was the age I had decided I was not going to tolerate any of that crap from anyone anymore. I paid my dues. You can accept me and treat me as an intelligent adult and form a relationship of mutual respect with me, or I will blog about you.

I’m on the bottom of Gen X . I had time to observe the changes of attitude and assumption between my elder cousins, and how the Baby Boomer and Generational parents adapted their assumptions about experience on down the line. No one around me treated me like a thinking person, and my extended family often conversed in front of me as though I had the significance and sentience of a family pet.

I had an opportunity to observe how all this respect stuff works, and is continuing to work.

I live my life along lines: ethnic lines, generational lines, consciousness lines. I get to experience more and observe more than most, because I always have some sort of cultural conflict going on. I don’t feel the least bit sorry for myself in any of the cards I’ve been dealt – I cherish my unusual nature, and the difficulties they bring me. I see so much more of the world than most people, just because I SEE it with different filters.

Here’s what I’ve observed when it comes to respect. There’s some “bleed” between generations; the experience may be different, but most people start with the tools they learn from the generation before. The results never produce the results for the next generation that it did for the one before it.

In the Generationals:

Men were granted respect just by virtue of having a penis and being presumed straight. Women pretty much had to game the system. Women were essentially property, and the only acceptable avocation was wife, which had all sorts of propaganda poured into it to con women into believing they weren’t being screwed over when they very much were. Since respect between women was not even a concept, most were left to a sort of baboon-dominance approach using status symbols like lipstick, white gloves, trophy husbands and pretty children in place of flinging feces. That’s right. Their kids were their feces to fling; god knows I felt like my mother was flinging shit whenever she discussed my collegiate non-marital status.

This meant that men were just assumed authorities, and women were expected to keep silence.

There are times for silence, really – but when it comes to family relationships, silence = imprisonment. NOT the time for silence.

Baby Boomers:

Men were still “granted” respect, although now they were given respect but could only claim authority in specific, defined relationships. This started with the “going steady” thing, with final authority conferred upon engagement or marriage. At the same time, women began a push-back, demanding more equal marriages, and slowly but surely found their ways into the workplace after the Generations proved definitively during World War II that a uterus was in fact not a disability when it came to physical or intellectual labor. Part of this was economic: the American lifestyle is increasingly expensive, and working parent households became more and more the norm. Also, if men stuck to their authoritative demands, they often wound up divorced or abandoned. While the Generational marital divorce rate is comparatively low, the rate of marital failure has remained the same throughout history in the Western world. Making divorce illegal did nothing to prevent a marriage ending, and legalizing it has saved the lives of thousands – possibly millions – of women and children, and yes for you “what about the mens???” a few men, too.

Generation X

In civilized, educated society men and women are presumed to be equal as an almost-but-not-quite foregone conclusion. Most misogyny is presumed to be a “redneck” or “blue collar” problem and the “educated” are almost unaware that they still practice it themselves. It is also still attributed only to men, despite more and more reporting of women offering up siblings and even friends for sexual violence and abuse, going so far as to create situations intended to harm their peers.

This means that the assumption of male authority has all but evaporated; the men who convince women to confer authority to them do so in ways immediately recognizable as physically and/or emotionally abusive. Most of their behaviors come out of a false beliefs that have developed, an idea that they must “game the system” for sex.Withholding sex was a strategy of Baby Boomers and Generationals; Generation X women of healthy self-esteem only withhold when the person targeting them is genuinely disrespectful. Gaming the system only really works on the women that already have self-esteem low enough to accept the miestreatment as their due, thus reinforcing the idea from the “system gamers” that their view of women is correct.

Most can see the “I’m a nice guy, I should get sex!” complaint as the misogynistic complaint of entitlement it is is. When these same misogynist men are asked to point out a woman they genuinely respect, they almost never want to sleep with her, too.

While a social tendency to grant men respect while women have to prove themselves lingers, it’s weaker: a woman can command immediate attention and respect through conscious use of body language and verbal cues. Mean girl culture has its noticeable start here, although it’s always existed in one form or another. It comes as a shadow-reaction to women being treated as relative equals; girls raised by women who found ways to benefit from the old system of female competition instill those skills into their daughters, who play it out in ways that result in Tina Fey movies and years of therapy for millions of men and women.

There is a cultural divide between women who want better relationships with other women and who want to enjoy sexual and purely social relationships with men, and women who deem “feminism not sexy” and who employ men as status symbols.

While white men in particular still hold most of the power, a real problem is the specter of women who feel they gain power and respect by finding ways to oppress other women. The excuse is a strange system that sidesteps accountability, by insisting on “pure emotional” communication (taking advantage of the myth of females not using logic/not having control over hormone-prompted emotions)  and “polite society” rituals wherein the strategies of selective non-communication and outright lying keep people just misinformed enough to act out patterns of persecution while fully believing they are doing the right thing. Again, silence is a weapon of destruction and abuse – if people are prevented from speaking to each other, and are discouraged from speaking honestly, the truth – and the true manipulators – can’t be revealed.

The end result is that while men are still at least initially taken at their word – as long as they have the sense to save the less socially acceptable comments for intimate circles – women are so suspicious of each other that, once they clear the “male approval” phase of sexuality they still go through life suspicious of each other.

Generation Y

My experience with Generation Y comes from observation, not from being in it. All I can say from what I’ve seen is this, and I know damn well I could be wrong :

Cliques are fading as each year of the generation progresses. More people are assuming multiple identities, rather than assuming the stereotypes developed by Generation X and the Breakfast Club. Even gender and sexual orientation are evolving as specific labels and prescribed behaviors slip away.

There is still a sense of sexual entitlement from men, although they are more fully aware they are doing something wrong when they commit acts of violence. This is both worse – and better. They know that their privilege is not justified. They have not yet come to realize collectively that an attitude of equanimity and a total acceptance of shared responsibility (less pleasure for some pleasure being an acceptable risk) will in fact get them the sex they crave. More men are finding the courage to admit it’s not all about sex to them.

Platonic friendships are more common, and more commonly remain platonic.

Male authority absolutism is often reserved for private kink play, a sort of cultural joke and fetish.  Except in specific circles, it  is only a vague concept in daily life, and for men to have authority often requires a demonstration of skills and behavior that merits that respect. Authority is conferred based upon other ways a person proves him or herself, either through academic achievement, social skill or public demonstration. This conferral happens with both men and women, although women still have to work harder to ensure equal representation and judgement.  Not all men think this is good – some long for the days when authority was just handed over based on genital accomplishment, not realizing that it would increase their workload, hold them to much more rigid standards, and significantly decrease their sex lives.

There is, however, a pocket of extreme behaviors and sexual violence as the generational bleed through passes down trauma.

While people still give in to their evil baboon feces-flinging tendencies, more people recognize those for exactly what they are, and the behaviors are not simply accepted as a form of social convention or as personality quirks.

What does this all mean for me and respect?

When I try to treat people with respect, I go to the basic rules of courtesy and traffic law that I have learned over the years. Not all apply to every situation, but anything that looks like a shared social convention, I’ll at least try once.

However, given my unique experiential mix, any attempt to establish authority over me based on nothing more than physical presence is taken as an offense. I usually draw from the Baby Boomer toolbox and simply cut that person off; if I’m unable to do that (such as in the case of mothers-in-law) I draw from the Generation X toolbox and try to minimize conflict, or if pushed too far, screw with that person usually through an act of outright defiance in the form of a prank or humor.

I am almost never intentionally disrespectful to anyone, and on the rare occasions I am, I can always cite a specific act of provocation. Except in extreme circumstances, I can even usually use a non or low-conflict strategy to ease out of a situation when someone is being overtly authoritarian/disrespectful with me.

That taking an authoritarian role IS an act of disrespect is a new, largely unverbalized concept to the people I’ve encountered in my life. As to how to address it in each case, that depends on the person. I have my strategies, and as life changes, they will have to change.

My mantra for myself on this is “don’t assume.”

  • Don’t assume because you’re older that your experience is more valid. (I am getting older, so this is for me, too.)
  • Never assume your experience is the same as another person’s.
  • Don’t assume that this person shares your social or cultural context.
  • Don’t assume that this person agrees with you.
  • There’s no such thing as “everybody loves,” or “everybody hates…”
  • Men are individuals. Women are individuals. No one really has a say in the gender or orientation they enter the world in, and to take that gender or orientation and make a whole list of assumptions is just crappy.
  • Don’t assume what you see in front of you tells you anything about what’s inside. People are not book covers.

As to conveying my personal outlook on authority and authoritarianism by those who bank on assuming authority,  that’s a whole other challenge. Right now I’m leaving it at “resist the urge to tell Grandma to check behind the couch the next time she asks me if I’ve found Jesus.”

 

 

 

 

 




Crackpot theory #6: the right to arm bears

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pic by Diana Rajchel - this bear was at the Minnesota Zoo in Apple Valley

Last spring, Saint Paul was temporarily terrorized by a bear lumbering into city limits.  The city limits the bear wandered into had something of a crime problem, not to mention a police understaffing problem.  I had to wonder if street crime in those areas dropped while the bear made its rounds. You’re a criminal, you’re out skulking, you’re about to break that window or jimmy that door.. and holy crap! A Bear!

The bear did no property damage, and did not maul anyone. It just wandered around, doing its thing. Unfortunately, it was more efficient for the DNR to shoot the bear than to relocate it.

This leads me to my latest crackpot theory: arm the bears.

At least, if they wander into city limits, let ‘em. The possibility of getting mauled by a bear sounds like one of the best crime deterrents ever. Set up little habitats in high crime areas where bears can hang out, maybe have a little canned sardine or leftover muskie, and then let them just have at. If they get a place to go for food and sleep, it minimizes the property damage they might do elsewhere. If that’s still a concern, just set up the habitat a little too close to that hard-to-bust crack house and let the bear take care of it. The most violent criminals shoot people indoors. Bears can get the random street crime riff raff that run up the paperwork.

With their habitats converted into agriculture and industry, these among many other animals are finding new ways and places to live. Just as the city became part of evolution – a very natural process – these animals are evolving by adapting to cities  themselves. I think any bear can make a wonderful contributing member of society; I don’t get this concept of humans being the only members of society’s club.




Absolute Write 2011 August Blog Chain: the Story–and Song

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From the AbsoluteWrite forum August 2011 blog chain:

“Step 1: Choose a song. It can be any song, vocal or instrumental, but you have to know what it’s called and who did it. If you really want to spin the roulette wheel, use the random function in your music player. Bonus points for finding and linking a YouTube video or other (legal) source. The song should be one you like and doesn’t have to be related to anybody else’s pick.
Step 2: Continue the story. Read the post before yours and continue the story in any direction you see fit. Your continuation must be based on, inspired by, or in some other way influenced by your song choice. Be prepared to explain it in the comments section!”

“The warm early morning sun through the clear water cast a mosaic of light on the beach as it sloped away into the abyss, and the water and sky met on the distant horizon, delineated only by a wall of cloud that might have been a storm. “

“Allison lifted each item out of her bag and placed it on a towel on her bed in turn – iPod, speaker dock, scissors… She looked at the scissors with apprehension for the first time. Is this going to hurt? Am I going to go to hell? “

“For so long he had waited for this moment; the right moment.”

“Lost in a roaring sea of spite and vodka , her brain forgot to coordinate the next step. “

“The sun exhaled a final pastel sigh and disappeared. Before it went, he saw her, motionless at the water’s edge. “

“ ‘Somethings not right with this place Willow,’ Greg spat. ‘Ever notice how damn high the suicide rate is here?’ “

“Greg stopped at the edge of the table, downed the bourbon and coke and placed the empty glass next to an ashtray, home to a lit Gurkha Black Dragon cigar.
‘Are you Spanky?’ “

“He saw everything over the years as time moved past him; the resort spring up over him. Time had forgotten him, Death had forgotten him, but he never forgot. His vengeance burned on. He would make them pay.”

“He stayed by her side, hoping for a chance of company tonight and also to make sure she would not be ending up dead. “

“Chris gathered a whimpering Clarissa in his arms and headed in the opposite direction, unsure of where to go.”

” One bikini clad girl lay in a pool of blood, a small silver gun still clasped in her left hand. “

“Chris pulled the dead body from the ocean and stared at it. Its face was covered with sand, but there was no mistaking that slight body; no mistaking that nightgown.”

“He’d rather be insane than have a crazy woman from his past threatening him with promises he never made to anyone, let alone to some God or Gods in whom he’d never believed.”

Song: Voodoo Child by Jimmi Hendrix

Spanky turned his smile to shine on Greg. “I’m Mr. Byron Saturday,” he acknowledged, “But some of the girls call me Spanky.” The smoke of his cigar clouded in an “O” around Spanky’s face, and for a moment beneath it Greg could swear he saw a creature with elongated fangs.

Greg’s face warmed. “Mr. Saturday,” he said, rasping against the smoke,  “I was wondering if you might know this woman?” He flashed a picture of Allison taken from her belongings.

“Mmmm,” Spanky inspected the picture with hunger. “I’d remember her.”  Spanky’s accent hovered between Spanish and French; rs rolled, but never quite from the same direction.

The locals had a habit of lying through omission.  Usually, Greg let it go – those illegal activities were often the only non-resort money to circulate on the island. If no one spoke of them, no one really needed to lie.

But this crime left behind a 6 year old child, and more than the usual damage that radiated to parents, lovers, and friends after a death.

This was not a crime of survival. Even if this guy really did have fangs, he owed it to the little girl to ask.

“Did you see her recently?” If he asked three times, islanders felt compelled to speak the truth. He repeated the question.

Spanky took another puff, and exhaled a smoke halo that rested for a moment just above Greg’s head. “Two days ago.”

The innkeeper reported Allison’s body three days ago.

Greg put the picture away. The women dripping off Spanky might act overtly sexual, but they were no bimbos. At least two carried, in ankle holsters and an especially creative bikini-shoulder holster. This Spanky had sway. “Could you come by the station tomorrow – just as a courtesy?” He didn’t want to arrest a man protected by armed bikini babes. “It would do a world of good for this woman’s daughter.”

Spanky’s eyebrows shot up. “There’s a child?”

A girl wearing a compromise between a band-aid and a bikini appeared at his side. Greg took note of the red bag she wore around her neck – yeah, that’s what he was looking at – as he answered. “Yes, this woman had a daughter.”

Spanky allowed the woman to rest her head on his shoulder. “A child…” he muttered. He recovered himself. “I will of course come by the station tomorrow afternoon, officer.”

As Greg left, he kicked himself for not bringing Willow. He did so much better with the weird island culture stuff.




Spring Green: the Opal Man

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Spring Green: the Opal Man

 

Spring Green hosts a series of art galleries, and while there were signs of economic struggle,1it still boasts some unusual and new ventures. Case in point, the Opal Man.

This is no mere tourist destination. The jewelry is handmade, with a full on lapidary in the studio itself. And we aren’t talking tchatchke pricing, either. These are luxury pieces. The gorgeousness was way beyond my means, but the shop owner was super sweet, let me take pictures of some of the work, and even gave me a little koala with its own boomerang.

one of the lovely proprietors at the Opal Man

I did take a small opal home for myself. I haven’t quite decided how it’s going to become part of my life, but it will find a place and a purpose, either as a pair to the gorgeous bracelet Lisa sent me for my 35th, or as… I dunno, my own anti-diamond tiara? Left to my own devices, all my jewels end up on a choker.

I’ve named the koala Stoney.

Opal, at the Opal Man in Spring Green, WI

 




  1. for example, the Bargain Nook was all that remained of a former “tourist depot” spot. Sadly, the Nook is a far cry from its glory days as a secondhand charity for Land’s End. [↩]

(Triggering for addiction?) Spring Green: the wines I drank

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Not all wine on this trip was awesome. All pie consumed was.


For those not in the know, Wisconsin is primarily a beer production state. The breweries in in Milwaukee create not so much an industry as they do a lifestyle. That lifestyle leaves bars open into the wee hours, lets you get hard liquor at a gas station or a grocery store and creates loopholes that allow bars to have “after hours” openings so that those who work third shift can still have a happy hour.

So you can imagine my surprise when, upon this visit to Spring Green, I found a push not just for wines, but for local wines. The Wine Spectator sort of sniffs and wrinkles its nose at the collective Midwestern wine industry, but after my experience at the Frank Lloyd Wright center restaurant, I’m advocating a massive rethink of that policy. …for Wisconsin. I’ve tasted at some Minnesota wineries, and there’s a ways to go yet.

Among the wines I drank this trip:

  • a Romanian Riesling – OK, not fabulous, but not like I was going to spit it out. Are Romanian Rieslings actually possible?
  • Goats do Roam Rose’ – obtained at the local bookstore (really nice hangout.)  Awful. Fortunately, I had already had some jack and diet by the time I got to it. We came in at closing time, and because of the wacky cork laws in Wisconsin, we actually had to have the bottle opened before we could leave – we couldn’t just buy it and walk out.
  • Pinot Gris – at Arthur’s steakhouse. Pretty good, better than the food, for the most part. They make up for food quality in buffet herding and a large fountain installed since my last visit in 2002. The greens on my side salad were so old they were actually bitter AND brown.
  • local Chardonnay, produced in Wisconsin – had a vanilla finish that was startling and quite good. At the Frank Lloyd Wright center restaurant. Best wine I drank the entire trip.

I have another bottle we brought home from a local shop that we have yet to pop. According to the owner of Convivia, it’s nice, especially for white Bordeaux fans like myself.

I am going to start blogging the occasional wine notes. Be warned.

 

 




The Usonian

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This time, Mike and I stayed at the Usonian. The only motel built with that architectural style, it sits on the side of Highway 14, one of those random small-side tourist attractions that seems random until you recall the presence of nearby Taliesin.

It’s also for sale, or was as of the beginning of July 2011.070411 134

The property is one of those “historic preservation” places; even the furniture is kept to a T. While I wish they changed the carpeting – I have this thing about textures on my feet – and the room had slightly bossy signs all over it (turn off the A/C or we’ll turn it off for you, keep your kids of this ledge) and an inspirational poem I found a touch annoying (it makes assumptions about guests’ religious beliefs. I am offended more by the assumption about rather than the belief itself.) The bedspread also didn’t feel quite right to me, but again, I have a thing about textures that most people do not.

Our wireless was terrible, in part because we were the furthest possible room from the office.

Still, the room proved a great retreat during the nasty heat wave we endured while there.

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The woman who ran the office was quite nice, did her best to make us at home, and had a small wine shop that consisted of Romanian wine productions. Wine was one of the more peculiar themes of Spring Green, given its location in a beer producing state. I grabbed a Riesling (which I wasn’t aware could be produced outside of Rheinland-Pfalz) and it was middling enough to get us through a night of cable TV and the safety of air conditioning.

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The grounds were beautiful, and like most of Spring Green, the surroundings were heavily rural. People live their lives, every day of them, out in these areas, and while I was pushed to be one of the people that made such a choice, I still can’t imagine having such limited choices. For a respite from the drama and drudgery of my daily life, it’s nice, but the drama that would come from living in such a teapot might make me crazy.

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I didn’t get all the interior pictures I wanted – it screamed “swinging 60s” with a really well-designed small space short-term living motif. I loved that chair, too.

Still, for the price and where it was located, we got quite a bit out of lovely, compact motel room.

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Why 2 DUIs is too many

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In the past three years, I’ve met multiple people with multiple DUIs. They all had one thing in common:

Not one of them seemed to think they were at fault for drinking, and then driving. Most blamed the police. One blamed the person that called the police after trying to take his keys. None of them acknowledged that their actions could steal lives and livelihoods from other people.

This tells me something about each and every person who did this: s/he does not care about other people. It’s not a 100% indicator, but it’s a pretty big sociopath warning sign.

I have long contended that what you do to your body is your business, but if what you do can in any way harm me, or harm a person who did not consent to interaction with you, what you do with your body is very much public business.

DUIs are a big example of this.

You can feel like you’re “not drunk” and whatever. And while still a horrific thing to do, I can understand – almost – one DUI. If you’re new at drinking, and you don’t know how to gauge your limits, you haven’t learned that two glasses of water two one glass of alcohol is necessary to clear your system and still takes hours at times… and the police officer that pulls you over catches you before you hurt anyone… the correct, decent human being reaction at the first DUI should be absolute horror at what might have happened. It should not be “Damn, I got caught.”

I don’t give a damn how convinced you are you can handle yourself when you’re drinking. It’s bullshit. It’s ego driven bullshit, and you’re trying to prove something no one cares about at the expense of another person’s life – a person you might even know.

This isn’t “don’t drink and drive.” It’s “strangers matter too, the people you could kill matter too, there are times when what might have happened matters one hell of a lot.”

Trying to “correct” for your bad behavior by “punishing” yourself – forgoing, say unemployment, or something does not address that you are risking the lives of others by drinking and then driving. If you want to risk your life, and you’re that self-centered, whatever, but since other people who didn’t sign up for you are involved the minute you turn the keys in the ignition, then yes, I have a big and permanent problem with you if you’ve gone so far as to drink and drive at least TWICE. Probably more, since habitual offenders only get caught once in awhile.

If you want to make it right after multiple DUIs, the solution is simple. Don’t drink and drive. Either get a sober driver, walk, drink where you don’t need to drive, or don’t freaking drink.  If alcohol “causes” you to act out, you are wholly responsible for your actions. Being drunk is not an excuse, especially when you know you’re inclined to do harmful things after you’ve been drinking.