Friday, March 18, 2005
Questions for Christians
While people who didn't help Terry while she was starving herself try to get the courts to force feed her today, Robin has started Questions for Christians to try to understand the hypocrisy of the religious right. Comments are open to anyone who wants to answer the questions. At least until we get Christian death threats.Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Selfish, Shortsighted Neighbors
The selfish, shortsighted views of neighbors like [LA Times] letter writer Jim Blumel Sr. are why the Santa Clarita Valley, pristine little over a decade ago, now has some of the worst air in the country. It has to do with poor development planning of housing ( huge, thoughtless, waterless, tract housing owned by people that don’t even live here) and freeways, as well as a cavalier “I have a Hummer, so I’ll damn well exercise my American right to just pick up my photos at Sav-on in it” mentality. He says “Whatever negative impact occurs to the environment [due to oil-drilling], it would be a small and necessary trade-off to save us all from impending disaster.” This is wrong! We need the planet, it doesn’t need us. That’s like saying the cherry is in charge of the sundae. We can leech everything we can from our country, sure. Become one big, ugly Texas. What then? The oil is gone, the environment choked, and it’s too late to turn solar (one of many infinite energy sources yet to be developed). So the whole country is a toxic mess, what then? Humans die off. The few left with the most gun power rule our land, taking over the last gallons of oil by killing for it, a la “Mad Max.”It’s time for a reality check. Unless you are extra-terrestrial, environmental protection is in your best interest. If you are among the evangelical Christians that believe Jesus is coming back real soon, try to remember the trinity. He may very well choose the year 3000 to come back. In that case, killing ourselves off in the meantime just amounts to less work for Him.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Devotion Through Dignity:
Hopes for the Memory of Terry Schiavo and Those Who Love Her.
By Robin Supak
Terry Schiavo’s tragically short life and equally tragic long death have touched me deeply. We are both forty-one year old white women, raised privileged Roman Catholic. We both entrusted a man with our lives and married him. The similarity abruptly ends there, because where I have a healthy fifteen year old daughter and a son, she has a fifteen year old abyss.
Fifteen years ago, Terry Schiavo’s heart stopped long enough to suffocate most of her brain. It stopped from a potassium imbalance due to anorexia. She succeeded in starving herself almost , but not completely, to death. She was mostly gone, and as the years went by, became unrecognizable as the stunning, conscious, and conscientiously beautiful woman she once was. The loss of Terry in the prime of her life was tragic, awful, and so unnecessary.
She had a mental disease with physical consequences, and that’s what killed her. The time to treat her malnutrition, to force-feed her, was before she destroyed herself. Anorexia, like alcoholism, is insidious; it doesn’t happen overnight. This illness develops when a person, usually female, feels they have no control over their life. That, combined with low self-esteem and the positive reinforcement that comes with being thin and looking “good,” can be fatal. The guilt the family feels must be overwhelming, but protracting her death is a selfish salve for not having been able to help her when she really needed it.
It is time for her parents, picketing Christians, and the governor of Florida to let her go. It is time to count their blessings from her life, and be grateful they get to say goodbye at all. Fortunately, Terry wasn’t vaporized beyond DNA recognition at the World Trade Center. She wasn't washed away in a tsunami, and she didn’t vanish from her bedroom during the night. Everyone gets to kiss, hold, and say goodbye to her. For that, they are so very fortunate.
If well meaning people want to honor her life, they should share her story, and let others learn from it. Start a foundation in her name. Speak to girls in schools and groups about the dangers of under-eating/ over-dieting. Show them the pictures of Terry at her gorgeous prime, and tell them she didn’t find herself attractive enough. Next, show a picture of her at the last of her life, her head floating and grinning like a sad, ironic bobble-head doll, a way she would never have wanted herself remembered.
Her family and community ought to, at last, honor the only major adult commitment Terry was able to make on her own before she was lost: marrying Michael Schiavo. If marriage is really sacrosanct, demonstrate that. Respect the wishes of a wife implied purely by virtue of marriage. If she was truly a loving person, she’d want her family, her husband and parents, to move on, certainly after fifteen years.
Fortunately, Terry Schiavo was devout. She grew up believing there is a special place in the kingdom of heaven for her. There, she will be free from the constraints her body holds on her, and set those that love her free to go on living and loving, as well. Death is a part of life, and so it is, however reluctantly, a blessing.
Hopes for the Memory of Terry Schiavo and Those Who Love Her.
By Robin Supak
Terry Schiavo’s tragically short life and equally tragic long death have touched me deeply. We are both forty-one year old white women, raised privileged Roman Catholic. We both entrusted a man with our lives and married him. The similarity abruptly ends there, because where I have a healthy fifteen year old daughter and a son, she has a fifteen year old abyss.
Fifteen years ago, Terry Schiavo’s heart stopped long enough to suffocate most of her brain. It stopped from a potassium imbalance due to anorexia. She succeeded in starving herself almost , but not completely, to death. She was mostly gone, and as the years went by, became unrecognizable as the stunning, conscious, and conscientiously beautiful woman she once was. The loss of Terry in the prime of her life was tragic, awful, and so unnecessary.
She had a mental disease with physical consequences, and that’s what killed her. The time to treat her malnutrition, to force-feed her, was before she destroyed herself. Anorexia, like alcoholism, is insidious; it doesn’t happen overnight. This illness develops when a person, usually female, feels they have no control over their life. That, combined with low self-esteem and the positive reinforcement that comes with being thin and looking “good,” can be fatal. The guilt the family feels must be overwhelming, but protracting her death is a selfish salve for not having been able to help her when she really needed it.
It is time for her parents, picketing Christians, and the governor of Florida to let her go. It is time to count their blessings from her life, and be grateful they get to say goodbye at all. Fortunately, Terry wasn’t vaporized beyond DNA recognition at the World Trade Center. She wasn't washed away in a tsunami, and she didn’t vanish from her bedroom during the night. Everyone gets to kiss, hold, and say goodbye to her. For that, they are so very fortunate.
If well meaning people want to honor her life, they should share her story, and let others learn from it. Start a foundation in her name. Speak to girls in schools and groups about the dangers of under-eating/ over-dieting. Show them the pictures of Terry at her gorgeous prime, and tell them she didn’t find herself attractive enough. Next, show a picture of her at the last of her life, her head floating and grinning like a sad, ironic bobble-head doll, a way she would never have wanted herself remembered.
Her family and community ought to, at last, honor the only major adult commitment Terry was able to make on her own before she was lost: marrying Michael Schiavo. If marriage is really sacrosanct, demonstrate that. Respect the wishes of a wife implied purely by virtue of marriage. If she was truly a loving person, she’d want her family, her husband and parents, to move on, certainly after fifteen years.
Fortunately, Terry Schiavo was devout. She grew up believing there is a special place in the kingdom of heaven for her. There, she will be free from the constraints her body holds on her, and set those that love her free to go on living and loving, as well. Death is a part of life, and so it is, however reluctantly, a blessing.
