It was a long time coming: I’m taking a hiatus from Facebook.
There are plenty of reasons people announce (on Facebook, of course) that they are quitting. More often than not, they come back. And, there’s nothing wrong with that; It’s good to take breaks.
For me, this hiatus has nothing to do with those studies that say Facebook can cause depression, jealousy, and so on. It’s not over any relationship drama. I don’t use Facebook for that kind of thing, especially since that would require someone to have a dating life. Ha!
On the contrary, I happen to think it’s a brilliant way to communicate to a wide audience at once. I have lots of fun on Facebook, sharing funny, odd, or depressing news stories in order to engage my 1200+ Facebook “friends.” Not only do engaging debates break out on my Facebook profile, but the funny commentary often has me in tears … laughing.
Sharing important news, as always.
But … I work in news and media relations. SO much of what I do is tied with constantly surfing the web, reading, and communicating: watching news trends, checking in with my ‘clients’ (faculty) and urging them to write OpEds or matching up their academic expertise to media outlets for commentary and interviews, then sharing these hits with various social media outlets. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
With the advent of the smartphone (the Blackberry was my first) years ago, it became clear that even though one wasn’t in the office, work could still get done. Emails could get answered first thing in the morning when I wake up, or at 1 a.m. in the morning, when I’m in a cab on my way to the next social event: Why not look at my phone and respond to that email, or surf Twitter for the latest breaking news? And with that news in hand, it’s only “my (self-imposed) duty” to share with my Facebook friends, right?
To put it simply: I’m burning out.
In addition to putting this sometimes undo pressure on myself to constantly communicate (sometimes necessary for work, but definitely NOT necessary to the point that others remind me [jokingly; I know] that I’ve missed a weird news story), it’s become a massive crutch when it comes to friendship.
Earlier I mentioned 1200+ “friends.” Let’s be realistic: I do not have that many friends. Some of these are networking acquaintances. Others were friends in high school and college who, these days, make me cringe with their racist, sexist, and misogynist, (yeah, I said it) statements on Facebook that it’s no wonder we do not hang out in person.
But among that list, are real friends who I have neglected because life gets in the way—and so does Facebook. Check out this excerpt from a Matthew Warner blog post that explains what I mean perfectly:
“When we see each other’s status updates every once in awhile, it gives us the illusion that we’ve “kept in touch” (even though most family and friends don’t see our updates — they aren’t on Facebook, don’t check regularly or missed it in their feed). It’s a poor substitute for meaningfully keeping in touch with our loved ones, but we compromise and settle for it anyway because it’s easy. When it comes to allocating how much energy we put into which relationships, it builds in a bias toward convenience vs importance. And, again, we end up doing so at the expense of time we should be spending on more personal interaction with our most important relationships.
“It’s made me into a lazy friend and loved one.”
So why not keep Facebook and just not log on and engage? Um, duh: I’m a communicating junkie; I can’t do that. (For more on that and other reasons to quit or take a real break from Facebook, check out “5 Things I Learned When I Quit Facebook” over at ABC.com.)
And why choose Facebook out of all the other social media? Well, I can’t quit Twitter: too much of the news world is there, so it comes with the career. And Instagram is easy: it’s just pictures. Since Facebook is more of a time suck, it’s the natural choice. And, remember, this is not a permanent thing. It’s simply a hiatus. An experiment, if you will.
The one worry I have on taking this break from Facebook is that it’s an excellent way to keep in touch with family and friends in other United States and overseas. This is especially crucial at a time when my father is in poor health and living at a nursing home since his hip fracture in late January. But I have to think of my well-being first. The less time on Facebook, the more time being present when I’m with my mom and dad. So, although it will take more effort, we’ll have to communicate via phone or email.
Sharing family news on Facebook: definitely one of the many reasons it’s a great social media channel.
So this is it: the hiatus is on, and so is the challenge: I feel the need to reconnect with people and return to my hobbies (writing about South American culture and music for Sounds and Colours) the good, old-fashioned way.
Stock photos for nursing homes? Not a thing of joy.
Once again I find myself at a point in time when something has to be decided on regarding my dad’s care, and I’m still incredulous at the reality that he has to be cared for at a nursing home. At a nursing home!
As I’ve stated on this blog before, living in a home was a thing of the movies, or the soap operas I’d watch as a tween on summer vacation. You know, uber wealthy soap opera family puts grandma away so they can start planning how to get all of her money, stocks, and high-end art. It’s certainly not something our family would ever do. But here we are.
My father gets his nutrition (and Parkinson’s medication) through a peg tube. He receives nebulizer treatments three times a day. He is wearing a catheter because, as he is incontinent, urine could make the bed sore he has on his sacrum that much worse. Oh yeah, he’s wearing a vac machine to drain the wound. It’s a lot.
But it gets worse.
As physical therapy pointed out to us last week, the regimen they have for him isn’t showing any improvement. And then came the warning: insurance is going to cut this plan of care.
So now the social worker at the nursing home (review to come later; I’m not happy with several things about the culture there) is trying to find a long term care facility that will accept my dad’s health care insurance (an Aetna plan administered via the Medicare program. It’s not the best, but it’s something).
I asked physical therapy if there’s any way we can get a wheelchair so we can take my dad outside when the weather warms up. (This weekend, we’re supposed to get above 60-degree weather!) They stalled (as usual) with an excuse about having to order it. But the thing about this experience is that it has made me a major league demanding (yet nice; no yelling!) bitch when it comes to my dad’s care at that facility. So, it’s GOING to happen. I don’t care if I have to make 100 phone calls and knock on every single administrator’s door.
I should be happy (?) that my father is OUT of the hospital and back into a subacute unit of a long-term facility, aka a nursing home. But this, his third round back, is more depressing for me. He sleeps more, interacts with us less, and it seems to get thinner by the minute. There’s no other way to say it — it feels like I’m losing him.
I’m also slightly, ok maybe definitely, losing my [was it ever normal?] mind. I’m angry. A lot. It doesn’t make me want to punch anyone; it makes me want to check out and stop speaking to everyone (except my parents.)
Life goes on and, more and more, it’s only my mother and I who visit and spend hours with my father (my mother more than all of us, as she has been forced to retire as a result of my dad’s fall and hip fracture.)
My brothers, both who have children, visit less and less. Two and three days go by and no visit. And I resent more and more. I have to be there every day. Throughout this whole ordeal, I’ve missed two days. I can’t see this going any other way for me.
I’m not going to lie; I’m pissed about their lack of devotion. I do not understand how you could not visit your father, the sole reason we were even born into this country, and became the people we are today. And checking in with my mother? Not so much.
Am I going crazy?
I actually met with a friend recently (something I hadn’t really done since my dad fell and became very ill) who also has a father in a nursing home. The situation is different. This person isn’t close to death, but immobile, and being in a nursing home is because the person’s spouse simply cannot handle the complicated care.
But this friend, one of five, told me that only one other sibling visits their father. “What can you do? You can’t get mad at it. And you can’t keep asking them to visit.” That’s true, I guess.
It’s hard to accept. I feel like I have anger, acid, or vomit, hanging at bay at the pit of my throat lately. I’m so disgusted. How can people be like this? Why are people like this? How dare they live their own lives? How dare they go out and have fun? Get a haircut even? Anything, all while my dad is stuck in a room. He can barely talk. He’ll probably never feel the outdoor air or direct sunlight again? How can you not just want to sit there with me!!! Aaaarrrrghhhh.
The anger and resentment affects so many other things. It’s like a bad domino effect. (Only I’m not reacting. As per usual, I’m bottling it all in.)
For instance, I posted a story on Facebook about a guy who walks 21-miles to and from work in the suburbs of Detroit every day because he doesn’t have a car. An old friend (Let’s go with acquaintance. If we were once friends in high school but haven’t spoken since then, don’t hang out in person, are we friends, really?) comments that the man is stupid for walking that far for a job that pays $10 per hour. -__-
I want to de-friend and block this person FOREVER. But not before insulting the person’s ignorance, of course.
A nurse’s aide at the nursing home gives me a look when I nicely ask her to do something. Nothing monumental. Just, oh, I DON’T KNOW, turning and positioning my father — something that should be done so he doesn’t develop another pneumonia and worsen his bed ulcer. She then s-l-o-w-l-y obliges. I want to throw a shoe at her.
A tourist slows down and then stops short in front of me when I’m on my power walk to work in the morning? Yeah. I lied. I maybe want to punch this person.
I need a break.
I know what I need to do is just live MY own life the way I want to (which is visiting my father as much as I can) and realize that maybe my brothers are experiencing my dad’s demise differently than I do. Maybe visiting is hard for them. Maybe.
But being angry about it, which I am not saying this blog post absolves me of, isn’t the way to go. I WILL TRY to let it go. I can’t promise I will, but at least it’s out here on the record, right?
When I am in the office, I feel distracted by wondering how my father and mother are doing, phone calls to and from doctors, insurance companies, social workers, and attorneys, and the dozens of relatives calling, texting, and Facebook messaging me from overseas to check on my dad.
When I am working from the hospital, and now, nursing home/rehab facility, I am often interrupted by speaking with my mother, trying to figure out what my father wants/needs (his difficulty speaking due to Parkinson’s was made worse by his hip trauma), and calling on nurses and nurses aides for help.
This is tough. My brain feels like scrambled eggs.
Still, nothing compared to what my parents are experiencing. I feel very faint today, and almost guilty for admitting to it, because sitting around worrying, or pacing while making phone calls, doesn’t exactly add up to rigorous exercise that would warrant being dizzy.
Dr. Atul Gawande just wanted to give a patient some hope. But he ended up saying something he would regret.
In FRONTLINE’s new film Being Mortal, Gawande remembers treating Sara Monopoli, a woman who was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer at 34, in the ninth month of her pregnancy. After giving birth to a healthy baby girl, Monopoli was diagnosed with a second disease: thyroid cancer.
In the film, Gawande tells Sara’s husband, Rich, that he knew she would almost certainly die of lung cancer, but he still gave the family hope that an experimental treatment might help treat both cancers. Rich surmises his family’s hope must have been infectious.
“You had joined us,” he tells Gawande. “We had our sunny disposition, hoping for the best.”
“The reason I regret it is because I knew it was a complete lie,” Gawande replies. “I just was wanting something positive to say.”
The conversation captures the dilemma suffered by doctors, families and patients with a terminal illness. The patient faces a painful decision: Whether to keep fighting a disease through every last treatment, trying to live as long as possible, no matter how painfully, or to live out the final days as well as possible.
My parents and I with my nephew at his preschool graduation in June 2014.
Earlier this evening, my very tired mom and I walked through the hallways of Hackensack Medical Center so we could meet my dad, who was being transported by paramedics, to a long term rehab facility in Fair Lawn, NJ: Maple Glen Center, a Genesis Healthcare facility.
On our way to the elevator, we encountered a super cute older gentleman who looked a lot like Fred Mertz (a character from 1950s sitcom, ‘I Love Lucy.’) He asked us who our patient was. I explained. He asked what rehab center my dad was being moved to, because his mother was in the hospital, and the facility she was in previous to her hospital admission, was “not so good.” Turns out it Care One Teaneck, which is a sister facility to Care One Wellington, where my dad was a patient in for about two and a half days before his blood pressure dropped due to dehydration and he was rushed back to the hospital. (Turns out the same happened with the cute little old man’s mom.)
This is our new reality.
This is what we have to deal with from now until my dad is well enough to come home, or goes to a place that is not home. People who have gone through the nursing home/rehab facility experience advise us to be there “at all times,” a near impossibility for my immediate family; we all work. (Today I filled out paperwork for my mother to take a leave of absence from her main part-time job, but it’s important for one of us kids to be by her side to provide her some respite.)
It’s really hard to swallow, but I have to be the stronger person. I have brothers, but I can see how this is harder for them. Two sons that always saw our dad as an active, strong, and funny guy, and how he’s a shell of the person he once was. I’m daddy’s little girl. I tell it like it is. I am there and am handling more of the being there, and paperwork of healthcare, because I must.
I cannot seem to form tears about my dad’s condition. I hold it in, save for every fourth day, when I can no longer hold it and something makes me angry to set me off. Yesterday, it was an argument with my brother about giving my aunt a ride somewhere.
I aspire to be like my mother.
I’ve always been used to her being a super strong woman who doesn’t scare easy. When I was 19, I feel asleep while I was driving and got into a terrible accident, dislocating my hip, breaking my wrist, cutting my forehead pretty deeply, and bruising my knees. I remember my dad crying in the intensive care unit, setting off my own waterworks, and my mom telling him to stop, that I’d be fine. She then grabbed by hand, gripped it, and told me to stop crying; that I’d be back to normal in no time. She was right. I was walking in less than eight weeks.
I really wish I could revert back to age 19, and my mom can once again be that warrior woman who, to this day, at age 69, works a couple of part-time jobs. It’s so hard to have a dad who looks scared and confused because we leave him at night, and a mom who is teary about her partner of 45 years (this Feb. 22!) not sleep with her at night.
It’s obvious I need to be that warrior woman. But it is tough. I may have a white collar job, and a master’s degree, but I feel I’ll never be their caliber of tough.
Having an illness or being close to death is not a competition, but as my father’s Parkinson’s disease progresses to a point where he can no longer safely swallow food or drink, I can’t help but think of people who have definitely had it tougher:
Children with cancer. Young people whose lives were taken by horrible accidents, senseless violence, or grave illnesses. Mothers who have died after difficult childbirths, and so on.
This is not to say that my father’s illness isn’t a big deal. At this very moment, it pains me to see him going through bouts of discomfort (but no pain, thank goodness). But knowing that, save for the past two weeks since he suffered a fall and hip fracture, it’s important for me to recall, and remind others, that he has lived a pretty wonderful and full 71 years, and he may continue to do so, albeit with some changes (such as a feeding tube).
My dad with me and my brother, Rich, in Wildwood, NJ.Thanksgiving eve in 2011 (?) with my cousin, Maria, her husband, Gonzalo, and my brother, Richard.Baseball? I learned that from my dad. (After my brother, Richard, took an interest in the Yankees, my dad bought us some Yankees hats, and took us to some games. Yet he preferred the Mets a bit more, because they had more Latinos on the team. Ha!)Hanging out with my brother, Richard, and my dad, as usual!Mom and dad by the Christmas tree at their first home in Paterson, NJ. This was a big accomplishment for them. They wanted us to grow up in a house they owned.
Don’t get me wrong, this is, without a doubt, the most incredibly difficult thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. But this isn’t about me. This is about the man who raised me and how I choose to remember, celebrate, and even laugh, about the way he was.
Such as:
The time he taught me how to ride a bike, and later, how to drive a stick shift. (There was lots of yelling by him, whining by me [I can’t do this! I don’t get it!], and finally, victory.)
The times he taught me to dance salsa and shimmy my shoulders along to various Colombian songs.
The jovial attitude he had with my friends, from making Kimberly laugh on our way to school (he often drove us), the joking around with Judy and Sibila after church, to actually going to happy hour (!!!) with Ysa, Barbara, and Melinda when they all worked part-time at Home Depot.
The jokes he always told among his and my mother’s family and friends. He consistently had his audience in stitches!
The time he and my ex-husband, Dave, grabbed pineapples off of the swim-up bar in Cancun and posed for a silly picture.
The way he enlisted my little brother, David, for various fixer-up projects around the house. It made David very good at carpentry and things.
The way he and my mom proudly bought his first home for us in Paterson, NJ, and later, their second home in Clifton, NJ.
The way he made sure to take us on a vacation on more than a few summers, even though it was right in state, since it was all we could afford: a full week in Wildwood, NJ. It was heaven! My dad loved to swim and he spent hours in the ocean with us.
The way he and my mom tried so many ‘firsts’ with their first-born, Richard. From karate classes to Boy Scouts, Richard was their first-generation dream realized.
The way he always talked a mile a minute in between his full and part-time job, or on his lunch break, going over his never ending to-do list.
The way he preferred to drive home for lunch, because he always preferred my mother’s cooking to anything else.
The way he had sheer pride in my mother. He always bragged about how beautiful she was when he met her on a bus in Barranquilla, Colombia, and how beautiful she was every day.
The way he loved his two sisters, “as elegant as they are beautiful,” he’d say, and he felt the same way about all of his nieces.
The way he was very proud of his younger brothers, as they were able to attend colleges and go on to stable careers.
The way he preferred soccer to baseball (who wouldn’t?) but because he had so much pride in having children born in the United States, he’d take us to Yankee games, and wanted us to speak to him in English as much as possible, so he could learn.
The way he and my uncles would take us to the park on spring and summer Sundays for pick-up games of soccer and softball, keeping my brothers and cousins entertained for hours on end. (And, again, despite not liking baseball, he was awesome at hitting [what we thought were] the biggest home runs, ever!)
The way he bought us puppies from the pound to have as pets in order for us to have the full ‘American’ experience (even though he didn’t exactly love dogs.)
The way he picked up slang from his co-workers at the General Electric plant in Paterson. (He’d come home saying phrases like, ‘What it is?’)
The way he initiated conversations with strangers and quickly won them over with a sense of humor, or genuine interest in where they were from. It’s something I inherited.
The way he never compared me to other girls or women, respected my choices (from my decision to get separated, and later divorce, to my more than one career changes), or pressured me to have children.
The way he encouraged my love of travel. After all, it’s what he and my mother came to this country for: for us to do the things they couldn’t.
The way he loved to dance at parties. This wasn’t limited to salsa, merengue, and I’ll never forget him asking me and my friend Marisol to get on the dance floor when they played a dance pop song at a Sweet 16 (I was mortified, at first; there was no one else on the dance floor!) and instantly having us laughing with his ‘pop’ dance moves. Mortification over.
They way he was passionate when arguing. (To put it bluntly, his quick and fiery temper, which I inherited!)
The way he adored cinema, especially Westerns. (Steve McQueen was one of his favorite actors.)
The way he bragged about my writing, and later, my journalism career. (It meant a lot to me.)
The way he’d lift weights at home, and cycling with his Peugeot 10-speed was always his favorite form of exercise. Getting us used bikes was a priority, and he always encouraged us to go for bike rides.
My dad and my nephew, RJ, at a birthday dinner we had in 2012.
These are just a fraction of memories of my father and I love that writing the list brought many smiles to my face.
As a reporter for the Home News Tribune, I wrote a column about my dad (read it below), when he was about to get Deep Brain Stimulation surgery in 2007. This excerpt encapsulates why I always knew this disease, while not as terrible as some others, would become progressively difficult for him to accept, and for his loved ones to see:
I’ll always remember the day dad told me he thought something was “off” with him physically. He and I were eating breakfast at the kitchen table, and he actually looked scared — something rare for him, at least in my eyes.
This is a man whom, ever since I was little girl, I’ve looked at as a larger-than-life personality with an appetite for hard work. He is a tough guy, a smooth talker, a brave man and an undeniable natural comic.
It seemed his Parkinson’s progressed slowly at first. We have had such great laughs, and he’s enjoyed time with us, and with his grandson, RJ, who made him light up so many times. But as the years passed, he has became more of a prisoner in his own body. The way Parkinson’s affected his vocal chords is especially tough, as this is a man who loves to express himself.
Nearly 17 years after he was diagnosed, this fall that fractured his hip, this one acute trauma—a common one for the elderly in this country—was enough to alter his status. This is not going to be easy for us, but, again, my main concern is that he is not in pain, and above all, comfortable.
I’ve always heard the following advice from people who have lost parents: spend as much time with your parents as you can, because you will miss them when they are gone. It is true. I’m grateful that we have had so many good quality years with our father (and, of course, that my mother is as healthy as she is hardworking). But for those of you who live in other states or countries from you parents, this doesn’t mean you can’t do the same. Though I’ve always lived in close proximity to my parents, I feel that simply keeping them informed about your achievements, your adventures, or your travails, is important. This is the kind of thing that brings joy to my immigrant parents. And I know this from the many conversations I had with my dad early on in his Parkinson’s diagnosis. Parents want to know they’ve raised happy children. So tell your parents how much you love them, yes, but just tell them about your life. They’ll appreciate it.
As my father was wheeled away into the surgery wing at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital earlier this week, my mother, brother and his girlfriend and I all looked at each other as if to say, “What do we do now?”
The answer was simple. All we could do was wait.
On Tuesday, my 63-year-old father — the superhero of our family — underwent nearly seven and a half hours of Deep Brian Stimulation, or DBS, surgery in an attempt to slow down the progression of Parkinson’sdisease that he’s been living with for the past nine years.
Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative disease whose primary symptoms are tremor, rigidity, and postural instability. The tremors that once plagued my father have long passed. It’s the rigidity and postural instability that severely interfere with my parent’s quality of life — dad wakes mom nearly every two hours at night so that she can help him adjust himself in bed or take a trip to the bathroom.
It’s tiring.
Almost one year ago, I dragged my parents to a support-group meeting for patients who have had DBS at Robert Wood Johnson. While the surgery does not cure the disease (there is no cure), it can help manage some of its symptoms and, hopefully, cut down on the amount of pills (25) that dad pops every day.
My father, stubborn as always, wasn’t exactly thrilled to go to a support meeting an hour’s drive away from my parents’ home in Clifton. What he saw there, however, led us to that waiting room this week.
People he thought were relatives of Parkinson’s sufferers began speaking about their recovery after the surgery, flooring my father with their varying degrees of composure. He was sold.
I’ll always remember the day dad told me he thought something was “off” with him physically. He and I were eating breakfast at the kitchen table, and he actually looked scared — something rare for him, at least in my eyes.
This is a man whom, ever since I was little girl, I’ve looked at as a larger-than-life personality with an appetite for hard work. He is a tough guy, a smooth talker, a brave man and an undeniable natural comic.
That day, however, something was wrong. A slight but frequent tremor in his right arm, he said, scared him into avoiding the doctor. Eventually he went and found it was the beginning of Parkinson’s disease.
So began a long and hard journey that included him having to retire early and, even worse, having to give up driving. A difficult part for me was how the natural charismatic expression on his face was replaced by a gaunt look — another symptom.
On Tuesday, as my mother and I took a seat in one of Robert Wood Johnson’s waiting rooms, mom turned to me and said something that I’ve never given much thought to.
“Isn’t it something that in the 37 years we’ve in this country, we’ve never had a hospital stay, much less a surgery,” she said. “We’ve been lucky, thank God.”
And yet here we were, stuck waiting as surgeons performed a crainiotomy on my father.
While the wait was tough, chatting with relatives of others in surgery was a positive experience.
Surgeons said the operation was a success but that my father would have to work hard when he got home.
And so with our help, he’ll work hard. Anything for our superhero.
Gina Vergel can be reached at (732) 565-7228 or at gvergel@thnt.com
I’m so #TeamNun. No matter how strict they were when I was in elementary school, one thing was always clear: they cared about us. Also, they cared about their student’s families: They’d let my parents pay tuition late when times were rough, as they often were. And they taught me EXCELLENT grammar and writing, and a most important forgotten art: penmanship!
This Here and Nowinterview (on WBUR) of Sister Joan Chittister proves women religious aren’t just your kid’s disciplinarian anymore. Of course, most of us knew this already. But it’s good to see the discussion out there. Radical feminists? I think not. #TeamNun is in a class by themselves.
I’ve teased out some of my favorite parts, but you can listen to the whole AUDIO interview here.
Excerpts:
Sister Joan Chittister: I would not deny that in every dimension of the church there is a great respect for the sisters. Since Vatican II, sisters have grown up too, just like women everywhere, and they basically highly educated and very committed people. When they began to function with confidence as full adults, that threatened an old church. The image of women religious by churchmen themselves was the eternal silent servant. Now you have a body of intelligent educated adult women and you’re facing a new climate in the church with a Pope who is apparently not afraid of difficult topics.
…
I mean, they have a word for it that’s embarrassing; they call it radical feminism, which means they don’t even know what radical feminism is. What they mean is that a thinking, articulate woman with an agenda and intends to pursue it for the sake of women everywhere, as well as the families and the children we serve.
HOST: Women cannot be priests still in the Catholic Church. Why is that door still closed?
Sister Joan Chittister: This anti-female attitude—they don’t want to call it that—‘We respect you, we love you, look at how we put you on a pedestal,’ meaning, as long as you’re on a pedestal, you yourself can’t move anywhere. This is very, very ingrained in churches in general, and in the Catholic Church, especially. This pope has said feminism is about allowing every member of the human race to become a fully functioning human adult. He has talked about the fact that until we really look at the feminist issue, he says, quote, ‘We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of the woman. Only by making this step, will it be possible to better reflect on their function within the church.’
Now, I think we could just start with the profound theology of the human, and we wouldn’t necessarily be starting on the same foot we always have, as in women are different as men, women are not as fully human as men.. there’s no sense in that. This Pope, however, has opened the door to the question. If ti’s still a question for men, we’ll help them answer it, but it has to be addressed.
You have to remember, too, that as much as we don’t want to admit it, the church has also taught racism, anti-semitism, and slavery, just as well as they teach sexism yet today. If this Pope, with what I see as a powerful and graced openness to the questions in our society, really pursues this question, we will all have a new consciousness of what it is to be human, to be female as well as male, and to be a church that’s really a church.
HOST: What hope do you have of that?
Sister Joan Chittister: I’m not even sure it’s hope anymore because we’re on the wrong side of history. Every single thing that we have dealt with this way has fallen. And this will fall, too, because it is so wrong. It’s theologically untenable, it’s psychologically ridiculous, and scientifically bizarre and bankrupt.
The shootings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the ensuing debate surrounding the killings and related protests, caused some of my friends, and obviously, people in general, to respond in a way I soooo dislike:
“Why don’t they protest when they get shot by one of their own?”
“Why doesn’t the media make such a big deal about black on black crime?”
These questions are problematic for several reasons that have been aptly outlined by both columnists like Ta-nehisi Coates(“The notion that violence within the black community is “background noise” is not supported by the historicalrecord—orbyGoogle. I have said this before. It’s almost as if Stop The Violence never happened, or The Interruptors never happened, orKendrick Lamar never happened. The call issued by Erica Ford at the end of thisDo The Right Thing retrospective is so common as to be ritual. It is not “black on black crime” that is background noise in America, but the pleas of black people.”) and academic scholars (“Giuliani presented no evidence that Black communities are not actually addressing violence in their own communities. It’s also useful to point out that based on the most recent crime statistics from the FBI in 2011, the White-on-White murder rate was .0014% of the population, while the Black-on-Black murder rate was .0069% (with rounding), a difference of .0055%.”) who can be found with a quick Google search.
These comments also demonstrate a complete lack of empathy on their part, which I can only attribute to ignorance, as in legitimate naiveté about the majority of folks who live in high crime areas, and what they really want. My guess is they must not know too many families affected unnecessary violence, be it on the victim or perpetrator’s side.
Lastly, they must not understand that, although it seems the media is ever present, thanks to the 24 hour news cycle and budget cuts due to the Internet and what it did to print journalism, resources within media organizations aren’t what they used to be. Gone are the days when a journalist would be assigned to cover crime in every single town.
As a newspaper reporter, I remember what it was like to camp outside of a victim’s home in hopes of catching a family member for a quote about what they were feeling. (It was not my favorite part of the job. Many times dreaded those interviews.)
Do people really think people living in high crime areas are happy about the state of their neighborhoods? Or that if someone gets killed next door, it’s no big deal? It’s so much deeper than that.
LUCKILY for us, journalist Jill Leovy has a new book in which she studies the epidemic of unsolved murders in African-American neighborhoods and the relationships between police and victims’ relatives, witnesses and suspects. I’m looking forward to this book, because it’s clear it’s not just from the perspective of victims, but it covers how the police respond to crime in tough areas.
The idea for Leovy’s book came from a blog she started (The Homicide Report) back in 2006 while working for the Los Angeles Times. In her new book, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America, she examines one of the most disturbing facts about life in America: that African-American males are, as she puts it, “just 6 percent of the country’s population but nearly 40 percent of those murdered.” (source.)
In this recent interview with NPR’s Fresh Air, she discussed how she managed the carnage and the pure emotion of family members of murder victims she came across as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times:
“It’s not the carnage that’s horrible, though. It’s the grief and the sadness of it that is – that will make your hair stand on end, and that is very, very difficult to deal with. The actual fact of bodies and blood is much easier to deal with than what you find when you go to somebody’s house five years later and they’re still shaking and weep instantly when you say the name of their loved one.
In fact, “The Homicide Report” was the easiest homicide reporting I did in all my years of homicide reporting, and there was a reason for that. And I knew it going in. I think in some ways, at that time, I needed it. It’s because mostly, I was dealing with victims’ families right after the homicide. That’s a time when – in the normal course of reporting, that’s when you usually meet victims’ families – that first 48 hours, that first week, maybe, before the funeral, and, you know, that’s the easiest time because people are in shock. They are in a state of suspended disbelief. They don’t know what to think. They’re kind of frozen and wide-eyed, and it takes time with something as traumatic as homicide for the reality to sink in. And so it’s a lot harder to interview people three months later, six months later. Two years can be a really grueling point, I found – five years, very, very grueling. Homicide grief is very distinct, I think, from other kinds of bereavement, and the trajectory of it can be different.
Another great part of this Fresh Air interview with Leovy is her insight into how police handle these crimes, and how they’re viewed by these communities. Simple it is not:
“Police hear that all the time: ‘You don’t care because he’s black. You’re not going to solve it because he’s black.’ And it’s very interesting, I – in terms of Ferguson and some of the other recent controversies – I was thinking that this is so complicated because there is, very definitely, a standard black grievance against police that you hear in South LA, that has to do with the generally understood problem – too much consent searches, we say, in LA, too much stop-and-frisk, too heavy of law enforcement, too much presumption of guilt when you take stops.
What I hear, when I’m in these neighborhoods, is a combination. It’s a two-pronged grievance. There’s another half of that. And the other half is, I get stopped too much for nothing, and the police don’t go after the real killers. They don’t go after the really serious criminals in this neighborhood. They’re stopping me for what I’ve got in my pocket, but I know someone who got killed down the street. And they haven’t solved the homicide, and yet, that second half seems to never break out and make it into the national dialogue about it. To me, it has always been that double-sided grievance of too much of the wrong kind of policing, not enough of the policing we actually want in these neighborhoods.
Hear the audio interview, or read the transcript, here.
Rose M. Perez was 8 years old when her family left Cuba.
She remembers holding her mother’s hand as they marched with the line of travelers across the tarmac toward the plane. Suddenly her mother paused and looked upward, her expression stoic.
“I said ‘Mom, come on, the line is getting ahead of us,’” said Perez, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Social Service (GSS). “I knew something was wrong, because she didn’t respond.”
Years later Perez learned that her mother had intentionally slowed down so that her relatives who gathered to watch the family depart would be able to see their place in the line.
Perez’s struggle to balance her Cuban and American cultures inspired her research on the adaptation of immigrants and refugees to U.S. society and how immigrants reconcile the worlds they must straddle.
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