You're Specialer

I'm an animal-lover.  Way more than I'm a human-lover.  Especially those animals designated, bred, and recognized as pets or companions.


It hurts my heart that pets are killed daily in shelters because people don't want them.  Well, that and the fees to adopt have gone up into the hundreds of dollars.  Most people can't afford that, even if they would be the best pet-parents in the world.


So when a "special" animal makes national news, through abandonment and/or abuse, I should be ecstatic that so many people come forward wanting to give the cat, kitten, dog, or puppy a loving home.


But when they fail to become the proud new parents, do they go down to their local shelters and adopt?


I doubt it.


The "special" animal is a totem, a beacon to humanity.  They also become trophies.  They have worth not because they are pets, but because they are famous.  The more damaged they are, the more famous.


No shelter throwaway would bring that kind of attention to the new owner.


And that is what hurts my heart just as much.  The animal is only a vase, a piece of jewelry,  a new high-end car.  "Specialer" than some mutt in a pen.  Like a Cadillac is more impressive than a Ford Escort.

Give Us Your Poor, Your Weak, Your Feeble-Minded -- We Have Just The Place For Them

Like many people, I'm fascinated by abandoned insane asylums.  Unlike many, I want to know the deepest histories of them.  I want to know why.


When you look at the beginnings of what would eventually become a horror-show of abuse and murder, you find the finest of intentions.  You see what humans can do for each other, before you see what they do to each other.


Each asylum that I've researched started out with noble design.  Those huge "scary" buildings were constructed to house, protect, heal, and teach.  Most of them included features found now in luxury resorts:  pools, saunas, gardens, tennis courts, libraries... The amenities were calculated to engage body and mind, and the medical models drove care that should have brought comfort, even if the patient could never be truly healed and recovered.


So what went wrong?


Committees. 


Men rendered faceless by their presence around a table, sharing responsibility so that none shouldered any blame.


They cut budgets, proclaimed treatment options too expensive, and congratulated each other for the savings.  They allowed increasing populations while decreasing funding.  They turned what could have been a cocoon of protection into a straitjacket.


And when the horrors were revealed, they denied knowledge.  That is believed because they had not one bit of actual awareness of the conditions, since they never visited or even communicated with the facilities they purportedly oversaw.  Why would they?  All they were concerned with was the budget.


Committees are man's way of controlling without responsibility.


Because the idealistic dreams of mental health experts were ground beneath the heels of anonymous bureaucrats, asylums are closed.


That leaves us with people who have no home, no protection, no hope.  They also are overseen by ... nobody.  They are nobody's problem, and everybody's problem.


Could we, at this time and with our current "advanced understanding," bring back to life the idealistic centers of care?


No.


Because we are no more advanced than we were 100, 75, 50 years ago.  I know that.  Shining buildings of glass and steel, rather than stone, could be built, clean lines and soothing colors, ambitious compassionate teams assembled, mission statements developed and binder after binder of policies and procedures printed, patient-based care plans implemented, and still, within five years, the slide would begin.  It's unavoidable.  Because every Tuesday, people would sit around a table to discuss the budget.  Or every fourth Tuesday, or quarterly.  A representative of that table would sit at another table for each interdisciplinary meeting, analyzing the plan of care, the interventions, the cost.


Bonuses would start for cutting costs, for increasing census, for "right-sizing" staffing.


No, we have learned nothing from the past, because we are not forced to learn.  The blame has always been placed on the direct caregivers, the providers, and never on the reasons behind the short staffing and decrease in care provided.


And the committee members moved on to other committees.

PTSD Now Covers Deep Disappointment

I do try to avoid the news, but sometimes I get bits of it while waiting for weather.


Yesterday, a very, very young man (although I'm probably being insensitive for assuming its gender) was bemoaning the SCOTUS rejection of hearing the case for open bathrooms.  "My heart hurts for all the trans students who are living in fear!" it wept.


Why? 


I know, they'll all be crowding the counseling offices to weep and shake and curl up into balls over this disappointment.  More than one will drop out of college and go back to their childhood bedrooms, pull the blankets up, and go on PTSD disability.


I'm laughing.


I have PTSD.  From being raped.  Constantly, age 3 to age 17.  And I function.  I do not expect people to tiptoe around me, I do not expect all men to apologize, and I do not expect everything in life to go my way.


And I have no sympathy for these fake-disorder crybabies.


That's all for now.  Just... grow up.  Life isn't elementary school, where your feelings are spared and you get awards for breathing.  And, increasingly, get special treatment for deciding your preferences before you even develop secondary sexual characteristics.

Take THAT, You Dirty Trump-Lover!

I was watching the channel Viceland, for a show about abandoned places.  Love those things.


And they ran a short.... commercial? ... tagging one older man as "Vincent  Father In Law" and another younger man as "[can't remember] Son In Law."  Vincent apparently committed the heinous crime of supporting Trump during the campaigns, and he talked about how his SIL would shout at him, so he would leave his own house during times his daughter, granddaughter, and son in law visited, just to avoid arguments.


When Trump won the election, the son in law laid down the law.  His wife and daughter would never see Vincent for as long as Trump held office, or anyone SIL disapproved of, for that matter.  SIL moaned about "Thanksgiving being lonely" because he would not go to Vincent's home for the holiday -- this also meant, of course, that he would not allow his wife to see her own father.


So much for women's rights, there, SIL.


Vincent, on his camera, was in tears.  "I don't care about the elections.  I just want to see my daughter and granddaughter!"  I guess old Vincent learned his lesson, right?  Vote correctly, or pay the price.