Katie isn’t feeling all that festive.
Introducing the witches
See? You’ll look cute!
Awww..it’s not so bad Katie!
Don’t like it Mama!
As long as I had a treat she’d let it sit on her head….but I have to say she wasn’t happy.
She’s a good girl…but we’ll probably lay off the festive attire.
Stupid Mama
Practice practice practice!
Tuesday night was the last rehearsal before our Halloween concert. I need to practice every night. Every. Night. Last night I spent 30 minutes on a few measures of Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz. It’s all pretty good except for some transition triplets that, counting in two, I can’t seem to get. And it’s pretty much just us clarinets doing it…so at rehearsal it was mush. Really bad mush. I’ve written in the beats of each measure. I’ve slowed it down. I’ve counted it in four. I’ve tongued the triplets to keep track even though it’s not written that way. Sigh. I need to figure this out.
We’re also playing Vesuvius by Frank Ticheli. It’s supposed to represent a volcano. We aren’t quite there. I’ve been playing along with a recording of it for a few weeks. That helps a lot, but still this is one you have to keep counting and not get caught up in listening to anyone else. Take a moment and listen to it. It’s a pretty cool piece. If we had about 3 more weeks of practice it would work out. But the concert is next Tuesday.
And yes we’re playing some other music that we can get through with less angst. But I have to say, our concert’s title is apt. “Things that scare us.”
Cause I’m feeling plenty scared.
Fractured
Fall reflections
I’ve been thinking about an injured family a lot lately. And as our government grinds to a halt and people express their frustration with the gridlock which is Washington I recognize their frustrations in my own ongoing feelings about the slowness of change toward truck safety. I know, I know…you don’t see the connection. Let me try to illuminate.
As many of you know last May my family and I met in DC with other families who have been irreparably injured by large trucks. Families who have had members lost, injured, families whose lives are altered forever. The first day of our conference, Saturday, May 4, we told our stories, cried, welcomed with heavy hearts the new families, and talked strategy to make change.
That same day a mother and her three children were traveling on a road in Georgia. Their car was hit by a truck, spun, and was pushed under the rear of a semi. Her daughters, AnnaLeah, 17 and Mary, 13 were killed. While we were sitting in a DOT boardroom hearing department after department tell us that they were studying a problem, contemplating a rule, considering change this mother was planning her daughters’ funerals. While we were arguing that stronger wider rear guards should be mandated on commercial vehicles two more beautiful children died. Beautiful people are dying every day. And our government continues to study. To discuss. To consider.
Thoughts ripple
So as I watch the government fight among itself I think the shutdown is a bigger reflection on our own fights for truck safety. If you were to ask most Americans they would side with safety. But the opinions of most Americans are not heard because we don’t have the dollars or the influence that the trucking industry has. Even in the article I linked to this post the truckers are quoted saying the problem is with those of us in cars. We need to pay better attention they say. We need to drive more responsibly they say. That’s all true. But this mother was hit by someone else, and was spun into the semi. A stronger wider rear guard could have saved her children. Why can’t we do this thing that would save lives. Why can’t we get even small changes mandated for the safety of us all.
Expanding changes
I get discouraged. And all the news coverage over the current government shutdown just brings home the sense of hopelessness about getting anything positive done in Washington. I get so discouraged.
But then last week as I was sorting through photos from our trip to DC I suddenly came across a photo of the framed collage full of faces of our lost family members that hangs in a DOT elevator lobby. There was Dad. Like a slap across the face I remembered why I can’t be discouraged. Because these people, and all the people that have been killed or injured since, have no voice but ours. AnnaLeah and Mary have no voice but their mother’s…and now ours. Their family is now part of our family. They are our children.
We just can’t afford to let the incompetence in DC discourage us. We can not give up. No matter what. You never know when you throw a pebble into a pond just how far the ripples will go. Change is like that too. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we will get safety mandated. We just have to keep throwing those pebbles into the pond.
Marianne Karth, AnnaLeah and Mary’s mother, has a facebook page celebrating her daughters’ lives. Put faces on the numbers I so often quote…go visit her page. Please support her now at the beginning of her new reality.
I’ll keep tossing those pebbles.
Tree of life
I was driving home the other night when bits of the news caught my attention. Someone was putting a bill together to raise the fine retailers pay if they are caught selling cigarettes to minors. I didn’t catch the beginning of the story, but apparently the fine has been $50 for a number of years. Based on cost of living increases some legislator figures the fee should be at least $98 and has put together a bill to get it raised to $100.
Now I’m all for fining organizations that sell smokes to minors and I’m glad that someone noticed and is doing something to make it less attractive to do so. But I can’t help but compare that problem to the minimum insurance levels mandated for injury and death caused by commercial trucks and the total lack of attention this issue has received.
In 1980 as Congress deregulated the trucking industry they set a minimum level of insurance mandated by a trucking company at $750,000. In the past thirty years that minimum has never been increased. And to make matters worse, the $750,000 is paid out per incident, no matter how many people are injured or killed. Many companies, mostly larger commercial carriers, do carry more than the minimum, but smaller companies and many independents carry only as much as they have to.
So lets say the trucking company that hits your car carries a million dollars of insurance. Sounds like a lot doesn’t it. Lets says someone in your car has a traumatic brain injury, spends a month or more in intensive care, and many more months in rehab. How far do you think that million will go? Or maybe the truck that hits your car also careens into 2 or three more cars. Maybe multiple people are injured or killed. That million dollars has to be split up among everyone. Do you think any one of those affected is worth less because they are one of many involved? I didn’t think so.
We have members of our truck safety family who have turned over their share of the insurance, money won to compensate them for the death of their son, to the one survivor of the crash, someone in another family, a stranger, because she needs the money for care and will need that care the rest of her life. That’s the kind of families that are touched by these crashes. Really great, compassionate people.
So all of this has been swirling around in my head the last few days. There’s a bill to raise the fine for selling cigarettes, but we can’t get a bill introduced to increase the mandated minimum amount of insurance for commercial carriers. It makes no sense to me.
And it makes even less sense when I learn of a terrible crash that happened in Indiana a couple of weeks ago. Seven members of the same family were killed; two young mothers, their four children and an uncle. Hit from behind by a careless, probably speeding, driver who already had speeding infractions on his license. Someone that shouldn’t have been driving at all. A company that only has to pay, by law, $ 750,000 to the family if they are found at fault. A family that will never, ever be whole. A company that likely considers the payout a cost of doing business. The only thing that makes a commercial truck company take notice is a large monetary loss. These days $750K is chump change.
Unfortunately the chumps are us.
This is the 1300th post on the blog. I wanted to write something meaningful, heartfelt, something about one of my favorite causes. But instead let me tell you about today’s morning trip out into the 6 a.m. darkness to find the perfect spot.
I had been dreaming about my mother. I lost the dream when I woke to find Katie standing on me asking to go out. But I was thinking about mom when I clicked Katie’s leash onto her collar and we ventured out into the cool morning air. The stars were out. I glanced up and saw Orion’s belt, my representation of my mom, in the sky. I don’t think I’ve seen it all summer and it felt good to have her overhead again.
We walked down to the end of the driveway, Katie, mom and I; Katie sniffing her usual places where other dogs leave her messages. I was watching the sky and thinking about mom when I realized Katie wasn’t sniffing anymore. She was staring intently over at the neighbor’s yard. “That’s just our shadows silly girl” I told her. And I moved a little just to prove my point.
And then we heard this; you only have to hear the first few seconds to get the effect. The sound was just over our property line…perhaps 20 yards away. Katie didn’t even bark back. She looked at me. I looked at her and together we hustled back to the house.
We were creeped out, but not as much as if Katie’s dad hadn’t heard this last week when he was out with Katie around midnight. He described it and found it on youtube for us to hear. So I wasn’t so surprised once I got my heart rate back down and could think about it. I don’t think the fox would have come toward us. Katie wants to go back outside. But I’m not taking any chances.
Not till the sun is up anyway.
Coming home from work last night I knew there was something wrong when the normal weather and traffic was interrupted for a CBS Special Report. Who, I wondered, had died? Turns out many people, children included. Turns out for an Oklahoma community the world turned upside down in an instant. Literally.
The pictures, the video, the grand scope of the devastation is overwhelming and painful to watch. It must be even beyond that to actually experience. I watched a mother being interviewed as first responders scrambled through the leveled elementary school behind her. “Why does this happen?” she asked. She couldn’t find her sister or her niece. At that point in the evening six people were confirmed dead, two of them children.
Why does this happen? Who can understand when terrible things happen to people? How can we move forward when such terrible things happen so randomly. How can we ever feel safe? And what can we do to help those families in the throes of grief right now?
I went to bed feeling sad. I woke with a sense of dark, heavy dread. I knew by now the death toll would be more than six. This morning it is twenty-four, nine of them children. The heaviness settles deeper into my heart.
We’re expecting storms here this morning. Very soon. They sky is dark and heavy, reflecting the way I feel. I ask Katie to hurry outside so that we can beat the rain. The air is thick, the trees still. Waiting. Waiting. I keep an eye on the sky, Katie keeps her nose in the air. Things happen randomly. You never know. Bad things happen everywhere.
As I watch the sky two dark shapes swoop low. I am startled and then mesmerized. A pair of sand hill cranes flies overhead. Very very low, very slow, almost silent. Instead of their usual noisy screeching they are cooing gently to each other. I hold my breath and watch them. They disappear behind a line of trees across the street. Stunning.
You see? Amidst the fear and sadness and confusion there is beauty. And we rarely ask why. Why did these two magnificent birds choose to fly right over my head so early on such a sad morning? I don’t know. Maybe I don’t have to know why these thing happen. Maybe I just have to move ahead and live.
And send some money to the Red Cross… for Oklahoma.
I’m having the weirdest day. Is ‘weirdest’ a word? Hmmm…looks sort of, well, weird. Anyway.
This morning as I was leaving for work I wanted to change the car radio from f.m. to a.m. so that I could listen to the traffic report but I couldn’t remember how. I pushed the wrong button several times, confused. Darn small buttons anyway.
When I got to work I asked one of my employees to work on a problem file and she told me she would not. I did not react well to being told no. I felt this red hot rage rush up my body from the soles of my feet through the top of my head until it consumed me. I hung up on her and then took a walk to calm down. My reaction was totally out of proportion to the infraction and my boss had to talk me down. Darn employees anyway.
After work my husband met me for dinner before we went to the hospital to visit Aunt V. Some little girl in the next booth was laughing a lot and loud and I wanted to crawl over the seat and strangle her. Totally ruined the dinner. Darn little kids anyway.
By the time we got to the hospital I could hardly wait to get away again, as if I could not stay in my own skin. Darn noisy, smelly hospitals anyway.
I’ve been nominated to serve on an advisory committee to monitor some truck stuff and I need to send in my resume and a couple of other documents. I needed to get that together tonight and I couldn’t find my resume on my laptop. Eventually we found it on the desktop computer, and husband emailed it to me. Then I couldn’t figure out how to get it to a place I could edit it. Then I did get it edited but couldn’t figure out how to save it. Eventually I just sent it the way it was. Close enough. Darn technology anyway.
While I was looking for my resume, searching through documents stored on my laptop, I came across the rough draft of a (very) short story. I have no recollection of writing it. It’s pretty good. It might have been a dream I had. Or not. Maybe I didn’t write it. But how else would it be there. It’s not like me to copy something into a document. And there are parts of it that seem like something I might write. But I don’t remember this story at all. Darn memory anyway.
One of my college roommates emailed me earlier today looking for the email of another college roommate. An hour ago I sent her the information, cc’ing the roommate she was looking for. I thought. But just as I hit send I realized that the cc was actually for one of our community band librarians…whose name is not remotely similar to my college roommate. So then I had to email her and tell her to ignore the totally confusing and irrelevant email and resend the original email to the appropriate party. Darn it all anyway.
My brain seems to belong to someone else. A much older and extraordinarily confused someone else. I’d like to exchange it please for the one that really belongs to me. Or at least for a newer model. This one seems to be wearing out.
I’m going to bed. I hope tomorrow makes more sense.
I have my doubts.
I just don’t feel any affinity for 2013. The number itself seems awkward, unwieldy, just a bit off. Where 2012 appeared to be a good, strong, well rounded and full number right from the start, 2013 seems rather empty and irregular. Maybe the problem stems from the odd number itself or maybe I’m superstitious about the whole 13th of it all. I don’t know.
I was unable to stay up to see 2012 out last night. Part of that was my uncomfortable feeling about 2013 and part of it was that I was exhausted from crazy work. Mostly I just wasn’t ready to let 2012 go. I know there are many people – thousands of people – that are more than ready to move on. People who survived Sandy, people who lost family members in any number of tragedies, people who are going to graduate in 2013, get married in 2013, have a child in 2013. But me? I don’t have a specific event planed for this new year; to me it appears as a long long beige tunnel the curves away into the future. There’s no telling what’s out there waiting and it’s a bit unnerving. It feels more comfortable to cling to the known, no matter how horrific some of it was, then move on into the beige.
I know, I know. I’m responsible for colorizing my own beige world and 2013 will likely contain amazing and as yet unknown events. And I also know that as I move into the year my feelings will settle down, my camera will be busy, my dog will sill make me laugh, work will be work, and my family will love me.
I was sound asleep when 2013 arrived, Katie and I snoring away when stupid neighbors began yelling and shooting off fireworks. Katie barked and made all the crazy noise go away and we settled back to sleep. I felt detached from the excitement, ambivalent about time marching on without me. Mostly I felt annoyed. But I’ll get over it.
I wish all of you a very very happy and healthy New Year. Time to join all the thousands who are out walking and jogging and eating right because this is January 1. I’ll go for a walk, track my points today. Tomorrow? Well tomorrow is January 2 and all bets are off.
Happy New Year to all of you!
Winds strip the last of the fall color away.
But tonight the news is full of Hurricane Sandy, and we must focus on the East Coast. All the political jargon and angst fades away. What’s important right now is that people have made their way to a safe place; made arrangements to safely wait out the storm.
My hope is that things are not as dire as the weather models and reporters are predicting. That we get some or a lot of rain, maybe even snow, but everyone survives and structures withstand the elements.
.
Mostly my hope is that all of you out on the East Coast, my blogging friends, my customers and all your friends and families make it through tonight with nothing more than damp shoes and windblown hair.
Stay safe, all of you. And please be careful.
Katie here. Mama says she’s too stressed to write tonight. But I tried to make her feel better. Really I did. It’s not my fault she keeps signing us up for stuff and then gets all freaked out. Not my fault at all.
I guess I should start at the beginning. Mama, signed us up for our first leg of Advanced Rally. Next Friday. When she signed us up it seemed like a really far away date. Lots of time to practice. And stuff. But now here it is. And she just got the latest book with all the new signs and she’s freaking out!
But we went to the park today, my Mama and I. She read the book and we heeled around and around. I sat when she told me to sit. I turned when she told me to turn. I backed up when she told me back. I did MY job. But it’s HER job to read the stupid signs. And all those arrows and halt marks get her going good, that’s for sure. She keeps telling me I need to learn to read real quick, so I can do it right even if she tells me wrong. I think that’s a silly idea; how’s a dog supposed to read AND execute I ask you?
So we did a lot of signs out of the book. I was off leash and everything. I even ignored the chipmunk I heard off in the field. I debated, but I ignored it. I figured….Mama with CHEESE or chipmunk…Mama with CHEESE or chipmunk. Mama won. She said I was a good girl and I got two pieces!
But after about 10 gazillion pages of signs I had enough and wanted to play! After all we were at my park! So Mama put the leash back on me and we went for a walk for awhile. I got to sniff lots of stuff.
But pretty soon Mama wanted to finish the rest of the pages of signs. I thought that was a good idea too, but I let her think it was her idea. She’s so SLOW though, reading the signs, thinking about it. I just want to go Go GO!
By the time she finally got to the last sign I was huffing at her. Enough of all this sitting and downing and sitting and standing and heeling and turning and coming and stopping. GEEZE Mama! Can’t you see that I’m PERFECT?
She says we have to practice all the signs every night (except Tuesday when she’s practicing at band) the rest of the week so that we are all set for Friday.
It’s gonna be a long week.
Change Is Hard 