A Wish For 2024 -A Show Called WolfHunter...

 ...starring Simone Byles...

Who plays a master assassin.lots of awesome actresses of color who aren't on TV enough, like Sonequa Martin Green and Sandra Oh, and very high production quality and gorgeous men, too...and great location shooting and fantastic action and STUNTS.

It's somewhere between La Femme Nakita and The Diplomat and The Equalizer, except the fantasy fulfilment is she takes out, symbolically, Putin and Musk and Trump and all the world's worst dictators and authoritarian dickheads.  

GOD I WOULD LOVE THAT SHOW.

Except every week she would gripe about her code name, because she loves wolves.  We could even follow her wolf-watching and foiling actual wolf-hunters in Alaska, wrecking their tracking instruments as they fly over in helicopters.

Voiceover: "Shooting a mother wolf and her cubs as they sleep in their den?  I don't call that sporting."

Male voiceovere: "I don't need to remind you that the pricing on this equipment justt drove the price on your little outing up threefold." (Her manager and partner is played by a wicked sexy British actor, as close to a Cumberbatch as can be cast)

"Three-fold? Are we in a Shakespeare play right now?"

"Come on, you loved my Guildenstern."

"It was the accent."

"At your disposal, My Lady."

"See you back at the cabin, my leige.  And don't worry about the bill.  It's covered."

"You are the top of your field.  Well, you are the only one in your field.  So, having no competition, of course you bring in the top salary."

"Well, I define that, and what it's worth."

"The Russian you did for cheap.  That surprised me."

"Did you forget?  I trained with Ukranians.  I have friends in that country.  I wasn't going to gouge them.  They're just people trying to survive."

"Of course."

"The tech dink was different.  Silicon Valley and the Pentagon could afford to compensate me."

"And did so nicely."

"You gretting jealous now?"

"Never.  I consider myself your manager, of sorts."

"Of sorts?  Don't modify that.  You are my manager, even if you become other things to me."

"I am in danger of interpereting that as encouragement."

"Beyond this point-" she took a handful of his goretex jacket, pulled him close and kissed him, "There be dragons."

"I am no Saint George.  I am a friend to dragons."

"You are more than a friend," she growled.

"I'm glad we have the room for the weekend."

"Yes.  I've got it covered."

She rolled on her back in the snow as the helicopter passed over them, pointing the instrument up at it.  

Inside the helicopter, the instruments blinked, scrolled, went static.  

"My tracking instruments are all offline."

"It's interference from a domestic source.  A professional source.  This isn't geo-EMFs.  It's tech generated.  Somebody is preventing us from hunting.  Someone is tracking us out here."

"So let's track them back."

"Bad idea.  I think I know who it is."

"Who?"

"It's a government wolf-lover.  Just let it go."

"Ugh.  Some leftover animal activist?  Or another hunter, competing?"

"Let it go."

VOICOVER drone footage of winter scenery:  For the record, I'm also a wolf watcher and a wolf lover and protector.  I profoundly admire these magnificent top Natural predators; they are crucial to a healthy forest biome.  And so beautiful.  The First Nations people of this region referred to wolves as their brothers and had fascinating interactions with wolf packs, much like the peoples on the plains of the Serenghetti have had for centuries with the prides of lions living there.

If I hadn't pursued my career with the FBI I would have continued my academic career studying animal communication.  It's a growing field, and I would have devoted myself to research.  But there's so much to criminal scuience, too, and many in my family have led lives in service.  A life in service is never one you regret-I learned that from my Dad, who was a Marine.  Lots of Marines in my family, and lots of policewomen, too.  I was going to be a game warden, but the FBI called me and I had to answer.  Linguistics, that was it.  I had an edge they needed.  Even animal linguistics can help you understand criminal communication and the nature of human predators.  But that's all I'm going to say about that  now.

Anyway, the title Wolf Hunter came from someone at the Pentagon.  It wasn't my idea.  But the general  title of the job holds.  Wolves being predators, and a cetrtain profile of malignant narcissist being a predatory personality type, yes, that's what I hunt.  It's a dangerous type of personality when they get power.

 I'm a safety.  I prevent a rabid wolf from getting through the village gates. And if too many people knew about me, there would be trouble.  It's complicated.  I'm a moral conundrum.  But just so you and I are clear with each other, I want you to know:  my conscience is clear.  I have no illusions about what I am and what I do.  I am not a nice person.  I'm not somebody you want to relax and have a beer with.  I am a weapon.  But without me, children don't sleep safe, nights aren't quiet, days aren't free of fear.  I am an unfortunate necessity.  I do my job so you don't have to think about it.  And I know you and your children-and grandchildren-will sleep safe.  

I am the Wolf Hunter.

POGOPHOBIA

 Given  ostensibly, that"...bearded men do not harbor more virulent bacteria in their beards than clean-shaven men"(a defensive study, of course, which I put very little faith in)I still am deeply grossed out by thick facial hair; it has always looked unsanitary to me, and off-putting.

A man who has grown, for all rights and purposes, an animal pelt on his face, does not broadcast availability for intimacy.  Instead he seems to be telling the world that he's ready for sweaty snowshoeing,trapping(subjecting small animals to horrific deaths for very small profits), taxidermy, and avoiding any damned floozy nonsense, like heating the cabin temperature above forty degrees.

I get the feeling that any unfortunate girl drawn close to that wolverine pelt might accidentally wake it up and get growled at, scratched, even bitten long before the first scratchy kiss that would give her the weeping sores of a skin infection (Google facial microbial flora in beards if you want nightmares).

My boyfriend grows the occasional quarter-incher, but then shaves it all off regularly.  I enjoy this.  It's the girl's equivalent of having a partner who changes her hair a lot so you always feel like you're with a new girl.   Jim has a lot of looks and I never know which one is next; as long as it's HIM I'm always pleased.  He never lets his beard grow too long, which is also pleasing, nor a mustache (UGH!  GODDESS save us from lip ferrets!  If you can shave it off and make a pet out of it, it is officially an ABOMINATION and should have gone down the drain long ago.)

A quick horrible story behind my pogophobia as well:

Years ago I went into a bagel shop to get a lox sandwich.  Once I got it into the truck and popped the clamshell cover I saw the tiny nest of black hair sitting on top, like a pubic garnish.  It almost looked like a prank.

I took it back into the restaurant and asked to see the manager, just like the White Chick that I totally fucking AM.

The manager turned pale green and called his chef out to question him.  The chef had a deep grizzly pelt jutting from his chin and strutted from the kitchen, aggressively digging into the chin pelt with all five digits; clearly he had a bear of an itch; possibly a massive, juicy zit or a termite queen nesting in there.  I became nauseated and instantly knew I couldn't stay and wait even for my money back.  I was too grossed out.

I left while they were still talking.

To this day if I go into a restaurant or a bar and the chef has a beard, I find a reason to leave.  I don't think people with beards should prepare food; it's disgusting to me.  

Some women don't mind beards, and I don't try to change their minds.  Far be it from me to prevent the scarring and the risk of bacterial skin infection.  Maybe true love is worth it.  Maybe the weasle pelt will stay asleep.

 

Listener Abuse and How To Stop It

 Self Awareness is a crucial tool  to help us stop doing this to people, but we also need a code of ethics.  

The ethic must be based in the idea that everyone's time and thoughts are worthy of respect, and that nobody is more worthy of attention and time than anyone else.  It's an egalitarian idea that may not float well in some  more authoritarian  (Republic of Gilead) circles.

To put it more viscerally, no person is another person's word dumpster. 

In effect,

You were not put on this Earth to sit and allow me to empty my mind of every idle thought, yammering on with my thought trash, chasing every thought rabbit from topic to topic, acting as if you were not even in the room as a sentient being with thoughts of your own, but only as a receptacle, a captive audience that, as a place holder, is simply there to make me feel heard while I dump.  

It is an inhumane way to treat someone while I get  myneeds met.  Does this sound extreme?  Try it a few times and find out just how demeaning and dehumanizing it is (not to mention boring).  I might also mention at this point, that it is also a well-recognized technique of gaslighting, a known emotional abuse method.

I found out how I had been making people feel over the years as a needy kid and teen and ERMERGRD 20-something and(DEAR GOD) know-it-all 30 and 40--something when I finally became more self aware in therapy groups and decided to make a radical turn and become a Listener.  

It was like changing from a dog into a fire hydrant overnight, and I found out what it was like to get peed on by everybody in the neighborhood.  It sucked.  I was not ready.  

Years and years later, after working harder on my listening skills, it still sucked.  I presumed my personal or spiritual growth was lacking, and I kept working on various aspects of that, but being a better and better listener while other people obtusely continued to DUMP never sucked less.

It finally hit me this was not my problem to fix, other than the fact that I was not erecting boundaries.  When it came to storytelling events, I interviewed audiences and noted that many listeners were being abused.  

This was a cultural problem, a two-pronged one.  

Prong one:  Many people are sloppy talkers, not knowing how to reign it in, and worse, not feeling the need to do so (as a radio broadcaster, I was trained for years in the importance of concise speech and the beauty of brevity.  "Shut up and play the hits" was thee Golden Radio Rule I was first taught.  Unfortunately, most people aren't taught this simple reality, that the less you yammer,the better-and even worse, most people don't recognise the responsibility incumbent upon them when in front of a captive audience (an important term to understand):when people feel they can't, in keeping with common good manners, escape the scene, then you have a captive audience and in that situation-think teaching a getaway weekend workshop or giving a lecture in your area of expertise-, much as it may be tempting to bend or even break some ears, it's especially abusive to do so). A captive audience is at your mercy and deserves all the mercy you can spare them.

One excellent rule to remember is that people can listen to almost anything for four minutes.  Keep any talk , story or presentation as close to four minutes as possible and you are being as kind as possible.  

Prong Two:  We all want to be polite and listen.  Nobody wants to ring the Shut Up Bell, although at one event I witnessed a man, Paul, who had abused his time onstage so savagely, by simply connecting loose thought to loose thought in agonizingly boring fashion for over an hour, not making a story happen and refusing to yeild the floor.  The group finally had elected one woman to remove him, and she did so-physically.  She was forced to push him bodily out the door, even after everyone-EVERYONE IN THE ROOM WAS CALLING FOR HIM TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LEAVE.  Still, in a misty haze of getting-needs-met, on and on he droned, unable to hear all the voices telling him in no uncertain terms to GO AWAY.

At that same retreat I met a friend; she and I would sit together at meals and events.  We were regularly accosted by one man who presumed to fascinate us with his presence, launching into stories as he sat next to us, even as we were deep in private conversations.  The soft glow in his eyes was the same unmistakeable needs-being-met glow of the storyteller-being-heard, even as we got up and moved away so we could hear each other and continue in our conversation that was well under way.  He had no sense of us as people; to him we were merely a cardboard Audience placeholder to chase around.

I would like to explain the term abuse, because I see sloppy talk as soft abuse.  And I'll explain.  

When you are the victim of hard abuse you can see in your abuser's face the joyous rage of the attacking wolf; an appatite is being sated.  This even appears in the verbal abuser who is whisper-taunting you, softly using sadistic words to try to frighten you or bring you down.  The facial expression is still bloodthirsty.  But the soft abuser is merely oblivious to your existence, subsumed in the bliss of their own needs being met, like an infant at the breast or the opium addict on a high.  Sloppy talkers who chase rabbit to rabbit, thought to thought, from den to den, are emptying the thought cache and experiencing that relief as they dump.  I know this, because I used to do it.  I know the value of journaling, because I no longer dump on people-I no longer make them carry my thought junk for me.  I yammer at my dog as I throw the ball for him while I take notes before journaling, because it helps empty the cache, helps me to hear myself and seems to be soothing to him as well.I know it doesn't make him more anxious.  And I only post or text when I have seived and find what I trulty think has value, has usefulness, or that I truly need reflection or accompanyment on once I've heard the thoughts aloud to him (at least, I usually follow my own rules on this, but some times I'm weaker than others).  This I think of as thought heigene, and I think it's essential for good relationships.

For a short time I had an aquaintance/friend who had no sense of thought heigene and whenever we talked she only seemed to have a vague sense that, "Oh, good, here is my new friend Robbie, who will listen to me so well, I can just go on uninterrupted and she won't make me listen to her stuff."

On rare occasions when I interjected my own feelings or point of view I was met with a cool silence and sudden change of subject.  I see now, because I had not stayed on-point, in keeping with thee point being about HER.  Rather sadly, she has passed on now, but also rather blessedly, for that "friendship" was exhausting and one-sided, much like my primary family relationship that I have withdrawn from for my own health.

At this juncture,not just for my own health but for the broader cause of cultural mental health I have arrived at a harder stance as a former yammerer, now a Listener.

As a former yammerer, I am not throwing shade on yammerers-merely on the ACT of yammering.  And I am not shaming.  I have done plenty of it my OWN self.  That's why I feel qualified to call for guard rails.  I set a timer on an ap on my phone for  threeminutes titled "talk" and I practice with it.

I 've begun to time myself in groups when called upon to do check-ins and comments, keeping my remarks to a tight three minutes or less, so I have the moral grounds to ask the same of everyone else.  

I gather my thoughts before meetings and take notes throughout, as I do in conversations with friends, so I can be more clear and bring more content of value.  I also try to write concise and entertaining emails.  These practices support keeping my remarks and conversations tight and concise; it's a rigorous practice that requires lots of polishing.

And I have decided that even if you are at the mercy of OCD, you get a a total of THREE subject changes when talking to yourself in the presence of someone else and not including them in the conversation simply because you are selfishly talking to yourself in their presence, making them your very own verbal dumpster because you just kind of felt like it and didn't bother to ask them to be a willing participant because you figured you were just that fascinating  and/or you were too lazy to bother to ask if it was OK with them (hello, captive audience), in which case YOU ARE A SOFT ABUSER and need to come to terms with that!  Happy Holidays!  At least you have a chance to change your ways now, cowgirl!  yippeecayyay(please forgive the Bruce Willis reference, but DieHard IS a great Christmad movie)!

Start listening by picturing everyone's words on paper, as if you are printing out a transcript of the talk.  INCLUDING YOU.  When the subject changes, change to a new paragraph. When ONE person is talking and changes the subject THREE TIMES, it gets indented THREE TIMES and that's a LOT of blank page for one person...and it's like, HOLD ON NOW///HOW MANY RABBITS IS THAT?!  You need to start acting like there are other people are in the damn ROOM!

It may ruffle feathers and bruise some egos at first, but if you asked me that's part of growing up and learning to act like a GentlePerson.

Today, rewatching an old Paula Poundstone comedy special, she talked abourt being OCD and the fact that we are all born with the tendency, but it's expressed differently in all of us.  For her, it's in i"ncessant chattiness".  "I try to listen I do!"she said, "But then someone triggers me and I'm off again."

Sloppy talk as mental illness, hmmmm.

But stll, boundaries.  We need them.  You may have a mental illness; you have the right to seek help.  You have the right to request support from the group. But you don't get to make the rest of us sick with your illness by railroading us with your "incessant chatter".  You need to respect others' time and presence here and rein yourself in, make room for other people.   You need to respect the presence of others.  Because that kind of speech that cuts other people out as if they aren't there is alienating and could well be traumatic and triggering for some(as a feature of narcissistic abuse and even gaslighting), so it could trigger or even cause illness in some people.  So I say a flat No to allowing yammering, which I define as one person holding the floor for more than four minutes with multiple(more than three)* subject changes. HARD NO.

I'm REQUIRING standards that call people to self-check when it comes to how long they yammer, to respect listeners, respect other people's precious attention, energy and time, and rein it in as a matter of respect, self-respect, and even craftsmanship.  Certainly I am requiring self-discapline, and that will scare some people off.

To that I say, Buh-bye.

You can't smoke or shoot up in here, either.

kicks soapbox into corner

* IF you have OCD you you get three subject changes WHEN in the grip of "incessant chattiness".  The human nervous system recognizes a sense of completion in the number three.  Three little pigs.  Three bears. Three plot parts: beginning, middle and end. Three chances to solve the riddle and pull the sword from the stone; it's the magic narrative number.  So you get a maximum of three subject changes. 

Timing-wise,you get four minutes, BECAUSE people can listen to almost anything for four minutes: that is how human beings are neurologically wired. I did not arrive at these numbers randomly, but specifically, from historical and biological precision.

Christmas Memory

Gentle Reader, I will ask you to bear in mind that in the early 1960's we did not have weather technology as we do now, and polar vorteces ,or whatever we call them, were not something we got warnings about at the time.  I'm certain if my father had known that temperatures were going to drop the way they did that night that he would have changed his plans.

 THIS Was prompted by hearing a rich conservative girl share her Christmas memory on a talk show; she "bought the wrong plane ticket and ended up in New York when the rest of her family was in Florida for the holiday."("Oh NO!  Poor little rich bitch!"I thought uncharitably, and then, "So RELATABLE!"Again, very uncharitable-very judgmental, as a broadcaster.

My backwoods Christmas memory stands in vivid fucking contrast to: buying the wrong plane ticket.

But I was only about six years old.

My father took me with him to cut our Christmas tree, and I was thrilled to join him.  It was my first year being invited, and I felt very grown-up.

He parked the truck by the bog, near the hill, fortunately, as it turned out(this was around eight miles from town, for reference).

Bog lands are good for hunting Christmas trees because the tree growth is more sparse and you can get one with a pretty even 360 degree round growth.  You just have to know the ice.  My Dad, being a thirty-year game warden in the Rangeley Lakes region, knew.  We wore snowshoes.  It was very cold that night and getting ever colder rapidly;the wood was brittle and gave easily, nearly crumbling. The tree came down quick.  He tied it down securely in the truck bed, tossing our snowshoes after it..  Then, after a few minutes in the truck cab, he came to me, breathless.  I had heard some thunks and slams but wasn't sure what they meant.

i knew it was getting a lot colder, and fast,but I didn't know what that meant.  I had been staring at the stars and hopping around, trying to get feeling back in my toes.

My father seized me by the shoulder, his breath pluming across my face.  His pale blue eyes, watering with cold and effort,  glittered in the dim starlight.

"We have to push the truck to the top of the hill so it will roll down, so I can jump in and start it," he breathed,  "And when it starts rolling you need to run and jump in and close the door.  You can't slip on the ice and fall and stay behind.  You can't have a coughing fit and stop and stay behind.  

"If you stay out here tonight  even for an hour you will die.  If we get stuck out here tonight we will both die."  

His fingers dug into my shoulder, even through his glove, even through my jacket.   "You can't stop and have a coughing fit or you will die. If I try to come back for you and we get stuck we will both die.  Do you understand?"  

"Yes Daddy."  My heart began jamming against my ribs, just like when the doctors gave me adrenaline shots in the hospital to stop attacks.  I started to feel dizzy.

I was a severely asthmatic child.  Deadly asthma runs in my family.  My father's uncle Ray died of an asthma attack at thirty-five.    I spent over a third of my early childhood in hospitals in oxygen tents.

"Don't let me down, Robyn."

"I won't, Daddy."

"Good. You need to push harder than you have ever pushed anything and not slip on the ice and not fall.  When we get it rolling, I have to jump in and get it started.  And you have to jump in the passenger side and slam the door shut.  I can't turn it around and come back for you.  Don't fall down and don't stop for anything.  Do you understand?  We need to push.  Right now."

My boots slipped on the ice, but I dug in.  We pushed.  The truck moved.  

My father ran, jumping into the truck.  I ran.  Of course he had opened the passenger door and left it barely closed.  I jumped in.  My father grabbed a handful of my jacket over my chest, hauling me across the seat and under his arm.  Then he reached past me, crushing me, to pull the door closed, locking it.  

"Put your seat belt on!"  he growled.  I did.

We fishtailed on the icy road, the engine roaring , as my father walloped the truck onto the main road, gunning it in front of an oncoming logging truck.  

I sucked on my inhaler the rest of the way home, hacking, trying to calm my burning lungs.

We made it home.  A few times I craned my stiff, aching neck to check if the Christmas tree, the carefully chosen tree, had made it.  It was still strapped down in the truck bed, branches shivering and trembling as if it felt what I felt while the Albuterol raced through my body.

We pulled into the driveway.  l in a full-on asthma attack, trembling and gasping,draining my inhaler.

"Get in the house." my father said.

When I went inside my mother said, "God, why did he have to go tonight."

The next morning the headline of The Portland Herald was something about Temperatures Reaching Forty Degrees below Zero and In Lake Regions and Farmers Report Livestock Losses.

My mother had something to rant about that morning.  But we had a beautiful Christmas tree.

"

How Terminal Brain Cancer Saved My Life

The timing of my diagnosis was magical.  I had , just a year earlier, signed up for EVERY benefit the insurance our work offered us, since I was about to turn sixty and thought I should play it safe.

 THANK YOU PAST SELF1!

Terminal cancer gave me early retirement from the toxic workplace. As workplaces go, you can do worse than radio, although radio has its share of narcissistic dickheads, and the pressure of the job is to Be Brilliant without ever experiencing direct audience feedback, which is Impossible.  In that sense, it's an impossible job.  There are many impossible jobs that many brave people pull off every day, and while teacher, nurse, and firefighter com to mind,  I maintain that although it's much less heroic and substantive, radio is still one of the more impossible jobs.  You sit in a room by yourself and talk to EVERYONE, presuming you're making intimate, sensitive, relevant contact.  It's INSANE, now that I ponder it.  That's why so many old-fashioned announcers sounded so grandiose and fake.  They had to bluster to keep themselves from feeling the existential impossibility of meaningful contact with EVERYONE going on a one-way feed from a closed box.  Of course the feedback comes on the phone, somewhat delayed, and often unnecessarily toxic.  

I've chastized myself for hundreds of painful hours over every bruising mistake I ever made on the air. Mistakes are impossible to avoid, but that's what I spent most of my energy in prep time doing.  After being literally SCREAMED at by my first listeners when I got artist facts wrong (doesn't matter if you get the "facts" from Creme magazine interviews with the artists themselves.  YOU are supposed to KNOW more.  You're On The Radio, aren't you?) But air personalities are hired for their voices, not necessarily their degrees in musicology.  (Magazine models, if you'll pardon the grandiose comparison, are not usually great seamstresses, photographers or makeup artists; they get hired due to genetic "gifts".)Most of us on the air had to fake it, because most of us, like most other real humans, had our favorite bands whom we could hold forth on with accuracy, but not ALL bands.  At some point you have to look shit up.  And it doesn't always go well.  There's a lot of faulty, drug-addled music "journalism" out there, especially circa '60-something thru seventy-something, although the cocaine/or meth-fuelled eighties had their moments, too. Rock fans are especially VICIOUS when they attack, fuelled by cultural righteousness and Hell Bent For Leather.  Not only that.  Men (the bulk of rock listeners who also would qualify under the FBI profile as Most Likely to seal a woman up in a Rubbermaid tub and slide her into a crawl space just to Shut Her Up)and who are for whatever reason triggered by women's voices can be vicious to the point of evil.

For example, the very first studio phone call I ever answered was from a guy "in the parking garage" who promised to cut off my head "and fuck the throat hole"because at least "that should shut me up."

I was a veteran of nightclubs when I arrived in the air studio that night, so this didn't shock me like the guy "in the parking garage"(doubtful- in the late 80's most people who weren't James Bond didn't have cell phones yet, and parking garages didn't have phone booths, but he probably figured he was terrifying enough that I wouldn't put those facts together.  He also probably figured I wouldn't park on the street. I hate parking garages.  He guessed a lot of things wrong).

I also wasn't thrown off by the way I was greeted by the co-worker whom I was told was going to train me on the board that night, a dude I will refer to as RM, since he may be a different person now.  People do grow.   I also wasn't thrown because I had taken it upon myself to be prepared; I had made friends with the sista-woman who did middays on the Fox, Rachel Wilde, and she was more than willing to train me on all the equipment.  I myself am a sista-woman and a good listener..  She got to share what it was like working with all the dudes.  I worked with a bunch of dudes, too. and we commiserated.  She helped me out a lot.  I owe a fuck ton of my success to Sisterhood.  By the time I walked into the air studio for my first-ever show  and Mister RM looked me up and down with a bitter sneer and said, "Oh, yay, a woman, huh?  Well, you're so special, you figure it out,"slung on his motorcycle jacket and stomped out of the studio, I was in no danger of cluelessness.  Rachel had given me all the preset numbers I needed.  I had memorized them, but also written them in block letters on a sheet of lined notebook paper that I now pulled from my back pocket.  With shaking hands I carefully set the slide pots to proper positions: Microphone level, for my female voice:  11 1/2.  Board master:  11 even.  Denon CD players:  9 1/2.   I had them all. I knew where the liner cards were and how to taylor them to the overnight daypart.  I knew how to talk to one person when I popped the mic, how to picture that person, and had worked with Rachel to get comfortable with the ideal Person in the demographic I could aim my breaks to.  I knew who was listening this time of morning and what I wanted to say to him. (No parking garage creeps.  I pictured an Average Guy working overtime and just trying to finish out his shift awake to get the week over with, hoping some good rock and roll would help.  I talked to him.)

I found the correct date and time on the paper commercial and music logs and set them up (again, this was the late '80's.  No computer logs yet, no email yet.Of course RM hadn't, as a professional courtesy  pulled my first hour of music CDs or commercial carts, (I would find out in ensuing years the man had no courtesy of any kind)but it gave me more practice! I learned to find my way around the studio. I obviously pulled(the first TWO hours, for the morning show who came on after me.  They don't thank anyone, BTW...it's like royalty.  Morning shows tend to recieve favors done for them as Right of Rule.  Anything you did for them you just SHOULD have done.Lots of afternoon drive people are like that, too, depending on how many national teams they announce for....but I digress...

Terminal Brain Cancer Lifted the worry of living homeless (mostly that's on my boyfriend, though, who let me live under his roof rent-free for seventeen years).  I get close to half of what I used to earn in salary sent to my credit union account every month.  A friend of mine made the mistake of saying the gov't was "giving" it to me.  I regret the tirade I unleashed upon her, but I remember in my working years looking at the one-third of my paycheck that would vanish each payday and telling myself, "Social Security, I might need it someday."  

Well, it's someday.  And I paid IN.  For forty-six years of WORK.  I EARNED these checks, the way I see it.  From stuffing cars at fourteen to reading TV ads at sixty, I put in my half-century, or thereabouts.

Terminal Brain Cancer brought me The Magic of Medicare and Humana. Yes, Medicare takes around two-hundred a month from my account.  It also, through Humana, gives me over one hundred dollars on a med card for food and OTC goods.  Not to mention paying for all of my prescrptions and appointments.  My breathing has never been better.  When I was working my asthma inhalers, not just the emergency ones you see geek characters carrying in horror films(why did asthma become the mark of a LOSER?), but the kind that prevent attacks and give you an actual LIFE, those used to cost me $500.00 a month.  When I was working I couldn't afford to breathe.  I had to suppliment my lack of income by leaning at the end of pay periods and in unforseen disasters on credit cards, which I was  never able to pay off.  I'm working on that now.  If I die before they get paid off, I'm not stressing about that. I worked my guts out for fifty years, and if that wasn't enough, then the Powers That Be will have to fucking deal with it, since they rigged the game to begin with.  I have done my best, and at times stretched myself beyond my best into my own self-destruction, as have so many who were raised with, and obeyed, the Work Ethic.  I'm done with that now.  But that is what our financial system does to the workforce-it asks you for more than your best; it demands your slow, systmatic destruction.

Side Note:  the Work Ethic I had always bought into, which I was raised with in place of, or rather as, religion, I now believe turned out to be the most nefarious force in our culture and resulted in a variety of evils from income inequality to the golden idol of Trump. I believe this because I've seen the result of my own codependence in relationships with narcisists. The codependent rushes about trying to please, toiling thirstily, as the narcissist grows rich and self-satisfied at the clear evidence of their own superiority.  It's a sick schema played out, not only in meth-addled trailers, but in sky scraping offices.   I believe it is the End Game of Manifest Destiny.  Big White God said, "This land is yours.  It's all yours.  "It's all yours to eat whole without conscience or to just take a shit in. Take it all. Go for it.The women, the dark-skinned people without technology to match yours in battle, the oceans, the air, all the water.  All the women, all the children you can exploit.  Use them up, too.  Use 'em up.  Eat 'em up. They all belong to the GREAT YOU."  And they did.  And they don't want to hear any complaints about it now.  "God said it was OK.  I am made in his image.  That blue-eyed Jesus looks just like my cousin Carl.  Hell, I practically AM God!  I do what I want!  You women have complaints?  I guess we don't get to burn you alive anymore, but we'll find ways to shut you up." 

 The toxic work ethic that ruled my life, and what I did not see coming, since I was so thirstily rushing about, was the terrifying twenty-year financial spider hole that yawns for working class people older than fifty-five, when you've most likely already been fired and you've found out all that shit about "wisdom" is just crystal magic bullshit and really only applies to wealthy celebrities,, and the time when your SSI checks will finally pay you enough to live on  (for many working-class people not until age SEVENTY-SEVEN) threatens to swallow you in your worst nightmare, as you find yourself in physically gruelling, humiliating jobs while you wear out a lifetime of friendships couch-surfing or living in back yard sheds, eating from trash cans and shitting in buckets.Adding injury to insults, by fifty-five many people have a laundry list of injuries, from back and foot injuries limiting their ability to do jobs that pay decently, to invisible neurological conditions like depression (Gee, YA THINK?) to PTSD.  Then they've got politicians and their militias yelling at them for being Losers or a "permanant underclass"(I hope it's a hot day where you are, Limbaugh) or making them feel like they just weren't smart enough or didn't work hard enough.  And that is all unmitigated BULLSHIT.

Life is just fucking hard.  Especially if you're a woman, which means you were a lower earner most of your life and not part of the favored gender club, which only works in your favor if you're a Taylor Swift lookalike-and even she won't be at fifty-fucking-five.  But she'll be selling us songs about why we should love ourselves anyway(BUT will she be coIntinuing the vintage Vivtoria's Secret meat market in her concerts?  AND-bonus question-how will she eventually gracefully END that bullshit anyway?  Just tell the bellowing men who used to buy tickets to her shows to drop off their wives and fuck off to Hooters for a couple hours till the show is over?  Or will she open her own chain?  She certainly could afford to, and she could make BANK...but what would she call that chain of meat markets?  Tay Tay's Ta-Ta's?

The fourth way terminal brain cancer saved my life:

4.  Perspective.  It's a common question the bored ask each other:"If you knew you only had so much time to live, what would you do/care about?"  And what you care about and focus on does change.  For me, not a LOT, because I've always been a person who cared more about living things than numbers on paper (mainly because numbers on paper jump around and insult me) and more about relationships than reputation, but I became even more intensely focused on time with people I love and care about(and when I say "people" I include furry people like my dog, Georgie and my cat Lucille and I still dream of the day they can be in the same room quietly).  Love really is all that matters.  I feel that even more intensely every day now.  

I  knew a dog would bring me more expense and hardships of one sort or another, and it has.  But also, LOVE.  Dogs are just LOVE MACHINES(sorry, but I could have stuck a much worse song in your head, considering the subject) and they are miraculous.  They remind us what is important; they keep us connected to our essential selves.  When you adopt a dog you invite a Teacher into your home and promise to provide for them and learn from them, that's my view.  And cancer, in part, inspired me to finally make the leap and adopt a dog of my very own.  I don't remember when I've been happier.

In all of the above ways,THANK YOU CANCER!

The Deep State Fucked My Brain

 Things started fine.  My Dad was a combat veteran, a Marine in the Pacific theater in WWII.  He had to hide in ancestor caves during the hurricane in Okinawa to survive-just one horror story.  If we had not pulled all the troopes out of Japan and brought my Dad home I would not exist.  So my very existence is tied to our bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I'm a baby of the bomb.

But-Iwas brought up in the land of the Transcendentalists.  There's no escaping the culture of literacy if you live in New England, even if you're backwoods working poor, like all my peeps.  Rich people-highly educated rich people(they all are)-own everything in New England.  They do all the hiring.  They tend to believe in spreading the good, which includes the books.  You can't escape Rudyard Kipling (I had memorized all the Just-So stories by the time Dr Suess was offered at the local library)Emily Dickenson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau,  Jane Austen, or the Brontes, not for the life of you.  There's a Shakespeare theater smack in the middle of rural Maine, for cryin' out loud, and it's packed to the gills all summer season.  Word gets out about Hamlet's father's ghost, and even local hicks will crowd in to catch that action(backwoods people in Maine are not rednecks, thank you very much.  We are hicks.  We leave rednecks to the ignorant South, whom we are the betters of. We are all decendants of abolishonists-or, at least that's what we're all told by our Grandmas.  Grandmas, not "meeemawws", thank you. 

Of course we've got churches.  Lots of 'em.  But they are kept to their own purposes. People in New England remember that the Pilgrims came here for freedom of religion;it's a point of pride in the region.  I dare you to lift your fists about that in a local donut shop.You will lose.  And you will be thrown out, without your coffee to go.

So, that was part of the problem.  I grew up immersed in the culture of our  founding fathers. 

Then, there was my liberal arts education.  Well, there wasn't much else to choose from.  And I sucked at math.  

English Lit was my direction; that and theater.  You can see how I was already vulnerable to the Deep State mentality.  And I fell into it, hard.  

The thinking still shows up in my brain on a daily basis.

For example, when I have a bone to pick with somebody, I automatically approach the conflict with a mind open to changing my own point of view or learning from the other party (WRONG!  I KNOW!) and presume that if they and I work together we can co-create a mutually satisfactory solution to the problem. 

 This is the kind of communist-brainwashed thinking the Deep State instills in young, vulnerable minds.  I have done some recovery, though.  I no longer take my rules for life from the Socratic Method.  (Socrates?  Who da fuck was he?  Socrates sounds like Satan!  Close enough!  Was Jesus even around with the ancient Greeks yet?  Well then they're all burnin' in hell annaways!  Everybody knows you get your rules of life from the WWF, not old dead Greek statue guys!Isn't all that Greek stuff porn anyhow?)  I know better now. When you have a conflict, you blaze in with the most hurtful fucking insults you can think up, and then you HIT YOUR ENEMY OVER THE HEAD WITH A CHAIR!  

YEAH!

I will fit into this world yet!

Clash of the Narcissists

 Thirty years in radio had given me a pretty solid understanding of fundamentals like knowing your audience, connecting with your audience, expanding your audience, and basics of media like that, so I believed I had something to bring to the gig of volunteer managing a local storytelling organization's social media.  I had lurked over the organization's Facebook page and seen the same seven individuals' popping up Likes on the same kinds of posts at the same times and days of the week for weeks, and as it turned out when I was able to look at the actual page stats there were no surprises.  It was sleepier than a rest home library.  Nobody was under the age of sixty.  I'm no ageist, but at some point you have to feed the funnel or the art will die.  I was concerned.  Where were the young storytellers?  Were they all at the Moth?  The Moth was boring (read: formulaic) in its own NPR way.  Would the generations just stay in their own rooms, isolated from one another, never trading stories or inspiration? Was there no crossover? It depressed me.

All the over-sixties I knew were members of a volunteer organization that told stories in local schools-a wonderful endeavor, but it tended to keep many of them in a rather saccharine vein, telling in a "safe for kiddies" sing-song tone, which seemed to me to be a style trap, because it did seem to bleed over into other stories they told. I was also concerned about the lack of community crossover.  Where were the tellers of color?  How could we be a vibrant society, a melting pot, a rainbow, if we kept telling and hearing the same stories over and over? 

One of the local tellers I admired most and still do is a young man named Cooper Braun-Enos, who was one of the creators of the Fairy Tale Festival with his partner in crime and brilliant teller in her own right, Ann Harding. Their tagline for the festival was something like, "Fairy tales are not just for children."  

Yes!  I thought..  I believed that deep in my soul.  Stories of all kinds should be for everyone, and I (quite arrogantly)  felt it was time to remind everyone of this. This was where my own narcissistic arrogance got me in trouble. This was behind my reckless decision to push the boundaries of the Facebook audience.  I felt it was time to remind everybody - the half dozen over-sixty "everybody" I had documented who had actually seen it-that stories were a living, vital art form, a multi-generational form encompassing many kinds of emotions and situations, way beyond  mythical ducks and bunnies and fairies and how to play nice.  I wanted to remind everyone of the visceral quality of great telling and how it could wake up the heart with big questions and great drama.  And that kind of arrogance, to "remind" master storytellers, takes a narcissist.  I was that narcissist.

It does take a narcissist (or a psychologist) to spot one, and while I've spent many years in helpful therapy like Dialectical Behavioral Training and nonviolent communication groups.  I've also recently been diagnosed by an accredited therapist at the minimal end of the narcissistic spectrum, having amassed skills like Active Listening and Making Space For Others.  Also I practice self-awareness, so I don't cast this next aspersion without reflection: 

The communal narcissist is a creature you will meet in volunteer situations.  The person I will call V. is such a creature. V. sent me, upon seeing the Facebook video I posted, thee most vicious email I have ever received. It's paraphrased from memory below, super-short in an effort to be fair. 

Myself being (I don't say it proudly) strategic,  I phrase all missives in such a way as to get the best result, so I keep emails(which are permanent record) brief, non-blaming, and if addressing a conflict, I suggest positive action almost immediately, and end pleasantly so I would have sent something like this: 

R,

Regarding the video you posted on the FB page tonight at 546 PM,  of Cooper Braun Enos's performance; it contains some objectionable language that I find worrisome, as children could be exposed to it.  

Please remove it ASAP.

Thank you for your urgent attention to this, and for utmost caution regarding such material in the future.

We appreciate your help.

Best Regards, etc...

V. was not strategic.    V. went straight for the jugular. She did not even bother to specify her subject matter.

Here is hers:(more or less. It’s paraphrased from memory):

 

What were you thinking?

Take it down NOW.

I've contacted everyone and we all decided you either didn't bother to watch it first or you didn't get what it was about.

(Translation: you are either lazy or stupid)

You are going to have to do better than this.

Take it down.

NOW.

I did not send her a copy of the Xcel Worksheet with the dates, times and data of visitors to the page including ages, frequency of visits, memberships, and other pertinent stats proving that no one over the age of  sixty saw the video (and it's not possible to conclusively prove; a grandchild could have been sitting on the lap of a pearl-clutcher).  I did not send the document of my hours or give my reasons showing the lack of national and local interest in storytelling events in contrast to video game sales or other relevant metrics.  I did not give her fuel for the fire.  I bent over and took my lashes like a good covert narcissist with a quick, humble reply saying, "I will be much more careful in the future." while carefully not admitting to wrongdoing.

The communal narcissist has the same grandiose need for validation as other varieties of the illness, but has their self-esteem so enmeshed with the success of the organization or cause or both, that their very survival instincts are triggered, like a mother raccoon's would be to find a scorpion in her nest of kits, when something happens too far out of their control.

I have done a lot of volunteer work so I have met many communal narcissists, and my narcissism clashed with their narcissism, causing great messes and drama.  I have learned:  just walk away. 

Also, I got help with my narcissism.  That wasn't what we called it then, but I learned and grew.  You can if you want to.

And then, thank god, you can walk away. 

Clash over.  But it makes a good story.