CURRENT EVENTS

SENTENCE

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1920.jpgThe current cover story of The Atlantic describes the crime most likely to escape prosecution. It’s rape. And not for any of the reasons we have assumed for so long. People are no more likely to lie about having been raped than any other crime, but police are far more likely to think a rape victim is lying. Think about it. If someone says their sister was murdered or robbed, is the initial reaction doubt that the death or loss of property occurred? If you saw someone you actually recognized running off with your television, would that mean the police would not bother to investigate the theft?

And if that same person stole someone else’s television, and another, and another . . . ? Except what is stolen during a rape is person and privacy and a sense of safety and well being. The crime is violation, and often by someone known to the victim, which results in police assuming it’s probably untrue or a one-off and not prosecutable. And the police would be wrong about all of that. Often the rapist knows his victim and the next ones too. Unless he is stopped, he does not stop.

Each year, 125,000 rapes are reported across the United States.

In 49 out of 50 cases, the assailant goes free.

These figures are a sobering reminder that, even in the era of DNA testing and #MeToo, rape is the easiest violent crime to get away with. In her cover story for The Atlantic’s August issue, Barbara Bradley Hagerty offers a sweeping, heartbreaking analysis of why so few rape cases are investigated by police, let alone brought to trial.

What she discovers—from her dozens of interviews with victims, police officers, prosecutors, and researchers—is law enforcement’s abiding skepticism of women who report sexual assault. And evidence shows that reported predators often go on to attack again. “How many rapes could have been prevented if police believed the first victim?” Hagerty writes. “How many women would have been spared a brutal assault?” Her piece is an unflinching assessment of the nation’s collective inaction and a guide to where we might go from here.

Jeffrey Goldberg
Editor in Chief, The Atlantic

Also in the news: a woman in Arizona is convicted of having sex with a thirteen year old child. I haven’t read the story, but she was sentenced to 20 years in prison. I would assume she will have to register as a sexual offender.

A woman Gary knew in Tillamook County was stabbed and killed in front of her two little children. Her ex-husband drove to town, bought beer, and drove then to his father’s house: “I killed Judy.” The man was sentenced to 5-7 years for murdering his former wife. He threatened to kill everyone associated with his case, but got out of prison early on good behavior and immediately sued for custody of his children.

It makes me wonder.

GETTING ON WITH IT

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From Wallowa Lake Lodge looking north as the sunrise does what it does, taking over the sky.

We meant to wait until Monday, though originally we thought we would have most of the furniture back into the kitchen and dining room yesterday. I had to put a second coat of varnish on the new piece of baseboard, the parts of the room that waited for proper cabinets. That’s been a twenty-year, thirty-five-year project. The cabinets finally in, but the base boards only finished last week. Then, after varnishing the rooms’s floors and baseboards, I came back for a second coat and got a little ambitious. Monday I put another coat on most of the floors. A week to cure and we thought, well, Monday is not too late for company coming Tuesday . . .

That’s confusing, huh? Yes, for us too. The floors were all dry enough today to walk on with bare feet or socks. The furniture around the edges of the room—huge pantry bookcase, pie safe, fridge, could come in without waiting because the floor they sat on is fully cured. The dining table has to wait till Monday.

The real problem was the fridge, which was in the hall facing out of the kitchen, blocking the doorway. Putting it back in place meant crossing over second-coated floor. Gary was suddenly in favor of buying a new fridge. Maybe next year, I kept saying. I think he just wanted the fridge back in the kitchen and buying a new one meant someone else would move it.

We moved it all ourselves. I made salal muffins after an hour beach walk (not so exhausting as the two and a half hours a day before). Gary figured out how to move the fridge without damaging the floor, moved the coffee maker back downstairs, and then began cleaning. I restocked the pantry and made soup and roasted strawberries we are too exhausted to eat. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow morning I will put the first coat of varnish on the two-foot section of baseboard I could not get to because the fridge blocked access. And then we will drive north and I will play Scrabble with a friend. Two games, we cheat and do not keep score.

In the afternoon I will carry on. Maybe I will empty and clean kitchen drawers or begin cutting fabrics.

This morning I irritated someone I respect, and that has distressed me more than it should. I wish it were possible that after reaching a certain age and making a lifetime’s share of mistakes that we just didn’t need to care anymore. We fix it and then move on without self-flagellation.

A wonderful woman once told me that the great thing about turning 70 was “no one expects you to look young anymore.” I look forward to that.

We watched the end of Tales of the City and Olympia Dukakis plays ninety-year old Anna Madrigal. Dukakis is eighty-eight and looks great. We remember again that we are cleaning out our lives along with the house. There is a lot that is not going back where it was. Getting rid of things is never so easy as the magazines make it sound.

I have a new quilt forming in my head, sorted colors by value and hue on my cutting board, and the first “draft” spreading across the carpet. I stare and stare at colors till they form a pattern I can sew together in my head. That’s how I rest.

TRUTH TO POWER

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“Today, I am an inquisitor; I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution. …The subject of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men. That is what we are talking about. In other words, the jurisdiction comes from the abuse or violation of some public trust. It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution, for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn’t say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of this body, the legislature, against and upon the encroachment of the Executive. In establishing the division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judges the same person.”

—Barbara Jordan, at the opening of the Watergate hearings

ICE

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from Apartment Therapy: “With nationwide raids targeting undocumented residents set to begin on Sunday, many are in fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents appearing at their homes and workplaces. Though the raids are set to target 2,000 people for deportation, there may also be “collateral arrests,” where agents arrest others on site who they suspect are without documents. If you are at risk of encountering an ICE raid—or would like to support your community members and neighbors if you encounter one, here is what to do . . .

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me

 

This morning I found advice from the ACLU on how to behave legally and safely in the event that ICE showed up at my door or in my community. It was published on Apartment Therapy, a fluff site and the overwhelming response of readers was: Thank you. The article is HERE.   The reader comments seriously made my day.

Thank you, AT, for providing this information. These days, just providing pretty pictures and decluttering advice and pretending all is right with the world just doesn’t cut it. We need those in positions of power and influence to demonstrate their values and put people over profit. I’m proud of you and thankful for this article. You might consider providing a version of it in Spanish and maybe another of the languages of the most-often deported people. My mother was an immigrant. Her color privileged her approval for entry at a time when people from non-northern-European countries were turned away or strictly limited because of the color of their skin. We do not and never have had a fair or impartial immigration system. My family, by the way, has not produced much of any merit, unlike the people who pick our crops and work hard day after day as law abiding residents, living in the shadows after escaping poverty, violence, and chaos that US policies have helped create (and not just in the current administration). My family, by the way, produced racists, homophobes, and drunkards, some of whom never did an honest day’s work in their lives. But they were white Englishmen so, of course, welcomed with open arms. Thanks for valuing humanity, AT. Everyone in the US, legally or illegally, has rights protected by the Constitution, and they need to know what those rights are.

It seems I am not the only person who has used this site to motivate me to clean and declutter.

Thank you. And please don’t be swayed by those that think that putting children in cages and depriving them of basic human necessities like clean underwear, showers & soap in order to punish their parents for attempting to exercise their legal right to seek asylum is something that decent people can be proud of. Using my real name, as always.

And I am not the only person who posts only using my real name.

Thank you a million times over for your courage in posting this, AT. I’m sure you’ll get plenty of flack for it, but your country is at a tipping point & it’s time real people started standing up to be heard. It’s just too important for anyone to have the luxury of not “getting involved”. People will complain that this is about “politics”. But it isn’t. This is about right versus wrong, about morality & common human decency. It’s about the kind of country you want your children to grow up in — one where people of all colours, nations & religions are respected & valued, or where just some people are, based on the colour of their skins. Heaven knows I get irritated at this site some days, but today I’m incredibly proud of you!

And in response to the inevitable backlash that AT is offering illegal and dangerous advice that interferes with ICE . . .

*Do not lie. Do not produce false documents. Do not physically resist. Do not physically interfere. *

These recommendations are specifically so people aren’t put at risk! It’s not advising people to break the law to say you don’t have to open your doors unless they have a valid warrant. It isn’t a political statement that you can ask for a translator and you shouldn’t sign something you don’t understand without a lawyer’s advice.

We are all human and we should be humane.

FINDING TIME

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Photo by Steve Larson

People ask me all the time, even now as I climb the stiff ascent to seventy: Where do you find the time? 

This morning, my husband and I were up and dressed and out the door by five to listen to the dawn chorus from the deck of the lodge. We are in Wallowa Lake for Fishtrap, a writers’ gathering. (The photo above is borrowed. The grass is greener and there is a tent for outdoor events. At right you can see the leaning tree. Yes, it is still there, Ann.)

8519949156_34edb2f18a_o.jpgSo far I have seen people I recognize, but no one I actually know. Yesterday we sat in the beautiful great room of Wallowa Lake Lodge (opened in 1923). We walked across the street for dinner. We walked through Canada goose poo to admire the river pouring into the lake. I watched clouds pass over head, the nearer moving east, those higher up shifting more slowly south. We have seen an unfamiliar species of ground squirrel and several deer since we arrived yesterday, and I had a pleasant talk with a local woman who was also knitting while her husband and daughter participate. Time passes slowly. I varnished the dining and kitchen floors before we left the house. Being here while “paint dries” is only an excuse. We plan to read and relax and hope to visit with friends.

Even in my twenties I was writing and publishing articles in magazines. In those early post-college years I judged field trials all over the west and learned to cook and had Afghan Hounds. 

In my early thirties, when I had two preschoolers at home, I canned peaches and read books and made quilts and worked part time. In my forties I went back to my work teaching, began taking writing classes, wrote stories and read and knit sweaters, and began running. 

In my fifties I began writing novels and attended workshops and read and made only jam in the summer. I spent a lot of time writing curriculum and grading papers and baking and cooking and making quilts and knitting and weaving and reading a few dozen books each year and writing thousands of words. Marilyn Chin once told me I was the most driven person she knows—this from a writer with six books in print. Molly Gloss sighs that she doesn’t understand why I have not had more success. But these women are sympathetic friends. There is accomplishment and accomplishment. 

Recently I went off Facebook. I do not text. I do not post on Instagram. I have a Pinterest account and it was useful to wean me off magazines, but I spend only minutes there each week. I subscribe to two major newspapers and read through them both plus at least one other international newspaper. I rarely watch the news. Did I mention that my cell phone is not smart? No time spent there. 

I get up early and tend to go to bed early, but like Daylight Saving Time, that only shifts my day around from most people. Early to bed and early to rise does not magically give me more hours in a day. It saves nothing. 

Now in my late sixties I no longer run and have retired from work, and my time is still filled with things to do—both pleasant and onerous tasks I have ignored for decades and now choose. We have always had and enjoyed watching television, but this month we are ending our broadcast and cable subscription. We read the news and go for walks each morning. Even so, I might well wonder how I found the time in my earlier years to get so much done. 

Perhaps it was not so hard. My husband took on his share of housework and childcare. Some things did not get done, usually cleaning and upkeep we neglected in favor of more urgent demands from children or our interests. I learned to be efficient about many things, especially the necessary tasks I do not enjoy, but also the interesting things I do. 

My habits are productive but not notable. I do not have books in print. I do not see family as much as I would like. Vacations were nonexistent for years, and even now are rare. We do not often feel the need to get away. (We live in paradise, after all.) I make many things without selling anything on Etsy. Perhaps, now that I am retired and accomplishing less, people will no longer ask me where I find the time. 

It is there, has been there all along. When I had children running about, I did tasks I could carry about with me, put down when I needed to chase a child, scrubbed the kitchen floor at least once a week, bathed and groomed dogs during the Sunday mornings my husband was always home. There were things I did not do—dressing up and going out to dinner, for example, because it did not matter and I spent my money elsewhere. I have always volunteered but we do not attend charity events. Even now, I think sometimes I should spend a few minutes a day meditating. If it genuinely mattered to me, I think I would find the time. 

What we should find time for is only what matters to us enough that we make the time happen. No magic, no great skill. If we would rather have time for a walk than read Facebook, we can choose to do that. If we would rather read or write a letter or have tea with a friend after work, that is a choice anyone might make. 

I choose how to spend my time, and if I do not, time spends itself.

“A YEAR AGO” or more

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So far this month. I have made little progress on Camp NaNo, but I withdrew six poetry submissions yesterday. A story has been out for a year, six months short-listed—I think they are only teasing me. Yesterday the last of the base trim went down in the dining room and kitchen; it’s only been thirty-some years to get it completed. This morning I have a few hundred square feet of floor to varnish plus that newly installed base. Rain is nearly always welcome, post-fireworks especially, but the damp will slow drying, so that is not so good.

I am worried about a former student and driving and writing and the world too. Not in that order.

Sleep did not find me last night, and I am already tired before a very hectic morning. The next busy-busy days, and I figured out, finally, what to do about a quilt I have wanted to construct. Good? I gave up reading Romola, which is too smart for my mood just now. And I was wrong about a connection to the painter Artemesia Gentileschi. Does anyone enjoy being wrong? I should be up walking the beach, but finally I feel sleepy when it is too late in the morning already for sleep.

Finally, the national newspapers seem to care about abuses against women, or at least when it makes a good story. One local Florida reporter would not let the Epstein story go. Julie K. Brown of The Miami Herald just kept digging and pushing. It took a while to regain traction—more than a decade for the boys to pay attention to this legal travesty—but her name has already disappeared from reporting on the rapes and other abuses committed by a very rich man despite her efforts to drag them into the [lime]light. New York’s Southern District, Geoffrey Berman, noted, “The defendant, a registered sex offender, is not reformed, he is not chastened, he is not repentant.” Well, when you are famous they let you do anything. (Who said that?) Money does not talk, it fairly shrieks until it has its way.

Why is that allowed in the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Oh, right, money.

EMPTY/FULL

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“Spot” is a mostly-wild rabbit. The truly wild rabbits do not have a white spot on their heads and would never have come into the yard to eat montbrecia in the middle of the day.

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Two of the ravens. Two more are out of the hot in a snag, one was on the sand.

We saw five ravens during our walk the other day. The raven pair have been as successful raising their brood as the eagles. We are less confident about our bats. Two were living under the eaves and we waited before going out early one morning until the sky brightened enough to send them home. Since then, fireworks. Every night. Mostly we love summer as much as everyone, but fireworks. However, the out-of-state party that was blowing sparks right over our head the other night, might have left. We hope they are gone. We hope so, but we are resigned to one more night of explosions keeping us awake past 10.

We need our sleep.

IMG_4548We moved furniture back into the living room and for a few days, it was lovely on the newly varnished floor. Clear space, less furniture. But we are not done varnishing floors. Almost immediately, we started shifting to prepare for the next step. The coffee maker is on top of the dryer. The microwave is around the corner. We just now finished moving everything else out of the kitchen and dining room except the fridge (we’re saving that for tomorrow).

I store pantry items in glass jars. Coconut and dried garbanzos and five organic cooking oils—all of that. Most of those nine shelves are lined up on the floor of a bedroom. We managed to slide the huge bookcase that housed the pantry into the hall. The round dining table, pie safe, and a bookcase are in the living room. So is the Kitchen Queen and what was kept in those pieces of furniture now on tables and in cartons. A drawer of candles on the sofa.

It has only just occurred to me that since I am retired, I will never again need the serving pieces for chocolate pots de creme and sparkling cider served to my students. I do not need to save them or store them and, along with a great many other things, including my grandmothers’ crystal, I will be letting them go.

In the mean time, Gary is scrubbing the floor and I cannot find the paint to finish painting into the corner I could not quite cut into when all the furniture was in place. There are still too many books. Too much of everything. We will never burn all these candles. Chaos.

So what else is new?

 

4th of JULY

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JUMP

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Dozens of pelicans have moved on and offshore lately. They are a grand sight.

Friday evening we drove south to the Farmers Market. We found it in a new venue, a much larger space than where it used to crowd out a small parking lot and spill into the street. We were somewhat dismayed to learn that this is their third year in the “new” location. How did we miss that? Our favorite stop was the falafel truck, and we stopped going when they retired and Fridays began to seem like a better time to stay home.

The coast is booming, though not [yet] literally.

On Saturday we braved traffic again to head in the opposite direction for the memorial of a man I did not know well at all. I know his wife, a woman who always did her best for students and was kind and patient with me too. Both were generous in their lives, their hearts and actions, personally and in the world. I liked singing and the stories. We attended mostly for the wife’s sake, but it was clear from words spoken, the kindness and humor, that missing the friendship of this man was our loss.

Sunday we again drove south to celebrate another passage. One of our favorite book stores is passing into new hands, allowing new possibilities for the store’s founder. She seems excited, and we wished her well.

I made my fifth batch of jam for the year—funny, since I almost never use it myself—and I bottled 48 ounces of strawberry shrub, which I like well watered down with sparkling soda. It’s a new pleasure for me.

My novel about recovery from grief begins with terrible loss, made stunning because of guilt and self-recrimination, lost opportunities to make wiser choices, to share, express love, and admit failure. My central character manages to move on, though she recognizes that healing is a myth. She finds a new life, just as everyone around her suggests she should.

My mother died a dozen years ago today. I miss her still.

Human attention is drawn to the new, but we feel safety in stability.

Nevermind. Change shifts the ground under our feet, rescues us from safety and complacency. Sometimes when we move on, we have no choice. We stumble, we fall, we wail and resist. Love, passion, need, opportunity. Here it is under our feet.

Jump.

Fireworks are illegal on Oregon beaches. That has not stopped anyone up to now. When we first moved to my family home forty years ago, we saw only little stuff, legal fireworks. Then in the 80s a neighbor (a trained fireworks person who worked on the Vancouver WA display—then the largest in the nation) would put on a display the night before or after the 4th, and this drew such a large crowd that after a few years he quit. He believed the crowds made his display unsafe. Unfortunately, people had a taste for it, and lately people buy loads of illegal fireworks. Some years it is completely insane, smoke like a war zone, thousands of dollars exploding all up and down the beach. The floating lanterns are the scariest because there is not telling where they will land. Fireworks cause distress to pets and people (especially veterans who served in combat), wild life, and sleep. They leave a nasty litter of chemicals and plastic onshore.

However, so far, this year seems pretty tame. I’ve heard some small firecrackers, the handful of booms the other day, and that’s been it. I hope people are more aware of the fire danger. A couple of acres burned up on the cape a couple of weeks ago. It was likely campers. I’d like to believe that fireworks are losing some of their appeal for many people, and then fire danger is very real. We have had horrific fires in Oregon over the past few years. And California.

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We found a stranded starfish drying on the sand. Since it was still alive, we carried it back to a shady tide pool. It immediately clamped on—as immediate as a starfish can be.

The weather is perfect, a hundred yards of sand out in front of our house and low tide at 8:30 for the night of the 4th. If the big guns come out, at least there is plenty of room for them to set things off well away from trees and homes.

Ben Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive: “War makes murderers of decent people. All wars and all people.”

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Benjamin Ferencz

 

On Christmas 1945, Ferencz was honorably discharged from the Army with the rank of Sergeant. He returned to New York, but was recruited only a few weeks later to participate as a prosecutor in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in the legal team of Telford Taylor. Taylor appointed him Chief Prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen Case—Ferencz’s first case. All of the 22 men on trial were convicted; 13 of them received death sentences, of which four were eventually carried out.

In a 2005 interview for The Washington Post, Ferencz revealed some of his activities during his period in Germany by way of showing how different military legal norms were at the time:

Someone who was not there could never really grasp how unreal the situation was … I once saw DPs beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder?
You know how I got witness statements? I’d go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone one up against the wall. Then I’d say, “Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.” It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid.

Ferencz stayed in Germany after the Nuremberg Trials, together with his wife Gertrude, whom he had married in New York on March 31, 1946. Together with Kurt May and others, he participated in the setup of reparation and rehabilitation programs for the victims of persecutions by the Nazis, and also had a part in the negotiations that led to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany signed on September 10, 1952 and the first German Restitution Law in 1953. In 1956, the family—they had four children by then—returned to the U.S., where Ferencz entered private law practice as a partner of Telford Taylor.—Wikipedia