On women's health and privilege.

I just read Angelina Jolie's OpEd in the New York Times about her decision to have a preventive double mastectomy after testing positive for the breast cancer gene BRCA1. She titles it "My Medical Choice." It is an amazing and wonderful thing that she has knowledge about her health risks and options to deal with them. Without a cure for cancer, this is the next best thing for taking control of one's own health care and future.

I have loved Angeline Jolie as an actor ever since her performance in my favorite coming of age film, Foxfire, based on the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name. I love her work for the United Nations and all she has done for refugees around the world. And I love her now for raising awareness of the options for women looking to prevent breast and ovarian cancers.

What her piece highlights for me is the very different worlds she and I live in. As a woman of privilege, she is able to make a fully informed decision about her health care. She can access state of the art genetic testing to better understand her risks. Then, with this knowledge, she can choose from several options for prevention and screening.

Breast cancer alone kills some 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.

For me, as I also consider myself a woman of privilege, I could probably afford the $3,000 for the genetic test, which would be a hardship, but not completely out of reach. Then, if I tested positive, I could consider some of the options, but first I would have to see what my health insurance company covers. I will never have access to the best surgeons in the country as Jolie did, nor will I be able to receive care at the Pink Lotus Breast Center or any place like it. But I might be able to get a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery with my limited health insurance, again, at some significant cost. I could probably scrounge up the funds or take out a loan.

For millions of other women in the United States, none of these options are available. They do not have health insurance, nor do they have access to the thousands of dollars for just the genetic screening.  They likely will not even receive a breast cancer screening. For them, they wait until something goes seriously wrong. They find the lump, if they are lucky; but then what? Without health insurance, how does she even seek treatment? 

I don't need to take this to its conclusion. You get the picture.

Angelina Jolie is brave. She is an important voice in the fight for women's health. I hope she can speak louder on behalf of the millions of women for which these options are out of reach. The advances in breast cancer prevention and treatment are truly remarkable. We should ensure that all women can access them.

This is why I support the Affordable Care Act. It is one step closer to ensuring that all women have access to the screening, prevention, and treatment afforded to Angelina Jolie. It is the moral and right thing to do for all Americans.

On entertaining

It has been a VERY long time since I have had a guest over for dinner at my home. Something like three years.

It makes me sad to think about it. I love to cook and take care of friends. Making cocktails and munchies, finding the perfect playlist, and preparing a special meal. Laughter and good times. I'd grill veggies, create a mini fiesta of tacos and burritos, shrimp with couscous, and all sorts of things. I miss entertaining and hosting terribly. Sitting on the couch with a glass of wine and talking until midnight.

But life has been extremely complicated. And the longer the break from entertaining, the more distant the idea, the messier the house got. The messier the house, the more daunting the idea of cleaning. It became a terrible cycle that needed to be broken. And there's a little bit of shame and embarrassment thrown in there too.

Life throws things at you sometimes that you can't handle with the grace and strength you thought you had. But it's okay. Because I think in losing part of myself, I found another part I did not know existed. The part who is patient, and kinder, and more strategic. I became more appreciative of friends who have stuck by me, and who have been kind and patient.

And now I'm letting go of things that keep me down. Letting go of some of the fears that kept me from my friends and family. Not caring about things that used to make me cry. I started by cleaning. One room. Then another. Then, to get me over the hump, I just did it. I invited a good and understanding friend over for dinner. And with a little help from hubby, made the house presentable.

Homemade tortilla chips and mango salsa. Margaritas. Vegetarian burritos and braised brussel sprouts. Good conversation. All the things that make me happy. I'm so glad I got here.

Better Than Popcorn

Yesterday afternoon, I came home with a plan: to veg in front of my television and watch movies until I fall asleep. But first, I had to take on dinner.

As I was preparing the meal, I was daunted by the very large bag of kale I bought from BJs earlier in the week. What on earth was I going to do with all this kale? I had already chopped some up into tomato sauce for pasta and hubby even included some in the crock pot for turkey earlier in the week. However, there was still a lot of kale.

Then it hit me. Instead of popcorn for my veg night, I could make kale chips! I made kale chips before and enjoyed them immensely.

I tore the leaves off their woody stems; sprinkled it with olive oil, salt and pepper; and rubbed the leaves until they were fully covered. Then I baked it at 300 degrees for about 15-20 minutes until they became light and crispy (but not brown). Finally, the thing that made this batch special...I sprinkled the finished product with nutritional yeast, an ingredient I had bought for a single recipe over the December holidays.

Voila! This was perfection! If you have ever craved popcorn for movie watching, please try this. You will NOT be disappointed. The chips are so light and crisp they melt in your mouth. The bitter green taster gives way to an earthy flavor. Then, the nutritional yeast adds a creamy, nutty, almost cheesiness to each delectable bite. Oh my goodness, why did I wait so long to make these?!

A new beginning

The last time I posted to this blog was just over two years ago. I was in the middle of an extremely rough patch in my life, to say the least. My husband and I were both unemployed and I was just beginning a new position.  

The two years following have been full of obstacles, hardship, joys, pain, and learning opportunities--too many to outline in any blog. The rough patch is still ironing itself out, but my mind is beginning to refocus.

I need to write. I realize I need to write in order to be happy. Being confined to only write about certain things has left a lump in my throat that needs to be cleared. So this post is titled "a new beginning " because I feel like I need to start over and almost erase the previous posts. But I won't. I need to write to be whole. So today, I will start writing.

How the Right Wing Uses Liberal Guilt to Defeat the Left

Again? Have we learned nothing?

First James O’Keefe went after ACORN. Even though the video used to defund the organization was later determined to be a fraud, liberals buckled under the pressure. The Congressional vote, even under Democratic control, voted to ban ACORN from receiving federal funding. The right wing plan worked and ACORN went out of business across the country.

Earlier, Laila Rose had begun her “undercover investigations” of an even more popular brand: Planned Parenthood. These edited clips, along with false and misleading information about abortion rates for women of color are being used in an attempt to defund Planned Parenthood. The right-wing controlled House of Representatives wasted no time in voting to ban Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding as one of their first acts of 2011.

Now Mr. O’Keefe is back. This time, posing as a Muslim donor to National Public Radio (NPR) recording the director of fundraising making disparaging remarks about conservatives and the Tea Party. In this case, a fundraiser, not a reporter was forced to resign for making a biased statement. Shortly thereafter NPR’s chief executive also resigned. No doubt, NPR will be next on the budget chopping block. Oh, wait, it was already defunded by the House along with Planned Parenthood.

And for some reason, the general public has not noticed this organized effort to attack and dismantle popular and vital programs that benefit our communities. Shame on the media for not making these connections for us and shame on progressives for cowering in response. Lawmakers are eating it up as an opportunity to finally get rid of these things they hate so much.

Enough is enough.

How is it that one afternoon a perfectly competent employee can be doing good work and the next moment he or she is thrown into turmoil, and unemployment. Why are progressives so caught up in their liberal guilt that they cannot just admit to a mistake and move on without allowing for the destruction of a perfectly good organization?

Fortunately, Planned Parenthood is fighting back. If you haven’t seen the pink bus "Truth Tour", you really should take a look. They are following the lying anti-choice zealots around the country with their truth bus, debunking lies and spreading the word about Planned Parenthood’s important work.

I hope that NPR does not fall victim to these attacks and fights back too. It is time for progressives to release themselves from the liberal guilt that allows them to agree to the punishments of the right wing because of deceptions and mistakes. And it is time for us to say “hell no!” to our members of Congress if they dare defund these vital community programs.

Unions Will Save the American Middle Class

The battle of public relations is waged in the media. Whoever gets the public to buy their version of the story wins. This is where corporations have the edge. They have enough money and power to distort reality and convince even the people they will harm with their goals that their story is real.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the union battle being waged in Wisconsin. Corporations are using soaring state budget deficits to eliminate worker rights. They have quietly set the stage by getting the politicians they elected to blame “powerful unions” for budget deficits, deflecting their own role in the problem.

A brief history:
The industrial revolution in the United States brought much wealth. However, the wealth was not shared. There was a huge gap between the rich and the poor. Workers were poor. There were no laws protecting workers from unsafe conditions or unreasonable work hours. The average work day was 12 hours. There was no minimum wage or child labor laws. Most manufacturing plants then, looked like today’s sweatshops.

We can thank the collective bargaining  of unions for our minimum wage, 8-hour work days, child labor laws, emergency exits and other job safety requirements. We can thank them for sick days, vacation days and holidays. These, and many other policies built America’s middle class. They enabled workers to earn enough money to actually take vacations and build the tourism industry. Workers could actually afford to buy the products they were making, propelling America’s economy, and the world economy.

At its peak in 1970, union membership across the country was greater than 25 percent.  According to the AFLCIO, overall union membership is less than half that, at 12 percent. American union membership in the private sector has in recent years fallen under 9% — levels not seen since 1932. Hardly at levels harmful to the U.S. economy as conservative pundits would have us believe. Yet unions remain under attack.

Wisconsin is the beginning:

With all that is going on in Wisconsin, as workers fight to protect their collective bargaining rights, you will witness the media siege, No doubt, this weekend, you will find an article in your local paper supposedly showing you the dark side of the teachers union, or perhaps another union. The television news programs will comment on how the unions must negotiate away some of their benefits in order to save states from financial disaster.

No doubt, unions will need to take less and pay more for their health benefits and pensions. However, do not mistake the need for this negotiation with the desire of some to end the union’s right to collectively negotiate in this process.

In the end, who will benefit the most from the loss of collective bargaining? Taxpayers will not benefit. State workers will still have contracts and benefits. Even in Wisconsin, Governor Walker’s plan will only save $137 million out of the state’s $3.7 billion deficit. Hardly a dent.

Our fears over budget deficits are being manipulated by powerful people who have been working for decades to rid themselves of unions so they can make bigger profits. In the end, an elimination of collective bargaining in Wisconsin would be a model for other states, and Congress, to give even more power and wealth to corporations over workers. Even as corporate profits soar higher and the wage gap increases, the American public will be convinced that unions are the problem.

Unions are not the problem. Unions and the workers in their ranks, will sacrifice in Wisconsin. They will preserve collective bargaining rights. And when history is written about this time, they will be credited with saving America’s middle class.

How Will You Celebrate Valentines Day?

Today is Valentines Day. Ick. I say it because I am one of those women who spent most of her girlhood pining for a boyfriend on this day. When I was sixteen, my long-distance boyfriend broke up with me, on the phone, the day BEFORE Valentines Day, AFTER I mailed him a card.

What was surprising to me was that when I did finally have a boyfriend on this day, I did not care anymore. I did not want a card or a gift. I became suddenly aware of the Hallmark sales pitch, the diamond commercials and the social pressures I spent most of my life avoiding.

Today, I think about this day in a different light. I have been married for 14 years last month. I married a Christian. This is a little surprising because I was raised Jewish. But religion had absolutely nothing to do with our decision to get married or the marriage ceremony. We went to City Hall together to get our marriage license. We hired a Justice of the Peace out of the phone book to perform our small ceremony at a local restaurant surrounded by immediate family and a few friends. Religion never played into it at all.

So when I read about Saint Valentine on wikipedia in honor of the day, I was intrigued to learn that the origin and identity of this saint of the Catholic Church is unclear. It may refer to a group of people who helped Christians in the Roman Empire when it was illegal to do so. Some of them even married Christians (gasp). Here is just a small clip from the entry.

The first representation of Saint Valentine appeared in the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493); alongside the woodcut portrait of Valentine, the text states that he was a Roman priest martyred during the reign of Claudius II, known as Claudius Gothicus. He was arrested and imprisoned upon being caught marrying Christian couples and otherwise aiding Christians who were at the time being persecuted by Claudius in Rome. Helping Christians at this time was considered a crime.

How appropriate that today we celebrate such martyrs during the height of the battle for marriage equality for same sex couples. The very church that celebrates the righteous acts of those who stood for love in the face of oppression has turned its back on love and has fought against legal equality outside of the church.

There was a time when I would not have been able to marry my husband in any church or synagogue. There was a time when no church would have married a couple of different races. But here in the United States, we have come to hold love and human dignity above such trite bigotry. We have advanced human rights.

If religion had nothing to do with my ability to marry, then why are religious leaders so opposed to legal marriage for same sex couples? No church, synagogue, mosque or temple can be forced to recognize or collaborate in civil marriage. If they could separate law from religion this would not be an issue. Alas, many people are not able to separate them. And for this reason, millions of people are being denied the same rights and responsibilities I have been honored to share with my husband.

But many within the religious community to recognize the sanctity of same sex unions in the eyes of their god. They have boldly led where the rest of us will one day follow. To name just a small handful...

Rev. J. Brad Benson, an episcopal Priest in Bath, NY who married his partner Carl Johengen with the blessing of Rochester Bishop Prince Singh, retired Bishop Jack McKelvey, and Maine Bishop Stephen Lane.

The Reverends Dawn Sangrey and Kay Greenleaf were charged for illegally marrying same sex couples in New Paltz, NY in 2004.

The Reverend Sam Trumbore of Albany, NY who marries same sex couples and was part of the lawsuit against New York State’s discriminatory marriage laws that were unfortunately upheld by the Court of Appeals.

All the clergy who are part of Clergy United for Marriage.

So today, on Valentines Day, I would like to celebrate the lives of those who are breaking this barrier and taking a lead in restoring equality and human rights to same sex couples.

Celebrate with me by contacting your elected representatives on the state and federal level, wherever you live. If you live in new York State, start here.