An Open Letter to Everyone Who Represents Me: President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governor Polis, Senator Bennet, Senator Hickenlooper, Representative Neguse, State Senator Lewis, and State Representative Bernett

It’s been a while since I’ve written. It seems that by the time I formulate something to say, there’s another new thing that arises that erases whatever I had to say before. But Boulder is my stomping ground (at least when there’s not a pandemic). We have shopped in that store. There’s a restaurant in that shopping area that makes vindaloo hot enough to please my husband.

 

 

 

 

  

One of my daughter’s best friends lived up the street. My daughter went to middle school around the bend. My son played concerts in the park nearby.

 

 

 

 

So I offer another open to letter to everyone who is supposed to represent my interests. I hope this time my letter makes some sort of difference.

 

23 March, 2021

Dear President Biden, Vice President Harris, Governor Polis, Senator Bennet, Senator Hickenlooper, Representative Neguse, State Senator Lewis, and State Representative Bernett,

  Today it was in my/our backyard, but yesterday’s shooting at the King Soopers grocery store in Boulder was no more horrific than any of the ones that have happened from that horrific day at Columbine High School until now. Of course it could happen in Boulder. Of course it can happen to any of us.

  I have watched so many politicians refuse to give direct and unequivocal answers when asked whether we need stricter gun laws. The answer should be “Yes. We need to discourage people from carrying guns. We need stronger guns laws that restrict the number of guns any person, family, or household can own. We need to outlaw assault rifles and all such weapons designed to inflict maximum damage to humans. We need our children to go to schools that are not fortresses, where they don’t have to absorb the pre-emptive trauma of preparing for a shooter entering their classrooms and playgrounds. We need to change our culture so that we no longer glorify guns and violence.”

Will you take a political hit for such an answer? Yes.

Will such an answer require a whole lot of courage? Yes.

Will giving such an answer be the right thing to do? Yes.

Please: we are looking to you to make Colorado and the United States a safer, saner state and country that will be examples to other states, to our nation, and indeed to the world. Let us show the planet that we know how to face our failings and change.

 

 

 

 

 

And let’s not scapegoat this latest devastation onto the backs of those of us with mental illnesses. 1 People dealing with metal illness are not prone to violence. 2 Let’s look at what almost every one of these shooters has in common: they are men. Let’s start there. What is wrong with the men in our country that any of them have to go slaughtering others and ruining the lives of those of us who knew the victims and, in other ways, the lives of those of us who didn’t? Let’s stop deciding retroactively that someone who commits murder is insane and unstoppable. Let’s stop only talking about getting those with mental illness the help they need and do it, and let’s also talk about getting our boys the help they need so that they don’t pick up guns and kill children in schools, congregants in houses of worship, people shopping for their evening meals and getting vaccines that will help protect us all from COVID-19. 

And let us not forget all those who are shot, but in numbers too small — one, two, or three — to be considered worthy of attention. EVERY DAY, 316 people in the U.S are shot; twenty-two are children. 3 Let us remember the victims of domestic violence, most likely to be killed when they try to escape; the children who find the guns their parents have not locked away and who play with them because we have taught them that guns are toys and who end up shooting themselves or siblings or friends; the folks who maim themselves or others; the ones who shoot in the air in a moment of excitement and end up harming someone, if only through inflicting the terror of finding a bullet lodged in a wall of their home.

Over two years ago I wrote a blog post 4 after the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. I opened my essay stating that I doubted anything would change, and I was right. Sometimes I really, really hate to be right. If the deaths of the children at Sandyhook couldn’t shock us into sanity, I don’t know what ever will.

 

Back in March of 2018, Garrett Epps wrote in the Atlantic an article titled “The Second Amendment Does Not Transcend All Others: Its text and context don’t ensure an unlimited individual right to bear any kind and number of weapons by anyone.” 5 Every child in school should read it; so should all our elected representatives. Epps quotes the judgement that Justice Scalia, that bastion of conservatism, rendered in Heller v. District of Columbia:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues. Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

I have gotten to the point that I hate all guns. I didn’t always. My grandmother and mother were incredible shots. I played with pop guns and fake sheriff’s pistols and water guns as a kid. But now I would happily see them all, toys and the real ones, disappear from the face of the planet. 6 

But I am willing to compromise. I am willing to talk with those who disagree with me but are also willing to find a sensible middle-ground. (Perhaps we could agree that people who have been cleared by background checks may own guns that were in existence at the time our Constitution was written. Surely that would appeal to strict constructionists.)

One of our nieces reminded me that her whole life has been permeated by this violence; the same is true for my children who flank their cousin in age. I know a teacher who is retiring in part because he can no longer assure his students that they are safe at school.

Let’s give gun-law reform a try. Let’s give it a try for at least a generation and see what happens. Let’s save lives and children. Let’s take some of the pressure off the police who have to worry about whether everyone they approach has a weapon. Let’s be humane and moral and responsible and value each other more than we do weapons that can destroy us as individuals and as a national community.

Thank you for reading my letter. I hope, fervently and desperately, that you all will act — directly and decisively — to turn the tide of this every-rising flood of preventable violence and damage. I am 

Your constituent,

Ruth E Feiertag

  • 1. And if you want to improve the mental health of many of us, pass gun laws that will keep us safer. The barrage of anguish and death contributes to my sense of helplessness and depression.

2. https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/mental-illness-and-violence

https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/evidence-and-research/learn-more-about/3633-risk-factors-for-violence-in-serious-mental-illness

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2686644/

3. https://www.bradyunited.org/key-statistics

4. https://www.ruthfeiertag.net/2018/10/28/guns-and-tyranny/

5. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/second-amendment-text-context/555101/

6. I think about the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert for two generations so that all those who entered the Promise Land would have never known what it was to be a slave. Sometimes I think that’s what we need here in the U.S. Let us have two generations without guns, and when the last of us who have known what it is to have lived with a national consciousness pervaded with the awareness of guns has died, then let the generations who succeed us decide whether they want to re-introduce them into society.

Adventures Outside the House During Our Time of Isolation

Yesterday I ventured forth farther a-field than I have for three weeks. I had an health appointment and my son agreed to take me so I wouldn’t have to take the bus (I don’t drive). I thought I would be excited to leave the house, but in truth I was mostly nervous. I looked up how to make a mask from a bandana and hair bands:

You can find instructions on how to make your own COVID-19 fashion statement here. I had a hard time getting the elastic bands to stay looped over my ears, so when I got home, I strung three together, before slipping the bandana through the end two, to allow the elastic to go around my head. I haven’t tried wearing it outside as I walk around yet, but I have high hopes it will stay in place a little better.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the way in, there were some cars, but many stretches of the road were almost empty.

We passed my favourite pond. There were two grey herons on it, a bird I hadn’t seen there before. I hope they’re nesting. Someone pointed out to me that the birds have been loving the quieter days and the cleaner air, and since then I have noticed that there are indeed more birds around than we’ve had for a while.

 

      After my appointment, we had a couple errands to run, one on the pedestrian mall. It was stunning to see how empty it was. The homeless folk had gathered primarily in one area, but most were keeping several yards apart from each other and talking about the pandemic.

I was surprised by how many restaurants were not limiting themselves to take out or curbside pick-up. Quite a number were open for business as more-or-less usual. THIS IS WHY WE NEED A NATIONAL SHUT-DOWN, PEOPLE. We can’t count on folks to stay away from each other if it isn’t mandated as a necessity.

There were few shoppers around; many of them were wearing scarves or masks. We looked like a small convention of highway robbers.

Because I’ve been cooped up at home, my son and I took the scenic route home. We saw trees just coming out of dormancy, still all bones, but not for long.*

There were some mountains, too.

Honestly, I feel as if the world has undergone such a cataclysm that I wasn’t sure the Rockies would still be there. It’s like living in one of those SciFi movies in which most of the population has been swept away by a plague and everyone is afraid of everyone else, but it’s not a movie.

Be careful out there, folks.

________________________

* Winter trees remind me of the first and last verses of Theodore Roethke’s poem, “I Knew A Woman”:

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;   
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:   
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).
………………………………
Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:   
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.   
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:   
(I measure time by how a body sways).
(https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43331/i-knew-a-woman)

 

Alien Abduction and the Rest of Inktober 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        If you’re one of the few people who might be reading this, perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve been away for a while. I wasn’t really abducted by aliens — that would have been all over the tabloids, right? — but I often feel as if I get transported to a place where I inexplicably lose time and all memory of what I was supposed to be doing.

      It’s hard to know how to dive into this post, not because I don’t know what to write, but because others, especially Jenny Lawson and Wil Wheaton, have already said it better than I ever shall. 

       You know what would help? If you would read Mr. Wheaton’s speech to the Ohio branch of NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness). Go ahead; I’ll wait. You can find the speech here: http://wilwheaton.net/2018/05/my-name-is-wil-wheaton-i-live-with-chronic-depression-and-i-am-not-ashamed/.

         You’re back? Great. That was a pretty awesome speech, wasn’t it? OK: here we go.

I am Ruth Feiertag, and I live with Chronic Depression.

        In many ways, my life has been very different from Mr. Wheaton’s. I rank among the least famous people on the planet. I do love Star Trek, but I never even got to be a neon-skinned alien with tentacles or antennae lurking, uncredited, in the background. But he and I do have some things in common. In my own way, I also have been fortunate. I have always had a place to live, enough to eat, clothes to wear, access to health care and decent schools, and almost all the books I wanted: you know, the basic necessities. I grew up in a stable home with parents and siblings who loved me. I went on to create a family of my own. Pretty damn lucky. 

       But like Wil Wheaton, I live with chronic depression and anxiety, what he aptly calls “the tag team champions of the World Wrestling With Mental Illness Federation.” (I also have myalgic encephalomyelitis, the condition formerly known as chronic fatigue, and a couple other door-prizes I’ve discovered or picked up along the way.) I’m offering up my story, in part, to add to my voice to the chorus1 of those trying to defuse the stigma around mental illness and, in part, to explain what happened to my Inktober tale.

          Again like Mr. Wheaton, I got the message early and clearly that mental illness was a shameful character flaw, one that would redound to my family’s shame. My mother was particularly expressive on this subject. Over the years, even well into my adulthood, Mom told me that psychologists only mess people up, that they always blame the mothers (thank you, Dr. Freud), that they take children away from their parents — a prospect that frightened me horribly. People who have mental problems, my mom would say, need to be tough and get past to whatever they might be attributing their depression. Mom made it plain that if we ever sought help for mental issues, she would be the one to suffer.

          To be fair, my mother’s fears were not entirely unfounded. She did have some damaging experiences, especially with school counselors who were quick to fault my mother for things beyond her control. It was not Mom’s fault that I was (am) shy and socially inept, tom-boyish and gawky, just as it was not her “fault” that I used to be tall for my age, liked books, and was good at catching lizards. My hair-cut, though — that was ENTIRELY Mom’s fault.

 

         My anxiety manifested young. I got kicked out of nursery school for being so shy and anxious that I couldn’t make friends or interact with the other children. I remember standing on the margins of the playground, hoping equally that no one would notice me and that one of the other children would ask me to come play. I think I was there about three weeks before the teachers told Mom to keep me home. Mom attributed my behaviour to selfishness. There was a baby, and Mom said that I didn’t want to let her have time with him.

          Grammar school was a little better. After all, public schools can’t kick out students for being socially awkward. I spent a lot of recesses tucked away in odd corners, reading. But my anxiety was still powerful enough to give me stomach aches. There was a day in first grade when I my stomach was cramping up painfully, but Mom insisted that I go to school anyway. She did tell me, however, to let my teacher know that if I didn’t feel better after a while, the teacher should let me call home. 

          Mrs. Persons was one of those firm teachers with high expectations and her opinion was immensely important to me. I was so shakingly nervous about conveying Mom’s message to her that I immediately burst into tears and couldn’t speak with any coherency. Mrs. Persons sent me to the nurse, the nurse called Mom, and Mom came to get me, and she was not amused.

          Even worse, when I went back to school the next day, Mrs. Persons shamed me during circle time in front of the other students, chastising me for my “crocodile tears” and accusing me of lying about feeling ill. (That wasn’t even what I had been trying to tell her. I’d been trying to say that if I still felt ill later, then, Mom had said, I should get to call home.) Other than that one instance, Mrs. Persons was a wonderful teacher who encouraged me and celebrated my intelligence, but I realized that she felt I had been dishonest and, on some level, that I had made her look bad, and I was disappointed with myself, verging on being ashamed, for letting her down. I had been bad, not in need of understanding.

         By junior high, I was talking with friends about whether I might be crazy. In high school, I would regularly miss a couple weeks of school due to a mysterious lethargy that my parents finally decided was caused by my allergies.

           It wasn’t until after the birth of my first child that I saw a therapist. The beautiful cherub we brought home from the hospital turned out to be an adorable demon who didn’t — and as an adult, still doesn’t — need much sleep. For a year, I thought that my low mood was due to an exhaustion that would go away about the time our sleepless wonder went to college. All I had to do was hold up for another seventeen years…

       Then, at the children’s used-clothing store up the street, I picked up a local parents’ newspaper that had an article on postpartum depression and I realized that sleep deprivation might not be my only problem.

       This was back before health insurance had to offer behavioural health benefits and before we had money to spare for luxuries like counselling, so it was lucky that the article also listed organizations that would help new mothers find the support they needed. The local United Way found me a therapist and sent someone around to check on me every week or so until I regained my balance. It took only a few months, that time, for me to feel like myself again and to start to re-build my hopes and ambitions, and then to work to start bringing them about.

       Over the next few years, I had bouts of melancholy that would come and go, but eventually the depression came to stay. I have now spent about a quarter-century living with the sadness, the self-doubt, and other emotional accessories that come with the second skin of melancholy.2

          Because here’s what Mr. Wheaton’s speech doesn’t say: about a third of us who suffer from chronic depression are stuck with it. The drugs don’t work — all the ones I’ve tried had side-effects that made me worse, sometimes trip-to-the-ER worse — and counselling doesn’t scare away the depression either. (I have a brilliant therapist. While she hasn’t been able to disappear the depression, she does keep me from living under my covers.) And even those who do get relief from drugs or therapy usually find what some people call the Black Dog (not Sirius Black. This is a different black dog. Sirius Black would be cool) padding along beside them at times throughout their lives.

         When my depression and fatigue become rampant, sometimes my mind walls off sections in an arbitrary fashion. And that’s what happened with my Inktober project. I kept up with writing the prompts, but not with typing up my ramblings and posting them. I have, slowly, over the past many weeks, gotten my Inktoberings into shape, and will start posting them, one every couple of days.3

          So that’s where I’ve been, sorting out my mom’s estate (a Work In Progress) and living in my head (another WIP). But if you’d rather think I was abducted by aliens, go ahead. That would be a better story. Maybe I was aboard a UFO with aliens who found my Inktober efforts sufficiently amusing to let me bring my notebook and pens. Maybe the depression is just a cover story planted in my brain to account for my absence. Maybe I’m still on the ship and don’t know it, though I’d expect space-travelling aliens to have better WiFi than what we have at our house…

 

 

 

 

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1. Mr. Wheaton, in addition to his NAMI speech, blogs about his depression (and other matters). Sarah Marsh, in the NAMI newsletter, tells us that “Mental Illness Should Not Be A Secret” in a story much like Mr. Wheaton’s. In one of the Rumpus’ Letters  in the Mail, Rion Amilcar Scott discusses the depression-troll that sits on his shoulder and has become a companion. And the Queen of Mental Illness, Jenny Lawson, thebloggess, writes about her own struggles on her blog and in her hysterically funny book, Furiously Happy. (I was going to quote something pertinent from the appendix in the middle of her book, but I couldn’t choose just one.) 

2. I do have moments of joy, especially when my children come home, but also after a trip to the bookstore, or during an outing with friends.

3. I saddled poor Hannah with my chronic fatigue, sadness, and self-doubt, mostly to give a plausible reason for the days I couldn’t think up a plot-point.