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Another Girl Gone Missing

Posted in an expository essay, tagged , , , , on September 18, 2014| 1 Comment »

a familiar mystery gripped Central Virginia, where a string of young women have gone missing over the past five years, starting with Morgan Harrington in 2009.

When we first moved to this Southern enclave, the best place to retire/be happy/enjoy your golden years in a college town/ we loved it. The encircling, comforting Blue Ridge views, the non-stop cultural happenings, the historic homes and of course the weather wasn’t bad. Except for all the ice storms –  and so what if I had to learn to pump my own gas, I was still in my 50s, a mere youngster, anything was possible.

This is our tenth year in VA, it should be feeling like home about now. Seven years ago, on September 20,  we moved into our newly built house,

Niece Lucia came to visit

Niece Lucia came to visit

and yes it took us three years to find the land “with a view” and the contractor to make it happen………..

And today I’ve been invited to a Candlelight Vigil in town to “Bring Hannah Home.”

A Second Year UVA student, 18 year old Hannah went out to dinner last Friday night and was going to meet up with some friends at a party later. Her last text message was something about being lost in the very early hours of Saturday morning. More than 24 hours went by before her off-campus room mates noticed she was missing and her brother and parents notified the police on Sunday afternoon.

Before this summer came a string of cases involving young women, starting with Harrington, 20, the Virginia Tech student who disappeared outside the John Paul Jones Arena during a Metallica concert in October 2009. Her remains were discovered on an Albemarle farm three months later. No suspects have been named in that case.
Two 19-year-olds — Orange County’s Samantha Ann Clarke in September 2010 and Charlottesville’s DaShad “Sage” Smith in November 2012 — since have vanished. No suspects have been charged in their disappearances. In the spring, a jury convicted Randy Allen Taylor in the killing of Alexis Murphy, 17, a Nelson County High School student who went missing in August 2013. She never has been found.
Roberts said police do not believe there’s a connection between Graham’s case and the others.           http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/charlottesville-police-chief-landowners-should-check-downtown-properties-for-signs/article_9bd9be5e-3db3-11e4-9762-0017a43b2370.html

And now we are seeing video of her running past a gas station, and walking along the Historic Downtown Mall, with a man following her. This man told the police he was trying to “help” her and later he witnessed another man putting his arm around her. Bloodhounds are tracking her scent, the police have established a Tip Line, (434) 295-3851, and asked residents to check their property if they live within a certain radius of the Mall.

Our little four-square brick house, the 100 yr old home we lovingly restored to house medical students, is right down the road from that gas station, just two blocks off the Mall. Today I’ll check out the backyard. Tonight I’ll hold a candle.

When we first moved here, while I was looking for land with a view, the Cville police were looking for a serial rapist who was attacking young women in the university vicinity. Pictures of his face, drawn by a police artist, were hanging in the women’s bathrooms all over campus. It turned out he was working in the meat department of the Harris Teeter on Barrack’s Rd.

It would seem there is a serial killer in our midst, he may hide around gas stations, or he may live and work right next door. The FBI has been called in. Our thoughts and prayers are with Hannah’s family.

Hannah Graham

Hannah Graham

 

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It’s Good to be Hep

Posted in an expository essay, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 16, 2014| 4 Comments »

Medicine, there’s the good, the bad and the ugly. Let’s face it, we’ve just about cured childhood leukemia and polio has almost been eradicated from the face of the earth. The bad news, besides Ebola, is sometimes the side effects of taking life lengthening drugs makes you want to die sooner, just ask any cancer survivor. And the ugly? It’s the business of big pharma and insurance companies in this country.

We’ve all heard about people up in Michigan, who travel across the border to Canada to buy their drugs. The medical community will usually give drug manufacturers a pass for the high costs, believing that the money it takes for research and development to bring a new drug to market offsets the limited time they can be marketed on their patent, before the patent expires and the drug goes generic.

A company must apply for a patent before they go into clinical trials with a new drug, so the usual profit-making time can be whittled down to seven or maybe ten years. Barely enough time to make back their investment, right?

Well Baby Boomers rejoice! There’s a new HepatitisC drug that has virtually erased this virus from the blood stream. And now you can fly to India, first class, purchase this drug and fly back, first class for less than it would cost you to take a course of this liver-saving drug in the good ole USA!

The drug is Sovaldi and it has a 94%+ cure rate, yes CURE…and it doesn’t have the horrible flu-like-side-effects of previous drugs. I know someone who was part of the test study in NC and she has been totally cured after carrying the diagnosis for over 30 years! The drug company, Gilead, just brought the drug to market this summer and so far the results are outstanding.

The problem is, Sovaldi is a thousand dollars a pill! It costs Americans $84,000 for a 12 week course to cure HepC – hence the flight to India scenario. And OK, if you have insurance, or your state has accepted Medicare expansion, well then maybe you can afford to take this drug. I wondered aloud why we haven’t seen a lot of breaking news about this breakthrough cure. After all, chronic HepC affects 150 million people worldwide. It is a slow, silent killer.

If a drug came along that cured 95% of cancers we’d be sure to hear about it.

“Sovaldi is already on track to be one of the world’s biggest-selling drugs, with sales in 2014 – its first full year on the market – set to exceed $11 billion, according to consensus forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters Cortellis.” http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/15/us-gilead-sciences-india-idUSKBN0HA0TT20140915

Bob tells me another drug company is about to release another HepC drug, one that may prove 100% effective in curing HepC. So my cynical mind thinks the reason California-based Gilead is now offering its drug to the developing world at a fraction of the cost ($300 a month in India) is so that it can corner the market on the planet before this new drug is released…or maybe it’s because they are such an altruistic brand? http://blogs.hepmag.com/lucindakporter/2014/04/new_hepatitis_c_drug.html

If you are over 60 it’s probably a good time to ask your doctor for a HepC test. If you needed a blood transfusion during surgery. If you were a soldier in Vietnam, sharing blood with your brothers on the battlefield, or if you dabbled in drugs, sharing needles during a Love-In, you may have been infected. Medical workers who experienced a needle stick, before the advent of HIV-prevention methods, could also have contracted the blood-borne virus. If you had sex with someone who has the virus, at any time over the past 40-50 years. You may not even know it, or show any symptoms until it is too late.

Higher cure rates, fewer side-effects. Let’s hear it for American Big Pharma, and their gigantic profit margins. For me, I’m enjoying Ken Burns’ Roosevelt documentary – http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/films/the-roosevelts – and dreaming about a time when a President could wrangle banks and trusts and bend them to his will! When Teddy brokered peace between Japan and Russia and built a canal through Panama. I wonder what Teddy would do with Sovaldi and Syria?

Yellowstone National Park archives

Yellowstone National Park archives

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Women United

Posted in an expository essay, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 14, 2014| 2 Comments »

I got my first hater the other day on Twitter, “Captain so and so” I forgot his made up, cowardly name. The problem was, I was just getting out of the shower, so I made the mistake of favoriting him and actually retweeted because I didn’t have my glasses on; and it never would have occurred to me  that someone might hate me?! Little old me? But hate he did, pasting a link to an article where some Kroger clerks got beat up outside their store. Threatening much?

Why? Because I had the audacity to take a picture of my lox and bagel lunch and post it with the hashtag,

#Groceries Not Guns.

I was thanking Panera Bread for their delish bagel and for instituting a sane gun policy in their stores, ie no open carry please. Leave your ammo at home! Then later I took a picture of my grocery cart at Whole Foods, filled with produce and such and said:IMG_1084

Love @WholeFoods #GroceriesNotGuns too bad @HarrisTeeter n Kroeger     

That’s Twitterspeak for let’s all boycott Kroger and Harris Teeter because they allow open-carry-gun-toting-zealots into their stores and I don’t want to bear witness to such foolishness.  This campaign by Moms Demand Action recently resulted in Target changing its gun policy, and I must admit I feel a little thrill each time I post something; like a revolutionary, I’m proud to join the ranks of Shannon Watts and these moms.

At home in an Indianapolis suburb the morning following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, Shannon Watts, a 41-year-old former public relations executive and mother of five, created a Facebook page calling for a march on the nation’s capital: “Change will require action by angry Americans outside of Washington, D.C. Join us—we will need strength in numbers against a resourceful, powerful and intransigent gun lobby.” The seed for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America—today a national organization backed by nearly 200,000 members and millions of dollars—had been planted. “I started this page because, as a mom, I can no longer sit on the sidelines. I am too sad and too angry,” Watts wrote. “Don’t let anyone tell you we can’t talk about this tragedy now—they said the same after Virginia Tech, Gabby Giffords, and Aurora. The time is now.” http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/moms-demand-action-guns-madd-shannon-watts-nra

Using social media in a way that MADD could never have dreamed – which one doesn’t belong? –10635909_879992738677881_2827510542402008695_nto change the culture of drunk driving, this movement is winning hearts and minds of people who own guns, and have permits, and store them securely, and would never in a million years carry an AK47 into a grocery store! Pointing out the absurdity of the NRA’s policy is one goal, changing our wild west culture and getting the NRA out of the pockets of lobbyists is another.

It’s about time we women fought back. The Violence Against Women Act celebrated its 20th anniversary yesterday. If you’d like to learn more, this article is for you: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/soraya-chemaly/50-actual-facts-about-dom_b_2193904.html

“Number of U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq: 6,614:
Number of women, in the same period, killed as the result of domestic violence in the US: 11,766”

I blocked my hater on Twitter, haters gonna hate. I refuse to be intimidated. Three women a day are killed in this country by an intimate partner. It’s not just the NFL that has a problem. Teach your children well.

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The First Guitar

Posted in an expository essay, books, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 9, 2014| 2 Comments »

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I was always a Stones girl. The Beatles did catch my attention in high school, and the boys all cut their hair into Beatles’ bobs. But they were too upbeat in the beginning, too melodic. My first memory of being moved, really moved by a song was hearing “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” over the loudspeakers, echoing across the lake at Camp St Joseph for Girls. Yeah, preteen girls and boys separated all summer by a lake. It became an anthem for our generation. One of the highlights of my adult life was seeing the Stones perform at the Meadowlands for my 50th birthday.

So of course I’m going to rush right out and buy (or maybe I’ll just click and send on my laptop?) the Love Bug Keith Richards’ new children’s book, Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar. Richards’ daughter Theodora, named after her Great Grandfather Augustus Theodore, did the illustrations.

The characters and story required no embellishment. Theodore Augustus “Gus” Dupree, Richards’ maternal grandpa…was a big-band jazz musician who had seven daughters and owned and played a number of instruments. And he often took grandson Keith, also the name of the boy in the book, on outings like Gus & Me’s journey through London’s streets and a music store. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2014/09/08/keith-richards-keeps-it-all-in-the-family-for-kids-book/15121597/

It’s that eight year old brain that can determine a life’s work. Richards loved the singing cowboy, Roy Rogers, he was the super hero in his life, and it took a real hero like Gus to show him that he didn’t need the horse or a gun to have fun.

I remember putting the Rocker’s first guitar in his hands at that age, after enduring two years of violin lessons. Listening to him practice with his Corgi howling beside him.

The Music Corner of our Family Room

The Music Corner of our Family Room

This Thursday, September 11, the Parlor Mob will play in NYC at the Gramercy. The Rocker will be stage right again, playing the guitar and the keyboards. I know he remembers his first guitar and I hope he likes these old pictures from middle school. 9/11 is always a sacred day for me, a day to sit quietly and reflect. But my son’s soul was forged during that heartbreaking time; he ditched high school to watch the Towers burn across the shipping lanes from Sandy Hook with his friends. Playing in the City is a love song from our boys. We will never forget.

His First Guitar

His First Guitar

 

 

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Book Club

Posted in an expository essay, books, Country, tagged , , , on September 6, 2014| 2 Comments »

My Ivy Farms Book Club dined on delicious crab soup, salad, and yummy bread. The scene through Virginia’s (yes, our host has the same name as our state) window was Arcadian, rolling pastures dotted with hay bales. Poetry was read aloud with alacrity; local poets, dead poets and poet laureates. And while driving home I realized I’d forgotten my sweater…

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Billy Collins

Of course I read Billy Collins, not the “Forgetfulness” poem, although someone else did, but one about Birds, and another about a House. I must have left my sweater where my spleen used to be. This was Virginia’s group email:

A lovely sweater was found on the back of a kitchen chair.

Does it belong to you?

If read properly, does this sound a little like Emily Dickinson?

This is how the poetry readings affected me.

I feel so sorry for Charles Wright.

But Billy, you were the Hero of the Night.

And so I replied:

At the last minute I threw it over my shoulder

Never knowing, always needing

To cover or contain my errant arms

Wide hips and sunkissed neck from light

To warm me in the chill of an air-conditoned night

To forget on the back of your chair

Late Summer Herbs

Late Summer Herbs

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Fashion Fix

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, journal, tagged , , , , , , , on April 18, 2014| 2 Comments »

By no means am I a fashionista. I know I know, it’s the second post in two weeks about fashion, but this time it’s a new angle, two new angles to be exact. If you like to know where your food is coming from, and you love the ‘ farm to table’ movement, you’re going to love this company – JUST! http://projectjust.com

JUST is a start-up company my BFF’s daughter, Natalie Grillon, co-founded to create transparency in the fashion industry. They help connect designers to ethical suppliers in the fashion supply chain. When we consumers hear about child labor in silk factories in  developing countries we are appalled but what can we do? Boycott a store, look for another label? Very often the thread from one silk or cotton farm in Northern Uganda to a store in the US can be convoluted.

In a nutshell, JUST provides designers with a database to search for ethical suppliers that will fit with their specialty and geographic location. When their clothing reaches the racks, it will be tagged with a JUST barcode so that we can immediately trace the journey of our new purchase. I absolutely love this idea; it’s fair trade all around. After spending time in the Peace Corps, Natalie received her MBA from Cornell where she studied Sustainable Global Enterprise at S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management. just-mobile-view

Congratulations Natalie, I wouldn’t be surprised to see you at a TEDx conference soon! I can’t wait to start seeing those JUST tags in Cville stores.

And next up is an online fashion company that would like to become your own personal shopper! Now I’ve never used a stylist, though some might say I would benefit from one. I remember when the kiddos were little and people would ask me where I got a certain item of clothing, I’d look down, look flummoxed for a minute because let’s face it, I was sleep-deprived most of the time, and then it would dawn on me. “OH, I picked this up on vacation in (insert our latest jaunt).” Because all kidding aside, shopping with a toddler in tow was a nightmare. Half the time I’d be trying to find the Rocker running between racks of clothing.

Well the Bride just turned me on to Stitch Fix http://www.stitchfix.com. Genius idea really especially for young women with little ones and little time. You go to their site, fill out a quick style chart about your likes “Boho Chic” and dislikes “Glamorous,” your size and the kind of lifestyle your clothes would need to represent, like mostly work or casual or evening, (I wish they had mountain-dwelling-writing- nana) and Voila! For $20 they will ship you a package with their picks and you keep what you like and return what you don’t.  Here’s one of their Pinterest pages I like http://www.pinterest.com/stitchfix/wanderlust/ which seems apropos.

Wishing everyone a joyous and warm Easter Sunday. And I thought you’d enjoy this throwback picture to my pre-adolescent self with my red headed cousin Joey in Dover, NJ. Notice the gloves and the Easter corsage! It’s pretty obvious I was fashion-challenged!

Chris n Joey 20140418 web 2

 

 

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Lilacs and a Sleeping Porch

Posted in books, journal, wedding, tagged , , , on May 3, 2011| 3 Comments »

The dwarf Korean lilacs are in bloom outside my sleeping porch. They perfume the air as we clean the gutters, slip into the hot tub, or take a break to read under the twirling ceiling fan. Although I directed the builders at the very last minute to attach a porch off the master bedroom, we don’t actually sleep there, like true Southerners might have done in pre-AC days. But we do rest there, on our zero-gravity chairs, and smell the lilacs.

Lilacs bloomed outside my bedroom window when I was a girl, my foster mother Nell would mound them in mason jars on the kitchen table. She had a beautiful smile, and the best sense of humor. At some point in my young life, I decided it was my mission to make her laugh. Her husband Jim, made me doll houses out of Popsicle sticks, and together they created a home. A home full of love and laughter. And although Nell didn’t drive, because in those days women rarely did, I felt as if anything was possible.

I planted lilacs outside our home in NJ, in Nell’s honor. Every morning, a Great Blue Heron would swoop out over them toward the river to fish for breakfast. And I brought pressed lilacs to the 9/11 widow two houses away who’s husband, Michael Patrick Tucker, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. Our little borough lost 13 people on that day. As I stood at the memorial weeks later, I remember thinking, “How can I put this into words?” There were no words.

Which is why I enjoyed reading this article at NPR’s website, about the ambivalence of hearing about the death of the BinLaden. “…because terrorism partakes of both crime and war, it is perfectly natural, and perhaps legitimate, to have both of these attitudes towards Osama bin Laden: to think that we had to disable him, and to think that he deserved to die.”

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/03/135927693/is-it-wrong-to-celebrate-bin-ladens-death?sc=fb&cc=fp

If a Harvard professor of Philosophy thinks it’s perfectly legitimate to rejoice in someone’s death while still thinking he was a sorry old man, probably sick in so many different ways; and that each person’s death diminishes me, to semi-quote John Donne, leaves me feeling hopeful. And thinking I may have to take a philosophy book out on my porch, and shut off the news of the day.

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