Vacation Package: The Chronicle Finally Keeps Its Promise!

The San Francisco Chronicles offers to keep the newspapers put on while we're away so that when we come back, we'll have a vacation package.  But they had never fulfilled this promise.

In the past, I called about it, was told the scripted "I'm sorry for this inconvenience" and promised that those concerned would be told and it would be delivered.  But it never was.

When I returned from my most recent trip I was more persistent.  I called every day, and I even got a special number, a perhaps-supervisor, Jerry Quiles:  1 800 499-5700.  I called and got a message machine.  I left a messages.  No vacation package the next day.  I called again.  I left another message.

This morning the vacation package was on my doorstep, right along with today's paper--the way it was supposed to be last Monday!

Behold:

In Chicago 2017: A Letter from 1972, New York City

Visiting my sister Dana in Chicago, I got permission to go through a box of photos and other items in a box brought up from the basement.

I found a letter I  sent her and her then-husband back in 1972, just after I went to a boyfriend's opening in Grease and right before I left him on stage to go to Spain.

So I don't have to type it up later in San Francisco, I'll type it up here as a blog post--or two or three or four:

February 15, 1972

Dear Dana and Herman,

I haven't written you sooner because of all the distracting happenings on 7th and 55th Street and at the Eden Theatre and on Greyhound buses and railway cars and metro trains and in meeting with your father in Harrisburg and at concerts seated among the Harrisburg 8 defendants for whom Joan Baez sings and in visits with your former rival for the Bill Gouldelock highest possible moral standards Aard, who went on to lower his prize-winning morals and grow his hair and develop a social consciousness instead and in seeing once again the fascist pig who dismisses morality and legality with a wholesome, practical "So what?" and explains how you can tell that Vietnamese aren't human and that all the whores are whorish and that your breasts are beautiful but your views are typically those of a humanities major who doesn't understand the necessity of self-defense (oh yeah?) and a metro liner that goes from D.C. to NYC in three hours to opening night and The New York Times, Daily Mirror, Daily News, New York Post, et cetera, carrying mixed reviews that say, on the one hand, the performers are appealing and, on the other, the performers are unattractive 30-year-old morons portraying unattractive 18-year-old morons in what's supposed to be a spoof of the 50's, and dinner at Sardi's, watching reviews on televisions while sipping champagne and booing or clapping, depending upon what the critic has to say about the chance of the play, and meeting Tom Jones--not the Fielding one, but the one who wrote the songs for I Do, I Do, The Fantastics, and 110 in the Shade, and talking with him for 30 minutes and being asked about the Peace Corps and trying to remember which of his songs you taught the Tongan kids, and being hugged by and hugging actors and actresses whose autographs you don't yet have and wondering just when you'll get your hair (that falls so neatly o'er each breast) cut and if you could get it done for free in exchange for donating your "old look" to the advancement of modern medical cosmetological (SIC) science, and trying to figure out just how to get out of the country as cheaply as possible and with no qualms about the no one to meet you on the other side of the vast Atlantic, and all the time being given back rubs and white roses and good meals in pretty restaurants by the wonderful guy you live with at the Wellington, where he wants you to stay at his expense because it's  "classy" and the room he had at the Dexter Hotel had a noisey (SIC) madman who laughed all night next door and wasn't in the Theatre District anyways, and thinking about all past sins & wickedness and knowing you're not the person on your check list of things-to-be--and yet there's something about you that moves you still and you wish you could share it with your family whom you abuse instead because you feel abused and all because of your unrealistic self-concept that has you as celebrity to be adored and toasted and served tea to, and so you go to St. Patrick's Cathedral and consider becoming a religious fantatick (SIC) instead, and when you begin writing a letter to your loved ones, saying all your foolish heart dictates, you're down-cast by the realization that  it won't be read because it's too long and rambling and there's clothes to be tried on and housework to be done.

That's why I haven't written sooner.

But I do thank you for clothing and feeding me and painting and counseling me and trying to show me the way.  Someday when I cast aside my childish ways and take on the maturity and responsibilities of a fine adult and citizen, I'll do the same for some lost soul and your maganimity will have lived on, gained a kind of immortality through me.

Due to my severe personality defects and emotional problems (to say nothing of my sexual hang-ups and inhibitions), I wasn't always able to relax and enjoy all that went on--or would have gone on--around me in the room.  Perhaps my irritability and the sometimes sharpness of my tongue left you with the impression that the three of us will never be able to live together on a permanent basis.  Well, if time and abortive attempts reveal that this is so, I still want you to know that I do love you, even if I can express it only a a safe distance.

Warm thots (SIC) from my foolish heart,
Tina in a nutshell.

Herman's Final Thoughts on Murder-Suicide--Back to Vietnam

My brother-in-law Herman Langner served  as a medical officer (head of the ship's sanctuary)  in the military with the Marines in Vietnam, where he witnessed up close cases of post-traumatic stress Disorder (PTSD).

"What I heard happening on the 9-1-1 tapes in my hometown in St. Charles, Illinois, a few blocks from where I live and practice psychiatry was far more traumatic than anything  witnessed in Vietnam.

"Trauma in combat is impersonal.  Soldiers in combat are trained to kill one another.  That's their job.  Sometimes they even feel compassion for the enemy.  What happened here in St. Charles was not impersonal.  Killing his wife was too easy for her.  He wanted to inflict pain on her, not just pain in her body but more importantly pain in her soul.  My thoughts and profound sympathy have been with her."

But I know his thoughts and profound sympathy have also been with those whose suicides and murder-suicides  are brought about by what he describes in Attachment and Suicides.

http://tinamartinsanfranciscovistas.blogspot.com/2017/05/hermans-final-thoughts-on-murder.html

More on How Recent Murder-Suicide Relates to "Attachments..."

Here's a link for the case we discussed last night.

http://ktla.com/2017/03/14/man-killed-daughters-before-telling-wife-to-live-and-suffer/

Here I'm copying directly from that report:

In a nearly eight-minute recording, Randall Coffland is heard admitting to the murder of his two daughters and shooting his 46-year-old wife.

“I just shot and killed my two kids and I shot my wife and I’m going to shoot myself now,” the father is heard telling the dispatcher. “My two girls are dead and I’m killing myself.”

He then tells his wife, “I want you to live and suffer like I did.”

Herman thinks Randall Coffland's suffering was exasperated by the absence of the "absolute essential building blocks of the human psyche, which are unconditional availability, acceptance, understanding, and appreciation-- just as basic psychologically as nutrients are to the physical well-being of the body."

Herman writes that as infants we internalize the maternal functions, and if we don't received them, we seek the fulfillment of these infantile attachment needs in our significant other.

"When these relationships fail, the results are catastrophic," he says.

The suicide notes presented in his book Attachment and Suicide provide insight into the startling intensity of these needs and how incredibly painful it is when they are frustrated.

"This is because our psychological and physical survival depend on their fulfillment.  Pain turns into rage, which is usually self-directed but in some cases is directed toward the significant other who they kill before killing themselves."

Herman thinks that the lack of insight into their own needs and motivations is dangerous and thinks more awareness would lead to fewer suicides and fewer suicide-murders.

Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, and Herman says "These cases teach us that the unexamined life can be deadly."

In the case of Randall Coffland, the attachment figure, his wife who was leaving him, was the catalyst for his committing suicide.

"However, he didn't merely kill himself to punish his significant other as was the case with most of those in the population I studied.  What he did was worse.  He killed their children  and wounded his wife before killing himself so that she could live with the pain she was inflicting upon him by abandoning him. "

http://tinamartinsanfranciscovistas.blogspot.com/2017/05/more-on-how-recent-murder-suicide.html

How Herman Langner's "Attachment and Suicide" Relates to Recent Tragedy

When I read in March about a murder-suicide, I was unaware that the tragedy took place just a few blocks from the home of my sister and brother-in-law, Herman Langner, MD, who practices psychiatry there.

Last night we talked about how it related to my brother-in-law's book Attachment and Suicide.

He was interviewed on this subject a few years ago after the Northern Illinois University shooting, also murder-suicide.

https://prev.dailyherald.com/story/?id=367056

Last night we talked about how this recent tragic incident relates to his findings after doing extensive research and writing a book on the subject.  

He studied 180 consecutive cases ruled as suicide by the DuPage County Coroners office.

 He says that the most observable disturbance in this population had to do with their relationships.   

"One group of victims showed a distinctive pattern of disturbance," he said.  "In their case an attachment object was of all-consuming importance and the sole preoccupation of the last moments of their lives.  

"In some cases they specifically asked, 'Who do you love more--me or you?'  

'When the significant other answered 'me,' they shot themselves directly in front of her."  (It was usually a female.)  

"In some cases they killed the love object before killing themselves.

"What they needed from the maternal object as expressed in their suicide notes was unconditional availability, acceptance, understanding, and appreciation.  Their lives were literally contingent on the fulfillment o these needs.  Failure to meet them provoked feelings of hopelessness, despair, and rage and was directly responsible for the decision to commit suicide."  

After killing his daughter and before shooting his wife in the legs, the man down the street told his wife, “I want you to live and suffer like I did.”

http://tinamartinsanfranciscovistas.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-herman-langners-attachment-and.html

To be continued...

Yo Semite--from San Francisco

While with friends in Oakhurst, outside Yosemite National Park, I was making fun of myself for pronouncing Yosemite as "Yo Se-Mite" when I first saw the name in a Mark Twain story in 1964.  I found the old textbook, and I see that it's written that way! It's from A Tramp Abroad, CHAPTER III "Baker's Bluejay Yarn" [What Stumped the Blue Jays]  http://www.online-literature.com/twain/tramp-abroad/3/  It takes about 20-30 seconds to come in.

In the photos in the Oakhurst-Yosemite Dropbox Album  I've included this final paragraph, "But then he was a good deal disappointed about Yo Semite too," (showing how difficult to impress a Nova Scotian owl was).  

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/nnbog3f78g94jhq/AACQkgB8K-GjKDaRFVfDnG_ha

Here are  Kathy, Evelyn, and me posing behind a sign that says "Sierra Beauty Day Use Only."  (We don't do nights!)

Here's the cat watching the sunset with us!

 Javier's special walking shoes--a little too special--and toilet paper in this era of top security.

Why, among the friends laughing on the deck, is it the women, not the men?

You'll also see the beautiful fire with and without the fireplace screen decked with Peg's nightgown warming.

Note Javier's choices of food when we went shopping--Jello and some kind of breakfast snack. He had the wisdom to choose Kathy's pancakes when the moment came to eat.

The colorful dish is gallo pinto, which Javier and Walter made for us!  It was beautiful and delicious, but so were the chile and Nigerian stew dishes, not photographed because  I was too busy eating.

Fundraiser for Jon Ossoff Brings Hope!

(Jon Ossoff is the thirty-year-old guy who's running for the House of Representatives, hoping to take the seat left vacant by Tom Price, when he was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services.)

I really enjoyed the fundraiser for Jon Ossaff yesterday early evening.  

  I got to meet Markos Moulitsas,  the person who founded the Daily Kos in 2002 !  

See how blissed-out I look  to be standing beside this rock star of activism!

  I also met  the former president of the Sierra Club and a woman who is an activist with Clean Tech. 

I was so impressed that Jonathan Axelrad of DLA Piper (a law firm) let the fundraisers use his law offices!

I also enjoyed meeting Christine Guo and Mark Rossetti, who organized the fundraiser and greeted people.  I was the first one there, so I had the chance to get to talk to them and tell them about people I know from Georgia--most of whom are Trump supporters.  (A friend whose maiden of honor I was back in 1964 wrote on Facebook the morning after the presidential election, "God has given our nation a second chance.")

I like meeting Jon Ossoff's former roommates Mark Rossetti and Richard Matsui--who were in a barbershop quartet with him, and even though I know this is a trivial comment, I think Jon Ossoff is cute!

It was good to see a mixture of ages, and in this picture you can even see a mixture of races!  

Mark Rossi must be the same age as Jon Ossoff--30!--and Mark's  dad was there too!

It was fun to see Jon Ossoff on Skype, and there was a young family from the 6th district in Georgia, who just happened to be in San Francisco.  With her little girl in her arms, the mother spoke, referring to her 20 years as a "lonely Democrat ," who's starting to feel some hope!  (Shari and Arya?)

The food was vegetarian but not vegan  (because I don't like raw veggies without something to dip them in, but I enjoyed the wine!