Advocating for the underserved

This letter was submitted with an application for Energy Assistance (a federal program) on behalf of a tenant in Seattle Housing Authority. The Energy Assistance Program administrator asked that thee tenant, who claimed to have no income, make a special appointment to meet with him and explain her circumstances. For many other programs, federal and otherwise, an affidavit signed by the applicant is adequate to "prove" no income. No other applicant was asked or required to make a special appointment.

Dear Energy Assistance Program administrator,

I am submitting this application without proof of income because this SHA tenant claims to have no income. She has proved to the satisfaction of SHA to have no regular income and her rent reflects this. I understand that you require proof to your own standards and when I explained this to the applicant, she declined to follow up with you saying “If they don’t believe me then it’s not worth my time.”

Most of the tenants I work with in SHA have physical and/or mental conditions that prevent them from participating in the activities of daily living that you and I might take for granted. I do not believe that this should also prevent them from benefiting from programs designed to relieve them from the burden of poverty.

Please consider contacting this applicant to ascertain for yourself her income status.

Sincerely,

Social Worker

Red Suzuki 500

I paid $600 for that cute red Suzuki 500 and a helmet in August 1985. Don't, don't... don't you, forget about me. That $600 bought me a lot of getting around from August through April of 1986. Just 9 short months. 9 months of riding my first real girlfriend back to her group home after spending the night with me, getting me back home just in time to watch coverage of the Challenger exploding over Florida, white plumes billowing over and over again all day. 9 months of riding through the roughest weather to my job at the bar on Thursday evenings. Nearly blown over on Pine Street by a cross wind wailing down 3rd Avenue. I laid it down on black ice with a cute girl on the back and I still have two marks on my shin all these years later. That bike was just big enough to take on the freeway, but the wheels wobbling on the bridge decks made me think that longer alternate routs weren't that bad after all.

Two weeks after I bought it, in the middle of August, an early morning rain shower had slicked the road just right. In that short time it had become my habit to take my helmet off once I'd left the navy base where I was living. But looking at the morning sun glinting off the wet road, rainbows of summer oil pooling in the pock marked asphalt, this time I had second thoughts and kept going. Driving on in the humid morning, a half mile down the road I came around a bend to find 3 cars stopped on an overpass where there was no light or stop sign. A driver had stopped, perhaps confused by the on and off ramps of the freeway below. To avoid a collision I stomped my right foot onto the brake, which on a motorcycle, is the rear brake, the brake on the wheel with the least traction. The last thing I remember is falling backwards, arms outstretched, sky swinging into view. For that split second of eternity I was weightless.

I woke to find someone pulling on my arm. I was flat on my back but my arm was being pulled with such force that my shoulder shrugged off the road in rhythm to the tugging. At first I thought, "what day is it?" Maybe it was Friday, but maybe it was Sunday, Friday? Sunday? Friday? Sunday? Panic! Amnesia? What's my name? Tons of information about me, my name, my address, my whole life, rushed into the void that time had left, but I still didn't know what day it was. But that didn't matter so much. After all, that's what they make calendars for. Finally I focused on the man still pulling on my arm. I let him pull me to my feet, and looking around, I saw several cars had pulled over, drivers staring at me. My face became a furnace, glowing down my neck. Shame sered my cheeks, weighed on my eyelids, I had lost control. Helplessness is a bed of broken glass for me. Someone called out "Are you OK?" Seriously. Are you going to take the word of the person who was knocked out? "Uh, yeah, I'm fine." I gave a half hearted wave, the reluctant celebrity. I had no idea how long I'd been unconcsious on the road. And I was too ashamed to ask. No one had cell phones, no one had called for help. The man who'd pulled me up helped me put my bike back on its wheels. It wouldn't start of course, no gas in the carburator. I walked it home, couldn't get away from the scene of my ignominy quickly enough.

I slowly pushed my bike the mile back to my house, dizzy, mind racing, heart pumping the whole way. The rest of that day I was scared to death I would die in my sleep. I knew just about that much about concussion. For two weeks I woke up with the spins, no matter where I slept. About a week after, I was changing the oil in the motorcycle with the help of a friend in his back yard. He showed me where the plug unscrewed so I could do it by myself next time. I bent over to look and the grass flew up and hit me in the face. It took a bit to realize I had fallen over as soon as I my head and heart had aligned. 2 weeks after, I went to a party at a friend's and 1/2 a glass of wine did horrible, unspeakable things to me.

Before the concussion I had a nearly photographic memory. The injury shaved a point or two off my average. To this day I have regular word finding problems. I attribute this to the injury, though most people don't notice and it could be the stress of having a brain too full of the come and go of daily life and work.

Over time the cost of maintenance--oil changes, front forks, tires, new tabs, not to mention the motorcycle endorsement I never bought--all of this added up to a charge I could not afford to pay. $600 bought a lot of good times and getting around, wind in my hair, bugs in my teeth, riding friends around Volunteer Park. It also bought a ride to the end of the road I was ready to take.

5 Word Prompt Poem for Claire

Spa Love Pineapples Chocolate Hugh

When Hugh said "We need to talk,"
In his thoughtful voice
The one he uses when
He thinks I might argue with him.
I stopped cutting the pineapple,
Put the knife down carefully,
Pushing the edge away,
Thinking about the three other
Pineapples patiently waiting
On the washboard,
And the people arriving soon
That Hugh had wanted to invite
And the chocolate still not sauced.
"Honey," he juts his chin as he pulls
his words out of his gut
"I'm not sure I love you anymore."
I'm not sure if her hears my sigh
"Of course you love me, dear. You've
Just forgotten how it feels."
I kiss his cheek and ruffle his hair.
He is so proud of his hair at his age.
I put the knife in his hand,
Holding his hand over the handle.
"Now chop the fruit for your friends,
They'll be here any minute."
Already I'm thinking
about the spa tomorrow,
To relieve his guilt with my pleasure.

Moon: a review

Well, this is more of a psalm than a review. I loved Moon. I loved everything about it. I loved it's mystery. I loved the pacing of the plot. I loved the low-tech special effects. Models and sets still got it, baby! CGI not required. I loved the music. I loved watching this movie after spending loads of time alone over the past few weeks. I loved the details of dirty entropy pock marking the sterile pristine space station, the coffee stained Gerty. I especially loved when a bloodied, feverish Sam was being carried, while he was not quite in his space suit and it looked like he had 4 arms and 4 legs...

This movie is what I've been waiting for. It's beautiful. Space, the moon, the station where Sam lives, it's all so beautiful. The funny thing is, we, the audience, have seen enough of space in movies to know how utterly silent it is. How would we deal with being alone in space for 3 years? How much effort does it take to maintain your humanity when you are alone in space? Clearly we measure our humanity by our relationships, even the most basic relationship of perceiving and being perceived gives us a sense of self. What interaction we can program into a computer is by definition limited. Watching Sam lose his humanity and regain it is a beautiful process.

Everything about this movie is what I yearn for in a film. It is so lovingly, meticulously crafted that it looks effortless.

Did I mention the music? I love the music. I love how the moon rocks being mindlessly digested by the Helium 3 mining machines cause the surface dust to billow.

I want to cuddle this movie. I want to hold it close, like a couple of highschool sweet hearts at their locker between classes. And when the bully Avatar walks by, we'll snicker and cut our eyes, and whisper, all the while knowing that what we have is so much better than anything Avatar has to offer, with all it's bling and gusto.

Winter Sun

Winter sun smirks
low across a mean sky
glints hard against the water
like glass on ice
reflects a fake, dancing warmth
off hard-edged buildings
marching along the bay.

10 Minute Free Write: What Did Someone Kill?

My father killed the muskrat. The muskrat had been cornered by our dog Butchie. Butchie was barking, looking up at us, barking more, smiling at us. The raised shovel above my father's head threatened to fall on Butchie, but fell instead on the muskrat. I had no idea what a muskrat was. It came up from the creek, said my father. It was hiding behind the garbage cans, but it was only hiding. It was not trying to get into the garbage, it never had the chance. What does a muskrat do? Why did this one travel so far from home? What if it was friendly? I thought something so easily cornered and killed must have been friendly really. How afraid it must have felt, cowering in the corner behind the cans. It never stood a chance. My father picked it up by its tail and carried it to the communal burial pit in the back across the creek, the very pit Butchie would be laid to rest in years later. I looked away, averting my eyes from the gore I expected, averting my mind from the nothingness where once a muskrat had lived. I went back inside, sad and afraid, not knowing why the muskrat had to die. I went inside to find Gilligan and his friends waiting for me. The day my father killed the muskrat was the day I saw the depth of coldness in my father, the emptiness that kept him from appreciating the life of a small water-rodent that couldn't have harmed any of us, and wouldn't have stuck around to make mischief of our order. That was a bad day for the muskrat. The last thing he saw was the cold empty eyes of my father, shovel raised and ready for the death blow, killing without a thought for the young in the den, the errand unfinished, the mate left alone.

10 Minute Free Write: No One Asked

No one asked me how I felt about moving. My mother hopped up and down with glee when the call came from my father at work. We were leaving for a new country on a far continent. I was too young to know what any of it meant. I jumped up up down with my mother, caught in the net of her joy, a minnow. Swept in the emotion of the moment until I realized in one fast frown moving, going, means leaving, away from, I would be leaving all the I knew, my grandmother, my friends, my school, my back yard, my creek, my dog, leaving suddenly felt empty and as I landed from a hop I started to cry. The universe was opening up and swallowing me whole in its limitless emptiness. My mother stopped to hug me and reassure me that we would love it, that we would have a great life. This was my first experience of not knowing what to expect. That moment that hard wired me for all the next moments of newness -- now I always feel and fear the universe yawning and swallowing me, empty space pulls me apart in zero gravity, all that is large becomes tiny, all that is minuscule overwhelms. No one asked what I was thinking, no one asked what I felt. No one asked what I wanted or what might help me get through this. No one asked me if I needed a space ship for my journey, What I have striven to build for myself since that moment is a self-contained pod that can travel untouched through the vast reaches beyond what little I know, the small room that is my life into the hall of mirrors that always waits for me.