Centralia Chronicles
Monday 6 January 2020
Pro-European on stolen land
Saturday 30 December 2017
#FBPE
"Identity politics" has become a buzzword for regressives. It probably won't shock you that I don't care about that. However, the impermanence of everything is a fact and energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed so all that is left is identity.
I am European to my roots. It is the hill I will metaphorically die on, surrounded by Brexit and America First - and acknowledging that I am, and always will be, a voluntary romantic migrant on stolen land (predominantly the Anishinaabe and Lakota peoples).
I usually say I'm proudly European. I don't know if that's the right word. There's no point being proud of a geographical accident but identities are also a bundle of experiences.
Saturday 2 September 2017
So about insurance...
I just want to rant about the clusterfuck that is the US health insurance "system". Said system bars newly arrived immigrants who are contributing fully through payroll or self employment taxes from claiming the same insurance state coverage that a citizen working fewer hours (and thus paying less into the system) can get. Then after the immigrant has worked long enough to qualify for employer backed insurance, that plan makes it so expensive to afford the regular meds that allow them to function in society that it is actually a better financial decision to work FEWER hours so the employer's insurer seems the immigrant not to qualify and we circle back to the State offering its good, but subpar, insurance to the immigrant. If they arrived because they married a citizen, their Green Card will expire at about the same as this insurers Russian roulette. If you're wondering, the path to citizenship can only begin a year after this date, eventually allowing the immigrant entrance into the hallowed masses of hyphenated Americans and in states like Minnesota, access to something approaching comprehensive health insurance regardless of what Congress and the current President do to the existing federal health insurance structure.
Unless I'm missing something, tax is money given to government to govern. In the US that includes the right to elect everyone all the way down to school board members. Except that immigrants are taxes AS IF they had access to those levers, DESPITE them not being allowed to vote.
Taxation without representation is tyrrany.
Penalising people who want to work MORE and contribute MORE to the economy, WITHOUT those levers doesn't make any sense.
Especially, but not only, if health problems have not developed as a result of the person's actions, but rather of deep rooted societal inequities. So go ahead, take health care from tax paying women, people of color, immigrants and disabled people (and the intersections of those and other disadvantaged groups) but don't expect your god-given Capitalist paradise to benefit from such a move and don't expect people being shat upon to stand outside in the shit shower without a response.
Peace and love,
Tim
Friday 21 July 2017
Symbols and identity
Monday 10 April 2017
Meltdowns vs coping
I had a busy day. Originally: it included a liver ultrasound, talk therapy and training for work, in that order.
Work training was removed from the schedule with a target date in mind, but nothing definite.
The liver ultrasound became an abdominal ultrasound, including being positioned on both my spastic and dominant sides. Don't get me wrong, the technician did a very good job and had good "bedside manner" but the last liver test results have still not made it into my electronic "chart" for me to read. I chose to believe they will show I have nothing to worry about.
Nonetheless, I was in pain from spasticity and fasting. I ate breakfast too fast and Sonja drove me to my therapy session, which I had mistakenly scheduled an hour later.
Fresh from an ultrasound, therefore, I sat in the waiting room. Gallows humor aside, the literal last thing I needed was a family including multiple children. You can guess what happened next.
Thus my therapist found her usually attentive patient in the waiting room with his hood up and head down basically doing everything but saying "la la la" to himself.
In short, I had a semi-public meltdown. My therapist is very good and she did her job but I just wanted to vent and to give general credit to everyone at Sanford Health.
Side bar: Sonja and I went to Old Navy for some shopping and one of the sales assistants paused to say "I love the beads on your glasses."
That made my day. FYI, those beads are a glasses retainer from South Africa ( Gauteng, I think) and I am deliberately wearing it/them to provide color in my field of vision when my mood is uneven and my wardrobe fairly plain.
Stay calm,
Tim
Friday 7 April 2017
Ataxia
I had a job interview not long back for a position with the archaically named Communication Service for the Deaf, their local branch here is also thankfully known as Minnesota Relay. Their main business is the provision of relay services to allow Deaf people or people with speech disabilities to access services. That business comes through a contract with Sprint, who in turn have deals with 32 separate states of the USA.
I believe those stats are right. Anyway, the main purpose of this post is to shine a light on life with a neurological condition rooted in brain damage, and being required to do a timed typing test in order to qualify for the job.
For the record, it took me three attempts and some adjustment of the keyboard position, seating position and testing method. All of these are things which cannot, fairly obviously, be conducted after the room has been adjusted by an occupational health specialist.
I'll ask about that when training begins because I DID get the job.
However, when I first sat down - and despite breathing exercises, my hands were shaking horrendously and so my natural inclination towards quality rather than speed kicks in.
Ataxia is a feature of some types of Cerebral Palsy wherein movements become jerky and unpredictable. What the previous post I made would refer to as the "Anxiety schema", also triggers increased spasticity (non typing arm, but still not fun in a job interview)
In the spoken element of the interview, neither spasticity nor ataxia were present so apparently it was the perfect #spoonie storm.
I type with three fingers on one hand, an entirely self-taught strategy which probably also amplified this problem. In decades of typing, including timed exams, I've never had that combination before.
After training, I'll let you know if I learned anything I can use in this job going forward.
Peace and love,
Tim
Tuesday 4 April 2017
Schemas/lifetraps and Larkin/infertility
Their book is here
It also reminded me of this:
This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
The copyright of all Larkin's works is held by MacMillan, who by a massive co-incidence also employed a close relative of mine. Anyway, the link to their site is here, since the Philip Larkin Society permissions page leads to a dead link at Faber & Faber.
It was originally published in an April 1971 edition of New Humanist, the journal of the Rationalist Association, the latest edition of which is led by a piece entitled: Community and tradition don’t have to be set against migration, change and difference. Read that here
Peace and love,
Tim