CANCER IS BACK AND THIS TIME IT HURTS RIGHT OFF THE BAT!

APRIL IS STILL POETRY MONTH AND LIBRARY MONTH. MANY WONDERFUL THINGS TO CELEBRATE.
   But in the middle of the month I received some bad news about my cancer which has returned to the lining (epithelium) of my stomach.  This time the chemo won't be as bad, they say.  But the doctor also said that I didn't have to take steroids this time. But she wasn't right about that. One of the chemo drugs is different and there should be fewer effects. But most people I spoke with didn't have pain with chemo, and I did.  As with most health issues, everyone is different, and responds differently to medicine.
   The pain began two weeks before and the first visit to Urgent Care sent me home with laxatives. Two weeks later they hadn't worked.  Meanwhile, and this is what makes me most angry, a blood test had been done when I first went and some doctor (not the UC doctor) asked for a CA-125 count.  It showed 92!!  Well, the month before, my six month check up, the count was 14!!  Yet this outcome didn't ring any bells, set off any alarms, nothing.  Had I not returned because of the severe pain, I would be walking around with the tumors on the lining of my stomach continuing to grow and spread.
 

Not like a baobab  tree that was across the Ruaha River from me in February 2015 when I visited Tanzania and Zanzibar, probably for the last time.  I am heartbroken that my health won't be good enough to fulfill that bucket list I had:  Amsterdam and the art museums, Yucatan and Oaxaca in Mexico, Ireland and Wales, Vietnam and Thailand.  Or a cruise in a very small ship around Europe. Don't forget all the places in Latin America I haven't seen -- Peru, Ecuador, Chile.

So I thought I would set my sights a bit closer to home and concentrate on that lifelong dream I have had of creating a beautiful, handmade, unique dollhouse.  Please don't laugh.  It has symbolic meaning in my life as I was gifted a beautiful handmade dollhouse for my sixth birthday.  Made by friends of my parents, it had a lift off roof, and a ranch style feeling, a fireplace, doors and windows that opened plus (I am pretty sure) lights that actually worked.  I turned six in 1953 when I was living in Croton-On-Hudson, New York.  The government was continuing its surveillance of my father and consequently my entire family. We suddenly had to move.  We purchased an old truck with a wood station wagon body that was owned by Allen Funt of Candid Camera. You have to be at least my age to know who he was.

More important than my dollhouse were the many books my father lost. He asked a friend to hold them for him in his attic in Croton but at some point the friend got scared and threw them away (possibly burned them all).  I guess my obsession with books and dollhouses goes back to those dreadful days when I was terrified but didn't know why, was told never to open the door to anyone, and lost the most precious gift of my short life.  I have never seen a dollhouse like it since and do not remember the names of the makers.  So sad.  This is the closest I've ever seen - by Marx - made of tin with a lift off roof.  Amazing!  The one I was given was wooden, with a shingled roof, and lights that worked. Much more sophisticated than this.

But now that I live in Los Angeles, close to Mexico (THIS IS MEXICO!), I think I should design a more logical house for this climate and natural setting.  So of course I thought of an hacienda - doesn't have to be a huge one, just one story perhaps, with a central courtyard, and the arches for the porches.  Found a blog with an excellent looking one and even wrote the artist.  She kindly sent me back the plans with the measurements!! So beautiful!  But it still isn't exactly what I want.  

I love that she designed it herself and figured out all kinds of beautiful touches to make it look real.  There is a center courtyard with a fountain but it is very very small.  The furnishings are exquisite and belong to a very upper crust family. Do I want my hacienda to be that bourgeois?  Not sure, yet who would own an hacienda if not a bourgeois?    I once stayed in an hacienda in Huejotitan, Jalisco, Mexico which was actually an orphanage.  It was huge, or seemed that way to my 16 year-old eyes.  Some of the staff had their own suites, bedrooms with a bath.  Larger rooms for multiple beds were plentiful to house the groups I had traveled with- about 15 of us - as well as the orphans themselves.  

The base of the above dollhouse is 39 by 25 -- that's quite large.  Access is from the back.  I imagined my doll house as a rectangle with a smaller one inside for the patio, with lift off roofs, so you look down on the rooms.  Indeed, I even hoped for a two-story affair.  And perhaps another way to open it by separating the whole into two parts that are also hinged in two.  But that's a lot to ask.  Our amazing carpenter/handyperson Gilberto Osorio (highly recommended - he can do anything and does it well, and if he can't he finds someone else who can) can probably make whatever I ask but I really need some good plants.

This is how I imagined the rich interior - full of beautiful pottery and rugs and art from Mexico.  I had started to collect furniture as well years ago so I have some.  This dollhouse will fulfill two of my particular wishes - bucket list I suppose one could say -- and those include a love of miniature animals and people.  I collected tiny ceramic animals and people for the first 14 years of my life, when I decided I was too old for them and told my mother to give them away.  A strange thing to do since adults collect these as well.  There is a tiny store at Olvera Street which houses many of the miniatures that I love.  I hope to lavish some love on them as well.  The store is owned by a couple who are struggling, as are all the stores there since the city decided to stop subsidizing them (so as to push them out in order to gentrify I suspect).

I wish I could believe in prayer and that I could pray for health.  Unfortunately this round of cancer is very painful -- to the point that I cannot really go anywhere unless I can sit with a heating pad on my stomach, and nod out when I am tired (which is most of the time).  

I'll end with something more positive - the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, a beautiful human being!  First African American to win the Pulitzer and poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, among other great honors!

A SUNSET OF THE CITY

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.

It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.
The sweet flowers indrying and dying down,
The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.

It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes
I am aware there is winter to heed.
There is no warm house
That is fitted with my need.

I am cold in this cold house this house
Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.
I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.
I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.

Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my
Desert and my dear relief
Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.

Somebody muffed it?? Somebody wanted to joke. 

TEACHER APPRECIATION WEEK -- HAVE YOU THANKED A TEACHER THIS WEEK?

What I think was similar to our apartment building in Croton-On-Hudson, NY but much smaller than this one.

   I have to admit that I have a love-hate relationship with schools.  You may find that odd since I worked in education nearly my entire work life of forty years.  My personal experience was not singularly brilliant or positive.  I was one of the poorest children in my neighborhood schools and I suffered mightily for it. The teachers just thought I was dull.  Certainly I did not impress many of them.  Certainly one's experience with school has a lot to do with class and ethnicity.  A kind teacher will see beyond those differences and celebrate them.  That, however, was not my experience.

   However, I do have some fond memories of teachers who literally saved my life, or rather, emotionally saved me from complete wreckage.  Yes, I am fond of hyperbole, but I cannot imagine having survived without these few teachers who thought I was a worthy human.

   The first teacher I clearly remember was Virginia Mills, a preschool teacher in Croton-on-the-Hudson, New York who literally picked up the ball when all the students refused to play with me.  Although my mother was the treasurer/fundraiser for the school, my father's reputation and notoriety had hit the small community of Croton in a big way.  A year later, in fact, some teenagers dressed in Catholic school uniforms came all the way from another town to throw stones at me.   Anyway, Virginia Mills loved pickles - as did I.  I was Joanie Pickle Kramer and she was Virginia Pickle Mills.  She once took me for a ride in a jump seat in an old car. I don't know if it was hers or not. She was glorious.   By the way, for a description of RED HILL where I lived briefly, and Croton-on-Hudson as well as Peekskill, please read this piece http://www.trussel.com/hf/americanheritage.htm in American Heritage.

We lived in a small cottage on the property of William Gropper on Mt. Airy Road when we first moved to Croton-on-Hudson. 

   Unfortunately I don't remember kindergarten at all. I think that was one traumatic year when we had to suddenly pack everything up that we could fit in Alan Funt's old Woody Station Wagon and drive across the country to Oregon.  I had to leave behind the beautiful handmade dollhouse I had been given for my sixth birthday.  I was heartbroken and haven't really gotten over that loss.  But the real loss was any sense of childhood I might've had.  It was gone.  Stones thrown, dollhouses lost, I was no longer a child.

   Fortunately we lived in a small town outside of Portland, Oregon in 1953.  We rented a farmhouse with pears, apples, cherries, strawberries, blackberries, and a filbert orchard.  I walked across a huge field of Pickles (for the pickle factory) to catch a school bus to school.  My classmates were berry pickers who had to work alongside their parents. We were allowed to wear whatever we had to school since children were so poor.  In first grade, I had the best teacher I would probably ever have. Her name as I remember was Mrs. Gold, and she was also from the East.  My father later explained to me that OREGON spent more for education that Westchester County in New York, so we had the best schools, the best teachers, the best for even a very poor community.  I loved Mrs. Gold so much that I made my mother go talk to her about it.  My mother probably was sympathetic with Mrs. Gold and tried to help me understand that I didn't need as much attention as the other children did.  After all, I already knew how to read (from age 5 because my mother read to me every single day, took us to the library, etc. etc.) and many of the other children didn't.  Mrs. Gold gave me a solo in the Christmas assembly - I played the xylophone all by myself.  I don't remember her too well, except that she was beautiful, and glowed as gold does.  How could I not be enraptured?

Historical downtown Gresham, Oregon.

My father worked for Jan De Graaff at his lily and tulip bulb farm in Gresham, Oregon.  He told Mr. De Graaff not to worry, that when the FBI came, he would leave and not cause any trouble. Mr. De Graaff was very kind.

   So in 1954 we got back in our woody station wagon and drove all the way to Los Angeles, California, not before visiting a fellow "spy" in Sequim, Washington.  We also stopped in San Francisco where my father would have preferred to live but my mother fell in love with the dry sunny climate of Los Angeles.  Suddenly she was free of all those allergies that had plagued her her whole life, even causing her to faint and often hit her head on the bathroom sink.  Los Angeles became my mother's haven.  But not mine.  I hated it. I loved the green and wet Oregon climate, the endless fruits, and vegetables, and nuts and flowers.  I loved the freedom of a rural setting.  Los Angeles was hell to me -- concrete hell.
   I remember little about Grant Elementary school here in Los Angeles. Perhaps because I didn't really want to remember those ten years I lived in Los Angeles.   However I did have very kind teachers in 2nd and 4th grade, and one in 6th.  In those years we were half a year with one teacher and half with another.  I think it wasn't that great an idea, but not sure.  My 2nd grade teacher, Mr. Krich [not sure] was a fabulous but overly strict teacher. Once he allowed my best friend to pee in his pants rather than allow him to go to the bathroom.  I never forgot that.  That was also the year that I began to hate teachers.  Grant had an art teacher who set us all to painting with water colors.  I tried, I really did.  But she came over to me, grabbed the brush from my hand, and proceeded to paint the painting for me.  That was the end of anything artistic I ever did again. THIS IS THE WAY A TEACHER SHOULD NEVER BE -- THIS IS THE SUCCESS ACADEMY APPROACH -- HUMILIATE AND PUNISH A CHILD. This was the end of my trust in teachers generally, or in school in particular.  I took the painting home, by the way, and my mother put it on our wallpaper peeling walls and it stayed there for ten years.  A curse I suppose to my lack of creativity.

In fourth grade I had one of two beautiful sisters - the single one I think.  Ms. Robicheaux perhaps, who owned a standard poodle.  Our landlords in Oregon had raised tiny frantic poodles and I was thrilled to find out what a poodle should be.  Once Mr. Krich and Ms. Robicheaux took me out to dinner at the Brown Derby on Vine Street.  I don't remember why they did this.  It seemed strange.  Many years later it occurred to me that they were having an affair, and used my presence to mask some of their relationship?  But that might have been too cynical.  They were lovely and young, they had both dyed their hair blond, and they were excellent teachers.  A coincidence perhaps.  Another teacher I don't remember liking but who did me a favor was a third grade teacher. She chose me to go on the ART LINKLETTER SHOW!! with my best friend Steve Adler, the one Mr. Krich had caused to pee in his pants.  I still have two of the gifts -- a record of the show and a globe that I received all those years ago (60 perhaps).  I was disappointed when I found out they asked us the questions before the show, then told us to answer exactly as we had, so that Art could pick the best questions.  I was rather spontaneous however, and told Mr. Linkletter that I wanted to marry Steve and go around the world.  He asked Steve how much money he had and Steve said $25.  So Mr. L said, "that'll get you as far as Pasadena."
   Grant elementary allowed me to skip a year.  My reading scores were 11th grade while in the 5th -- so I guess they thought I needed the challenge.  I regret to this day that I was ever skipped as I missed critical emotional and social development, which was already sorely lacking.

   Moving on to Junior High, the dreaded misery of most pre and teens, I find that I lost track of my absolute favorite teachers.  I can remember the name of one and not the other. These two teachers accepted me for who I was, perhaps recognized a troubled insecure child, and tried to give me the attention and confidence that I craved.  Mrs. Ethel Parrish was the light of my life, only I didn't realize it at the time. She taught Science and I believe was the advisor for the Girls League, of which I was Vice President (my best friend Heidi was President).  Mrs. Parrish I think had me chosen by the Home Economics department to be one of two girls to get their hair cut and styled in front of a girls' assembly.  I wasn't too fond of the cut, but it certainly was an honor.  Mrs. Parrish however did the most amazing thing I can ever recall a teacher doing for me.  She allowed me to meet her after school at the bowling alley near my house where she helped me finish the hem of a dress I had made in home economics, in time to wear to a school dance.  What was so extraordinary was that she was on the school bowling team and this meant they allowed a student to invade the teachers' private time and leisure after school. I don't think I would have wanted to do this.
   My seventh grade English and Social Studies teacher (ninth grade too) did not like me. Mrs. Ring? - a published author and a snob.  But my 8th grade teacher did.  She encouraged me to write. I did the best writing I have ever done in school for this teacher (whose name I cannot recall). I regret that I lost two pieces --  A SHORT MYSTERY STORY, and a poem about the Lemon Tree in my back yard.  Mrs. W or S was considered old in my mind, but she was gentle, and kind, and encouraging. All that I needed to take off and think that I actually had a mind! 

Le Conte Middle School library today with my colleague Janet Larson holding a pajama party.  The shelving is still the same as it was in the early early 60s.  And they don't know the song we all had to learn back then.  

   Off to Hollywood High when my nightmares began.  I was only 14 and very shy, overweight, and lacking any confidence. The smartest kids in my middle school of course were the tops of the school. I was never accepted in any of their clubs.  My "best friend" Heidi was top scholar, top artist, top social clubs (approved by the horrid Bertha Standfast who actually allowed SORORITIES on our campus).  Hollywood was all white, and I hated it.   I also was outspoken about my beliefs.  In 9th grade at Le Conte one teacher, Mr. Goldblum,  had used me to enliven discussions. But when it came down to it, he always chose the other kids ahead of me for any responsibility. I realized I had been used.      By high school I reveled in my radicalness.  I wore black. and tried to be a BEATNIK.  I refused to sit down for a DROP DRILL and had my name entombed on my cumulative sheet with a RED MARK.  And the last year the principal held an assembly to call me and my two friends Communists because we handed out leaflets protesting the DEFACT SEGREGATION OF THE LOS ANGELES CITY SCHOOLS, and encouraged fellow students to sit in a the LAUSD BOARD OF EDUCATION [where my mother was working coincidentally. She didn't believe it was the schools' fault.  She was right of course, but it was the only target we had. The HOUSING COVENANTS were harder to fight.)

Hollywood High School - the home of the Sheikhs.  How disgusting is that?  Not even pronounced properly.  

   I cannot name one teacher that I liked in high school.  That is a sad story.  I wasn't encouraged by any of them.  Perhaps the one I can name is Ruth Kopf, Biology teacher, who was tolerant and kind.  I helped her one period a day and enjoyed that.  But otherwise, all teachers were anathema to me.  They disapproved of my left wing views, they told me I wasn't smart enough to go to Jr. College as my other friends were doing, they discouraged my applying to Berkeley (where I ended up in Sophomore year).  How much more negative could it have been?  Well, now I know it could have been much worse.  I could have had NO FRIENDS, or no identity as a Beatnik and a Leftist.  I had a purpose at least.

   But I had no adult support. And my home life was chaos, as Mrs. Parrish had guessed.  I have long decided that no one will like all their students. But at the very least, teachers must not show such obvious favoritism that students feel bereft at best, suicidal at worst.  Teachers have to know that home lives are not easy.  Did I say I was one of the poorest in my High School?  I bought two outfits at Sears, that was it.  I hated my clothes, my body, my hair.  But I did at least have my leftist views that helped me see a larger picture.    And the day I graduated from Hollywood High -- no one in my family came -- at the Hollywood Bowl no less -- my sister sent me a congratulatory TELEGRAM FROM CUBA, where she was visiting with the Socialist Workers Party and met her future husband.  

   So teachers - yes I can love them.  They come in many forms.  They can be the person who teaches you how to crochet, to the neighbor who taught you the piano.  There are as many teachers as there are subjects to teach, in my opinion.   Sometimes the best teachers are just ordinary people you meet once on the street, in a store, or taking the bus.   BUT PROFESSIONAL TEACHERS MUST BE HONORED THIS WEEK OF TEACHER APPRECIATION.  STOP ALL THE NEGATIVITY AND BLAMING OF TEACHERS.   Find a teacher and bring them flowers, an apple, any sign that you appreciate their good works.  You won't be sorry and you will make the hardest working people on the planet happy!!

Mt. Airy Road and the left -- http://www.trussel.com/hf/americanheritage.htm 
Jan De Graaff Lily - http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/09/obituaries/jan-de-graaff-tamer-of-the-wild-lily-dies-at-86.html
Allen Funt episode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGkMhGqbJhY