Palo Alto Suicide Cluster

Sorrow is the news today with the loss of yet another student in what experts are calling a teenage suicide cluster. My thoughts and prayers are with the people of Palo Alto who've lost four kids in six months, individually, yet each laid out on the railroad tracks. On the surface, Teenage Wasteland, my case study of an "upper poor" town in Northeastern NJ, in 1987 seems light years away from Henry Gunn High School in Palo Alto, 2009. Twenty-two years later, the world is such a very different place.

But young people still struggle to fit in--at home, at school, in theor own skin, and in the world. They labor against shame, fear, body hatred, depression, addiction, abuse, bulllying and existential dread. They triumph through peer solidarity, subculture, loving families, dedicated teachers, hope and faith.

We can never know for certain "why they did it" then, or now, and it would be reductive to explain away suicide by any one factor. But I can't help wonder if the suicides were motivated by a similar sense of hoplessness, an apocalyptic vibe that crosses lines of race, class and gender, and appears in every region. It can't be articulated, seems mystical, but is grounded in material reality.

The anomic drift, alienation and the fear of economic and social insecurity that haunted working class kids a generation ago has bubbled up. Suicide is a symptom of devastating economic decline, again, now, in 2009, in California, in Palo Alto, on a commuter line out of Silicon Valley.

Conversion Experience

Living sober after a lengthy career in alcoholism was a surprisingly smooth transition; I was dying and recovery offered hope, practical solutions and the possibility of a new life. Likewise on September 28, 2002 my baptism felt as natural, as nourishing & as close to my soul as the Long Island surf and sand I've walked in all my life. But not all conversion experiences are seamless and organic. Today I am expecting a FedEx shipment from Shanghai that promises to be life altering: I've renounced PC and embraced Mac.

I've been computing since 1981, when brutal mainframes offered sado-masochistic kicks to downtrodden graduate students and quantitative sociologists alike. In fact, bad computing experiences may have triggered more drinking binges than any other of life's trials & tribs. My first computer was a Kaypro, I resisted switching to DOS, and have hated Windows forever---Vista was the last straw. Enough of freezing up, crashing, and chronically viral and buggy systems--who has time to write books when half the day is spent rebooting, patching and reconfiguring? Thanks to a methodical left-brain Saturn in Virgo, I can actually fix most of this crap. Hey, I'm a survivor. Back when Mr. McAfee & Peter Norton were the geek studs of the scene, I was on the guest list. But I'm over that now.

Computing is a collective experience. You really need to be compatible with your tribe. Once upon a time at Big Science University I hoped to crunch huge data sets for Durkheim and sociology. I needed a math coprocessor, and Macs were for dreamers. All my pals had PC's. I wrote about our bourbon-fueled binary bashes in what was once the Village Voice, in a column called "She's Gotta Hack it," long before most of us were born. Like my drinking, which started out as fun, life with PC finally deteriorated to the point of hopelessness. Daily episodes of freezing up , crashing, hours waiting for virus, spyware and malware preventions to kick in. I knew life with parasitic Vista would be more misery. So I posted a query on Facebook, asking my 600 so-called pals: "Go Mac or PC?"

To my astonishment, only one friend urged PC---and he's an engineer. Everyone else, including my surf buddies, my priest, nieces & nephews, ex-boyfriends, cousins and acclaimed sociologists urged me to go for it: "Mac!" "Mac!" So I took the suggestion, and surrendered. Now I'll be heading out to the genius bar, I already got a sleeve.

Sobriety and a (progressive) faith-based life have taught me that we all deserve joy, unconditional love, comfort and care. Sometime today or tomorrow, a MacBook Pro will arrive and I will be released.

Age of Aquarius Kicks In?

Oh some say it won't happen for years but the Obama election signified a shift in the zeitgeist, a leap towards a very different world order, a new energy, a new social order. The collective consciousness has been irreversibly altered, and sociology never mattered more----even as there are no jobs for professors, and no funds for student enrollment. But the school of the street is rich and properous with truth and agency. Love Thy Neighbor, this time for real.

Global capitalism, the ecology and the ideology of individual greed is washing out to sea giving way to a new era of social responsibility and mutual respect. Each day the fear and confusion is tempered with new hope and possibility. The youth are the harbingers of what is to come, and I have never been more proud to be an elder in this land, to see what happens next.

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.
O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

Live From Slugland

Johnny Thunders' Higher Power

"So Alone" Live at the Lyceum, March, 1984

America Alcoholica

Remember, O Lord, what has happened to us;
look, and see our disgrace.
Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens,
our homes to foreigners.
We have become orphans and fatherless,
our mothers like widows.
We must buy the water we drink;
our wood can be had only at a price.
Those who pursue us are at our heels;
we are weary and find no rest.
Lamentations 5:1-5

In the transition from capitalism to socialism there’s an interim period of history known as alcoholism. Typically described as self-centered, self-seeking, and arrogant yet filled with shame, the active alcoholic is a fear-based and narcissistic creature—sort of like America.

As advanced capitalism slams through an inevitable end-times collapse, we’re hung-over, reeling towards a terminal state of anomie; stranded somewhere between another drink and the promise of living sober. As any addict can testify, the morning after always feels apocalyptic; the daylight bores into us, drilling down to the core of our soul-sickness. Cold terror sets in, we're nauseous with despair. Depleted, ashamed, hopelessly alone, we cry out for salvation, Lord I just can’t face another day. We pray for a miracle—a bailout, a regime change, a new messiah. We bargain with God, with fate, with history, making a thousand more promises we'll never keep; liberty, freedom, equality, dignity, democracy.

Alcoholism is an individual malaise; sober living is a we proposition—a social project that requires binding fellowship. We’ve fallen so short, nullified sacred social contracts and sold out future generations. Wallowing in personal loss, debt and self-pity, now we play the game of blame and shame. Mostly, we betrayed ourselves. We followed a false god and here we are, spiritually and materially bankrupt.

We admitted we were powerless…and that our lives had become unmanageable. Yes, the last eight years have been brutal. But a hard bottom can be a blessing to a sick and suffering alcoholic. From the personal to the social, from the individual to the collective, profound desperation often precedes radical transformation. Yet even as we are dragged kicking and screaming into a better world, we resist. There is no great man of history who can save us now. We need a change of heart.

For the late stage alcoholic, the alternative to recovery is a slow, stinking, death. Bush is not Satan, McCain is not Bush, and Obama is not Christ. Denial is not a river in Egypt or a new club in Dubai. Analog or digital, PC verses Mac, either way, the party’s over. It’s time for us to rise up, suit up, show up, and grow up. Come November 4, America goes to rehab.

*reprinted from: First of the Month
http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2008/10/choosy_beggers_1.html