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Does anyone else feel constantly disappointed in humanity these days? I fight my propensity to be cynical with every ounce in my being at times, but there is just such an abundance of "I'm so offended right now" in this world that it is an uphill, often losing, battle.

Something that seems to be getting worse every day to me are the mommy wars. I'm not talking about the wars about whether it is better to work or stay home (let's all just assume, incorrectly, I might add, that every mother is ever afforded that choice in the first place), it isn't about whether formula is perfectly fine or breastfeeding is right. It's not about the usual suspects, this most recent war.

Nope.

This war is about cupcakes.

Really.

I'm not kidding.

The newest variety of the mom war has Pinterest written all over it, accented with handmade bows and custom outfits.

Let me explain.

Some people are crafty. Some people were born crafty. Some people become crafty when they have kids. Some people actually enjoy making 50 cupcake toppers and coming up with awesome decorations for parties. Some people actually bend over backwards to make special cakes and adorable invitations. Some people loathe it but do it anyway because they want to do it for their kids.

An actual cake I made. Haters gonna hate.

Some people can't do it, either because they just aren't crafty or don't have the time/energy/extra money to drop on making tiny cupcake flags. Some people buy cakes from the store and packaged invitations and their kids have amazing birthday parties. Some people keep celebrations small and at home. Some people forget until the day of, then hustle to get it together at the last minute. Some people always forget goody bags. (totally raising my hand on several here)

Why does what someone else does or doesn't do for their kids have anything to do with your parenting?

It shouldn't.

It doesn't, in reality. It quite literally has nothing to do with you.

It does, though, or at least it seems that way, because every time I see a friend post something kickass she did for her kids on the book of face, someone has to come along and crap all over it.

It seems like someone always has to tell this mom who is just doing something cool for her kid that she is making the comment leaver feel inadequate as a mother.

Always.

You've seen it.

Why does my kid's birthday cake make you feel inadequate?

How does anything I do in my family have an affect on your self-worth?

It shouldn't. This isn't a contest. There is no winner for best-mom-ever, but there are definitely losers...and as long as we're comparing ourselves to each other, we are all losers.

I've written before about this, about how I truly believe that we are all different as mothers. We all kick ass at something, we all go way over the top when it comes to our kids about something. Whether your something is birthday cakes or homemade pancakes or notes in lunches or bedtime rituals or whatever it is - we all are totally awesome at something.

And we all suck at something. There is some aspect of parenting that we all hate, that we all loathe with every ounce of our beings. There is something that no matter how many times we have tried, we are terrible at.

And it is all okay.

Seriously.

We live in a world now where the response to feeling inadequate about our parenting because of what someone else shares on Facebook or Pinterest has resulted in mom shaming, hence the comments being left on all things awesome. It's even gone so far that mom fails are now a thing.

And they are. We all screw up. We should be as willing to admit the times we forget about a lost baby tooth or yelled at a kid purely out of frustration or tried that new Pinterest recipe and it was an abysmal failure as we are about the things we did right.

But that isn't how social media works. Social media, for most people, is a platform for the shiny and happy and perfect and positive. All that is great, this is true, but the shiny and happy and perfect and positive is only part of the story of our lives as parents.

And none of it has anything to do with anyone else.

I joked (sort of) yesterday about how I am starting to feel like I need to make a gigantic IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU sign and staple it to my forehead.

We, as a society, and especially as the mothers of the children of the next generation, have got to stop taking everything so goddamn personally. We have to stop believing that what anyone else does is a reflection on our triumphs or failures as people, as mothers. We have to stop making other women feel as though the things they do for their kids make us feel bad.

We have to stop.

Because it is not about us. It never was about us, it was about their child. For the love. We don't get to insist that it is about us simply because it makes us feel bad.

There is a moral imperative here. An absolute crisis of conscience going on, and it's one that we are modeling for our children. We need to support each other, celebrate the gifts of our friends, support one another when things aren't shiny and happy and perfect and positive.

We need to stop making other women feel bad when they have done something they should be proud of, something special for their families, something important for their children.

And we need to do it now.

I'll make my ridiculous birthday cakes. You do whatever your thing is. We can high five each other instead of snarking, honest.

Let's do that instead.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Princess Celestia My Little Pony Rainbow cake to make....

Before I get into the meat of this post, let me preface what I am about to say with a few disclaimers.

1. I freaking love science. Always have, always will. Shoulda been a marine biologist. True story.

2. I don't intend for this to turn into a debate, but if the shoe fits...I'm game.

Not my card, but it works.

3. I am concerned, very concerned....

This is a topic that I've been meaning to write about for a good long time now, and to be honest it is so broad with so many issues that there is no way that I'll be able to discuss most of them. I'm hoping to at least gloss over the major issues that concern me the most, and might write about some more of them in more depth in the future.

One of the precipitating factors in the conjuring of this post was the debate about creationism and evolution that happened recently between Bill Nye and Ken Ham. I watched the whole thing, which was a bit of a challenge while making dinner and helping kids with homework, but I wanted to see it myself before I could make any sort of commentary on what transpired.

Because that is how things are supposed to work....you are supposed to form opinions about issues only after being presented with all the evidence from all sides...

Anyhow, I watched it and ended up writing a piece about the debate for Lefty Pop. I wrote it there because I knew my propensity would be to over analyze the hell out of it and turn it into a long post if I touched it here. Over there, I have to work very hard to condense my words, and so that's where I did it. You can read the post here if you haven't already.

The debate was concerning enough, the idea that there is a group of people wholly unwilling to accept scientific truth, entirely reliant on the Bible as though it is now or was ever intended to be the factual basis for anything. As Nye himself said, and the reason for his agreement to do the debate in the first place was, what adults want to believe is fine...it's the children he is concerned about. I agree with him absolutely.

I agree with him because we are already struggling as a nation when it comes to science education. We are already losing our edge when it comes to our ability to compete internationally in innovation and the development of new technologies.

Our education system has become increasingly obsessed with objective measures of knowledge, and has insisted on legislating how to teach from the top down, often by people with no actual experience in the classroom. We worry so much about literacy, and yet find ourselves struggling even more there now than in the past. In the meantime, we have sacrificed math, science and all extra curriculars at the altar of literacy. The experiment is failing. It is failing our children, it is failing our families, and it is failing our society as a whole.

We have sacrificed everything else for reading and writing, but are churning out a generation of kids who can barely put together coherent sentences, let alone tell you what a covalent bond or confidence interval is.

We need a reboot. Desperately.

We need science. Now more than ever.

The danger, to me, in the Nye/Ham debate isn't how the universe started, which was the point of the debate in the first place. The danger, to me, is in the refusal to see evidence of evolution that exists right now in this space and time. The danger is in discounting the very real changes that are happening in viruses and bacteria that already are presenting threats to the lives of humans in current time. Things that we used to be able to understand and treat are mutating, evolving, surviving our only arsenal of weapons against them. To just deny that is happening isn't only a silly debate to me, it's dangerous.

Deniers seem to be all the rage these days, though. Climate change is one of the greatest debates raging in the political world currently, which begs the question of why science that almost every climatologist in the world agrees on ever became fodder for political debate in the first place. Why are we debating science? Why do we think we can?

If you haven't seen it, you should watch Bill Nye and Marsha Blackburn on Meet the Press from last weekend. It makes my head hurt to think that she is an elected official.

Easy. It's easier to deny it. It's easier to wave it off as speculative. It's easier to say that there is no possible way that human involvement is speeding up the process, because if we believe that, then we have no incentive to change how we do business...and that is the crux of this faux debate - business.

Business wants to make money. Corporations are legal fictions that exist to make money. Period. They do not exist to serve the public interest. They do not exist to serve public health. They do not exist to serve the environment. They do not exist to serve the world as a whole. They don't even exist to serve our nation. They exist to serve their shareholders. They exist to make money.

Politicians anymore exist to serve corporations, not the people.

The quickest way to make a buck isn't going to be the cleanest, the safest, the more environmentally conscious.

Why do you think we don't have fully operational electric cars yet? Why do you think the water in West Virginia was contaminated for weeks after the plant hadn't even been inspected in years? Why do you think wells are being erected at a record pace all over the country in every place a shale deposit exists?

Money.

It's not because the corporations give a damn about what happens 10 years from now or 100 years from now. It's because they want to make money, they want to make money the fastest way possible, they want to extract fossil fuels from the earth the fastest way possible, refine them the fastest way, and they need to keep us totally dependent on them.

The fluids used in fracking aren't even public information because the industry has convinced regulators that the information is proprietary. Never mind that they may be contaminating ground water and air. Never mind that they may be creating seismic activity in areas that had very little before.

The Weather Channel just released a huge collaboration on the effects of fracking in Texas. It is well worth the read, particularly if you live in an area of the nation obsessed with drilling, as I do.

The regulators of many industries are people who either work in the industry themselves or who reside so far down in the pockets of the industry that they can't see their way out. Biased regulation isn't regulation, and it certainly isn't safe.

Instead of actually studying the short and long term environmental impacts, instead of worrying about public health, instead of doing their jobs, the talking heads we the people elected are just denying these issues exist at all.

They aren't doing their jobs. Instead, they are pretending to be experts in areas they know nothing about and calling the actual experts liars.

As if the time and energy wasted on denying climate change and the dangers of industry aren't enough, we should also be very worried about the knowledge base of the average people here in the US.

A study came out last week that 1 in 4 US adults believes that the sun revolves around the Earth. 1 in 4. I read that aloud to my husband, and in his generally skeptical way, he questioned the validity of the study, mused about who the population sample was.

It was a study by the National Science Foundation.

Shit.

Are we really this uneducated? Are we really this ignorant? This can't be true. Can it?

There were more questions in the study, and our collective answers are compared to other nations here. It's not pretty, I promise.

Then again, as we learned in the wake of the creationism debate, 46% of the population believes in the Book of Genesis - that God created the universe and everything in it in 7 days. Carbon dating, evidence of the big bang, evidence of trees and ice on the Earth many more thousands of years older than the Book of Genesis tells us....all means nothing.

This should be terrifying to all of us.

Incidentally, this should not be taken as me saying that religion and science cannot coexist. I absolutely believe they can and do coexist, for the simple fact that even if you subscribe entirely to the Big Bang Theory, as I do...something had to start it all. The matter had to come from somewhere. Mayim Bialik was on Real Time with Bill Maher last week. The woman, an actual certifiable genius, said the same - that there is no conflict between her religion and her foundation in science.

They aren't mutually exclusive, as much as people may want to simplify it. They can exist in harmony.

When people labor under the delusion that they can't coexist, or that science is bullshit, people die. Children die. Children like Kent Schiable, who died of pneumonia because his parents believed prayer would save him.

Prayer didn't save him. Antibiotics might have.

This is a matter of life or death. If we keep slacking on science education, we'll all pay the price eventually.

Yesterday was my birthday. Though it was one of those days that I legitimately needed several extra hours to get everything done and was running around all day, it was a good day. A really good day.

Probably the best birthday I've ever had.

There was no celebratory dinner. It was waiting in the crockpot when we got home from all the other things we had to do.

There was no cake. Which is fine, because I really don't like cake anyway. (Gasp! I know, right?)

There was no party. Unless you count the singing of Happy Birthday as we crammed chicken cacciatore into our mouths.

There was no hurrah. My youngest didn't even realize it was my birthday until last night.

And you know what? It was still awesome.

I resisted joining Facebook for a long time, telling myself (with real reason) that I didn't want to be on a social media site, that I didn't need to connect with classmates from decades ago, that I didn't need to be wasting my time there. I pushed it away because I was afraid I would like it, if I am just being honest with myself.

I eventually gave in and joined.

Over the years I have reconnected with people I never thought I would, forged friendships with people I never would have had the chance to, and met some of the nicest people I've never actually met.

Then there is this. Most of you came by way of Facebook.

All day yesterday, I received posts and messages from these people that live in my computer. I laughed at a few, teared up at others, was touched by everyone that took time out of their day just to write to me.

It's fairly fantastic, this internet thing.

A few times, though, I saw people posting memes and links to posts whining about the 10th anniversary Facebook movies. In case you don't know what they are, earlier this week, Facebook celebrated their 10th Anniversary. To thank their users, they created an app that generates a one minute look back video of your time on Facebook. The first posts you wrote and pictures you shared, the items that people interacted with the most, the things that some algorithm decided were worthy of being included in that little snippet of life.


Most people loved their video. Some didn't, usually because it included pictures of painful reminders, posts having to do with heartbreak or loss, people who aren't here anymore.

Even if people loved their own video, eventually the snark about everyone else's videos began. It seems in this world we can't ever just let people have their moment without making it about us, can we? We seem to think that our opinions are important enough to voice them, even at the expense of others.

If you don't want to make a video, fine. No one required you to do so. If other people do, leave them be. Chances are that video means something to them that you could never possibly understand.

My video made me cry. In it, pictures of my parents who are both gone now, of my babies when they were little. Images from some of the worst days in my life where I was trying to hold it together and smile for the camera. Others that show the moments when I started to emerge from the tunnel. When life turned around, when there was genuine joy again. Pictures of the things I love, the people I love, the things I am proud of.

My video was an absolutely accurate representation of what my life has been like, perhaps because I am absolutely authentic, even online.

The trouble with social media is that it's easy to portray ourselves as something other than who we really are. It's easy to get caught up in comparing yourself to the images everyone else puts out there. If you can take it for what it is, though, be real about who you are, and stop worrying so much about what everyone else is doing, it can be a truly beautiful thing.

Philip Seymour Hoffman died yesterday. He was found with a needle still wedged into his arm, heroin believed to be the culprit.


When I heard of his passing yesterday, it hit me in the gut a little bit. Not because I know him, not because I know his family members or friends. Not, much to the dismay of what some may believe, because he was an award winning actor.

It hit me because he isn't the only face of addiction, he is just the most recent one. He's just the face that most people recognize, the one that we were familiar with, the one that we came to love through his work on the screen.

Whenever someone famous dies, there seems to be this immediate attempt by far too many people to make their life and death insignificant, as though the death of a celebrity somehow negates the death of all the other people who died on that given day. People attempt to place more value on the lives of some people, less on others, claiming that the celebration of the death of a celebrity is a misplaced outlaying of our efforts. I argue the opposite, obviously, particularly in situations like this one where there is so much opportunity for us to learn about addiction, about mental illness, about why lives end this tragic way.

The opportunity is there, without question. The issue is whether we, as a society choose to seize it, or whether we chalk this loss up to drug use and wave it off indifferently as another selfish life wasted.

It seems we do the latter.

Plenty of opportunities have been presented to us in the past, of lives abruptly ended this way. Of people who happen to be famous, but also struggle with the same demons that many of us ordinary folks do, meeting sudden death in this way.

Philip became addicted to heroin after struggling with abusing prescription pain medications, an all too familiar and increasingly common path to this addiction. This is not the addiction we want to think it is, the sordid one that happens in alleys, nor is it one reserved only for those in positions of privilege. Heroin doesn't discriminate. Its use is up 75% in the past few years, and the demographics of the users have shifted. 

It's easier to think that drug addiction happens to other people, to them, over there. Reality tells us that it happens far more often than we want to believe. It's a false sense of security.

Chances are that someone you know is addicted to drugs right now, you just may not realize it.

Or you do know, but you hide their addiction because of the social stigma. 

Or you don't hide it, but you shame them instead. 

Or you don't shame them, but you slowly phase them out of your life because you don't want to be around them anymore or because you just can't do it anymore. 

Or you keep them around, but talk about them behind their backs, discuss how sad it is that they refuse to get help, vow to be better than they are.

Or they do try to get help and sometimes they get better for a while. 

Or they relapse and die just like he did yesterday.

The trouble with drug addiction is that it really isn't about the drugs, no matter how much most people seem to believe that. Drug addiction is a means to an end. It begins usually as a way to try something new, to try and get high, to try and transport yourself somewhere else, to try and just feel better for a minute.

Most drug use is self medication for the things that people either can't or won't cope with in real life. The root of most of all that? Mental health conditions, the huge piece of this issue that we find ourselves ignoring all too often every time drugs are involved.

Nancy Reagan taught us all that drugs are bad. D.A.R.E. programs taught us that users are criminals, they are bad people. No one ever bothered to tell us that the vast majority of them were in need of help from a mental health system that largely doesn't exist.

And you know what happened?

People believed them. I can't even begin to tell you all the things I saw flying through my newsfeed yesterday in the wake of his death. Proclamations that he was selfish, that he was a waste, that he should have been happy because he was rich and famous. People who decreed from the mountaintops that if he would have just tried harder, he would have been better. That it's his fault that he died.

In reality, he struggled with depression most of his life. He got clean. He was recently in rehab.

Addicts don't want to be addicts.

Addicts don't want to die.

Addicts don't want to throw their lives away.

Addicts don't want their children to grow up without parents.

They just want to feel better. They just want to feel normal. They just want to stop feeling everything else for a little while.

Addicts are people, just like you and me.

Addicts come in all forms, dependent on many different things, drugs just being one version of dependence.

The problem is that our system is limited, laboring under the illusion that drug addiction is a criminal issue, a medical issue on the fringes that can be fixed with proper rehab. That all ignores the fact that drugs aren't the problem...what led that person to drugs in the first place is the problem. The drugs are just a means to an end.

Rehab doesn't fix addicts. It primarily treats the physical symptoms of withdrawal.

Prison doesn't fix addicts. It just puts them in a cage for a while.

Even death doesn't fix addicts. It just leaves the people who love them here, forever wondering how different things might have been.

The only way to really deal with addiction is one that is multi-faceted, one that makes us uncomfortable. It is messy and complicated and takes a lifetime of effort. It sometimes involves relapses and second chances and third chances. It involves support, sometimes sponsors. It involves therapy and counseling until whatever the root cause is has been revealed and addressed. It involves consideration of not just the physical withdrawal, but the emotional withdrawal, the social withdrawal, the psychological withdrawal. It requires a mental health system with adequate resources, which clearly doesn't exist. It requires us to do better. It requires support instead of judgement.

And sometimes, even when all those things exist, it fails. It fails because addiction can take people and swallow them whole. It can rob them of everything they value, everyone they love. It can strip them of everything they care about, rob them of reason and logic. It can convince them that they aren't worthy, that they have failed not just themselves, but everyone else. It tells them that they are broken and irreparable. Then it shoves them back down and does it again.

Our society says it failed because they didn't try hard enough, because they were selfish, because they were stupid.

How exactly is saying things like this going to help anyone?

The short answer - it isn't. It just allows us to believe that if we try hard enough, if we care about other people enough, if we are smart enough, we can avoid addiction. Our false sense of security hurts those who need help the most.

Never mind the damage done to the people they leave behind.

To those who claim Philip's death isn't tragic, I ask you to think about his children. I'm sure they would disagree with you.

Until you've been there, you can't know what it is like.

Until you've watched someone you love try and claw their way out only to be dragged back in again, you can't know what it is like.

Until you've seen someone throw everything away just to feel better for a moment, you can't know what it is like.

Until you've dealt with someone desperately in need of help who turned to self medicating instead, you can't know what it is like.

Until you've had to tease out where the line between believing in someone and enabling them is, you can't know what it is like.

Until you've had to make choices no one should ever have to make, you can't know what it is like.

Until you've done all you can to help someone who doesn't want it, you can't know what it is like.

We all have our demons. We all have our issues.

Many of us are closer to being addicts than we would ever admit out loud.

Some of us know how easy it would be to turn.

Some of us are addicts already.

Some of us already walk the line.

I planned to write about teen movies today, and I fully intend to do that soon. I just have to get my head on straight first.

There's too much else going on in there right now for me to think about movies.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake.

TWENTY YEARS.

It happened early in the morning. I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever been so scared in my life as I was that day. It sounded like a freight train ran into the side of the house. It felt like the world had picked everything up and shook it.

I grew up in Southern California, lived about five miles from the epicenter. There is a huge crack that ran down the canyon, through the neighborhood, and directly under our house.

I was 16. A senior in high school. Fortunately it didn't hit during the day, or I might not be here, along with a bunch of my classmates. The concrete overhangs collapsed at school. We were out of our school for two months, sharing a schedule with our cross-town rivals.

Part of living in Southern California is living with the reality that an earthquake can strike at any time. We did drills for them, were well trained in what we were supposed to do to stay safe and shielded in the event one hit.

Then the earthquake happened and panic set in. All those years of drills and training went out the door and instinct took over. Just get out of the house. Get out. It was the only thing I could think of. GET OUT NOW.

Oh shit. Oh shit! OH SHIT. OH SHIT!!!!

I couldn't move for a while. I was so scared I couldn't even scream. When I could stand, I was knocked over. The door was jammed shut and I was being pelted with whatever had been on the shelves in my room that had been turned into projectiles.

When it stopped, I met my parents and brother in the hall. Everyone was freaking out. We got down the stairs in the dark, tripped over whatever had fallen, and got to the front door. All the car alarms were going off, but the power was gone.

It was dark. Warm. Just the slightest hint of a breeze.

My Dad was sitting on the driveway, rocking back and forth. My Mom was talking and talking and talking and worrying and worrying and worrying.

We checked on the neighbors to make sure everyone got out, that no one was injured. Everyone gathered on front lawns and wondered what the hell we were going to do. The aftershocks came one after another.

At first light, I went back into the house, against the wishes of my parents. I had to get my brother's medications out. The dust clouds were forming all over the hills, there was smoke in the air from fires, and he needed to breathe.

The debris in the kitchen was thigh high, but I found it all. You don't feel the cuts and scrapes when adrenaline is pumping through your body, you just do it.

We were without power for four days I think, gas for longer. We had no water for over a week, used the pool water in buckets to flush the toilets. We had to boil it for weeks.

The whole house shook with every aftershock. We slept in the car for almost a week. I use the word slept as though I ever actually slept. It was years before I slept soundly again.

The afternoon of the day it happened, I saw one police car drive down the road next to ours. That was it. No one was coming. We had to learn to figure out how to make this work on our own.

It's one hell of a way to learn survival skills, but the things I learned that week have been used many more times since.

Keep bottled water and canned food on hand at all times. Keep flashlights, batteries and a battery powered radio as well. Sleep with shoes next to you. Know where the gas, electricity and water shutoffs are for your home. Have an evacuation plan for your home and a designated meeting place.



That, and try to keep your shit together when it happens.

Good luck with that.

About two years ago, I was cleaning out the toys in the basement with the hopes of donating some that weren't played with anymore.

Pinkie Pie Freckles

Twilight Sparkle Mini-me

Last spring, my husband signed up to volunteer at Comic Con. You should have seen the look on the girls' faces when he told them both that there would be a MLP panel at the Con.

Watching Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve on television a few days ago, I wondered silently in my head why anyone would take anything that Jenny McCarthy says seriously.

Then I remembered that countless people have hinged major parenting decisions on her words.

Then I remembered that she penned not one, but three books about autism. In those books, she advocated vigorously for the connection, dismissed by several scientific studies, between vaccines and autism. She didn't just imply that her child developed the condition immediately after being vaccinated, she basically stood on a soapbox for years and screamed it, then told people that it can be cured.

When her son was diagnosed in 2005, she made the prevention and treatment of autism her main focus in life. She poured all her energy into it, much like most parents facing the condition.

What she had that most other parents don't was pre-existing fame. She used it, oh did she use it. She used it to wax poetic about possible causes and latched quickly onto the idea that vaccines had caused his condition, then she took that and ran with it. She was on television programs, she was interviewed for magazines, she wrote books, she quickly became the poster child of the anti-vaccine movement among the parents of our generation. She started a website for parents, soliciting donations even.

In 2010, when her son magically recovered from the condition(1), it was fairly quickly hypothesized in a Time article she was interviewed for that he actually had a condition known as Landau-Kleffner syndrome which causes speech impairment and can be associated with long term neurological damage. She knew then that he may never have been autistic at all, but held fast to the idea that he was and that she had cured him. She started to backpedal on her vigorous crusade against vaccines, and started to say that they just needed better research instead of parents refusing them entirely. She still stuck to his diagnosis of autism and his alleged recovery from it, though. 

By 2010, though, her books were out there in the world, being carried into the offices of pediatricians by well-meaning parents terrified of needles and vials as ammunition in their argument against vaccines.

She is still standing behind them now. She responded to the most recent controversy, which isn't even a new controversy since it is pertaining to the 2010 interview, with this statement:

Evan was diagnosed with autism by the Autism Evaluation Clinic at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital and was confirmed by the State of California (through their Regional Center). The implication that I have changed my position, that my child was not initially diagnosed with autism (and instead may suffer from Landau-Kleffner Syndrome), is both irresponsible and inaccurate. These stories cite a “new” Time Magazine interview with me, which was actually published in 2010, that never contained any such statements by me. Continued misrepresentations, such as these, only serve to open wounds of the many families who are courageously dealing with this disorder. Please know that I am taking every legal measure necessary to set this straight.

Maybe he does have autism. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe no one should really be listening to whatever she has to say about it in the first place. Last time I checked, she was an actress, not a medical professional.

Made by my dear friend at Manderstanding. It's a joke. Sort of.

The only study that has ever shown a link between vaccines and autism was debunked as fraudulent, and every other study looking for a connection has found none.

Does this mean that we can just wash our hands of the cause of autism and decree from the mountaintops the safety of vaccines? No, it doesn't. I say this not just as a blogger, but as a mother who elected to delay and space vaccines for one of my children because he demonstrates hyper sensitive autoimmune re-activity. I say this as someone who studied for years in the field of public health and can read and understand the papers released when studies are completed with a cynical eye. I say this as someone who worked on the legal staff of a hospital.

I know, because of my background, that medical studies are not ever as clear cut as the media tends to make them. I always, always, always do further research into the funding of the study, where it was performed and look for the players in the background that may be skewing the results, even if unintentionally. I say that I absolutely think that there needs to be more study in the areas both of autism research and vaccine safety. I say that I don't believe we understand enough about either. I've written about the cases where the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program paid out settlements to families alleging a connection. 

I say all these things because I am a well educated parent who happens to be well versed with medical literature. I do my own research. I discuss all vaccination decisions with both my pediatrician and my son's endocrinologist. I don't rely on what an actress said in a book.

No one should.

Doesn't mean that no one did.

Current research tells us that vaccines do not cause autism. 

Current research tells us that vaccines prevent diseases that can cause illness, injury and death.

She knew that, and she wrote all those books anyway.

I haven't read them, I will be the first to admit it. I have to assume that she inserted disclaimers in them about how parents are supposed to talk to their pediatricians and that she isn't a medical professional. I have to assume her lawyers would have forced her put disclaimers in them.

I also have to assume that a lot of people took what she wrote to heart, as she shared this painful journey of a mother desperately seeking answers for her child. I saw the interviews where she cried on television, she railed against the medical establishment. I can only imagine how her words would jump off the page and burn themselves into the minds and hearts of parents in the same place she said she was.

The only reason she was on those television shows, in the pages of those magazines, the only reason her books sold as much as they did? The books where she professed to heal autism?

Her fame.

She used it, and her son's condition, to generate more fame. Her soapbox was bigger, more visible, with a better sound system. It even helped land her a spot on The View.

I have to hope that she did it because she believed it. I have to hope that she wasn't just taking advantage of her son's issues for publicity and screen time. I have to hope that she really felt like she was doing the right thing. I have to hope that she was convinced she was right. I have to hope she was just a scared parent looking for answers.

I have to. Because if she wasn't any of those things, it doesn't make all of this a terrible mistake, it makes it sick and wrong.

There is no way to know how many people believed her. No way to know how many people carried her book into their pediatricians' offices and stood their ground, refused shots for preventable diseases. No way to know how many of those kids contracted diseases they could have been protected against. No way to know how many others were infected by those kids. No way to know how many of them died. No way to know how damaged the effect of herd immunity is because fewer and fewer kids are fully immunized.

This page tries to keep a tally, though it's impossible to say how much of this is because of her influence, and how much is attributed to the anti-vaccine movement in general. This book talks specifically about the damage that people like her have done and the very real consequences of the anti-vaccine movement.

The damage she has done puts an exclamation point on the danger of people who use their fame to manipulate others. She isn't just influencing small trivial things, here. She is influencing life and death decisions and taking no responsibility for it. She will, however, enjoy more time in the spotlight, thank you very much, even if it means threatening a lawsuit.

This is her reputation at stake, after all. That's more important than misleading millions of people.

(sarcasm)

(just in case I needed to make that clear)

(1) I would have linked to the Time article containing the actual interview, but it now requires a subscription.

1. Stop falling for manufactured debates and controversies.

Stop allowing one person's opinion to turn the internet into a three week long argument complete with ranting statuses, soapbox proclamations, open letters, comment trolls and snarky replies. For the love of all that is right and just in the world, stop reading comment sections. Stop taking everything so personally. Stop believing that you can change anyone else's opinion. Stop thinking that anyone else's beliefs have anything to do with you. Good, bad, or ugly....everyone needs to own their views. Also, understand that a lot of the talking heads on television get paid just to start fights.

2. Stop believing everyone cares about the manufactured stuff. Realize that all those manufactured debates and controversies are the luxury of the healthy, employed, entitled first world.

People who are dealing with a chronic or terminal illness, people dealing with oppression and judgment, people who can't find work, people who aren't sure where their next meal is coming from...I can promise you that most of them don't much care about whether Miley has a nip slip in her newest video or what some guy on a scripted reality show said. On top of that all, remember that the vast majority of the people in the world would love to deal with your first world problems. Perspective. It's everything.

3. Stop ignoring the real issues.

While everyone is so caught up in arguing about silly things, we as a society have become masters at ignoring the real issues in front of us. Cities have criminalized homelessness. Hospitals are closing emergency rooms in inner cities. Kids are starving. And that's just here. Around the world, there are all the fights we throw ourselves into for questionable reasons and the ones we turn a blind eye to just because we can. The media keeps us in the dark. We need to demand that someone turn on the damn lights. Then we need to open our eyes and see what is really happening. Makes you uncomfortable? Too bad. Reality has that effect on people.

4. Stop talking. Start listening.

In everything. In personal exchanges, with family members, at work, online. We get so caught up sometimes in our experience with the world that we lose the ability to see things from the perspective of the other person. Even if we can't understand where someone else is coming from, try. Accept that their experiences will never be the same as yours, their perspective will never be the same, and they will never see things with the same eyes you do. There's truth to that old adage about not judging someone until you walk in their shoes. Be still. Observe. Listen.

5. Stop plugging in.

Stop worrying so much about what the people online think, what they are doing, where they ate dinner, what their vacation pictures look like. Does any of that really matter in your life? Truth? No. Social media is a blessing and a curse. We all (myself included) need to value it for the good and ignore the rest. We need to remember that many people only put the things they want other people to see out there, that most people won't tell the whole story, that we're getting the saccharin version of everyone else's lives. There's always, always, always more to the story. At this point in my life, I have to wonder if all the gloriously happy people who act like everything is 24/7 awesome are delusional or just heavily medicated. Seriously. Look up from the screen, look at the people who are there. Check on them.


6. Stop making judgments based on hypotheticals. 

If you make a habit of preaching to the world about things, about judging other people, about telling other people how to live their lives, stop. Take a long hard look in the mirror. Listen to the words that are coming out of your mouth. Realize that you really and truly have no clue what anyone else is facing in their lives, that any assumptions you are making about their choices are based on your limited information and until you've actually been there, you aren't there...and whatever you think you would do is purely hypothetical.

7. Stop worrying about the things that don't matter, start worrying about the things that do.

Ready for this one? If you're expending a ton of energy on something that seems like a waste of time, it probably is. Obsessing about something that isn't going to matter in ten years? Stop. Telling yourself that you'll work harder on that messy relationship tomorrow because it's too hard today? Stop. Telling yourself that you'll take the kids to the park tomorrow because you're tired today? Stop. Telling yourself that you'll make that phone call tomorrow because you are too busy with the things that don't really matter? Stop. Make the phone call instead. Life is short. Way shorter than you think it is. Do the stuff that matters, even if it's hard. Even if it sucks. The rest of it won't make a difference down the road.

8. Stop beating yourself up.

Carrying a few pounds more than you'd like, so you're refusing to take the picture? Stop that. Twenty years from now, I can promise you that you'll want that picture. Even if you don't, someone else will. Feeling like a terrible parent? Stop that. Chances are that if you're questioning whether you are screwing your kids up irreversibly, you aren't. Parenting is hard work. Much harder than you ever think it will be. If you occasionally think you're doing it wrong, you are probably doing it more right than you are giving yourself credit for. Focusing on the things you don't do well? Stop that too. Think about what you are kickass at and focus on that instead. Love what you love. Fly that freak flag. I'm rooting for you.

9. Stop over scheduling.

For serious. The best decision we made as a family this year was to take a break from all organized team sports in the fall. It was the first time in almost nine years that we weren't beholden to practice and game schedules. We played games, we built forts, we hung out at the park, we played dress up, we found new things we love. Plans are great. Not having them is pretty great too. Plan to do nothing sometimes. Do nothing together. Don't wait nine years to do it.

10. Stop using your energy on people who suck it out of you.

This world is filled with selfish narcissists who will use and abuse you as long as you let them. Stop. Severing ties with some people is excruciatingly hard, especially if you are like me and are well conditioned to tolerating it. You deserve better. You deserve to be surrounded by people who are supportive and real and don't just take and take and take. You deserve someone to lean on, someone you can trust. You are worth it. Don't ever let anyone else try and convince you otherwise.

This year is almost over. I'm glad to see it go. Let's kick next year's ass, shall we?

At some point last night, I put my phone down and sighed. It seemed like everyone on the internet was completely and totally preoccupied with the controversy over the words spoken by Phil Robertson and the resulting moves A&E made in their wake. 


I would like to discuss the First Amendment issue here since that seems to be the most talked about online. Essentially, there isn't one. Really. I say this not just as an opinion based on what he said and whether I think it should be protected speech, but as someone who has actually studied Constitutional Law in depth.

The First Amendment protects against governmental intrusion upon the freedom of speech. Phil absolutely has the right to say whatever he wants to here. He has not been arrested, detained or silenced by the government for doing so.

What he doesn't have the right to, is to say whatever he wants to say without consequence. His public persona is one that A&E has a right not to do business with, and if he says something they take issue with, there is no obligation on their part to keep employing him.

Their decision to suspend him from filming in the wake of these events is purely a business one...and in all likelihood a smart one, at that. Those who call for public support of the Duck Dynasty show, those who are going out and purchasing DD merchandise to show their solidarity are actually supporting A&E, who has the licensing rights to the merchandise, and who should be the target of their frustration.

In fact, this controversy has resulted in a huge amount of publicity for both the show and the network, which makes the cynic in me wonder if it wasn't all staged.  Particularly since it's a week before Christmas. Hmm.

It is the industry, after all.

If you want to make the argument that their personas aren't manufactured (or at least embellished) for television because it's a reality show, you should check out what the family (already wealthy from the duck call sales) looked like before they were on TV. Go look at that, then tell me it's not all for show.

Told you I am a cynic.

I have had a few people ask me if I am annoyed that he was even asked what he was in the interview in GQ. The short answer is no. I'm not surprised by much, actually, and it's pretty clear that the questions were asked because they would be answered, and those answers would get a lot of attention. Reporters like a story with traction, and this one had a ton of it.

Personally, I wasn't surprised by what he said in the GQ interview. Frankly, I'm not sure that A&E was. They certainly shouldn't have been. I will not even get into what he said or didn't say, because at the end of the day, that's not important. He has his views, he is entitled to have them, he is entitled to speak them, and though I may not agree with him, that's not important to this discussion.

Trust me when I say that those discussions are all over the internet right now if you are interested in finding them. I'm not about to start one here.

Being entitled to having and speaking those opinions, though, doesn't confer any protections in the private world of employment.

It seems that some of the people rushing to his defense, as well as those in a hurry to attack him haven't read the article itself. Whether he should say what he did is a subjective question, but whether he can is an objective one. He can and he did, but that doesn't mean that he should be insulated from the effects of his words. The lack of said insulation isn't a Constitutional issue.

As a writer, words are my medium. I say things. I have opinions. I write them and put them out there for the world to see. I don't get to tell the rest of the world that they have to listen to what I say, but they can't decide not to associate themselves with me based on what I write. Neither does Phil. The people who read what I write can absolutely choose to stop talking to me, stop reading what I write, stop being my fans, even stop being my friends.

It has happened before, it will happen again.

I don't live in a fantasy world where I am covered in bubble wrap and fully insulated from the effects of what I do and say.

Neither does Phil.

A&E can decide they don't want to do business with him moving forward.

And it has nothing to do with the First Amendment.

As fast as the news started to break about his death yesterday, the meme generators started working overtime.

The jokes about drifting, the I guess he went too fast this time, the people who just couldn't stop laughing about how ironic it was that he died the way he did.

Paul Walker, the star of the Fast and Furious movie series, died in a fiery car accident yesterday when a friend of his drove a Porsche into a utility pole, then a tree.


Many people called it a hoax immediately, which it wasn't. This time.

Earlier this week, there was a hoax about him, and the details were eerily similar. This time, though, it wasn't a hoax. It was real.

He was really dead.

Once people seemed to digest the fact that it was a real news report, the irony jokes started. Was it ironic? Sure. Should it be funny? No. Death is never funny.

The internet can really force you to hate humanity sometimes, and this was one of them.

Never mind that the characters he played in movies were just that - characters. He loved fast cars and was a driver, but his day job was 
acting.

I tend not to hold back on my opinions about society. When bad things happen, when people treat others unkindly, when selfishness and paranoia are allowed to infiltrate our collective minds, when we stop caring about other people, no good can come of it. I've written about it many times before.

And yet, this is, sadly, the world we live in these days.

We live in a world where food stamps are cut but corporate subsidies aren't. Where the poorest of the poor are told to find another way, but CEOs make millions of dollars, and we don't blink an eye.

We live in a world where anyone with an internet connection can spend hours endlessly tormenting other people. Where fat-shaming and bullying and hatred and racism are spewed all over social media. We live in a world where websites exist for insecure teenage girls to post pictures and have people vote about whether they are hot or not. Where girls who have been victims of rape are tortured again online, where children are driven to suicide.

Infants are naturally selfish, purely as a survival mechanism. Toddlers fully believe that the world revolves around them, because it is all they can perceive. As children get older, they begin to understand that what they do and say has an affect on other people. They begin to sympathize. They begin to develop compassion. They begin to develop the ability to empathize.

Or at least, they are capable of it. They won't necessarily learn these things if they aren't taught to, if the elements of life which connect them to others are not encouraged and fostered. It is more difficult for some to learn, particularly if they have conditions which interfere with the development of empathy - and with those children, it's even more critical that we model, that we shape, that we teach. With all children, they need to be taught.  If they aren't taught, these abilities stagnate, they don't develop fully.

Then they hit adolescence, another typically self-centered time in life, and we shove a cell phone in their hands, give them unfettered access to the internet, and convince ourselves that we have done enough. We wonder what went wrong when that child is implicated in cyberbullying or destroying property or rape.

We live in a world where adults are just as bad, if not worse. They step on each other, they use people. The me me me me me nature of the world we occupy means that instant gratification is more important than integrity, that I am always more important than you, that the ends always justify the means.

Even if they don't.

Even if they never did.

We convince ourselves that what we do is okay, when we know it isn't.

The element missing in all of this is a simple one, and it is the most beautiful solution to so much of what ails the world today.

We need to learn compassion. We need to learn empathy. We need to remember how to care about other people again.

We need to relearn these lessons if we've forgotten them ourselves, and then we need to teach our children.

We need to look up from our phones long enough to make eye contact with other people, the ones we know and the ones we don't.

We need to see people, really see them. We need to sympathize. We need to remove ourselves from our place in life, even if just momentarily, to imagine what it would be like if we were them.

Sounds easy enough, right? It is not as easy as you would think to live with integrity and kindness in a world structured for the selfish. It takes discipline. It requires love.

So, how do we do it?

Here are some of my ideas, and they can apply to children and adults. If we all did some of these things, if we all learned to stop the rush to judgment and instead tried to understand, what a different place the world could be.

- Disconnect and re-engage. Remove all electronic devices, ban them if you must (that goes for the parents too). Eat meals together. Play board games. Hike. Go for walks. Do something, anything, that requires human interaction and isn't immediately tweeted to the rest of the world. Communicate to your spouse, to your children, that their time is important to you, that they are important to you, that it is all more important than whatever is going on in the online world. Your most important work in the world takes place at home. Never forget that.

- Volunteer. Donating money is great, but work is a better teacher for children. Time and effort given to someone else with no expectation of anything in return is essential to fostering compassion. We must understand that no matter how bad our situation may be right now, someone out there needs more help than we do, and that we can find a way to help them. There are so few opportunities in our society any more for actual, hard work, but it wouldn't take long to find someone around you who could use a few extra hands. Elderly neighbors may need yard work done. Nonprofits may need landscape work or painting assistance. After the flood here, there are miles and miles of trails that need to be rebuilt. The value of blood, sweat and tears cannot be taught with words alone, they must be experienced.

- Donate. We collect things in this country. We have an abundance of things. When you clean out those closets, when you decide to replace something worn or outgrown, put it in a box and take your children with you to donate it to a shelter, to an agency that can use it, to a non-profit donation center. Make them carry the box. Make them help. We do a food drive at least once a year for a local charity with our girl scouts. Physically have them collect the food, turn over the donation. They will understand more that it helps someone if they are a part of it. Take their old bikes to groups that collect and redistribute them at the holidays.

- Angel Trees. From the time my oldest was a baby, we have tried to make sure we do at least one angel tree donation a year. Allow the kids to choose the tag, take them shopping, have them wrap it, have them bring it back. Tell them what it is for, that there are children who may only receive this one item for the holidays, that they are fortunate, that they need to make sure they give to others.

- Pay it forward. When someone gives you the gift of kindness, pay it forward. Enthusiastically tell your children what someone did for you, then plan out ways that you can surprise someone else with a gesture of kindness. If you can make it an anonymous act of kindness, even better, because you will be teaching them true altruism - the notion of doing good with no expectation of thanks in return.

- Spend time with animals. For some children, animals bring out their innate compassion more than people do. For almost all children, the lessons to be learned from caring for an animal are vital moving forward in life, learning how to be responsible not just for themselves, but for another life.

- Spend time with people of all ages. If you aren't close in proximity to family, or you don't have a large family or circle of friends that spans many generations, find a way to get your kids around those who've seen the calendars change more. There is a wisdom and patience that can be passed on by our senior citizens more than anything we can teach them. Kids will learn compassion around both babies and the elderly for many of the same reasons: those with mobility issues need more time, that sometimes people need rest, that sometimes you can spend hours reading books and telling stories.

- Share and reach out. Not just with siblings, but with classmates. With friends. With the girl who always seems hungry at school but never has a snack. Encourage them to reach out to children who are new, who struggle with communication, who have special needs. Teach them that what sometimes appears as anger and hostility can just be that a child is frustrated and just wants a friend. Teach them to stand up for others. To speak out, not just for themselves, but for those who can't or won't.

- Teaching empathy to those with conditions that make it more difficult to develop it at all present a special challenge. Often, even with adults, the best way to teach compassion, to teach empathy is to pose a hypothetical question whenever a choice about treating other presents itself. Turn the situation on its heels and ask them how would you feel if ____________? Some children and adults simply can't conceptualize it any other way. They need to make it personal, they need to think about it in terms of how they would feel in that situation, so teach them to immediately ask themselves this question.

Everything is relative, or so they say.

I am not sure that it's always that simple though.

I truly believe that how someone experiences the world has as much to do with their experiences as it relates to what they choose to experience.

Some people see everything around them, they take it in. They internalize it. They can imagine what it might be like to be in the shoes of someone else. They see need and they address it. They help.

Some people, too many people, are capable of just shutting it all away. They can't see the truth, they can't see reality, no matter how urgently it is thrust in their faces.

I see this play out here again, as I've seen it so many other times in so many other circumstances.

It's something that happens everyday.

Some tragedies are small and intimate, personal in scale. When my husband was diagnosed with cancer, when I lost the baby, when my father died....it felt a little bit unfair that everyone else carried on as though nothing had happened. My world may have stopped spinning just then, but theirs didn't.

When the tragedies are so small in magnitude, as horrible as they are to endure, there is no reason to ever expect that it could or should affect other people, for the simple fact that it didn't.

When the tragedies occur on a larger scale, though, there should be pause. Or at least it feels that way. It's harder to ignore something that happens to entire neighborhoods. Though this most recent disaster didn't physically alter the landscape on this end of town, though it didn't flood homes and destroy everything on this side, though no one was trapped and alone waiting for help right here, it's still real.

Just a few miles away, all those things happened. They are still happening.

But you can choose not to see it.

And many do.

Too many.

Far too many.

I've learned the hard way though that it's not worth trying to motivate people to care about others when they just don't know how.

I can't waste my time trying to make people care, not right now, not when there is so much else that needs done.

Perspective.

To see it, you first have to be willing to open your eyes.

Are you willing?

In my hands today, I held an entire lifetime of memories.

Then I threw it away.

Pieces of a life built over decades and decades.

In my hands today, I held mementos of vacations, trinkets from a career long over, first editions of books printed nearly 100 years ago.

Trade journals and huge volumes and certificates that had once been proudly displayed. Gone.

In my hands today, I held film reels and photographs and journals filled with handwritten pages.

The delicate letters that I traced with a gloved finger, refusing to read it out of respect, and yet taking it all in.

Most of it, unceremoniously, added to a giant and growing pile on the street to be picked up by huge heaving machines.

With every piece thrown in there, my heart broke a little more.

I accompanied my son's Boy Scout Troop to one of the neighborhoods most affected by the floods today. We showed up and just asked who needed help. We quickly realized how much help everyone needed.



If you could have somehow overlooked the piles of debris everywhere, it would have appeared to be a normal neighborhood from the street. The damages were inside. Below the ground. In the basements, where the sewer lines backed up and flooded every single house.

In the home we spent most of our time, the elderly couple who own the property. Sitting in a chair in the corner, his head in his hands, the man. Milling about from time to time, trying to put on a tough face, his wife.

She stood, watching total strangers try to save what we could from a basement that contained a lifetime of things and five feet of contaminated water.

I tried the best I could to organize what could be washed and saved.

I cringed with every book that was pulled out.

I carried muddied frames and albums holding photographs of an even older generation and fought back the tears in my eyes.

When I handed a dripping, brown pile of frames to their daughter, I just said that I was sorry. I suggested ways to save the pictures with rinsing in clean water then laying them out flat. There were so many, she may have to hang them. I don't know if it will work, but I know how much she wanted to try.

I know that I would.


Some of the things lifted out of basement window wells today were just that - things.

Most of them weren't.

Most of them were pieces of a lifetime that we couldn't save.

I don't know their names. I didn't want to intrude more than it already felt like we were. I held tiny bits of their entire lives in my hands, a complete stranger.

Dignity is incredibly important when you lose so much else.

I tried my best to respect that.

I didn't pay attention to the address. It doesn't matter. I don't know who they were of if I will ever see them again.

I want to believe that we helped today.

I know that what we did will never be enough.

I know that some things just can't be replaced.

To the couple who owns the house, I am sorry.

I am sorry this happened to you.

I am sorry you lost so much.

I am so, so, so sorry.

Part of living through as many natural disasters as I have means that I've also seen both the best and worst sides of people.

When tragedy strikes, we want to believe that everyone will rally together and help one another, but that is not always the case. Often, the opposite happens, and people begin to worry only about themselves, even if that comes at the price of others.

It's not pretty, I promise.

There have been some amazing stories coming out locally about things people have done to help others, who have rescued each other, who have gone above and beyond. The emergency responders are always amazing, and one of these days, I plan to drive to Boulder myself to hug the Sheriff. No one signs up for this much responsibility.

Close friends of mine spent hours in the thick of it moving other people's horses to safety. Local people have gone up in planes and helicopters every single time the weather cleared to get aerial shots of the flooding, often being the best source of information about road conditions.

Then there are the other people.

The ones who are bitching that schools are out most of this week. Because it inconveniences them. Because they have to go back to work. Because the school their kid goes to is fine. Because this is just ridiculous. Never mind that some schools suffered a lot of flooding damage, that many teachers and students are evacuated, trapped or have lost everything. Never mind that the schools with damage need water pumped out and water intrusion damages repaired or that the buses are being used to evacuate people.

The ones on this end of town who are pissed because they wanted to go to Target in the middle of the storm, but the police and fire departments were just impeding their travels and shutting down roads. Don't they know how important it is to run menial errands in the middle of a catastrophe??? Never mind that the roads were flooded or in danger of flooding. Never mind that bridge integrity is an issue. Never mind that no one gives a shit about your weekday trip to Target. Lives are in danger. People lost everything. Whatever.

The ones who just had to go out in the thick of it because they wanted to see what was going on. Who needed to stop on the side of the road and block traffic so they could take crappy pictures with their cell phones. Some of those people got stuck on the other side of the river then complained that they couldn't get home. Some of those people were pissed at the police and fire fighters for worrying about stupid inconsequential things like public safety. Some of those people probably lost their cars when they flooded and had to be saved. A fire truck was lost east of here saving people who shouldn't have been out. Fortunately, no one died in that rescue, but that rescue never should have happened in the first place. Stay home, stay safe. Don't endanger other people or divert resources because you're an asshole.

The ones who can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that the road conditions are changing constantly because of the river flows, that roads that were closed five minutes ago may be open now and vice versa, who can't comprehend why the city doesn't have an accurate map, updated every five minutes. The people who work for the city have their hands full, dammit. Give them a break.

The ones who take this opportunity to find some flaw in the local government's handling of the disaster, because that's going to do anyone any good at this point. A tragedy on this scale simply cannot be adequately prepared for. Social media is a blessing and a curse, because it allows quick dissemination of information, both correct and incorrect. It gives people a platform to distract from the immediate needs of others.

The ones who don't understand that although their house is safe and they are largely unaffected, this is a regional disaster. The roads are not going to get rebuilt over night. The water isn't just going to disappear because it's in your way. The bridges probably won't all be fixed for a year. A year. Instead of whining about how you have to drive half a mile out of your way to get to the other side of town now, think about the people who's only way in and out of their home was destroyed.

The ones who just don't get it. The ones who don't think it is a big deal because they aren't personally affected. Who live just far enough away that it's not their problem. Out of sight, out of mind. Empathy is dead, folks. I hate to say it, but it's true. If something has to effect you to affect you....that's a problem.

Then you have all the people who don't actually live here, but who come to visit this beautiful place. The ones who are more worried about their reservations and vacations than whether people are trapped or dead. Sorry, your vacay isn't our top priority right now. Lives need saved and towns need rebuilt first. The mountains will still be here indefinitely, honest.

p.s. the leaves will change next year too.

There is also this huge component of stuff largely ignored by the media, and I have to talk about that too. I've lived through enough of this shit to know that it's not just this disaster. It happens all the time. The media goes where the money is, where the good shots are, not where the story is. During the Cedar Fire in San Diego, we saw tons of shots of expensive coastal homes burning because it made good TV. People out by us were dying because there was no news coverage of middle-class east county.

During the Northridge earthquake, no one outside of town knew that the soil in neighborhoods by us liquified, swallowing houses, or that our high school was closed for months, or that if the earthquake would have happened during the day hundreds of us would have died. FEMA didn't even show up for a few weeks. My house was five miles from the epicenter, as the crow flies, but we didn't exist.

It's happening again now, and reminding me that when disaster strikes, you have to truly be prepared because help might not be coming. The cameras sure won't show up unless you've got something happening that they deem worthy. The Today Show is broadcasting from Boulder today, apparently. On day 5 of this event, when the biggest threats are over here, but the situation is worsening out east. They have helicopters and all the money in the world. They could fly into Lyons and show what happened there. They could come to Longmont and show the damage here. They could talk about the entire neighborhoods trapped and isolated by water east of here. They won't. They'll set cameras up in some beautiful part of Boulder and make it look good.

Those of us who live here, who understand what happened, who get it, will be fine. We'll help the friends who need dug out. We'll be patient about road closures and bridge inspections. We'll conserve resources when needed, give what we can without being asked to. We won't seek credit or photo opportunities when the hard work of rebuilding starts. We won't criticize and complain about inconveniences, we'll understand. We saw what happened here, even if the world didn't.

It's alright.

Living through enough of these disasters, I know the truth.

We got this.