This is the Fourth Installment of my Schiavo Diaries. If you feel lost, please refer to The Complete Schiavo Diary on my page.
"If she dies, there is going to be hell to pay..."
- Randall Terry
"This is a terribly difficult decision which we are institutionally incompetent to make."
- Rep. Barney Frank
"Now when the bardo of the moment before death dawns upon me,
I will abandon all grasping, yearning and attachment,
enter undistracted into clear awareness of the teaching,
and eject my consciousness into the space of unborn mind;
as I leave this compound body of flesh and blood
I will know it to be a transitory illusion."
- The Main Verses of the Six Bardos, The Tibetan Book of the Dead
Over the hill and deep into the woods there is a pack of coyotes which usually unleash their blood-curdling yelps around two and four in the morning, often accompanied by the muffled screams of an overwhelmed rabbit caught in their clutches. It is a shrill cacaphony of sounds that rolls sharply up through the hollow and pierces the ears with a subtle reminder of the deep, dark night and the creatures that lurk in the shadows, creeping along the underbrush and through the tall weeds and jagger bushes, stalking the unsuspecting prey beneath the towering Maples and Oaks and the occasional Conifer, their fangs dripping wet with blood, fresh from the involuntary and instinctual convulsions of a fierce feeding frenzy which devoured the evening's Main Course.
One can hunt coyotes all year in Pennsylvania. They are ugly creatures with long, thin snouts, beady eyes and a mottled coat...and completely wild.
And just as I finished another smoke - a blend which shunned the injection of chemicals and additives and went straight for pure tobacco- one of the big fuckers lumbered underneath the Mercury Light, following the ground with his nose around the line of Blue Spruce in front of the House, a mere fifteen or twenty yards away. He was enormous - yet skinny from life as a scavenger, and I froze with my cigarette teetering from my lips and a head blinded by the Northern Lights, just staring at this brute which would no sooner smell the fresh and open paper cut received while reviewing my notes earlier in the evening before he was on top of me, dragging me around by the jugular, back to his friends waiting just beyond the edge of the woods...gnashing of teeth and the horrific crack of bones splintering under the pressure of stabbing canines...We're eating good tonight, fellas. And damn if I don't think he's a Commie sonofabitch, too...
But just as this fantasy was carrying me away, I felt the gentle tap of the Muse on my shoulder and cool aluminum of Adult Beverage sliding into my hand. She pulled the cigarette from my mouth and with a tap from her index finger knocked off the lengthy ash, drew the last hit down to the filter and put it out, before lighting another and handing it back to me.
"What would you ever do without me, hun?" she asked.
"What? Leave? You're not leaving...Are you? Not yet. You can't. I won't allow it...the goddamn thing's not finished. I'm just beginning to flesh out the story, get a feel for the characters."
"Ha, ha, silly little man..." She tossed her face downward and clutched it in her palm as she laughed and pointed at me with her other hand. Her long, sandy blonde hair fell over her face and she peered at me from underneath with a single, mischievous eye.
"Your playing games...and there's serious writing at hand," I explained, but a Muse caught in the fits of hysteria at the follies of a simple-minded, mortal Man has little interests in pleas from the innocent, confused clown she's laughing at...
I sipped my beer and walked back inside the house, muttering to myself, "There's never a Satyr around when you need one..." But she was still rolling around with devastating laughter that nearly brought on another episode of Post-Traumatic writer's block and my confidence was sinking fast. She would be no help to me, at least not until she had settled her ass down and regained her composure. With no other recourse, I sat behind the keyboard and begin hammering away , in the hopes that the old adage of a thousand monkey's typing away at a thousand keyboards would hold true and I would at least have a few thousand colorful words and well chosen metaphors, if not the proverbial Shakespearan tragedy...but as I have often found, when tragedy is the subject matter, a Bard is of little use and often just another unfortunate bystander to the wretched dramas unfolding before us as the Nation continues to circle in an ever-widening spire away from Reason and toward the Pitch Black of Madness...
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Jerry Garcia is noodling away at Stella Blue from the other room and I am reminded of the instrumental tribute his bandmates tossed off on November 19, 2002 at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena...When all the cards are down, nothing comes for free...and in the wicked turns of the past week that seems all the more evident. But, for now, the Big Bear is running up & down the long neck of his guitar, taking flight and carrying away the haunting yet redeeming rhythm of the composition out...out...out...and back home again, singing with the full range and heartache of a Working Man's musician, familiar with long roads, endless hotel rooms and countless smoky bars, clubs, dance halls, stadiums and ampitheaters...Wild Nights and Acid Tests...Bolos and Bozos...The notes ring with the melancholy resonance of a Lost Age in America, a High Time, Forgotten Patriots, Poets & Troubadors...a decade of Dance & Ritual Protest...upheaval and Social Revolution...
An altogether different sort of happening is taking place at the Pinellas' hospice where Terri Schiavo lays, ready to discard this mortal coil and make Humankind's most ancient journey - the passage from Life to Death. Outside her window, predators are hovering, dark creatures nourished vicariously through the personal tragedy of the Schiavo's and the Schindler's...Pro-War Christians who abide the execution of mentally handicapped Texans; who have probably never said a prayer for 100,000 dead Iraqis or visited a Veteran's Hospital to see the amputees eviscerated by war and hidden by this Administration and the Press; who believe in tax cuts instead of funding Public Education and that there is No Separation of Church and State...
They carry signs and hold each other as if any of them had any real connection to Terri Schiavo. They've scrawled slurs against Michael, the now familiar talking points circulating around the Flat Earth Society and as shameless as the to GOP Memo linked to Bill Frist, the Witch Doctor of Tennessee, and other high-falutin' Big Wigs pulling the strings. Tom Delay has been exposed as a Spineless Political slug and the possibility of the Texas Grand Jury indicting him seems capable of far more damage than merely pouring Salt into his exposed wounds. The White House is backing off and word from the Kitchen Staff was that Turdblossom was terrified, scared sick, so much so that he'd noticed blood in his stool and quickly called a doctor, who dismissed his fears as his body naturally closing up one asshole since it has no need for two. Because if he was the slimey creep who advised the President to hop on the Shameless Prosyletizer Express back to the D. of C., his testicles should be wired to a Car Battery for absolutely Shit advice, attested to by Big W's dramatic slump in the Polls since his Flight from Texas into what his advisors must have felt was an opening to the Promised Land. But Conservative Hacks, who've been slaving Terri Schiavo around on the Political Auction Block to advance their ideaological bent, are at a loss for words and unable to present a coherent response to the apparent Blowback against a Republican Leadership experiencing Mass Hallucination and on the verge of feigning Stigmata. And the Base has become Rabid - Jeb Bush looked terrified on TV as he explained that he most definitely would not overreach His authority. He was clearly unnerved, however, by remarks from Pat Robertson and Randall Terry and talk of Hellfire and Damnation, flushed and clammy, like some poor Puritan Sinner after Johnathan Edward's launched into "Hands of an Angry God at the pulpit, realizing that his political future, and his family's for that matter, may rest in the hands of Men who heal people via Television and hold dark fantasies of firebombing Abortion Clinics...
Signs read, "Bush Visit," "Stop Killing" in large, red splattered letters. The Schindler's lawyer is speaking and drops the first reference to Auschwitz and concentration camps. Bobby Schindler, Terri's brother, picked up the theme as well and furthered the depravity of the language whirling around this story. It is a cheap shot and spurious correlation, and bares no resemblance to the Holocaust. Beside me, I've laid the picture my Grandmother took as she rolled across Europe as a nurse in the 107th Evacuation Hospital, following days after Normandy across Bloody Omaha and Utah, throughout France and surviving German bombers during the Battle of the Bulge, past the Eagle's Nest and Hitler's bombed out bunker, and among the dead at Buchenwald prison. There are at least twelve corpses, most still in prison stripes, emaciated, shaved bald and piled on top of each other. Their faces are hollow, and heavy shadows fall across their exposed cheek bones and sunken eyes. In the center is a man laying on his back, his face turned toward the camera and left arm extended from his body. The dark stains in the center of his prison shirt and the mangled condition of the clothing suggest he was murdered by some Nazi bastard with a fairly close shot straight through the heart...wholesale slaughter, a systematic execution...and now the name Schindler associated with this scandalous manipulation, in America at least, and not the German Industrialist who saved the lives of a thousand of his workers.
Holy Thursday was heavy with Conservative Hacks sputtering their nonsense on TV and Radio, questioning the integrity of the Medical Community, making bold accusations that Michael Shiavo was an abusive husband. Even supposedly non-political sorts, popping up on Larry King and the like, were quickly discovered to be agents provocatuer, towing the Administration talking points...err on the side of life...and coming on strong as Randall Terry-esque, Right Wing loons. They dismissed medicine, they dismissed law, they behaved rudely and with no sense of decorum, freely insulting Medical and Legal professionals. But there was no stopping them. These folks wanted blood, even if it meant sacrificing the Right's beloved contempt for Judicial involvement with continual appeals to the Courts, despite twenty-six legal proceedings already conducted on this matter. And just as Jeb Bush was explaining he would not overreach his power - even though his "power might not be as expansive as people want it to be"- horrible rumors were circulating, suggesting that the Right to Lifers would implore Gov. Bush to intervene with the State Police, seize Terri and declare her a ward of the State. His request for custody would eventually be denied, and I began to wonder how long a pompous, goon-head like Jeb Bush could resist the pressure before succumbing to the Bush Family's instinctive impulse toward complete, all-out Shamelessness in the pursuit of Personal Glory & Vindication by sacrificing the Republic to the Social Agenda of Middle-Aged men wearing overalls and flannel and Dale Earhardt hats, Bush/Cheney stickers still on their cars, with enormous guts and toothless wives, and nothing better to do on a Thursday afternoon than protest outside a hospice and show complete contempt for the poor souls inside.
Jeb has suggested he will do all that is within his power. But his cryptic statement about the perception of his power by people, might imply that the greasy little worm would not rule out an incredible 11th Hour extension of his powers granted by the Legislature, or simply seized by the Governor, assuming such a thing is possible under the Florida Constitution and what conditions might apply for granting such Extraordinary and Emergency powers. Only a hypothesis, but if they'll gerrymander in Texas and force a sham, bullshit election on California, another desperate, self-indulgent power grab would not seem so far out of the question. A silly thing like a Constitution has never slowed them down before. And questions about the jurisdiction of Congress seemed to have little significance during last weekend's Palm Sunday Compromise.
EARLY polls from the week show that Republicans are taking some serious hits, partly because of the Schiavo Case and a struggling economy. But clearly the GOP's role in the whole matter was not resonating well with the Public. Bush has fallen nearly seven points in some polls in the course of the past week. Congressional support has fallen by seven points as well. And while an overwhelming number of people who support reinserting the feeding tube still favor Bush with a 67% approval rating, only 39% of people who respect Michael Schiavo's role as Terri's husband support the President. But those numbers are very misleading - more than 80% of the Public in some polls is horrified by this entire tragedy, and only a meager 13% support the Right to Lifers, the GOP and the actions taken by Congress and the President last weekend.
Bush stated that he had not talked with his brother about the "next step," making it all the more evident that the slimy Bush Brothers are in cahoots on this matter. But by Good Friday, the President was avoiding talk about Pinellas and shifting focus toward the Minnesota School Shootings, no doubt in an effort to salvage what was a considerably disastrous move begun by Tom Delay more than a week ago.
But the Green Meanies were still on the hunt and as Holy Thursday dissolved into Good Friday the language was increasingly disturbing. Advocates for the Schindler's were making references to the "Black Mercy of the Court" and Bob Schindler went so far as to say that judges were banding together to kill his daughter. Fred Honzberger chastised his liberal colleague, Mike Romei, on their weekly Thursday Night Fights, in which the resident Conservative blowhard squares off on the issues of the day against the House Liberal, as personally killing Terri Schiavo..."You're killing her...You are killing her"...It was a disgusting slur, and one repeated later on Romei's own program by a caller named Jacob, who proclaimed, "I am Terri Schiavo." Yet it is consistent with the language the Right has employed throughout the last week - words like "murder," "kill," and "offing her." Clearly sensing they had overreached, the Randall Terry Crowd was stepping up the rhetoric and willing to assign blame to everyone who did not come down on their side...an UnGodly Nation was responsible for this happening and they were the Warriors of Truth and Light, chosen by God to save Terri Schiavo or was it God who chose Terri to advance the Right to Life Agenda or perhaps it was the Devil who showed Tom Delay and others among the Republican Leadership how to exploit her irreparable situation.
They attacked medical professionals, legal professionals and anyone who stood in their way of overrunning the Country with this Madness until they reached a ruling acceptable to them, and showed no concern for the fact that the Moral Majority, while on this Crazed Pursuit, was savagely ripping apart the very essence of the Husband/Wife bond, sacrificing the sanctity of Marriage and the promises loved ones make to each other.
No one is buying their story about Michael Schiavo, but that hasn't stopped them from perpetuating the crude stories of how he was abusive or asking why it took him seven years to say she would not want to live this way. They do not consider for one second that Michael spent seven years fighting to save his wife, enrolling her in Rehab and demanding the best care from nurses, before finally accepting the inevitable and deciding to spare his wife from a prolonged period of Degeneration and Atrophy. These were the same nurses, however, who testified against Michael in court proceedings, citing the bogus claims that Terri was able to swallow or the victim of severe neglect and abuse.
They say Terri could swallow chipped ice and jell-o. But chipped ice has the strange habit of melting inside the mouth and jell-o is just as likely to slide down your throat with or without any effort on your part. No one has ever choked on a bowl of jell-o. These were their claims, however, as bizarre as Mary Schindler's declaration after they removed the feeding tube, stating that her daughter said, I want to live. Perhaps Mary could explain how a person could talk without the use of their tongue and control of their vocal cords. They believe that Terri is capable of following the twisted saga playing all around her, despite medical evidence to the extreme contrary. It is the same sort of insanity which has blinded them to the realization that for the stories of abuse to be true, the Police, the Nurses and the Personal Care Homes would all have to be complicit in hiding the truth from the public. If she was receiving poor treatment in a Home, it was the fault of the Nurses, not Michael, whose demands for the best treatment for his wife angered the three nurses who testified against him. If injuries from spousal abuse were being hidden, certainly the Police would have some hand in it...but these claims were ridiculous and completely without merit, and, therefore, absolutely in line with the Neo-Conservative mentality.
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Moyers: "Do you think Jesus today would be a Christian?"
Campbell: "Not the kind of Christian we know..."
- The Power of Myth
Part of this Madness has been inspired by William Hammesfahr, a neurologist making bold statements about Terri's chances for recovery. He has peddled his Snake Oil on the Christian Broadcast Network. And promotes himself as a Nobel Prize Nominee, which is absolute bullshit since the Republican Legislator in Florida who nominated him has no pull among the Nobel Nominating Committee. He is no likelier to receive a Nobel Prize for Medicine or Science than George W. Bush would for Peace. He is an associate of Randall Terry and has promised to perform a miracle for Bob & Mary Schindler. Besides coming off as a shameless self-promoter, Hammesfahr was reprimanded by the Florida Department of Health in 2003, for charging a patient with services never provided...a $2000 fine, six months on probation, 100 hours of community service and $52,000 in Administrative Costs. He charges his patients cash and comes across as a violent Crystal Meth addict, duping his patients with bogus treatments to support his fix and extensive collection of Underground Pornography no doubt hidden away in some dusty trunk or attic or basement, the kind of place were Republican Moralizers store Skeletons and suggestions of Drug Abuse and Infidelity.
They are crawling out of the Florida swamps now, surrounding Terri's hospice window and protesting in front of the Governor's Mansion. Jeb was so terrified of the protestors that he scratched the Stations of the Cross from his schedule. And at this point, I don't blame him. These people are laying a heavy trip on the Governor and it was clearly taking it's toll. Perhaps he could call his father, a former DCIA, to help him get out of the country or fake his own death...or maybe catch a flotilla back to Cuba, where he could start over as a Sugar Cane farmer who supplements his income by selling off his Cocaine harvest to American Intelligence Agencies and Republican Bankers. It seems unlikely, however, that there is any way out for George & Jeb. Their asses are twisting in the wind and the Jesus Freaks were threatening to really start turning the screws.
Two thirteen year old girls were detained by Police, along with a ten year old boy, for trying to bring Terri water. A man in Tallahassee was arrested for purchasing a gun and declaring that he was going to free Michael's wife. A suspicious package was found outside the Florida Court Building hearing Thursday night's appeal on behalf of the Schindler's. But there was no bomb as they originally feared. To top it all off, a man was arrested in North Carolina for offering $250,000 on the Internet for the murder of Michael Schiavo and another $50,000 for the head of Judge Greer. Christians during Holy Week are like American Stoners let loose upon Amsterdam's Cafes and Red Light District. They are ferocious, wild-eyed crazies running amok. Perhaps the only surprise was that it took a week before the Moral Majority resorted to violence and threats of retribution. Which is not surprising, since Randall Terry, now the official spokesman for Bob & Mary, has a long history of Pro-Life violence. During a single four year period, 40,000 Pro-Life demonstrators associated with Terry have been arrested. He has disowned his homosexual son and used bankruptcy laws to avoid paying child support to his estranged wife, whom he also blames for the sexual orientation of his son. But Randall's son swears he learned much from the collection of Books his father kept on the topic of homosexuality.
To Be Continued...