First, a belated Happy Hanchristeid! I celebrated the first Hanchristeid this season. In the Hanchristeid calendar, this is Year One. In the Hanchristeid calendar every weekend, is a 3-day weekend. Hanukkah, Christmas, Eid.
I really, really like 3-day weekends. In fact, for at least 2 decades I have from time-to-time tried to find a reason to make the 3-day weekend a permanent fixture. I realized that even though I could call in on Fridays, if I wanted a guilt-free 3-day weekend I had to have other people to support my plan for a 3-day weekend and the 32-hour work week.
The one time I did call in sick on a Friday, to have a spa-day in order to be beautiful, well-groomed and cool-as-a-cucumber for my first date with Wolfy the Resident, I was caught. People from the hospital (U. of Chicago Hospital's Transplant ICU) showed at at this house-party and my Nurse-Manager was one of them!
Now, over 20 years later, I see a window of opportunity to make a rational case for a 32-hour workweek and the 3-day weekend.
The downturn in the economy has meant less work, so fewer people are working. Why not reduce the number of hours worked, but keep more people working. Divvy work up, change the 40-hour workweek into a 32-hour workweek. Stop firing people. Stop furloughing people.
I have a creative solution, a global solution, a kumbaya solution to have us join together as a nation and celebrate our diversity by celebrating the conjuction of 3 major religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Hanchristeid.
In the Hanchristeid calendar every weekend is a 3-day weekend. Every Friday, every Saturday, and every Sunday is a day of observance. In the old calendars: the Islam has Friday as its holy day, Judaism has Saturday holy but calculates the holy day of Saturday as beginning at sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday, and the Christians observe Sunday. Hanchristeid has combined all three days and uses the 3-day weekend to encourage everyone to take the time to work on relatedness. How all things are related. Supporting good relationships with each other, with our environment and that includes Gaia - mother Earth. Hanchriseid is about the goddess reclaiming her children and making her children's lives good. We are all her children. This is the gift of Hanchristeid. Gaia. mother earth, is very hurt when her children don't get along with each other. Gaia, mother earth, is very hurt when she's not respected and loved for nurturing and sustaining life.
Hanchristeid was a half-baked idea I chanced upon while I served on the Editorial Board of the Jung Institute's magazine "Transformation" over 15 years ago. Jung was a contemporary of Freud and Jung's lifework was the study of comparative religions. Around that time I served on the Editorial Board of "Nova et Vetera: Journal of Christendom West" started by some folks from the University of Chicago. They were the "vetera" old men and I was the "Nova" new girl. I was the only female on its Board. U of C's school of Divinity is noted for being run by atheists. Seriously. It has something to do with Einstein's paraphrased quote: "because of my contempt for authority, I have been made an authority". Atheists seem to be really good at understanding God because atheists are objective and don't petition a non-existent God for some kind of favor.
While on my tour of the world's religions I thought that it would be a good idea for the feminine to reclaim religious philosophy and usher-in a new age of "harmony and understanding".
So...
Happy Hanchristeid and TTFN! Ta-ta for now! I am celebrating Year One in the Hanchristeid calendar with self-renewal, a renaissance. I'm studying for my State Boards, again. I'm taking the State Boards, again.
I HAVE TO take my State Boards again. Ironically, had I been able-bodied (not handicapped) the State would have automatically allowed me to pay the biennial professional license renewal fee and I could have kept my license current. But the State of Illinois, aka Governor George Ryan at the time, declined to allow me to renew my license. It took an act of Congress, literally. My Congressman Rahm Emanuel and his staff had to take them to Court and a Judge ordered them to restore my license.
Governor Blagojevich and his lawyer Matt Ryan had other plans for me. They continued a poltical vendetta against me and kept changing the rules and bypassed the Judge's order to restore my license. So they said I had to show competence by taking an RN refresher course. The RN refresher course had an entrance requirement of my holding a CPR card. Blago and Matt were snickering. How was I going to get a CPR certification since I was in a motorized wheelchair? Yes Matt Ryan called me on the phone, at my mother's house, to let me know they were snickering at me.
Easy-peasy. I had been teaching CPR since my teens, when I was a teenage runaway and lived in communes and worked at a free clinic in Detroit - Open City. So now I 'taught' a CPR course and that proved my intellectual competence to coach an able-bodied person to correctly provide CPR! I earned my CPR much to the surprise and chagrin of not-so-hot Rod and his lawyer, Matt Ryan.
I gave the State of Illinois and Oakton College (the provider of the RN refresher course that had me get the CPR certification as a prerequisite) my CPR card. I thought I was going to take the required course and my license would be restored, as the Court had ordered. The State modified the Judge's order and I saw nothing wrong with taking a refresher course. But then Governor Blagojevich intervened and the Nursing Department Chair, Sandy Kubala, declined to allow me to take the course. My psychotherapist was appalled and reached out to Sandy for an explanation. The Governor's office had called her.
There were other shenanigans, but why dwell on the past.
It's year One of Hanchristeid. It's a renewal. A renassaince. A new way of looking at the world without fear. It's not a burden, it's a blessing to have to retake the State Boards. New leadership, new rules. I'm ready to take the test, again.
Today, all my ducks are in a row AGAIN. I'm confident. I've needed to add to my knowledge-base of nursing practice. I needed to add the new pharmaceuticals, the updated protocols for treating the diseases that have plagued us since the beginning of time and that I studied in college.
However, AIDS did not exist when I was in nursing school, so I didn't study AIDS and AIDS drugs for the 1981 State Boards. However, as an RN I was working with Dr. John Phair at Northwestern U. and Al Jensen at the Howard Brown Clinic on what at that time we called, GRIDS. GRIDS is the acronym that we used to explain the mysterious disease gay men were dying of. GRIDS stood for Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome. We renamed GRIDS, AIDS. We wanted to accurately describe the disease and that meant removing the word "gay". Along with Al Jensen, I edited the first manual used at the Howard Brown Clinic for the diagnosis and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. I've also worked with other AIDS projects. So I'm confident with the material.
Mother and Child Nursing. Easy! I worked nurse midwifery with my friends from Prentice at Northwestern University by going out on home-births. All my godchildren were homebirthed, delivered by Dr. Eisenberg.
I'm just waiting patiently to take the State Boards, again. In 1981, I was a healthy woman. Today, I'm disabled and need special accommodations for the disabled which the State is graciously providing. I'm just waiting patiently. Okay, not so patiently.
I just got off the phone with the license maintenance unit at the State of Illinois and inquired about when and where I would take the State Boards. I was informed that over half the people in their office called in and took today off. My plans for a new calendar, a new religion, Hanchristeid and the 3-day weekend are already in many people's conciousness. My plans will reach fruition. The world is ready! TTFN!