hostile-entry

I was interested to read about people’s reactions across the country to athletes who didn’t stand for the national anthem. So many Americans were offended and angry by the action of these athletes. There was a time when I couldn’t stand for the national anthem either.

I remember the feeling. I was physically able to stand, but couldn’t. So profound was my anger at federal officials, who had stormed into my home in August 2005 that I was unable to stand. I had no respect for a government who had organized what I regarded as an invasion.

Much later, I recognized that legally they had a right to force their way into my home. They had all the correct documents to back up their actions. But emotion doesn’t always coincide with logical thinking.

Some time later, during a church outing to a Bridgeport Bluefish baseball game, I refused to stand when the national anthem was sung.

“Stand up,” my friend Maury said.

“No.”

“You’re behaving badly,” he said. “Just stand up. You’re calling attention to yourself.”

“I don’t care, I don’t want to. I can’t.” I knew I sounded immature, flighty, not like who I really was.

“You’re embarrassing me,” he said. “I don’t want to be with you when you behave like this.”

Fortunately, the national anthem finished by the time I calmed down and everyone sat on the bench.

At the end of the game, when the group of church members walked out of the stadium, a friend asked curiously, “Why didn’t you stand up for the national anthem?”

“I didn’t want to. I’m anti-American,” I answered. I couldn’t believe I actually said that, me, with my family background of settlers who arrived on the Mayflower and my connection to Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence. I was aware I sounded like a nut job and even more self-conscious than when Maury became annoyed with me.

“Well, we’re going to have to something about that,” she said.

How could I show respect to those federal agents, representing the United States, who came into my home and threatened me? I couldn’t separate the tradition of a song about the country some of my ancestors helped found with my overwhelming feelings of alienation and anger.

Now, at weekly Rotary meetings I stand and sing whatever patriotic song is selected. Usually, it’s God Bless American, which brings back fewer difficult memories. I rarely think of the words and instead, hope that as a group we are singing in approximately the same key.

But I remember how I felt, how nobody was going to make me stand for something I didn’t respect, the United States Government. Now, I can stand for my country that needs support and hope and hard work to save it from the dangers that swirl around and threaten us all.

https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/journalstar.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/f/44/f4448db6-e8c8-5b4e-ad7a-6053173965f9/57dc8dd957f5b.image.jpg?resize=1200%2C951

Trump had plenty to say about the NFL players who kneeled during the singing of the national anthem. Other players stood, but locked arms. Still, more sat on the bench during the singing. Trump railed against all of these football players. His words evoked strong responses across the country. Many agreed with Trump’s criticism. His twitter account lit up with his.
It was as if Trump thought he represented America and those who didn’t stand, didn’t show him respect. The President didn’t seem to understand their “taking the knee” was to protest racial inequality or to criticize him for his reaction against those who didn’t stand. So fixated on this protest, he seemed barely to notice the mass killing of 59 people at a Las Vegas country music festival. He reacted as if he was personally insulted by the athletes’ demonstration, yet not much offended by the gun violence a few days earlier.
October 3rd’s New York Times editorial headline states that in the past “477 Days, 521 Mass Shootings. Zero Action by Congress”. These facts show the world Trump’s predisposition to focus on the trivial and make it all about him, pushing aside what is important.
Our government has been doing nothing about changing gun laws for years. Every time there’s another mass shooting, we’re upset and talk about having the victims and their families in our thoughts and prayers. What we need is Congress to stand up to the National Rifle Association and actually pass gun control laws that will make a difference. I really thought that when all those children were killed in Sandy Hook, Congress would finally act. But no, the powerful NRA has too much influence.
We need to do something, which is what we say after every mass shooting. Connecticut’s Senator Chris Murphy is speaking out. Maybe he can make a difference. I know I’m interested in working with him.

Noor Salman, the wife of the Orlando nightclub shooter, was arrested yesterday for obstructing the investigation into her husband Omar Mateen’s mass shooting, the New York Times reported.  She was also charged with aiding and abetting, by providing material support for the attack on the nightclub, where her husband gunned down forty-nine people.

Now, I have no idea if these charges are reasonable or not, but they bring back memories when the Feds threatened to arrest me, for obstruction of justice. I had locked my bedroom door for privacy, when I wanted to change from my nightgown into clothing. The agent in charged slammed his shoulder into the bedroom door and split it away from the frame. Then the whole group stampeded into my walk-in closet.

The Feds also attempted to intimidate me, saying I should have known what my then-husband was doing, when he received internet child pornography. They were certain I must have known what was going on in the house, where we both lived. But I didn’t.

I might have let this comparison go and not felt compelled to compare my experience with Noor Salman’s, because, as immoral as my husband’s crime was, it wasn’t murder.

Of course, those little girls, whose photos he collected were not volunteering to pose. They had been either kidnapped or sold by their parents. Every man who views such pictures contributes to the sexual slavery of these children. The owners of the photos make money from the pedophiles who view them. There’s no incentive for them to stop. It’s their business.

Noor Salman said she didn’t know what her husband was doing. After all, she was beaten and verbally abused by Mateen. I would think her efforts would have been to protect herself, not assist him. The Feds can only guess and go ahead with either the threat of an arrest (as they did with me) or actually press charges (as they have done with her).

Maybe she’s just as innocent as I was. Perhaps she just doesn’t have as good a lawyer as I did.

David Hamilton’s photo in the New York Times on November 28th shows him with a kind smile, attractive face and artistically rumpled, yet business-like suit. He looks like a kindly grandfather, a supportive mentor in whatever business he might have run.

            That impression is false, an illusion. Now that’s my opinion and I never knew him personally. But I’d heard of him even before I saw his obituary. I knew he was known for photographs of nude or partially nude girls.

The obituary reported that he committed suicide after a former model accused him of raping her when she was 13. What’s there to say about that? He was guilty and left the world because of his guilt? He wasn’t guilty and the girl misunderstood. Ha – I doubt it, but I wasn’t there.

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I ‘m pretty accepting of nudity in photos, as works of art, and in films. I saw nothing alarming with Sally Mann’s nude photos of her children in books that have been much discussed over the years. The only concern I felt was wondering if the children might object to such exposure when they were older. There was nothing sexy about them.

Nude photos of children is a subject that’s always on the margins of acceptability. A picture can be seen to be an artistic creation that’s perfectly fine by one person, and at the same time, as something quite different, even abhorrent or illegal, by another. Is a gauzy, blurry photo of a prepubescent girl a work of art? Or is it pornography? So much is in the eye of the one who looks at the photo. The viewer’s attitude is affected by his or her personal experiences as well.

Long ago, I might have thought producing soft focus photos of nude or partially nude little girls was merely another way of creating art, and while I wouldn’t personally have been interested in such a photo, it was an area where I and others could legitimately question its intent.

Many photos like Hamilton’s are on the margins. Men who are inclined to be aroused by young girls, like my former husband, might easily find his pictures a turn-on. I have a different, much more critical eye than most people for this sort of ‘Art’ as a result of my experience with federal officials and the arrest of my then husband.

I believe that anything that has the power to tempt men who are attracted to little girls should be questioned. While I resist censorship, it seems actually unfair to have material so available, pretending to be “just art”, while feeding the addiction of men who are attracted to children.

It’s an area open to interpretation and the result depends on one’s past experience and one’s interest in prepubescent girls. No one can state for certain what the right way is for the public to look at such photos or the photographers who take them. It’s unlikely that, as a society, we’re going to come to any conclusion any time soon, but I know what I think about the publication of such pictures.

Years ago, someone should have forced Hillary to clean up her potentially disastrous choice of email servers. But that didn’t happen. Now, I wonder how many people, who are glued to every word uttered by the candidates, are thinking about Huma Abedin, Anthony Weiner’s estranged wife and Hillary Clinton’s confidential aide.

Unless you avoid salacious scandals about politicians in the papers, you know about Anthony Weiner’s issues. However, I never read a newspaper report that said               “Huma Abedin should have known about him.” Now, I wonder though, when a few emails have surfaced that appear to have been connected to Weiner, if some people will think, “She should have known and dumped him after his first sexting scandal and not given him a second chance.”

Abedin waited until this past August, after another lewd message was found, to separate from her husband. It would have been impossible for her to know he would make this second catastrophic choice, for she couldn’t foresee what he would do in the future.

Nobody knows what goes on in a marriage, what the level of love is, what the degree of trust is, what the commitment to the union is. I believe that if married people had to respond to such a question, it would be difficult to know for sure, for everyone. And it could vary, year by year, week by week – even day by day.

No one I knew ever said to me that I should have known what my husband would do after his arrest in 2003 for allegedly touching a seventh grade girl in his art class. I defended him vehemently. Not once did I doubt his denial. So positive he was innocent, I even imagined scenarios where the two girls concocted a story about him because they were bored. Today, I still believe some such situation very well was true. Nobody knows but Paul and these girls. Never would I have thrown him out at that point. I was too loyal, perhaps steadfast to a fault.

I never heard anyone say that I should have known what he was doing when he was arrested for possession of child pornography. I had kind and supportive friends.  Perhaps a few of them wondered, but seeing my loyalty to him early on, said nothing.

The Feds weren’t so reticent. They couldn’t figure out how I didn’t know what my husband had been doing. After all, we lived in the same house. How could I not have known? They bombarded me with questions and threats and didn’t believe me when I vehemently denied knowing anything about pornography.

Perhaps Abedin wasn’t aware either. She may have been just as blindsided as I was. It’s not something he’d be doing with her sitting by his side. I’m sure he was alone – just as Paul was when he sat at his desk and received photos of little girls and then saved them on the thousand CDs he hid in the dungeon that was the basement.

It isn’t Abedin’s fault that Clinton used her own server or that Abedin’s marriage broke up as a result of her husband’s rash behavior. It isn’t my fault that my husband broke the law in all the ways he did and I didn’t know what he was doing. Poor communication, an unwillingness to improve it and me working long hours provided a scenario for separate lives.

My situation occurred in the past. Abedin’s is current. I hope that people are kind to her, the way my family and church friends were to me.

While sitting on a local Afghani bus, Susan and I bounced along and listened to goats, held securely by their owners, as they bleated from the rear of the bus. They would get off at the next town to be sold at market.

As the bus came out of a curve near a tribal village, I looked out the window and was stunned by the beauty of fields of vivid, red poppies.

“Look, Susan!” I said, “I’ve never seen such a gorgeous field of flowers. I wonder what they are.” We stared, in awe, at their beauty.

It was 1975, and my five-year-old daughter Susan and I were on a round-the-world trip. Then, I didn’t realize the poppies would be used for opium and shipped to the west as heroin. Only later, did I learn about their dangerous end-product.

We were entranced with the bright clothing worn by the tribal women standing outside one of the walled villages, protected by adobe fortifications. The bright red of the poppies matched their scarlet dresses. The women’s dark hair and eyes looked stunning next to their light skin and brilliant clothing. For one second, my eyes deeply met the eyes of one of the women. There was no time for communication, but I sensed her interest in me, as I felt for her, in spite of our completely different lives.

More than forty years later, while reading the April 11th business section of the New York Times, I was amazed to see a photograph of stunning, lavender crocus flowers spread across the landscape, with the familiar bare mountains in the distance. Unlike the poppies, the end result of the lavender beauty of these flowers carpeting the landscape is a prized spice to flavor delicious menus across the world, and not fuel the drug trade.

Ah, progress – Saffron instead of Heroin.