Observations

I’m off today, but I am still thinking about yesterday’s new client, a trans 20 year old FIT student whose uncle decided to throw her down a flight of stairs. She fled in just her socks, walking through the snow to her friend’s house, where she can stay for a week. She told me that things had not been comfortable at home for a long time, but she was hoping she could get through school and then leave. I’m also thinking about the discussion at Rise and Resist last night about FBI agents showing up at the homes of members (and former members) of several environmental orgs including XR and Sunrise. We talked about what to do in such a situation – don’t open the door, ask if they have a warrant (which they often don’t), don’t talk to them, call Ron Kuby who has offered to represent any of us in that situation. Today Kuby also offered to represent the snowball-throwers – the NYPD and their supporters are all outraged because some officers got pelted by snowballs during a big post-blizz...

On my way to work yesterday, the snow was coming down hard, but it was too warm for it to stick. There was a sense of hushed excitement - anticipation- throughout the City as people waited and wondered about the coming storm and rushed to get errands done. As I approached the building, I ran into one of our staff leaving - he lives in Jersey City, and he was making a dash for the train before NJ Transit shut down. "I've been here since earlier," he said hurriedly, "everything is done," by which he meant cleaning and setting up. An entire group of volunteers had cancelled, but between a few scheduled people and a few others who live in the area, we wound up with enough to get dinner done. Upstairs, Doug was slammed, seeing client after client who needed psych evals, medications, forms filled out. Stephen, stuck in Singapore, kept asking me for snow updates all afternoon. His chances of being able to fly in today were receding with each inch of snow that ...

it’s sad weather today, overcast, and the rain makes it feel like the sky is crying. “Chickenshit weather,” I think to myself dodging a singing guy wheeling a trash can around Herald Square. Suddenly I hear Kate S’ laugh, she found Dad’s pronouncements of chickenshit weather hilarious and even after he was gone she would still say it. “Stop!” I tell my mind, it’s bad enough there’s rain on my glasses, I don’t need tears too. It’s already hard because we are scheduling things in March and every time I hear the word, I think of her birthday, March 9th. I get to the office and find Misty very focused. H. has messaged her, asking how she got through her mother’s death, if it ever gets better. Misty doesn’t like H. because once in an out of control rage, she said some mean things to me. It was years ago, and even at the time I knew she was projecting, her anger at other people directed at a safe target, but Misty has never forgiven her. “This is different,” she tells me, explaining wh...

C., another now-adult former client, calls in crisis mode. She has been locked in a custody battle with her abusive trans. ex. who keeps calling child welfare as a way to harass her. She had been prevailing, but something changed. "He has temporary custody, and I have supervised visitation," she tells me, sobbing. "Am I a bad mother?" "No," I say, "you're a mother in a very challenging situation." She is dealing with poverty, her own medical issues, a special needs child and this abusive ex. "What should I do?" she asks. "What does your lawyer say?" "I don't have a lawyer!" It turns out that the domestic violence org that was supposed to provide her with legal services has dropped the ball. I look up another org in her area, send her the info. "The child welfare guy was actually nice," she says. "He said it's just temporary, that I am burned out." "Maybe you can take th...

I wake up at 5am with a lot of pain in my left wrist. That’s not the arm I fell on yesterday, so it’s just arthritis and whatever other crap. That wrist never fully recovered after surgery a couple of years ago. Muffin, a senior cat, is meowing persistently in the hall and Connor, who has come out since its dark, is scratching and kicking like a lunatic. I think he must be in the box but when I turn on the light, I discover that he has attempted to bury the rejected part of his dinner. Checking on Muffin, I see she has food and water and is not stuck anywhere. She has a neurological problem that makes her shake like a human with Parkinson’s and is unable to back up, so if there’s an impediment in front of her she is stuck until rescued, which I have done a couple of times since I’ve been here. Apparently she just wanted to make sure I still exist because once she sees me, the meowing stops. As consciousness dawns, sadness comes flooding in with yesterday’s memory of Saucy dead o...

I often work through holidays, but today I decided to go to Rise and Resist’s flip off Trump action first. I gathered with the other marshals at 12:30pm, pulling our neon vests over our winter gear. A request went out for people who felt comfortable blocking 5th Ave. so I volunteered and we went and hung around near the corner trying to look inconspicuous until the protest gained enough people. Then, with traffic stopped for the walk light, we stepped into the street and organized ourselves into a line, holding hands all the way across fifth ave. The closest bus was confused, and instead of turning, it got uncomfortably close to us before the police turned it east on 57th st. Behind us, the crowd was having a rowdy time, yelling Fuck Trump and dancing to the drums. There was a time when blocking a street would have brought threats of arrest pretty quickly, but the few officers who were there seemed content to direct traffic away from us. Eventually a large woman in a navy jacke...

H. is worried about my attempts to repair that pipe that froze and burst in my basement. "You're not allowed to die," she writes, "because if you die then I'd really be all alone and you and my mom are the only people in this world who understand me." I reassure her that's it's not dangerous, I am just trying to cap a 1/2 inch pipe that used to be connected to the basement sink. It's giving me some trouble because the edges are too rough for the rubber gasket to seal properly so I tried smoothing them with a wire brush, but the jagged part is too big for that, so tomorrow I am going to try a deburring tool. "You need to live forever," she says. I keep my response light, but in my head I"m doing the math. I'm ten years older than her and have more than my share of health issues, but she has serious heart disease. More than that, what's really bothering me about this is that I'm not always sure I want to be alive. At...

W At this week's Rise and Resist meeting, a member proposed doing an oral history project with his youth arts organization. With multiple members lost in the past several years, the idea of preserving these stories is compelling. During the discussion, Naomi pointed out that the ACT UP oral history project had been used in court against activists. I had been listening quietly, but at that point I raised my hand. "I was one of the activists whose oral history interview was used by the prosecution," I said, and gave a brief summary of what was a much larger story. On March 16th, 2003, a 23 year old American activist named Rachel Corrie was in Rafah, in the Gaza strip. At that time, there were international observers from a variety of countries in Gaza using their presumed privilege to try to protect Palestinians. Several of my friends had spent time doing that. 'On this day, Rachel Corrie, in a high visibility vest, was trying to prevent the demolition of a Pal...

Yesterday, my Very Sick client was really struggling. Since he had been picked up by an ambulance at his apartment, he was at Bronxcare, the nearest hospital. Like many hospitals in the Bronx, Bronxcare is short on resources. Unlike NYU, where there is one social worker for every floor, when you call the social work office there you get a recording that instructs you to leave a message which will be returned in 24-48 hours. Staffing shortages mean long waits for pain and diarrhea meds, or to be cleaned up after an episode of fecal incontinence. Overworked staff mean less patience for our client's challenging behaviors, and a tendency to respond to him with anger, which only makes his behavior worse. It also means that attending to details like his skin gets overlooked. "I'm white like a ghost," he said, referring to his very dry skin. We have known each other for a long time and I know what will make him laugh. "So am I," I say and he starts crackin...

Getting ready for my infusion this morning, I had just found two matching socks when an email alert flashed on my phone. It was from Kyle, my newish neighbor, the one who introduced himself to me for the first time by saying “I know we look like a hetero couple, but we’re both bisexual.” Now he was writing to tell me that in today’s warmer, thawing weather a pipe burst in my basement, sending water into theirs. I didn’t think they could get in to shut off the water so I threw on my shoes and took off for Bay Ridge, trying to shut up the inner voice that was saying, “you’re never going to be able to move back home.” I had barely left when I got a message from H. “She’s gone and I want to kill myself because I walked out of the room to do something.” On the phone, I told her “That’s common. People often wait for someone to leave before they die.” “I wanted to be there, holding her hand.” “You were there, you got yourself and E there,” I told her. “Her last word was E’s n...

H’s mother is dying. She has been on oxygen for a long time because she damaged her lungs by smoking, just like my mother. After her last hospitalization, she was discharged on high concentration oxygen and she fell through a crack – really a canyon in the system. Nobody followed up to adjust the oxygen, and sustained use of that high a concentration caused carbon dioxide to build up in her blood and it wasn’t until she began having periods of altered mental status and wound up back in the hospital that they realized what was happening. By then enough damage had been done that she could not recover. H. has been getting increasingly frantic as her mother became less able to answer the phone. “Who am I going to text at 3am?” she kept asking. Monday afternoon, I was on hold with social security and could not answer when she called, so she texted me. “It’s time for hospice,” and a crying emoji. “Her body is just done at this point.” She desperately started searching for ...