"I'll Ride with You" Christians, Shiites, and Yazidis in the Islamic State. Will Australian Twitter Activists Ride with the Real Victims of Hate?

Australian Twitter activists responded to the Sydney hostage crisis by announcing "I'll ride with you" to Muslims who feared the "inevitable Islamophobic backlash" against Muslims. 

Australian Twitter activists announced -- oh so very bravely and multiculturally and diversely -- that they would ride with Muslims in Australia to protect them from those evil, violent, non-Muslims. 

In fact if these Twitter activists really wanted to be brave, diverse, and multicultural, they would announce that they will ride with Christians, Shiites and Yazidis in the Islamic State. 

By the way, you can read the Islamic State's pamphlet defending sex slavery of Christian, Shiite, and Yazidi girls here

The Money Problem

Source

In July of 2014, I was confronted with a money problem. The money problem terrified me. For months, I would stare at the ceiling before falling asleep, that high, rugged, exposed beam ceiling of bare planks, and writhe, inside and out. What the hell am I going to do? I have no idea.

It was not an "I need money" problem. I've been really poor for a long time and I've learned how to survive on almost nothing. My first year after I left Indiana University and moved into this apartment, my first year as an adjunct professor, I earned, and lived on, six thousand dollars. No food stamps. No welfare. I did not apply. I certainly had no health insurance. My apartment is government subsidized – the rent I pay is calibrated to my income – but other than that, I lived on that six thousand dollars.

I ate rice and beans. Cheese, even the most basic cheese on sale, was a luxury. I walked almost everywhere I went, supplemented by the occasional hitchhike. A dollar ten bus fare was a major expense. I found clothes on the sidewalks surrounding the laundromats and Salvation Armies I passed. I got a mint condition, bright red, Woolrich winter coat, khaki shorts, an endless supply of socks. All those socks that people claim that they lose when they wash clothes? I've got 'em.

If I went to the movies at all – I love movies, and love to discuss recent releases in online discussion boards – I would attend the six-dollar morning feature, and stay all day, sometimes watching three movies at the multiplex back to back.

I spent all my free time applying for tenure-track jobs. I was still naïve enough to think that a PhD from a good school, a published book, published articles, good reviews on my teaching and letters of recommendation from world-class scholars would land me a job. I didn't yet know that that would never happen. So, life was okay, if not great.

So, no, the money problem that confronted me in July was not an "I need money" problem.

It was an "I don't know anything about money" problem. It was an "I have to ask someone to educate me about money and I have no idea whom to trust, and I don't even know what vocabulary words to use" money problem.

I know that "poor" equals "cooties." I know that people hate the poor more than they hate any other group, except maybe for ugly people or sick people.

We like to pretend that hate is something that other people do, not us. We like to pretend that National Public Radio could eliminate through judicious, clever and censorious essays. It's not.

Our human essence produces hate constantly, just as our bodies constantly produce shit. We all confront hate. We all feel hate. Jesus offered the antidote to hate: love. But we have to climb that hill every day. We have to consciously choose to defuse our hate. Be pretty, independent, rich, powerful, and people will like you, but also envy you, which is a form of hate. Be poor, old, sick, or just a bit weird, and people will hate you. We all really are still in a high school cafeteria, and the same likes and hates and popularity contests are ongoing.

If I approached too many people, or the wrong people, with my money problem, it would merely serve to remind them that I am poor, and they would hate me for that, and I would lose people in my life. I need people in my life. I didn't want to lose people in my life.

I was afraid to ask about my money problem because I was afraid to lose people in my life. I was afraid to talk about it for another reason. I've never been taught about money.

My parents were very smart. They were Eastern European peasant immigrants and they were smart in the wrong way for immigrants who wanted to latch on to the American Dream. The peasant immigrants who did well were like Vito Corleone – ruthless and amoral. Or they were skilled technicians who could rake in the bucks in the higher paid jobs in the coal mines and steel mills.

My parents were readers, debaters and storytellers. There was no way a little immigrant boy who mined coal, or a little immigrant girl who was sent out to clean houses, two original thinkers who liked to read books in their spare time and ponder the meaning of the universe, would ever have any money. My mom, one of the smartest people I have ever met, cleaned houses and worked in factories. My dad was a caddy at a country club. My brothers who worked with him told me that the rich men whose bags he carried treated my dad badly.

My mom used to tell stories like this. When she went to clean a new house, her new employer would leave a large roll of bills in some obvious place, like the mantel, to test if she would steal it. Such gestures inspired great contempt in my mother. Money was indeed proving who was superior and who was inferior. It wasn't what the rich thought.

No. My parents didn't have money, and they didn't know anything about money, and I learned nothing about money from them. Too, my mother cut me out of her will. So, money. Clean slate. Don't have it. Don't know anything about it. July, 2014: suddenly, a money problem. Needed information. Had no idea how to get it. Was afraid to ask. There was a deadline; this was urgent. I had to act fast. I choked.

I struggled against self-hatred. I was absolutely certain that everyone knew the answer to my money problem except me. I couldn't ask them, because asking risked losing the person from my life – oh, you poor ignorant white trash child of low class immigrants. You just reminded me that you are poor! Be gone!

And I didn't even know the vocabulary words to use to ask the question. If I opened my mouth and tried to articulate it, what would I say? I'd make porpoise sounds. "I am scared because woop woop squeal squeal and I don't know if I should framistan the gizmo or hyperlude the thingamajig!"

I know a liberal who has talked in a way that suggests to me that he has money. Lots of money. At least a million. He has used that word "million." He is constantly bashing Republicans and capitalism and reminding his friends of the plight of the wretched of the earth, and when he does this, his friends say things like, "Oh, you, you are such a Robin Hood! A champion of the poor!"

I asked him. The conversation instantaneously reached absolute zero degrees. Any words I spoke after I broached the topic were utterly gratuitous.

Okay, one slammed door.

It took me a while to recover. To re-gather my courage, in rags around my feet like a tattered prom dress, to wrack my brains and to ask someone else.

I asked a Catholic priest. We made an appointment. We met in a café. Once I got the question out, it was as if I watched his cassock melt and his "survival of the fittest" human nature emerge.  

He tried to "be nice" by lecturing me about why I am so poor and why didn't I just get a full-time job, because, you know, employers are chomping at the bit to hire older PhDs with a work history of teaching college. Yuppers. Helpful. Uplifting, even! Not.

I wanted to say "You have no idea how many hundreds of jobs I have applied for. You have no idea what it's like getting one rejection after another. You have no idea how terrified I am and how strong I have to be just to get through the day. What kind of priest are you?" But I didn't. I am too polite. I listened to him say stupid things for an hour. Then I left.

The next person I asked said "We'd prefer not to be embroiled." We – she'd recruited her spouse. Two against one.

I slunk away.

I will never forget the "we" or the "embroiled."

Again making clear. I wasn't asking anyone for money. I was asking people to help me handle money I didn't know what to do with, because I know nothing about money because I've pretty much never had any.

I asked someone else. He said he'd think about what he could do. Time passed. He was still thinking. For me, time was running out.

I approached Bob [pseudonym] another person who gives the appearance of having money. I figured he'd know. He said he'd put me in touch with Mr. Big [pseudonym] who was a really smart lawyer. I gave Bob my phone number to give to Mr. Big, the smart lawyer. And I pretty much forgot about it, because something else was up, in addition to my money problem.

I went to the hospital to visit my sister. This was one of three hospitals she'd be in in the space of a month. It was very hard for me to watch my sister suffer. It wasn't clear whether this hospital visit would be her last or would merely be one more milestone toward the inevitable fate the doctors have told us to expect soon. I felt as sad as I've ever felt in my life.

I am driving again after many years of not driving. I have not driven in rush-hour traffic … ever. I left the hospital and drove out on to the highway and was stunned that one can sit for ten minutes at time, not moving, on route 80, a super highway. I was tense because I'd just left the hospital, and because I needed to get to a diabetic dog I was babysitting. He needed a meal and insulin on schedule.

I made it through the traffic jam and to the dog. Phone rang.

"Hello."

"Hello, my name is Mr. Big."

"Oh, yes, hello, Bob told me you'd call. Thank you for calling. I can't talk right now. I just left my sister in the hospital and I need to feed a diabetic dog. Please give me a time I can call you back."

Audible, pregnant pause.

"YOU call ME back? YOU call me?? YOU cannot call ME back. We'll talk now."

"I can't. I just left the hospital and I need to feed this dog and then give him a shot. Now is a bad time for me."

"Oh. Oh. Oh. I see. Oh. Goodbye."

I think this guy really regrets that we're all using cell phones now and he couldn't slam down the phone.

I fed the dog, gave him a shot, and then I did what you do when someone you love has received a terminal diagnosis. I stared numbly into space while tears made their way down my cheeks. Thoughts of money were very far away. Death trumps money. Love trumps money. Dogs trump money. All these trump phone calls from pompous, self-important bozos.

I received an email message from Bob. Bob screamed at me. Mr. Big is very important! You didn't take Mr. Big's phone call! You are "ungrateful"! Never ask me for anything again!

Please note. I did not ask Bob, and I was not going to ask Mr. Big, for *money.* I was merely seeking *knowledge about money.* And for that, Bob and Mr. Big humiliated me.

See? Poverty = cooties, and we are all still in that high school cafeteria, one misstep away from becoming non-persons.

I took time to recover. And then I came out of my retreat to ask again. Mac is a Catholic deacon. "I will connect you with someone who can answer your question."

The man's name was Richard. He's a banker. I stumbled through asking Richard my question, in my embarrassing, clueless, porpoise language, all the while quelling my shame and terror.

In two brief emails, Richard the banker sorted it all out. He told me exactly where to go, whom to ask, and what to ask for. He used a vocabulary word that is utterly unfamiliar to me. I went where Richard told me to go, I spoke to the employee who has the title Richard said he would have, and I asked for the thing Richard told me to ask for, using a word I had never used before. It was actually quick and easy.

I went through six months of shame, terror, and confusion, because of my ignorance. I was rescued from all that by a man who knows what he is talking about, and who is willing to share his knowledge.

Playback Effect: Karen A. Wyle's New Sci Fi Novel. Interview and Excerpt.

Author Karen A. Wyle (second from left) en famille 

Q. My own work has two main thrusts. “Bieganski” is about identity, stereotyping, atrocity, and Christian-Jewish relations. “Save Send Delete” is a memoir about love, atheism, and faith. I’m guessing that my blog readers are interested in those topics. What in “Playback Effect” might be attractive to the readers of my blogs?

This may sound self-centered, but if I followed your blog because of my interest in the topics you mention, I might be interested in Playback Effect’s author, more (initially) than in the book itself. I might be curious about a Jewish agnostic of Polish extraction, raised by a Jewish agnostic and a Jewish atheist, who had a decades-long interest in Christian apologetics and frequently conversed (in a one-sided way) with a God in Whom she didn’t much believe.

I do tend to focus on relationships, especially but not exclusively family relationships, in all my novels, whatever their nominal genre, and Playback Effect is no exception.

Q. What is it about Sci Fi as a genre that attracts you?

Science fiction is a wonderful vehicle for examining almost anything about human society and how humans tick. The futuristic setting acts as what Mary Poppins might call the “spoonful of sugar” that lets the author get to the heart of current or eternal issues without being immediately detected.

Do BLACK LIVES MATTER in Newark, Paterson, Wayne?

For the past week activists, rioters, looters, arsonists and hatemongers have been tearing America apart, insisting on a mythical boogey man KKK cop and a blameless "gentle giant" who had his hands up and begged not to be shot. "Black lives matter!" they chant, as if they just figured that out, as if compassion for life, for human life, for African American lives, were their invention and proprietary domain.

This morning while gearing up for my workday I stood at the kitchen sink, trying to convince myself to eat breakfast, listening to WGBO, Jazz 88.3, a radio station in Newark, NJ.

Newark is fourteen miles from me. My parents and two older brothers lived in Newark in a walk-up, cold-water flat. A violent explosion drove them out to the suburbs. My family was one of millions of people driven out of cities wracked by violence in the latter half of the twentieth century.

"Eleven people were shot in Newark over the weekend. Three died." The WGBO announcer said this morning at dawn. "There is no word on motives for any of the weekend violence," a newspaper reports.

Newark's dead. Do their lives matter?

Lisa Parker. Jamil Harris. Zaire Williams. Have you heard their names like you've heard Michael Brown Michael Brown Michael Brown Michael Brown? Will you ever hear their names?

A man was stabbed to death on my doorstep. I was questioned by police. Honestly I have to tell you – I've forgotten the name of the man who was stabbed to death on a spot I have to step over when I go out the door every day.

In class this morning Pavlo told me I HAD TO see this one video on youtube. I did not know what to expect. We watched the video together.

Lee McNulty, a 27 year veteran of John F. Kennedy High School in Paterson, NJ, described that high school as a giant farce that does not educate its largely Hispanic, African American, and immigrant Muslim – Arab, Turkish, and Bengali – students. McNulty described how Paterson schools' superintendent – himself an African American – earned a hefty bonus for cooking the books and pretending that the schools are teaching, when they are not. You can see the video, below.

Do the lives of the kids stuck in Paterson's schools matter?

I checked my email. I learned that five young African American men are accused of gang raping a female student in a dorm room in Wayne, NJ. You can read more about the allegations here. Do these lives matter?

Al Sharpton will be appearing at John F Kennedy High School soon to make sure that its thousands of students are receiving an adequate education. Not.

Jesse Jackson will be in Newark soon to protest the ongoing murders of African Americans by other African Americans. Not.

Massive numbers of protestors will hold lengthy rallies to demand respect for women in African American song lyrics, music videos and in the lives of role models like sports stars. Not.

Black lives matter. Except to activists shouting "Black lives matter."

The answer isn't another riot or looting spree or protest rally. The answer, as much as I hate to say it as a former leftist, is on the right. It's in the words of authors like Shelby Steele and Larry Elder. The answer is in old fashioned values. The answer is in showing up every day and doing boring things like working a steady job and going to church on Sunday.

I don't have a rousing ending to this blog post. I have to stop typing now so I can get up early tomorrow morning and go to work grading my students' papers. Because Black lives, Hispanic lives, white and Asian lives matter, and the way to support them is to show up every day, and be a mensch.

Update. Karen Wyle and Gordon sent in this story. Only nineteen -- nineteen! -- Paterson students deemed ready for college, while at least 66 school officials make six figure salaries. Read more here

Karen Armstrong Naked. And Kim Kardashian on World Peace!

Painting is from Aleah Chapin's "Auntie" Project
Karen Armstrong's head found here
Credit to Terese Pencak Schwartz for the photoshop

"Why is Kim Kardashian famous?" I hear this complaint a lot. Me? Kim Kardashian doesn't bother me any so I don't complain about her. I know why she's famous. She's good looking and she gets naked in front of cameras.

Here's my rant: Why is Karen Armstrong famous? Armstrong and her fans are doing way more damage to the world than Kim Kardashian will ever do.

If you don't listen to National Public Radio or watch TED, you might not know who Karen Armstrong is.

Left-leaning media regularly trot out Armstrong to reassure the masses that Islam is a religion of peace and that Christianity and the West are responsible for the world's woes. Armstrong's opinion is meant to be authoritative because Armstrong is, we are repeatedly told, a "scholar." Armstrong is 70 years old, she is plain, and she speaks with a plummy English accent. She may even wear blazers with leather patches at the elbows and smoke a pipe. In short, she looks and sounds like the scholar from central casting.

On November 23, 2014, Salon published an article with this lengthy title, "Karen Armstrong on Sam Harris and Bill Maher: 'It Fills Me With Despair, Because This Is The Sort Of Talk That Led To The Concentration Camps'"

You really don't have to read the rest of the article after that rather clunky and alarmist headline, now, do you?

Everybody knows what the allusion to "Sam Harris and Bill Maher" is all about.

On September 26, 2014, on his HBO show "Real Time with Bill Maher," Maher tweaked his fellow liberals. Liberals rant and rave about sexism, he said, as long as the accused are Republican Christians. Liberals hear no evil and speak no evil when it comes to misogyny in Islam. "It's not cool Rush Limbaugh called somebody a slut," Maher said, but "98% of Somalian women have" suffered clitoredectomy. "That all seems like a bigger issue than evangelical Christian bakeries refusing to make gay wedding cakes." Maher plunged his sword into cultural relativism. "It's okay to judge that rule of law isn't just different than theocracy, it's better. If you don't see that, you're either a religious fanatic or a masochist, but one thing you certainly are not is a liberal."

Then, of course, on October 3, 2014, Sam Harris, Ben Affleck, Nick Kristof, and Michael Steele appeared on Maher's show. Maher mentioned that on the previous week's show, he had said, "To count yourself as a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles like freedom of speech, freedom to practice any religion you want without fear of violence, freedom to leave a religion, equality for women, equality for minorities including homosexuals. These are liberal principles. But then when you say that in the Muslim world this is lacking, they get upset."

Salon's November 23, 2014 Karen Armstrong article was part of the tsunami of backlash that Maher has had to endure. Salon and Armstrong banged familiar drums, like cultural relativism. Islam is no more violent than any other ideology, Armstrong insisted, and singling Islam out merely allows Westerners to escape criticism. Salon paraphrased Armstrong's position. "When people in the West dismiss violence as a backward byproduct of religion, they're being lazy and self-serving. Blaming religion, Armstrong argues, allows Westerners to ignore the essential role that violence has played in the formation of our own societies – and the essential role that our societies have played in seeding violence abroad."

Armstrong classified Jewish prophets, Jesus and Mohammed in the same category. "The prophets of Israel, for example, were deeply political people. They castigated their rulers for not looking after the poor; they cried out against the system of agrarian injustice. Jesus did the same, Mohammed and the Quran do the same."

Salon asked, "How direct is the link between colonial policies in the Middle East and a terrorist attack in New York or London?" And Armstrong answered, "When I saw the towers fall on September 11, one of the many, many thoughts that went through my head was, 'We helped to do this.'"

Salon asked Armstrong about the October 3 episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher." Armstrong responded "It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps in Europe."

Salon asked "Is Islamophobia today comparable to anti-Semitism?" and Armstrong answered that Islamophobia is "deeply enshrined in Western culture. It goes right back to the Crusades … We've recoiled, quite rightly, from our anti-Semitism, but we still have not recoiled from our Islamophobia."

I fear that casual readers – if there are any left – might stumble across Armstrong's words and think, "Wow. This lady is a scholar. There must be something to what she just said. Bill Maher and Sam Harris are comparable to Nazis, and if we don't suppress criticism of Islam, we'll have another Holocaust on our hands, with Muslims as victims."

That fear bugs me a lot. It bugs me because I respect scholarship. In fact Karen Armstrong is not a scholar, and Bill Maher and Sam Harris are not only not the Nazis here, they are the resistance fighters. It's the Nazis who would, if they could, eliminate Maher and Harris. Of course antisemites consider both Maher and Harris to be Jews, though both are atheists. But that is the least of the reasons why present day Nazis would want to eliminate men who speak publicly and courageously.

The word "scholar" is best applied to people who devote themselves to study of focused material, and achieve certification from others who have studied and gained expertise in that same material. Scholars perform original research. Scholars produce original, peer-reviewed publications. Scholars are circumspect about the public statements they make on which they claim authority. A scholar might say, "My research has been on medieval knighthood; therefore, I am not qualified to speak about soldiers in the Roman Empire." Armstrong does not meet any of these criteria of scholarship. Armstrong was, first, a nun. She left the convent and attempted to embark on an academic career. She tried to write a dissertation about the English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Her dissertation was rejected. She did not receive her desired degree. She left the university.

Armstrong does not perform original research in original languages. She does not publish with university presses. Armstrong is a popularizer, that is, she reads original research by real scholars, digests it, and presents her digested version to the public. There's nothing inherently wrong with being a popularizer. Beloved figures like David Attenborough, Carl Sagan and Ken Burns are popularizers. The problem with Armstrong is her obvious bias. Armstrong has been widely criticized for cherry picking facts about Mohammed in order to depict him as a peaceful, benevolent man. Mohammed massacred an entire Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayza. Armstrong exculpates Mohammed for this massacre, calls the massacred Jews "traitors" who had to be killed, and insists that antisemitism is purely a Western, Christian vice. Armstrong says that Muslims were not anti-Semitic at all until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Armstrong insists that "jihad" "is a cherished spiritual value that, for most Muslims, has no connection with violence." None of these statements stand up to serious scrutiny. See, for example, Andrew Bostom on Islamic antisemitism well before the creation of Israel, and Bernard Lewis on the meaning of the word "jihad."

In a September, 2006 review in the New York Sun, Efraim Karsh, head of Mediterranean Studies at King's College London, and author of "Islamic Imperialism: A History," published by Yale University Press, called Armstrong's biography of Muhammad "an attempt to validate the 'Islam equals peace' thesis" "to whitewash Muhammad's extermination of the Jewish presence in Medina" and "a travesty of the truth." This is just one of many scholarly condemnations of Armstrong's work.

I am not a scholar of Islam or of the Middle East. Unlike Karen Armstrong, I will make no claim to scholarship that I have not earned. I have made my own small contribution to scholarship on the Holocaust. I prepared myself to make this contribution by watching hours of Nazi propaganda films and combing through Nazi propaganda posters. I have listened to Nazis speeches and read the transcripts. I have read other scholars' analyses of these documents. In the Nazi propaganda I have viewed, there is nothing remotely similar to Bill Maher's or Sam Harris' commenting on liberals' selective outrage in relation to Islamic gender apartheid. This is a matter of such importance that I would like to invite Karen Armstrong to support her statement. Ms. Armstrong, can you produce even one Nazi document that is in any way similar to the transcripts of Bill Maher's two episodes of "Real Time with Bill Maher" that you describe as being the precursor to concentration camps? And, since you cannot do this, is it not time for you to retract your statement and apologize to Bill Maher and to Sam Harris, not to mention to victims of Nazism?

I am a devout Catholic. I am allergic to people like Bill Maher and Sam Harris. Men like them insult people like me regularly. I do not defend them because I like them. I do not like them. I defend them because I believe in scholarship, truth and common decency and lies about the Holocaust cause me to feel revulsion.

I'm feeling a temptation right now. I want to say, "Rather, it is people like you, Karen Armstrong, people who whitewash historical massacres of Jews, people who demonize honest debate, who do bring on Holocausts." But I bite my tongue. I resist the temptation to say that, because it is a cheap statement.

We know what created the Nazis. It's not a mystery. It was a perfect storm of several factors that were neutral or merely sub-lethal poisons on their own but when combined brought the world to its knees. A sense of humiliation in the wake of the Versailles treaty set fire to nationalism, atheism, scientism, social Darwinism, and neo-Paganism. No, Karen Armstrong, on no level did public intellectuals like Sam Harris and gadflies like Bill Maher bring on Nazism. It is obscene of you, Karen Armstrong, to say that they did. I've been to Auschwitz, several times. I've met survivors and their rescuers and their children. On their behalf, I want to say how disgusting your lies are, and how badly you owe Nazism's victims, and how badly you owe the truth, an apology. 

This essay appears at American Thinker here

Ho, Ho, Ho. Not. Alone on the Holidays.

Lonely Snowman at the Flatiron Building. Oliver Fluck Photography. 

It begins in October, on my birthday, which is also the anniversary of my brother Phil's death. Then there is Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's.

I exhale only on the first business day after New Year's Day.

These holidays were hard when I was an abused kid in a less than perfect family. These holidays are hard now that I'm a single adult with a less than perfect life.

There was some respite years back when I was a young adult, away from my natal family and before I was hit by the twin meteors of a catastrophic illness and being politically incorrect in academia. These two events made me really poor, and really poor is never really popular.

I remember my 24^th birthday when my tall, adorable, married boss, who, according to the grapevine, had a crush on me, threw a surprise, candlelit birthday party for me above a sheep stall in Nepal. Everyone was there. There were heartfelt toasts with raksi, Nepali moonshine, and yearning glances and furious gossip. One of the great nights of my life. The next day he sent me a poem by runner. Handwritten on that translucent, lumpy, handmade Nepali lokta paper. I still have the poem. If the skinny bastard wants to deny this, I can produce it.

I remember a Thanksgiving party I threw in a closet-sized dorm room in Dom Studencki Piast in 1988 in Poland. Communism was falling. Nobody partied like young Poles on the verge of yet another liberation in their long history of captivity and release. You would not believe how many gorgeous, pale, crazed young Poles, and how much Sodom, Gomorrah, and Gatsby, we packed into that tiny dorm room.

I remember an intimate, Berkeley, Christmas Eve gourmet repast prepared by Simon Stern, now a successful professor, then my fellow grad student, and an atheist of Jewish descent, who celebrated Christmas for me.

Those rare, long-gone days are jewels covered in dust in the bottom of a quilted box way back in storage. They've begun to smell of mold.

Now it takes everything I have to remain upright, functional, and dry-eyed.

My birthday. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Years. Twenty-four hour doses of hell.

I am so alone on these days, and in such overwhelming pain, of a full buffet of flavors – rage, grief, nihilism – that inevitably I have to ask, "Why am I here?"

I used to be Facebook friends with poet Mary Krane Derr. My cherished Facebook friendship with Mary came to an abrupt end on November 30, 2012, when Mary met the fate she long expected. Her body finally quit.

Mary had been born with a chronic health condition and she was always spilling out and spelling out her body's various malfunctions in graphic, hapless, Facebook posts.

Mary rebelled against the concept that the afflicted exist in order to provide spiritual growth to more fortunate people. Mary didn't want to be constantly ill and on the verge of death – and she didn't want to go through this as a learning experience for others. She wanted to be healthy, goddamnit.

Me? I think it's possible. If God is in control, and if the world makes some kind of someday remote sense – very big ifs – if the chaos that we see, if you pull your focus far enough back, resolves itself into an intricate and magnificent design– maybe those of us whose lives pointlessly suck are here to say, however mutely, to those whose lives don't suck – Be generous. Be grateful. Be aware.

The other day I had a strange encounter. A former student approached me. The student described in detail my having helped her years ago. She said that she had been totally alone and that no one else had realized she needed help. No one knew what to do. I alone, she said, had recognized her need, known how to help, and helped.

Here's the thing. To this day, I have no memory of this event. I've struggled to add up her face and her story and my help and I don't remember. And this isn't the first time this has happened to me – it's happened about three times. Someone I can't place and don't remember says that I was there at some key moment and did some key thing that made a positive difference.

So. Maybe that is why I am here. For those key moments when I help a stranger I'll quickly forget. And maybe I have to endure the torture of these autumn holidays, for however long I have left, so that I'm there at those important moments.

I am not always as alone as I am on my birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. I test as pure extrovert with no introvert tendencies. I am compulsively verbal and I like people. I like one-on-one contact and I actually like crowds.

My human contacts, though, are seasonal. I'm not important enough to anyone to be remembered or treated with any tenderness or intimacy on my birthday. I have no family so Thanksgiving is an impossibility. On Christmas I can always pretend to be Jewish and go to the movies and a Chinese restaurant. I've never been either cool or sexy so New Year's is really not that big of a deal; it's just that it is the final punctuation at the end of the Fall suicidal despair marathon.

One of the social gymnastics I must perform is being nice to people on the days after holidays when my acquaintances come trickling back into contact with me. "Hi, Danusha! I just spent 36 hours ensconced in the bosom of my family, cavorting and frolicking, surrounded by my grandma's apple cheeks, my spouse's passionate and affirming embrace, my siblings' caring and sharing, and my children's, niece's, and nephew's adorable, youtube-worthy antics! How about you?"

What I want to say is, "You will be pocked by plagues and wracked by famine, a scorching wind shall smite you, vengeful midgets will trip you up, and an abominable beast with ten heads and a burning eye in the center of each head will rise dripping, from the depth of churning seas turned to blood to obliterate you with his rod of iron."

But usually I just say, "Hey, great!"

On a more serious note.

I have moments of celebration. Last summer I tossed together an essay, "Top Ten Reasons I Am No Longer a Leftist." It took me two days to write. I submitted it to an online publication and it "went viral," or as close to viral as anything I write will ever get. I was satisfied by that, and I shared my sense of satisfaction. Some of my Facebook friends slapped me on the back and said "Way to go" and shared my happy moment.

And my Facebook friends have shared my sadness, too.

I recognize that I'm being a small, miserable putz when I am unable to be happy for them during their moments of celebration. Yes, they have family and I don't. I should not begrudge affirmation. I don't know their secret pains, and none of us knows what the score is going to be at the end.

So, yes. Happy Birthday. Happy Thanksgiving. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. May I be as happy for you as you have been for me. And may the happiness I feel for you expand my soul as the sorrow you have felt for me has expanded yours.

I don't normally close blogs with a list of instructions for any potential readers, but I will close this one with just that. Please don't feel sorry for me, or try to comfort me, or feel obligated to send me an invitation. Being the charity stranger at someone else's family feast is worse than being alone.

I feel compelled to write and to share what I write. I am always eager to write. I always feel high when I write. I always feel better, and better able to face any task, any chore – including surviving the holidays – after I write. And that's why I posted this. 

"Save Send Delete" is Amazing, Uplifting, Absolutely Dazzling

Very, very grateful to "anonymous" for this Amazon review. 

Please consider purchasing "Save Send Delete" as a Christmas gift ... I can send you a signed copy. 

"Danusha Goska is an amazingly talented writer, an exceptionally brave women who has been through incredible trials, absorbing a wealth of knowledge and wisdom that she shares in a thought-provoking, accessible format. Some of the writing is absolutely dazzling.

It is, btw, a thinly-veiled true love story by email correspondence, but she won't share the name of her correspondent (YET – I sure am guessing) I was warned that it would be heavy, and yes – after all, it is about struggles and searching, i.e., life. I think it still would be an inspirational gift for anyone sad or feeling alone ... or, well, for anyone. There is wisdom from the Bible, Talmud, Vedas, Twelve Step, a wide range of readings – but it is not preachy.

There are amazing stories of travel in it, so if you enjoyed Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" you can get that armchair journey without the calories. Some parts reminded me of Anne Lamott in uplifting ways, but without the political rants. Incidentally, this author has been leftwing, rightwing, and everything in between, surviving exotic diseases (and less exotic) and saving lives.

Whether or not one agrees with everything in it (I didn't always), I think it is an important book. There is only a tiny bit of language your great-aunt won't like in 1-2 places towards the end and also some adult themes. (This writer is honest to the core.) This is a book that could foster all kinds of intelligent discussion and debate and should be on book club lists ... Oprah???"