Riley Matthew Moscatel came out as transgender in 11th grade English class at Bucks County Technical High School this past spring. From all reports, his transition had gone well at school.
Everyone supported him. Everyone loved Riley. He was everyone’s best friend.
–Kate Cimino, a friend
Other friends noted that Riley suffered from depression in the past but appeared to have improved. But, they say, he had become increasingly uncomfortable with his body.
Riley uploaded a message to his Instagram account on Monday.
My mirror reflects Jessica, my heart and mind say Riley … You see me as the happiest person in school, I’m a prisoner of my own body …
hello cruel world. take that. and that. and that. leftists look injustice in the eye then look for a stick to poke it with, find lonely leaves of grass, and injustice blinks or maybe winks.
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”
by the end of 1877’s Virgin Soil, Turgenev’s sixth, final, and longest novel, Nejdanov has taken his own life, unwilling to go to prison in Siberia for a cause that has taken everything from him and will not, in his own mind, accept his desire for the beautiful, culminating, like Whitman, in a desire to write poems. ironically, by dying, his most stalwart comrade, the hopelessly in love Mashurina, is deprived of the one thing, Nejdanov, to which she is devoted other than the revolution. desperate for any remembrance of Nejdanov, Mashurina spends a few moments at the end with the blowhard but equally lonely socialist hanger-on Paklin. Paklin, desperate for conversation and relevance, tosses out stupid questions. Mashurina slams the door:
Paklin pulled himself up.
“Why, of course … do have some more tea.”
But Mashurina fixed her dark eyes upon him and said pensively:
“You don’t happen to have any letter of Nejdanov’s … or his photograph?”
“I have a photograph and quite a good one too. I believe it’s in the table drawer. I’ll get it in a minute.”
He began rummaging about in the drawer, while Snandulia went up to Mashurina and with a long, intent look full of sympathy, clasped her hand like a comrade.
“Here it is!” Paklin exclaimed and handed her the photograph.
Mashurina thrust it into her pocket quickly, scarcely glancing at it, and without a word of thanks, flushing bright red, she put on her hat and made for the door.
“Are you going?” Paklin asked. “Where do you live? You might tell me that at any rate.”
“Wherever I happen to be.”
“I understand. You don’t want me to know. Tell me at least, are you still working under Vassily Nikolaevitch?”
“What does it matter to you?” “Or someone else, perhaps Sidor Sidoritch?” Mashurina did not reply.
“Or is your director some anonymous person?” Mashurina had already stepped across the threshold. “Perhaps it is someone anonymous!”
She slammed the door.
Paklin stood for a long time motionless before this closed door.
“Anonymous Russia!” he said at last.
in some ways, we all have had the door slammed in our face and are left anonymous. more sadly than Mashurina, who at least was on the clearly ascending side of history, we are more like the pathetic Paklin, trying to piece together our own relevance. the oppressors are desperate too, to make us feel that we are on the descending side of history, and oh how it feels that they are right when that door slams yet again.
perhaps tiny is the measure of your impact after so much dedication and sacrifice. perhaps it is a lost job. perhaps it is a beating by yet another dirtbag you feel forced to tolerate because you have no place else to go (you can leave, we will try to help). perhaps it is deep loneliness at the loss of someone good that you loved so much and will never see again. perhaps self-medication has become part of your problem, and those who love you couldn’t take it anymore.
maybe you pull yourself up, and try to reach out:
perhaps it is “just” a diary that few read. perhaps it is a diary that many read but which is soon lost in the vapors before discouraging objective conditions. perhaps it is … you know, and maybe no one else does, your personal objective conditions and how you feel standing before a lifetime of closed doors of one kind or another.
“O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless-of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light-of the objects mean-of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all-of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest-with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good amid these, O me, O life?”
sometimes all you can do is get up in the morning.
“My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”
but please do get up in the morning. please. we love and need you tender comrade.
we are penniless. we are broken. we are shattered. children shot. bombs are bursting on our homes. but we shall not be defeated.
Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men-go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families-re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He shall know that the ground is already plow’d and manured; others may not know it, but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust shall master the trust of everything he touches-and shall master all attachment.
This time of year is often a sad one for transgender people. Family time hits people hard if they have been rejected by their families. And the reminders that it should be family time are unceasing.
But it can be hard even for those who have supportive families and friends. It was apparently too hard for a Wisconsin 14 year-old.
Alexis “Lexi” Lopez-Brandies recently asked to be called Landon. That makes this a tough article to write because all of the reports refer to the Horlick High School freshman as a girl and use female pronouns…so much so that when I heard that Lopez was transgender, I was unsure what direction of change Landon was pursuing.
William Horlick High School is in the city of Racine, Wisconsin, has about 2100 students and 200 faculty. And apparently none of them knew how the bullying Lopez was enduring was affecting him.
Landon took his own life last Sunday morning. Landon’s parents don’t lay all the blame at the feet of the bullying, saying that Landon also suffered from severe depression.
I thought that I was done with it, I really did! I was really better the past few days. But depression has set in again. I hate it! I want to be normal, get a job (all of you know that I do have a brilliant side), and get back with my family.
Not likely. My garden is ready to pick, and I have not the energy to do anything to make it so. Melancholia is a curse that I have lived with, off and on, for half a century now. For a couple of weeks I was over it, but that was just because of a fantasy.
Now, never concern yourselves that I will do anything rash. I will live until I die, and will not die from my own hand.
Tonight Eastern Standard Time will begin. Again. And that, around here, is the dreaded beginning of horrible Winter. This, after all, is Upstate New York. I’m nestled against the Massachusetts border. And the beginning of Eastern Standard Time fills me with utter dread.
What stands between me and actual, below zero winter? First, deer hunting season. A very few hunters, fewer by far than a decade ago, will stagger drunkenly into the woods before dawn and send the grotesquely overpopulated deer into an unparalleled panic and frenzy. They’re already crazy because they’re in rut. The deer will then run into the roads and into cars. Why don’t they avoid the cars? Two reasons: first, they think the roads are made of ice, so they’re afraid of running on them. And second, there really is a reason for the phrase “a deer in the headlights.” This doesn’t begin explain why deer run into the sides of passing cars. And it doesn’t explain why the shoulders of all of the roads are filled with deer eyes reflecting headlights and waiting for an unfortunate moment to run into the road.
Back in May the European Central Bank created a massive $1 Trillion bailout package for the countries on the fringe of Europe that were struggling with rising interest rates on their debts.
Despite the enormous bailout package, interest rates for the PIIGS countries just hit new records today.
Irish and Portuguese government bonds fell, pushing the yields on 10-year securities to records versus benchmark German bunds, on concern European banks are vulnerable to losses on their holdings of so-called peripheral euro-region debt.
Spain’s debt isn’t doing much better.
This is particularly depressing for Ireland since it has already enacted the draconian austerity measures that the financial markets demanded. In fact, all of the European nations in question have implemented austerity measures, and yet the financial markets continue to punish them.
Ireland and Portugal are the big losers for today, but Greece is still leading the pack towards self-destruction.
“Greece is insolvent,” Bosomworth, Munich-based head of portfolio management at Pimco, which oversees the world’s largest bond fund, said in a telephone interview today. “I see it as being quite a substantial risk that Greece eventually defaults or restructures.”
One Trillion dollars in bailouts and we are back where we started four months ago. Why is that?
Three years ago this past Saturday the economic crisis struck.
That’s why the comments by Alan Greenspan on the very same day on Meet the Press are worth noting.
“There is no doubt that the federal funds rate can be fixed at what the Fed wants it to be but which the government has no control over is long-term interest rates and long-term interest rates are what make the economy move. And if this budget problem eventually merges to the point where it begins to become very toxic, it will be reflected in rising long-term interest rates, rising mortgage rates, lower housing. At the moment there is no sign of that because the financial system is broke and you can not have inflation if the financial system is not working.”
The financial system is still broken three years later!?! Think about that for a moment. We’ve thrown trillions of dollars at the financial system and we’ve fixed nothing.
The obvious conclusion from this reality is that we haven’t addressed the real causes of the crisis, and instead are only dealing with symptoms. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent “unusually uncertain” comments before Congress proves that the so-called experts simply don’t understand what the problem is.
Only very rarely has a person to the same extent, ….. captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.
Fresh off of letting the former Minerals Management Services oil bomb a third of our nation’s seafood supply from the Gulf of Mexico into oblivion through regulatory neglect, and letting the EPA perform the world’s largest biology experiment with Corexit spraying,
He’s come up with a great new manufacturing stimulus program to end our nation’s economic malaise of millions of unemployed.
And Dept of Defense Secretary Gates is enthusiastic, saying it will “build high walls around a smaller yard” by narrowing in on the nation’s “crown jewels.”
What could this be ? Is it a bird, is it a plane, no, it’s more than that, it’s
India, which currently is seeking 126 fighter-jets worth over $10 billion, 10 large transport aircraft worth $6 billion, and other multi-billion dollar defense sales, could be among the possible beneficiaries. Allies seeking advanced U.S. weaponry and equipment, who now often buy elsewhere due to the cumbersome U.S. approval process, would draw immediate benefit from the reforms, U.S. officials said.
Isn’t this the world’s largest multicultural Asian democracy which currently is embroiled with a little misunderstanding with its Muslim neighbor, Pakistan, which we just happen to be giving money to with one hand, and droning with the other ?
Although a “Democrat” in the House, Berman, is writing a version of the bill, others are also expressing enthusiasm for their kind of stimulating one stop shopping Mall of the Americas experience. And there will be seasonal sales, and back to school specials, as the boring old technology is rotated to the clearance racks and the new, stylish and advanced technology is put on the front of the aisles.
Rep. Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., represents a district with aerospace and other manufacturers, and said reform is needed for the survival of U.S. manufacturing.
“We can begin to manufacture our way out of this recession by reforming our export controls,” Manzullo said in a speech at the American Enterprises Institute, a conservative think tank.
Okay, they’re a little bit worried about who might get the clearance rack weapontry items, but not too much.
Ah, streamlining ! Transparency ! Hope and Change !
Your kid didn’t need that publik skoolun fer kollage anyway. Call your local recruitment office now and reserve him or her a space for 2015. They’ll leave the lights on for ya.
Robert Samuelson sez this depression recession is “egalitarian.”
It has been the most egalitarian of all the 11 recessions since World War II. In various ways, it has touched every social class through job loss, pay cuts, depressed home values, shrunken stock portfolios, eroded retirement savings, grown children returning home-and anxiety about all of the above.
This graph of unemployment by income level sure the fuck doesn’t look “egalitarian:”
And I say the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father.
The Conspiracy of the Elite has always been able to throw the kill switch. It’s what they do. They kill whatever stands in their way. Whether it is the resistance to their domination by the common man. Or a “Leader” who doesn’t want to go along with their agenda of world domination. Or the Earth herself who does not yield to their rape and pillage without a fight. This Elite of banksters, financiers, industrialists, military professionals and philosophers of elite exceptionalism gather under names like Bilderberg, Trilateral, CFR, G8 and others in secret and public places always protected by a phalanx of kill switch security armed to euthanize the prying eyes of the public and those brave enough to resist.
To deny this conspiracy of the elite is to deny the earth orbits the sun or the tides are effected by the moon. To deny an elite gathers in secret to decide the fate of nations or the value of money or to plan war and recession is to deny we need water and air to survive. It is a truth which is self-evident.
Riley Matthew Moscatel came out as transgender in 11th grade English class at Bucks County Technical High School this past spring. From all reports, his transition had gone well at school.
Alexis “Lexi” Lopez-Brandies recently asked to be called Landon. That makes this a tough article to write because all of the reports refer to the Horlick High School freshman as a girl and use female pronouns…so much so that when I heard that Lopez was transgender, I was unsure what direction of change Landon was pursuing.
