I love my blog! I don’t spend enough time here, but this blog has been with me since 8th grade and has been a good friend. But now I am graduating and moving on to a new blog: Cassie at College.

Have you ever been to any kind of graduation ceremony where they didn’t explain that commencement is about new beginnings and not about closing things down? I think it’s a lie. Or a myth. Or wishful thinking. But I AM starting something new —- my college career.

With high school graduation, I am formally graduating from my first blog Political Teen Tidbits and moving on to my brand new grown-up college blog right over at Cassie At College!

The themes and colors there will change when I get a chance to play with all that, but I will always be me.  Still politically left, still writing about prison and drug reform, and adding in my feelings and experiences moving from the world of high school to the world of college.

Maybe in four years from now, Peanut Butter and Betsy will buy me the “Cassie at Law School” website or “Cassie in the Working World”.  Some day I might even buy my own site!  And of course, one of us needs to reserve PresidentCassie2032.com.

Please visit the new site and follow me on my journey to Princeton.

No, I’m not valedictorian or salutatorian and I don’t get to give a speech at my high school graduation, but I’m still reflecting and considering and getting scared.

When I was a little girl, Pocahontas was my favorite movie. As I approach my high school graduation, there is a part of me that isn’t ready to leave high school — a piece of my heart that wants everything to stay exactly the same. Last night, I was reminded of the old adage that everything always changes. Just as a river changes the lives and the plants it touches, so the river itself changes from moment to moment, and so do our lives.

The real Pocahontas was a young teenager when the English settled at Jamestown and her life and the life of our continent changed forever. The Disney movie places her closer to my age and her questions are similar to my own.

What I love most about rivers is:
You can’t step in the same river twice
The water’s always changing, always flowing
But people, I guess, can’t live like that
We all must pay a price
To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing
What’s around the riverbend
Waiting just around the riverbend
…

I look once more
Just around the riverbend
Beyond the shore
Somewhere past the sea
Don’t know what for…
Why do all my dreams extend
Just around the riverbend?
Just around the riverbend…

Lyrics here

Unlike Pocahontas, I know where I am going. I have no marriage proposals to consider, but I do have a scholarship to Princeton. My dreams await past the shore and into the sea. The river of high school has changed me, as have all the streams and rocks and reeds in my life.

In the past 18 years, my river has included rough and smooth waters and has taken some unexpected turns. I have a sense of what lies just beyond the river bend, and I’m gathering the courage to explore the rest of the twists and turns.

Mother’s Day is important even if you don’t have a mom around.  Maybe it’s even more important and here’s why.

If we are lucky in our lives, a lot of people love us, and some of us in mothering ways.  If we’re smart, we let them.  And if we’re really smart, we thank them.  Our own original moms may have had a choice whether or not to become a mother, especially in the 50 years since the pill came out, but they didn’t choose to mother us specifically unless we’re adopted.  But many of us get mothering love from people who chose us and who love us even when we’re not perfect.

So now I want to thank all of the real life and internet moms and aunts who love me even though they don’t have to.  Thanks to my brother, who was my first substitute mom, and thanks to Hazel’s mom, Agnes, Uncle Dave, Aunt Betsy, Auntie Sue, Mrs. B, Bob, all of the Beach House moms & aunts, and Grandma K.  One day I will be a great mom because of all of you.

An editorial in yesterday’s LaCrosse (Wisconsin) Tribune notes that:

[I]f we continue to let mental illnesses go untreated because of paltry insurance benefits and under-funding of public efforts at mental health care and intervention, we’ll continue to pay an escalating monetary cost — in law enforcement, in prisons, in emergencycare at the county level of people in extremis.

Last week, the congress and Obama administration passed new laws that are intended to bring equality to the treatment of mental health issues.  In a New York Times article, Robert Pear said this:

Insurers cannot set higher co-payments and deductibles or stricter limits on treatment for mental illness and addiction disorders. Nor can they establish separate deductibles for mental health care and for the treatment of physical illnesses.

Such disparities are common in the insurance industry. By sweeping away such restrictions, doctors said, the rules will make it easier for people to obtain treatment for a wide range of conditions, including depression, autism,schizophrenia, eating disorders and alcohol and drug abuse.

Unfortunately, this may not be the case — at least not for everyone. The same New York Times author points out that:

The rules apply to group health insurance plans of the kind typically offered by employers. Federal health officials said the rules did not apply to the individual insurance market, where policies are sold directly to individuals and families. However, some states have laws that apply to the individual market.

Even if the laws apply to individual insurance buyers, it may not be enough. Robert Preidt’s article in BusinessWeek’s Health Day News from yesterday points out:

Fears about losing status at work and about confidentiality are among the main reasons that many American workers are more hesitant to seek treatment for mental health issues than for physical health problems, according to a national survey released this week by the American Psychiatric Association.

Very few of the editorials call for  what I think is equally necessary: equal and adequate treatment of mental illnesses in the prison system and administered by the courts.  Society’s destigmatized acceptance of mental health will take a lot longer.

The Parent Trap

— Flickr/kapungo (Creative Commons)

We love seeing bad parents getting punished. Why don’t we care how that affects their kids—like me?

No, I didn’t choose the photo and no, that is NOT what I look like.

I watched the BCS Rose Bowl last week because UT played and I live in Longhorn Land.  While the rest of my friends were yelling about quarterbacks and kickers and coaches, I focused in on something else entirely.  The TV announcers kept focusing on Heisman Trophy winner Mark Ingram (who probably had a good game, right?), but instead of talking about his running or catching or something relating to football, they kept talking about his dad.  Cool.  His dad must have been some kind of hero?  Maybe single dad who raised him? An astronaut?  A war hero?  No, another football player (OK, so maybe the announcers knew him), but a football player who is now in jail.  And giving his son moral support.  Wha??  Gimme a break!  His dad is in jail.  What else is he going to be doing with his time?

The news articles did the same thing. Here’s one from the Daily News:

Alabama running back Mark Ingram plays in Rose Bowl as father watches from prison

But more than that is on Ingram. His father, a wide receiver for theSuper Bowl XXV-winning Giants, will be watching from behind bars. He is in a federal jail in Queens awaiting sentencing on bank fraud, money laundering and failure to surrender on charges. The sentence reportedly will be meted out tomorrow.

The third charge stems from Ingram Sr.’s failure to report to a federal facility in Kentucky in December of 2008 to begin serving a 92-month sentence on the first two charges.

He risked the longer sentence so he could watch his son’s freshman season and was apprehended in the family’s hometown of Flint, Mich., just hours before Alabama played in the 2009 Sugar Bowl.

“It shows the type of relationship we have, the type of bond that we have as father and son,” Ingram said. “That he’d sacrifice that? Any son has to love that and appreciate that.”

That’s not sacrifice! That’s going to make Mark the younger feel guilty when his dad serves the extra time because he was supporting Mark!  Look ten minutes into the future. Duh!

I know that feel-good stories sell, but let’s focus here.  The dad is in jail because he committed crimes and then ran away from the law.  He is a convict.   He is not there because he was wrongfully imprisoned.  And he’s not there because that’s the best place for him to support his son’s career.

How many words were said about Mark Ingram’s mom?  She was at the game.  I bet she even raised him.  I bet she’s the one he calls when he needs to talk.  I bet she cooks for him when he goes home.

WTF is wrong with these people?

Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors was recently asked to review a book, and because the target audience was people under 30, he asked me if I wanted to take on the project. I agreed, then emailed him and a few other people about how to go about reviewing a book I didn’t like. Taking only some of their advice, this is the result.

Cassie

Generation Change by Jayan Kalathil and Melissa Bolton-Klinger fails in its attempt to encourage the Obama Generation to continue the campaign for change. Published by Skyhorse Publishing and subtitled “150 Ways We Can Change Ourselves, Our Country and Our World” this book is geared toward readers under age 30. The unsigned description on the back cover indicates that the “fun, witty, and optimistic approach [is] sure to attract readers of all ages” but the font size and writing style are more appropriate for middle-class or wealthier sixth graders. If reduced to a size 12 font, with chapter titles at size 14, the book would likely fit into 150 pages rather than the current 210.

Would you pay $12.95 to read a book that tells you to “Stay Young at Heart” and devotes a chapter to flossing? The best suggestion is #5, which encourages us to blog for good. We’re already doing that. “Find the cause that keeps you up at night and get blogging!”

The book consists of an introduction and 150 suggestions, grouped by audience and then topic. The inclusion of websites for nearly all suggestions will make the book obsolete quickly, and following the advice of chapter 17 (Turn Off Technology) make the rest of the suggestions useless. Some of the suggestions seem very reasonable but others are downright silly, especially in relation to other chapters. Some of the recommendations contradict each other: “Invest Responsibly” and “Buy Buy Buy!” are in adjacent chapters. This assumes a certain level of income that is unobtainable to most Americans under 30. Also included are suggestions for living simply, vacation recommendations, and advice for traveling the world. The latter two seem at odds with the first one and would likely make a person less able to invest responsibly.

My biggest complaint about the book relates not to the suggestions themselves, but to the glorification of President Obama. The authors seem not to have noticed that the environmentalists, peace advocates, human rights advocates and many progressives feel betrayed by Obama’s policies in the first year. We’ve become the generation that asks “What Change?”

There are suggestions for honoring the troops and supporting veterans, but very little on ending the wars America is fighting.

Suggestion #85 would have us “Send President Obama a Thank-You Note”. Thanks, but I’d rather write to him in protest.

Unless you’ve already agreed to write a review of this book, don’t waste your time on Generation Change.

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/wrphotograpic/1424263977/

Not rich.  Not yet.  But I do have 1,000,000 hits on my blog!  Yay!

Thanks to David for letting me know.  I never keep track of these things.

That changed last Tuesday.

Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all been President of the United States during my schooling, and all three have addressed the nation’s students in the first weeks of school. Clips of these addresses were shown on Channel One, or the existence of the speeches was mentioned in news stories. There was never any controversy.

That changed this September.

This August, we were warned that the President was scheduled to speak to students across the nation, and the news media was full of dire predictions of this unprecedented address. We were originally asked to have our parents sign a form saying that we could listen to the fifteen minute national pep rally for paying attention and focusing on our studies, with the option of spending that time in another room. Then the speech was canceled except in U.S. government classes. Our infantile minds were apparently not prepared to absorb such concepts as hard work and setting goals.

image via Fort Hood Sentinel

And yet, we were apparently sufficiently mature to watch last week’s memorial service from Fort Hood. Without warning and without parental permission, this solemn service and the words of the President and several reverends were shown school-wide, in class.

Tuesday’s memorial honored the fallen soldiers who died here in Texas, those killed by one of their own, a member of the Fort Hood family. Perhaps seeing the memorial was appropriate, but not without any prior indication that it would be shown.

In many ways I am different from my classmates, but I was far more prepared for hearing the President’s scholastic encouragement than for seeing the empty boots of fallen soldiers and hearing the roll-call and the sound of taps. My brother wears the same uniform as the grieving soldiers, and he has served at Fort Hood. I lived with him at Fort Hood during one of his trainings for his career as an army truck mechanic. The buildings in the background of the live shots were familiar to me, and I imagined that afternoon what it would be like to attend a memorial for my own brother. I was distraught Tuesday and am still emotional as I think back. I hope he remains alive well into his 90s, and I am more than resigned to grieve for him when I reach ninety myself.

Most of Fort Hood’s dead are honored with ceremonies similar to the service last week. The rituals are the same though the crowds are much smaller. The news doesn’t tell us about the 70 Fort Hood soldiers who committed suicide in the first half of 2009. We have not seen military funerals for any of the 5000 military service members killed in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan since I learned to write my name in cursive. Our morning announcements don’t indicate the number of those forever wounded in body or soul in that time. And we have certainly seen no mention of Afghan or Iraqi civilians killed by our military since my adult teeth started coming in.

Funerals and memorial services can be very traumatic, and the sight of empty combat boots is intended to sadden us. Many of my classmates have never been to a funeral, and fewer still have family members serving in the armed forces. Almost none have a family member deployed in a war zone. Our first military funeral should not have come unannounced and unanticipated.

image via CBC

Do you know this Dixie Chicks song? The girl who is mourning the dead soldier (from the Vietnam War) is mourning alone under the stands at a HS football game, and no one even knows that she knew him, that she fell in love with him.

President Obama and everyone else has sent their sympathies to the families of all of the people who were killed yesterday here in Texas, but I wonder if there’s anyone else mourning who is just crying by themselves under the stands.

It’s a real tragedy. I don’t think we understand enough about what happened, but we know enough that it’s time to end all of the wars.

Lyrics:

“Travelin’ Soldier”

Two days past eighteen
He was waiting for the bus in his army green
Sat down in a booth in a cafe there
Gave his order to a girl with a bow in her hair
He’s a little shy so she gives him a smile
And he said would you mind sittin’ down for a while
And talking to me,
I’m feeling a little low
She said I’m off in an hour and I know where we can go

So they went down and they sat on the pier
He said I bet you got a boyfriend but I don’t care
I got no one to send a letter to
Would you mind if I sent one back here to you

Chorus: I cried
Never gonna hold the hand of another guy
Too young for him they told her
Waitin’ for the love of a travelin’ soldier
Our love will never end
Waitin’ for the soldier to come back again
Never more to be alone when the letter said
A soldier’s coming home

So the letters came from an army camp
In California then Vietnam
And he told her of his heart
It might be love and all of the things he was so scared of
He said when it’s getting kinda rough over here
I think of that day sittin’ down at the pier
And I close my eyes and see your pretty smile
Don’t worry but I won’t be able to write for awhile

[Chorus]

One Friday night at a football game
The Lord’s Prayer said and the Anthem sang
A man said folks would you bow your heads
For a list of local Vietnam dead
Crying all alone under the stands
Was a piccolo player in the marching band
And one name read but nobody really cared
But a pretty little girl with a bow in her hair

[Chorus x2]

A Florida Culture-War Circus Over Rifqa Bary

By TIM PADGETT / MIAMI Monday, Aug. 24, 2009

Rifqa Bary, 17, reads a Bible during her court proceedings in Orlando, Fla., on Aug. 21, 2009

Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda / Orlando Sentinel / Landov

Florida has a knack for turning family dysfunction into national spectacle. Ten years ago it gave us the Elian Gonzalez mess; five years later came the Terri Schiavo debacle. Now we have a new domestic dispute that threatens to become another culture-war circus, complete with a clash-of-religions angle to boot: the battle for Rifqa Bary, a 17-year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio, who ran away to an Evangelical church in Orlando, Fla., because, she claims, her Sri Lankan Muslim family has threatened to kill her for recently converting to Christianity.

The Orlando lawyer who claims to represent Rifqa, conservative activist John Stemberger, head of the Florida Family Policy Council (which fought in 2005 to keep Terri Schiavo on life support), last week wrote in a petition to keep the girl in Florida that she “is in imminent threat of harm from the extreme radical Muslim community in her hometown of Columbus.” He warned that one of the world’s largest “cells of al-Qaeda operatives” once worked from a Columbus mosque the Barys have attended.

The saga began in mid-July when Rifqa, after a dispute with her parents, bolted from her home and rode a bus to Orlando. There she took refuge with the Rev. Blake Lorenz, the pastor of a conservative Christian congregation, the Global Revolution Church, and his wife Beverly, whom the cheerleader and honor student had met on Facebook. Almost three weeks later, on Aug. 6, the Lorenzes finally let authorities and Rifqa’s frantic parents know the girl was with them. Then, a few days later, Rifqa dropped a bombshell to an Orlando television station: she had run away, she claimed, because her family, angry about her conversion to Christianity, had “threatened to kill me.”

After its probe of the situation this month, Florida’s Department of Children and Family Services took Rifqa from the Lorenzes and placed her in foster care. At a hearing in Orlando on Aug. 21, a judge ruled that she could remain in Florida until he decides, probably at a later hearing slated for Sept. 3, where she should ultimately go.

Court Expected to Send Runaway Teen Home Despite Muslim Honor Killing Fears

Personally, I think they are exploiting it.  This girl’s story may be good for a newspaper for judges and social workers, but it shouldn’t be on Fox News or in Time Magazine.

I was sorry to hear about your mom’s arrest and plea for drug use and selling drugs.  I was even more sorry that it’s in the newspapers and on the blogs, and that people are making fun of her.

I am around your age (nearly 18) and my mom has been in jail for almost eight years on drug charges, so I know some of what you are going through.

I am also completely a busybody and am going to use this blog post to give both of you some advice.

1. Go to Alateen.  Or ACOA.  Or someplace that’s NOT your church where you can learn about addicts and addiction how none of this is your fault and that you can’t cure your mom.  Also, Mercede, if there’s a support group in your town or in your HS for kids who have a parent in prison, GO!
2. Mercede, I don’t know who you are living with these days, but my brother became my guardian when he was 18, and he was way too young.  And that’s without being a father himself or having reporters and photographers following him around.  I hope that you stay with a family, a whole, real family, at least until you finish HS.
3. You will find out really soon who your real friends are and who thinks a lot less of you because your mom is in jail.  Sometimes even good friends can be insensitive, but at least they still like you for who YOU are.  Some kids are incredibly creepy and think it’s cool to know someone who knows someone in jail.  Stay away from them.  Same thing with overly curious adults.
4. People will ask you what they can do to help.  It’s a dumb question, but if they ask twice, tell them to do something to improve life for prisoners and provide treatment for addicts.  You may even want to join organizations that encourage treatment instead of prison for addicts.
5. Stand up for your mom. Make sure that the lawyers and guardians and corrections people all know that someone is watching and that someone cares. I don’t visit anymore, but I do have an adult in my life who communicates with my mom and with the prison.
6. Because your mom is an addict like my mom, and because we watched our moms use drugs instead of facing problems head-on, all three of us can become an addict more easily than most people.  So learn what the signs are, and be careful, and watch out for each other.

We all need to work on making this country less inclined to incarcerate addicts and more inclined to help them find treatment.  And that starts with making sure that drug use is not a crime.  Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol and it’s not working for drugs.

I hope you do go to Alateen and counseling and get all the help you need to not have to ride your mother’s roller coaster addiction.  You didn’t cause it and you can’t cure it, but you can learn healthy ways to get through the next few years.

Your friend,

Cassie

I don’t have a view of the same beach from here, but it’s a nice place and we can hang out until Peanut Butter gets the electricity turned back on over at Relaxed Politics.

No dancing on the tables or breaking stuff!

• That’s NOT what he was looking at. Watch the whole video.

US Magazine says this:

Pictures can be deceiving.

Yesterday, a photo surfaced of President Barack Obama seemingly checking out the backside of a 17-year-old junior delegate at the G-8 summit in Italy.

But new video tells a different story.

See Obama’s “Just Like Us” moments.

It appears Obama wasn’t sneaking a peak; instead, he was just helping another young delegate down the stairs.

But French president Nicholas Sarkozy’s intentions aren’t as clear.

The Head of State — who’s married to former model Carla Bruni — keeps his face drawn toward the 17-year-old.

• I am a 17 year old girl and I know that if I wear sexy clothes and walk a certain way, MOST men will look at me. It’s the reason I wear short skirts some times and don’t wear them other days. So what if he DID look? Who cares? It’s not like she had an ID out that showed her age.

• Girls and women have the power to dress the way we want to dress in the United States. And be who we want to be. We don’t all need image consultants, and we don’t all mind if men look at us when we walk past.

Tex & I managed to stay silent for the entire minute of silence, but, o be perfectly fair, no one else at tonight’s Austin vigil was silent either.

Most of the 700+ people who protested with candles were Iranian, and they all seemed to know each other.  Between me and Betsy, we knew three other people, but everyone was there for peaceful purposes.  In addition to the protesters, there were police officers on bicycles and a few regular joggers and bicycle riders who happened to be using the same bridge.

I spoke with a 19-yr-old student who has family in the South of Iran and a grandmother in Teheran.  She says that her grandmother hasn’t left her apartment at all in the past 10 days, but she feels safe living on the 19th floor of a large apartment building.

Tex spoke with a family that was in Iran in 1977-79 and the mom left with her infant daughter four days before Iranians took over the U.S. Embassy there.  The whole family are dual citizens and want their votes counted in both countries.

Austin has six TV stations, and five of them had satellite trucks at the vigil.  There were also print reporters and a few radio stations.

We walked back to the parking lot with a family from Iran, and the father of the family said that he missed Wednesday’s rally but was glad that he made it tonight.  He said that he’d have to stay better tuned in because we’ll be needing more vigils and protests, but I sincerely hope that we don’t need any more.