Beth's Everything Blog

Archive for March, 2010

What has happened to our collective great moral conscience? Our state social services are in line for deep, painful cuts to some to the poorest of us all. Yet the Senate Ways and Means Committee and House appropriations Committee have cut $12 million in the Children’s Initiative Fund (CIF) funding (24%) which serves nearly one half of our state’s children. CIF serves Children’s Mental Health, Smart Start, Family Preservation, Early Childhood and Autism Grants, Early Head Start and Child Care Quality Initiatives and others.

Worse still, legislators are proposing big cuts to the school budget. House Bill 2739 proposes reducing general state aid and supplemental general state aid to schools by almost $200 million. Our wonderful Kansas grade, middle and high schools are at great risk. Are we really going to let this happen?

Kansas, along with many other states, was seriously ill prepared for the economic downturn. Our legislators didn’t set aside enough money to cover the shortfall. Decrease in property values made for decrease in property taxes. The problem now is how to deal with the budget crisis. Kansas needs $467 million to balance the budget for fiscal year 2010-2011 but let’s not do it at the expense of our children’s future.

I favor business and am not in favor of raising taxes but when the stakes are this high, it must be a consideration. Why can’t our legislators put aside petty disagreements and come up with a plan where everybody wins?

House Bill 2739 states that any school district with the amount per pupil less than the state average may call an election to raise mill levy. The bill reduces base state aid per pupil to $4,005. That is more than $ 1000 less than the previous year with the result that teachers will be fired, classroom sizes will increase, music and athletics will be cut, libraries won’t be able to buy new books, teacher’s pay will be reduced and some schools may close.

Because of less federal aid, Kansas’s schools must operate more efficiently. I believe enough can be done to offset the loss of federal money and without cutting needed programs. The House appropriations Committee made a recommendation to “restore $6.9 million in welfare aid to the developmentally and physically disabled and reduce state government payroll by 5% through mandatory furloughs and a 1% across-the-board cut to agency operating budgets (except K-12, colleges, corrections, and human service caseloads.) The plan doesn’t raise taxes and leaves a $312 million ending balance.”

Lets ask more parents to volunteer their time in classrooms to aid teachers.

Maybe large corporations can help bear the cost of saving our kids.

Think about raising money in our own school districts.

Most importantly, let’s get over the great ideological “growth of government” divide.

Our children need us to assure them a bright and healthy future.

At Last: Daffodils

Twenty years ago, I wrote an article about a retreat sponsored by The Missouri Division of Family Services for foster children, aged 14 to 18. The purpose of the retreat was to help DFS learn, understand, and deal more effectively with the problems of foster children. The kids were encouraged not to hold back, to be honest and “tell it like it is.” These are excerpts from that retreat followed by an up to date response from my expert.

The Coordinator of the program, warned me ahead of time that the children were angry, hurt and in pain.

I had been asked to appear on a panel made up of a juvenile judge from Memphis, Missouri, a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) from St. Louis and a juvenile officer from St. Louis County, all really neat people and dedicated enough to drive many miles in the pouring rain to be there.

After lunch, we found ourselves facing fifty quiet, polite, attentive young people.  We took a few minutes to explain our roles in the system and then asked the children if they had any questions.

It started off calmly. A tall, good looking fellow about 17 years old stood up and said, “I’ll like to ask the judge why is it that judges never listens to the kid?”

Fifty pairs of serious eyes shifted from the boy to the judge.

He said he couldn’t answer without knowing more of the circumstances and could the boy be more specific?

He could. His father was an alcoholic that had beaten the boy for as long as the boy could remember. “But what’s worse is I have two little sisters.”  His eyes filled with tears. His father had been both physically and sexually abusive to them. As he told his story, his voice rose with anger and anguish.

“So when I tried to tell the judge that if he sent my little sisters home, that my old man would just keep on abusing them, the judge sat there and diddled with his pen, tapping out some dumb rhythm, rolling his eyes up. And you know what he did?” the boy was now sobbing without shame. “He didn’t pay no attention to one thing I said. He sent me to a foster home and sent those two little girls HOME to be beaten up on or worse.”

The room was dead quiet. Slowly, everyone looked back to the judge.

The judge said something to the effect that often, one parent or the other requested that the child not be allowed to testify.

“Bull . . . .!” replied the boy.

We on the panel now knew it was going to be a long two hours.

A pretty girl of fifteen stood up. She and her group had some questions.

“A lot of us,” she said, “have wanted desperately to be adopted, to have real families of our own, but we can never be adopted if our parents won’t sign the papers. Right?

They don’t want us but they won’t sign no papers. How come you can’t fix that?”

“Another thing. When I was taken out of my home, I signed a contract with the judge and DFS. The judge told me if I did everything exactly like the contract said for six months, they would find me a good placement. Well, I did every little thing, Judge,” she said defiantly, “but after six months, they told me they didn’t have a good placement or any placement.” Her voice rose. “So you know what?” Her face was red and fighting back tears. “They lied. That Judge and the DFS worker lied.”

The juvenile officer tried to explain that they may not have had a good placement available right at that time but she answered, “Then they shouldn’t have promised.”

One blond child told how she’d been sexually abused. She went to the police and suffered the embarrassment of explaining in detail what had happened to her. She answered all of the policemen’s probing and intimate questions and then, “Guess what?” she said. “They made ME take a lie detector test. How come they didn’t make HIM take a lie detector test? Well, I know why. ‘Cause they didn’t believe me. That’s why.”

The Judge said that lie detector tests are inadmissible as evidence in court.

“Then why did they make ME take it? That bastard is still out running around and he has a three year old daughter. What do you think is going to happen to her?”

I spoke up to explain that a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) only has one case and that we are in constant contact with ‘our child’ to represent his or her best interest and to keep the court well informed regarding the case. “If you don’t have a CASA, go to your GAL attorney or your DFS worker for help or write a letter to your judge. He’ll listen.”

A girl rose. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, “ she said, “but I tried that. I told my DFS worker and my legal aid attorney that the man who was then my foster father was sexually abusing me. They nodded and patted me on the back and promised to do something. That was months ago and I’m not in that home no more but he is still a foster parent.”

Finally, a little dark curly-headed girl sobbed out her story of lifelong parental molestation. “We kids didn’t do nothing but we got taken away from our Momma and our school and our friends and HE still lives with Momma and has had two more baby girls for him to play with. What kind of law is that?”  She dropped her tear-streaked face into her hands and slowly sat down.

So what’s changed? I asked my expert, Lynn Barnett, LMSW, who has had much experience in this area.

Lynn’s response:  “The biggest change is that foster parents must now take a number of classes or workshops over the course of a year. 30 hours of training are required and deal with everything from forming bonds and attachment to appropriate discipline for teens.  It is very comprehensive training.

Even more training is required of foster parents who take children with intense behavior problems and/or severe medical issues. Each foster parent must take an intensive refresher course each year.  The trainings must be approved by the state agency with which the family contracts.  I have attended excellent trainings for foster families in Missouri and in Kansas as well.

Foster parents must now provide the agency with credible references and undergo federal background checks and fingerprinting.  No one with a history of abuse and/or a  felony conviction is permitted to become a foster parent. If a child reports abuse, the investigators respond immediately. If the charge is reliable, the child is instantly removed and the home closed for good.

Family preservation services are much improved Families now have a chance to develop skills and stay together with support from the community mental health system.  Social workers connect the family to vital community resources that help with things like utilities, bus passes and food pantries.

In the 70′s and 80′s, state agencies wanted to preserve their foster home beds by forbidding foster parents from adopting their foster children.  That is no longer true. Foster parents can now choose to adopt foster children provided the birth parents have had their rights terminated. This is a big change.

Kids today don’t have to move from home to home, thus losing those important “attachments” they develop.  Fewer moves mean healthier kids.

I realize that some teens believe no one is listening to them but consider this. Those same youngsters have spent a lot of energy messing up their lives, defying authority, getting kicked out of school or making bad grades.  The kids who are obeying the foster home rules, help out around the house, make decent grades, and do their best to get along in the system are most often heard by their case managers, attorneys, CASAs and judges.

One teenager at the retreat was so upset about a sibling being left with the abusive father. While that has not ended altogether, it happens much less often.  If one child is taken from the home due to abuse, most often, they all are. In cases where children could be endangered, home witnesses and therapists provide assessments and act appropriately.

Of course there are a few foster families that do it ‘for the money’ but in Missouri and to a lesser degree Kansas, it doesn’t pay all that well.  Foster homes that take  ‘high needs’ or ‘intensive rate’ kids deserve and receive more; as much as $45 to $64 a day.

Space prevents me from going into more detail but if you have questions or comments, we’d be glad to hear from you.”

As soon as they were old enough to leave the yard, we told the children to come when they heard the bell.  Mounted conveniently outside the kitchen door, it had a loud, commanding ring that could be heard as far as the elementary school a mile or so away.

We lived in a quiet neighborhood. The firemen across the street never sounded their sirens after ten at night or before six in the morning.  Most of the families who lived in the five houses on our block included three children or more. On the block just north of us lived a couple and their passel of kids  in an old colonial house with a barn and horses out back.  Beyond the tall row of cedar trees to the west stood a hovel that looked like it might collapse at any moment. A young couple lived there with their rag tag children (we never knew exactly how many).  Even though those kids wore dirty, torn clothes and often no shoes, we could hear their jubilant voices at play. During good weather or bad, our children had a plentiful supply of  playmates.

The timbre of our particular bell rang so deep and vibrant that our children could hear it from inside any neighbor’s house. Everyone in the area recognized that sound. We tried to be judicious about its use, usually for meals, but occasionally for something else. Within minutes, our three (and sometimes their friends) magically appeared.

No one knows when bells were invented but they can be found in the early Chinese dynasties. The bible speaks of bells in Exodus  (28:34). “They also made bells of pure gold” (and sewed them) on the lower hem of [Aaron’s] robe” so that he could be heard and people would know that he was still alive.

It didn’t take long for priests and ministers to figure out that bells hung in church belfries would call people to pray. Farmers kept track of their milk cows and goats by tying a bell around their necks and volunteer fireman in small towns responded quickly to the sound of the firehouse bell.

There are numerous bell ringing societies. One is the Surrey Association of Church Bell Ringers. Most anyone can learn to ring bells even though it is an art.  If you have a yen for learning how to ring a church bell and you have the time and the patience, The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers is a good place to start.

Many superstitions surround the sounds of bells. They were thought to drive evil spirits away, the larger the bell the better. Some believe that every time a bell rings a new angel has received his wings.  Others think it is an ill omen, or that it eases child birth or ends bad weather.

For us, the bell worked miracles. Our children always came home safe and sound.

by Pinky Kase

Some times strange theories and solutions come to light in the art world.  Surely there should be no new evidence or conclusions to be drawn about Vincent van Gogh’s ear.  The ear was severed on Christmas Eve in 1888 and presented to a whore named Rachel as a rather macabre early Christmas gift.  It was definitely van Gogh’s ear or the better part of it. The authorities had full knowledge of the presenter since he frequently wandered around the town of Arles drunk or messianic or crazy.  This was not a time in recent history that understanding and kindness were visited on people whose actions were less than normal.  Rachel passed out upon unwrapping her gift and the police went in search of van Gogh, since this was an incident deemed unbearable and indecent by the citizens of Arles.  They found him in his house in bed copiously bleeding, semi-conscious and minus the aforementioned ear.  The Yellow House, so named because it was painted yellow, was shared by Vincent and his fellow painter Paul  Gauguin, who testified that van Gogh had cut off his ear during a  fit.  Gauguin then sent a telegram to van Gogh’s brother advising him that he should come at once.  At this point Gauguin boarded a train to Paris and never returned to Arles.

Theo, Vincent’s brother, came immediately and after a short time in the hospital van Gogh was persuaded to enter an insane asylum in Saint Remy where he produced some of the most significant paintings of his career.  There was Starry Night and Cypresses and in 1889 his Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe.  One year later van Gogh committed suicide and his ear has managed to increase his fame, serving to recreate him as a love starved genius betrayed and rejected by both Rachel and the world.  His art has become reknown as a symbol of one of the greatest efforts of modern art.  There is hardly anyone who does not recognize and admire his art.  An exhibition of his work delights his audience and brings thousands to museums and exhibitions throughout the world.

That is the way the story was told for over a century, until two reputable German academics, Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans, published their recent book — “Van Gogh’s Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence”. Vincent had a desperate dream of living and working with a community of working artists and Theo practically bribed Gauguin to join Vincent in his fantasy.  And so here there were the two of them living together and philosophizing about art. No two artists could be as diametrically opposed in their plans and desires.  Vincent obsessed about the warmth of the lush southern Arles, and he wished to abandon all the failures and disappointments he had faced up to this time.  He was also hoping to improve both his sex life and his spiritual life; he seemed to imagine Arles as a place of beautiful pious prostitutes.  In a way he wanted his paintings to be “spermatic”, explosions of a sexual vitality that he could rarely achieve in life.  Now let us compare his desires with those of Gauguin, who by all accounts was tough, brutal, crude, a user and abuser of women.  At first the two managed to get along   despite their vast differences in opposed personalities.  But then reality seems to have set in on the night of December 23rd when Gauguin tore out of the house after a huge quarrel.  Van Gogh had been talking him to death about all the things that beleaguered him.
As he walked down the street he hear someone call his name.  It was Van Gogh gesturing wildly with a razor in his hand.  Here the revisionist story of the German historians takes over.  Gauguin was an expert fencer and had his foils with him in Arles.  It would have been sensible to carry his sword with him late at night since the  town was crime ridden.  The historians continue’ “In a heated surge of emotion, he pulls out his rapier and makes several lightning fast fencing moves in Vincent’s direction.  He must bring this crazy man to his senses, keep him at a distance…Vincent feels a stinging pain in his left ear…Where is his ear?  He sees something lying on the ground.  In shock, he picks up the cut off ear and says, ‘you are silent.  Indeed I will be, too.’ ”

The argument that they put forward in defense of their theory is that a fencer’s blade can make quick work of the clean slicing of flesh such as an ear while a razor would be a laborious and painful removal of a body part.  Mentally disturbed persons are known to mutilate their arms, hands, and legs but not their ears.  They cite other fascinating details to support their position, all of which point to a mutual consent of the two men to silence the incident.  And where does this lead for the two artists?  Gauguin moves on to Tahiti where he continues his symbolist and bright folk color motifs.  He also remains that immoral brute that could survive because he was the essential legendary modern painter.  And van Gogh?  Vincent’s work up to this time had been about people–postmen, children, couples in restaurants.  Suddenly people completely disappear from his work when he enters the asylum.  It is as if his collaboration with Gauguin was terminated and now he sees only wheat fields filled with black crows, starry nights and conical cypresses heavy with impasto.   He uses a palette knife like a weapon pouring huge masses of paint on the canvas.  He accepts his isolation accompanied only by his paintings.  He maintains only that the belief in his work will one day flower, that there will be a community of readers and viewers who will understand him, that it will come in another world and time.  He was so right.