Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

NEW YEARS, CHICKEN LEGS AND WATER

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I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I used to do that. But life would inevitably throw me curves throughout the year, plans would change, resolutions would be altered, or discarded altogether, and I’d start feeling like a failure; so no more New Year’s resolutions, thank you very much.

There are things I would like to do this year. I would like to finish the three books I am writing. I would like to get myself into top shape physically, a task I’ve begun. I would like to climb more of the Catskill Mountains and begin the task of taking on the Adirondack Mountains. Noble aspirations for sure. If they work out, great. If they don’t, also great.

There are other things too I’d like to do. I am well on my way to making a life-long dream come true: my own library. Completing the library in the room I’ve chosen requires the acquisition of more shelves more than it does the acquisition of more books, although their numbers are sure to grow. Were everything in place now, the library would have on or about 1,000 books. I forget in which of Dickens’ books it was, but there was a character who called his library “The Growlery”. I kind of like that.

I think too that I would like to cook more. Now the notion of my cooking more might send some who know me running for cover. I can’t say as I blame them. And, as you’ll see, after I offer two examples or, if you prefer, servings, of my culinary exploits, I don’t think you’d blame them either.

An ex-girlfriend of mine was the picture of graciousness when, on her first visit to my home, I dazzled her with a dinner comprised of a chicken leg and a glass of water. She stayed! Now that, my friends, is both true love and true tolerance. True, the chicken leg was cooked in an exquisite sauce. But a chicken leg and glass of water? Really, Peter. In my defense I will say that this woman was very beautiful and I was head over heels falling in love with her and any ability I had to concentrate on preparing a meal was barely able to keep its head above water.

Lest you think that was my biggest culinary faux pas, let me reassure you it was not.

I lived in Seagate in Brooklyn during the 1970s. I had occasion to be thoroughly smitten by a woman dazzling in both looks and personality. I lived on the beach. We decided to have dinner at my place and then go for a walk on the beach. Very romantic. At that time in my life I pretty much lived on a diet of pasta and cheese along with the other culinary delights indulged in by those of us who were, more often than not, short on money. But remember what I said; this woman was dazzling. And so, I was determined to make the dinner equally dazzling.

I took the bus to the fish market and bought 50 shrimp. I figured it was a good round number and I didn’t want to look cheap. I knew shrimp were classy. I went home and turned my culinary talents loose on the shrimp.

When she arrived for dinner I had a lovely platter piled high with crispy sautéed shrimp that had been dipped in egg and rolled in Italian bread crumbs. Looking at them and smelling them made your mouth water.

She was impressed. She either didn’t notice or didn’t say anything about the fact all I had cooked was the shrimp which I served with what any chef worth his or her salt would serve – soda.

We sat down for our feast. I shoved some shrimp onto her plate (ladies first) and then shoved some onto my plate.

She said, “They look wonderful,” and she meant it!

I said, “So do you.”

We dug in. They were crispy. Very crispy.

She said, “These are very crispy.”

I said, “I know.”

She said, “Did you shell them?”

I said, “Pardon?”

She said, “Shell them? Did you shell them?”

Not content with simply being an ass, I went for being a complete ass. I said, “Shrimp don’t have shells. Lobsters have shells. Clams have shells. Horseshoe crabs have shells.”

She said, “Shrimp have shells too…”

Five minutes later we had two plates before us. One was piled high with beautifully sautéed breaded shrimp shells. The other was piled high with a bunch of naked white shrimp.

There is one thing I do cook well. I cook some of the best omelets known to humankind. In fact, a former roommate of mine, an honest to God French Chef, actually replaced his method of cooking omelets with mine. While I cling to that ribbon of culinary success, I need to get going. My library beckons.

Happy New Year.

DAN FOGELBERG, GRATITUDE AND SOBRIETY

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A friend of mine just e-mailed me and let me know Dan Fogelberg died from prostate cancer at age 56. I am stunned. I love his music, in particular a song named, “There’s a Place in the World for a Gambler.” He died at 6 a.m. Sunday morning in his home in Maine with his wife Jean at his side. I can’t stop the tears.

As I write these words through cloudy eyes I find myself thinking about people who rush through their lives driven by various arrays of fears and anxieties, needs and wants, some driven by believe systems driven by greed and or lust for power or the misguided belief that they can and must control and manage every aspect of their lives and thus miss so much of life itself.

I know I lived like this for years. And while the last few years have not always been easy, all in all, life is good. Even this year, despite some grueling times emotionally, physically and spiritually along with some hefty doses of the rugged terrain of change, has been a good one.

Though you might not think so at first (or, for that matter, second) glance.

Other than the year I was shot in the head, 2007 has been the worst year for my health. As I mentioned in an earlier essay I almost died in an ER in June. And while I am better, I am still not out of the woods. I am, however, still sober. And that, for me, is more important than anything else. As I heard a woman once say in the rooms of a 12-step program, “Anything you put before your sobriety you lose.” Truer words were never spoken.

This year I have had to step back from some people I love and care about deeply. This group includes my 30-year-old daughter and as a byproduct of this reality, my two grandsons. It also includes a truly remarkable woman and her two remarkable sons. But in sobriety I have come to learn (grumbling and griping all the way, mind you) that I cannot rescue everyone, even though when people you love are struggling it can be mind-splitting painful and heartbreaking to see. As I said in a previous essay, and learned from Michael, the person I am closest to in the world, a friend for well over 30 years, all you can do is keep the door open and food on the table. But in sobriety you don’t stay seated at the table staring at the door wondering what will happen. You remember to live and do so.

When I got sober on July 12, 2002, I remember being in 12-step meetings listening to people with many years of sobriety talking about some pretty rough things in their lives: cancer, the death if a loved one; I remember one man talking about how his son was killed by a drunk driver and how that driver was now out of prison and living just blocks away from him. Others talked about going through break-ups, losing jobs, struggling with children who were in the vice-grip of alcoholism and addiction, and still they were all sober and vocal about being damned glad they were. And, most baffling of all, they were happy!

I thought they were all nuts.

I mean how on earth could someone go through the kind of things these people were enduring and not fire up a joint or toss back a shot or two? I mean, my God! Wouldn’t those harsh realities, as I’d come to believe, erode your body, mind and spirit if you didn’t find some way of escaping them, some way of taking a break from them?

The internal fear driving my thought process being, if I don’t get high and lapse into my well-learned patterns of enabling and dishonesty, reality will wash me away into nothingness.

Not true. It might have felt like it was true, but was not.

In fact, sobriety has allowed me to be me again in the world around me. Now my life is my own. Like anyone else, I have my fair share of problems and struggles. But no longer do they drive my days or dominate my every waking moment. I am not missing life anymore. I am grateful for sunsets and sunrises. I am grateful for thunderstorms and snowstorms and sunny days and cloudy days. I am grateful and filled with paternal joy watching my six-month old puppy Charley disappear headlong into a snowdrift only to come bursting out of it seconds later, shake himself free of the snow, giving a loud yip that clearly signals he is having a blast. He then does what any upstanding six-month old puppy would do in the first snow storm of his life, he dives right back into the snowdrift. I am grateful for my love of books and writing and a home that is toasty warm.

I do not run or hide from life anymore. I can’t pretend to know what’s around the corner in life and I’ll be damned if I’m going to worry about it. I don’t have time. I have to go to the store and replenish my supply of Dan Fogelberg albums and listen to them and cry tears of sadness for his passing and tears of joy and gratitude for his being here in the first place.

Life is good. I’m glad I’m in it.

ROMNEY: SLICKER THAN HIS HAIR

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Watching Governor Mitt Romney on Meet the Press today it dawned on me that the only thing greasier than what he puts in his hair is what he puts on his words. Russert, in typical Russert fashion, confronted Romney with example after example of Romney flip-flops on abortion, gun control and stem cell research along with a hideous response to Russert’s query about Romney’s view of the Mormon Church’s late-to-the-table 1978 repudiation of racism against blacksin the church.

Asked if his church was wrong to have what many considered a racist policy well into the 1970s, Romney did what most politicians do these days, he skirted the question which, in my book, is simply a wordier way of saying he lied. Romney launched into how his father marched with Dr. King and how he, young Romney, has always believed all people are equal. Asked again if he didn’t think his church was wrong, Romney said what he said earier in the interview, “I stand by my faith.” Kind of like belonging to a white’s only club, going out of the club’s headquarters, pretending to be for equal rights, then retreating behind the club’s “lily-white” doors again to mull things over, in the company of, well, white people.

Then Russert asked Romney about his flip-flopping on gun control. Years ago Romney was in full support of the Brady Bill, a bill I helped fight for and a bill that is, needless to say, dear to my heart, as are Jim and Sarah Brady, by the way. Asked if he still supported the Brady Bill, Romney immediately…well, you know where this sentence is going – twisted and turned and, when all is said and done, lied. Romney said the Brady Bill, which in part called for a five-day waiting period allowing for a background check to go through before the sale of a handgun, had changed over the years and he now supports an instant check system. Asked again if he stood by his support of the Brady Bill, Romney simply repeated his affection for the instant check and his just-in-time-for-the-election membership in the NRA.

As one who fought for the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, signed into law in 1993, let me offer a few facts for the Gov. When it was passed into law the Brady Bill had a provision that allowed the five-day waiting periond to be waived the moment a state had an instant background check system in place. Moreover, on November 30, 1998, the five-day waiting period was replaced by the NICS (National Instant Check System) managed by the FBI.

In its 2002 report the NICS said since its inception there have been more than 563,000 handgun denials. I’d say some lives have been saved. Hey, didn’t Romney say he was pro life?

KEEP THE DOOR OPEN AND FOOD ON THE TABLE

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Early Sunday morning, the second snow storm of the year, the house warm and toasty, stocked with food, good coffee, even some hot chocolate and jazz artist Charles Lloyd playing a piece called “Song for Her,” a piece so eloquent and pure it stills my fingers at times as my eyes wet up at the beauty of the notes that seem to drift into the air, tiny jewels all.

It has been an amazing year, filled with joys and struggles, beginnings and endings, losses and gains, moments of exhilarating joy and some of heartbreak. In many ways it has been a year like any year. As life is all things and comes to us on its own terms, it is your relationship with those terms that makes the difference. I was in an emergency room this year and learned my health was so precarious I was in danger of dropping dead from a stroke or heart attack at any second. After receiving a few units of blood I gave a speech the next day and went come to contemplate the fragility of things, not to mention my foolishness at not taking better care of myself. I am better, by the way.

I saw two Springsteen concerts this year and will be going to two next July. I am writing more than ever before. I have made a wonderful new friend in Brampton, Ontario. Recently I was talking to a close friend about how I know I am supposed to be finishing my memoir but I am having so much fun writing a novel called “Twigs” I don’t want to let up. He said, “Write whatever the hell you want.”

I thought, “Uh, okay.” It’s amazing how someone else can say something so clearly and you find yourself shaking your head wondering how the hell you missed it in the first place.

People have entered and left my life. My daughter struggles with the behaviors of addiction and she and my grandsons are out of reach.

As an alcoholic I cherish my sobriety. A woman I know has many years sober under her belt. I was talking with her recently about some of the year’s struggles and the early days of sobriety when I was in the “pink cloud” and all of life seemed wonderful. She smiled and said, “One time I was in the “pink cloud” and my sponsor said, “Not to worry, this too shall pass.” ”

We laughed. She is right. All I can do, or all any of us can do, is pray for those we love and care about and, as my best friend Michael says, “Keep the door open and food on the table.”

And so what about next year? What plans do I have? What do I hope for? I have plans for sure. I also know that the Robert Burns sentiment, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry rings true, yet it’s fun to make plans and set some goals. But it is wise to be careful and not get so wedded to them that if they change, or go awry, as they are want to do, you don’t spin yourself into a tizzy.

Next year is a special year for me. On October 2 I will turn 55, the same age my father was when he died. There is something about this that moves something deep inside me that I can’t put into words.

So here’s a dose of my plans. I will finally read my father’s copy of “the lives and times of archy and mehitabel” by Don Marquis. I plan on completing the three books I am writing. I will spend a few days in a cabin in New Jersey’s Stokes Forest, where my father went when he was a boy and where he took me when I was a boy. And I might go on a cruise. Get a cabin with a balcony and watch the ocean and write and read.

I have other plans too, and while all plans are subject to change, it’s nice to have them. And I don’t mind the change.

Two things are for sure. My sobriety comes first – and I will keep the door open and food on the table.

A SEAT AT THE TABLE

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In one way or another I have been a human rights activist for nearly all of my 54 years. I was raised in a civil rights family. Our minister marched with Dr. King. I can remember the Sunday service after Dr. King was assassinated when the reverend Bill Daniel took all of us to task for Dr. King’s murder. We all play a role in creating a society where things like this happen, he said. He was right.

In his 1963 letter from a Birmingham jail Dr. King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” He was right. He was right then and he is right now.

When we talk about justice, we are talking about freedom. Each is an appendage to the inalienable right of every human being to be who there are safely in the world around them.

And so it is with an allegiance to freedom and justice for all, along with an unflinching awareness that we are all threads in a single garment of destiny, that I try with all my might and heart to apply my voice to the fight for the right of all people to be who they are safely in the world around them. Safely doesn’t just mean physical, moral and spiritual safety. Safely also means social and cultural safety. To achieve these, equality is required. To achieve true equality, freedom is required. To achieve freedom, a seat at the table of social, political and cultural discourse is required.

For 13 years now I have worked primarily with people who have survived brain injuries. I have worked in both long term and community based settings. There have been times where I have found myself in a position of having to confront patterns of behavior and patterns of decision making that, intentional or not, deny survivors their right to have an equal say in the management of their own lives.

Over the years I’ve seen malicious patterns of oppression. I’ve seen the poison of dishonesty and the insidious tool of threat used as manipulation tactics. These threats are often linked to the person’s ability to keep the services needed to retain their level of independence in the community. Cruel? Absolutely. Illegal? Should be.

Dr. King said, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

I can tell you from personal experience that being one of the voices that demands freedom can take its toll. It can be hard and grueling and painful to endure. But I don’t mind. Yes, I get scared at times. Yes, I am at times deeply worried I will lose everything. But I will not retreat into silence when I am, in some instances, attacked on a very personal level by the forces of injustice.

Here’s the thing. I would be more scared were I to retreat into silence and tuck myself away in some corner of the world and there sit idly by as the forces of injustice had their way. Such a retreat would be tantamount to my enlisting in the forces of injustice. And that, I can tell you, would take a toll on me that I am not prepared to endure.