Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

MY NOVA SCOTIA LOVE

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It is 1961 and I am seven years old and we are in Nova Scotia. I am dazzled by the beauty of the land and the warmth of the people. They’re playing bagpipes in the streets; bagpipes are the sound of the human soul.

We took a plane and boat to get to Nova Scotia. We had a cabin on the boat and I can’t think of a more delicious experience than a cabin on a boat and watching the ocean. Our days in Nova Scotia are filled with walks and good food and, as always, I love to wander about in nature. On one of my solo excursions I meet a Nova Scotia girl around my age. She has soft brown hair and her eyes are warm chocolate brown and I am smitten to my trembling little-boy knees. We spend hours walking and talking and soon find ourselves sitting on top of a very large rock in the middle of a field. All the world is alive with color and beauty and the sun warms and comforts us, and I think secretly we both know we are getting a taste of what heaven must be like.

I don’t know how it happened but one minute we are on top of a very large rock in a field and the next minute we are on top of a very small rock that is surrounded by a herd of shoulder to shoulder cows, wild cows. There are so many you can’t even see the ground anymore. My Nova Scotia love and I have seen enough movies to know we will start a stampede if we do anything to upset these huge, mean, snorting beasts. We are trapped and we know we are in grave danger. I mean these big beasts don’t seem to notice us yet, huddled together on top of a very small rock, but I know it is just a matter of time. I know I must protect my Nova Scotia love, with my life if necessary. I also know I am trembling with terror inside and I can’t let her know this. She would panic if she knew, and I must prevent this from happening. I know too that if I step off our very small rock I will be stomped to death by these wild, mean cows. It is clear to me that any animals this big can’t be very nice.

She says, “We’ve got to find help.”

I say, “We will, we will,” and hold her hand.

She says, “Maybe you should leave me here and find help, Peter. It will be dark soon.” She was right, it had to be 12 noon.

Knowing I do not have the courage to step off the very small rock and knowing there is no way I’m going to admit this, I say, “I would, but I can’t leave you alone. If they decide to charge us someone has to protect you. I won’t leave you alone in all this danger.”

She says, “Oh, Peter, what will we do?”

I say, “We’ll be okay.” I know I’ve just lied to my Nova Scotia love because I know once these wild cow beasts see us they will charge us and kill us.

Suddenly she leaps to her feet, points and shouts, “Peter, look!”

I do and there is my father and another man (the farmer we learn later) running through the cows toward us, smiling and laughing! As soon as we see them our mutual facades dissolve and we are both in tears screaming to be rescued and, of course, we are.

My family and I leave Nova Scotia a few days later. I’ve never seen my Nova Scotia love again, and the years have taken her name from my memory. But she will always be a part of my heart and I will always love Nova Scotia, and the bagpipes. The jury is still out on the cows.

BUSH-CHENEY: COMMIT THEM OR JAIL THEM

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Okay, so let me see if I have this right. President Bush today said he can’t be sure if there is a civil war in Iraq because he lives in a nice place like the White House; he called the idea that his administration would manipulate evidence against Iran “preposterous” and he said “I go out of my way to thank the families” of military members to help morale.

If thanking the families takes Bush out of his way something is terribly wrong. If living in nice place like the White House stops him from recognizing a civil war we can only be grateful Abraham Lincoln didn’t have the same cognitive deficit. His puffed up indignation at the idea people would doubt his administration’s evidence against another country may mean that living in a nice place like the White House makes it hard for him to identify reality itself.

It is time for the “men in white coats” to come and take this delusional dangerous man to a hospital for a mental health evaluation. They should take Vice President Dick Cheney too because that sadistic (and cowardly) man keeps saying we are winning in Iraq, never mind the ever increasing number of casualities. And both of these men possess a kind of moral heartlessness that prompts them to send members of the miltary into war without proper equipment!

While both these men, and I use the term men loosely, talk about the worldwide fight against terror, both pulled strings to avoid fighting in Vietnam. While former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld may have been the most dangerous defense secretary in my country’s history, the man had courage. On 9/11 Rumsfeld was in the thick of it, helping to rescue Pentagon employees from the burning building. Say what you want about the man, he has courage; the kind of courage you can’t fake. Bush and Cheney are all about fake.

Here’s my idea for Bush and Cheney. In my state there is something called a Two-PC. This stands for two-physician consult and can be used to admit someone to a hospital for a mental health evaluation when someone is determined to be a danger to themselves or others and will not admit themselves voluntarily.

Now I know there are some who would argue against me here. Some like, say, Bill O’Reilly of Fox News or the cigar-sucking pill-popping Rush Limbaugh. I’m sure both would say Bush and Cheney are real Americans, great Americans even. Okay, well, let’s review. Bush claims the quality of his living quarters prevents him from knowing if there is a civil war in Iraq. Despite ever-increasing casualty numbers, Cheney says we’re winning. Knowing that most Americans and most members of the world community know the Bush administration cooked the books so they could start a war, they decided the best way to show they were being honest about their claimed evidence against Iran was to grab a couple of miltary personnel in Iraq, hide their identity, have a closed meeting, present a paucity of evidence, none of which directly ties Iran’s leadership to the Iranian weaponary on the streets of Iraq, and, just to top it all off, they didn’t tell the new defense secretary Robert Gates what they were doing.

All I know about American history tells me that every time our country has been asked to go to war, the administration presented their evidence and views to the country. Never do I recall and administration so sleazy and dishonest that it decided to present evidence anonymously. Evidence many think will be used as a reason to start a war against Iran. Then again, why should we be surprised? There are more than 3,000 American dead now because this administration cooked the books to start a war. Cheney and Bush should go to jail or to a mental hospital, take your pick.

The American people made their view very clear in the last election. Congress should listen. As Americans, we may fight and bicker and argue our political views, with all kinds of zest. But mess with our country’s ability to be safe, and we are Americans first, not Republican, Democrats, Conservatives or Liberals. Lets hope this administration and this congress understand that. Because it is true – and that is not fake.

LINGERIE AND BEANO

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It is a few years ago and I am in Victoria’s Secret attempting, and I mean attempting, to buy a woman I love a satiny, pink, bathrobe. My hat’s off to any man able to go into places like Victoria’s Secret alone. It was the first time in my life I’d summoned the courage to walk into such a place by myself and three strides in my palms are clammy.

I am trying to pick out the right size robe when a sales woman in her early twenties wearing an outfit so tight a coat of paint would’ve given her more room comes over to me. Her belly is showing and the front of her pants are cut so low I regroup and, for some odd reason, stare directly at her forehead. It quickly becomes clear to me that she has taken classes in perky or maybe she’s just downed a dozen perky pills because she is loaded with energy. “Can I help you, sir?” she says, her voice so bubbly I’m afraid she’ll make little popping sounds. “I know we have all kinds of lovely things you’d like” and for the life of me I can’t believe she just said that.

I say, “No, this is fine, thank you. This robe here would be fine.” And I remove the robe from the rack and hand it to her.

I’m not off the hook yet. She says, “We have many undergarments that would look just lovely with this, very sexy. Can I show you some?” Where does she get the courage to talk like this, I wonder, as both my armpits simultaneously spring a leak.

I say, “Oh, no, thank you. She has all kinds of things, the robe would be fine.”

She says, “Would you like me to gift wrap it for you?” I tell her yes please, and thank her. Well, maybe it’s just me but if there is a gift wrapping race held somewhere in this country this lovely young lady would come in last. So I’m stuck. I can’t leave without the pink robe. For what seems like days I stare at a display of lotion and shampoo and conditioner. It is the only safe place to look. Finally she is done and I pay, thank her, and flee.

There have been less than a handful of times when a woman I was with has seen a lingerie section and said, “Oh come on, lets go look. Show me what you like.” Is she nuts? Show her what I’d like? You mean walk over to a, what, a shelf or something, a rack (pardon me for the use of the word rack) and lift up some garment so wanting in fabric it’s lucky if it can cover a crumb and say, “You’d look great in this, dear”? So I try to beg off and she says, “But how will I know what you’ll like?”

I’m ready for this question. I’m no dope. I say, “You’d look beautiful in anything.” Then, like an idiot, I push my luck. “Why don’t I wait outside down by the book store, and you can surprise me.”

She says, “Now honey. I go with you when you buy your clothes. You don’t see me run away and hide.” She says this to me while we are standing in the lingerie section. Fortunately, she says this in a whisper that successfully prevents anyone from hearing who is standing more than 100 yards away.

Now there is something called Beano on the market. An anti-flatulence over-the-counter pill. I’d like to know what sadistic little shit (bad word choice given the subject) decided on the name Beano. Well let me make the following declaration here and now. There is no power on earth that could get me to walk in and buy a bottle of Beano. Call it an ample supply of prescience on my part but I know exactly what would happen. I’d get to the checkout counter with the bottle of Beano and about 15 to 20 things I didn’t need in the hopes the Beano bottle would blend in and be less noticeable. The cashier would pick up the bottle of Beano, gaze at it intently for a moment, reach for the microphone and, over the store’s loudspeaker say, “Price check on Beano, aisle four, price check on Beano, aisle four.”

TR WOULD BE PROUD OF SPITZER

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Theodore Roosevelt Jr. would be very proud of Governor Eliot Spitzer. TR was elected New York governor in 1898, and quickly gained a reputation for taking on machine politics. Like TR, Spitzer does not let party loyalty blind him to loyalty to the people who elected him. If only that statement could be made about most members of the New York Assembly. But we can’t. When one of their own was not among those recommended for the post of comptroller, the majority of the assembly threw a hissy fit and appointed one of their own. Never mind that last month leaders of the legislature and the new governor held a press conference to announce they had agreed to chose a comptroller from a list recommended by a panel of three former comptrollers.

Well, it seems to me that Spitzer is on his way to being the people’s governor and, with any luck, the assembly might follow suit and, say, think more about representing the people than their own personal interests.

In response to the Assembly’s actions, Spitzer accurately summed it up when he said, “We have just witnessed an insider’s game of self-dealing that unfortunately confirms every New Yorker’s worst fears and image of all that goes on in the Legislature of this state.”

Like TR, Spitzer seems hellbent on rooting out corruption in all forms and we the people would be wise to throw our weight behind him. If members of the assembly don’t learn to put the people first, then lets throw them out when re-election time rolls around.

Oh, if you think it was just the Republicans who undermined the new Democratic governor you’d be wrong. The Democrats cut the rug out from under the governor as well. More accurately, the Assembly undermined the people of New York and given Spitzer’s landslide victory, it is safe to say New Yorkers are sick of being undermined.

So keep going governor. TR’s footsteps set a fine stride to follow. After all, he is the only U.S. president to have received both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Medal of Honor. TR would be proud of you. This writer is, and so are many, many New Yorkers.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN IS RIGHT – AGAIN

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I am watching Republican Senator Mitch McConnell tell the Jim Leher Newshour that the details of a squabbling senate might be too confusing for Americans to understand. To be exact, he said that the “parliamentary tangle is somewhat confusing for your viewers.” The tangle he references is the Republican effort to block an up or down vote on whether or not the senate supports the troop escalation proposed by President George W. Bush.

Sorry to disappoint you Senator but at this point I think most Americans know most of you on capitol hill are a bunch of greed-soaked liars who will do anything, including sacrifice the lives of young Americans,Iraqis and Afghans so you can remain in power. And why the lust for power? My guess? Money – as much as you can get.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of political leaders treating us like a mindless bunch of Lemmings (my apologies to the poor plummeting rodents). Too often both sides of the aisle are more concerned over their ability to retain their political posts then stopping the killing.

Vice President Dick Cheney, for one, should be in jail. He is not at all delusional as Democratic Senator Dick Durbin recently claimed. Cheney is a liar without conscience. He is about money and greed and couldn’t give a rat’s ass about the young men and women being killed in the middle east. Moreover, he is a wimp. The five deferments he received to avoid going to Vietnam were sought because, he said, he had other priorities. What were they? He wanted to go to school (actually he knew going to school would help keep him out of Vietnam). The last deferment was a hardship deferment. What was the hardship? His wife was 10 weeks pregnant. There are so many tempting lines here about Cheney’s distaste for pulling out that I’d better flee to the next paragraph.

You think Cheney or Bush give a damn about those killed and brutally wounded? Think about this. A 70,000-square-foot state-of-the-world rehabilitation center for returning veterans recently opened in Texas. It’s called the Center for the Intrepid and was funded by the donations of 600,000 Americans with a wonderful assist from radio talk show host Don Imus. Cheney and Bush didn’t bother to attend the opening. Could it be they have a conscience? Could it be they maybe feel guilty and have a hard time facing the men and women who’ve lost limbs or been horribly burned? I don’t think so. After all, Cheney’s old haunt and the source of millions for him, Halliburton, a Texas-based oil company, was asked to donate to the rehab center. They refused. Oh, by the way, Halliburton was awarded a no-bid contract in Iraq in excess of $7 billion.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Most men can handle adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Obviously the same holds true for women. Just look at Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to be the Speaker of the House in our country’s history. What’s the early read of power’s impact on her? She’s demanded and will receive a military plane to fly her back and forth to her home district. Lincoln is right – again, and again, and again, and again.