The Polyamory Dilemma

Did anyone happen to see Boston Legal tonight? They featured a V family--one husband, two wives. The husband was arrested for polygamy and the law firm was defending him. I really appreciated the wife who said that when she was too exhausted for sex she would send her husband to his other wife. It was so cool to hear someone say "I'm poly because I'm NOT horny." The woman on the program was exhausted from riding herd on the kids, whereas I suffer from a variety of ailments which, along with the meds I take to control them, have killed my libido.

At any rate, on this program they quoted divorce statistics and spoke about the fact that the family's poly arrangement worked. In the end, the people had to get divorced in order to stay together and keep the husband out of jail--which is the dilemma in which many poly people find ourselves. We can't be married in the eyes of the law to more than one person.

Yet the litter of monogamous marriages is strewn across the landscape of our lives. My daughter and grandkids are typical. My daughter has been married twice. She had two children with her first husband and one with her second. She is now engaged again (this time to a keeper) and he has a baby from a previous relationship. So, let's break it down:

Alex and Beth have: a father, a mother a step-mother, a current step-father and an ex-step-father.
Presley has: a father, a mother a step-father and a step-mother
Abby has: a father, a mother and a step-mother, as well as a variety of
Mom's boyfriends.

So, these four kids have had a total of ten parents so far, as well as various
girlfriends and boyfriends of their parents along the way. I didn't even try to count all of the grandparents and ex-granparents these kids have had. And this is a typical "monogamous" family. When are people going to wake up and realize that whatever works for the individuals involved is best and that our marriage laws are antiquated? Instead of penalizing people for finding paradigms that work, we should commend or at the very least support them. So I say, viva le poly difference!

It's Not My Fault

It’s Not My Fault

Each year I participate in a very special program at the VA called the National Veterans Creative Arts Competition. Almost 3,000 veterans from all over the country compete in 45 categories of artistic endeavor ranging from painting and sculpting to needlecrafts to singing, dancing and performing. When I lived in Chicago, I sang in the VA chorus there and we won three gold medals in two years. Upon moving to Danville, I began to compete as a solo artist. In 2004 I won a silver medal for vocal solo comedy, singing a parody written by the Capitol Steps, called God Bless My SUV. And last year I won a gold medal for a song I wrote about my bi-polar disorder. The song is “It’s Not My Fault,” and I’d like to share it with you here.

IT’S NOT MY FAULT

It’s not my fault,

Baby I’d never hurt you

It’s not my fault,

I’d die before I’d desert you

It’s not my fault…

Baby—I love you.

When the darkness fills my head,

And I feel that awful dread

I can’t control it.

When I feel the blinding rage

And I should be in a cage

You see I know it.

So I reach for what I can find

To ease the pain in my mind

Or at least to slow it.

And I sent you far, far away

In hopes that you would be safe

And that you would know it.

Repeat Chorus

I finally got the help I that needed

And the rage at last has receded

And I try not to blow it.

And now you’ve grown up so fast

And that pain is far in the past

Each day I show it.

Like Rhiannon I have survived

And kept all my love alive

So that I can bestow it.

On you and now on your kids

I’m no longer out on the skids

And I’m finally growing.

The Flag Drooped

Rochelle Weber

Copyright 2006

The Flag Drooped

One day the circus came to town. It was the Greatest Show on Earth and we had tickets. Nine of us piled into the minivan and headed downtown to the great stadium where our basketball and hockey teams usually play. Somehow, we got separated. Being disabled, I took the elevator to the third floor where my son-in-law said our seats were. But when I got off the elevator, there was no sign of the kids. While I was waiting in the lobby, the announcer’s voice came over the speaker system. “Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth! Please rise for our National Anthem!”

As the music began I came to attention and saluted with my hand over my heart. I was the only one in the lobby who did. Vendors continued to sell popcorn and drinks. People continued to check their tickets for their seat numbers and scurry toward the correct doorway, urging each other to “Walk faster, we’re missing the start!”

The Flag drooped that day.

When I came home, I checked my e-mail. There was a message from my sister. You know, one of those things that get circulated. It was about the way terrorists are being treated. It was called “I Don’t Care…” It said “I'm supposed to care that a copy of the Koran was ‘desecrated’ when an overworked American soldier kicked it or got it wet? Well, I don't. I don't care at all….When I hear a story about a Marine roughing up an Iraqi terrorist to obtain information, know this: I don't care….When I see a fuzzy photo of a pile of naked Iraqi prisoners who have been humiliated in what amounts to a college hazing incident, rest assured that I don't care.”

Again, the flag drooped.

Because you see, I DO care. I DO care when my fellow citizens ignore the Flag or the National Anthem. I DO care when our country sinks to the level of the terrorists who attacked us. I DO care when the Bill of Rights is set aside. I DO care when our soldiers act like criminals and do not represent our country with honor. I am ashamed of the atrocities our country has committed in the name of “the war against terror.” I don't think that Al Quaeda represents all people of Islamic belief anymore than the Ku Klux Klan represents all of our people.

This is not to say that I don't support our troops. I support those who represent the ideals of our country and serve with honor. I support those who protect and defend the Constitution as they have taken an oath to do. And I still salute when the flag passes by or when the National Anthem is played.

Yes, the Flag drooped that day. But there are still those of us who wave it high—with pride—and defend it with honor, as did our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers. God bless our Flag. God bless our country. God bless America.

Introduction

Hi! Welcome to my blog!

Please fee free to check out my webpage, http://home.mchsi.com/~riweber/. I'm Rochelle Weber and I am an author, editor and professional grandma. My first book Rock Bound, will be released by Inara Press on May 15. http://inrarpress.com More about that later. We're doing some wonderful things at Inara and that's a post all its own.

This is my first blog, so please bear with me while I get the hang of it. I guess, I'll start by telling you about myself. I was born and raised on the Northwest Side of Chicago and yes, I'm a Cubs fan. In fact, in 1969 I was a Bleacher Bum! I graduated from Schurz High School in the top third of my class. There were over 800 of us, so that's a pretty decent achievement. I was one of those kids with a paragraph under her photo in the school yearbook, and another paragraph's worth of off-campus extracurricular activities such as Girl Scouts, Junior Achievement, Candy Striping, church choir and babysitting. And my love of reading developed early as well.

After high school, I worked for Ma Bell and became a USO volunteer. It was the only way I could meet boys with short hair in those days. Hanging out at the USO led to my joining the Navy. I became a medic (CorpsWave) and worked in the surgical ICU at the Navy Hospital in Oakland. I married a man I had met at the USO just before I left for boot camp and transfered to Pearl Harbor when he was assigned to a submarine there. I lasted about two, three months there before I got that malady that women sometimes get on their honeymoons. I was medically discharged from the Navy and Elizabeth Anne was born September 6, 1973 at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. By the time we left Hawaii, we had acquired a fluff-butt pooch named Peaches, and Christine Renee was five weeks old.

I had always written short stories and such for fun. It was in the back of my head that I'd write when I retired. But I got serious about it when we were living in Charleston, SC and I was working as a receptionist at our local NPR affiliate. One of our producers noticed a letter I was writing to my family on my lunch-hour and said "Rochelle, you can really write!" She began to mentor me and I finally started college with an eye toward writing.

Well, college was a meandering path. After my husband got out of the Navy he began working outages at various nuclear power plants around the country. I was tired of staying home alone while he was at sea, so I quit my job at the radio station, packed up the kids and the dog, and we went on the road with him. That lasted for four years before it tore our marriage apart and I moved home, got another secretarial job, and went back to school. I finally got my bachelor's degree--in Communications with an emphasis on FictionWriting--at Columbia College, Chicago.

I continued to work in secretarial/administrative positions for over ten years until I became disabled and then I finally started to write again. I met several people in the Chicago Science Fiction community and began to attend sci-fi cons. I discovered that they weren't just a bunch of geeks dressing up like Klingons and getting authorgraphs. The cons I've attended all have at least a few workshops related to writing and publishing your work. Some even offer opportunities to meet editors and agents, as well as published authors. They're marvelous venues for networking. And that's how I made the first contact who hired me to edit her books. Then she recommended my services on the EPIC website and since then my career has snowballed and I am now editing for three publishers, one of whom has accepted my book.

So, here I am--setting up a webpage, registering for a domain name, and setting up a blog.

Again, please visit my website at http://home.mchsi.com/~riweber/.

I'll post an update when my domain name is registered and set up.

Many Thanks.