K9'S FOR WARRIORS : VETERANS WITH POST TRAUMATIC STRESS TEAMED WITH LOVING SERVICE DOGS!

K9S FOR WARRIORS   What a wonderful effort!

Excerpt:

Roughly 20 Veterans die by suicide every day, and over 1,000 dogs are euthanized. K9s For Warriors exists because of a fierce dedication to saving the lives of both Veterans and rescue dogs. This program is backed by scientific research and empowers Veterans who fought for our freedom to live a life of independence. Graduates of the program are able to live a life of renewed purpose and independence, that they previously did not think was possible. Many have reunited with their families, gone back to school, restored their relationships with family, and significantly reduced their medications.

EATING DISORDER HOTLINES : IT TAKES BRAVERY TO MAKE THAT FIRST PHONE CALL

IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT HAVE AN EATING DISORDER. Here's a start:

EATING DISORDER HOTLINES

When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself as you are, or imagine you're too fat?

THE ARRANGEMENT : EZRA POUND and OLGA RUDGE : WORLD WAR II FORCED EZRA, DOROTHY, and OLGA to LIVE TOGETHER FOR A YEAR

Excerpt page 98:  (1931) It was Ezra's custom to spend late summer and early fall with Olga and Mary in Venice, while Dorothy was in England with her mother and Omar.* Mary recorded her first impressions of those visits in her autobiography, Discretions.....

***

Mary had memories of afternoon walks with her father or going for swimming with him and her mother practicing her violin in Rapallo, setting the table for lunches and collecting flowers, as a child. But when these weeks were over, she was sent back to her foster home.  Mary was raised in that German home.

As the Great Depression deepened Olga sought some other ways to earn income, taking a steno class and seeking work as a translator of written work in French.  Though many of their contemporaries thought this work was beneath her, they were pragmatic too.

George Antheil had work for her in New York - a tour that included travel expenses.  Ezra continued to work on his Canto's.  Eventually the economic conditions improved. In 1939 Ezra went back to the United States for the first time in twenty-eight years. Olga would also have cause to go back to the United States eventually, but they ended their lives in Italy, and together.

***

Page 137 Excerpt:  

While in the United States, he (Ezra) had consulted an attorney to explore the possibility of legally adopting Mary to legitimize her status and secure a U.S. Passport for her, in case they had to leave Italy suddenly. (because World War II was brewing.)  When Olga heard the news, for the first time in their fifteen year relationship she 'put her cards on the table' and stated her position in strong language that could not be misunderstood. "He has put her off every time she tries to get H to consider the subject of the present triangle, she wrote (The couple wrote to each other in third person as if this might keep their communications private.) There was no reason to maintain a "marital front" out of respect for Dorothy's parents, since both were gone. "He has told her He did not believe in marriage ... certainly no church would consider a marriage entered into as He did her. His was, as sacred or binding."  On the brink if war with its possible dislocations, it might be a good time to reconsider legitimize her own - as well as her child's status...

***

Olga was worried that if Ezra adopted Mary she might loose her  A the war began Mary was already in her mid-teens. When in 1944 Rapallo was bombed, deprivation and hunger set in.  Mary, at eighteen took a secretarial job and was on her own. When in May of that year, Dorothy and Ezra Pound were forced to move, along with all their furnishings and possessions, Olga invited them to live with her. The three of them lived together for a year. They attempted to be mature about the situation and Dorothy gave the impression she was not hurt by her husband's relationship with Olga.

***

During the war, Ezra went on Italian radio and made some pro-fascist remarks, which got him charged with treason by the United States.

***

Excerpt page 155: 

Later, after the triangular living arrangement had abruptly ended, Olga recorded her true feelings" "One solid year, Dorothy made use of me to the fullest, shared my house (while) I worked like a slave - cooking, cleaning, finding food - which I only undertook owing to her incapacity, so that E. should not suffer.  I cannot understand the incredible meanness of the way she was behaving... in terror lest I have some advantage over her, considering our respective positions: she, with the war year's income saved up, a family legal advisor to fall back on and right to appeal to any of E's friends for help, a child provided for with no trouble on her part.  I with no rights of any kind - income completely knocked out by war  - high and dry in a country I never would have lived in by choice except to be near E, having to improvise a living with Mary...:

***

Dorothy Pound would prevail as the wife of Ezra Pound for the rest of her life.  Ezra may have also withdrawn from Olga as he aged and their daughter, Mary, married and had children, making Olga a grandmother with a family of her own.  At one point the poet and the violinist did not see each other for seven years nor had Mary seen her father in as long.  As Ezra aged and his physical and mental health declined,  Olga wanted to be there for him.  In particular she wanted to get him out of St. Elizabeth's Hospital, in the United States near Washington, D.C., a mental hospital which she was shut out from, when he was there in the early 1950's.  Olga battled with depression again but managed to make it back to the United States where she got to visit with Ezra, where he was housed in the part of the hospital that housed those with senile dementia. She asked certain literary friends of his to lobby for his release from the hospital.  His legal problems did not make it any easier but his friend Ernest Hemingway suggested it was mental illness that had influenced his behavior and that was the legal path his lawyers took.

In these passages of Anne Conover Carson's book, we learn that Olga paid the price of not being married to the father of her child, a man she long loved, because he would not divorce.

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All Rights Reserved including International and Internet Rights

*Omar was the son of Dorothy and Ezra Pound, who Dorothy had as a first and only child not long after Olga had her daughter with Ezra, Mary.

OLGA RUDGE FINDS A HOME and A DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP EMERGES as DOES SERIOUS DEPRESSION

Excerpt: page 83    ... Watts was eager to sell one of three adjoining small houses on a cul-de-sac near the old church of Santa Maria della Salte in Dorsodura, the quiet "back" of the city. ...  Olga began to consider ways to get together enough money.  "It was the house that changed my life, ad I got it just for the asking." she remembered "First I asked Ramooh is she would give me what she had promised in her will now -- to buy a house --- and she said, "Yes."  That was half. Then I wrote my father and asked him if he could give me the rest, and if so, to cable, "yes" and he did. I still feel guilty at not having told my father that I had not seen the house (he was in the real estate business).  If I had, he might not have acted at once.  As it was , he lost his money in the 1929 stock market crash, and I would have been left with nothing but my three year old."

Excerpt page 84: Olga arrived in late November 1928. "To call it the smallest house in Venice (is) pretty near the truth...

***

It was the only house she would ever own though she had the rental apartment in Paris for some time. The idea was that Ezra live next door and that she would have Mary live with her, that they would be a family unit while Ezra would have his own space, but he reacted as if he would be in a cage.The house needed replastering and white-washing.  Olga sent Christmas alone when she wanted Ezra with her, in a hotel while the house was being refurbished. She let him know that she was angry.  They had differences in what we call "world view."

***

Excerpt page 85 (Ezra wrote) ... You have a set of values I don't care a damn for.  I do not care a damn about private affairs, private life, personal interests. You do. It is perfectly right that you should, but you can't drag me into it.  Yeats wrote a long time ago that an artist could not really have friends save among artists.... You want to be the center of the circle.  I can not be in perpetual orbit.

*** 

Ezra was laying down the rules for a relationship.  He basically threatened that he might not continue in it.  

Excerpt page 86 : Early in the new year of 1929, the hard work, the uncertainty, the coldest winter in many years - in Venice, the canals froze over - had broken Olga's spirit.  In deep depression, she wrote to Ezra, crossing our some of the most painful passages; "I have tried very hard to go on some of the more painful passages, "I have tried very hard to go on working, but I can't... nearly two months since I tried to finish things.  You didn't want to keep me -- or to give me any reason, except unjust ones....."

***

Ezra was not sympathetic.  He urged her to have the company of men younger than him. Slowly she emerged from her depression.  She realized that Ezra thought of their relationship as the "impresario and the impressed."  

Ezra might have had Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  While accusing Olga of wanting to only have her way, he was not accomodating.

During the 1930's Great Depression era, Olga went into a serious depression again and since everyone was effected she limited what she would accept from Ezra as support of their daughter Mary.  There were times when he backed out of the relationship, and she knew it, but their daughter Mary had to be considered.  Over the years the two would work out their relationship, and if secrets were kept from family or society, certainly discretion and Ezra's wife Dorothy, had to be part of the arrangements.

C 2024 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.

MEN WHO HAVE WOMEN FRIENDS: WHAT I DO NOT AGREE WITH ANNA BEY ABOUT

As a person who has had several men friends in my life and has been a woman friend to several men, I disagree with Anna Bey when she says that if a man has women friends in his life, he's just not that into you.

Oddly, she admits to having several male friends in her life. She also says your net worth and network are the same. So is she only networking with other women? Aren't friends the best of your network?

I think it's healthy to preserve and make friends of all kinds throughout your life no matter what your marital status is. Having a partner should not prevent you from this. Some friends are to share and some are just for you. Your partners shouldn't dictate to you who you can befriend, unless there's a true reason for concern like the person is criminal, or violent, or using illegal drugs. Of course you'd be protective of someone in cases like this. 

You're not going to like all of your partner's friends nor they, yours. Still, unless there is a true reason for concern, well, this may surprise you, but you still deserve some privacy and autonomy even if you're partnered.

A friend you can trust and rely on is a treasure. But just as there are many ways to love, there are many ways to be friends with someone.

The limits some women let men put on them is troubling. Same goes for men. If a partner begins to hack away your friends at the beginning of a relationship when dating, I'd advise you to end the relationship. It's a form of control that's abuse.

Everyone should have some people in their life who are there for friendship, not for business, not as family, and not for romance. You need support. You need to go out and have fun. You need to share. You need the opinion of the opposite gender. You need to be you.

Generally, I think men are better at keeping friends because they're better at being their own person, setting boundaries, considering opinions but deciding for themselves. It's the women who seem to consult their women friends about men in their lives as if they need approval or don't have full confidence in their own thoughts and feelings and are in need of guidance. (Sure, sometimes you do, but all the time?) Anna is right about the kind of women friends a woman should have. Let the ones who are not for your happiness and success or can't keep a secret go. 

I think a woman needs the same in men friends. And visa versa.

If you allow yourself to be isolated by a partner, or if you dump your friends when you get involved with a lover, do you really expect them to be there for you when you come up for air or get dumped yourself?

Or, if you are the controlling and jealous person, well, I guess you might be able to trust someone who has no one else but you but this can also be abusive. (As a side note one of the first things that happens when you get involved in a cult is the cult finding fault with your support group and cutting you off from them.) I've observed women friends who started affairs because they felt so locked down in marriage. It seems at that point anyone looked good -the office womanizer, the guy in the mail room who never had a girlfriend, the irresponsible man next door with a child that needs a mommy.

The reason partners don't want their significant others to have friends is a fear it will result in affairs. But does it really? I think men tend to separate who they feel attracted to and who they don't and well, women friends tend to be the ones they aren't attracted to.

But then it may surprise you to know I don't advise anyone participate in hook ups or friends with benefits. Not only do these activities blur the friendship/ love boundary they also blur the stranger/friend definition. 

Another fear that's being played when a person's partner expects them to leave behind friends is that having them is like having potential lovers awaiting. This can happen. Which isn't the same as counting on it happening.

There can also be a fear that a man's women friends will decide who they like and who they don't and will influence him out of dating you. I had that experience with one person and he admitted to me that she objected to all his girlfriends, so that should have been revealing to him. A friend wants the best for you but understands you go your own way.

While it may be normal to prioritize an intimate involvement or to get busy with work and raising children it doesn't take a lot to keep a friendship.

Send a birthday card.

Meet for lunch.

Invite to a party.

Have a long phone conversation once in a while.

Send over home baked cookies or a bottle of wine with a note.

Sure your lives may go out of sync or take different paths but then it may be more interesting when you share.

I believe that friends are especially important if you have no siblings or your parents have died or you live far from your family. 

Because we've been thinking about men and women and money this month, I'd like to express that I don't expect friends to always pay for me or go without some sign that I'm participating in a friendship. When I'm out with men friends such as going to the theatre or meeting up for dinner I pay for my own tickets or meal. However, I believe in taking turns with invitations and with some invitations comes the nicety of paying for the people you invite. If you are the one with limited funds, still find ways to show your interest.

Invite people to a potluck or dinner party. Invite them to go to the museum on a free museum day. Take along a picnic basket. Don't expect men friends to act like suitors and do all the calling and planning.

Women friends have told me of feeling confused about a man's interest in them upon first meeting up. Is he looking for a friend? Or someone to date?

Men have told me that if they meet a woman and meet again for coffee and she offers to pay for hers they feel she is signaling she's interested in friendship only. 

This is complicated by the fact that men today don't always want to reveal themselves as interested and face rejection. They'd rather be cool and let the woman reveal herself. They'd also rather "hang out" than actually go on dates. That's for teenagers who need supervision, in my opinion.

Men who can afford to will often pay for their friends because they can, male or female friends. Women who earn good money or happened to have come into some do the same.

Missy

C 2021 All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

BULIMIA : YOU'RE NOT WELL WHEN YOU MAKE YOURSELF THROW UP

BULIMIA COM - an AUTHORITATIVE SITE

Not too long ago a friend from highschool and I were talking.  She said she had been looking at some old photos and I was so thin.  I was.  I had a high metabolism and I also had a busy life.  I was naturally thin.  And to this day dieting will not work for me.  Calorie counting will not work. I absolutely have to keep moving to stay thin-ish.

Long ago I gave up on being my high school weight.  I'd look ridiculous.

I know what my old friend was trying to get at.  She wondered if I'd been thin due to bulimia or anorexia and I had not been.  She however, had a mom who was regulating her diet.  I recall she fainted a couple times.  Her sister, whose diet was also regulated by their mother, actually passed out in a snowbank and had to be rushed to the hospital.

Learning that our Mistress of the Month, Susan Mary "Shoe" Taylor, was bulimic by the time she met the man she would become a long term mistress to in 1978, Jonathan Guinness, an aristocrat and beer brewing heir, I wondered if all her adventures and misadventures had been too hard on her, destroying her mental health.

Why did she need to be too thin? Was she basically a trend follower?  A fashionista?  The reason I wonder is that bulimia is often associated with women who want to be "fashionably thin" which is "model thin" which is "hanger thin" - I mean way too thin.  After a while a woman looses her ability to see herself in the mirror as she really looks.

As women age especially they need some weight on, some fat.  I believe this strongly.  As your estrogen wanes it's your fat that holds it.  You need that to protect your bones. That's my belief.

Bulimia can wreck your physical health beginning with your teeth which rot away from all that vomit.  So save your bright and beautiful smile and say OK to looking womanly. Check out the link!  There's lots of authoritative information including a Bulimia hotline!

Missy

MONICA LEWINSKY IS STILL HEALING

VANITY FAIR - MONICA LEWINSKY on HEALING and MEETING UP WITH KEN STARR

I dedicated a month to Monica, who was not a Courtesan, not a Mistress in the best, classic scense, but did have an affair with President Bill Clinton when he was in the White House. He denied it because his definition of sex was intercourse.  Now with the Me Too Movement outing powerful abusers, Monica Lewinsky has entered a new phase of her healing.  And she writes a thought-provoking article about her life as it is right now.  Back when I featured Monica here at Mistress Manifesto Blogspot I said GET OFF HER BACK! Sure she was smart.  Sure she was young.  She knew what she was doing.  But being outed by a person posing to be a friend and putting the Presidency into question isn't something she took into consideration.

MARCH 2012 is where to find Monica Lewinsky in my archives.

EXCERPT: ... Given my PTSD and my understanding of trauma, it’s very likely that my thinking would not necessarily be changing at this time had it not been for the #MeToo movement—not only because of the new lens it has provided but also because of how it has offered new avenues toward the safety that comes from solidarity. Just four years ago, in an essay for this magazine (Vanity Fair), I wrote the following: “Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: it was a consensual relationship. Any ‘abuse’ came in the aftermath, when I was made a scapegoat in order to protect his powerful position.” I now see how problematic it was that the two of us even got to a place where there was a question of consent. Instead, the road that led there was littered with inappropriate abuse of authority, station, and privilege. 

JUDY COLLINGS MEMOIR FRANK ABOUT FAMILIAL ALCOHOLISM and DEPRESSION

SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES
MY LIFE IN MUSIC - Judy Collins

I listened to Judy Collin's e-book because she reads it herself: I love hearing the author read their own words and in this case, as in Carly Simon's e-book, previously reviewed here at Mistress Manifesto when I featured James Taylor's Mistress Evie as Mistress of the Month, also sing some songs. In Judy's book she reveals her relationships with Stephen Stills, who wrote the song Sweet Judy Blue Eyes for her during their relationship.  He was several years younger and eventually that was a problem.  More so, she hated LA and went to live in New York City.  They managed to stay friends for four decades and in 2007 a tape of unreleased music from their 1968 affair was discovered and released as "Just Roll Tape."  She's still confused about why Joni Mitchell rebuffed her friendship but is thankful to her for the international hit she had with Joni's song Both Sides Now. She was the first person in popular music to include the song of whales (1962).  As she says she was considered an "overnight success" after many years of showing up.

Judy Collin's life also intersected with Joan and Mimi Baez, Bob Dylan, Lucy and Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Phil Ochs, Janis Joplin, and Stacey Keach - who she had a long relationship with, and many others in the music business. A youthful pregnancy resulted in a beloved son who followed in the footsteps of his mother and mother's father into alcoholism and depression and suicidal thoughts.  In his case he did suicide.  The marriage didn't last.  Years later after finally coming to terms with her alcoholism, Judy Collins did marry again and that marriage has lasted.  She says she had an attraction for the "dangerous ones" who "slipped in and out of other women's lives.

As she came to adulthood and the folk music scene in the 1960's, and to folk music she has been true though she considers her song choices and writing to be eclectic, and was once a member of a group in favor of open relationships and partner sharing as well as a Yippie (like the Chicago Seven), it should perhaps come as no surprise that Collins was a sexual explorer. She had some one night stands when married and touring and fell in love repeatedly.  Her story of driving 16 hours alone in a borrowed car to have an illegal abortion and then breaking down on a moonlit road reminds us that abortion must remain legal.  Another time she was in the car and began confessing to her husband that she was having an affair with another man after they hit a rabbit on the road.

I found her frankness refreshing.  Though no intimate details are given, Collins was no stranger to the Story of O, group sex, sex with women, and a "sexually hip" lifestyle.  (All of which makes me feel downright conservative these days.)  She was ill at times; TB, hepatitis, and voice endangering alcoholism.

So if you love her voice, are a fan of music memoirs, or are battling some demons yourself, you may find this memoir well worth the read.


Missy

C 2018 All Rights Reserved Book Review

MRS. FRANK SINATRA - PHILANTHROPIST

This video is from 2016, which would have been Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday. Barbara Sinatra died in 2017.


BARBARA SINATRA CHILDREN'S CENTER - RANCHO MIRAGE CALIFORNIA
EXCERPT:
The mission of the Barbara Sinatra Center for Abused Children is to counsel physically, sexually and emotionally abused children, and to focus on prevention, community education and breaking the cycle of generational abuse. No child is ever turned away due to a family’s inability to pay.

—Barbara & Frank Sinatra Founders

Approximately 90% of our budget comes from the generosity of a caring, worldwide community, fundraising events, and charitable organizations. This heartfelt support ensures that children are counseled regardless of a family's ability to pay.

GEISHA ARE FAMOUSLY PRIZED AS WIVES... BUT MISTRESSES DO NOT PREVAIL

Chapter 26 of Mineko Iwasaki's book, begins to reveal the progression of a young woman through her teenage years. After two years as a professional dancer, after years of rigorous classes, it was time for her MIZUAGE, the ceremony of moving up. This is the term used elsewhere for the ritual deflowering for which men compete and bid, depicted in the film Memoirs of a Geisha but which Mineko Iwasaki denies happened to her or in her particular house.  She says it is like "sweet sixteen" in the west. Her Okiya (the household she belonged to) paid for her ceremony which cost over $100,000 just for the right kimono, as well as for things like treats and gifts to be given around the neighborhood. The treats handed out include ones that appear to be breasts with pink nipples. (Not considered to be obscene.)  She was seventeen in October of 1967 when she had hers.

On page 5 of this chapter she says that this ceremony tells the community as well as the clients that she is getting near marriageable age and that geisha are "famously prized" as wives.

EXCERPT: ... "One couldn't ask for a more beautiful or sophisticated hostess, especially if one travels in diplomatic or international business circles.  And a geiko (the term her particular house used, rather than geisha) brings with her the cornucopia of connections she has cultivated over her career, which can be very important for ayoung man starting out..."

But the young geiko is also used to having money. 
Page six:

 "I have seen instances where working gieko married for love and basically kept their husbands.  These relationships were rarely successful." ..."What about the women who are the mistresses of married patrons?  Those stories could fill another volume.  The classic take is that of the wife lying on her deathbed.  She calls the geiko to her side and thanks her tearfully for taking such good care of her husband.  Then she dies, the geiko becomes the man's second wife, and they live happily ever after.

It is rarely that straightforward.

I remember one particularly disturbing incident.  Two gieko were having affairs with the same man, a big sake merchant.  They each took it upon themselves to pay uninvited visits on his wife to implore her to separate from him. Caught in the impossible dilemma of the ensuing uproar, the man committed suicide..."