People ask us here in Tucson,
“How do you stand the 110 degree summer heat? “
We desert rats think to ourselves –”What wimps for asking!” –
yet our polite answer is, “We go up to the High Country!”
The High Country is only a few hours out of town. One nice place in the High
Country is Ramsey Canyon, world-known for gorgeous hummingbirds
And dorky looking frogs.
The Ramsey Canyon trail is steep and uphill, but worth it for the view. The
country is a mix of desert and mountain pine, because it is where the
Sonoran desert meets the Rockie Mountains.
About half-way up I see a mama turkey with six babies. I did not know
that turkey babies like to climb up mama turkey’s back for rides.
I make friends with a squirrel. He jumps around in Shakespearian iambic
pentameter … Under the Greenwood tree …
who loves to lie with me …
Here shall we see no enemy
but winter and rough weather …
Da Dum da dum da dum da dum…
I forget that the Canyon has bears and puma and I take the colors of
the many greens and the sweet way the trail winds.
I watch a spider happily at work.
I spot a gentle deer in the meadow, and watch him as
he leaps like a springer spaniel to eat some leaves.
I follow him into tall grass,
all the time all spaced out watching him, all rapturous like St John of the Cross
wrote,
I was so caught up and rapt away,
In such oblivion immersed,
That every sense and feeling lay
Of sense and feeling dispossessed;
I do not notice a coiled-up rattler at my feet –
his hissy sound like water rustling –
his hooded mean little eyes –
and his awful open serpentine mouth!
YIKES! Run away!
Suddenly formerly friendly forest is forebodding!
Every tree looks like a monster!
Friend-squirrel stops to eat; he knows my mind is playing forest tricks
on me. He also knows I stepped on the snake first.
Did St John ever get so spaced out that a rattler snapped at him? I think
about that as I wander up to the top of the mountain and watch
civilization below. I take it in, no longer thinking, just feeling the
transcendental experiences St John knew so well:
I entered – where – I did not know,
Yet when I found that I was there,
Though where I was I did not know,
Profound and subtle things I learned;
Nor can I say what I discerned,
For I remained uncomprehending,
All knowledge transcending.
It is time to leave, but in the new stillness of my heart,
I know that I will come back to High Country sometime soon.
At the end of May in Washington, DC, the Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide brought together a very diverse group of people from all walks of life and from all over the world. Not everyone agreed on religious or political issues, including ones related to assisted suicide, such as the death penalty and abortion.
The task of the Symposium’s leaders was to get all these people to unite around just one issue. Here is how some of the speakers went about “herding cats.”
We can agree on a definition of assisted suicide. It is one person directly and intentionally involved with ending the life of another. There is nothing in that definition about withdrawing or withholding care.Assisted suicide is not about unintentional overdoses or unintentional deaths. Assisted suicide must be the direct and intentional cause of death.
There is a difference between killing someone and letting that person die. Removing medical treatment is not euthanasia.A person who is actively dying may also refuse hydration and food.
We need unity. We need to accept that we are diverse, and that we can remain unified on a single-issue basis.We have a specific area of concern.
Stephan Drake
Not Dead Yet Organization
I came to this convention under the notion that we would be focused on physician-assisted suicide, and not other issues like stem cell research, universal health care, Roe versus Wade, and so forth.We cannot turn this into a cultural war discussion.What does a coalition mean?Where can we join together? We must be focused on this one issue.
Margaret Dore, attorney
Coalition Against I-1000 in WashingtonState
The other side wants to talk against the Catholic Church.The point is — let’s get back to talking about the laws and the statute and not about faith and values.
When you go to argue assisted suicide laws, you should hit them where it really hurts. That is, to tell people to simply read and study the statute. Look at what the statute really says and how it does not provide protection. Look at the potential for abuse within the statute itself.
Look at the language of the statute itself.The patient and the patient alone must have the choice to use or not use drugs.To self-administer drugs refers to the act of ingesting medications. Yet ingesting drugs can mean intravenously, by mouth, through a patch on the arm or whatever. “Self-administered” can mean therefore that someone else gives you the medications.
Notice that the statute had no requirement for witnesses at the time of death.
Families typically abuse guardianship statutes in order to access elderly people’s estates as quickly as possible. This is why 95% of family members abuse such statutes. Assisted-suicide laws give them a new means to inherit estates more quickly.
Dr. Margaret Cottle
Palliative Care Physicians, Canada
The idea that you are better off dead is belief-based. There is not one shred of evidence that proves you are better off dead.
People who make up these policies are often physicians who have an agenda and work their way up in political systems.The phrase “physician-assisted death” better describes the essence of the process than “physician-assisted suicide.”
Under some laws, doctors do not have to assist suicides, but anyone with a license can do it.Today you are allowing “philosopher-assisted suicides.”
Many say that the Oregon law has “careful safeguards” and there is no pressure on vulnerable persons to end their lives.The fact that people in Oregon are carrying around cards that say, “Do not euthanize me” shows they feel under pressure.
Dr. William Toffler
National director, Physicians for Compassionate Care
Why are assisted suicide laws aimed at people who have only six months to live?Why are only doctors turned into the judges and executioners in these cases?Why are just overdoses of sleeping pills used?Injections would be more efficient.Some people have lived up to eleven days after an overdose.
If you look at the data in the Oregon experience with assisted suicide, there has been an incremental increase in the number of cases.For example, in 1998, there were 20 cases; in 2003, there were 60 cases; and in 2008, there were 80 cases.
We are also seeing an erosion of information in Oregon.In 1998, for example, there was a 17-page average report on each case, and psychological referrals were done 20% of the time. In 2009, the reports were down to five pages and psychological referrals were only 3%.
Dr. Mark Mostert
Director, the Institute for the Study of Disability and Bioethics
We are at a critical juncture in the euthanasia debate.There is a social acceptance of doing away with people.
The sole criteriafor this coalition should be that we are opposed to assisted suicide, euthanasia and eugenics.These are equal opportunity killers, and religion, and liberal or conservative, and whatever else does not matter in this fight.
Ask us why euthanasia and assisted suicide are wrong.Ask us why living is better than suicide.
People who argue in favor of assisted suicide and euthanasia often say they and others should not live if they are a burden and require help in feeding and self-care. They say that such a life lacks dignity and autonomy.They say handicapped people are a drain on the health care system.
At this month’s International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide in Washington, DC, many speakers were handicapped or else they were people with profoundly disabled family members, including the brother of Terri Schiavo.
I copied 17 provocative quotes from their speeches here.
Bobby Schlinder, director of the Terri Schiavo Foundation:
Rolling Stone published an article about Terri=s Avegetable life … her dead fish eyes … and her doped up smile …@ This was my sister they were talking about.It was just one example of the media=s profound prejudice and bigotry against handicapped people, and their slander and defamation of my sister.
My sister was never dying or on life support. We took her everywhere in her wheelchair. The media distorted her condition.
The diagnosis Apersistent vegetative state@ dehumanizes people.It is a subjective diagnosis. My sister was not a diagnosis.She was a human being with a profound brain injury.
The number one question that I am asked all the time is AWho would want to live like your sister?@That question is used to leap frog into killing people.But the question was never about Terri.It was always about us and about how we are going to treat our most vulnerable.
Diane Coleman, founder, the Not Dead Yet organization
Every time read I the phrase “burden of care” I feel a threat.
We are sometimes asked, “Who are you - the disabled – to take away our rights to euthanasia?”However, the reasons for euthanasia are disability-related – things like loss of autonomy, loss of dignity.We don’t believe in that.We do not believe those are reasons for physician-assisted suicide.
We’re not dead yet and we will fight back.
Randy Richardson, father of Lauren
I want to say that my word “compassion” is not followed by the word “choices.” My word compassion means someone with a heart taking care of someone else.
When we told Lauren, “Lauren, we’re going to take you home,” she cried. Lauren is not a vegetable. Carrots can’t cry.
Lionel Roosemont, father of Tikvah
I thought they would do everything possible to help my child.Instead, they told us that we should have an abortion as soon as possible. They told us she would be born blind, deaf, paralyzed and helpless.When she was born, she was not blind, she was not deaf, and she was not paralyzed. Her APGAR scores were nine and ten.
The newest developments in Belgium society are that newborn babies are being killed and pharmacists are selling “euthanasia kits.”
Please publish the Belgium story to put them under pressure.Stand up for your country and for Belgium.You don’t have to be afraid.
Stephan Drake, Not Dead Yet organization
When I was born, the doctors put the odds at 100 to one that I would survive the night.They worried that I might survive and I did. I am living against medical advice.
The restriction of physician-assisted suicide to just the terminally ill should not be regarded as permanent.We know their strategy.They have laid it out for us.
Alison Davis, No Less Human
Once I accidentally went into the wrong room where proponents of assisted suicide were working.Everyone assumed I was pro-euthanasia because I am in a wheelchair.
The other side thinks we disabled people are clamoring for such laws.Most of us are terrified of these people and we are afraid of euthanasia becoming law.
About twenty years ago, I just wanted to die and this feeling lasted for years. Once I took a large dose of pills, slashed my wrists, and then I drank an entire bottle of martini.A friend took me to the Emergency Room where I was treated against my will.If suicide had been legal then, I would have satisfied all the criteria. It took me years to decide that my life was worth living.I have not thought about suicide since.I had no idea of the good times that were ahead of me.
I have experienced much pain in my life.When my pain is bad, I do not need to be told that I am burdensome.I need to hear that my life has meaning.The feeling that I may be abandoned is worse than any pain.
Welcome to Jane St. Clair’s website -Author of Walk Me to Midnight - articles against assisted suicide - songs and stunning photographs of Arizona.
Walk Me to Midnight is a fast-paced suspense murder mystery that critics have call “taut, penetrating, and impossible to put down - a novel that will keep you reading all night long until you get to its horrifying conclusion.” Yet it’s a serious book guaranteed to make you think –some scenes from this book were included in a scholarly journal about contemporary fiction.
This novel defies classification - published by a Christian book company, it has been banned in some Christian bookstores. The tone of Walk Me to Midnight is more spiritual than religious.
For more information about Walk Me to Midnight and to read an excerpt from Chapter One, see Walk Me to Midnight.
Last weekend I went to an international conference on euthanasia. The most important thing I learned there is that no one can decide whose life is worth living. It is impossible to say a person’s life is no longer valuable because he’s old or because she’s in a wheelchair or because he’s mentally disabled or she’s suicidal or he’s terminally ill or whatever.
The most important person I was introduced to was Teague Johnson. Tracy Latimer, whom he refers to here, was a child with cerebral palsy whose father killed her.
Here is this astounding eleven-year-old boy in his own words:
My Name is Teague
My name is Teague. I am eleven years old, and have really severe cerebral palsy. The Latimer case in Saskatchewan has caused me a great deal of unhappiness and worry over the past few weeks.”
I feel very strong that all children are valuable, and deserve to live full and complete lives. No one should make the decision for another person on whether their life is worth living or not.
I have a friend who had cerebral palsy, and he decided that life was too hard and too painful. So he really let himself die. I knew he was leaving this world and letting himself dwell in the spiritual world. I told him that I understood that the spiritual world was really compelling, but that life was worth fighting for.
I had to fight to live when I was very sick. The doctors said I wouldn’t live long, but I knew I had so much to accomplish still.
I have to fight pain all the time. When I was little, life was pain. I couldn’t remember no pain. My foster mom, Cara, helped me learn to manage and control my pain. Now my life is so full of joy. There isn’t time enough in the day for me to learn and experience all I wish to. I have a family and many friends who love me. I have a world of knowledge to discover. I have so much to give.
I can’t walk or talk or feed myself. But I am not “suffering from cerebral palsy.” I use a wheelchair, but I am not “confined to a wheelchair.” I have pain, but I do not need to be “put out of my misery.”
My body is not my enemy. It is that which allows me to enjoy Mozart, experience Shakespeare, savor a bouillabaisse feast, and cuddle my mom. Life is a precious gift. It belongs to the person to whom it was given. Not to her parents, nor to the state. Tracy’s life was hers “to make of it what she could.” My life is going to be astounding.
Teague died May 29, 1995. He was eleven years old. His life was indeed astounding.
I have always loved the way the ocean is ever-changing and moving so that it hypnotizes and yet at the same time relaxes your mind. To me, she has light feet and dances the samba. But now I live in the mountains, and they are more sober than friend-ocean. They play great thunder music – symphony, not samba.
My own mountain is called Pusch Ridge but that is such a prosaic name for a huge everest that looks like a gigantic dinosaur.
I am not the only one who sees this mountain that way. A Feng Shui master took one look at Pusch Ridge and proclaimed him to be a dragon protecting our valley. Like China we too have crouching tigers and hidden dragons in our mountains. A dragon protecting your valley, though, is considered very very lucky.
He is never the same from day to day or even hour to hour. At sunrise he wears a halo.
At sunset he turns bright red and then fades to black.
During monsoon he is green; during dry heat, he is brown. In some lights he is purple mountain majesty;
in others he is maroon with a white top of snow.
Sunlight and moonlight can drop into his holes or a cloud can turn parts of him into gray umbrage.
I greet him every day. I love him. I trust him. Like friend-ocean, he is eternal and forever.
If he could speak, he would say like the Navajo people do in their Blessingway ceremonies:
In beauty may I walk.
All day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk.
With dew about my feet may I walk.
With beauty may I walk.
With beauty before me, may I walk.
With beauty behind me, may I walk.
With beauty above me, may I walk.
With beauty below me, may I walk.
With beauty all around me, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
It is finished in beauty.
It is finished in beauty
–Navajo Blessingway Ceremony
Henry David Thoreau once said it is wise to fall in love with your own small and special piece of real estate. He had Walden Pond, but I think he would have loved Pusch Ridge.
I have a snobby friend who says Ted DeGrazia was not much of an artist. It’s true that his most famous work is a UNICEF Christmas card. It sold in the millions, but it’s not like it’s the Mona Lisa or something.
To me, DeGrazia’s art is not just about his paintings. His art is about how he lived his life here in Tucson. That is why I like to go up to where Swan Road almost ends under Fingertip Rock. There I can see how an artist truly did it his way.
DeGrazia built everything himself – his little house, his chapel, his studio and his art gallery. Because everything’s hand-built adobe, the buildings are small and primitive.
There are nutsy-putsy decorations everywhere – crucifixes mixed with beer cans, candles on cactus, and old Singer sewing machines used for planters. Nothing’s wasted, like the way poor people do things. There’s art in every corner. Everything’s art.
The chapel, dedicated to Padre Kino, could hold maybe ten people on its little benches.
Drawings are all over the chapel walls, and some you wouldn’t expect – like a clown brightening up a dark corner in the back.
DeGrazia liked to go up Superstition Mountain on horseback and visit the Yaquis. Sometimes they would come to his house and hitch their horses in this handmade corral.
DeGrazia did paintings, but he also worked in metals. I picture him working on this stove outside,
fashioning the copper door to the art gallery.
or making a beautiful crown.
He put a lot of humor that shows in many of his works.
But DeGrazia believed the artist’s role was to feel deeply and express emotions for people. Here is the resurrected Christ in glowing white, yet His face says so much more about what He is feeling.
DeGrazia famously took 100 paintings up a mountain and burned them to protest unfair tax laws. That’s a Western thing — to not much like the government.
When he came toward the end of his life, DeGrazia designed his own grave. Like I said, he did things his way.
I like to go up to where Swan Road almost ends not just for his paintings, but inspiration. DeGrazia’s place is sacred because it shows you what it’s like to lead an authentic life. His house, his chapel, his studio, his grave, his way. Adios, amigo.
Friend-squirrel stops to eat; he knows my mind is playing forest tricks
