The 85th Annual La Fiesta de los Vaqueros THE TUCSON RODEO!

Rodeo comes but once a year in Tucson, but it’s the biggest time of the year. Schools and businesses close, so everybody can cowboy up and go down to the arena.

The rodeo is decorated with cows, adding to the excitement.

Before the events start, you can buy a cowboy hat and a beer, or just some  honky tonky tourist souvenirs at the booths below the stands.

It costs plenty to get in so the cowboys can have a chance at a big purse. A real rodeo cowboy can make upwards of $20,000 here in just one event, but some events are so dangerous that they earn every penny and then some.

Rodeo has got clowns who pretend to fight bulls and lots of stunt riders …

These cowgirls compete for who can ride around the Coors barrels

and back the fastest.

But the most famous event is the buckin’ bronco. Ride em cowboy!

This event is timed in terms of seconds, as are most rodeo events.

R0pin’ is harder than it looks and sometimes that little doggie gets the best of even the most skillful cowboy.

The most dangerous event is bull riding because the bull can come back at you if you fall off.

Here a cowboy went down, and his foot got caught in the stirrup

and he got hurt badly enough

so that they had to get the medics.

But he got a big round of applause for getting up and walking home.

Rodeo is so many things - a time for a cowboy to strut his stuff —

Show his skills at ropin’ and ridin’

And win him some money too.

Everybody’s got some cowboy in them — which is why rodeo will last forever!

Happy Trails to you, and y’all come back next year!

To some people, the sky is something over your head. You look up to see it.

Back East the sky is always broken up into parts by buildings,

clotheslines, telephones and such.

 Even in cities by the sea, the sky gets broken up.

Out West, the sky is everywhere.

Microsoft skies

Technicolor skies

Black and white skies

Hallelujah skies

And rainbow skies

The sky here makes ordinary things look dramatic

Ordinary buildings

Ordinary days

Promise yourself you’ll come to Big Sky country at least once.

Promise yourself you’ll walk in the sky.

When you first come, you wonder where you’ve landed.  Where are you?

This landscape looks more like Star Wars than Mother Earth.

What kind of place can have so much sky and yet at the same time, look so desolate and forgotten?

What kind of trees are these? Are they trees? They offer no sheltering arms, no comforting green, no sweet shade in this wilderness.

The Mormons named them Joshua Trees, because they thought they looked like Joshua in the Bible as he lifted his arms up to heaven to pray.

Joshua lifted his arms before the Battle of Jericho! And the walls came tumbling down!

This place looks like where those walls came a’tumbling down.

There are rocks everywhere - piled and random. Some people climb them.

Why bother going to the moon or outer space when you can go to Joshua Tree National Park in California? It’s amazing here.

Robert Browning once wrote — This world is full of such a number of things, I think we should all be as happy as kings.

He would have liked Joshua Tree Park.

by

Jane St. Clair

Author of Walk Me to Midnight

Within the last five months, four beautiful students from Palo Alto, California (home of Stanford University) killed themselves at a railroad crossing. These precious children were all students at Harvey Gunn High School. Students there are devastated by this terrible loss. Train crews tell officials that it is hard for them to drive over the spot where the suicides occurred. These are unspeakable tragedies.

Suicide is the third leading cause of death for teenagers, after accidents and homicide. Please, if you are considering suicide, get help right now. Suicide is like junking a car that has a flat tire.  You can fix it and things can get better.

129 things to do instead of suicide.

Test-drive a convertible with the top down

Work up your American Idol audition

Go to a music store and play drums

Design your own line of clothing

Do a murder mystery party

Get a psychic reading

Have fake business cards made

Start a collection

Go horseback riding

Go to a tanning salon

Spend the day eating junk food

Play with Legos

Make a lemonade stand for charity

Take a bubble bath

Redo your MySpace or Facebook page

Play miniature golf

Read a book of New Yorker cartoons

Watch wildlife

Phone your grandmother

Paint a wall mural in your room

Send a message in a bottle

Put on prom clothes and eat by candlelight

WATCH A SUNRISE

Lift weights

Have a meal at an airport

Study cows

Make puppets

Go to the mall and try on something you’d never wear

Make a video for YouTube

Work up an impression of your favorite celebrity

Get decals for your car

Take up belly dancing or tango

Do some star gazing

Go through your clothes and donate some to charity

Buy someone roses

Have your portrait made

Watch Steinfeld reruns

Go roller-skating

Dye your hair

Plant a tree

Go to a 12-Step meeting

Make cookies

Learn Sudoku

Take a walk

Buy a puppy

TAKE NATURE PICTURES

Go to a movie

Get a massage

Go to the library

Meditate

Plan a safari

Go skydiving or ballooning

Call a friend who’s in worse shape than you are

Go to the gym and work out in a new way

Write a poem

Rearrange the furniture in your room

Plan your wedding

Get a racquet ball game going

Meet a friend at a restaurant

Visit some place creepy

Attack a household chore

Go to a waterslide park

Write your memoirs

Watch a live theater production

Visit a theme park

Draw a wall-sized picture

Do some yoga

Play Barbies or GI Joe with some little kids

Count your blessings

Draw a picture of your pet

Tour a factory

Rent a limo

Build a time capsule

Buy a new video game

PLAN YOUR TRIP TO EUROPE

Get a scavenger hunt going

Make pancakes

Dance to the video game “Dance Revolution”

Visit a college

Take a ride on public transportation

Go bowling

Read an old yearbook

Visit a nursing home

Go to a thrift store and buy something silly

Watch “The Matrix” or “Cinderella Diaries” again

Play Frisbee

Write a letter to your Congressman

Go rock-climbing

Watch baseball at the park

Ride your bicycle

Charge up a bill on a credit card

Make homemade pasta

Learn how photoshop pictures

Do a water sport like swimming, tubing or canoeing

Have a picnic, indoors is okay

Throw a spontaneous party

Ride a rollercoaster

Make Play Dough and do a sculpture

Get acupuncture or acupressure treatments

Walk barefoot in the grass

Practice a musical instrument

GO TO A TACKY TOURIST SPOT

Get a manicure or hair cut

Go to church or synagogue

Visit a history museum

Jump rope

Build a snowman or a sand sculpture

Read a book you loved as a kid

Visit college websites and pick the best

Do 500 jumping jacks or push-ups

Go to the zoo

Fly a kite

Knit

Toast marshmallows

Take up golf

Take an online course

Put together a model of a car or airplane

WAKE UP YOUR DOG AND GO FOR A WALK

Go skate boarding

Play basketball

Ask someone new for a date

Go to a big-time sports event

Learn to juggle

Catch fireflies

Try a new ethnic restaurant

Cut the grass

Get tickets to be in an audience at a TV show

Make sandwiches for the homeless

Visit an art museum

PHONE 1-800-SUICIDE

            People Care. I love you.

The elder prays for all the people who are crossing the desert today, that they might not die from the heat and their thirst.

No more deaths on the desert, the elder prays.

Then the drums begin and the dancers march into the room, single file.

The only music is drums, but what incredible drums they are, how loud and fast, you feel like dancing but your feet do not know the steps.

The elder tells the story of when the Anglos first came here. They asked their guides, Who are these people who live over the mountains there?

And their guides answered, They are Aztec which means people who wear feathers. Aztec.

But Aztec is not who we are, said the elder. We are Chicano, which means people of the land.

The Anglo came and thought they discovered a new land. But we were already here. We discovered them when they came off their strange boats.

We welcomed them. They were hungry, so we fed them. They were thirsty, so we gave them something to drink.  They were tired so we offered them shelter.

What did they give us in return? Our history is not so good.

At the end of a year, the Anglos celebrated their survival.  But we already knew how to survive on this land.

Today both Anglo and Chicano share a concern. We worry together about poisons in our desert land, poisons in our air and our water.

We ask together that these poisonings may end.

No more deaths on the desert, and may all people live in peace.

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. It includes chapters on New Age vision quests in Sedona, Arizona.

Walk Me to Midnight is available for at online stores (used copies are under$6!) For more information about Walk Me to Midnight and to read an excerpt from Chapter One, see Walk Me to Midnight.

To read about Jane St Clair’s work as a writer, see About Jane St Clair.

To read articles against physician-assisted suicide, go to Articles About Assisted Suicide.

To see Jane’s photographs and read her word-songs about the Sonoran Desert in Tucson, Arizona, go to Desert Songs by Jane St Clair

To read prize-winning short stories by Jane St Clair, go to Stories by Jane St Clair

To read Jane’s online diary, go to
myspace.com/jane_st_clair

To read book reviews by Jane St Clair, go to Jane St Clair on goodreads.com

Thank you for visiting this website, pardner.

Reason #30- No on Assisted Suicide
Sunday, November 2
Today’s AD-Some terminally ill people recover and get well.

A hospice nurse told me about a lovely 24-year-old given three months to live. Five years later, she is still with us and the mother of a child.

Every good doctor knows that medicine is an art as well as a science. No one can predict with 100% certainty who will live and who will die. Although it is rare, some terminally ill people can and do get better. Everyone who works in hospice can tell you at least one story attesting to that. They personally knew a patient who beat the odds and is still vertical today.

Offer them suicide and you take everything away from them. You take away hope. You take away their lives.

Reason 29: No on Assisted Suicide
Saturday, November 1
Today’s Ad: Doctors make mistakes in medical care.

This week, Mississippi Supreme Court has upheld a $4 million award to the
family of a woman misdiagnosed with cancer and then given a lethal dose
of painkillers.The 66-year-old woman received massive doses of painkillers at a hospice for cancer, which an autopsy showed she never had, according to court
records. See http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20081025/NEWS/810250356/1001/news.

That’s just this week’s news. It happens all the time.

The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, reports that medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States at 225,000 deaths per year. Half are medical mistakes, including 2,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery; 7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals; and 80,000 deaths/year from infections in hospitals.

Do you want to give doctors the right to administer suicide medications? Hey, mistakes happen.

Reason 28- No on Assisted Suicide
Friday October 31
Today’s AD-Assisted suicide laws give societal approval to suicide.

These laws create a world where everyone agrees it’s okay to check out at certain times. In fact, we’ll help you do it. We’ll make it legal. Society approves. This creates more suicides among people who are not sick, and leads to increased medical killings. It creates incentives to do less medical research and to save money on medical care by offering people poison pills. This is already happening in Oregon.

In the Netherlands, assisted suicide has moved into mercy killings of deformed babies, and into allowing mentally ill people to kill themselves rather than seek treatment. There is no reason to believe the United States would do any better if such laws are passed here.

Reason 27- No on Assisted Suicide
October 30 Thursday
Today’s AD No one, not even incapacitated people, needs assisted suicide.

This is the worst case scenario argument from people who want assisted suicide laws. It goes like this: people who are paralyzed cannot commit suicide themselves. Therefore, they are denied a right. Therefore, we have to pass assisted suicide laws.

First of all, assisted suicide laws are written only for the terminally ill. Someone like Christopher Reeve and Terri Shiavo may have been too incapacitated to commit suicide but they were not terminally ill. Assisted suicide laws have nothing to do with their cases.

The vast majority of people who are terminally ill do not become incapacitated until the very end. They have plenty of time to kill themselves without help. If they ask friends and doctors to help them commit suicide once they become incapacitated, they are often looking for approval of their act or sympathy for their condition. It’s no one’s job to kill another person, and unfair to ask that of doctors and family members.

Reason #26- No on Assisted Suicide
October 29
Today’s AD You already have control over your final illness.

Many people believe that assisted suicide laws are bad for society, but they want them just in case they personally need them. They want control over their dying process. It’s a me-first attitude.

What they do not understand is that they already have control of their dying process. My own grandfather pulled out his feeding tubes and respirator himself, telling his doctor and his son that he was an old man and his time had come.

You already can kill yourself any time you want. You have the right to refuse any medical treatment at any time. You can choose pain relief only. You can tell your hospice nurses and caretakers to keep everyone out of your room, if you want control over who sees you when you are sick. You already have control, and you don’t need assisted suicide.

Reason #25- No on Assisted Suicide
October 28
Today’s AD-We can come up with better ways of helping the dying besides assisted suicide..

A young man was diagnosed with HIV in the Netherlands. Even though his doctors told him he could live many years free of symptoms, he asked for an doctor-assisted suicide. No one talked to this young man and helped him work through his feelings of depression and of being overwhelmed by his own diagnosis. His culture accepts suicide, so that was that, and he ended his life in despair.

In our own country, oncologists routinely walk away from cancer patients they have been treating for months or even years once they are terminal. The person’s death becomes a personal failure on the part of the physician, even though it’s nothing of the kind. The only failure is the doctor’s lack of caring and lack of courage to stay involved. Caring is not always curing, but every bit as important. If you only think in terms of curing and winning battles against illness, you walk away from your “losers” and you walk away from caring.

We can come up with better ways of dealing with death than this, but we never will if we pass assisted suicide laws.

Reason #24- No on Assisted Suicide
October 27
Today’s AD Oregon offers terminally ill people assisted suicide in lieu of medical care.
Oregon and the Netherlands, where assisted suicide is legal, keep expanding it. This passage, written by Dr. Herbert Hendin in Psychiatric Times, sums up what’s happened in the Netherlands:
The Netherlands has moved from assisted suicide to euthanasia, from euthanasia for the terminally ill to euthanasia for the chronically ill, from euthanasia for physical illness to euthanasia for psychological distress and from voluntary euthanasia to involuntary euthanasia (called “termination of the patient without explicit request”).

The Dutch now end the lives of psychiatric patients and deformed babies.

In Oregon, medical systems are already offering people assisted suicide in lieu of chemotherapy. See “Oregon Offers Terminal Patients Assisted Suicide in Lieu of Medical Care,” FOX NEWS, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,392962,00.html.

Reason #23- No on Assisted Suicide
October 26
Today’s AD Assisted suicide laws give more power to the government, not the individual.

On the surface, it looks like you gain a new “right” when you vote for assisted suicide. Actually, you turn over more power to the government and medical establishment.

You already have the power to commit suicide at any time. But if you sign a paper agreeing to have your doctor do it for you, you are turning over your power to someone else. You are creating a mechanism for the government and medical people to enter into decisions as to who lives and who dies. You are taking away the power of the individual.

Reason #22- No on Assisted Suicide
October 25
Today’s AD-Assisted suicide laws removes incentive to do medical research.

If cancer patients routinely kill themselves rather than undergo treatment, you have removed a reason to perform medical research to cure cancer. Research scientists receive funding based on how much money illnesses are costing insurance companies and how many people suffer from them. If an illness is rare, it gets less funding.

Also, think about the parents of terminally ill children. They will move mountains to cure that child. Rich parents fund research. Average people find breakthroughs themselves, like the parents in Lorenzo’s Oil.

Suicide laws remove such incentives for medical research and human progress.

Reason #21- No on Assisted Suicide
October 24 Big financial interests are often behind assisted suicide laws.

When are you dead? When your brain dies? When your heart stops beating? When you stop breathing? When you are in an irreversible coma? No one really has come up with a working definition of death, so the concept gets abused, especially since death involves money.

The longer we keep sick people alive, the more they cost us. Last illnesses cost more than any other medical category. If we convince you that you have no hope for a future, we save money on your care and make money on your organs. If we convince you to die early, we inherit your money more quickly. The government saves on Social Security. Your company saves pension money.

So. Are you going to let such financial interests promote assisted suicide as a new public policy?

Reason #20- No on Assisted Suicide
October 23
Today’s AD Christopher Reeve considered assisted suicide.

In his autobiography,”Still Me,” Reeve describes the despair he felt after becoming paralyzed in a riding accident. Within seconds, he went from being a handsome, extremely physically fit person to one who could not move from the neck down. He could speak and drink through straws, and that was pretty much it.

He asked his wife to help him commit suicide, and she said, “I understand how you feel, but you’re still you and I love you.” Hence, the title of the book.

What Reeve confesses is that he was testing her to see if she was willing to take over his care.

He went on to live a life of example. Not only did he write an inspiring book, he also acted in and directed several movies and worked tirelessly to get funding for victims of paralysis. He never gave up trying to walk. He became a real superman.

Reason #19- No on Assisted Suicide
October 22
Today’s AD Assisted suicide asks too much of loved ones.

In the movies and on TV shows, the dying person is always in extruciating pain and crying out for help to the only one who will listen: an old friend or spouse or daughter or whatever. The writer presents the scene as totally hopeless unless the loved one helps the dying person commit suicide.

This is, of course, absolute nonsense.

The correct response is, “I can’t do that, but I can stay by you, love you, help you through this, make sure you get pain relief, counseling and help. We can get through this together. Please don’t ask me to hurt someone I care about. I love you.”

Reason #18- No on Assisted Suicide
October 21
Today’s AD-Assisted suicide laws put poor people at risk.

This is the Martin Sheen argument against assisted suicide. He is making radio ads in Washington partly because he believes that assisted suicide laws will put poor people and those without health insurance at an extreme disadvantage within the medical system. Think of the money we’d save on CAT scans, x-rays, medicine, nursing care, rehabilitation, disability payments, etc if we had this cheap alternative: suicide.

Martin Sheen is right.

Reason #17- No on Assisted Suicide
October 20
Today’s AD-Suicide interrupts a natural path to wisdom.

At the very end of human life, everything happens faster and better. When you don’t have much time, you prioritize. People become more authentic when they are dying, which is why courts give so much credence to a person’s “last words.”

Hospice nurses have shared many stories with me about how people come to realize new things about themselves, what was really important to them after all, who loved them and whom they really love, what the meaning of life is and what the afterlife, if any, looks like to them. They may go through a period of regrets, sorrow and mourning before they find wisdom, but it’s there. If you cut off your life too soon, you miss your chance for wisdom.

Reason #16- No on Assisted Suicide
October 19
Today’s AD-The first Nazi victims were terminally ill people.

The Nazi party used very emotional propaganda films about terminally ill people who needed the compassion of assisted suicide. Today we Americans are watching similar movies like Million Dollar Baby, which got the 2004 Academy Award for Best Picture. The most effective Nazi film told the heart-breaking story of a doctor’s wife who begged her husband to kill her.

Once they sold the Germans on assisted suicide and had some doctors on board, the Nazi party moved into the concept of “useless eaters.” Germany was in a terrible depression in the 1930s, worse than America’s. “Useless eaters” were criminally insane, severely handicapped children, very very elderly, etc. Once they eliminated “useless eaters,” the Nazis went on to killing —- well, you’ve got the idea.

For more information, go to article “Hitler, the Nazis and Four Arguments Against Assisted Suicide.”

Reason #15- No on Assisted Suicide
October 18
Today’s AD-Assisted suicide laws cannot be written so as to prevent abuse.

This is the reason the American Medical Association opposes assisted suicide. Doctors know that there is no way to control assisted suicide once you make it legal. There is no foolproof way to write the law without opening it to abuse.In Oregon and the Netherlands, for example, assisted suicide laws require two physicians to “sign off” on a suicide. However, some doctors “sign off” routinely without examining patients. One Dutch doctor hurried up a suicide because he needed the bed for another patient. You can’t write a law that covers every contingency so there’s no way to control what happens to your patients once you open that door.

Reason #14- No on Assisted Suicide
October 17
Today’s AD-Dying people can be treated for depression.

Many people who are terminally ill are not depressed.At the end of her life, my sister became like a poet or artist, sitting outside and just taking in the beauty of everything. She got an enhanced sense of life, everything became so incredibly beautiful to her because it was not going to last very much longer.However, some terminally ill people are depressed and talk about suicide. If they get antidepressant medications, a good psychologist and a caring spiritual counselor, they can recover emotionally. They often find the courage to face the final work of dying: reconciliations, settling of old disputes, telling others how much they have meant to them, and so forth. Suicide is always an act of despair, and it’s not good to leave the planet in despair.

Reason 13- No on Assisted Suicide
Today’s AD
October 16 -The arguments for assisted suicide are all based on emotion.

Emotion is a kind of thought, but emotions are unreliable. We feel empathy when we see a dying person. Our first impulse is to hurry it along, end his suffering. However, behind that emotion of empathy hides a judgment: that person’s life is not worth living and needs to end now.

We can have a similar emotion when we see someone very very old or in a wheelchair or someone like Terri Shiavo. That life is not worth living. Are you feeling compassion or making a judgment?

Reason #12- No on Assisted Suicide
October 15
Today’s AD- Assisted suicide sets a bad example for other people.

A handsome young man, the father of two young children with a beautiful wife, a brilliant scientist passionate about his life’s work, was dying much much too young. Yet Randy Pausch inspired us all with his incredible “Last Lecture.” He knew he was dying, but he looked back to check on his two young sons, to make sure they and his wife would be all right, and to leave them and all of us all with a little bit of wisdom. When he was toward the end, his doctor said, “Randy, this may be it.”

He answered, “I’ll get back to you on that.”

Those were his last words.

He took control and he did it his way. We are all grateful for his example.

For more information on Randy Pusch, go to http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/.

Reason #11- No on Assisted Suicide
Today’s AD
October 14 -Insurance companies love assisted suicide.

About 27% of Medicare’s annual $327 billion budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life. That’s a lot of money, and one poison pill is so much cheaper.

You may be young and think that this is a great way to save money in the middle of a health care crisis. The insurance companies believe that too. They like doctors to help people commit suicide. It saves money.

However, what’s going to happen when it’s your turn to die?

Reason #10 Today’s AD
October 13 -The American Medical Association opposes assisted suicide.

Here’s the American Medical Association’s statement as it appears on their website:

E-2.211 Physician-Assisted Suicide
Physician-assisted suicide occurs when a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing the necessary means and/or information to enable the patient to perform the life-ending act (eg, the physician provides sleeping pills and information about the lethal dose, while aware that the patient may commit suicide). It is understandable, though tragic, that some patients in extreme duress–such as those suffering from a terminal, painful, debilitating illness–may come to decide that death is preferable to life.

However, allowing physicians to participate in assisted suicide would cause more harm than good.

Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer, would be difficult or impossible to control, and would pose serious societal risks. Instead of participating in assisted suicide, physicians must aggressively respond to the needs of patients at the end of life. Patients should not be abandoned once it is determined that cure is impossible. Multidisciplinary interventions should be sought including specialty consultation, hospice care, pastoral support, family counseling, and other modalities. Patients near the end of life must continue to receive emotional support, comfort care, adequate pain control, respect for patient autonomy, and good communication.

Reason #9- No on Assisted Suicide
Today’s AD
October 12 -Allowing assisted suicide will increase teen suicides.

American teens kill themselves at a rate of about one every two hours. About 19% of our teens tell researchers they have experienced depression, and half of those have had suicidal thoughts. Our kids take three times the number of prescription drugs for depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions than do European teens.

By okaying assisted suicide laws, we are telling our teenagers that suicide is okay and necessary sometimes. Given the above data, do you really think that’s a good idea?

News flash: Martin Sheen opposes Pro I-1000 see http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/sep/08093007.html.

Reason #8- No on Assisted Suicide
Today’s AD
October 11 - You don’t need a doctor to commit suicide.

Assisted suicide gets lumped into abortion issues, but the two are very very different. You don’t need a doctor to commit suicide. There are many ways to do it, and it’s not my place to show you how (even though I am a crime writer and know a lot about painless quick poisons and such).

Suicide is an intensely private act. You don’t need to involve anyone else, and society is better off not approving of it.

Reason #7- No on Assisted Suicide
Today’s AD
October 10 - Skilled hospice caregivers can control physical pain.

Some people are more afraid of physical pain than of actually dying.

There is no need for that fear because of modern pain control methods. I watched my parents and sister die from cancers that had spread through their bodies, and they did not feel pain, even in their last days. Morphine and other drugs did the trick, and they were not even that sedated.

One reason hospice nurses can control pain is that they don’t have to worry about addiction and can use higher levels of medications. They know how to look for and take care of blockages and other problems. Please do not be afraid of pain.

Today’s Ad

Reason #6- No on Assisted Suicide
October 9 - The American Nurses Association is against assisted suicide.

Official Position: “The American Nurses Association (ANA) believes that the nurse should not participate in assisted suicide. Such an act is in violation of the Code for Nurses with Interpretive Statements (Code for Nurses) and the ethical traditions of the profession. Nurses, individually and collectively, have an obligation to provide comprehensive and compassionate end-of-life care which includes the promotion of comfort and the relief of pain, and at times, foregoing life-sustaining treatments.”

Today’s Ad
#5- No on Assisted Suicide
October 8 -All humans have dignity, even the sick and dying.

One old man was taking care of his wife who had Alzheimer’s disease. His friends said, “Why do you put so much into her care? Can’t you see what she has become?” The old man answers, “Maybe, but I remember who she was.”

No matter where you are in your life, you are still human and you have the dignity of being human. Babies are helpless but they have human dignity. People with terrible handicaps, scars, amputations, mental illness — they still have human dignity. No one and no sickness can take your human dignity away from you. You are still someone’s spouse, someone’s parent, someone’s child, someone’s loved one. No matter what happens to you, you are still you. No one can take that from you, no matter what.

Today’s Ad:

Reason #4- No on Assisted Suicide

October 7 - Suicidal people have a diminished capacity to make the decision to end their lives.

If you tell a psychologist that you are suicidal, he or she has the power to put you in a hospital because you are a danger to yourself. Legally, you have diminished capacity and are unable to make important and rational decisions.

If you say a dying person has a good enough reason to kill his/herself, why not a person in a wheelchair? Someone whose family was killed in an accident? Someone who faces financial ruin? Suicidal people need treatment for depression, not help committing suicide.

Today’s AD

#3- No on Assisted Suicide

October 6 – Assisted suicide puts pressure on dying people to end their lives

One hospice nurse told me that he has seen families fight over estates and money even as their relative lay dying. The attitude was: Please get this over so we can get our inheritance.

Likewise, in the Terri Schiavo case, her ex-husband stood to gain money and freedom to remarry once she died.

On the other hand, it is very hard for most people to stay near someone they love who is dying. If you want to get your pet’s life over, multiple that by thousands when it’s a person you love. You really want it over, but that’s making it about you. The loving attitude is “I want every possible moment with you. Take your time.”

October 5, 2008 Today’s Ad

Reason 2 -Assisted suicide makes doctors accessories of fact to homicide.

“Accessories before the fact” is a legal term. Let’s say you buy someone a gun, knowing that he plans to kill someone with it. You are an accessory before the fact of homicide and could go to jail for doing that. Similarly, when a doctor provides a dying person with poisons, knowing that the person is going to kill himself, he is an accessory before the fact.

Assisted suicide laws are written so as that all doctors get off the hook for helping murder someone. It becomes a legal parsing of morality. Isn’t that what we hate about lawyers?

October 4, 2008 Reason 1
Assisted suicide creates a world without love.

When we think of people who showed great love and compassion — the Good Samaritans and Mother Teresas of the world –we think of how they stopped and they took the time to help others.

When they saw suffering, they didn’t shoot the person to put him out of his misery. That only creates a world without love.

Do you want your kids to grow up in a world like that? When people are so sad they want to die, they need love and understanding.

Killing is not compassion.

by Jane St Clair

Author of Walk Me to Midnight

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.

To read about Jane St Clair’s work as a writer, see About Jane St Clair.

To read articles against physician-assisted suicide, go to Articles About Assisted Suicide.

To see Jane’s photographs and read her word-songs about the Sonoran Desert in Tucson, Arizona, go to Desert Songs by Jane St Clair

To read prize-winning short stories by Jane St Clair, go to Stories by Jane St Clair

To read Jane’s online diary, go to
myspace.com/jane_st_clair

To read book reviews by Jane St Clair, go to Jane St Clair on goodreads.com

Thank you for visiting this website, pardner.

Author of WALK ME TO MIDNIGHT

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.