the begining of the week

I wish I had something witty, political or relevant to say today but I really don't. It's Monday, and I was off for four and a half days so I am back in the work clothes and dealing with humanity. My anxiety is not too bad today, yet I am not quite sure I am up for a walk to the cafeteria. It's so much easier to hide out in my cubicle, but eventually I will get hungry and have to find food somewhere. Dealing with this panic disorder/anxiety is the toughest thing I have ever had to deal with because I never know when it is going to hit me. Wednesday was really bad. A co-worker was in my cubicle and I had to ask her to leave because my anxiety was so bad-that was embarrasing. I am told that this anxiety is a result of unresolved issues that I have with Len. Perhaps, probably. None the less it is there, and I have to deal with it. I found a shrink in Lansdale who specializes in anxiety disorders. I am hoping he helps. Till then, I sit and hope the panic does not hit.

Not becoming your depression

As anyone who has read my blog knows, I suffer from depression. I take my medications religiously rarely if ever missing a dose, yet there are days like today when I wake up and I know that nothing in the day will be right. It's not a matter of things not going my way, but I know enough about my mind by now to know when it has shut down and a personal visit from Bruce Springsteen himself could not cheer me up.

Today I am thinking about Len, my partner of twenty years who died two years ago March 17, a date that happens to be my birthday and I am just filled with sadness. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for my current partner Mike and the life I lead but sometimes I just miss Len. You had to know him to know what I am talking about. While so far from perfect he had a laugh that could fill a room and despite the age difference and despite his physical problems I just thought he would live forever.

Today I am thinking about my own maladies-I had pneumonia in December and my body is playing tricks on me. I quit smoking and gained ten pounds and my jeans dont fit and I dont have the money this week to go out and get new jeans (in a larger size), I go to the gym and my body that I was once so proud of does not look the same and it is taking a long time for the muscle fibers to come back and in the meantime I feel like a lopsided mess.

Staying home on sick leave messed with my mind and I am fighting depression, I am fighting agoraphobia, I am fighting social anxiety disorder. Tomorrow I have to go back to work and I am worried about having a panic attack at work. On a brighter note I do have an appointment with a behaviorial psychologist tomorrow who claims he can cure me of my panic attacks.

I am tired. I am tired of the fight. That does not mean I wont continue to fight but the one two punch of pneumonia and depression really knocked me on my ass and I am struggling to get up. Depression is not always about feeling sad, sometimes it is about feeling overwhelmed. The sadness I can deal with, what I can't deal with is being behind in my bills because the thought of sitting down and facing them is more than I can handle.

I don't want my depression to define who I am. I went to the gym four days in a row this week, I went to the movies and I almost went to the circus today. It's not easy life right now but I wont give up.

Depression

Depression

Everyone gets the blues now and then. That unshakeable feeling that things just kind of suck and you wish you were anyone than who you are. But for most people those feelings of worthlessness or listlessness subside after a day or so and they return back to their lives, unaware of what was making them feel so down just a few days ago, but, if the numbers from the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) are to be believed, an estimated 57 million Americans suffer from depression. I, along several of my friends and family, am among that staggering 57 million.

When you mention depression to most people, the everyday blues come to mind. People don’t understand how depression can manifest itself and cripple an individual. Looking back, I can trace my first bouts with depression to my early 20’s; I was in the Navy on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and I was down to one pair of socks. The problem was that I did not know where the ship’s store was, and asking someone for directions just became an overwhelming task-something that seemed like way more than I could handle, so for about two months, until we pulled back into port, I wore the same pair of socks every day-washing them and hanging them out to dry each night before I went to bed. The key word in that story is overwhelming. When my depression is acting up (as it has been the last month or so) everyday tasks seem overwhelming, something as simple as cleaning my room can seem like something I can’t conquer, so the dirty laundry piles up and the rugs go un-vacuumed.

Somewhere along the line, my depression branched out and instead of just feeling down or overwhelmed I developed and anxiety disorder. I have been diagnosed with a generalized anxiety disorder with possible elements of post traumatic stress syndrome. What this means in everyday terms, is that without the proper medication (and I have tried many) I can’t function. When I am around people, be they friend or strangers, I get extremely nervous, my heart beats fast and I have panic attacks. If I am able to talk to the person at all, the internal dialogue going on in my head is usually “Please stop talking to me so that I can get out of this conversation and into my safety zone” It’s a terrible way to live because I never know when or where it is going to strike me and sometimes I can be in a situation and everything is fine and then later I am in the same situation and full blown panic attack.

My latest emotional “tick” is agoraphobia. For those of you unaware of that term it is the fear of leaving your house or what you deem to be your safety zone. Agoraphobia is something I only recently experienced and luckily I found a medication that took away the symptoms pretty quickly, but a recent illness has left me recuperating at home for a number of weeks and my depression is worse than ever. For me, this means my panic attacks and agoraphobia are back. Luckily for me I have an understanding spouse and more importantly a good doctor and today I was on the phone with him for 45 minutes (for which I will undoubtedly be charged) and we discussed fun things like the sub conscious and the role it plays in our lives and more importantly we discussed and changed my medicine regimen.

I picked up my new meds today and in a few days the new meds will kick in and I will be functioning again, but I have friends and family members that are not that lucky. I know extremely intelligent, well educated people who are unable to work because of their depression. I imagine the worst part of not being able to work is the comments and judgments made against them. “Why they should just pull themselves up by their boot straps and get to work” when the truth of the matter is they cant work.

Two years ago I lost a dear friend to suicide. Life just got to be too much for him. A lot of people thought my friend was just selfish. I never thought that. I knew my friend very well and selfish was something he never was, but he was depressed and life just became overwhelming for him.

Today I sit here on this cold snowy February Saturday writing about depression. I do it for myself because before I got sick, one of the things I enjoyed doing was writing and blogging. I got a lot of positive feedback on my blogs (though no newspaper wanted to publish them) but after I got sick the depression got so bad that I just couldn’t write.
for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking aboutI feel more alive today because I talked to my doctor and we came up with a plan and I feel as though there is hope, I am not doomed to spend eternity like this. So for any of you reading this who never experienced chronic depression, consider yourself lucky and for those of you who do-well you know exactly what I am talking about

Before I was sick

Believe it or not, there was a time when I was not sick or at least recuperating from being sick and during that period I was writing articles left and right. It seemed as thought I had an opinion on everything (except health care, I still don’t understand either the liberal or the conservatives view). But as I sit here at one o’clock in the afternoon, in my pajamas (I did at least manage to get a shower) I realized that I have not written anything in a long time and at the very least writing will help pass the time.

I am very lucky, my illness was short-lived, totally curable, and it just has a long recuperating stage. It’s not like you get pneumonia, get out of the hospital, sit around for a week and everything is fine. No, you get out of the hospital and it is a week before you can take a shower without using oxygen, its two weeks before you can run something to the dumpster and not need oxygen and we wont even go into the whole diarrhea that comes with the antibiotics.

And again, I am lucky, as inconvenient as my pneumonia is and has been and will continue to be, it will pass. A year from now I doubt I will even remember I was sick and my illness will just manifest itself in a shortness of breath now and again. But right now I am fighting to not become my illness and to look at the bright side and see the glass half full etc, but what if I were suffering from something more severe and life threatening? Then what?

I will be the first to admit I am a whiner. I whine because I don’t feel good, I whine because I am bored, but what about people like Farah Fawcett and Patrick Swazyzee or my mother or a friend’s mother in law who faced cancer and fought until the end? My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1974 and bravely fought it for ten years before succumbing to it in 1984. Unlike myself, who feels entitled to a sick day if the wind is blowing the wrong way my mother was a very brave woman who would get chemo treatment in the morning, go and work at her brothers carwash in the afternoon, then go home, get sick then make dinner.

I don’t know how people like my mother, Farah, Patrick Swayzee etc, do it. How do they not become their illness? I got brave today, I went out and got the mail. A simple walk down a few flights of stairs, a walk across the parking lot and I was on the couch for an hour taking a nap. Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting myself down. I am not a hypochondriac nor am I looking for attention (which is a good thing because stranded out here in Hooterville with three cats and a spouse that does not get home until 7 means there is not an abundance of attention to go around) I am just heeling at my own rate. I’d love nothing more than to speed the process up but pneumonia is just one of those things that takes a long time to recover from.

So I spend my days trying to push myself, but it is not easy. I am afraid to push myself, I am afraid that a trip to the mail box will result in a coughing jag, I am petrified to get behind the wheel of a car and right now I have NO business behind the wheel of a car, but I do know I need to push myself. Yesterday I had a full day with Ronca, today was a minor day just getting the mail who knows what tomorrow will bring.

I write this with no other intent then to pass the time and get myself back into the writing mode. Before I got sick I had an opinion on everything, now, well its just all about me and I want to get out of that mentality.
So there you have it, my thoughts today January 19, 2010. 28 days left till I go back to work

Memories of Past Lives

Memories of Past Lives
Some psychics and religions believe that our souls never die, that when our earthly bodies give way, we are reborn and we come back into our new lives as another person. While at the time of this writing (and I have no plans for any changes at this time) I am very much alive, yet as I sit in my home and look around I see evidence of my past lives along with my partner’s past lives and then as we put it all together, I see my/our current life.
I am a memory keeper. Not just in my mind where memories can often get distorted over time, or erased out self preservation, or just because our memory bank can hold just so much information. So it is important for me to hold on to physical objects that were part of my past lives.
As I see it, my life is broken down into four main categories. There is my child hood, though not idyllic was filled with many warm memories, especially of my mother who succumbed to cancer when I was 23. Now that I am almost 49, my mother has been gone longer than she was with me and my cerebral memories of her fade with each passing year. There is my military life, brief as it was, but filled with such a cast of interesting characters and adventures, but those memories too fade with each passing year, and each “new life” I am given. Then there are the twenty years that I spent with Len, my partner who I stayed with for better for worse, for richer for poorer and sickness and in health. When Len died, part of me died also. With Len’s passing twenty years of memories were industrial cleansed by his family who could never deal with the fact that he was gay, and at Len’s funeral I was relegated to “Dear Friend” status. The memories and love I shared with Len will live on in my heart forever, but just like any other memories, my mental memory drive will be forced to erase emotional data to make room for new memories. Finally, there is my life with Mike, my partner/spouse and since our relationship is new, we are now making new memories for ourselves.
Like me, Mike has past lives also, there was his childhood in Roseto Pennsyvlvania, a small slate mining town in the foot hills of the Pocono Mountains, there were his years at Rider College in the late 60’s, his marriage to a woman, subsequent divorce, and then a 15 year relationship with another partner, other than myself.
When Mike and I first moved in together, he moved into “my” apartment. It was my first apartment that I got after Len died and there was nothing about that apartment that said that anyone that I lived there. After about five months of sharing a tiny one bedroom apartment with noisy neighbors, not to mention Mike’s daily commute of two hours each way to work, we decided to look for a bigger place together. We needed to get out of South Jersey for two reasons, one, it was just ridiculous for Mike to commute two hours each way to work, and two, south Jersey was filled with too many memories of Len and the longer I stayed in south Jersey, the longer I prolonged the already arduous process of grieving, so we picked a location that was halfway between Mike’s work and my work and this certified Bruce Springsteen loving Jersey Boy found himself in Lansdale Pennsylvana.
Mike and I now share a home that we built together, but we built with pieces from our past lives. Between my and Mike’s childhood memories, our subsequent college and armed forces days, our past relationships there are literally over a hundred years of memories in this apartment. Pictures of our parents and grand parents as children and as bride and grooms, pictures of our childhood, pictures of Mike’s kids, my pictures of Len.
When you look at our apartment, it looks like a warm inviting home, there is nothing (save for the tiny kitchen) that would make you feel like you are in an apartment. No, Mike and I are committed to make a home.
Sometimes I look around our home and something catches my eye, sometimes it is a piece of furniture, sometimes a gift that Mike got me for our first Christmas, sometimes a picture and I reminded of how many lives I have had. There is the vase the I bought Len during one our last vacations together, there is a gravy boat that belonged to my mother, there is a picture of my sister Ellenbeth when she was just 15. I look at Mike’s things also, the china that belonged to him and his wife, the china closet he bought with his last partner, pictures of his children when they were kids, long before I came into their lives and I am reminded of his past lives also.
So many people say that material possessions are not important, but they are. I am not talking about extravagant indulges like $500 shoes, or $2000 suits, or even fancy cars or fancy jewelry. My “wedding” band from Len cost $99, we bought on Jewelers Row in Phildadelphia, yet every time I look down at it, I am reminded of the love we shared. In October of this year Mike and I got married and I am wearing one more $99 wedding band, and it’s okay, I don’t need platinum to symbolize my love for a person, in this case titatanium steel is enough.
I guess what I am trying to say is you never know where your precious memories lie. Sometimes they are in a photo album, sometimes a record album and sometimes a simple Christmas tree ornament.
It’s Christmas, the time of giving, and if you are like me and so many other Americans you are on a tight budget. I’d love to be in the position to surprise Mike with a trip to Europe to ski, but that is not going to happen this year, instead I am having a family heirloom of his restored-his grand parents wedding. That is something that can and will stay in his family long after we are gone. I urge you all to give during this season to your loved ones, but forgo the fruitcake and the Ronco Ginzo knives, a simple framed picture of you and a loved one can be a treasured gift that will last a life time.
None of us know how many “lives” we have. I for one am counting on the everlasting afterlife promised in the new testament. I miss my mother, I miss my grand parents, I want to meet the maternal grand father who died before I was born. I miss Len and I miss a host of friends. All I know is that the life I have now I am going to enjoy. God bless you all and many you all have a Merry Christmas

The Slumming of America

The Slumming of America

The Slumming of AmericaPerhaps some people might think me a prude or curmudgeon after reading this article but the older I get (I am now 48) the more shocked, disgusted and disappointed I am by the language that we are subjected to in movies, television and music. It seems to me, that for some reason, violent, homophobic, racist and misogynistic language is not only accepted but embraced.Recently, I was attending a social gathering of almost 200 people, all of us over the age of forty (closer to fifty than we care to admit) and I was shocked, embarrassed and angered by the language of several of the attendees. Before I go any further, let me tell you that I possess the vocabulary of the former sailor that I am. I love to curse, and being born and raised in New Jersey, well put me behind the wheel of a car and I amaze myself at the variations of curse words I can come up with, but I work very hard at not using four letter words as part of my daily conversation especially when I am at a social event. But it seems to me that I am in the minority, and that a lot of people feel it is okay to throw the “F” word around like it is nothing, turning it into an adjective, adverb and noun instead of the crude word that it really is.The thing is,I really can’t blame people. Television and other forms of mass media have made vulgar language part of our daily existence, so I think we as a society are becoming more and more desensitized to obscenity. Turn on any premium pay channel and watch a television show where the writers are not scrutinized by the sensors of network television and you will see that the envelope of what is acceptable as “artistic and realistic” is being forced farther and farther. Two shows come to mind, HBO’s The Soprano’s along with their recent hit series “True Blood”. I have to admit that I enjoyed both of these series immensely and followed each week Tony Soprano’s trials and tribulations and like millions of other viewers in America and across the globe, I was glued to the television set every Sunday and could not wait to find out what was going to become of America’s favorite mob boss.Then somewhere around the fourth or fifth season, I noticed the language on that show (while always profane, but at the same time realistic for portraying a New Jersey Mafia boss) was becoming more and more graphic. I noticed that the writers started to use language that debased women with misogynistic language that at best is not used in polite society outside of a gynecologist’s office. What bothered me the most about the use of this word was that I knew that a female friend that I work with watched the show also, and I wondered how she felt when that word was used. Was she as shocked as I was? If I were a woman I would be furious. Why should my friend, or any woman, have to be subjected to such a hateful word? During the last season, the storyline portrayed a closeted gay man, and a homophobic temr was thrown around like it was nothing. As a gay man, who has been the subject of homophobic violent acts all the while hearing the word this word (and because it is considered an obscene word I can’t use it here) being screamed, I was appalled. To me, the “F” word is just as hurtful as the “N” word is to African Americans and the “C” word is to women. Yet more and more and more Americans are becoming desensitized and complacent about crude and repulsive language.Another HBO show, True Blood, started off with a strong first season about the ill fated love between Sookie, a human who could read people’s minds, and Bill, a vampire who swore off on human blood, opting for artificial blood instead. Let’s face it, sex sells, and all of us, gay, straight or bi enjoy the occasional butt shot or topless scene, but during the second season, the plot line became so convoluted and the sex scenes became more and more graphic and I felt like I was watching soft porn after a while. Again, call me a prude, but I don’t want to watch an orgy on Sunday night!!A lot of people reading this might be thinking “if it bothers you that much, then don’t watch it” and they are right, I do have free will to turn off my television but it seems to me that no matter where I turn, no matter what form of entertainment medium I turn to, vulgarity is there. One of the most popular recording artists of our time is Eminem, a white rapper with a reputation for violent, homophobic and misogynistic lyrics who just happens to be actually good. His latest CD, titled Relapse, chronicles his battles with chemical dependency and subsequent recovery, and as a person who has been in recovery for the last 18 years of my life (so much for my anonymity) I was floored by this CD. Em nails what it is like to be dependent on chemicals, what it is like to relapse and what it is like to stay sober in world where it seems everyone around you is using. However, the violent imagery, homophobic and ,misogynistic lyrics are at best hard to get past and at worst, embarrassing to listen to if there is a woman in my car. Anyone who knows anything at all about rap music knows that if you are going to listen to it, you better prepare yourself for some harsh language, but the “dumbing of the English language” is not limited to rap music. A few years ago Bruce Springsteen made the news because of a deal between his record company and Starbucks that fell through because of language he used on an acoustic album of his called “Devils and Dust”. It seemed that a line in a song he sung about visiting a prostitute did not fit in with the Starbuck image. Readers, I worship Bruce Springsteen, I have every single one of his albums/cd’s, have seen him thirty five times (recently traveling to Dublin Ireland to see him) and yet once again there was in my possession a CD with a lyric that I would be embarrassed to listen to with a woman or one of my nieces or nephews. And the worst part about it, in my opinion, the lyric in question took away from the song. Instead of a song about a lonely man visiting a prostitute we got a musical porn movie.Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, there existed in Hollywood an establishment known as the Haye’s office. The Haye’s Office for those of you not familiar with film history was a censorship office. They had a strict code of what was allowed to be shown on screen, only closed mouth kissing was allowed and obscene language was never allowed. In 1939 the producers of Gone With the Wind had to plead with the Haye’s Office to allow Clark Gable to utter his famous parting words to Scartlett O’Hara “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn”.I for one am glad that the Haye’s office no longer exits. I want realism in the movies I see and while I am sometimes offended by the language in today’s entertainment industry, I am a strong proponent of the right to free speech. My question however is “Does the right to free speech mean we no longer have to take responsibility for the words we use?”. It is almost a cliché to hear that the brave men and women of our country fought for our right to free speech, but call me crazy, call me a prude, but don’t we owe these American heroes some respect by using our right to free speech wisely? I wonder what the World War II Vet who fought in the battle of Iowa Jima thinks when someone like Eminem or Bruce Springsteen has the audacity to compare their “right” to free speech with the sacrifices made my men and women of true honor.I guess maybe I am just getting old. Loud Rock music, the roar of a Harley Davidson and long hair on males makes me crazy. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I do my best not to curse in front of women and children, I believe that all strangers over the age of say 30 should be addressed by Sir, Maa’m or Miss (if you are under thirty the best you are gonna get out of me is “dude” or “bro”), and I open up doors for women.I think we all need to look within ourselves because most of us are guilty of inconsiderate, foul and offensive language. The English language is rich so many creative and non offensive words. Let’s leave vulgarity to the uncreative."

The Slumming of America

The Slumming of America

The Slumming of AmericaPerhaps some people might think me a prude or curmudgeon after reading this article but the older I get (I am now 48) the more shocked, disgusted and disappointed I am by the language that we are subjected to in movies, television and music. It seems to me, that for some reason, violent, homophobic, racist and misogynistic language is not only accepted but embraced.Recently, I was attending a social gathering of almost 200 people, all of us over the age of forty (closer to fifty than we care to admit) and I was shocked, embarrassed and angered by the language of several of the attendees. Before I go any further, let me tell you that I possess the vocabulary of the former sailor that I am. I love to curse, and being born and raised in New Jersey, well put me behind the wheel of a car and I amaze myself at the variations of curse words I can come up with, but I work very hard at not using four letter words as part of my daily conversation especially when I am at a social event. But it seems to me that I am in the minority, and that a lot of people feel it is okay to throw the “F” word around like it is nothing, turning it into an adjective, adverb and noun instead of the crude word that it really is.The thing is,I really can’t blame people. Television and other forms of mass media have made vulgar language part of our daily existence, so I think we as a society are becoming more and more desensitized to obscenity. Turn on any premium pay channel and watch a television show where the writers are not scrutinized by the sensors of network television and you will see that the envelope of what is acceptable as “artistic and realistic” is being forced farther and farther. Two shows come to mind, HBO’s The Soprano’s along with their recent hit series “True Blood”. I have to admit that I enjoyed both of these series immensely and followed each week Tony Soprano’s trials and tribulations and like millions of other viewers in America and across the globe, I was glued to the television set every Sunday and could not wait to find out what was going to become of America’s favorite mob boss.Then somewhere around the fourth or fifth season, I noticed the language on that show (while always profane, but at the same time realistic for portraying a New Jersey Mafia boss) was becoming more and more graphic. I noticed that the writers started to use language that debased women with misogynistic language that at best is not used in polite society outside of a gynecologist’s office. What bothered me the most about the use of this word was that I knew that a female friend that I work with watched the show also, and I wondered how she felt when that word was used. Was she as shocked as I was? If I were a woman I would be furious. Why should my friend, or any woman, have to be subjected to such a hateful word? During the last season, the storyline portrayed a closeted gay man, and a homophobic temr was thrown around like it was nothing. As a gay man, who has been the subject of homophobic violent acts all the while hearing the word this word (and because it is considered an obscene word I can’t use it here) being screamed, I was appalled. To me, the “F” word is just as hurtful as the “N” word is to African Americans and the “C” word is to women. Yet more and more and more Americans are becoming desensitized and complacent about crude and repulsive language.Another HBO show, True Blood, started off with a strong first season about the ill fated love between Sookie, a human who could read people’s minds, and Bill, a vampire who swore off on human blood, opting for artificial blood instead. Let’s face it, sex sells, and all of us, gay, straight or bi enjoy the occasional butt shot or topless scene, but during the second season, the plot line became so convoluted and the sex scenes became more and more graphic and I felt like I was watching soft porn after a while. Again, call me a prude, but I don’t want to watch an orgy on Sunday night!!A lot of people reading this might be thinking “if it bothers you that much, then don’t watch it” and they are right, I do have free will to turn off my television but it seems to me that no matter where I turn, no matter what form of entertainment medium I turn to, vulgarity is there. One of the most popular recording artists of our time is Eminem, a white rapper with a reputation for violent, homophobic and misogynistic lyrics who just happens to be actually good. His latest CD, titled Relapse, chronicles his battles with chemical dependency and subsequent recovery, and as a person who has been in recovery for the last 18 years of my life (so much for my anonymity) I was floored by this CD. Em nails what it is like to be dependent on chemicals, what it is like to relapse and what it is like to stay sober in world where it seems everyone around you is using. However, the violent imagery, homophobic and ,misogynistic lyrics are at best hard to get past and at worst, embarrassing to listen to if there is a woman in my car. Anyone who knows anything at all about rap music knows that if you are going to listen to it, you better prepare yourself for some harsh language, but the “dumbing of the English language” is not limited to rap music. A few years ago Bruce Springsteen made the news because of a deal between his record company and Starbucks that fell through because of language he used on an acoustic album of his called “Devils and Dust”. It seemed that a line in a song he sung about visiting a prostitute did not fit in with the Starbuck image. Readers, I worship Bruce Springsteen, I have every single one of his albums/cd’s, have seen him thirty five times (recently traveling to Dublin Ireland to see him) and yet once again there was in my possession a CD with a lyric that I would be embarrassed to listen to with a woman or one of my nieces or nephews. And the worst part about it, in my opinion, the lyric in question took away from the song. Instead of a song about a lonely man visiting a prostitute we got a musical porn movie.Back in the 1930’s and 1940’s, there existed in Hollywood an establishment known as the Haye’s office. The Haye’s Office for those of you not familiar with film history was a censorship office. They had a strict code of what was allowed to be shown on screen, only closed mouth kissing was allowed and obscene language was never allowed. In 1939 the producers of Gone With the Wind had to plead with the Haye’s Office to allow Clark Gable to utter his famous parting words to Scartlett O’Hara “Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn”.I for one am glad that the Haye’s office no longer exits. I want realism in the movies I see and while I am sometimes offended by the language in today’s entertainment industry, I am a strong proponent of the right to free speech. My question however is “Does the right to free speech mean we no longer have to take responsibility for the words we use?”. It is almost a cliché to hear that the brave men and women of our country fought for our right to free speech, but call me crazy, call me a prude, but don’t we owe these American heroes some respect by using our right to free speech wisely? I wonder what the World War II Vet who fought in the battle of Iowa Jima thinks when someone like Eminem or Bruce Springsteen has the audacity to compare their “right” to free speech with the sacrifices made my men and women of true honor.I guess maybe I am just getting old. Loud Rock music, the roar of a Harley Davidson and long hair on males makes me crazy. Maybe I am just old fashioned, but I do my best not to curse in front of women and children, I believe that all strangers over the age of say 30 should be addressed by Sir, Maa’m or Miss (if you are under thirty the best you are gonna get out of me is “dude” or “bro”), and I open up doors for women.I think we all need to look within ourselves because most of us are guilty of inconsiderate, foul and offensive language. The English language is rich so many creative and non offensive words. Let’s leave vulgarity to the uncreative."