Dear Rand Paul

Dear Mr. Paul,

You are an ophthalmologist, a sight specialist. I must reveal that I question yours — sight, insight, point of view. You say, for instance, that mountaintop removal improves the land. Can you not see that this method of coal retrieval has lay to ruin a million acres of Appalachia, and buried 2,000 miles of streams? Would you not recommend that the eyes of eastern Kentuckians close at night to rest? Yet, our eyes do not rest because of harsh lights that intrude around the clock so that machines can obliterate our mountains ever faster. Do you not hear the thunder of the dynamite, the incessant noise of chain saws and bulldozers clear-cutting our forests? Have you not tasted the fouled water, polluted with coal slurry, that sicken our children? Have you not been touched by the sorrow of the people of this state who have lost their property, their jobs, their culture, their health and even their lives due to this practice?

When we refer to mountaintop removal as the rape of Appalachia, the metaphor is apt. When you say, Mr. Paul, that mountaintop removal is good for the land, your comment sounds very like the pimp who rapes and beats women into submission so they make better prostitutes. Compliant and defenseless. Nobody is going to miss a hill or two, you say.

Dear Mr. Paul, you say that Oxycontin abuse is not a pressing problem in our state. Are you not aware in Kentucky we have a generation of young people now struggling with a tenacious addiction to a pill that was promoted as non-addictive by a corporation that knew better? Do you not notice the drug-related crime statistics in the paper? Have you not read their obituaries?

Dear Rand Paul, do you believe the things you say about the need to repeal parts of the Civil Rights Act, or the lack of need for legislation to protect those who face discrimination?

Or are you, Mr. Paul, just the latest beneficiary of the sadly effective Southern Strategy implemented by Richard Nixon, which plays to our worst instincts, our prejudices and our fears? Are you just the libertarian version of the politician who snows us with lies proffered as facts by repeating them ad infinitum in their “news” programs? It goes like this: Fox News quotes Rush Limbaugh, who got his information from Sharron Angle, who’d had a conversation with Sarah Palin, who’d heard it on Fox News — a self-affirming circle of fact-free constructed realities. You are familiar with this method in your own life, Mr. Paul, certifying yourself as a qualified ophthalmologist by a board that you established yourself and populated with your family members.

Nevertheless, you have been elected to represent my state in the US Senate. Your job is to open your eyes to the reality of our beautiful and beleaguered state. Your job is to stop the destruction of our mountains, not to turn a blind eye their devastation. Your job is to help our youth struggling with bleak job prospects and pill habits, to have the vision to help them, instead of denying their existence. Your job is to represent the people, all of us.

Dear Rand Paul, Now is the time to come to your senses.

CD Collins
Native Kentuckian

What Your Valentine Really Wants

I’m beginning to see a pattern: couples in trouble because one partner wants a verbal intimacy that the other is not interested, capable of, or ... able to fathom.

Last night, I spoke with a close male friend, who yakked on like an interesting, articulate magpie about the nuances of his troubled relationship with his girlfriend.
Her complaint: he doesn’t talk to her.
His complaint: she goes nuts on him.

“I don’t even remember what I said,” he tells me over hot chocolate, “but I guess it was the wrong thing.”
Get your head on, boy! The least you can do is pay attention.

In frustration, his girlfriend sometimes:
Kicks him out of the apartment, and seethes for days.
Yells at him in an escalating fashion.

To be fair, he really doesn’t know what she’s talking about, or he forgets, especially in those moments of crises. In relating the situation to me, he seemed surprised by her reaction:
“Suddenly, she started yelling at me.”
He was not able to draw a line from his behavior to her response. He did not see the connection. His concept of the big picture is all a-fuzz.
Listening further, he revealed the root of the problem,
as common as it is profound: he is afraid.....

....that she will leave him.
Honey Jock! This is the very definition of neurosis:
to create through your actions the very thing you fear.

I don’t think communication walls are just a man thing.
This impasse is not sexed.
I know men who complain about women for the same reason.

A few days ago, I was speaking to a female friend. Let’s call her Charlotte Bronte. Well, Charlotte was tormented with this issue concerning her wife. Yes, her wife. Relax. This is Massachusetts. Her wife would not or could not provide the deeply intimate, imaginative communication that Charlotte craved. Her wife wanted to talk about laundry.

You know, metaphorical laundry without the metaphors. The practical stuff, not the soul stuff. The couple had tried therapy for years and Charlotte told me that she had ended up sounding like an unhinged looney tunes. No one, not even the therapist, could get a grip of what Charlotte was freaking out about.
Pitiful.
And poor Charlotte Bronte was starving...

Charlotte and I agreed that this deep communication, talking not just talking, is, to us, like manna, the miraculous food supplied to the Israelites in the wilderness.


I brought this subject up with another couple over dinner.
“Does he listen and remember what you say?” I asked.
“Remember?” She laughed heartily. “He doesn’t even hear it.”
“Be fair,” her husband warned.
“Okay,” she replied, “He listens....when I’m talking about sex.”

So, this Valentine’s Day, why not surprise your Valentine with what that girl or guy really wants. And your Valentine will be grateful, and eager to please. I’m telling ya.

Dr. John Gottman speaks of the four horseman of the apocalypse when predicting marriage failure and success.
The four horsemen that predict failure are as follows:
Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt.

If any of these horse are affecting your relationship, could a lack of manna could be involved?
If so,
show courage, open your ears, open your mouth, open your heart,
and see what little bit of Heaven may follow.


CD Collins
www.cdcollins.com