Tag Archives: lawsuits

book reviews, Duggars, Reality TV, religion

My thoughts on Jill Duggar’s “bombshell” book, Counting the Cost…

I know I’ve written a lot of posts about the Duggar family. There was a time, years ago, that I watched their reality television program on TLC. I remember seeing them featured on the Discovery Health channel back in the early 2000s, when Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar were just a fundamentalist Christian Arkansas couple with fourteen children and another on the way. I watched with amazement as they went from being a seemingly very humble family from the “sticks” of Arkansas to household names.

I’ve never been a very religious person myself. So why was I so interested in the Duggar family? Well, the truth is, I do find strict, fundamentalist religions very interesting, even though I have no desire to participate in them myself. I also got the sense that the family was too good to be true. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Sure enough, it turned out my suspicions that there was some underlying trouble in paradise was on target.

Although I used to watch the Duggars’ show– 17, 18, or 19 Kids and Counting, (depending on how many kids they had at the time) and later Counting On, on an intermittent basis, I have never been one to read their books. Like I said, I’m not a very religious person myself, so I don’t really have any desire to read books about promoting Christianity. The Duggars aren’t people I look up to, either. But, when I heard that Jill Duggar Dillard was going to be writing a book called Counting the Cost, with help from ghost writer, Craig Borlase, I decided I would read that one. I finished the book yesterday, and now I’m ready to offer my thoughts.

Jill Michelle Duggar Dillard was born May 17, 1991. She is Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s fourth born child, and the second oldest daughter of their brood of 19 living children. In her book, Jill writes that she always felt compelled to be a people pleaser. She always tried to be the most mature and best behaved of her siblings. She was so sweet that she earned the nickname Sweet Jilly Muffin.

Early in her lifetime, Jill and her siblings lived in a house next to a church that was much too small for their growing family. She writes of how her mother, Michelle, trained her children, using music and other rewards to influence their behavior. Jill writes that the kids were not allowed to dance, because her parents worried that moving inappropriately, wearing “immodest” clothes, or being exposed to worldly media would encourage sin in themselves and other people. From a very early age, Jill was trained to obey without question, and taught that if someone fell into sin, it was her fault. That early training set the conditions that made it especially difficult for her to break free of her father’s hold on her.

Thanks to Jim Bob’s wheeling and dealing with the TLC network, they were able to build their own “big house” in Tontitown, Arkansas. Jill and the other oldest siblings were involved in helping to build the Big House, to which she refers frequently in her book. The “Big House” is the specially built home the Duggars built to accommodate their huge family; it is about 7000 square feet, but it only has about four bedrooms in it. There’s a master bedroom, a girls’ room, a boys’ room, and a guest room. TLC filmed the family building the house, doing all they could as a family before professionals had to be called in to do the more challenging work. Jill writes that she was happy to have had a part in building a house for her family.

As she grew older, Jill realized that finding a husband would complicate her life, especially since she was a “star” on the Duggars’ reality show, and her father was famously very strict. Jill writes that she was raised in Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), which is a lifestyle system ultra fundamentalist Christians adhere to as a means of preserving their version of raising godly families. Gothard founded the IBLP in 1961. It should be noted that Bill Gothard was eventually ousted from the IBLP because he was accused of preying on young women. Jill mentions that her sister, Jana, the lone blonde older Duggar girl, used to work for Bill Gothard. He specifically requested that she come to Chicago to work for him, running a training program for girls in the IBLP. Gothard reportedly favored blondes.

The “Umbrella of Authority” idea promoted in the IBLP.

Within the IBLP, there is the idea of the “umbrella of authority”, which is a hierarchical structure of the family within a church. Jill explains that she was raised to always honor her parents, especially her father, who would then honor the church. She believed that if she simply did everything she was told to by her father, she would never be in any kind of danger. Meanwhile, Jim Bob had a hunger for money and power. He wanted to keep the reality series going, because it brought in a lot of money and prestige, although he claimed he saw the show as a “ministry”, bringing the masses to the Duggar brand of Christianity. He bought rental properties and airplanes, new RVs, and other trappings of success. The Duggars had always said that every child is a gift from God, and that they were open to taking as many of God’s gifts as God wanted to send them. But then they used God’s gifts to fund their own prosperity gospel… to show everyone else how much God favored them and their way of life. To me, it just looks like plain old greed disguised as something “godly”.

Even though finding a mate as a Duggar wasn’t an easy prospect, as the potential spouse had to meet with her parents’ approval, Jim Bob wanted to marry off his children. Why? Because every time a Duggar got married or had a child– especially the Duggar daughters– it brought in a lot of cash for Jim Bob. And I do mean for Jim Bob— because as Jill and her husband, Derick, discovered, Jim Bob was getting paid by TLC, but he wasn’t sharing the wealth with his adult children. Instead, he’d do things like give them places to live or cars to drive. Jim Bob Duggar, it seemed, wanted his children to work for him for free, and forever. He wanted them to be under his control, and make themselves available to his every whim and command. And he even went to tricking or coercing them into signing extreme “scientology like” lifetime contracts, to force them to stay under his control.

Jill and Derick have always seemed to me like a very close and loving couple. And, in fact, that is exactly how Jill makes it seem in her book, as Derick has encouraged Jill not to let Jim Bob run her life. However, it turns out that Jim Bob actually picked out Derick for Jill, and encouraged her to get to know him, as he was serving as a missionary in Nepal. She writes that she wasn’t interested at first, but he managed to capture her heart. TLC arranged for Jill and Jim Bob to travel to Nepal to meet him in person, and that’s when they entered their “courtship”– so called “dating with a purpose” of getting married. Jim Bob was right in that Jill and Derick were very suited to each other. But he didn’t know that Derick was not going to stand for Jim Bob dictating everything in their lives together. If he’d had a clue that Derick is as assertive as he is, there is no way Jill and Derick would have ever been allowed to wed.

As the Duggar children became adults, Jim Bob realized that he needed to make everything legal. So he tricked Jill into signing a contract she didn’t read– asking for her signature on the day before her June 2014 wedding, and not giving her the whole contract, or the time to read it. Jim Bob later told Jill and Derick that he had paid Josh and Anna for awhile, but found that arrangement wasn’t to his liking. So instead of giving his children a salary, he basically paid them in gifts in kind. But he had his accountant tell the IRS that they were being paid, for tax purposes. Later, Derick, who was a trained accountant before he became a lawyer, figured out what was going on. The couple later sued Jim Bob and prevailed in getting a small pittance of money for all of the time and labor Jill put into the show.

As if the the demands of the reality show wasn’t enough stress in their relationship, back in 2015, the tabloid, In Touch, got ahold of police records from 2006, detailing interviews Jill and her sisters had with law enforcement. The 2006 police interviews stemmed from a tip that Oprah Winfrey got regarding Josh Duggar’s deviant behavior.

In 2006, the Duggars were supposed to be interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, but the producers got a letter about Josh Duggar’s abusive misdeeds in 2002, when he was about 14 years old. The producers called the police, and that led to an investigation of Josh’s perversions. The police records were supposed to remain sealed, since Jill and her sisters Jessa, Jinger, and Joy Anna, were all minors at the time of the investigation. But In Touch got the records, and they were later released to the world, which led to the reality show being temporarily axed. The loss of the show was, of course, bad for Jim Bob’s finances, but the records’ release also revictimized Jill, her sisters, and the other person who was molested by Josh. It was devastating and humiliating to have that incident revealed to the public years after they thought it was in the past.

Jim Bob later finagled an idea to make a new show called Jill and Jessa: Counting On, later retitled simply Counting On. It would focus on the oldest children’s lives, minus Josh and his wife, Anna, and their children. However, once again, Jim Bob fixed it so that he was the only one being paid by the TLC network. Jill and Derick were “volunteers”… except they were bound by a contract that required them to work, while Jim Bob pocketed all the money. It prevented them from living their lives on their own terms… everything from forcing them to be available for filming, even when they were out of the country, to allowing cameras in while Jill was giving birth. It was unacceptable to the couple. So they decided to fight back, and that caused great strife in the family. Jim Bob used a variety of different tactics to get Jill and Derick back under his control. They resisted him, but it came at great cost… hence the title of the book.

My thoughts

Overall, I think Jill and her ghost writer, Craig Borlase did an excellent job on this book. Borlase did a good job making the book sound as if it came straight from Jill, yet it was very easy to read and understand. I spotted a few awkward sentences and at least one typo, but even the awkward sentences lent an air of authenticity to Jill’s story. I would not expect her to sound like an extremely educated person, because she was homeschooled using a fundamentalist Christian curriculum. She hasn’t been to college, nor is she super worldly, although I think she’s probably the most worldly of her siblings.

I did notice a couple of things that I haven’t seen other people mention about this book. I think I detected some subtle shade thrown at Ben Seewald. I know Ben and Derick had a falling out a couple of years ago. Jill never mentions Ben by name. She refers to him as “the guy Jessa was courting”. But later, she mentions Jinger’s husband, Jeremy, and refers to him as a “great guy”. Very interesting indeed. I don’t know if that was intentional, but I did pick up on it.

After all she’s been through, one might expect Jill to be super bitter and angry. I don’t know how Jill really feels off the record, but to me, this book is a very even-handed, yet honest, treatment of her situation with her family. She makes it clear that she loves her parents, even though her father has, quite frankly, been a totally narcissistic creep.

There are a few bombshells in the book. For instance, Jill shares how her father justified telling the IRS that he paid her about $130,000 when they never received that money. Jim Bob sent an itemized list of things he’d spent money on for Jill, to include her care and feeding when she was still a minor! And he never accounted for all the work she did for him– to include doing the heavy lifting of raising several of her siblings from the time she was a child herself.

It blew my mind that Jim Bob had made so much money off his children’s weddings and grandchildren’s births, but he was unwilling to so much as help Jill and Derick pay their $10,000 insurance deductible when their second son, Samuel, was born and Jill almost bled out and died. Jim Bob offered Jill and Derick $20,000 to “settle” the situation– a total insult, really. He gave them two days to decide, then rescinded the offer. Jim Bob also used the threat of lawsuits to keep his adult kids in line (definitely not a very Christian or Christlike thing to do) .

Fortunately, Jill and Derick were smart enough not to take Jim Bob’s monetary offerings or sign any other contracts with him. They have maintained their freedom and independence. They can make decisions for their own family, including sending their sons to public schools, drinking alcoholic beverages, wearing what they want to wear, and deciding if they want piercings, tattoos, or whatever else on their own bodies. I think they know that the freedom to make their own choices in life is worth so much more than money is. I also think they will make a lot more money on this book than any lump sum monetary gift Jim Bob could ever give them. It’s too bad most of Jill’s siblings weren’t as clever as the Dillards were.

Personally, I think Jim Bob Duggar is a narcissistic dirtbag. I’m sure he comes by it honestly, as a lot of narcissists do. I know he had a difficult upbringing. There was a lot of uncertainty and periods of poverty during his childhood, and that makes him very anxious about his own station in life as an adult. He corrects that anxiety by being hyper-controlling and dictatorial, and being a fundie Christian is one way to keep everyone in line. I get that. However, I still think Jim Bob is a creep for treating his kids the way he does… especially his daughters. He acts like his children, their spouses, and his grandchildren are his property. Jill even pointed out to Jim Bob that he treats her worse than he treats his child molester son, Josh. And all because she doesn’t want to live under her father’s thumb for the rest of his life or hers.

I also don’t think Jim Bob Duggar is a very good Christian. There’s a lot more to being a Christian than simply following rules and reading the Bible. Jesus Christ was not someone who craved riches, power, and control over other people. Jesus hung out with the people who were misunderstood and cast out from society. He served other people with no strings attached. He loved other people and ministered to them. Jesus didn’t seek to own other people, nor use them to prop up his image so he could be “example” for others to follow. Christ also didn’t threaten people with lawsuits or use shady contracts to keep people under his control. Jim Bob seeks admiration from people, control over them, power, and MONEY. That is not Christlike behavior.

Somehow, Jill has managed to show grace toward her parents. The book even ends on a positive, hopeful note. She shares a sweet picture of her parents holding her youngest son, Freddy. I know Jill loves her dad, in spite of everything. I admire her for that. She’s probably a better person than I would be in her shoes.

Anyway, I enjoyed reading Jill Duggar’s book. I applaud her incredible bravery and insistence on living her life on her own terms. I hope some of her siblings will follow suit. Living under the thumb of a control freak narcissist is no way to go through life. I think the Dillards are living proof of that. So bravo to Derick and Jill! I wish the best to them and their family, and I recommend her book.

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law, mental health, musings, narcissists, psychology

The great awning collapse of 2017…

Good morning everybody. It’s August 30th, which means that summer 2023 really is on its way out…

Here in Germany, it actually feels like summer is ending. I can’t say that it’s a given that cooler weather routinely arrives in Germany at the end of August. I do remember coming to live here in mid September in 2007 and needing to buy a jacket, because it was already chilly.

But ten years later, three years into our second Stuttgart area stint, I remember it being super hot on August 30th. It was so hot that I decided to unroll the ugly orange awning that covered our patio. I was told by the landlords, when we moved into the house in 2014, that this was one way to keep the house somewhat cooler during the summer months. I’d never had an awning in any other house I’d lived in, but our next door neighbor also had one and used it all the time during the scorching summer of 2017.

On August 30, 2017, the awning was 17 years old, and had recently needed to be repaired. Our former landlady sent her very handy husband to fix it, and it appeared that he had succeeded. Ex landlady wrote in an email that her husband had “fixed” the awning, but it was old and they weren’t sure how long the repair would last. It was blazing hot, and I wanted to allow for air flow in the downstairs. So, instead of lowering the Rolladens, I unrolled the awning to block the sun. Some time later, there was a stiff breeze, and the damned thing collapsed with a resounding thud. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed when it fell.

I’ve already written extensively about what happened after the awning fell on August 30, 2017. Our former landlady went on the warpath. First, she wanted to know if we had liability insurance, something that most Germans have as a matter of course. Most Americans don’t carry it, and I think she was counting on us not to have it. But, thanks to Max, our former dog sitter, who strongly advised us to have German insurance, we did have both liability insurance and pet liability insurance policies.

I think ex landlady was disappointed, because she no doubt saw this event as an opportunity to get us to buy her a brand new awning, rather than settle for the low settlement from our insurance company. I’m sure she also realized that by taking a settlement, she would not be able to ask for anything else related to the awning without having to deal with the insurance company. She couldn’t easily manipulate them, like she thought she could manipulate Bill. But again, I don’t think she expected us to be insured. When ex landlady demanded the insurance, she also limited her ability to negotiate a better deal on the collapsed awning.

Frankly, I don’t think we should have even had to give her our the insurance information. Nothing I did caused the awning to need repair; it was simply old and ready for retirement. She sent her husband to fix it, rather than hiring an actual technician. It was part of the house and, naturally, I assumed I was allowed to use it. She never said not to… and I don’t control the wind.

I’m pretty sure it really burned her up that we were wise enough to get insurance. It likely especially annoyed her that we also had German legal insurance. When we moved out and she tried to cover the cost of a new awning by stealing our deposit, I’m sure she wasn’t expecting to be sued. And we sure didn’t want to sue her… but I’ll be damned if I willingly allow someone who treats us with such obvious contempt to get away with it. She was NOT going to be illegally taking our money and acting like a complete jerk on my watch. At least not without a fight.

I’m writing about this subject today because I saw the photo I took of the collapsed awning in my Facebook memories today… and it reminded of me how we ended up moving to Wiesbaden in late 2018. But it also reminded me of how reluctant I was to move. Isn’t that crazy? I actually worried that our new landlord might be even worse! That’s how completely mindfucked I was after four years of living in that house.

It was about five years ago that Bill’s bosses in Stuttgart told him that his job was being converted to a government service job. Consequently, his choices were to:

  • Stay in the same job, but become a GS worker at significantly reduced pay and without a housing allowance,
  • Find a new contracting gig in Stuttgart, either with the company he currently works for, or another company,
  • Move to another location with the company he works for or a different one,
  • Move back to the States and work for the same company or a different one,
  • Retire and live on his pension, while hoping I write the great American novel. That option would have also required a move. 😉

Neither of us wanted to move, even though we hated dealing with our ex landlady, and we didn’t really like living in her house. It only had a few things going for it. The rent was relatively cheap, although I doubt a German would have paid what we were paying. It was in a pleasant town near a beautiful nature park and close to the Black Forest. The neighbors were nice and relatively friendly, especially for Swabia.

But the house itself was old and charmless, furnished with old, nasty carpets in the upstairs, and it had outdated appliances. It was originally meant to be two apartments, so the layout was weird and kind of sterile. It was a duplex, and while I really liked our next door neighbors, who were actually pretty cool people, I don’t like sharing walls with people. I’m sensitive to noise, and I don’t like feeling like I’m making too much noise. We had two beagles who I know were loud. I wanted a free standing house… and Bill and I were, by 2018, in a financial position to be able to afford the rent on one.

I still dreaded the idea of moving. I was comfortable with our vet, our dentist, and getting around the area. I’d had a total of six pandemic free years of experience living near Stuttgart. It has its issues, but the area is very beautiful and inspiring. The idea of moving somewhere else seemed daunting. And again… I worried very much that we might land in an even worse situation. Our former landlady was very unpleasant to deal with, especially in the wake of the great awning crash of 2017. But at least with her, we knew what to expect.

So, when Bill was told he should apply for a job in Wiesbaden, I was initially reluctant to consider it. I think he was reluctant, too. Moving is a pain in the ass. Then, as we decided we’d try to stay in Stuttgart, he went to Africa for a TDY, and I was left alone in that weird house…

One night while he was gone, I was sitting there with Zane and Arran, looking around that house, and thinking about the broken orange awning that had caused the former landlady to verbally abuse me in my own space. I realized that I hated the idea of being beholden to her. I hated dealing with her intrusions, which had become less frequent since her outburst to me and my declaration to Bill that I would not be tolerating that again. He sent her an email telling her to talk to him when she had concerns or issues about the house. Naturally, she really resented that request. She clearly didn’t think I was worthy of the consideration, even though she and the former tenant were trash talking us, and it was likely that when we weren’t home, ex landlady was entering the house without our knowledge or consent.

I thought about how I hated the kitchen, the crappy flooring, the cat piss reeking carpets, the weird, mostly useless tiny rooms on the ground floor, and the annual projects the ex landlady did to the exterior of the house… She’d opted to put in a partial new fence and driveway rather than upgrade the antiquated upstairs toilet that clogged three times due to its “water saving” feature and inability to handle American toilet paper. Toilets are a necessary feature of any home. The upstairs one did work, but it was old and actually didn’t save any water, because it required at least two long flushes whenever either of us took a dump. I hated dealing with it.

And then it dawned on me. WHY IN THE WORLD WAS I FIGHTING TO STAY IN THAT HOUSE? I didn’t even LIKE that house! It defied logic. If there was ever a sign from the heavens that it was time to move on to bigger and better things, it was when that awning crashed on August 30, 2017. But I was kept there because I was afraid that the worst was yet to come. I also knew that when we moved out, ex landlady would be a colossal pain in the ass. I expected that she’d try to take our deposit. I wasn’t wrong.

I remember Bill came home from his trip and I told him I’d had an epiphany. I said “I want you to apply for the job in Wiesbaden.” It turned out that he’d independently kind of come to the same conclusion, even though neither of us had initially wanted to move. Also, the folks in Wiesbaden, having seen Bill’s resume, actually asked why he hadn’t applied. He was perfect for the job they were looking to fill, and people with his unique skill set aren’t easy to find. His boss in Stuttgart even told him that if he applied, it was pretty much a given that he would be hired. And that’s precisely what happened.

We were much more careful when we went house hunting in Wiesbaden. The house we live in now was the seventh one we toured. In over twenty years of life together, Bill and I were never as picky about our house as we were when we moved to Wiesbaden. It paid off, because our current landlord is extremely nice and very considerate. He’s also our next door neighbor, and he’s an excellent neighbor. The house itself is also much, much nicer than our old one was, although it lacks the beautiful views and places to walk the dog(s).

Life here isn’t perfect, and I do miss a lot of things about Stuttgart… but I definitely wouldn’t go back to where we were. The move to Wiesbaden was difficult. It took a long time to process the mental anguish and damage wrought by our experiences in our former house. The lawsuit was painful, especially since the wrangling was going on during the height of the pandemic. But… I thank GOD we were in Wiesbaden for that, instead of living in that weird house.

I am grateful we were able to change our situation. I know it doesn’t always work out that way. But thinking about the great awning collapse of 2017, I realize that we were probably a bit “trauma bonded”. This is a phenomenon that can happen when people are in abusive relationships where there’s a power imbalance. It often happens between people who have romantic relationships, but it can also happen between kidnappers and captors, bosses and employees, and yes, landlords and tenants.

In the article I linked about trauma bonding, the author mentions that people often feel the need to reach out and “try again”. I can honestly state that while I did feel regret that things ended the way they did with our ex landlady, I have no desire to ever see or speak to her again. She violated our trust and tried to fuck us over, and she underestimated both of us. That was a big mistake on her part. Not trusting my rather nervous gut feeling when I met her was my big mistake. One life lesson I have learned is that it’s smart to take heed when people demonstrate who they are. Learn from the experience.

Also, we were much too nice when ex landlady egregiously violated boundaries. This is a problem we still struggle with, as Bill and I have both been traumatized by abusers before and trained not to get into conflicts (in spite of his Army career). That’s why, in July, when those awful window workers were in my home, acting like complete assholes, I didn’t throw them out. I also wanted them to finish the job. Now, I realize that I should have marched over to my landlord and had him deal with those guys, as they put their feet up on my patio furniture. Next time there’s a big construction project, if we’re still here, Bill is going to try to work from home. That way it won’t be just me, dealing with the disrespect.

I really do not try to get in other people’s ways. I keep to myself, most of the time. Somehow, I still manage to find myself in these situations with people who act like narcissistic jerks. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of teaching me something new.

Anyway, we are mostly thriving in Wiesbaden. I am truly sorry that the awning fell on August 30, 2017. I certainly didn’t plan for that to happen. I didn’t do anything to directly cause it, other than unroll it on a day that happened to suddenly get windy. But it was the start of a necessary shift northward. Just like Mary Poppins, we stay until the wind changes… and in our last house, that’s pretty much literally what happened. The wind changed; there was a big crash; and we moved on to our next destined place together. It was a good, healthy thing to do. I don’t know when the wind will change again, but I don’t regret our move up here. I just shake my head in disbelief that it took so long to realize we needed to make the move. That’s what happens when you’re stuck dealing with abusive people in your life.

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controversies, law, poor judgment, rants, religion, Texas

Now libraries are a threat, and must be destroyed!

Every time I think things can’t get any more ridiculous or absurd, someone or something proves me wrong. I never thought I’d watch my country move backwards so fast as I have since Donald Trump was unleashed to wreak havoc on our democracy. It’s bad enough that judges and politicians with no medical training whatsoever see fit to try to eliminate abortion access, as they also refuse to expand social safety nets and access to affordable healthcare and childcare. Now, we have people contemplating shutting down libraries!

A couple of days ago, I read a horrifying story about a rural county in Texas where people were contemplating shutting down the local library. Why? Because in April 2022, seven residents of Llano County, Texas dared to sue county officials, claiming their First and 14th Amendment rights were violated when 17 books were taken off the shelves because they were deemed “inappropriate”.

Some people in the community and local officials didn’t like the subject matter of the books, so access to them was either restricted, or they were removed from the library altogether. These folks no doubt felt they were “protecting the community” from books about race, gender, or sexuality. Obviously, being exposed to that information would only give people “ideas”, causing them to fall into “sin”. In case you missed my sarcasm, obviously, I believe that’s ludicrous. If that’s really how they feel, they probably ought to consider banning the Bible, too.

Some “thinking people” realized that it wasn’t right for certain conservative groups to decide for everyone else what subject matter was appropriate for their public library system. So they sued, and the judge saw things their way. On March 30, 2023, US District Judge Robert Pitman ordered the Llano County Library System to return the books to the shelves within 24 hours. According to CNN:

Books ordered to return to shelves include “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson, “They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings.

The judge also ordered that the books be listed as available in the library’s catalog. The books are not allowed to be removed for any reason while the case is ongoing. Pitman said, “Although libraries are afforded great discretion for their selection and acquisition decisions, the First Amendment prohibits the removal of books from libraries based on either viewpoint or content discrimination.”

Fair enough, right? The case went to court, and the judge decided. You’d think that would settle things for now, but no…

Rather than just complying with the judge’s orders, the defendants, who had argued that the books were removed as part of a regular “weeding process”, decided it would be better to just shut down the libraries for everyone.

They were pretty sneaky about it, too. They didn’t come out and say they were shutting the library down out of spite. They raised the idea on a recent agenda without naming a specific reason for closing the library. Instead, they described it as a discussion “regarding the continued employment and/or status of the Llano County Library System employees and the feasibility of the use of the library premises by the public.”

The Llano County commissioners and members of the Library Board have appealed the judge’s ruling. They don’t trust people in their community to decide for themselves what they should read, or what books their children should have access to reading. Interestingly enough, I’m certain the people who are for book banning and censorship would identify themselves as “freedom loving Americans.” And yet, they want to dictate to everyone else what should be available to be read in a taxpayer supported community library.

One of the complaints is that the library isn’t a “safe space” for kids. If you’re really afraid of a book being “unsafe” for your kids, I wish you luck when they finally grow up and move away… Geez! God forbid you might supervise what your children are reading, too.

Fortunately, good sense has prevailed in Llano County, and for now, the library will stay open. Yesterday, the Commissioner’s Court unanimously voted to “shelve” discussion of defunding the library, at least for the time being. According to CNN:

“The library will remain open. We will try this in the courts, not through social media or the news media,” Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham said Thursday.

That is a sensible comment, indeed, although the commissioners vowed to continue to fight the lawsuit demanding the permanent return of the books. They are obviously terrified that by reading about race issues, LGBTQ topics, or other “controversial” subject matter, the innocent youth of Llano County will veer from the straight and narrow path of respectability. What a bunch of embarrassingly ignorant bullshit that is! As if people willingly choose to be completely different from their peers, so they’ll be mocked, persecuted, or even physically assaulted or killed for simply living their lives!

According to CNN:

In the public comment section of the meeting prior to the vote, 15 residents were allowed to give their opinions about closing the library. Eleven of them were in favor of keeping the library open. Another four said they wanted to temporarily close the library until a wide variety of books were removed from the system – substantially more than the 17 books at question in the lawsuit.

Still, Cunningham insists that the books were removed due to a regular “weeding” process, not because of their controversial subject matter. And to that, I say again… BULLSHIT. 😉 I don’t believe that those books– every one of which had controversial subject matter– all just happened to come up for “weeding” at that specific point in time.

Cunningham also stated in the CNN article that the idea of closing the library came up because of the cost of litigation.

“A public library simply cannot function if its librarians, county judge, commissioners and even the volunteers who serve out of the goodness of their heart, can be sued every time a library patron disagrees with a librarian’s weeding decisions,” he said.

Cunningham said the lawsuit has cost the county more than $100,000 and the total library budget is $450,000.

Well then… if county officials want to avoid litigation, they shouldn’t try to weed out books that all have to do with certain “taboo” topics. People sue when they feel like they’ve been treated unfairly. Treat everyone fairly, and with consideration for their rights, and most of the time, you won’t be on the receiving end of a lawsuit. It costs money to sue people, and it takes time. Most people don’t sue others just because it’s “fun”.

Personally, I’m grateful to Americans who aren’t taking the insane extremist actions of political conservatives lying down. Republicans have gone way too far in the era of Trump. Their ideas are not what the majority of Americans want for the country. I see and hear them bandying about the importance of the Constitution (especially the Second Amendment), but they don’t seem to realize that the Constitution is for every American. It’s not just for straight, White, conservative leaning males who have money.

I don’t use libraries much myself these days. I prefer to just buy whatever I want to read. However, there were many times in my life when having access to a library was a Godsend. Libraries should be safe, sacred places for people to expand their minds and access the information they want and need.

No group on either side of the political spectrum should have ANY right to dictate what is, or what is not, appropriate reading material for everyone else. And yes, that goes for the extreme leftists, too, who feel like they need to edit and censor classic books to suit our more “modern thinking”. That’s not cool, either.

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first world problems, work

I would not want to be 18 years old in 2023…

Good morning, Krusty Krew… Bill and I woke up bright and early in our suite at the Wald Hotel in Stuttgart. It’s a very nice hotel and we have a lovely room, although the bed is a bit firmer than we’re used to. But, no matter. I realize this is a first world problem, and we’re damned lucky on many levels.

As I was regaining consciousness this morning, I took a look at the news. First, I read about Gwyneth Paltrow’s legal woes. She’s been sued by a retired optometrist who apparently crashed into her on a ski slope in Utah seven years ago. The guy, name of Terry Sanderson, initially sued her for $3 million, but a judge threw out the case. Now, he’s suing for $300,000. I’m no fan of Gwyneth’s Goop, but it does sound to me like the guy who crashed into her is trying to cash in on her fame and wealth. She’s countersuing him for $1 and legal fees. Frankly, I hope she prevails.

Then I read a story in the Washington Post about an 18 year old young woman named Daya Brown from Atlanta. I don’t have any more free articles to share this month, so here’s a link I found to another paper. Brown is a fine student, and in 2020, when she was 15, she “had some extra time on her hands.” She started researching colleges she thought she might like to attend. When she was finished, she had a list of about 70 schools.

Then, when the time came for Brown to apply to colleges, she spent about three hours a day for over four months, filling out applications and researching scholarships. She took advantage of the pandemic rules, as many schools waived their application fees during the height of the COVID-19 era. In the end, she got accepted to 54 schools and scored about $1.3 million in scholarships. Ultimately, she decided to accept an offer to attend Duke University. No doubt, that is an excellent choice, and she obviously has a great work ethic. She’ll probably do very well at Duke.

Personally, I think that applying to that many colleges is ridiculous on many levels. But ultimately, Daya Brown was rewarded for her efforts. She can tell people that 54 colleges accepted her. Anyone who has ever filled out applications for institutions of higher education knows that successfully gaining admittance to selective schools is challenging. However, I think the time Daya Brown spent on filling out those applications could have been better spent on other things, like enjoying her final year of high school. In other words, when she’s in her 30s or 50s, I wonder if Brown will still think the hours she spent applying to so many schools was time well spent.

Also, I once had the “privilege” of working in a college admissions office one spring. It was my job to file all of the stuff prospective students sent in to the College of William & Mary, a very selective school in Virginia. I saw, with my own eyes, the endless deluge of documents from hopeful students the admissions office dealt with at William & Mary. Some of it was absolutely insane. I know the college admissions process has changed since those days. For one thing, a lot of schools use the same application. Still, there are human beings at those schools who have to process each application. As I read Daya Brown’s story, I thought of the people working in those offices who had to process her application, even though she probably had a much shorter list of schools that she was actually considering attending.

I can excuse Daya Brown for applying to all of those colleges, though. She probably got a lot of local praise for working so hard on her applications. And she is obviously a good student, and one that most colleges would happily welcome to campus. Maybe she felt encouraged or pressured to apply to so many schools from her family, or maybe she’s simply a bit compulsive. Whatever her reasons, she’s getting highly commended for it, which is valuable in and of itself. She’s even getting fifteen minutes of fame, as thousands of people read her story, and people like me blog about it.

In our warped American society, people who have insane work ethics are praised and rewarded. Most people never stop to think about how, actually, it’s kind of a self-absorbed thing to do– applying to so many schools, when you can only attend one at a time. It’s also not a trend I would want to see catch on, as more students might feel pressured to do what Brown did, when they already have a lot to worry about and think of during college application season/senior year. Not everyone has the time or the money to apply to so many schools. I realize that Brown didn’t have to pay application fees for all of the schools she applied to, but I don’t expect that trend to continue, as the pandemic hysteria seems to abate.

Naturally, I had to read the comments… and I have to say, some of them were really surprising. I wonder… do people ever really stop and think about the big picture when they react to news stories? So Brown got into 54 colleges. That means it’s likely that students who actually wanted to attend any of those schools she applied to, but had no intention of ever attending, were rejected or relegated to a wait list.

Most people who commented on Daya Brown’s story seemed very impressed. Those who were not impressed by her extremely ambitious college application operations were roundly criticized. One person, name of Cherie, wrote that she thought it was “nuts” that Brown applied to so many schools. She wrote that this was not a trend she’d want to see continue. A number of people left Cherie very rude comments, even after she explained that she, herself, has a doctorate and teaches college courses. Another commenter, who claimed to be a physician, called Cherie (a youngish looking woman, based on her Facebook photo) an “old hag”, and berated her for daring to criticize Brown’s actions.

I took a look at the doctor’s profile. She appeared to be pretty long in the tooth, herself. Cherie didn’t need me to stick up for her, though, as she wrote that she hoped the physician had a better bedside manner than her online personality. That’s a separate issue, of course, but I wonder why people simply can’t be civilized when they comment on things? Why start off an exchange by calling someone a mean-spirited name, as you try to qualify your comments by saying you’re a physician? I can see getting “nasty” if someone is nasty to you, but why immediately address someone with such piss and vinegar? It really makes me think that a lot of people are just unkind.

But mostly… I just think that if you’re already a very hardworking student who has done well in high school, you should just try to relax and enjoy the fleeting days of youth. Daya Brown has the rest of her life to work. She’s 18 years old, beautiful, smart, and presumably healthy. Seems to me she could have whittled down that list of colleges by two-thirds; people still would have considered her a hard worker, and she would have still gotten into a great school and scored scholarship money.

In this age of excesses, I just don’t think this trend of students applying to dozens of colleges is something we ought to be promoting. Being resourceful and hardworking is certainly commendable, but there’s a hell of a lot more to life than trying to impress others. And “workaholism” is not really something that Americans need more of, because there’s a hell of a lot more to life than work, branding, and self-promotion. At best, it ends with frenzied people who are bitter and burned out by their time they’re 30. At worst, it ends with people who die sooner than they should, having spent all their time working, instead of being with loved ones, serving others, and enjoying being alive.

Anyway… just a thought from a 50 year old “hag”. The doc didn’t actually call me that– yet, anyway– but I stand with Cherie, the college professor, who clearly knows of what she writes. And I’m really glad to be 50, and no longer feeling the pressures of being 18, with my whole life ahead of me. I’m sure it’s a lot scarier now than it was in 1990, when I was Daya Brown’s age… Fortunately, my own college choice was easy. I applied to four schools, and only got into one… and yet, 29 years post graduation, I still have a pretty enviable lifestyle. I guess that just goes to show you that, in the grand scheme of things, even if you aren’t a super achiever in high school, things can turn out fine.

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mental health, psychology

No one should ever die over spilt coffee!

The last couple of years have really been quite the mess, haven’t they? I wouldn’t be a young person in America again for anything, especially in this post pandemic hellscape. Young people are under so much pressure to make it. I remember what it was like to be young and unsure, filled with anxiety and depression, feeling like a failure, and when I was clinically depressed, actually thinking about suicide on a daily basis.

I thought I would be broke and unloved, or working in a job that I hated, desperately trying to earn enough to pay my own way. I went through this anguish for years, only to somehow find myself on a career path to a career I probably wouldn’t have loved that much. Then I met Bill, and was soon swept off that path, and into a new future that I had never, in a million years, envisioned for myself. Even after twenty years, I can’t believe this happened. I never would have thought that the answer for me was finding the right man. That’s not how I was raised AT ALL.

I’ll be honest. There are times when I still feel anxious. There are times when I am depressed. Sometimes I worry about what’s going to happen. Then I am awed by what I have… amazed, even. And I’m glad I didn’t give in to the urge to commit suicide when I was still in my 20s. Then I think to myself… if I had done that, I wouldn’t have been any the wiser about what was to come. My life would have been unfinished, like Neuschwanstein… or an incomplete novel with no ending.

You might already be wondering what’s brought on today’s musings, which some people might find a little disturbing. Well, I don’t assume anyone worries about my mental health, and there’s no reason to do that now. I’m not feeling particularly depressed today. It’s just that this morning, I read a story about yet another high achieving young woman who decided to kill herself over something that really should have been a blip on the proverbial radar.

The Washington Post ran a story today about Katie Meyer, a young woman who, by most accounts, should have been on top of the world. On February 28, 2022, 22 year old Meyer was just a few months from finishing her degree at Stanford University, where she was a soccer star and captain of the university’s soccer team. She had a 3.84 GPA, and in 2019, had helped lead the prestigious university to a national championship in soccer. She had plans to attend law school. She’d hoped to attend Stanford for law school, too.

On February 28, Katie Meyer had done seemingly normal things. She went to classes, soccer practice, and an event for the Mayfield Fellows Program, for which she had recently been selected. She had FaceTimed with her mom and sister about her spring break plans. She had emailed her mother about plane tickets she had booked. She’d never make the flight, though. February 28, 2022 was her last day of life. Katie Meyer committed suicide that day.

So what happened on February 28 that led to Katie Meyer’s untimely death? It started with spilled coffee in August 2021.

On that fateful day in August 2021, Katie Meyer was riding her bike when she somehow spilled coffee on a football player who was accused of sexually assaulting (kissing without permission) one of Katie’s teammates, who was 17 years old. Katie maintained that the coffee spilling incident was an accident. The football player, who was not identified and never faced any disciplinary charges, didn’t even complain about the spilled coffee. However, the incident was reported to Stanford’s Office of Community Standards by the dean of residential education. An investigation ensued, and apparently, for the first time in her short life, Katie Meyer was in some trouble.

The complaint against Meyer indicated that spilling the coffee on the football player had caused physical injury. It was the university’s standard practice to review the incident and determine whether or not Katie should be disciplined. Meanwhile, the incident regarding the football player’s uninvited kiss of the soccer player was also reported to the Title IX office. However, that office determined that the criteria for investigating the kissing incident were not met.

In September, Meyer spoke with a university administrator about the coffee incident. She expressed how distressed she was by the investigation. Two months after that meeting, Meyer provided a formal statement about the incident, again explaining that the disciplinary process had caused her great worry and stress. She feared the incident would derail her career plans and ultimately even ruin her life. According to the Washington Post:

“My whole life I’ve been terrified to make any mistakes,” she wrote. “No alcohol, no speeding tickets, no A- marks on my report cards. Everything had to be perfect to get in and stay at Stanford. I suffer from anxiety and perfectionism, as so many female athletes do. We know all too well that in professional settings women have everything to lose and have to work twice as hard to prove that they are qualified and professional, and any mistake is magnified, any attitude of assertiveness is demonized.”

Man… I can remember feeling like that, too. And I am definitely NOT Stanford material. So often we think of high achievers like Katie Meyer– young, beautiful, brilliant, athletic– richly gifted in almost every way. We think of how lucky they are. We never stop to think about the incredible pressure they’re under and how much pressure they put on themselves. It’s easy for me, at age 50, to sit here and think this is ridiculous that a young woman like Katie Meyer– who seemingly had EVERYTHING going for her– would kill herself over spilled coffee.

I empathize with Katie. I remember very well being young and scared, and feeling like any little mistake I made would permanently ruin my life. I also felt like I needed to excel when I was very young. I felt like it was expected of me, not just from my parents and other elders in my life, but also and especially from myself. Unlike Katie, I didn’t excel at that much. But, like her, I felt like I really needed to achieve, and if I didn’t, my life would not be worth living.

I remember working as a temp in the admissions office at the College of William & Mary, where extremely talented, bright, high achieving young people attended school. I read their essays, letters of recommendation, and report cards, and filed them away, along with lots of other items they sent in to convince the admissions committee that they were worthy to matriculate at William & Mary in the fall of 1998. So many of them seemed desperate to achieve… and unaware that there are so many ways to succeed at life. In 1998, I was 26 years old, a graduate of a less prestigious college, and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. I felt like a loser, even though I had already done a lot. Depression and anxiety will do that to a person, especially when they’re young.

I was fortunate, though, because I found a really kind and understanding therapist who helped me. I took medication that helped even out my thinking. I took voice lessons, which were relaxing and therapeutic for me… a form of expression that was easy for me and brought positive regard. Gradually, I started to see other pathways out of that hell. It took some time, but I finally moved past that dreaded anxiety ridden state of youth that causes young, ambitious, talented people to consider suicide.

In Katie’s situation, several months passed, and Katie apparently figured the trouble had blown over. She started to relax and look forward to her bright future. But then she got that email at about 7:00 pm on February 28th. She was alone, and when she read the email about disciplinary action toward her, she panicked. Hours later, she was found unresponsive in her dorm room. The email from the Office of Community Standards, informing her that there was a hold on her degree and she could be removed from the university due to the spilled coffee incident, was still open on her computer.

Apparently, Katie had not responded to a February 25th email indicating that more information had been added to her file regarding the spilled coffee incident. The Office of Community Standards had requested more exonerating evidence from Katie by February 28th. She was a very busy student, though, and had evidently missed the email. Since the supporting evidence had never arrived, the university sent the after hours email that left Meyer so distraught that she took that last devastating action.

Katie Meyer’s parents are now suing Stanford University for wrongful death. They maintain that the university had acted negligently and recklessly in the way they handled her disciplinary case. According to the Washington Post:

“Stanford’s after-hours disciplinary charge, and the reckless nature and manner of submission to Katie, caused Katie to suffer an acute stress reaction that impulsively led to her suicide,” said the complaint, filed last week in Santa Clara County Superior Court. “Katie’s suicide was completed without planning and solely in response to the shocking and deeply distressing information she received from Stanford while alone in her room without any support or resources.”

For its part, Stanford University is vehemently denying responsibility for Katie Meyer’s death. In an official statement to the Stanford community, university officials wrote:

The Stanford community continues to grieve Katie’s tragic death and we sympathize with her family for the unimaginable pain that Katie’s passing has caused them. However, we strongly disagree with any assertion that the university is responsible for her death. The complaint brought by the Meyer family unfortunately contains allegations that are false and misleading.

I don’t pretend to know what actually happened in this situation. The description of the coffee spilling incident is not very well explained in the article. Did she go up and hurl a cup of hot coffee at the football player while he was kissing Katie’s teammate? Or was she carrying a Starbucks while riding a bike and hit a bump in the road, causing it to fly from her hands? I can’t tell from the description in the newspaper article. However, whatever actually occurred with the football player, I do know that it should not have led a 22 year old woman with a very bright future to kill herself. I am so sorry for Katie’s parents and other friends and loved ones. But I’m not sure that the university is necessarily at fault, either. I would imagine that most people would not have reacted in such an extreme way to that email.

Extremely competitive universities like Stanford University do attract the best and brightest, and a lot of those students are extreme perfectionists, perhaps even to a pathological level. Maybe at a school like Stanford, it makes sense to be very careful about delivering that kind of bad news– the kind that might threaten a highly achieving young person’s future. However, Katie was 22 years old, which made her a grown woman. She was about to embark on a career in law. I would imagine that she would face some pretty threatening and stressful challenges in that arena, too. It sounds to me like Katie really needed mental health treatment. Perhaps the bigger question is, does Stanford University support and encourage students to seek out mental health services when they need them? Do they try not to penalize students for seeking help when they need it?

This is a topic near and dear to me, because my husband has spent most of his adult life in the military, in which a lot of lip service is paid about people seeking mental healthcare when they need it. However, those who do go to therapy and take medication often wind up being penalized when they lose security clearances or get reassigned to jobs that mess up their career aspirations. A lot of tragedies have occurred because of this policy, that punishes people for seeking help. Hell, in the military, a servicemember can wind up being “punished” even if a family member needs special services for their mental health or educational needs. See my rant about EFMP for more on that.

More recently, I read a Washington Post article about students at Yale University who were kicked out of school for having mental health issues. One student, Rachael Shaw-Rosenbaum, had a very hard time dealing with attending Yale during the pandemic. She needed help, but instead was driven to suicide. The article highlighted other stories of high achieving students being forced to withdraw from Yale after they needed psychiatric care. Some of those students did go on to kill themselves, because they felt like they’d failed and Yale simply wanted to “get rid of them”. Yale University also famously falsely accused a young woman of having an eating disorder and threatened to kick her out of school because she couldn’t gain two pounds. I wrote about Frances Chan, the “fake” anorexic, in my old blog, and since her story is relevant to this post, I will repost my 2014 article about her case today.

Anyway… I think it’s very sad that there’s a population of very bright, promising, young people who feel so overwhelmed, anxious, and depressed that they can no longer bear to go on. I thought it was hard enough in the 90s, when I was staring down the rest of my life, wondering what was going to become of me. At 22, I should have been on the brink of the best time in my life. But instead, I was scared, anxious, depressed, and occasionally suicidal. I feel fortunate that I managed to get through that time. I realize that not everyone can do what I managed to do. They lack the time, the money, the will, or they simply feel like they aren’t deserving. Some of them feel like they should be able to get over mental health issues by themselves. They’ve been taught that they have to be superhuman. But no one is superhuman.

It’s time that Americans stopped stigmatizing people who have mental health issues, especially when they are among the best and brightest. It’s time treatment for mental healthcare was prioritized, and made easy to afford and access. It’s time we stopped ruining people’s lives– or making them think their lives are ruined– simply because they made a mistake or got in some trouble or experience a temporary lapse in mental health due to stress, physical illness, or some other minor setback.

Life shouldn’t be so serious… or so hard, especially for young men and women on the brink of adulthood. No one should ever die over spilt coffee.

My condolences to Katie Meyer’s friends and family members. She sounds like she was an extraordinary person.

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