The Truth about Bertha Gifford

I am Bertha Gifford's great-granddaughter.

She was my mother's grandmother, and my mother lived with her on a farm in Catawissa, Missouri on and off for a period of several years.  Since Mom--in her later years, when I was working on Tainted Legacy--told me everything she could possibly remember about Bertha, I feel I am uniquely qualified as an expert on Bertha.  The only person in the world who knows more about her than I do is historian Marc Houseman with the Washington Historical Society in Washington, Missouri--and he only "knows" more because his brain is a virtual file cabinet.  He remembers dates and names.  I remember nuances and impressions.  We've been great collaborators in our search for the truth about Bertha Gifford.

For the record:

Bertha was not convicted of 17 or 18 or 19 or 20 murders, nor was any evidence produced to substantiate that number.  Seventeen people, at a grand jury hearing, gave testimony regarding loved ones she had cared for who died.  Bertha was a "volunteer nurse" over a period of close to twenty years.  We have no record of how many people she cared for who didn't die.

After the grand jury hearing, two bodies were exhumed.  Both were found to contain arsenic.  Enough arsenic was present in the body of Ed Brinley to "kill seven men."  Keep in mind:

If your own body were tested today, arsenic would be detected.
There is arsenic in the water you drink--even if it comes through a filtering system.
Arsenic is present in ground water and well water.
Ed Brinley was a heavy drinker... during prohibition... when the alcohol consumed came from neighborhood stills.
Bertha Gifford was in the habit of ingesting arsenic as it was thought to be "good" for the circulation. This was a common practice in the 1920's.
As a volunteer nurse, Bertha admitted giving arsenic to people.  Her motivation, as she declared in a signed statement, was to help them.  Ain't nothing crazy about that.  Misguided, perhaps.  Arrogant.  But not crazy.  No more crazy than Dr. Conrad Murray was in giving propofol to Michael Jackson to "help him go to sleep."

Bertha Gifford was brought to trial in 1928 when most folks in small towns got their news from a weekly newspaper and/or their neighbors. A scandalous story such as Bertha's would keep folks buying papers for weeks.  After all, other forms of entertainment were limited compared to what we experience today.  Sensationalism in journalism was an accepted practice.  After all, editors were desirous of giving their readers a good story.  Courts, not newspapers, were responsible for presenting only factual evidence.

Forensics, in 1928, was a nascent art.

The doctor who continued to supervise Bertha as she cared for ill family members and neighbors was never called into question for any suspicious deaths--or for allowing her to continue nursing after patients died in her care.

My point in all this?  Too much time has elapsed for us to know the real truth about what happened with Bertha Gifford.  If I were to make the claim that she was not a homicidal maniac, my opinion would immediately be attributed to bias, and understandably so.  She was, after all, the beloved grandmother of my mother.  But as I mentioned, I do feel that relationship uniquely qualifies me to draw certain conclusions.

“For the record, prejudices can kill.” ~ Rod Serling

Maple Street, U.S.A. Late summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children and the bell of an ice cream vendor.  This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street...in the last calm and reflective moment...before the monsters came.

If you have been politically polarized by the tragic misunderstanding between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, please stop reading here and carry the opinion you are entitled to away with you.  If you are open to considering a slightly less one-sided view, read on.

First:  How did the jury acquit George Zimmerman?  The answer is simple; the judge told the jury this:  If a “reasonable” person would have feared for his life in George Zimmerman’s situation, you must vote to acquit him.  And they did.

If I learned anything in law school (and I learned a great deal in a short amount of time, let me tell you), I learned that cases are not decided on passion.  Cases must be decided based on the law at hand.  In Florida, this is the law at hand—like it, love it, hate it, shake a fist at it, it is the law, and a jury—whether it’s made up of primarily white women or primarily green men—has a duty to base a judgment on the law as it stands.

But as I see it, the problem in this whole controversy should not center on whether or not Zimmerman was determined by the law in his state to be culpable.  The problem is much, much deeper than that.  And it stems from the fact that poor George Zimmerman did fear for his life.  But so did Trayvon Martin.

Both men were frightened.  Both reacted as they did out of fear.  For Trayvon Martin, acting on his fear of George Zimmerman cost him his life.  And, if we are compassionate… and I know we are, in our hearts… acting on his fear of Trayvon Martin cost George Zimmerman the life he knew.  Because he can never go back to the privacy of anonymity, never feel safe again while others threaten his life, and if a civil suit is brought against him, he will most assuredly be found culpable there… and will spend the good part of the rest of his life paying for his stubborn decision to follow a boy he deemed suspicious.

Why?  Because we live in a culture of fear.  And yes, that fear is race-based.  OK, calm down, I’m not calling anyone a racist.  I know how we hate that word.

But can we just be perfectly honest?  We have been living with this build-up of racial tension for a long time.  It’s not my imagination.  It’s not me “pulling the race card” to point the blame one way or another.  It is the truth that I know because I have seen and experienced it.

I grew up during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s.  I saw the March on Washington… and the Watts Rebellion.  I was encouraged by the signing of the Civil Rights Act… and defeated by the race riot that occurred at my own high school in 1969. In my adulthood, I have had the unique experience of living life as a white woman while raising black children. If you are a white person who believes “racism” at its core no longer exists in this country, forgive me, but you are simply naïve.

Racism is still pervasive in this land of diversity.  It just wears a different set of clothes.  Gone are the white robes, the placards held high with racial epithets boldly emblazoned.  White people tend to think of “racists” as white supremacists who spew hate and refer to non-whites in derogatory terms.  The truth is, whenever a person makes a judgment about a set of people, predicting a specific action or behavior based on race, that person is guilty of race-ism.  Thus, the young black man who calls a radio talk show to say, ‘I could have told you Zimmerman would be acquitted—as soon as I heard the jury was all white women, I knew it’ is just as guilty of race-ism as the middle-aged white man who says, ‘If they don’t want to be treated like criminals, they shouldn’t dress like criminals,’ a reference to the hip-hop music inspired fashion of wearing hooded shirts.

None of us want to be thought of as racist.  Racists aren’t nice people.  And we all want to be thought of as nice people—proper, appropriate, good people.  And “good” I think most of us are.  Just… frightened.

The social climate we’ve been living in for some time now has been much like that depicted in the old Twilight Zone episode, “TheMonsters Are Due on Maple Street,” named by Time magazine as one of the top ten best Twilight Zone episodes, by the way.  If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend a quick viewing via YouTube or Netflix.  (It’s episode 22 of the first season of the original TZ.)  Because… there we all are.  An incident occurs which is somewhat frightening to the folks on Maple Street because they don’t know what really happened, don’t understand what’s going on.  Their fear leads them to arm themselves… and the next thing you know, one man kills his neighbor… which of course, only adds to the escalating hysteria.

And that escalating hysteria is what I see on the news right now.  People are terrified of vigilante justice—on both sides.  Trayvon Martin’s family is entreating the country to move forward peacefully… just as Rodney King once did.

The thing is, we can’t do that as long as we fear each other.  As Rod Serling said, “There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices—to be found only in the minds of men.”

The truth is, we will never have peace until we see each other as individuals, not black or white or privileged or poor.  Just… people who share the same needs, who just want to make it to our next destination unscathed.  

Dusting off the rusty super powers

Today’s blog post is brought to you by my dear friends Lynn Miller and Catherine Higgins.

No, they’re not paying for advertising.  They just had the proper incantation to get me writing again.

I haven’t been writing.  (Did you notice?)  Haven’t done a blog post in weeks.  Haven’t worked on the YA novel that is really, for all intents and purposes, finished, just needs some typos corrected and it can go to print.  Haven’t started that memoir I intended to write this summer, the one about my six years on the mountain.  Haven’t even done much journaling, despite having a good deal to write about after my recent trip to Missouri.

Why?

Not that it matters, really, and I take a great risk in being entirely honest here, but….  I’ve just been sad.  That’s it.  Just sad.  Just… unable to cast off a shadow that’s been following me around since February.  Some things happened back then… then some more things.  Then the Boston Marathon bombings.  Then some things in May and June related to my day job and my other job (this one) and people who are unkind, ungracious, uncouth, unscrupulous.  Next thing you know, I’m going to bed and waking up angry every day.  Not a good thing for a depressive personality.

A few things have happened to bring some sunshine into my life.  I spent a week in Missouri with my dearest friends in the world.  I celebrated my birthday and my daughter’s (same day) with the people I love most in the world, and My Daughter the Poet wrote me a fabulous love-drenched poem for my birthday.  To top that all off, I saw some friends yesterday I hadn’t seen in quite a while—and they asked, “What are you writing?” in such a way that made me believe they really did want to read something I’d written.  

That’s all I need, you see—just an audience.  It’s when I begin to ask myself, What’s the point? and I begin to doubt that anyone really ever reads my work that I start to think… it might be easier just to sit in front of the TV or Facebook for hours, using those ever-present opiates to numb the sadness for a while.  But Lynn and Catherine asked.  And I had to be honest and say my sadness was the culprit… which made me realize how defeated I’d become… which made me angry—in the right way.  

So there, take that, Sadness!  I have buckled on my Super Sadness Deflector Shield.  I have drawn forth my Sword of Dynamic Power (also known as The Pen).  I have danced my eager fingertips across the Almighty Symbols used to combat sadness and create peace and harmony.  I have produced a document.  I HAVE HEREBY BEEN A VICTOR, NOT A VICTIM.

OK, sorry for the shouting.  Got a bit carried away there.  Thanks for reading my words. I’m going to saunter off and do a small victory dance… then get to work on that YA novel.

Zen and the Serendipity of a Bike Ride

Today was one of those very Zen days.  That’s the only way I can describe it.

I’ve been angry at the Universe for a while.  I have not been moving with the flow of life, just shaking my fist in frustration at many, many things, digging my heels in, holding my hands over my ears (figuratively speaking) while telling my spirit guides to go….  Well, anyway, I’ve not been in a very good place.

During my yoga this morning, though, I decided to focus on opening up to love and whatever else the Universe wanted to bring me in the course of the day, be it dark or light, yin or yang.  And this is what happened….

After breakfast I went for a bike ride along the designated bike path that runs from Claremont to Fontana.  I jumped on at Grove, and while waiting for a traffic signal in Rancho Cucamonga, several other cyclists stopped as well, everyone saying good morning to everyone else as we waited for the light to change so we could cross.  When it did, I had made it to the other side when I heard a voice behind me.

“Ms. Murphy?”

I slowed my bike and a young man caught up.  It was Kendall.  He’d graduated from Upland High in… 2003 or 2004, I think, back when I was still teaching seniors.  He was a star football player, filled with the joy of life, a tiny bit naughty at times, but never disrespectful and always a sweetheart.  He’d been recruited to play football in Utah—until he broke his leg and his world changed forever.  I can’t believe he recognized me in dark glasses and baseball cap, but he did.  And then he made me cry.

After he’d told me about college and how he started his own business, he said:  “Ms. Murphy, thank you.  I never forgot what you taught me in English, and it allowed me to take an Honors English class in college with an emphasis on politics.  The class was a breeze because you taught me how to write an essay.”

Sheesh.  This is what happens when you open yourself up to the Universe; you find yourself standing at the side of a bike trail, trying to dab away the tears and blow your nose discreetly while a young man looks you in the eye and says, ‘You made a difference in my life, and I’ve never forgotten you.  So thank you.’ 

Suddenly in that moment all the angry words of clueless parents, the ever-looming threats of pay cuts, that niggling sense of guilt at never doing quite enough for my students much less my own kids—all that dark mist evaporated—poof—with the warmth of validation.  OK, maybe I have accomplished one or two good things in life.  Yes, yes, I know it’s much more than that, but you don’t hear the tape that is sometimes stuck on a continuous loop in my head.  It’s the bane of us depressive folks, please understand….

Which is why I try to practice wu wei, to simply let life unfold around me without reacting or responding, just appreciating.  When I do, good things happen… and today’s event will carry me along, floating on this current of life, for quite a number of days.

Suede becomes Seamus

Friday came.  No one came to claim Suede.  I took the day off work, showed up at the shelter at noon when they opened, walked up to the counter with the new collar and leash I’d just bought at Petsmart, and told the young male employee that I was there to adopt Suede.  Twenty minutes later, my dog was sitting calmly on the floor next to me while I adjusted the new collar and signed the last of the paperwork.  A man waiting to get a dog license asked, “How old is your dog?”  I looked around, realized he was talking to me and replied, “Eight.”

“How did he happen to get in here?” the man wondered.

“Oh—I’m adopting him today.”

“Really?  I can’t believe how well he listens to you.”

My son would echo those same words later in the evening when he watched us play fetch and my good dog dropped his new toy turtle every time I asked him to.

Years ago my daughter introduced me to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, and I became a fan.  When I was searching my brain for some name that might replace “Suede,” I wanted a long A sound, an Irish name and hopefully one with character.  And suddenly there it was on my Facebook page, a post by Billy Collins (another favorite poet who enjoys celebrity status) which included a photo of him visiting Seamus Heaney in Ireland.  Perfect.

So from our first hours together yesterday, Suede became Seamus.  (For those of you unfamiliar with crazy Celtic pronunciations, it’s Shay-mus.)

I called my vet upon arriving home, and he just happened to have a free spot in the afternoon.  (Yes, my vet does house calls.)  He came by with his able assistant Emily, pronounced Seamus healthy and gave him all the vaccines known to preventive dog medicine.  (The shelter had done no inoculations as the family surrendering him had produced paperwork showing that he’d had his shots.  Just, no one recorded when.  So we gave him all the vacs again, just to establish a base line.)

And what did my new dog do while he was being jabbed by a stranger repeatedly?  He wagged his tail and licked Dr. Lebovic’s face.  Who’s a good boy?  Huh?  Who’s a good boy?

In the evening, when the warm spring day cooled a bit, we went for a two-mile walk.  We did the same loop this morning after I’d done my yoga.  Seamus is calm and obedient on the leash, even when other dogs bark at him or sprinklers go on or cars whiz past.  And yeah, he listens.

Dogs.  They’re just so amazing, aren’t they?

Suede

"Mama always said life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get."

This photo was borrowed from the website www.the-happy-dog-spot.com.

Last Wednesday I did my weekly walk-through of the local animal shelter.  I’ve been looking for a dog to adopt, but it’s tough to see dogs under those conditions, so I generally don’t stay long.  That day, I was suddenly greeted by two dogs in a single kennel barking loudly through the chain link.  One appeared to be a huskie/shepherd mix.  The other was a purebred chocolate lab.

I ignored them, waiting to see if they would stop barking.  When they didn’t, I decided to address the issue.

“Hey!” I said, “sit.”  The lab stopped barking immediately, hung his head in shame, and sat.  The other dog stopped barking, but stood watching me.  “Sit,” I said again, and he sat.

The card on their kennel told their story. They’d been brought to the shelter the day before when their owners had been evicted from their home.  They had gone from having their own home and no doubt a yard to being thrust into a small cement kennel, separated from all that was familiar.  Their collars attested to their status as family members, with tags stating their names and the address of the home they would probably never see again.

Saddened, I left.

But I couldn’t get them out of my mind, so I returned the next day.  The lab, “Suede,” remembered me and, true to his lab instincts to please, immediately sat, watching my face expectantly.  The huskie mix, “Fenway,” spent his time pacing back and forth in the kennel.  When Suede wandered over toward the food bowl, Fenway growled, putting his body between his cellmate and the food.

“You just lost the gentleman vote,” I told him.  Suede returned to where I stood and sat down again, wagging his tail slowly, quietly.

At the front desk, an employee told me a ten-day hold had been placed on the dogs.  The family has that long to make arrangements to house them.  In the meantime, a list would be made of people interested in adopting them.  I gave the woman my name, thus becoming #1 on the list.  If the family does not return to claim Suede by Friday, May 10, I can adopt him.

I returned the next day to visit, and noticed that Fenway had developed a runny nose. He was still showing food aggression toward Suede, and Suede still sat as soon as he saw me.

On Saturday, the kennel appeared empty when I approached, and my heart started pounding.  I bent down and looked to the back of the enclosure.  Fenway was there, curled up asleep.  No Suede.  My eyes misted over.  Had the family reclaimed one dog but left the other behind?  Or had the dogs simply been separated by the shelter staff?

The answer to the latter question was yes.  Two kennels down, I found a very lonely, very glad to see me Suede.  He sat, but stood again and wagged his tail, then sat again.  I spent a few minutes quietly talking to him.  On Sunday I returned again, this time just sitting outside the kennel on the floor for a while, talking to him.

On Monday, the kennel smelled bad, and Suede’s milk chocolate nose was bloody and raw.

“What happened?” I asked.  He wagged his tail, then leaned against the chain link.  I squeezed my hand through, scratching his neck.  A runny pile of poop oozed at the far end of the kennel.  Dogs that are housebroken have the hardest time in shelters because they’ve been trained not to go ‘inside.’  The loose stool was an indication that his digestive system wasn’t adjusting to whatever they were feeding him, and his nose was an indication that he had tried to scrape up some dirt to cover his mess.

When I returned on Tuesday, his kennel had been cleaned.  And as I sat with him, I watched a family with young children stroll through, looking at the dogs.  The little girl with them saw Fenway’s gorgeous blue eyes and ran to the kennel while her parents hung back.  For a week, I have watched that dog bark at every single adult who comes within five feet of his kennel.  But when he saw the little girl, he trotted to the gate to greet her, quietly wagging his tail.  Atta boy, Fenway.

Friday is the day after tomorrow.  I should be excited, but I’m not.  What I’m feeling is much less than that, and a little more.  I’m anxious about bringing Suede home, worried about how Sug will adjust to having a dog in the house; she’s never lived with one.  And I feel guilty, as if I’m profiting from the misfortunes of others.  I can only assuage that guilt a little by telling myself that if I were ever in the situation of having to give up a dog (and heaven help me if such a calamity would ever occur), I would want that dog to be adopted as soon as possible to someone who would care for him and love him deeply and responsibly.  And I am hopeful.  There is still time for the family to rally, to return for the dogs who miss them terribly.

 And so the waiting game continues.  Stay tuned.

Word Search

I lost my words last week.

I was gathering them all together like Scrabble tiles,

arranging, rearranging….

Then Boston exploded,

sending my words in a thousand directions.

It has taken a good deal of effort to gather them all back in.

When I was finally able to go about retrieving them,

I found that they had been changed by the shock wave.

Some words, like “celebratory” and “success”

became “sadness” and “confusion.”

Some words, like “serenity” and “tranquility”

are still missing, though I haven’t given up hope of finding them again.

In the meantime, I will busy myself

gazing at the waning moon, watering my roses, exchanging exclamatory text messages with my teenaged granddaughter about the CD she loaned me

and continuing my search for the next good dog who will serendipitously bless my life.

Oh look—it appears I have found a few more words….