GUEST COLUMN FROM RICKIE LEE JONES: "YOU DON'T KNOW UNTIL IT'S PERSONAL WHAT THESE THINGS MEAN"

I met Rickie Lee Jones in 1979. I was a rock writer and she was an up-and-coming young singer-songwriter who was playing in San Francisco just as "Chuck E's in Love" was starting to break. I interviewed her. I was blown away by how cool and smart she was. I don't think the feeling was mutual because she kind of dozed off while I was asking her questions. I did get a great story written though! Fast forward a decade or so and I'm the president of Reprise Records and Rickie Lee is back on the label. Oh, was I thrilled! A real artist, not a manufactured product; someone with something to say that it worth listening to and-- great bonus-- a unique way of saying it!

A couple years ago I was blown away when she played me "Ugly Man," one of the best songs ever written about George W. Bush. Tonight I'm going to see Rickie Lee play at the Wilshire Theater (8440 Wilshire Blvd in L.A.). Vic Chestnut is opening so I'll be getting there early. This afternoon Rickie sent me some thoughts that have been rattling around in her mind lately, thoughts I think we've all been having, thoughts, as she says, you might not fully grasp until it's personal. Usually sharing what is personal is what Rickie does in her music. I'm really excited that today she's sharing that with Down With Tyranny readers.

-Howie (DWT)



here is a work, a dirge, a sonnet,
a song of the rags and utensils of our time,
the hospital beds and pans and plastic
cups for your teeth, the straw,
the apple sauce.



i know these things because my mother came here last month and immediately had a stroke. We sat in the emergency room for four or five or six hours until they found her a room, we were grateful. Then she had a stroke for a bout a week and they sent her home
one day after I asked if she could go home. She wanted to go home, but she wasn't ready.
They brought some guy in to tell her about the walker, and that was it.

That night, the third trip to the bathroom, about two in the morning she fell down.
Fell hard, but i have carpeting in the hall.

In the hospital the Dr. took her off her dilantin for seizures. Has she had a seizure? no,
she has been on that medicine since she had a seizure two years ago.

Five, six trips to the toilet, no sleep all night. IN the morning we begin to call the pharmacy for her meds, but no meds have been phoned in. The nurse, the home care nurse, he calls the DR. and the drug store, but no meds have been phoned in. I have a few, half of the pills (left over from before this episode) but none of the new ones. I give her what i have.
I figure, one day, it's got to be ok, these people just worked to save her life, they aren't going to send her home and kill her.

That night she gets up and goes to the bathroom just as many times as last night, but i am not with her. I don't wake up when i hear her move. I guess i am too tired.
IN the morning i go to the drug store and the pharmacist says, no, no medicine has been phoned in, we have been trying to reach the Dr. I say she needs this medicine to survive,
she will die without it. Trying to sound dramatic, urgent, and off hand at the same time,
i turn and walk away. I go to the county to get an application to build a five foot fence, my neighbor has been SHOOTING his gun at my dogs. The sheriff did not arrest this Israeli.
The fact that white men get away with outrageous infractions of the law the black men would be arrested without question for is really bothering me. I am seeing racist attitude in every aspect of the law lately. I cannot escape knowing that each thing that happens to a white man will be a different story for a black man. Wealth is not the trump card for racism.
I am driving home wiping the steam of the window ( that has been coming out of my ears)
and pull up to the house and Lee is standing in the drive way. I can see by his face that
he is Hiding. Hiding his thoughts.

Your mother had a seizure. The ambulance came. It happened right after you left.

Mom was so sick, i put her in front of the fire place, made her toast, and ran to get the
drugs. But there were no drugs.

AT the hospital emergency room the nurses had no idea why mom was brought there. The ambulance driver didn't tell you it was a seizure? That she just got out of here two days ago?

That she has a stroke last week?

no...they just said maybe some shaking or fainting.

For Christs Sake.

It would be twelve hours before they put the old woman in a room. They didn't bring her food because no one came to evaluate her to see if she could swallow. They didn't give her the
dilantin because no dr. came to prescribe it.

When i saw her Dr. two hours after she arrived, i said, we have tried to reach you for 48 hours.
I am totally reachable.
YOu are not. I watched while the nurse called you, both pharmacists said you had not returned their calls, and I also phoned you. And now here she is.
I am always available But perhaps you should find another Dr. for your mother.

Yes, that's obvious.

and that was it, he quit there in the emergency room.

I am telling you all this to tell you what it is like to care for a sick person in America today.

Because as terrible, as difficult as this is, it is made ludicrous when capped with Bush's policy toward health care for the elderly. I kept looking at these people, these health care
professionals, who always seemed to have some secret thought on the back burner.
You know, it was her health care. Her coverage. Wealth would provide immediate back up
under any circumstance But if you have insurance, we have to evaluate where you can go
for your care. That takes time. And who it will be, and how long you can use our hospital.

Bush cut the funding for after stroke rehabilitation. My mother is instilled to about 1500, period. That is speech therapy, occupational therapy, rehab of all kinds. Nurse, and equipment she might need to get around - a walker, a piece of metal in the shower to grab onto when you are trying not to fall.

You know, my mother is 79. She worked her entire life. She never collected well fare, never, for one day, rode on the back on anyone else.

Here in office is a man who has never worked, and never not rode on the back of someone else. He has no idea the implications, the indications of his decisions. He has no
connection to the results, to the meaning of the words that he makes into law.

I cannot help but feel angry as we try to squeeze a few dollars here and there out of the system, with the help of the very nice people, good people, nurses and home care people,
They see this every day of their lives.

But this new attitude of irreparability this administration brings to our country is what i worry most about. They have these marching boots on, and they trample our beautiful garden, our Constitution our history, our liberal history of great leaps against racism, against
Ism, against the call to Hate it if it isn't like You. We have fought this good fight for so many years, and these men in their boots come in and try to erase that history. They make our lives so pale, so colorless that we forget how colored we are. We forget there are stars.

Let me remind you that there are stars, galaxies, rivers, and a great powerful earth that will squash little GW like a bug before long. He thumbs his nose at the great mother earth.

He steals from the poor to feed the rich, he reminds us of the depths we are capable of,
he cuts back Medicare for mothers who have had strokes, who cannot speak anymore,
and whose only hope is a little bit of therapy for a long, long time.

You don't know until it's personal what these things mean, these bills, these words
MediCare - care, head - start. all of these names we think little of.

But a generation of children will have no head start, and another generation of adults will
have no second chance, either.