Anitra's Other Baby

Besides the Union garden, Anitra "With the Lettuce in Her Hair" Freeman also maintains the decorative plants in the entrance-way to the thrift store next-door to the Union. They're pretty. Click on the image to see them in more detail. This image has not been Photoshopped, except to reduce its size.

Anitra's Baby

A view of Union Hotel Garden, worked mostly by Anitra, from above:

Here's another shot of it from the side. Click on it for a bigger version. Kale, sugar pod peas, nasturtiums. We've been eating the nasturtiums, they're yummy. The garden is 70 square feet, roughly in the form of a right triangle, about 10 feet and 14 on its sides.

Alley of the Week

I don't know how long I'll keep at it, but for now until I stop, I'm going to post an Alley of the Week.

There are a lot of great Seattle alleys. The one behind my building is exceptional. It's raised, it's gated, and the art galleries (Kucera and Foster/White) put sculptures out on it. From S Main to S Washington, between 3rd Ave S and 4th Ave S. The back of the Union Hotel faces it at its north end. You can see the Tashiro Kaplan Artist's Building beyond.

The Union Breaks Father's Day Promise

The Union Hotel, the subsidized apartment building I live in, is managed by people who can't figure out how to treat their tenants with respect.

The latest insult happened today. We were told days ago that there would be a Father's Day Brunch at noon in the community room today. There were notices placed in the halls to that effect, and at the front desk.

The notices said that there would be no 7 AM breakfast today.

As I have said before, I don't want their breakfasts anyway, so I have insisted on not being woken up at 7 in the morning with reminders of the breakfast on the intercom. So as a result of my complaints, lists of tenants who wanted breakfasts were created, and only the people on the lists were called for them.

There's no reason for the intercom reminders anyway if the management could just make the meals happen at the scheduled time.

Today, Anitra and I went down to the community room to join the Father's Day Brunch at its scheduled time, 12 noon.

We saw nothing happening and asked the desk person what was up.

What was up was that the meal had already happened at 10:45 AM. She had gotten a call from management just this morning telling her to notify everybody on the breakfast call list of the change of times.

Just because some bonehead imagined that the brunch would happen in lieu of the breakfast, they told her to handle it as she would have handled the regular Sunday morning breakfast, even though it was an entirely different event. A noon Father's Day brunch is not a breakfast.

First, they broke the promise about when it would happen. Then they violated their own protocols, which called for announcements of onetime events between 8 AM and 10 PM.

I've told the story about how the intercom protocols came about in my column for Real Change. I titled it for Adventures in Bloggery as Be Silent, Consume, Die. All I wanted was not to be called on the intercom at times when I would want to be sleeping. I agreed to allow that they would call me during the day for special events like this. THEY insisted on that. So I have taken them at their word on it, and come to expect it.

Their word means crap.

They can't ever put themselves in our shoes. They have less respect for the people who live here then they have for ugliest fish in the lobby aquarium.

This comes right on the heels of similar broken promises involving a nutritional class (PTSD, posted just June 5).

It compounds the anger I expressed in Rage And Counter-Rage, just last May.

The inability of these people to figure out what they need to do to keep my experience here from amounting to one insult after another did not begin with the current manager. See Social Services Gripe for a complaint about the last one.

But the current management can't seem to get anything right.

PS: Only a fraction of the residents are on the call list (I'm blanking on the number -- I remember it as being 7 out of 52 -- but I know its fewer than a third.) So in excess of 30 residents were misled about the time the meal would happen, and Anitra and I weren't the only ones in the lobby at noon finding out we were screwed.

PTSD

It's been about 23 years since being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since then I have learned a lot about it. I'm no expert on how it effects everybody, but I know how it effects me very well, and I am an expert on managing my own case.

Various components of the disorder, or syndrome, that I have lately needed to take into account: panic attacks, delayed stress problems, depression due to grief, and chronic functional problems.

Panic attacks are managed by education. You learn what they are, and then you can go through them with less fear. The less afraid you are when a panic attack starts the less severe it will be.

Delayed stress problems include but aren't limited to flashbacks. I deal with them by not burying my memories. People who advise "put the past behind you" give crappy advice. You have to explore the past and face it to free yourself from it. I can avoid some situations that trigger flashbacks, but need to keep such avoidance to a minimum, recognizing the collateral costs.

Depression due to grief is not talked about much but it's a major issue for people like me who experienced long term repeated trauma. There is an awareness of loss that can't be ignored. It's mostly a sense of lost feeling. For so many years I didn't dare feel what was around me, because I was over-sensitized. It left much of my life flat, colorless, and tasteless to me. This takes grief management.

The chronic functional problems are something else. Long-term repeated trauma causes neurological and chemical changes that are not completely understood (Wikipedia has a summary here), but cause definite behavioral changes that have to be taken into account.

Typical are disturbances in fear reactions. The public stereotype of a PTSD sufferer is of someone who is too fearful. But the disorder often goes the other way. Many times I have not had a fear reaction that I should have, and put myself or others in danger. This is why I haven't driven a car since 1987.

Another problem I have that I suspect is a chronic functional disorder, is harder to describe. It's a kind of brittleness. I need to ease into things. I can't be blind-sided. To see how it works I have to give examples.

Last year a friend of Anitra and I showed up at the Real Change office on a Saturday when I was working the desk, just minutes before closing time, and invited us to join her as her guest that night at a special community meal in her building. I had planned to go home after closing and cook a dinner. The plan was detailed. I knew what I was going to cook. But Anitra wanted to go to the community meal and I agreed.

I know from experience that if I had one or two days to prepare myself for the community meal I could have gone through with it. Or, I could have gone through with it if the meal event was less stressful than it turned out. But what happened was, we got to her building and found ourselves waiting in line for entrance into the dining area, and Anitra left me to go look for our friend. It was crowded, the other people in line were loud incessant talkers, and I had a severe panic attack on the spot. When Anitra came back I begged off, ran home and collapsed in bed in tears, hating myself for being a freak.

I simply shouldn't have agreed to the sudden change of plans. I knew better, but I thought I could get away with it just this once, and went along to avoid being a pain.

Yesterday there was another incident here at my building, the Union. Over a month ago I had signed up for a nutritional class. According to the sign-up sheet it was scheduled yesterday, a Wednesday, at 2 PM. It happens that's also the day of the week we have a community dinner at the Union, at 5 PM, but in the past when we've had nutritional classes there was food at the end of the class, so I didn't think I would mind missing the dinner. That was just what I planned to do; I would use the meal-time to do my usual afternoon errands, including my stop at the office to feed the cat.

A couple of weeks ago the plan was solidified when a sign reminding us all of the class was posted, and it specifically promised pizza. The staff added that it would not be just any pizza, it would be pizza we ourselves made during the class. Now there wasn't any doubt that I would get something to eat at the class, and wouldn't mind missing the dinner.

This is the Union, though. It's run by the Downtown Emergency Service Center. So yesterday morning I went to the front desk to make sure everything was going as planned.

I was told that the times hadn't changed. The class would be at 2 PM. the dinner would be at 5 PM. Then I noticed a sign for the dinner saying that pizza would be served. I said, "That's odd. Why would you have pizza for dinner, knowing that the people who attended the class would have already had pizza?"

The answer was, "Oh, the people who go to the class will make the pizza that's served at the dinner. There won't be pizza at the class itself, you'll get it at 5 PM."

Well, screw me and my stupid plans.

In the weeks leading up to the class I had come to look forward to it. I didn't so much care about what I might learn about nutrition, I was looking forward to the shared communal experience. Now I found out that the complete experience, including the shared eating, would drag out over 3 and a half hours, and I had other things I had planned to do during that time.

Here's where the PTSD kicks in: I had prepared for the whole thing, the making of the pizza and the eating of it. In my brittleness, I couldn't deal with dividing the experience in half. I couldn't go to the class and enjoy making the pizza, knowing that I was being screwed out of partaking in it, if I wouldn't be at the dinner. I couldn't go to the dinner and enjoy the pizza, knowing that I was screwed out of the joy of helping make it, if I hadn't been to the class. I couldn't do both the class and the dinner and enjoy them, knowing the whole time that I was abandoning my usual afternoon routine, and knowing that I had been misled for two weeks about the class.

So I decided to bag both of them. Right after making that decision, Adam, our Editorial Manager, asked if I could come in to see some public disclosure documents he got hold of. I promised to arrive by 4 PM.

As I was leaving the Union around 3 to do errands on the way to that 4 PM meeting, I expected to see the class either in progress or wrapping up. It wasn't. I found out that the class hadn't happened yet. It was going to happen at 4 PM.

If I had known that the class was going to be at 4 PM I could have done my afternoon routine early and got back in time for both the class and the dinner.

I was livid. Twice in one day, I found out in two different ways that I had been misled. I pointed this out to our building manager. I told him I signed up for this event a month ago and the Union and the class provider had a month to get me the right information, and the best they can do is tell me one hour before it's going to happen?

I was more livid by his reaction. "You can still go to the class," he said.

"No, I can't. I keep my promises. I have an appointment at 4."

"Oh well."

That was it. "Oh well." No apology for jerking me around feeding me BS for a month. No apology for taking my time for granted, and assuming that I have no life but the life that is patronizingly doled out to me by him and DESC through their events.

And I'm sure neither the building manager nor DESC will ever acknowledge that they are clueless about the special needs of their residents with PTSD.

The following closing rant is therefore directed to DESC:

Hello. Get this straight. I don't have borderline personality disorder. I make friends well. I'm not psychotic. I have excellent reality judgment. I'm not even especially neurotic.

I have PTSD. Look it up. It means I've been abused too much. You don't accommodate it by "drawing me out" into the community. I'm past that stage. I can find community myself, assholes. That's not my problem. Stop confusing me with the other mental patients who live here. It's your job to know the differences.

You accommodate the disorder by just not heaping more abuse on me. Don't feed me bullshit, apologize to me if and when you do, and keep the noise down in the next room, and I'll be just fine.

Rage And Counter-Rage

Yesterday we had a community meeting at the Union Hotel, the subsidized apartment building where I live. The meeting was facilitated by the building manager and the social director. Anitra and I and one other tenant brought up an ongoing complaint, and about half the meeting consisted of the five of us discussing the complaint while others present just listened in. The complaint was this: when any one tenant in the building repeatedly disturbs the peace of his neighbors (we couldn't name names, and we were talking about more than one loud disruptive tenant) the management doesn't do anything to relieve the disturbed.

To clarify that, lets say Jack lives in 101 and Jill lives in 102 (there are actually no apartments 101 or 102 in my building.) Say Jack screams and rages and stomps his floor, 24-7. Say Jill is a child abuse survivor (like me) who has PTSD and not only can't sleep through Jack's rages but also has flashbacks because of them. Say Jill complains every single day about Jack's behavior.

The result of all those complaints will be no relief for JIll. None whatsoever.

After enough complaints, under some circumstances, the management will approach Jack and try to help HIM with the difficulties HE is having managing his behavior.

But no relief for Jill.

Jack has to be accommodated, of course, because his disruptive behavior is due to mental illness. That's why any intervention with Jack is presented as "helping" Jack deal with HIS problems. I understand that.

What I don't understand is how the needs of Jill get tossed aside and she never, ever, gets relief, even though her needs are also the needs of a person presenting mental health problems.

One of the things I said during the meeting was that it really galls me that, all the time that the building manager and social director talked about what they could try to do in these situations, each and every time the word "help" was used it was in the context of helping the Jacks. Never would they speak of "what can we do to help the Jills?"

A point I didn't raise at the meeting, but a sore point for me, and one they're going to hear about sooner than later, is that these people aren't even mental health professionals.

Ironically, we were told earlier in the meeting about nurses who have begun visiting the building that could provide some medical assistance to tenants. It occurs to me that the building management wouldn't dream of trying to act as medical nurses to anyone in the building presenting a significant physical complaint. But upon their own assessment of a serious mental health problem of a tenant they will presume to act as if they were psychiatric nurses.

So, we have a situation in the building where one of the Jacks is a paranoid schizophrenic who has delusions concerning other tenants persecuting him, and who therefore harangues other tenants in the halls and in the community room and in the lobby. And the management steps in when people complain of being harangued, and they try to "help" this Jack.

But instead of getting better, he gets worse. Could it be that the "help" he's getting is just feeding his disease?

I think so. I think the man's acting-out from paranoid delusions serves the purpose of calling attention to himself. The "help" is the attention he gets. They're just encouraging him by demonstrating over and over again that if he acts out he'll get rewarded with exactly what he wants, to be the center of attention at all times. They also reinforce his belief in his delusions, because he knows that the management is intervening with him in response to the other tenants complaints.

The Jacks need a place to live too, and I wouldn't propose evicting them. But the methods now being used to address these kind of problems are totally unacceptable. DESC has to find a way to address the needs of people who have PTSD who have been placed next door to disruptive people.

They're the ones who are suffering the most. For all we know the paranoid schizophrenic is as happy and blissful as he's ever been in his life with all the attention he's getting, but the people who live next door to him are undoubtedly not happy from having their lives destroyed by constantly being subjected to screaming harangues, and they are grievously unhappy to realize that the DESC management can't even bring themselves to talk about helping them.

Which makes them (us, I'm one of them) feel like were just part of the fixtures around here. We aren't even shown the compassion that animals would be given under the same circumstances.

Social Services Gripe

I live at the Union Hotel, which is not really a hotel, but a subsidized apartment building. I've been posting columns here for the Union Hotel newsletter, but even though this post will be partly about the Union, it won't be in the newsletter, because I'm not in the mood to be nice.

I'm really getting tired of the way these places are run. The management here has told me they want me to participate in the social activities. When they say "the" social activities, they mean by that the ones they arrange. So if I choose to have friends in the building and to enjoy their company, that doesn't constitute participating in "the" social activities. To do that I have to participate in activities initiated by and run by the management.

I get out. I'm involved in Real Change. I take part in political activities of my own choosing. But I've been told that this building has an active social program, which they want the residents to take part in, and, sadly, I don't take part in it as much as is expected of me. I was told they're wasting their program on me.

I've been told by some in the management that maybe I'm in the wrong building. I should be relocated to a building that's more appropriate to my needs. (Not that that's possible. The system doesn't allow for those kind of adjustments.)

They're the ones in the wrong building. In fact, they're in the wrong line of business. Nobody in ANY subsidized apartment building that gets any kind of public funding has any right imposing their narrow ideas of what constitutes socialization on me or anybody else.

These people can't get it straight. Their power over me is too great for them to insert themselves into my social affairs. People who have the power to evict you should not try to pretend to be den mothers.

When I moved in here I was told the social activities would be opportunities I could decline. I chose to apply here for one paramount social reason. The woman I would be married to if I could already lived here. She couldn't be relocated, so I located in her building.

The Union doesn't have have any business interfering with that kind of socialization.

Social workers can't be social engineers. They aren't really experts on human relationships. These people need a shot of humility.

The issue is bigger than the Union. This sort of arrogance is rampant throughout all social service agencies. If I moved to another building, I'd still find it.

Anitra: Dances With Redness

Subtitle this one Adventures in Flash.

A couple more scenes from the Union Hotel's Valentine's Day Dance Party. Becky from the Downtown Emergency Service Center was there taking promotional pictures. Since she got my picture, I figured I could retaliate. Then Anitra dances for the camera while a rectangular redness hovers around her, covering up a guy who strayed into the shot by accident.