My Unexplained Freefall into Virtual Nonexistence

Google, it seems, has stolen my identity. Well, that’s a bit harsh – they didn’t exactly steal it. That implies something nefarious. But they did, in effect, take it from me. Or, more precisely, they’ve denied it to me. They refuse to accept that I am who I say I am. In fact, the message reads: “We have determined that your name does not comply with the Google + names policy.” 

It all began – this descent into obscurity - with an email from my brother inviting me to join Google Circles, which is a social networking site managed by Google +, an extension of Google. Now, I’ve had an account with Google for some time, under my given name, which is Bonnie Council. And while I realize that Bonnie Council is not exactly glamorous or catchy or even memorable, it is still my name. The only name I’ve ever used, except for during two failed marriages, after the second of which I happily re-claimed it, vowing to never again relinquish that one tenuous hold to my solitary identity. 

But Google + doesn’t think it is my real name. The question remains, and for some reason remains unanswered, in spite of numerous – well, three, anyway – requests to the folks at the Google + feedback site, which is, what in heaven’s name is it about my name that makes it noncompliant with their so-called “names policy?”

Here’s the thing. They tell you on the site that you can use nicknames, of which I have none, and that you can change your name up to three times in two years. They also say you can’t use a company name or even a group name, like for example Jones Family. However, if your legal name is Charles Jones, Jr. but you normally go by Chuck Jones, or even Junior Jones, then you can use that name. So with that sort of flexibility, it would seem they would be at least a little forgiving of the fact that even though my name  sounds sort of official, it is still my real name. They want the name your friends, family and co-workers know you by. That, for me, is Bonnie Council.

The really strange part of this whole time consuming imbroglio is that they even have an appeals process whereby, if they’ve determined that your name doesn’t comply with their policy and you disagree with that decision, you can send more information, like for example a web address or even copies of legal documentation, such as a driver’s license, to assure them you are who you say you are. So, dutifully I sent them my web address (http://www.onlyme-bonniesblog.blogspot.com/) after which I was shocked to receive my second rejection. After another few days of metaphorically crying in my beer I then not too eagerly gave in and sent them a copy of my drivers’ license. Followed by an unceremonious third rejection.

Fine, I figured. Who needs them? 

Turns out, I do. After explaining the whole perplexing saga to my brother and then politely telling Google to kiss my keister, I promptly forgot all about it. Until I attempted to access a new feature on Picasa, the photo editing site I’ve used exclusively for the past several months. Seems Picasa is a feature of Google + and because Google + thinks I do not exist, Picasa, by default, does the same. Basically I’ve been barred from the sandbox. 

I feel as if they’ve decided that I’m not a nice person, the equivalent of a playground pervert, something “other.” Someone undeserving of even a reasonable explanation of why they don’t believe I am who I say I am, and why my name does not comply with their names policy. In spite of the fact that my brother, with the same last name, was accepted without issue.

Now it’s become more than just annoying. It’s actually a little humiliating, this “rejection,” and the fact that there is no one I can even communicate with about it. So I’ve decided to go public.  My hope being that perhaps some reasonable soul at Google will actually see this post. And then maybe someone will finally decide I’m real after all. 

Because I am. I really, really am.

Excuse Me Ann, But Where's The Beef?

From the very get-go, the idea that a wife has to get up on a podium and talk about what a loving man her husband of forty-something years is in order to “humanize” him was, to me, just creepy. Doesn’t it seem a teeny bit Stepford wife-ish? 

In the first place, the speech – well, did she write it, or did Mitt’s speech writer? I’m going for the latter. But in the second place – what did she tell us? Really. What did she say that was new, or relevant, or that would make a single solitary one of us who might not already have our minds made up suddenly decide, well, gee whiz, Mr. Romney is such a nice man, and Mrs. Romney speaks so earnestly about all of the rest of us mothers, wives, daughters and sisters whom she so totally identifies with (really?) that I guess I’ll just vote for him to be president of the country. 

Her job, or her speech’s job, as I understand it, in addition to humanizing her husband, was to make him appeal to women voters. Call me a cynic, but it’s kind of like the wife of the car dealer coming up to me after I’ve walked away from his spiel to tell me what a great guy he is and that’s why I should buy the car from him. I mean, really – what’s wrong with this picture? Since when do women need another woman to sell her husband to them?  Women are intuitive by nature. We listen to our instincts. So believe me when I say, I did not need Ann Romney to tell me all the reasons I should or should not like her husband.

In spite of the fact that the Republicans seem to think the women of this country don’t have the ability to make up their own minds, my thinking is, if we aren’t already in love with Mr. Romney, there’s probably a good reason.  A few of them, in fact.

And I have to tell you, I don’t need to listen to too many pablum-flavored speeches like the one Ann Romney made to recognize when issues that matter to me are not being addressed. And she said not a single word about issues that matter to me. She didn’t mention health care and her husband’s promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act. She didn’t mention women’s reproductive rights.  Not one word was said about Romney’s plan to defund Planned Parenthood, or about his stance on abortion (or, even more frightening, Paul Ryan’s stance). She never mentioned his plans to slash such programs as Head Start and Pell Grants. She didn’t apologize for her husband’s egregious and false assertion that the Obama administration removed the work requirement for Welfare. And she didn’t address the still unanswered questions of whether or not he supports equal pay for women. 

So, I’m still waiting, Ann. Give me a reason, just one good reason, why I should want your husband to be president of this country. Because I haven’t heard it yet.

The Only Speech I Want to Hear Ann Romney Make

Ann Romney is scheduled to speak Tuesday at the Republican National Convention. Based on interviews over the past few days, it’s pretty clear her goal is to get people to see her husband as a real human being, loving, caring and down to earth, someone we might like to invite into our own living rooms. She has gone into some detail recently of the devastating changes in her life when she was diagnosed a few years ago with Multiple Sclerosis, even to the point of revealing how Mitt would crawl into bed with her when she was at her lowest and sickest point to boost her morale and keep her spirits up. We’re supposed to see him as a nice guy. And I suppose, in the realm of loving husband and father, he is a nice guy.

But what I want to hear Ann tell me in her speech is how she thinks it might have felt to get that same diagnosis, to face the same questions, fears and uncertainties she faced, to conquer the depression that eventually overcame her, to undergo the costly treatments that ultimately turned the illness around for her, without either money or insurance. I want to hear how well she might have handled her illness with the odds already against her. 

And then I want her to tell me how the Republican Party expects people, normal middle income people, to go through what she went through without the Affordable Care Act, which is the only thing to come down the pike in years that actually helps the middle class. Because Romney insists that if he is elected, repealing it will be the first thing on his agenda. Which is the single most important reason every non-millionaire American should not vote for him.

I don’t need to list statistics here to show how devastating a long-term chronic and/or potentially life threatening illness can be to a family’s financial security and stability. We’ve all heard the stories, the nightmares. And as many of us have already experienced, the Affordable Care Act, if nothing else, at least provides the security of knowing that in the face of a serious illness the one thing we won’t have to worry about is that our insurance company might drop us, or refuse to pay for certain aspects of our care, or raise our rates to a point where we can no longer afford the coverage. I want Ann Romney to tell us all what she would have done if she had had to face issues such as these as she struggled with her new diagnosis. Of course she won’t have an answer, because of course she has never had those kinds of concerns.

In the first place, though I have no way of knowing it, my guess is that she doesn’t even carry insurance – why should she since she is already a multimillionaire who can surely afford any treatment she may need? But even if she does have insurance, no doubt the best money can buy, I doubt she has even the least worry about whether or not her rates will go up, or even if the insurance company might drop her outright, which of course they would never do, because she is, after all, Ann Romney. I’d love, however, to be a fly on the wall as she tries to imagine herself in such a situation. A situation that does occur, however, countless times every single day to good, hard-working people throughout this country.

So tell me, Mrs. Romney, please, just how do you expect people will handle a diagnosis like yours, and all its related problems, issues, concerns and fears, after your husband repeals the Affordable Care Act? You can talk until you’re blue in the face about what a good man he is, how concerned and caring he was when you were diagnosed and in the throes of your illness – but how does that make him any different from any other husband, father, or son facing a loved one with a devastating illness? What I want to see is evidence that he cares about ME, as an individual, enough to leave things as they are with  the Affordable Care Act and my insurance. Because I need my insurance. And I need my rates to not go up or my coverage to be dropped just because I get sick.

Mrs. Romney, just how DO you expect people to handle a diagnosis like yours after your husband repeals the Affordable Care Act?

My Strawberry Lament

I love strawberries. So you’d think this time of year I’d be in strawberry heaven. That, however, is not the case. Because this year, more so than in any previous year, I simply cannot find strawberries that I feel good about eating. That is, normal sized strawberries. Not anywhere. Well, to be honest, I haven’t gone to a certain popular yet expensive natural foods market, but that’s because I know I won’t be able to afford what I find there. But I do hope that they, at least, have not stooped to selling those repulsive, genetically altered and hyper-horticulturalized monsters everyone else sells. I think I invented that word, by the way – hyper-horticulturalized. I tried Googling it just to see, and up until now anyway, it doesn’t seem to exist. So I’m putting it out there. Because unfortunately the practice of hyper-horticulturalization is growing, no pun intended.

 

We can all probably agree that eating healthily on a tight budget seems to get more challenging each day. Especially when our food markets offer sales on things that are not actually good for us. For the past few weeks my local market has had strawberries at buy one package, get one free. Which is tempting, to say the least. Until I look at them. Then all I can think about is the laboratory experiments, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides it took to make them grow so unnaturally huge. And I walk away empty handed.

When I was a child, my grandparents had a strawberry patch on their small New Jersey farm. Nana made strawberry shortcake beyond compare. With exquisite anticipation I trudged into the garden rows with her on cool summer mornings, stooping low to search beneath the dew-covered leaves for the ruby-red berries. Back then I could easily cup my hands around several at once. Of those I find in the grocery store these days my adult palm can hold maybe two. This is not right. Nor are those anemic white interiors they all seem to have now, or the absence of flavor and juice, or those humongous seeds. Strawberries are not supposed to crunch!

I do miss strawberries. Real, unadulterated strawberries.  Nothing evolved from a test tube tastes that good.  Kids growing up today have no idea what they’re missing. That’s sad. And probably perilous. 

Am I the only one who’s suspicious of these things? Are we all so naïve as to think food that’s been genetically altered and over-fertilized  in order to make it grow bigger, fatter, and faster is not going to have some kind of effect on us as well? What about all these kids leaping into puberty years earlier than normal? What about the soaring obesity problem? I’m thinking we should revolt. Just stop buying them, stage a strawberry boycott like the grape boycotts denouncing pesticides back in the 80s. I’m already having my own personal version of one, going several weeks now without one of my most favorite things.

Why should I drive 20 miles on $4.50 a gallon gasoline to pay $6 or more for a pint of strawberries just so I can be assured they haven’t been genetically altered and treated with heaven only knows what? My local market should have them, and they should cost the same as those mutations they now sell. Or less, because it must be cheaper to grow things that haven’t been scientifically modified and loaded with additives, right? 

I admit I don’t know a lot about this stuff, because I’m not a farmer. Or a scientist either. Perhaps I’m all wrong – maybe the strawberries are growing this enormous all by themselves, but somehow I don’t think so.  Just imagining the kinds of things that are being done to our food gives me the creeps.  

With all the important issues going on in the world, I feel a little guilty obsessing over strawberries. Perhaps I’m a little too absorbed in this. But, I don’t know, giant fruit could be auguring a future we’re none too happy with. Maybe we should all be worrying. What’s going to be next? Grapes the size of ping-pong balls? Oh, right, they're already out there, too.