To Emily, For Everything Unwritten

Oh my beautiful friend, a treasured member of the family of my heart, some might wonder what more I could possibly add to the notes I’ve already written you here. Yet you and I both know there is always so much more behind every post and every memory I’ve shared. As you prepare to finally move on after so many years of working with Tony in some capacity on our therapy team, you already know I will forever be grateful that we met all those years ago when you were interning under our little man’s first music therapist.

My debt is not just for what you have done for him. For standing by our family in a dark time, for coming back to work some of Tony’s hab hours this past year while you were committed to and working other jobs, for patiently hearing the pain in my heart, for helping to patch those wounded pieces back together again, for caring about what happened to me when I needed it most, and for everything unwritten- thank you.

To Nancy

My friend, it made my day when you asked to use some of my makeup pictures as the inspiration for the makeup look for one of the characters in the Christmas play you are directing. Thank you so much…I know as much as you love quality costuming in theater, that was a huge compliment!

A Brief Note:

My fabulous sisters-in-law will already know this, but sometime in the next month, I’m going to be getting an Instagram account. I really haven’t decided at this point whether or not I will link it up to the blog or not, but it is a possibility that I will just be sending out a private notification to current friends and family members. Much of the content is going revolve around my makeup, a few tips every now and then about how I am doing something and why, whatever crafts I’m working on (and currently it’s a hand sewn quilt using some of my worn out leggings), and general life moments. There are a few things everyone should be aware of when it comes to how I’m planning on running my Instagram:

1) I am not a “cool” and hip person in real life, and I’m not even going to try to be on Insta.

Exhibit A: My real life hair and clothes…trends just aren’t my thing, I like what I like.

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2) While I will give you my thoughts on the brands I’m using, nobody should expect me to be trying to keep up with purchasing all of the latest releases, because that isn’t a treadmill I want to be on. I like to buy most of my makeup when it goes on sale, and Black Friday has some of the best makeup sales of the year. So, I’m not always going to be speaking to or about the latest releases. As colorful as some of my makeup looks are, that’s really how I go around the community every single day unless I am sick. I also will not be using filters, photo shop, or tagging the brands themselves. My goal is to give family and friends a window into what I’m doing, not make the brands look good…not even the ones I love. And, I think the filtering doesn’t help anyone’s mental health.

3) Some of the brands I love working with are controversial (i.e. Jeffree Star Cosmetics). I will not be keeping that off-line. I don’t believe in cancel culture…for me, it’s about the quality of the makeup and not the person or the drama behind it. If I choose to stop shopping somewhere, it’s because they’ve made a serious breach with me personally as a customer (and Jeffree’s team never has). This is something anybody should be aware of upfront in case it is incredibly important to them not to hear about brands they personally don’t find palatable.

Exhibit B: My real life makeup looks.

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Some Reading To Consider:

Twilight Man: Love And Ruin In The Shadows Of Hollywood And The Clark Empire, by Liz Brown.

When this book was released this past May, one news outlet after another was highlighting through coverage of the ongoing nightmare of Britney Spears a dark and horrible truth: that sometimes, conservatorships and guardianships can be abused and unnecessary. And this book brings to life yet another real life example in the tragic circumstances of Harrison Post, who died in 1946 after an unsuccessful battle to gain back the money that had been swindled from him by his own sister when he was placed under such an arrangement.

There is little actual documentation about much of what happened, and what little there is could easily comprise a book a tenth the size of what Brown has delivered. But she has chosen to include a more sprawling history to set the stage of events, making this also in some ways a historical account in regards to both W.A. Clark, an insanely wealth copper magnate, and his son, Will (who was the source of Harrison’s wealth). Owing to the laws and mores of the time, Will was a very closeted gay man…and Harrison, who was listed for many years as being his secretary, was instead his paramour.

Perhaps if laws had been different they might have solemnized their relationship with the legitimacy of marriage, but that was not the time they lived in. The author gives certain details to support the significance of the relationship, such as Harrison’s face being used and immortalized 13 times as the visage of men depicted in a ceiling painting commissioned by Will Clark and that a trust fund with significant money was established for him. In 1934 (near the time of Will Clark’s death) Harrison suffered a stroke, and his opportunistic sister seized upon this temporary infirmity to have him declared incompetent, crack his trust fund, sell his properties, and flee with her appropriately named husband (Mr. Crooks) to Mexico.

Guardianships are sometimes necessary. Every parent of an individual with significant disabilities knows this. But the use of them can never be taken lightly. Sometimes they are used by predatory people to take advantage of a temporary condition to line their own coffers, and this book is a cautionary tale about one of the attendant dangers of wealth and fame. With disabilities, sometimes these arrangements can be overused to inappropriately deprive a person of freedoms within a community for things they are able to do themselves. I think we can see in Ms. Spears case regarding individuals with wealth that perhaps the best solution to this might be to assign an oversight committee made entirely of volunteers of that individual’s fan base or local community members who don’t have any ability to profit from the arrangement, but have some sort of appreciation for the person as an artist, philanthropist, etc. When it comes to disabilities, a panel of disabilities advocates might be best. Regardless, I think this book is an important read because it places another spotlight on the need to improve the oversight of these legal arrangements so that the people placed in them are protected from abuse and predation.