Really? An Apology? in Everyday Ramblings

Not to dwell on the past, but remember my job? The one I was basically forced out of while my tall young inexperienced blond male cohort got promoted above me with a larger salary. Yeah, that one.

Yesterday the attorneys they hired after I left (in such a dramatic fashion when I came unnervingly close to having a fatal heart attack from the stress) completed the report that included Eric Holder the former AG of the U.S. and cost 6.5 million dollars…

For all of that, all those horrible meetings with men, all men, about my concerns, my blatantly obvious concerns about age and gender discrimination, my reward is this…

From the President, Danny Jacobs, a Black Physician….

“…Jacobs also acknowledged people who have been wronged by OHSU in the past, saying, “we are sorry for anyone who has experienced inequitable treatment, discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation or retaliation while working or learning at OHSU.”

Sorry. He is sorry.

So am I. At least now for me it is water way under the bridge. Have I mentioned lately how happy I am not to be working there anymore? That is typical though. They had to pay 6.5 million dollars to have somebody with a big name tell them something I was telling them for free.

All that money that they could have saved giving me a settlement could have gone into patient care. Sometimes people do make truly bad decisions. This has all been one after another.

But! I am out of there and even though the institution literally looms over me when I am outside, I could care less. It is cold and wet, and I miss my little garden plot.

The last week of the year that I am taking off from teaching I am going to plan out my crops for next season.

Yesterday I was reading about a symposium Oregon State University had online with tree specialists last week from all over the country to talk about what the intense heat dome we had in June did to our trees. One thing it did was kill off a lot of our young Christmas trees.
There was one tree where a scientist took the temperature of the trunk, and it was 122 degrees. There is no previous record of it ever being that hot here for that long.

While we were all worried about the damage from the ice storm in February, it turns out that it was the heat that had the bigger impact on the most trees here. I shudder to think of the economic impact.

It might be time for another Christmas movie.

Oh, and there is “West Side Story”. That movie, that I went to see with my big sister Kes, was hugely influential in my life. I know the score so well. I had already been to a few live “Young People’s Concerts” in L.A. with Leonard Bernstein and I thought he was the cat’s pajamas. I had serious ambitions to grow up to be a Jet.

It wasn’t the cool gang vibe; it was the dancing. I wanted to dance the dance the male Jets were dancing! Those leaps. Man was I disappointed to find in my dance classes that girls didn’t do those leaps. Scarred for life, I’d say.

Well, they do now. But they didn’t then. And sadly, all the boys I knew as a teenager did not dance…

Are you catching a theme here?

Yep, I am blaming my feminism on Jerome Robbins. Feeling it in the body first, before it ever got into my overactive intellect.

The reviews are pretty good. Not sure when I will feel safe enough to go in a theater but knowing the new movie is out there, is a treat to look forward to.

Last updated December 10, 2021