Karla Noyes' Captain's Log Series

At the end of my second full-day at my desk I was given two reprimand letters from my supervisor. That must be some kind of record. The first was for wearing one of my hand-spun, hand-knit, keyhole scarves in the office because I was cold; apparently a patient had strangled someone and now there’s a facility-wide ban on wearing anything around your neck (so much for my collection of beautiful scarves.) The other letter was because I was away from my desk without permission. I was at the benefits office choosing my health insurance plan. While I had permission for a 1 o’clock meeting, I spaced that out and remembered it at 4, but no permission. Sheesh! This was one of those personal growth experiences. My first impulse was to say, ‘Hey, how about a verbal warning first?’ As in ‘this isn’t fair.’ The second impulse was to just let it go, know that she’s strict about the rules, and vow to keep my distance from her. There isn’t going to be any relationship other than me doing my job, pla...

After 14 months, 69 applications and 16 interviews I finally landed a job. I told that to a woman in my orientation class, she said it took her 4 years! In both cases we’re lucky. I work in the Trust office tracking the Medicare, Social Security and Veteran’s benefits of the patients at the Napa State Hospital http://www.dsh.ca.gov/Napa/default.aspx . This place houses people with varying degrees of mental illness and criminality, although the ones who are civilly committed are there because they pose a threat to themselves or others. A good portion are there because they have been found to be incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity. There are 1,250 patients, 40 or 50 are really dangerous, (3%). I’m told that most of them have schizophrenia and an assortment of other maladies, bipolar, depression, etc. Some of them go to great lengths to kill themselves which has caused the staff to remove all of the possible physical opportunities; the State can’t have people ...

When I was 7, in 1960, I remember bemoaning my only career options were secretary, like my mom, nurse, or teacher. Later I learned that other girls had nun as a possibility. Life didn’t seem worth living if that’s what the future held. It was an era of pointy-boob bras, you had to stuff toilet paper in the ends to fill them out because breasts aren’t shaped like that. It was an era of girdles and nylons – that always got runs even though they knew how to make them so they wouldn’t. An era of dirty jokes and cat-calling, which were obviously aggressive and implied some sort of violence, so I wore clothes that hid my gender, generally floppy tops. At my wedding reception my father derisively said, I bet she’s pregnant. I wasn’t. As a kid I didn’t want any part of The Feminine  so played in the mud, climbed trees - falling out and breaking my arms, twice - and ran barefoot in the grass. At Christmas I got a doll, what am I supposed to do with this? At 7 I swore I would never, ever, ...