WUTR: Utica/Rome

Me and my best friend had way more than altitude to adjust to, deep in the remote mountains of upstate New York. Before the Internet and cell phones, we had a pay phone on the first floor that we shared with an entire dorm and a television in the common room, also on the first floor. We'd already broken a lot of rules in the dorm and around campus, the least of which was having a hot plate in our room for heating up cans of soup or making box mac and cheese, in direct violation of the dorm's fire code. There were no microwave dinners, no cable TVs, no personal computers, and no anxious "helicopter parents" circling overhead. We were free.

Our relative isolation from the rest of the world created a bubble for young minds to thrive, especially in exploration of the past through our art history and history textbooks. It didn't really matter what day or time it was, because we lived through our studies, anyway. The allure of being out of touch in a cool way has trapped many a hippie perpetually in college towns, like the demon from the movie 'Krampus' captures souls stuck in so many snow globes sitting on its shelf. There was something eerily dead about going to the same bar forever, dating the same tie-dyed wearing sophomore over and over again.

We'd shudder in the frigid evenings over the possibility of a similar fate, which propelled us past incredible odds to our respective educational careers: Karen from urban-based Yonkers, and me from the projects in Queens. Sometimes we wondered like 'The Talking Heads', "....how did we get here?", only to be brutally reminded of our commitment to our ideals by a six-hour bus ride through the frozen tundra of a nearly deserted landscape. In the overheated dorm rooms of our engaged minds, we always left a window open to catch the coldness of the crisp, clear mountain air.

After a night of Old Milwaukee and weak pot, we slunk down to the first floor to watch TV on the sly, with our reputations preceding us. It was late, so we'd escaped the voracious Long Island crowd that were more supported in their daily habits by their similarly enabled parents. Used to the abuse that comes with shared family spaces, we sank into the old, sunken couch with a sigh of relief, in a mostly dark room that was empty of other kids. Finally! We had the TV to ourselves, without the petty power plays or bitchy stand-offs that happened among the factions of hardcore viewers in the dorm with time and madness on their sides. Kids would plot TV "takeovers" in the cafeteria with their dorm-mates by shouting down anyone who objected to their "Must See TV" during coveted time slots.

But, like two weary, single moms at the end of yet another tough day, we just wanted to put up our feet and relax without making a highly charged political statement about how spoiled and compulsive we weren't. We'd had enough of that growing up. So, one late night found us turning the dial on the TV unmolested by cries of outrage, to catch Letterman or maybe a "Honeymooners" rerun. Didn't really matter. New York City channels usually showed black-and-white classics or freaky monster movies for the overnight crowd working the night shift at the precinct or in the ER; great, working-class stuff.

We'd gotten to the right point of mellow before bedtime when catastrophe struck. We'd lost the signal! Some old movie started playing, then cut out to a screen full of static. What the...? We were left to spend the rest of the night in wondering paranoia. Had the Russians attacked? Was it nuclear war? A media blackout based on alien invasion? What? WHAT? WHAT?! What the fuck just happened? We'd adjusted the rabbit ears, unplugged and replugged the set, banged on the side of it until horizontal lines shimmied across the tube; no such luck. Our electronic babysitter was dead. It was humbling to our superior senses of self, as well-adjusted freshmen.

The next morning in the cafeteria, we immediately told our friends the bad news. Someone had to approach the Residence Hall Director with the creepy molester 'stache about buying a new TV ("dude, we should totally draw straws to see who does it"), because the old one had just cut out. Huh? What are you guys talking about? Our friend from Buffalo was a blue collar girl used to working the early morning shift at the local convenient store, so she'd already been up to catch "her programs" at six a.m., and the set was working just fine. What'd you two do?

Nothing! We protested. We did absolutely nothing but turn the thing on and sit down. Must've been a signal drop, because we were watching some old movie and then the fuzz came on. Wait a minute...our friend from Syracuse asked us around what time. Oh, we didn't know. It was late. Letterman had been on, then some war movie started with this big flag flying and the National Anthem playing...no, wait, dude! Probably a baseball movie, hence the music....yeah, that was it. Totally.

Our upstate friends erupted into hysterical shrieks of laughter, crying at the cafeteria table, clutching themselves and each other. Me and Karen just looked at each other. Now what? <shoulder shrugs> We were called "Abbott and Costello" behind our backs by some of the kids, because she's a big girl and I was a beanpole. Sometimes, we were funny without even trying. Okay...mind letting us in on the joke? Finally, good ole Tracey told us the truth, and it was so much weirder than The Cold War or the end of the world. "No, you guys." Hahaahaa! "Lemme tell 'em!" What? WHAT?

"That wasn't a movie. That was the station signing off for the night." Crickets. I looked at my friend again and shook my head. I had nothing. We turned back to them. What do you mean? They, in turn, looked just as baffled. A sign-off! The station "signed off" for the night! What are you talking about?! Finally, Lisa from Rome kicked in, "Guys! GUYS! That means no more TV!" No. More. TV. What is this strange Bizarro universe? "That's it! The TV goes off the air until morning." Holy....what frigid level of hell is this?! We struggled to assimilate a place with no late night take-out, or Ralph Kramden banter with Alice. 

Suddenly, two hip girls from the 'burbs realized how far from home they were, and then our real education began. "Humbled" wasn't exactly the word for how we felt. We were almost completely cut off from the outside world, and we were alone in it. After that, we had a new nickname around campus. 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure' had officially arrived, and it was massive in its scope. Like, totally, dude. And dudettes! It was the start of a whole new era.

Mental Illness: Now Appearing Near You

I've touched on the subjects of sociology and psychology before but not at length, though it's greatly affected me through exposure to individuals not in full possession of their faculties. When I watch the news, it occurs to me that I'm not alone in this experience throughout the world, as behavior that starts in the home and ends in a disastrous collision of the private with the public. Like many people, I struggled with whistle-blowing on sick people versus my safety, resulting in the loss of home, health, and income; choices many of us face at home and at work every single day. I've worked with people so sick, they rocked back-and-forth in their chairs all day while at work, muttering curse words over and over again, or whispering threats at employees without any consequences at all. True: the world is unsafe, life is hard, and I accept that. Nothing new to this working class girl.

A cursory list of the latest headlines speaks to the major health care crisis in our country, as a plague that tells its tale in psychosis and gun violence. The "Virgin Killer" in California, who legally bought three separate handguns, posted sick rants detailing his future crimes on YouTube before he committed them. He manifested such extremely violent tendencies that his aunt called the police to alert them about his obvious status as a walking time bomb (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/california-killings-elliot-rodger-was-described-as-polite-and-courteous-during-welfare-check-by-police-9432530.html), but nothing happened. Unfortunately, someone has to break the law before legal action takes place, and an intelligent criminal knows exactly where the dividing lines are, much better than you and l. That's their big advantage in the world: shock and awe, for the dual purposes of hurt and destruction. Ask anyone who's been harassed, stalked, or threatened, and they'll tell you a similar story, to the ongoing frustration of law enforcement officers and psychiatric health care workers, and that's just the beginning.

There's a recent spate of murders in NYC, again, perpetrated by an individual so unfit for a place in our society, that his parole officer told anyone who would listen in authority that he would murder someone soon, and then he did (http://nypost.com/2014/06/06/parole-officer-warned-cops-brooklyn-ripper-was-dangerous/). Need more examples? No problem. I got that: the school shooting in Oregon (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/justice/oregon-high-school-shooting/), the psychologist with security clearance who calmly let himself onto an army base to commit what he felt was a "revenge" murder (http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/03/us/fort-hood-shooting/), not to mention the massacres in Colorado, now infamous.

What is it? Where does it come from? Just like conversations about global warming and starving children in Africa, the answer is as old as slavery and murder: because it's a part of human nature. But, how did it get this bad? I have a theory that I'm road-testing, which is quickly gaining support. The answer is this: a greater dissolution between public and private in "The Age of Transparency", because there's less room to hide, and for healthy people like myself, that is a very good thing indeed. What was once hidden at home, like a body surreptitiously buried in the backyard at midnight, way out in the country, with no proof of wrongdoing, has now gone public. Ed Gein lived in a place so rural, he could get away with it. Jeffrey Dahmer preyed on homosexual men, a group that traditionally had very little public support or empathy. "Jack the Ripper" likewise preyed on another famously disenfranchised group, the street-walking prostitute, often a societal target for psychotic rage and murderous intent.

Now that today's individual is much more savvy about the early signs of illness (thanks to the widespread access of such information), those of us who grew up in homes of the sick are often forced into the roles of psychiatrist and law enforcer unwillingly, and that is extremely threatening to someone who seeks to hide their paranoid psychosis with violent tendencies. Children and teens who witness this behavior routinely are groomed to accept abuse as acceptable, as they're gradually conditioned to it (along with the rationale for it) through complicity, similar in method to a pedophile or addict. Who are we to give voice to a major worldwide health crisis? We're nobodies, and that's exactly what someone who is desperate to exploit us counts on, though those rules are changing, too. The kids who are artists, thinkers, and makers are no longer the "kooky" black sheep in their respective families, as "The Digital Age" and the "Design Intelligence" movement now lead the world. 

Hmm...who then to disenfranchise, isolate, and victimize? It's become harder to do so, and so the disordered responded by setting up their family members through constant vicious attacks in secret, sabotaging them until they appear to be the opposite of what's true in public, because that's what bad parents do. I saw a story in that vein just yesterday: a girl was raped, then her crazy parents pushed her into the media spotlight to get attention for themselves, and then they forced her to take to "the low road" through deliberately enforced impoverishment to survive, after they cut her off financially. The result? 

A teenage pregnancy and a convict "baby-daddy", gaining plenty of evidence to do her in and discredit her point of view. In order to survive adverse conditions, it's not uncommon among whistle-blowers in the home to be singled out as a primary target for family scapegoating. After all, what can a dependent teenager really do in retaliation? They held all the cards, along with the money and their seemingly suburban perfection, except the facts didn't exactly pan out. Their daughter tested "positive" for drugs while living in their home, and now, safely on her own as a working single mother, she's clean, even with random drug tests, which she volunteered to do: http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/2136.

I saw an episode of "Judge Judy" that was so bad, the bailiff had to warn the defendant by looming over him physically until he was subdued enough to speak somewhat coherently, bringing no defense to the table or excuse for his poor behavior whatsoever, in a brazen show of delusional cockiness that grows worse and worse every day. Another man on the show, in a separate case, lashed out at the judge in a way I'd never seen before. When she pointed out that his crazy behavior was the result of his mental state and medication, he shot back at her (in full view of the public, on t.v.): "You, too! You need medication, too!", and I actually gasped. Another woman was so unmanageable, her entire case was dismissed, because the judge repeatedly told her to be quiet and, red-eyed with rage, she declared defiantly "I will not!". The mentally ill no longer respond to authority figures, public shaming, financial consequences, or the law.

It's become harder for sick people to find targets for their aggression, easy as it is for us to openly view their sick behavior and then testify about it; witness any reality t.v. show nowadays about dating, drinking, and mental illness. They've been forced into the public arena to act out their rage, because our private spaces have become safer from a growing movement of support and education, thanks to the brave people who are willing to speak out, even to their detriment. And therein the problem also lies—because even obvious outward manifestations are not enough to get someone help anymore, like I observed at any one of my office gigs. A sick guy I worked nearby had ranted all day long to himslef at his computer (OCD), within clear earshot of the entire office space, visibly twitching, talking, cursing, and starting from his chair compulsively, something I often see in other public places like subways and libraries. 

Where once a family could exert financial and social pressure upon a disordered person, forcing them to conform, the economy changed to our detriment. Now, the sick have power and money, which is more easily done with a damaged morality (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/donald-sterlings-mental-health-figures-clippers-sale-report-n118176). What do you do when those in power are mentally unfit to serve our best interests? My generation, Generation X, was painted as "slacker" because as a population group, we were blocked from implementing change by those same corrupt Baby Boomers who have/had numbers on their side, but just like in life, our time has finally come. In the process we became leaders, as we waited until a new population could respond to our ways of thinking, like Gen Y and Millennials have shown through their abilities to adapt to technology and respond to change, embracing a world vision that's greener, safer, saner, and healthier, not because it benefits them immediately, but because it's the right thing to do.

The answer is dual-fold, combined with better healthcare laws and stricter gun laws. There's absolutely no good reason that a college student like "The Virgin Killer" should legally possess three guns for his "self defense". It's absurdly irrational, these old laws made to please unsafe extremists, and it will change. Healthcare must follow suit. Without better mental healthcare reforms in place, all we can do is cry out yet another warning at our own expense, bankrupting our lives in the process, because self-sacrifice is what a honorable person does while actively seeking change, waiting for the tides to turn. And the tides, ushered along by global warming, are turning. 

Welcome to "The New World Order". We've had enough. No longer will the sane cower in fear at the hands of tyranny, because this world operates on one very powerful principle that was previously hidden in the dark, nursed in secret, now reaching its final, unhealthy conclusion as an end to it all, and that is this: transparency.  
What a beautiful world it will be.