by Cathryn Platine
It has been quite some time since I have been writing or sharing much of anything and a LOT of weird water has passed under the bridge. On Facebook my posts have mostly been restricted to political re-posts and the cute animal shares and for a good reason. I suffered a major health crisis the spring of 2019 following getting a pacemaker the first of the year. Instead of improving my health, it caused my health to go down hill. Apparently the cheap Medicare approved two wire model interfered with the electrical rhythm for part of my heart and I put on, by early June, 60 lbs of edema water weight.
At the time a younger couple from NYC had started to stay full time instead of just frequent visits but the trans partner was very mentally unstable and as I asked for greater help with chores such as taking care of the chickens it was resented to the point she came into my bedroom and screamed at me for over an hour while I was bedridden. My sister priestess, Viktoria, was not picking up any of the slack on her weekend visits either. As a result of them not cleaning the coop and keeping the chicken feed in the vermin proof containers, we got a rat infestation for the first time after having chickens for almost seven years prior to that. It was also the first time since the insurrection of 2007 that I did not feel safe in my own home.
As my health declined, I turned my bedroom into an efficiency apartment of sorts. I had a microwave, small freezer, small refrig and a breakfast cooking station complete with a griddle and coffeemaker. The ladies bathroom with directly outside my door so that as also not an issue but by the end of May I was, practically speaking, wheelchair bound for anything off the property. Finally I got a doctors appointment and was told to check into the hospital that day. My cardiologist worked out of St. Peter’s in Albany so that is where I was taken. I was put on IV diuretics, practically lived on the can and peed out sixty lbs of water in two weeks. At that point, one of the nurses, ignoring my request she not do so, examined my genitals. I don’t discuss is, but I am intersexed and when I had down there surgery, remained so. She freaked out and got two aides and immediately rushed me out of the room I had been in for two weeks with other women. I mean immediately, like five minutes notice.
I was confused at first but then realized what had just happened. I complained and asked for a supervisor. I got an apology but the nurse wasn’t even disciplined at all despite the non discrimination notices everywhere you looked. Rev. Jeremiah Lennox was visited at the time I was rushed to a private room and basically read them the riot act on my behalf.
While I was in the hospital, Viktoria was supposed to bring me needed personal items since her Albany home was only ten minutes from the hospital and she was still doing her weekends at the Maetreum. Apparently this was asking too much and I waited up to a week for her to “get around” to bringing me underwear, my incontinence pads and pj bottoms among other things of a personal nature. Instead of cleaning up the chicken coops, she gave away our chickens and adopted ten feral cats from NYC to take care of the rats. She proved unable to even pay the bills despite her having been the treasurer for about seven years at that point and I had to run the radio station remotely from my hospital room. I spent my 70’th birthday alone in the hospital. Later I was to learn from several sources that Viktoria was counting on my not surviving my open heart surgery and was extremely resentful that I did. She had even printed up business cards for herself as Battakes of the Maetreum!
I was hospitalized for just over a month and had two more transphobic encounters with staff during that time. I demanded release and came home mostly confined to my bedroom with no one else in the house except Viktoria on the weekends and my cat Frodo, his brother Gandy having died shortly before my hospitalization. Despite having lived at the Maetreum full time for a two year period in the past, apparently it was too much to ask she do so again for a couple of weeks as I started to recover some of my strength. I did have a visiting nurse for a couple of weeks, twice a week for an hour or so.
Unable to do much those first few weeks, Viktoria continued to produce the Phat Coffee House show on the weekends. Keeping these guys from turning our studio into a party house had always been as challenge but Viktoria let them run totally wild and then turned around and lied to me about it to my face. Eventually it got so bad we had to cancel their show altogether.
As a Conclave, all the active priestesses had agreed that we would stop taking in any charity housing women for the immediate future. We had been burned badly by a succession of users who trashed the property and stole from us on the way out. A woman from Texas, who was a FB friend for several years but I did not really follow, approached me about moving to the Maetreum on a full shared expenses basis. Seeing an advantage of someone living with me full time and pulling their own weight during the winter, I asked the other priestesses and was given the go ahead. Big big mistake. She promised she was not into drama at all which should have been a red light. She turned out to be the drama queen champ of all time and upon her arrival, I knew I had made a huge mistake. Her housebroken dog wasn’t. The dog got out and I spent the first four hours of her arrival searching the grounds “before a bear ate her”. She and Viktoria bonded immediately over metal music, smoking too much dope and sleeping with the guys doing their radio show. Having committed to contributing a full share of expenses (600 @ month) Julie immediately announced that due to unexpected travel expenses (someone else drove her up from Texas) she couldn’t make the first month payment. She did have money for dope a week later. During the two plus months she was here, her dog bit at leave five people I know of. Luckily none of them sued us although they could have. During that time she made exactly one contribution of 500 (not the agreed on 600) and borrowed money from me personally twice.
One night Viktoria informed me that her friend Beth was coming up with someone who needed a place to stay. Remember, a Conclave which included Viktoria, all agreed we were NOT taking in anymore emergency housing cases. I was forced to sit at the table, with Leslie, the woman in need, Beth, Viktoria and Julie and keep telling them, no, we had all agreed not to do this again as a Conclave. Yes, I finally gave in having been made to feel like the ogre of all time. Leslie had some serious issues but overall not as bad as some of the characters we had in the past. But after only a couple of weeks Julie decided Leslie was going to kill her and all the rest of us in our sleep. She was totally irrational about it. She had nothing to base this on.
For more than fifteen years we held what we called Orphans Thanksgiving every year for folks who didn’t have family or were estranged from family or just wanted to join us in a Thanksgiving celebration. 2019 was the last one. The night before, while several of us went out to dinner, Julie decided she was going to have a medical emergency and called Viktoria to leave the dinner early and take her to the hospital. We had a houseful of guests either already there or arriving the next day. Julie told the social worker at the hospital she did not feel safe at the Maetreum because of Leslie in an attempt to force me to throw Leslie out on Thanksgiving. This prompted a call to me from social services who were going to come and investigate while I had a houseful of guests. I explained the situation and as a result she would not be allowed by social services to return to the Maetreum and got a free hotel room. I never told her to leave, she maneuvered herself into the position of not being able to return out of a mean spirited attempt to force someone else out.
Thanksgiving day I was doing most of the prep work, still recovering from my heart surgery and getting wore out. Viktoria started yelling at me as I tried to go up to my bedroom to lay down and followed me upstairs into my bedroom screaming at me about Julie and Leslie. She would not stop. Downstairs we had a full house of guests. Once again, I felt totally unsafe in the very home I had founded. My heart condition, commented on by several people at the time, aggregated by Viktoria’s assault, left me cyanotic from the lack of circulation. Two months later I had to have another surgery to replace my bottom of the line pacemaker with a better one. Apparently, according to a couple of anonymous emails I received, I was once more expected to die by Viktoria who apparently was telling a large number of people that she was just waiting for me to die so she could take over the Maetreum! The prior entry here “For the Record” contains the bare bones account of why Viktoria was removed from the priestesshood the following summer. In a facebook reply to Jay Stewart, Julie Pousson stated;
“Jay Stewart, Vikki’s goal was to wait out Cathryn and take the place over. She stated this goal to me and to others. She profited off the losses she caused, and wholly deserves her fate.”
Viktoria had met Jay (John) Stewart at the funeral of Randy Ripley, a long time friend of mine and operator of the community radio station in Woodstock. Jay had been a long time hanger on to the trans communities with a reputation as a user and harasser via phone of other individuals. The fall before my heart surgery, Viktoria had invited Jay and his wife to our Yule celebration and dinner. Jay’s wife, Cheryl, openly insulted me while I was giving our meal blessing. Jay went on to get totally orc-faced drunk that evening. Afterwards I discussed the behaviour with Viktoria and made it crystal clear that Cheryl was never to come back and I was not happy about Jay being coming by as well especially since neither of them was Pagan, let alone Goddess oriented. Viktoria started sleeping with Jay and meeting him at the Maetreum on the Sunday of her weekend visits. As a result, what little work around the Maetreum Viktoria had been doing was replaced with her leaving me a sink full of her dirty dishes every weekend and Jay eating any food available I had for the following week.
The fall following my surgery several folks had cut and split a large amount of firewood for use during the winter. We partially heat with wood from a cookstove I had bought the Maetreum many years before. Jay took it all. Following the disastrous Thanksgiving, there having been no leftovers, that Saturday I cooked another turkey for Leslie and I to have for the following week. Jay came by on Sunday and ate most of it and took the rest. To be clear, I survive on a below poverty level social security income and was also helping Leslie with food. Jay had been joining Viktoria in passive aggressive sniping at me plus refusing to use the mens room toilet, instead the stall I used and leaving the seat up on purpose. I finally had enough and told Viktoria I did not want him in my home any longer.
To be continued:
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