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Archive for the ‘Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country’ Category

Tuesday Terror

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on September 20, 2016| 2 Comments »

Last night I had a nightmare. Of course it involved a car, my usual scenario. It was one of those “Please let this be a dream” nightmares as I was waking up. It had all the usual elements: I was lost; the man driving the car was a maniac; and technology was winning. Yes, my iPhone was in my dream. When I tried to open Google Maps to find my way home, it was stuck – I couldn’t move the screen – it was stuck on me, on the pedestrian me, and someone was watching my every move…maybe I shouldn’t see that new movie Snowden?

Last night a pedestrian was killed by two cars in Keswick. Someone just walking along a road, was hit by a Volvo of all things and then hit again by a pick-up. And a few weeks ago, a woman from California was dropping off her Freshman son at UVA, when she was killed in a relatively new shopping center here in Cville. She and her husband and daughter were just crossing a street, she had probably made her son’s dorm room bed. Maybe his sister had organized his CDs? Do kids still have records or is everything on their phones?

In VA, everyone stops for pedestrians, at least that was my understanding.

The day before, Bob and I had just been to Trader Joe’s in that place and remarked at how the design – the streets, the parking, the signs – was God-awful. http://www.nbc12.com/story/32808255/family-dropping-off-son-at-uva-struck-by-car-mother-killed

We go to Trader Joe’s for two things, Bob’s maple syrup and my unsweetened green iced tea. And we might go to the new cinema in that shopping center, the one I call Stonehenge but is really “The Shops at Stonefield.” In fact we plan on seeing that new Amy Adam’s movie about aliens there, because I need to be frightened just a bit more before Halloween. Here is the trailer that the Rocker produced:

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/amy-adams-aliens-arrival-trailer-1201838317/

I feel like I am living in a nightmare, a war zone lately. Seaside, and Chelsea and a knife-wielding monster in a MN mall. But then I am reminded by our President, who is in New York at the UN, that we must open our hearts to Syrian refugees. Only to read a convoy of trucks full of humanitarian aid was barrel bombed on its way into Aleppo today. I am reminded that in fact, I am not living in a war zone, but these poor people are. The cease fire, such as it was, is over. Russia is playing coy, not claiming responsibility, I imagine waiting to see who will win the US Presidency.

And so we talk about Skittles, and baskets of deplorables.

Maybe the best news of all was hearing that five years from now we will all be driving around in driverless cars. This IS good news, right?  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/business/ford-promises-fleets-of-driverless-cars-within-five-years.html?_r=0   17ford-master675

 

 

 

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Lost Lovey

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Journaling, tagged , , , on September 16, 2016| 4 Comments »

My Grand Daughter left her Monkey on the plane going home to Nashville. The whole family went into crisis mode. Just to be clear, the Love Bug does have an emergency back-up Monkey, but it’s lacking an eye and wouldn’t fool her one bit. The airline was called and online reports were written; the small independent toy store in Charlottesville was searched.

“But this doesn’t look like her Monkey, ” I said.

Why would a stuffed animal company named Jellycats decide, in the course of four years, to make Monkey’s tail yellow and his feet brown?         img_5207

My plan was to wash and distress the new Monkey, and try to pass him off as Lovey Monkey #2, but to no avail. Ebay was a total fail.

“No, not worth getting a different one,” the Bride said.

But I did get the Bug a new Monkey, and shipped it off yesterday with its very own letter from Nana. The Love Bug has other endearing nicknames, which is why she is called Ms Magoo Two, after the Bride, who was the original Ms Magoo.

We all have to learn how to deal with Love and Loss eventually, still I thought she was just too young, too little, too tender…

Nana

Charlottesville, Virginia

Dear Ms Magoo Number Two

I have searched high and low, near and far, up and down, all over town for Monkey, and I have some news.

It seems he has decided to take a Grand World Tour on that airplane. As we all know, monkeys are very curious, and he wanted to see what other monkeys in other countries are up to:

To visit Lemurs in Madagascar

To visit Orangutans in Borneo

To visit Chimpanzees in Tanzania

To visit Mountain Gorillas in Uganda

And Lowland Gorillas in Cameroon

Monkey knows you will miss him, and he will miss you too. And so he has sent his twin sister to keep you company. Her name is Mona the Monkey!

Mona is very kind and funny, and she loves meeting new people! She likes to listen to your stories, have tea parties with dancing and singing, and just generally be the Belle of the Ball!

Like her twin, she loves to snuggle best of all.

I hope you will allow Ms Mona the Monkey into your heart Ms Magoo Two, and give her a chance to be your very dear Lovey. At least until Monkey decides to return to Nashville, Tennessee, whenever that may be.

She told me she cannot wait to see your new house and playroom, your new classroom and meet all your friends at school. She also told me she thinks you should be a Princess for Halloween, because you are already a Princess to her!

I really had so much fun in New York with you darling girl, and I promise to come and visit soon. I love you a bushel and a peck and oodles and boodles of macaroni noodles!

 

Kisses and Hugs,      

Nana

 

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Going Home

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on September 13, 2016| 2 Comments »

It was a constellation of events. The Bride and Groom had a wedding to attend this past weekend in NJ, very close to Great Grandma Ada and Great Grandpa Hudson’s home. And even though we were just in Nashville for the Love Bug’s pirate birthday, we wanted to continue the love, so we drove north. At one point I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride, driving on 81 and 287, I forgot how many cars and trucks drive so close and so fast. Guess I’ve become a VA driver. Good for Bob, he still loves to hustle on the road!

The Bride wanted to introduce the Bug to the Big Apple. Taylor Swift is her number one crush of the moment, and she knows the singer moved from Nashville to NYC. She was hoping for a celebrity spotting, and so we ventured over the George Washington Bridge and down the East River. The same route that was embedded in my memory, when my family would take the bridge to visit my sister, Kay, on the Upper East Side.

What we hadn’t factored into the weekend’s equation was our only free day for New York was Sunday, September 11th.

I did not sit and listen to the names, because I know one of the names.

I did not write about 9/11, because I lived through that day. Waiting for the Bride to call me from DC. Wondering where the Rocker was since he had left his high school, along with his friends. Worrying about Bob, who was helping to coordinate disaster relief at a marina.

I did not play a video about boat rescues, because my friend was on a ferry that returned with ash covered people.

Since we only had a short time on Sunday, we decided to stay uptown. Men in saffron colored robes approached me, and I waved them off like a true New Yorker, but said “Sorry” like a Virginian. Pigeons fluttered in the glorious sunlight that streamed through the buildings. I asked my Bug if there were more pigeons or people in NY, and she smiled and said, “People.”

But actually the city was strangely quiet. Reverent. And it wasn’t until I recapped our day for Bob – at the Metropolitan Museum and visiting Aunt Kay – that tears filled my eyes. Because we went straight to the museum’s rooftop, where I was intrigued by the Roof Garden’s “PsychoBarn.” http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/cornelia-parker

A facade, the Queen Ann farmhouse looked as if it had dropped out of a Kansas tornado into this spectacular setting. Like a stage setting, It is “Simultaneously authentic and illusory.” The artist was alluding to a child’s fascination with transitional objects; something that helps to “…negotiate their self-identity as separate from their parents.” I told the Bride if only it were yellow, instead of red, it would have looked like my NJ home.

And as we gazed across the trees of Central Park, at the skyline of NY, I felt a certain nostalgia. But also an overwhelming sense of calm, a serenity usually reserved for my mountain view. I told Bob it was only right for us to be there, on top of a tall building in the center of one of our most beautiful cities, on this sacred day.   img_5189

 

 

 

 

 

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Fight or Fly

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country on September 10, 2016| 1 Comment »

Last night, for only the second time in my life, my dog was attacked. The first time this happened, I was walking 100 pound Buddha. 

Four dogs flew through their invisible fence and stood growling and barring their teeth. Time stood still. I wasn’t sure what to do, but many Sherlock Holmes-like scenarios ran through my head. 

Should I let go of the leash so as not to be entangled by it?

And just as I was calculating that in a split second Buddha calmly placed his whole white, furry Polar Bear body sideways in front of me. Never looking into the dogs eyes, he stood his ground, showing them the grand beauty of his size alone. 

They continued to growl, but softer. I knew what to do. “Heel” boy, and we walked away from that  encounter, our heads high. 

But last night I got sucker punched. Returning late from Grandma Ada’s, I was walking Ms Bean back into the hotel on her leash. Right near the front door, an old hound filled with tumors started to growl and I didn’t think anything of it  until he started to pummel forward. 

He bit Bean in the neck and I can’t remember time standing still. In fact, it sped up and we went around and around, it didn’t occur to me to drop the leash. Finally Bob intervened and my poor Ms Bean had pulled her head out of its collar to run away. 

But the worst was yet to come. The  hound’s woman stayed in the lobby, apologizing as Bean cowered underneath me. Bob told her we were fine, when in fact we were not, and the night manager asked her to return to her room – asked Bob if we we would like to call the police, to press charges. 

As the woman left the lobby, she muttered some insult at us. At that point I went into fight mode, leaving Bean with Bob I nearly ran after her and stood within an inch of her life to tell her exactly what I thought of her and her aggressive, unhinged and unleashed dog!

She backed down. 

You do not mess with a Jersey girl masquerading as a Virginia country woman. This morning we will walk Bean in the Park. Maybe I will try meditation, sometimes I feel like I could fly. I will ice my pinky finger again, that same one is a soft shade of leash-twisting purple. Bean seems fine, there was no blood, only the residual stream of adrenaline dripping through my veins. 

But there will be papers filed. It’s true about never going home again.  

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A Culture of Rape

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, criminal justice, tagged , , , , , on September 6, 2016| Leave a Comment »

What a glorious morning in the Blue Ridge. I’ve been sitting out on the deck with Ms Bean watching golden leaves drift by and listening to the rustle of oak trees in the wind. Soon I will have to bring the plants in from the porch, but for now, this is my season. Warm, sunny days and cool nights, Fall in Virginia is at its most elegant. Only the recurring theme of rape brings my autumn rhapsody to an end, and sends me upstairs to write.

Maybe it’s because we were sailing the Danube when a Stanford swimmer was on trial for raping an unconscious girl behind a dumpster, or maybe it’s just because I’ve been too politically plugged in to think about anything else, but today’s news caught my attention. Brock Turner, the rapist/swimmer, has been released from jail and is registering himself as a sex offender in Ohio. There are a few things about this case I find abhorrent.

First, in the state of California, if you rape an unconscious girl, they assume she has given her consent because she can’t say, “No.” Should I say that again? There are a few states that have crafted laws like this, what shall we call it, the “I Can’t Say No” clause? So, this gentleman was charged with a “sexual assault,” not “rape.” Still, this is how the FBI describes rape – “…penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”

Nothing about the ability to talk, in fact we know some women are so terrified they cannot utter a word. In this case, the woman was “lucky” two men saw her being raped, and chased down the predator. Because if that had not happened, this would have just been another post-party night on campus. The unnamed young victim read a lengthy letter to Turner at sentencing, this is a small part:

According to him, the only reason we were on the ground was because I fell down. Note; if a girl falls down help her get back up. If she is too drunk to even walk and falls down, do not mount her, hump her, take off her underwear, and insert your hand inside her vagina. If a girl falls down help her up.

Three months in jail, a slap on the wrist. Boys will be boys will be sex offenders for life.

Let’s leap across the country to New Hampshire, to another white, privileged incidence of rape that has shocked suburbia. This week the victim of last year’s St Paul’s prep rape case went public. A very brave Chessy Prout, who is only 17 now, was a 15 year old Freshman at the prestigious school when she became a victim of something called the “Senior Salute,” where upperclassmen try to hook up with the new students. Owen Labrie, a 20 year old who looks like a student at Hogwarts, was sentenced to one year in prison after he was found on a train violating his bail. Poor boy, he was only trying to visit his girlfriend at Harvard. http://www.today.com/news/chessy-prout-st-paul-s-school-assault-survivor-sheds-anonymity-t102326

And skipping back a century, if you’ve been following any of Downton’s marathon episodes over Labor Day weekend, you may have been reminded of the lady’s maid, Anna, who was raped downstairs during a concert upstairs. It happened in the second episode of Season Four, and I happened to watch a bit while Bob was working. How could I forget the intrigue of the rapist’s untimely death, the aftermath of arrests at the castle? Who did push the rapist off a train platform to a very Anna Karenina end? Was it Anna, or her husband Mr Bates?

Rape happened in the Bible, and lest you think we’ve figured it out, it wasn’t until 1998 when the state of Mississippi struck down its law that a rape could only be proved if a woman was “pure.” And let’s all thank “King Edward I of England (who) was a forward-thinking chap. He enacted the landmark Statutes of Westminster at the end of the 13th century. They redefined rape as a public wrong, not just a private property battle. The legislation also cut out the virgin distinction and made consent irrelevant for girls under 12…” http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/men-defining-rape-history

If you haven’t sat down to talk with your high school and college Freshmen, boys and girls, about these things, you had better plan some time over Parent’s Weekend. Tell them if a girl falls down, pick her up. This was the view from my kitchen last night. Apricot night skies and buttercream mornings. img_5153

 

 

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7 Things To Do This Labor Day

Posted in books, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on September 2, 2016| 2 Comments »

A friend asked me if I had any plans this weekend. I told her I’d just returned from Nashville, and Bob of course was working. ERs can get pretty busy when Summer turns to Fall. There was a slight chill in the air this morning as I kissed Bob goodbye. A pale sun glow illuminated the eastern ridge, as I sat down in the aviary to ponder plans.

1 – Shop Local… and sustainably! Forget about big box sales, on junk from China, my buddy Wendi has a delightful warehouse in Cville chockfull of anything and everything for your home. When the grande dames of Albemarle County start downsizing, they bring their gorgeous antique furniture and unique finds from around the world in fashion to her. I follow Leftover Luxuries on Instagram to see what rolled in this week; needless to say, you never know what you might find! A huge farm table for under $500? Bonus, you don’t have to build her furniture! http://www.leftoverluxuries.com/home

2 – Get Your Hands Dirty! Plant a new tree, or some bulbs. Now’s the best time imho to spruce up your garden. There’s only a couple of months of watering until frost steps in and you’re done! And if you don’t have a green thumb, our local potter Mud Dauber, (a gallery and studio of different clay artists) will be giving private throwing classes in their 1890s renovated barn – right down the road in Earlysville, near the Farmer’s Market! I was thinking this might be a good exercise for my broken pinky finger. https://www.visitcharlottesville.org/listing/mud-dauber-pottery/1218/

3 – Hit Up an Indie Bookstore – You know all about me and that famous Nashville watering hole for literati, but why not find your very own indie bookstore and lose yourself for an hour or so among the shelves? If there’s one thing Millennials and us Boomers have in common, it’s that we prefer to read real books on paper over a device of any kind. When I was writing for the Two River Times in NJ, I loved stopping in at Fair Haven Books – now known as River Road Bookstore. The ladies there knew my name and what I liked to read, so I never left empty-handed. In Prague I discovered the Palac Knih (Palace of Books), but here in Cville, stop by New Dominion Bookshop!  http://www.newdominionbookshop.com

4 – Take Up a New Sport – One of my Facebook friends mentioned that her son doesn’t like sports, what’s a mom to do? I told her not to worry, kids gravitate to their own beat; the Rocker hated baseball when he was little, even though I loved playing softball every summer at camp. Lacrosse was a no go, only ice hockey sustained my son’s interest. Coming full circle, his band Parlor Mob joined a Jersey Shore Rock and Roll team that benefitted several charities, and voila he was back out in the field again! My sports club in Cville opened a brand spanking new Squash facility last year, hmm… facilityhttp://www.theaquarian.com/2011/08/17/shoreworld-charity-softball-new-asbury-music-book-and-more/

5 – Do a Vineyard Tour – Central VA is full of vintners, honestly I can’t drive ten minutes without finding a winery! We’re kinda like Napa, only not so well known and greener. Millennials drive down here from Northern VA for weekend wine tours, but for us, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to the best terroir on the planet. My favorite wine of all time is White Hall, it’s a beautiful drive out past Crozet http://centralvirginiawinetours.com/wine-tours/  Or maybe think about planting your own grapes? That is if you’re not into craft beer, and beekeeping seems too difficult…ah, the toils of the landed gentry!  http://www.virginiaestates.com/virginia-farms-for-sale/starting/vineyards.asp

6 – Charlottesville City Market – If you’d rather buy your local produce, head on down to this fantastic farmer’s market very early tomorrow morning. UVA is back in session so this place gets crowded quickly. There are over 100 vendors in the downtown Water St parking lot, and you will find everything edible in season, and jewelry, wood carvings, gorgeous orchids and much much more. Plus, it’s an event. You are guaranteed to meet someone you know, and to learn something new. I hope Hermine decides to spare my friends in FL, and maybe hold the rain off here until noon. http://www.charlottesville.org/departments-and-services/departments-h-z/parks-recreation-/city-market

7 – Warhol Your World – If it’s raining, pop into a museum! There’s the Broad in LA where you will find Ms Cait, and the Frist Center in Nashville where my grand babies roam free. But here the UVA Fralin Museum will be finishing up its show of Andy Warhol silkscreens on September 18th. “The exhibition will pay special tribute to the concept of the icon, and the fluid definition of that term in contemporary society, particularly in relation to its historical definition. From Annie Oakley to Liza Minnelli and Saint Apollonia, in these prints as in other works, Warhol played on notions of celebrity through the use of the singular iconic image—repeated, reproduced, and reversed.”  http://www.virginia.edu/artmuseum/index.php   This is titled “Butterfly on Nana 1”

IMG_5138

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To Trust or Not to Trust

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »

My brain has been news-free for a week, and look what happened! Hillary is slipping from the polls, and commentators/strategists/pundits have been making jokes about Trump “softening” on immigration. It’s enough to make me believe what the Flapper always said, the TV is a “boob box,” from the ancient meaning of boob, meaning  – a stupid person; fool; dunce. It would seem our intelligence is bound to diminish in relation to the number of hours we spend in front of a screen.

But the radio, now there’s something that can capture your imagination and leave you maybe just a bit smarter! On our nine and a half hour drive home from Nashville, Bob and I listened to a few podcasts from NPR’s TED Radio Hour. I was sad to leave my grandbabies, but it was great to share this mind-numbing drive with Bob; he could jockey my smart phone while I navigated my way between trucks in the left lane climbing the Smokey Mountains. The show about Trust was enlightening:

http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/406238794/trust-and-consequences

Restoring trust in government was one of the subjects it tackled. A former Prime Minister of Greece was the speaker, but look at what’s happening now in Brazil. In case you were too busy watching the Olympics to notice what was going on behind the scenes, and I don’t mean Ryan Lochte’s little fib, the democratically elected first woman president in Latin America, Dilma Rousseff, is fighting for her political life. By tomorrow, we will know if her congress has voted to impeach her on grounds that she concealed the growing fiscal deficit – ie, she lost their trust somewhere along the way. Because in fact, there is NO evidence she did any such thing.  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-37217633

…senators blamed her for the tanking economy and accused her of concealing the growing fiscal deficit as she sought re-election. They also questioned how she could not have been aware of the corruption at state-run oil giant Petrobras, when for years she chaired its board of directors.
The revelations about corruption at Petrobras, in which members of Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ Party as well as business executives and influential members of other parties have been implicated, have played a crucial role in undermining the government’s credibility.

Trust is a basic human need. If we can’t trust in the unconditional love of a parent, for instance, we might grow up to be a frightened, anxious human being. Jack Welch, the former CEO of one of our biggest corporations, GE, once said that Trust is THE absolute in business. The last part of TED’s podcast had to do with trust within a marriage, “How Can Couples Rebuild Trust After an Affair?” Now this could apply to both political candidates, as well as the latest Weiner scandal.

Psychotherapist Esther Perel wrote a book titled “Mating in Captivity.” She specializes in marriage counseling, and insists that couples can grow stronger after an affair, if they are willing to do the work. “Adultery has existed since marriage was invented, and so has the taboo against it.” She tells us that it is the only commandment in the Bible repeated twice!

Perel defines an affair as a secretive relationship, an emotional connection, a sexual alchemy – Proust said it’s our imagination that is responsible for love. So Jimmy Carter was right when he thought lusting in his heart was a sin, right? And sexting a la Weiner, with his toddler asleep in the bed next to him, is an even bigger, corporal sin. In 1998 President Bill was impeached for a casual affair with an intern, one in which he tried stupidly to define sex. But the evidence Congress used to prove their point was that he lied under oath to a federal grand jury.

Maybe before our country considers electing Trump, we should investigate his previous affairs, and see if he tells us the truth. Maybe we should put every single member of Congress, men and women, in a grand jury room and grill them for hours about their sexual peccadillos! Trump wants America to be great again, to close our borders and while we’re at it, how about a Senator Joseph McCarthy-like witch hunt for sexual transgressors?

Am I kidding? Of course. The problem is, nobody knows when Trump is kidding. And that’s the kind of lack of trust, of dishonesty, one might expect from a sociopath. Not a President. Hillary may parse her words, but when they come out, I believe her.

This little guy trusts the adults in his life not to start up this tractor, but he always wants us to vacuum!  IMG_5103

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Finding Peggy

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country on August 28, 2016| 2 Comments »

It’s been a wonderful week of birthdays. Bob’s August birthday is the day before the Bug’s, so we’ve been celebrating for four days straight. On Wednesday we had dinner at Rolf and Daughters in Germantown and it was quite delicious.  

Thursday was pre-K cupcakes and today was the actual 4 year old pirate princess party, complete with eye patches!

Everyone arrived during a thunderstorm, so the gold doubloons in the sand ship had to be moved to the front porch. And luckily, the bounce house just fit in the playroom. But we started our day at the Farmer’s Market, and I was delighted to find…

Peggy, the Parnassus Bookmobile parked right next to the food trucks! Have I told you lately how much I love Nashville? Of course I had to pre-order Ann Patchett’s new book, “Commonwealth.” 

But the biggest surprise of all, was when Uncle Dave arrived from LA just before we sang Happy Birthday and cut the pink and black pirate cake; the Love Bug’s face was pure unadulterated joy! I’m glad I didn’t have my phone to snap a picture, because I loved simply experiencing that precious moment. 

Tonight we played at being a scientist. One of the birthday gifts was a beginner microscope, so the Groom went outside and found a snail for us to investigate – after our tea party of course. 

BTW, have I mentioned Princess Awesome dresses for girls who don’t exactly need to be rescued?  http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6654034

My pirate princess is sleeping sweetly, and I’m about to turn in – it’s been a whirlwind week in the Music City. Finding Peggy was the icing on the cake of my daughter’s new home and my grand daughter’s birthday. 

Having my two adult children together? Priceless.   

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Organizational Hell

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country on August 23, 2016| 5 Comments »

Lately, we’ve been decluttering. It started with finishing the basement, and ended with a total reboot of nearly every room in the house. Because so many ceilings had to be patched and repaired, we wanted to banish the plaster dust from our lives forever. 

But here’s the problem, and many of my friends know about this little hiccup, out of all the things we’ve collected over the years, our kids probably want less than 1%. Which is why I enjoyed reading “Stuff of Nightmares” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner in the NYTimes Magazine. It was all about the joy of decluttering and the current craze led by Marie Kondo. 

She compares this Japanese Kondo approach to the standard American National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) approach. It was hysterical and sobering all at the same time. 

Kondo wants us to pick every single thing up and if it doesn’t fill us with joy say goodbye to it and find it another home. The NAPO way is full of excuses. We can take our time, we can buy organizational things, we can maybe even get some therapy? 

Some people stay in one place forever and would never think of getting rid of anything. And some of us are married to nomads. If we stay in one place longer than a decade we start to get twitchy. You know where I fall on this spectrum, I’d rather stay in one place – but I married a nomad. 

And we are currently tidying up in anticipation of the next move. So who wants the French cupboard? What should I do with all my books and papers? How many pairs of red shoes do I really need? What I wouldn’t give to have Marie Kondo come into my home for a day, or two weeks. 

But this week I am celebrating the Love Bug’s 4th Birthday. How can that be? She is more precious, more scrumptious, than ever before. Four is a magical age, she has started pre-K and soon she will be playing soccer and before you know it, she’ll be driving a car!!

It’s all too much to comprehend. So I’m keeping her Mother’s field hockey jacket. And the candy striper uniform the Bride wore and said she would never work in a hospital. Because the Bug might want them someday. Right? 

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Floods, Fires, and Fibs

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country on August 19, 2016| 1 Comment »

What a week! The floodwaters in Louisiana are humbling, and the wildfires so close to the Rocker and Ms Cait are frightening – but the lies, the lies in Rio are just plain weird.

Why would Ryan Lochte tell Billy Bush he was held up at gunpoint if it didn’t really happen? Inquiring minds really want to know. Lochte has returned to North Carolina, leaving his fellow swimmers to face the music; a move I always warned my children against, leave no one behind:

The three U.S. Olympic swimmers (Bentz, Conger and Feigen) are cooperating with authorities and in the process of scheduling a time and place today to provide further statements to the Brazilian authorities,” USOC spokesman Patrick Sandusky said in a statement Thursday. “All are represented by counsel and being appropriately supported by the USOC and the U.S. Consulate in Rio.”

The ongoing incident has presented an unwelcome distraction for organizers of the troubled Summer Olympics, already beset by issues with logistics, venues and security. The closing ceremony for the Games is Sunday.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/la-sp-oly-rio-2016-three-of-ryan-lochte-s-u-s-swimming-1471525979-htmlstory.html

I have an idea. And it’s not “boys will be boys,” or some other such nonsense. What if it really happened? Or maybe, they were a bit tipsy, which in those circumstances would be normal, and they had a little too much fun in a gas station restroom, and one thing lead to another, and all of a sudden their high jinks looked strangely real when a gun was pulled out in the wee small hours of the morning. What were they to think?

But why is this “Breaking News?” There is a child sitting in an emergency room in Syria. Battered and bloodied. This should be Breaking News…

Russia is flying planes out of Iran to bomb Aleppo…the same way we flew out of England to bomb Libya. Yes, I was sitting in the upper part of a London bus when the news was announced about Reagan and the Iron Lady in 1986…I had no idea what it meant. I had accompanied Bob on an international conference of catastrophe physicians (Emergency Medicine Physicians) – but I knew the Brits were very unhappy with us. We were simultaneously trumpeted into dinner in the Great Hall, and snickered at behind our backs.

Do you think the Iranians hate the Russians for using their airspace and airfields?

Can we ever step away from war?

I have nothing against Russia. If Russia would like to see Trump win our election, what would that mean? If we could actually unite with Russia, and Iran and stop the bloodshed in Syria maybe we could stem the tide of terrorist recruitment in Europe, and make our own country safer…I just wish Putin saw the potential in Hillary. Maybe he does, but we are not allowed to know. How many lies must we hear, before this election?

Is Trump the Manchurian Candidate of the 21st Century? I prefer to think the Cold War is over. The Mideast may not be ready for democracy today, but for a little while, maybe it’s ready for a cease fire? Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen. People are dying. I keep waiting to pull the curtain back, to see who is really controlling our international policy. I am waiting for someone, anyone, to speak the truth.

Children cannot continue to be the pawns of war.        screen-shot-2016-08-17-at-6-03-03-pm

 

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