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Archive for the ‘Wedding’ Category

Could it for some reason NOT be all about TRUMP! I am fatigued by his incompetence, his supreme arrogance, his inarticulate Twitter rants. I mean, it’s the season to be jolly and yet, I find myself silently fuming.

The British government is pressuring the newly engaged Royal couple, Prince Harry and our very own American Meghan Markle, to NOT invite President Barrack Obama and Michelle to their wedding. Why, you may ask? I mean they became good buds with the Obamas at the Invictus Games, but the fear is a snub could enrage Mr T!

“Meghan made disparaging comments about him on social media during his election campaign last year.

There are deep fears among senior Foreign Office and No10 officials that another perceived national snub will make it impossible for Theresa May to meaningfully engage with Trump.

A senior government source said: “Harry has made it clear he wants the Obamas at the wedding, so it’s causing a lot of nervousness.

“Trump could react very badly if the Obamas get to a Royal wedding before he has had a chance to meet the Queen.'”  https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5210122/prince-harry-meghan-markle-wedding-invite-donald-trump-obama/

Luckily, Buckingham Palace is in charge of the guest list.

When we were planning the Bride’s wedding, we gave the Bride and Groom the job of sending out invitations. At the time, we thought we were being clever, after all we had to make a wedding appear out of nowhere in an apple orchard. But it gave them an important responsibility, who to invite to their wedding – their small, intimate wedding.

And they gave us all numbers, divided equally three ways; our family, the Groom’s family, and their friends. Knowing what many Jewish families can look like, (third cousins once removed are similar to nieces and nephews), we had some pruning to do. And then there’s always the dilemma of, “If Aunt Suzy comes with ALL her children, then we have to invite ALL of Uncle Saul’s children…”

Bob and I have been watching The Crown on Netflix lately, and not just for the Corgis. I’m loving the way the 1960s are unfolding, and can’t wait to see HRH Elizabeth meet Jackie Kennedy. And so of course, I feel like I know the Queen and all her troubles with her sister, and that Nazi-loving uncle of hers who abdicated the Crown for another American.

Plus, I’m following Kensington Palace on Instagram, and I’ve seen all the beautiful pictures of the newly engaged couple. I guess you might say I’ve become an Anglophile in my dotage!

And I’m hoping beyond hope that Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, will tell her government to step down, back away from that guest list! After all, it’s Meghan and Harry’s day, it’s their wedding they are planning. Not the Prime Minister’s. And Mr T disinvited himself from the Kennedy Center Honors this month basically because most of the honorees wouldn’t have shown up if he arrived with Melania. He is a national embarrassment.

He would give the speech that is all about him, and plug his golf course in Scotland.

So I’m begging you 2018, let’s just let 2017 walk away gracefully. I’m planning on working to make a TN Senate seat flip to the Blue Side, and get the Grands to appreciate the idea that Nana doesn’t have seating arrangements in her house! I may also repeat this prayer from time to time:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Here is a wedding shot from Carter Mountain. Bob is saying, “I couldn’t have done it without her.” I think.

J&M 0917

 

 

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When we first heard about the German jet crashing into the French Alps, we were horrified. I asked Pilot Bob what could have happened? No need listening to all the speculation on cable news, when I have my very own pilot across from me at the dinner table.

He told me it must have been a sudden loss of cabin pressure. And when he talks, I listen. When the Piper Arrow gets above 9,000 ft, Bob whips out the oxygen and everything is fine. So I asked him, how long would you have to be sentient (yes that word just popped into my brain last night over Thai food) at 38,000 ft? How many minutes before one would pass out from lack of oxygen? “Fifteen seconds,” he said. The pilot would have fifteen seconds to grab an emergency back-up oxygen mask right next to his head in the cockpit. He added, “At 60,000 ft your blood would boil.” Thanks.

And then the news this morning. I could barely drink my coffee. Somehow it was better to think that Germanwings Airbus flight 4U 9525 dropped out of the sky, one minute after reaching its cruising altitude, due to some mechanical difficulty. But listening to the French Prosecutor, visibly shaken, putting his head in his hands, tell us that this was a deliberate descent by the co-pilot, left me feeling sick. He locked the cockpit door. He manually took over auto-pilot to begin the descent. He continued breathing and never answered his radio or the ramming on the door by his senior pilot.

So naturally, I called Grandma Ada. http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/mar/26/germanwings-plane-crash-investigation-press-conference-live-updates-4u9525

And Ada told me a story. Yesterday she went to her gym, and she spoke with a Hasidic woman about the fire in Brooklyn that took the lives of seven children in an Orthodox Jewish family. This is an ancient question; why do bad things happen to good people? The woman didn’t really answer, she kindly took Ada’s hand, and told her we need to do more mitzvahs – more good deeds, more acts of loving kindness.

Maybe that helps some, but either this co-pilot was psychotic and suicidal or he was a terrorist; either way this is a mass murder. If it turns out that the ‘interruption’ in the co-pilot’s training was due to a trip to Yemen, or some other terrorist training camp, I feel myself turning into a hawk. Forgiveness is not a word in my vocabulary at the moment.

Still, despite the headline-grabbing nature of airline crashes – especially mysterious cases like Flight 4U 9525 that were cruising along at high altitude – flying remains easily the safest form of travel ever created. A professor at MIT last year calculated the risk of a passenger dying in an airliner crash as 1 in 45 million. By way of comparison, the National Safety Council puts your lifetime odds of dying as a pedal cyclist at “merely” 1 in 4,982.   http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielreed/2015/03/24/germanwings-airplanes-flying-at-high-cruising-altitudes-rarely-crash/

If you need to chill out after a morning of bad news, may I suggest you click on to the nest of a bald eagle in PA. Two eggs were  spotted this Valentine’s Day and you can see her feeding her baby hatchlings in live stream!! http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1592549&mode=2

Hanover PA nest

Hanover PA nest

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