Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Spooky

October 28, 2024 by mountainmornings

The French Roast pod clicked into my Keurig, I pushed the blinking blue button and went to the front door. This is my routine most mornings, start coffee, turn off front porch light and open the door. I want the morning sunlight to hit my face and jump start the old circadian rhythm, but it’s just pre-dawn and still gray when something catches my eye, something black, and velvety. There’s a huge spider sitting on the ribs of the life-size skeleton relaxing in my rocking chair.

The skeleton I arranged just a few days ago – one leg draped onto a column with the opposite arm raised in greeting. But the Big, beautiful, black spider?

Don’t get me wrong, I love most bugs! And spiders eat mosquitoes so they are doubly loved but I didn’t put this stuffed one on my porch. I asked Bob if he was the culprit – he just looked perplexed and asked if it was a real spider. So, there is the opposite of a porch-thief in our neighborhood; someone is adding to the Halloween decorations! And since my brain doesn’t function until an hour after the coffee kicks in, I put this particular conundrum on the back burner and made my breakfast – yogurt with a ripe pear.

Once our nest emptied out, Halloween lost most of its cache. We never had any trick-or-treaters in the Blue Ridge, and living in downtown Nashville meant drunken bridezilla/hen parties instead. But this is a neighborhood in the best sense, Mr Rogers sense of the name. There’s a Golden for every family and a Doodle for every couple. Les walks her granddog Teddy, a tiny white Shih Tzu, in a doggy pram and was among the many who left me food while I was recovering from Covid Rebound. Aha, of course… I was betting on Les for the spider.

Our porch looks festive, but not over the top. I gave up on pumpkins years ago when we moved to the South. No use in watching them rot in our hot Fall, southern-exposure front yard. But this skelli presented itself to us, it was lying around in our alley one year like a recalcitrant teenager. It was like the yoga ball that rolled into our yard just when I was thinking I needed a yoga ball! The Flapper was right – what the mind can conceive you can achieve! She was a real positive thinker who collected buddhas in the latter part of her life.

The Rocker called to ask if I had a picture of him in his Sonic the Hedgehog costume, the one I made when he was about the Pumpkin’s age. Seems he was working on the new animated movie, and he did make the cutest little hedgehog. I loved sewing Halloween costumes out of felt and cooking up a big pot of chili while baking cornbread. Ha, I was a real multi-tasker back in the day! But I never went in for Halloween decorating in or around the house. Now I’ve made patchwork cloth pumpkins and thrown a few gourds in a bowl on the dining room table and put mums and a skeleton on the….

Today we Americans spend around 11.6 BILLION dollars on All Hallows Eve.

Why? Is it the candy? Are we beginning to embrace death as just another part of life? Why am I so sad about streaming the last few episodes of The Good Place? I never felt like this with Netflix, like I didn’t want a series to end. I thought I’d get tired of the endless references to David Hume, but it is the antidote to this election season. We humans can get better, we can learn, at least I want to believe we can.

The Bug is dressing up in one of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour outfits, and the Pumpkin will be dressed like an old man. The end is near I’m afraid for these pre-teenagers. The Bride told me her Parisian friends admitted that Halloween is catching on with the French, but mostly just for parties and costumes. They would never send their children out into the street begging for candy! Zut Alors!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Sequestered

October 22, 2024 by mountainmornings

Yesterday, Bob took me out for a ride. We drove through a McDonalds for two fish sandwiches like two old people, then we came home where I could lay in an anti-gravity chair in the warm sun. You see, within 48 hours of arriving home from France and visiting a dentist to have my tooth replaced, I tested positive once again for Covid. Rebound Covid. Nearly 50% of people, taking Paxlovid or not, will experience rebound – in fact, Joe Biden got it again! Only this time, the second time around, one cannot take Paxlovid; you’re required to just suffer in silent isolation.

What to do, what to do? During the first few days I simply existed with a brown paper bag sitting next to me filling up with tissues. I was counting the hours between Tylenol and sleep, sweet, sweat-drenched sleep. On Air France I watched “The Regime” with Kate Winslet, where she plays a wild and disinhibited dictator of some fictional European country, but back in the States my appetite changed. Now I needed pablum – we’ve started watching “The Good Place” on Netflix and it’s exactly right. And once the fever broke, I started reading again.

This month’s Atlantic must have read my feebled mind, the cover story is titled “The Case Against Pessimism; the West has to Believe That Democracy will Prevail,” by Anne Applebaum.

“Since 2018, more than 116,000 Russians have faced criminal or administrative punishment for speaking their mind. Thousands of them have been punished specifically for objecting to the war in Ukraine. Their heroic battle is mostly carried out in silence. Because the regime has imposed total control on information in Russia, their voices cannot be heard.”

Applebaum makes the case for war, and I never thought I’d agree with such a premise, but fascism in the form of Putin today, is on the march. Fascism hides beneath many names: Sovietization, Russification and even a German word: Gleichschaltung. She posits that IF Germany had armed Ukraine in 2014 when Russia first invaded Crimea, if the West had not looked away, this current war might not have happened. And now, after the full-scale invasion of 2022 and initial call to help Ukraine, western democracies’ support is starting to wane. She warn us:

“Complacency, like a virus, moves quickly across borders,” she writes. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/10/russia-ukraine-democracy-applebaum/680318/

My virus flew across the ocean courtesy of Air France. But I refuse to be complacent about our election. Our twice-impeached ex-President, you know the Apprentice candidate who sent Putin Covid tests for his own personal use before we Americans could get our hands on them, wants another crack at autocracy. Remember back when our friend and neighbor who had been in construction gave us K95 masks for our daughter the ER doctor? Mr T admires tyrants, and Arnold Palmer is running around naked in his head. It’s been a week.

This morning I tested negative for Covid!! We voted early! Instead of going to the movies afterwards, Bob wheeled me around Lowes looking for mums. I didn’t wear white like I did when I voted for Hillary, I’m lucky I got dressed at all. I’ve been humbled, and not by children, by the fragility of our democracy. This is not a forkin joke. Please remember to vote like your life depends on it.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Oh La La La

October 16, 2024 by mountainmornings

Bonjour Everyone! How do you say, “We have reluctantly returned home from France?” in French? We landed in Nashville last night after touring most of Kennedy Airport between connections. And I have three takeaways:

I didn’t think about our election much. We had to decide where we would go for dinner. Should we walk with an umbrella around a mountainous ancient city on the Cote d’Azur? How many Salades Nicoise is too many Salades Nicoise for lunch? But we did pass by a golden poster on the Metro advertising a new movie, “The Apprentice,” where Jeremy Strong plays the kingbuilder Roy Cohn. How could I not have even known about this movie? It’s about to be released in Europe but is currently playing here. This is about the ex-president as a young real estate tycoon in New York, about the time we met him at a Vikings game. My plan is to vote early for Harris/Walz, and cap it off with the movie!

You cannot go back! I mean you can go home again, but it’s never the same. In Paris for example, we couldn’t even get close to the Eiffel Tower without standing in a long line because it is now barricaded. On our Bateau Mouche cruise, we didn’t pass by the monuments because the Seine is too high! Mon Dieu. Only the diffuse light and delightful French people were similar to past tours. And having the Bride and her family with us for our last weekend was the icing on the gateau! They were visiting the Groom’s colleague and his family near the Place de la Republique, and so the Grands got a taste for real Parisian life.

But for the first part of our trip, Bob and I were two for the road and started off in Nice. We sat in the blue chairs on the Promenade des Anglais and watched the Mediterranean sea. In fact, we saw a man dressed in a black wetsuit swimming far, far out who came closer to shore with what looked like an orange balloon tied to his waist. When he emerged on the rocky shoreline and took off his cap and gloves, we could see it was a buoy. He just walked down the Prom like Jason Bourne! I was too stunned and jet lagged to film it. Bob and I have never been to the southern coast of France, so everything was new.

We strolled through mansions of the Belle Epoque – one on the sea, Villa Massena, and one on a mountaintop, Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild. Everything was over the top! But the story of Beatrice Rothschild captured my interest. In 1883, her marriage was arranged (at the tender age of 19) to an older Parisian/Russian banker, Maurice Ephrussi, who almost immediately infected her with “an illness.” This illness compromised her fertility, and as a result she kept many small animals in the villa who were pampered as only the French can do. After her divorce from Maurice, she spent every winter in her villa, throwing parties, collecting art and gambling in Monte Carlo! The casino, built in 1863, was the only gambling establishment in the world to allow admit women!

“The Baroness Ephrussi de Rothschild made her Villa a true haven for art collectors with porcelain, furniture and paintings by the Great Masters. The Villa was decorated in the Rothschild style, i.e., with the best from each era, resulting in a somewhat eclectic mix!” https://www.villa-ephrussi.com/en

The Pandemic was real, and still has reprecussions.

Traveling over 4,000 miles has some risk. And unfortunately for us, we contracted Covid early on – even though we wore K95 masks in every airport. My companion, the ER doc, brought along Paxlovid just in case, and we had just been vaccinated so I cannot complain. Well, I can complain about losing a tooth after biting into a hard baguette because I had to eat something before taking the pills. Then, after searching for an English language book at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I hastily picked up Stephen King’s “Holly” for the plane. I have never read one of his books, but I had no choice. Billed as a crime novel, I was hoping for minimal horror but the timeline includes early pandemic and Mr T days, and I remembered that the sheer terror of that time was real.

How could we as a nation have forgotten? How can it be that a tyrant with small hands and delusions of grandeur think he could possibly win another term? He bungled our response to a worldwide novel virus, creating a culture of Zoom funerals. His incompetence was likely responsible for several hundred thousand deaths. Marie Antoinette offered her subjects cake, Caesar suggested ‘bread and circuses’ to keep his citizens happy, and what does Mr T offer? A CIRCUS with LIES.

Okay, so I’m back to thinking about our election. Vote early people, and remember “…we are never ever ever ever getting back together… Like, ever.” Taylor Swift

Except well, I did get back together with this guy 45 years ago, and I think I’ll keep him! Here we are with Monet’s Water Lilies.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

When Water Rises

October 1, 2024 by mountainmornings

What’s happened to the Appalachian Mountains post Hurricane Helene is apocalyptic.

And we are no strangers to hurricanes. When you marry an Emergency Physician, you learn to live with contingencies. We would fill up the bathtub so we could flush our toilet in the Berkshires before a Nor’easter. We had a generator in our garage on the Jersey Shore.

But last week in Nashville, Bob was walking around the house muttering about emergency back-up plans, or the lack thereof. He needs to know that everything will fall seamlessly into place when all else fails… I mean he used to write disaster plans! This is why doctors seem so serene in the midst of chaos, they figure they have everything covered. We even have a mophie wireless charging brick just in case we lose power.

But last week we didn’t lose power, we only lost internet service for four days.

This is day FIVE since Helene roared her way up from Florida, leaving over 100 dead and 600 missing. We had dinner with Les and her husband Saturday night and she got us up to speed on Asheville. She and her husband David own a condo in the middle of town and she told me she spoke for less than a minute with one of her neighbors before they lost cell service. She was starting to pack her car when she heard the roads were gone and only emergency services were allowed in.

Roads in and out of Asheville have washed out. Cables are gone and cell towers toppled. They had a boil water alert before they lost water altogether. Power and internet service is down and food is running low. Every creek and river overflowed after being drenched the week before, then Helene dropped the amount of FIVE Septembers of rain. The hospital there, Mission (recently bought by HCA) was running aground before all this happened. Doctors and nurses are living on-site with the help of generators.

People in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia have lost everything. It is unimaginable but not totally unexpected. Most people living in the Northeast don’t understand how a mountainous area can flood, but climate change has challenged that belief. The once every hundred year flood is happening every few years. I checked on the Facebook page of a widowed friend living in Haywood County, NC. Her daughter is a physician who works with the Groom, and she worked as a journalist for a newspaper in her younger years. The Bride thought we’d have a lot in common, and we do. I found a picture on her timeline of a coffee cup a friend posted for her with this caption:

“She’s hand grinding her own coffee beans and using a camp stove.”

I was relieved to know she’s alright. Of course she is, she roasts her own coffee beans on her front porch! If you would like to help people recover from this storm, all the usual sites are accepting donations – Red Cross, the Salvation Army and United Way. Also you can register online if you live nearby to help with food: “World Central Kitchen, which set up meal service Monday at Bear’s Smokehouse BBQ, welcomes volunteers who have registered online.” There is also: https://mercychefs.com/helene-response and https://www.heartswithhands.org/

In retrospect, losing Google Fiber for four days was nothing compared to Helene’s wrath. And please remember when you vote next month, one ex-president’s response to a disaster was to throw paper towels out to victims after a hurricane hit Puerto Rico. And vote accordingly. Wonder Woman painting by Ashley Longshore.

Screenshot

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Autumnal Equinox

September 23, 2024 by mountainmornings

We were all in the pool when it hit me, Fall that is. But Fall in the South feels different, for one thing it’s still hot. Not three digit temperatures hot, and not the oppressive humidity, so we can sometimes sit outside in the shade and visit with neighbors. But I knew my days of ballet in the pool were numbered, what I didn’t know was that we’d lose our wi-fi!

Goggle Fiber has been replacing cables in our neighborhood all summer long. They’ve been digging and splicing along with the constant cacophony of new construction crews.

It happened like this: Bob harvested his sweet potatoes, carrots and leeks so I started to make potato leek soup for dinner; there was a knock on the door, and it was the modern day cable guy aka the Google guy; he asked Bob something about checking the box on the side of the house and warned us that we may lose our internet for a few minutes while they switch over to 8 gig…

That was 48 hours ago. I know.

We’ve been living in an analog world. We ate dinner at the dining room table. We had an actual conversation. We played Boggle. I cleaned up the kitchen. Then I called Aunt Kay for the after-action report on our MN trip. Then I texted Les next door and she has AT&T so they were watching the TN vs Oklahoma game. She offered me words of encouragement and jigsaw puzzles.

It’s funny really. I’m surprised when I switch on a light because I expect that nothing else will work. Last night the Bride was making pasta with her new Kitchen Aid mixer, well she made the dough and the Grands fed the dough through the special attachment. Voila fettuccine! She also picked my basil and made a scrumptious pesto but most importantly, she asked us over for dinner so that was sweet. We practiced our French and the house was filled with laughter.

But no Masterpiece Theatre for me last night. And the new season has started on PBS, hopefully I’ll catch up on their streaming service. So I picked up my knitting. Dr Jim told me to pretend it’s the 1960s, but I don’t want to go back… like ever.

Losing your internet is a little like losing your mind. We don’t realize how tethered we are to technology. When Bob can’t sleep because he’s worried about losing our internet service, he can’t turn on the TV and doze on the couch. I can’t play music while I’m doing household chores because it’s streaming on Sonos. We don’t have a turntable and my vintage vinyl records are the Rocker’s hanging up on the wall! Do you even own a radio?

Right now I’m writing on my iPad offline. In fact, “Working Offline” is loud and clear on the banner at the top of my ‘page.’ Like I didn’t know. I’ll be walking over to the Bride and Groom’s porch to publish this later.

I have to admit that Bob is getting a little twitchy. We finally have a Google Fiber technician sitting in my closet! He’s been running back and forth to his truck and waiting for word from a supervisor. If I could type and cross my fingers at the same time we’d be golden. But don’t feel sorry for me, a new Parnassus First Edition Club book was delivered just in the nick of time. And all my favorite characters are back:

Elizabeth Strout’s “Tell Me Everything.” Olive is in assisted-living and that’s all I’m going to say. Cause I always tell you everything. Here we were at the Farmers Market on Saturday, before our virtual world collapsed.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Land of How Many Lakes?

September 17, 2024 by mountainmornings

Along with a travel-size tube of lavender lotion, I crafted an eternity pearl necklace for her. Bob and I ordered tennis balls for her temporary/travel walker. Dr Jim arranged for a Fajitas and Margaritas lunch cruise on Lake Minnetonka and his friends threw her a celebratory brunch complete with her favorite coconut cake for dessert.

My big sister Kay turned 90!

We couldn’t have picked better weather for our visit to Minnesota. Dr Jim is the last connection our family has to the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and we all flew in like migratory birds last week from TN and NY. After Kay’s last fall, the one that broke her shoulder outside her Upper East Side apartment, she wanted to see her little brother ‘one last time’ and so we set up a Fall sibling reunion goal. We also thought we’d ‘help’ Dr Jim downsize into a pied-a-terre in the town of Excelsior.

But like most construction plans, his actual move-in date was delayed; birthdays however, arrive despite our best objections. Our Daughter-in-Love, Aunt Kiki, will turn thirty something this week. Ah, to be thirty again… The Bride received a blue Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a pasta attachment for her big day and mine will be the last of the September birthdays, a footnote to a momentous year.

According to my Native American horoscope, our September natal days come under the “Duck Fly Moon.” I’ve always called us Christmas Party babies, but maybe Autumnal Equinox sounds better? The Flapper introduced me to a book, “The Medicine Wheel,” about Native spirituality years ago. She was beginning her search for meaning, studying psychology and Buddhism. She spent her final years surrounded by sculptures of Buddha on the shore of Lake Minnetonka. With her two sons nearby, we would write letters to each other wondering about the state of the world.

This was the last time I routinely actually wrote letters!

First the Love Bug, followed by four more female Fall birthdays – 12 to 90 years old. We saw a family of wild turkeys crossing Dr Jim’s road. I glimpsed a white egret swoop into the trees behind his house. At least I think it was an egret, maybe it was a swan? We all saw loons floating on the lake. I remembered the whooping cranes flying south last month over Nashville after I read Margaret Renkl’s brilliant essay about blue jays and change. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/16/opinion/hope-social-problems-justice.html?unlocked_article_code=1.LU4.kgtX.2sZHo4nF3YuS&smid=url-share

My sister Kay is an artist. Her beautiful paintings are hanging all over the country, including right here in my snug. She was a single mom and a lipstick feminist back in the 50s and 60s, a glamorous stewardess for National Airlines. At her interview she was never weighed or measured, simply hired on the spot! National’s base was in Florida, but she flew around the world a few times! I loved visiting her Manhattan apartment as a teenager, right up the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim. We’d have lunch at the Madison Deli and she’d correct my country-bumpkin table manners at Lutece for dinner.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s can’t compare to her lifestyle then, and now she still walks with some help to Central Park nearly every day.. Kay taught me so much about life and love. As soon as I landed back home, I cleaned out the bird bath and replaced the small solar fountain. The cardinals and robins are getting used to the moving water, even guarding it at times. Our temperatures will be rising back into the 90s this week and I know our cardinal family will be sticking around, but we’ll be flying off again in a few weeks to France.

Happy Birthday Kay!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Florida Man

September 10, 2024 by mountainmornings

No, not that Mar-a-Lago guy who thinks he can ‘debate’ a former prosecutor. I know everyone will be watching CBS tonight to see what insanity Mr T spews forth, and I’ll be reluctantly watching too. Who can resist a train wreck? But I’ll be visiting with friends at least; Bob and I will be heading over to an election debate watch party which should cushion the blows of this farce. I can only hope Kamala doesn’t spend all her time correcting the former Liar-in-Chief.

But the Florida guy on my radar this morning is good ‘ole Gov Ron DeSantis. Did you know that he has an Office of Election Crimes and Security, aka the election police? Bob said of course he does, and didn’t I remember when he started rounding up felons who thought they had had their voting rights restored after the 2020 election?

Florida is one of the few southern states that allows previously incarcerated people who’ve paid their debt to society to apply to have their voting rights reinstated.

But in the small print you cannot vote in FL if you were convicted of murder, a sexual offense, OR you have outstanding legal costs associated with that past felony conviction. Or maybe you just didn’t jump through enough hoops? The Gov’s roundup out of the blue had the police officers apologizing to the people they were arresting!

But wait – today the WaPo is reporting that election police have been showing up at people’s homes to question them about signing a petition they had signed months ago! One person reported having ten pages of personal information displayed on her dining room table! What was that about you might ask? Oh, just a little Amendment number 4 coming up on the ballot in November that would nullify the 6 week abortion ban the Gov signed into law last year…

“They want people to stay home and to not vote,” Democratic state Rep. Fentrice Driskell said at a virtual news conference Monday. “They want people to read these articles and hear it on social media that the police showed up at somebody’s door and intimidated them and made them feel bad about signing an Amendment 4 petition.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/09/09/desantis-election-abortion-referendum-fdle/

Isn’t it rich that Mr T says a vote for Harris will make us a banana republic, while his minions are incrementally toilng away to make it so. Shame, intimidation and threats of arrest are the tactics used in the sunshine state to keep people away from the polls. Nearly 70% of Floridians believe abortion should be legal in most cases, and a 6 week ban is too strict. If asked, probably most American women would say, “Mind your own damn business!” And yet, this Florida man is using the power of the state to twist our free and fair elections to his own whim.

This was a gut punch, reading this article actually made me sick. I kept thinking of SS police knocking on doors to find Jews.

The other night Bob and I joined the Bride and Groom at their election letter writing party. I had a list of potential voters in Arizona and I was supposed to write a bipartisan message urging them to vote this November. The Groom was writing that he worked in healthcare and believed in healthcare for all. I only needed to write one or two sentences per letter. Instead I wrote about gun violence to the men and bodily autonomy to the women. Who knows, maybe someone with an open mind will listen.

I hope you and your friends are throwing parties! Are you talking with your neighbors? Maybe just this once we can come together as a nation, blue and red, black and white, and say enough is enough? Here is my new Fall knitting project, shades of pink and purple with just enough grey to add gravitas.

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

World View

September 3, 2024 by mountainmornings

Happy September, the month of family birthdays.

Hope your Labor Day weekend was warm and sunny! We had a good downpour in Nashville and I didn’t complain because all the trees were wilting. After days and days of three digit temperatures, I’m looking forward to Fall. My Irish lineage craves soft, overcast rainy days. I’ve started a new knitting project and the Bride is taking a pottery class. The Grands are back in school and thriving… the Pumpkin is playing soccer and the Bug has finally grown an inch taller than me! But of course I’m shrinking, so there’s that…

I came across a little known connection between Ireland and our country while reading the BBC News yesterday. Did you know that back in 1847, while the Native American Choctaw people were being “relocated” to a reservation in Oklahoma, their tribal leaders sent a donation to Ireland to help with the Great Famine? They reached out to help others suffering around the world while experiencing their own Trail of Tears, where 15,000 died from disease, starvation and exhaustion.

What caught my eye, and the reason for the newspaper article, was the glorious “Eternal Heart” sculpture recently unveiled in Oklahoma by the Choctaw to symbolize our kindred spirits. And I say “our” because I have always loved Native culture, and wear a silver feather pendant from a Native artist in Arizona like a talisman around my neck.

The Irish and the Choctaws have continued to honour this gesture through continued acts of generosity. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Irish people demonstrated their support by providing €2 million in aid to Native Americans severely affected by the crisis. Similarly, in 2018, former Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar announced a scholarship for Choctaw people to study in Ireland.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3zvq3vz8o

But it’s not just one or two acts of generosity, it’s not just the companion sculpture of feathers in County Cork, Ireland, this connection is an example of the purest form of altruism. It’s the opposite of selfishness. According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, altruism is a “willingness to do things that bring advantages to others, even if it results in disadvantage for yourself.”

Could you reach out to another with love and support, while suffering yourself, like the Choktaw? Dr Jim, my psychologist brother, said something to me the other day that stuck – “There are two ways of looking at things depending on your view of the world; they are the abundance vs scarcity model.” I had to sit with his reasoning for awhile. If you can take the balcony view, if you believe in the ‘greater good,’ your world view is that of abundance – you can appreciate the rain instead of fuming about a washed-out barbeque. You pick eggplants in your husband’s vegetable garden and imagine a new recipe for the evening’s meal. You can feel free to be creative, even fanciful.

You can donate money to one of the TN Three even if you know there’s no chance in hell a Democrat will be elected to the US Senate in this state. https://www.votegloriajohnson.com/ But you feel it in your bones that a woman, a smart compassionate woman, will be our next president.

You might even let your granddaughter weave fairy hair into your greying tresses!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Game Changer

August 27, 2024 by mountainmornings

Count the “I”s, not the “Lies,” Bill Clinton said.

One of so many moments that made me proud to be a Democrat, no, to be an American, last week watching the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Everyone I spoke to felt the exact same way; like we were turning a corner on hate and division, like we were righteously taking back the flag, standing up for working men and women, for unions, for civil rights. For once, I felt the urgency of a woman who knew exactly what was at stake in the coming months. Kamala Harris said,

“(Trump) plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions. Simply put, they are out of their minds.”

Unlike the Republicans, the DNC delivered a hopeful message for our future, and now we have to act because November is right around the corner. But what can we do exactly? In order to win, we Dems need a three point margin because of the electoral college, but we need to win BIGLY, by maybe five points! I’m no longer knocking on doors, and I hate making phone calls, but I can pick up a pen! WRITE! The Bride and Groom have already had a ‘write and sign letters to swing states party.’ You can sign up to write and send postcards here: https://turnoutpac.org/postcards/

You could also buy merch, and be your own personal billboard. I’ve got a VOTE tee shirt with the letters made out of books and rainbows and even a uterus – but that’s not good enough. I need one of those hats with the comma followed by a “La.” Or maybe even a camo cap? We do need to take back the symbols of freedom and democracy that the GOP co-opted, I want to hang an American flag by my front door and put up a Harris-Walz sign on the lawn! You know, next to the “Hate has no place in our neighborhood” sign.

Did you know that the Second Gentleman’s daughter, Ella Emhoff, has been ridiculed by Mr T’s followers? What those cult followers didn’t know is that Ella is an artist and a model, and if I’m reading her correctly, she could care less what they think.

Ms. Emhoff, a textile artist and knitwear designer, has become known for her style since she first grabbed national attention during the inauguration of President Biden in 2021 sporting an embellished plaid Miu Miu coat on the steps of the Capitol…. On the first night of the convention, Ms. Emhoff wore cream trousers and a drapey top from Helmut Lang topped with a camouflage hat with “Harris Walz” emblazoned on it in neon orange letters. The sold-out hat has become a popular piece of campaign merchandise in recent weeks. (She also posted photos from that evening, including a shot of Tim Walz’s children putting up bunny ear fingers behind their unknowing dad’s head during an interview with NBC’s Jacob Soboroff.)” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/22/style/ella-emhoff-dnc-harris.html

My first reaction was hooray, they’re not bashing Kamala Harris’ pantsuits. And my second reaction was how dare they go after Ella after Ann Coulter’s malicious remarks about Walz’ son Gus. I thought a candidate’s child was off-limits. I remember how Chelsea Clinton was maligned for her curly hair and braces, so when Ella talked about her step-mom coming into her life when she was 14, I could relate. I was a young teen when the Flapper married my stepfather, a Judge in our town. I was going from an only-child home into a birth family with five siblings and two step-siblings. Talk about culture shock.

The Bug celebrated her 12th birthday this past weekend. She’s entering the wonder years of adolescence and my mission as her Nana is to be a safe place to fall. We can always bake muffins and string jewelry over here.The Rocker and Aunt Kiki gave her Taylor Swift tickets, she had a spa day with all her friends at her house with all the skin products, and yesterday she scored the winning points in her school’s volleyball game! 7th Grade is looking pretty darn good so far.

And so is this election – last week was a game changer. Here are my Virgo Bimbies (kiddos in Italian)!

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Medical Musing

August 20, 2024 by mountainmornings

I remember when Great Grandma Ada broke my ribs.

We were in Target and she was newly arrived in Nashville; she was rolling along nicely on a motorized red shopping cart, heading towards shorts for Hudson. Suddenly, instead of going backwards, she plowed right into me. I found myself on the floor covered in clothes with red shirted people gathering and gawking. My chest hurt and a foot was aching too, but I managed to walk out of there and straight into an urgent care.

After looking at my chest Xray, the doctor apologized for not being able to prescribe more narcotics! The law had just changed in TN, and the government was trying to control the opioid epidemic by limiting the number of pills a physician could give his/her patient. It wasn’t the first time a doctor had apologized to me for some aspect of care gone wrong – a spinal tap done on my newborn, the path lab mess after an amniocentesis, the West Nile conjunctivitis diagnosis. You can see why I am a skeptical healthcare consumer.

I’ve been thinking about this since I read that two doctors were charged in Matthew Perry’s ketamine overdose death. DO NO HARM takes on new meaning when it pertains to drug addicts. Addiction has touched just about every family I know, including my own. For years we didn’t know where Bob’s middle brother was living, and by the time we intervened and got him into rehab it was too late. He left a couple of days later and died of an overdose just a month before the Rocker’s Bar Mitzvah. He was the sweetest of three brothers, but he was caught in the trap of our medical community with its rules and regs around methadone and a secret underbelly of drug dealers.

And btw, read Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Demon Copperhead” if you’d like to understand Appalachia and the scourge of drug addiction. JD Vance’s book doesn’t hold a candle to Demon.

The Bride told me that ketamine, on its own, would not usually result in death, that Perry’s death was most likely caused by being in a hot tub while also taking a cocktail of drugs including ketamine. Emergency physicians may use ketamine while doing surgical procedures. It supposedly produces a dissociative experience, or as my daughter demonstrated with a whirl of her arms, “The mind separates from the body.” Psychiatrists have started using the drug in treating depression. But why someone would think it was a good idea to abuse ketamine is beyond me, then again, I don’t have an addictive personality… unless you count shoe shopping.

In a combined public and private effort, we have made a dent in the numbers of drug overdoses in our country. By taking drug manufacturers to court, smarter foreign policy measures, enforcing policy at home by stressing treatment, and limiting a doctor’s ability to prescribe narcotics, and of course the availability of over-the-counter Narcan we may be turning a corner. We have life-saving Narcan nasal spray in our house, do you? Oh, and legalizing marijuana nationally would probably help as well.

The new data show overdose deaths involving opioids decreased from an estimated 84,181 in 2022 to 81,083 in 2023. While overdose deaths from synthetic opioids (primarily fentanyl) decreased in 2023 compared to 2022, cocaine and psychostimulants (like methamphetamine) increased.” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/20240515.htm

But this all came too late for my brother-in-law.

I spent an hour this past week getting an infusion of Reclast, a bone strengthening drug in the hospital. I sat in a plushy recliner and contemplated the beautiful, verdant landscape outside the picture windows. Except for the occasional bleep from the machine, it was blessedly quiet. Bob sat beside me reading his book on his phone, occasionally the nurse would come in to check on me. Medicare paid for this treatment…

Still, most insurers will not pay for treating the disease of addiction. We are a puritanical country and we expect people to “pull themselves up by their own boot straps.” But this would be like telling me to build my own bones, or telling a diabetic patient to watch what they eat. I read this morning that Matthew Perry paid $55,000 for 20 vials of ketamine. All of his enablers should be held accountable.

And maybe we should all learn to live with a little pain. Yesterday I went to the first Bug’s volleyball game of the season and got hit in the face with a ball during warm-up. My glasses went flying off and I found myself surrounded by kids asking me if I was alright. The Pumpkin and his friends sat in front of me for the rest of the game, my guardians against incoming fouls. Of course, I didn’t cry, until last night’s opening salvo for the DNC.

Also my pearl stringing for Kamala is coming along. Night Night DT

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »