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Pardon Me

December 3, 2024 by mountainmornings

There’s much ado about Hunter Biden’s pardon. One of the things I learned in Catholic School was to ‘put myself in someone else’s shoes.’ What if you were President Joe for a day – would you want to pardon your son with a history of drug and alcohol addiction who had turned his life around after a long political investigation? He lied on a gun form while high on crack cocaine and didn’t pay his taxes. OTOH, he didn’t intimidate witnesses or try to overthrow the government. So, YES, I’d pardon my son.

Then again, whenever I bump into someone in a crowd, I usually say, “Pardon me.” So I’m an equal opportunity pardoner.

It’s a habit I picked up when I was first living in Boston, Massachusetts in the 60s, and continued while living in the Berkshires. Back in NJ the usual retort was a quick, “Sorry,” but not for me. Maybe my old Catholic school upbringing was to blame; how many times had I blurted out in confession, “Pardon me Father….?” It just seemed a bit more dignified, maybe even a little royal, to pardon people. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the word PARDON means to FORGIVE:

“to forgive someone for something they have said or done. This word is often used in polite expressions…. If someone who has committed a crime is pardoned, that person is officially forgiven and their punishment is stopped:“

Forgive me if i see nothing polite about the politics of this week’s Presidential pardon of Joe Biden’s son Hunter on gun and tax evasion issues is nothing new.

In fact, George Washington dismissed charges in 1795 against two Western Pennsylvania farmer/rebels, John Mitchell and Philip Weigel, involved in the Whiskey Rebellion! It would seem prescient that our young nation’s first crisis was a result of Hamilton imposing a tax on a domestic product that was grown and manufactured on the frontier – whiskey. The farmers refused to pay the tax and the resulting violent conflict was framed as a Federalist vs Anti-Federalist issue. Indeed, when Thomas Jefferson was elected President he repealed the Whiskey Tax!

“Residents viewed this tax as yet another instance of unfair policies dictated by the eastern elite that negatively affected American citizens on the frontier.” https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/whiskey-rebellion

Let’s jump ahead, past Confederate and Jimmy Hoffa pardons, to the one I remember in September, 1974. I don’t remember where I was at the time, but I do remember the feeling. Like our nation had gone through so much pain with the Watergate hearings and someone had to pay for trying to interfere with our election. When Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon I felt betrayed, not just because of his covert shenanigans, but because he had lied about stopping the war in Vietnam. I actually hated that man!

Deep down I knew that Ford was right by not being vindictive and preemptively saving us from a long trial. After all, Nixon resigned.

Today we have a twice impeached, convicted felon about to re-enter the White House. Mr T never thought to give us the courtesy of resigning, instead he sat idly by while insurrectionists attacked the Capitol. He wanted his Vice-President to overturn the will of the People. And one of his most controversial pardons was issued to his Son-in-Law’s father, Charles Kushner in 2020 after being convicted of “… tax fraud, witness tampering and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.”

Just knowing that one of Mr T’s first acts as President may be to pardon the Jan 6th rioters makes me sick. But like the BBC once said, one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. It’s just that ever since a hanging chad in FL and a 5-4 Supreme Court vote stopped the five week fight in 2000 of Al Gore vs George Bush, I’ve been disenchanted with our Electoral College. Gore won the popular vote by more than a half million votes. I wonder where we would be now if Gore had been elected when 9/11 happened?

My point is, Democrats didn’t storm the Hill and defecate in the halls of Congress.

My idea of ‘freedom’ certainly differs from the MAGA crowd. They want to be free of government interference, but the funny thing is so do we. We don’t want legislators in our doctors’ offices and they don’t want them in their business either. We also don’t want religion in our public schools or censorship in our libraries, conversely MAGA wants more God in our public places and they love pulling books off shelves.

I’m nostalgic for the good ole days when Washington DC could function, when deals got done and a consensus was reached. When senators went out to lunch together and congressmen and women played baseball together. When truth and trust were collective values. Pardon me for thinking we might return to a more congenial, centrist government eventually – a time when the farmers and the cowboys, the coastal elites and the working class middle of the country could be friends.

Here is the Bride’s Thanksgiving American pie!

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Talking Turkey

November 26, 2024 by mountainmornings

I’ve been accused of falling to avoid cooking for Thanksgiving; it is always said jokingly, and I usually laugh along. But I’m missing the whole chopping and shopping and planning phase because for me it’s all about the sides and the table decor! The Bride’s Virginia in-Laws have already arrived and will be picking up the slack, but she has tasked us with cooking the turkey. There is a cute little Butterball defrosting in our refrigerator, and today we will bake a loaf of corn bread for the stuffing. This is our traditional recipe, classic corn bread stuffing cooked in the bird and not in a casserole dish.

My left hand is pretty free these days, the splint goes on only when I’m outside or around children and dogs. You can barely see the surgery scar. My right hand has to wear the splint all the time for the next three weeks. I’m not supposed to lift anything or exert any force on any one hand – so trying to pull the microwave door open was a mistake. I can push down the seatbelt to unhitch, but I can’t push it in. I feel like Goldilocks, forever looking for that sweet spot between comfort and pain.

My plan is to have Bob chop up all the vegetables for the stuffing the night before and Thanksgiving morning we’ll begin – I will pick parsley and sage in the garden, and I will be able to crumble the bread into the sauteed mirepoix. In fact, this will be hand therapy for me! But Bob will have the heavy lifting; he’ll be brining the bird and assembling the stuffing and getting ole Tom into the oven. Which is fine with me. The Bride is in her happy place baking up a storm of pies and biscuits.

I was invited to see Wicked last weekend with the Bug and I couldn’t resist. Three generations at the movies with candy and it was a marvelous escape, the seats even reclined! Still, it was hard to feel engaged, my head was stuck in its Aspen collar looking straight ahead so I couldn’t gauge the Bug’s reactions. Every now and then I’d throw my splint across her body and I never knew whose hand I was holding. But we all loved it, the costumes, the singing, the fantasy of it all.

I held my box of Goobers with my right hand and carefully picked out one nut at a time with my left – hand therapy with rewards!

On the way home I asked the Bug if she ever felt different. Like Elphaba, did she ever feel the need to defend herself? I said that I always felt different as a child: my last name was different than my foster parents; I had blazing red hair and I wanted black hair; plus I had the whole two mother, two separate families thing. She thought about it for awhile.

“Well Nana, I really don’t feel that different,” the Bug said.

And I felt a calmness seep into the car because we talked about her girl friends and her height and all the tween drama that’s happening. And I understood that this one has a bit of her Grandma Ada’s energy – a willingness to help, a compassionate perspective. It’s almost like the Bride’s yoga study and Ada’s counseling skills found their match in this next generation. I know these are the Wonder Years, and we have high school on the horizon next year, but dear God please keep this child safe.

And thank you for not killing me when I slid into the end table! Here is my left hand at occupational therapy… and Happy Thanksgiving All Y’All!

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Fingers OUT

November 19, 2024 by mountainmornings

The past two weeks have been surreal. One moment I’m toiling away happily at the NYTimes Strands puzzle, and the next I’m laying flat out on the floor. Time and bones fractured. I like to blame things for my maladies – the mosquito for West Nile, the coughing stranger on a plane to Nice for Covid. But this time, I can only blame myself. It was early morning, I was holding my phone and rushing to the door to corral an escaped Little Emperor when my Ugg slipper caught on the rug.

The day before the election I spent in my daughter’s ER. That whole day went by in a blur of x-rays and a neck MRI. The spine NP wanted to admit me, but the neurosurgeon showed up and discharged me into the care of two ER docs! The next morning I woke to the election results – “President Elect Donald Trump.” My cervical collar, my splinted hands, was this all a nightmare? Was I still dreaming? I didn’t want to believe the news and so I told myself that I’d wait until all the votes were counted. Besides, I was due in surgery for my left hand, no coffee no food just Gatorade. I turned off the TV. I couldn’t handle (get it, handle) anything other than the next step in my recovery.

We had to wait a week for repeat scans, thankfully I wouldn’t need neck surgery.

Denial is a powerful tool. Bob would not listen to any election post-mortems, and our daughter is following suit. I’m not willing to go into the weeds of WHY Kamala lost – numbers, ethnicity, socio-economic standing. But this is who we are… this is who we Americans are and where we are right now. The Bride helped me to understand this on a cellular level one night early on when I was going out of my mind with panic, feeling choked by the C-collar and imprisoned by pain. She talked me through in her physician/yoga voice, telling me to embrace my suffering because this is where I am right now... right now… but not forever.

We are still on a news sabbatical, watching Netflix and The First Ladies on PBS, walking outside for exercise whenever possible. I have the best neighbors, delivering the most delicious soups, breads and treats and of course the Bride shows up every day mainly to support her father who has been the real hero in this drama. Along with my left hand, my right wrist is also fractured so Bob right now is both of my hands.

If you recall, he had to wear a C collar for months after his neck surgery that resulted in a cerebellar stroke and I now have a new respect for his strength and resilience. If all goes well, I should be out of my ‘cone of shame’ by mid-December. Meanwhile, my emotions have run the gamut from self-loathing for wearing fancy lug-soled Ugg slippers, to such incredible gratitude for my network of friends and family.

I heard one interview on CNN of a middle-aged couple who came here illegally from Mexico and were granted asylum under Reagan. Their adult children were living the American dream – college educated, good jobs etc. when the reporter asked them why they voted for T they said, “Because these immigrants are criminals!” Can you guess where they get their news?

We Democrats are all suffering through the stages of a collective grief; but my reality right now is singular. I am grieving the loss of my youth when I could slide into second base at Camp St Joseph with ease. I remember vividly twirling around on my knees and sweeping the floor with my hands at the Martha Graham Dance Studio. My body has betrayed me and now my country seems to be hell bent on doing the same.

The only other time my body wouldn’t cooperate with my brain was when we were trying to have baby number two. I had to learn to let go, I had to become the trapeze artist and trust in the safety net beneath me. The Rocker’s birth was a miracle and I have future grandbabies to consider, I need to practice dancing to Adelaide’s lament. “I love you a bushel and a peck you bet your pretty neck I do.”

We took the Harris-Walz signs off our yard but kept the American flag flying on the porch. You can still love your country even when it seems to be slipping away from its foundation right now. I can remove the left splint and move all my fingers so I decided to get a manicure – a rare luxury for me. But we must practice gratitude this Thanksgiving and every single day. Now more than ever.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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!

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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.

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