MountainMornings

It’s raining this morning in Southern California. One can’t complain because the state has been experiencing six years of drought. In fact, the Rocker had us watch Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary film “Before the Flood” last night. It’s on Netflix and I highly recommend it. 

It’s about the astonishing rate of Climate Change our beloved planet is experiencing, and what steps we need to take immediately to stem the tide. To stop the tsunami toward damnation that H Bosch depicted in his 16th Century triptych “Garden of Earthly Delights.” http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=65670

And so we are ending our beautiful Thanksgiving week the way it began, driving during a deluge. We are grateful for this rain and the magnificent coastline just a few feet away. Yes the sea will continue to rise, but so shall we to its challenge. 

We are grateful for our family; for raising adult children who still want to hang out with us. For the Great Grandparents still living independently and with passion. 

For our Grandbabies – for their always astonishing love and free spirits! For our friends, near and far. And for you dear reader. You have been kind enough to lend me your ear all these years. We’ve been through quite a bit together; this started out with the Bride’s wedding and we are fast approaching the Rocker and Ms Cait’s big day. 

I am thankful for you. 

But before we head home, Bob and I will take a detour to my sister-in-law’s memorial in MN. Dr Jim’s wife, Anita, died suddenly after a devastating stroke right before Thanksgiving. They married when Jim returned from Vietnam in the early 1970s. 

He met his future bride while First Lieutenant Jim was studying at the Monterey Language School before his deployment. Anita was that rare California bird, native to Northern California, slender and sassy who always wore the boldest, shortest mini skirts with white gogo boots.

When he introduced her to his East Coast family, we were all dazzled. I remember thinking I was thankful Jim survived the war, but thought I would lose my brother forever to the kind of girl the Beach Boys immortalized. My sister Kay and I were sitting at a table outside a NYC cafe at twilight, I was sipping a Grand Marnier. 

We had arranged to meet them that night, and as she walked down Madison Avenue heads turned. A colorful exotic blonde bird of paradise had landed in our cement jungle. The smell of oranges has been forever associated with my handsome brother’s return alongside his beautiful West Coast bride. 

Anita was a designer, an artist who reluctantly left her Left Coast home to follow her husband to the arctic chill of Minneapolis. She was always opinionated, but soft spoken. She loved my brother fiercely, and she helped care for the Flapper in her old age with a sweet and calming kindness. I will always be thankful for her. 

May her legacy be an abundance of California sunshine with just the right amount of nourishing rain. Her love and laughter will continue through my brother, their daughter Lisa, her California nieces and nephews and my LA children. 

Here giraffes can graze in a garden that meets the ocean. After the memorial, Anita will be returning to her paradise. 

This morning I asked the Bride if this is the first Thanksgiving we won’t be together. She reminded me that when she was in Paris during college we were apart.  “Ah yes,” I said laughing, “but you had your brother!” 

And this year we have her brother!  We are in California with the Rocker and Ms Cait, and since the Groom couldn’t leave his new post, the Bride and her family will stay in Nashville. Our Big Chill group has been splintering lately too, lots of new grandbabies to welcome into the world. Congrats Al and MJ!

It’s been fun exploring the Gold Coast with Bob. Thinking aloud about retirement, after all it’s been all of two weeks so far. What would it be like to live among the dream weavers of Southern California? The climate is great, the fish is fresh, the people seem happy! But our grandbabies would be so far away.

So we play the If – Then game. If we live in Nashville, then Nana gets her heart’s desire. If we live in Santa Barbara, then Pop Bob gets to walk on the beach every day. 

Bob likes to say, “If my grandmother had balls, she’d be my grandfather.” Tacky I know,  he picked up that little ditty from his father, who liked to point out the stupidity of playing an “If – Then” game. Like for instance, whoever thought that IF Mr T ran for President…he might win?

Which brings me to the latest fiasco of newsworthiness – the controversy over a certain CNN news crawl. You know the header under talking pundits on a political show that’s trying to give the American people both sides of an argument. Only my side, which I might call “extremely liberal” and others may call “progressive” was pitted against the “alt right” sometimes called the “alt Reich.”

Never mind that the majority of citizens fall into a huge bell curve in the middle of those two extremes. We seem to have elected a President who David Duke endorsed, who settled a multimillion dollar lawsuit over his fake university, who is being charged for raping a 13 year old, and who thinks Breitbart is the news leader. Have you noticed that nobody’s talking about emails anymore. 

“If Jews are People”

That was the header under CNN while talking heads debated the pros and cons of their political pendulum. And just like Shakespeare might have a dream within a dream, the nightmare continued with the headline “CNN Sees Twitter Backlash Over If Jews are People Headline Crawl.” Like the only thing that went wrong here was the poor intern who typed in that chyron. Let’s all pile on social media shame shall we?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cnn-sees-backlash-jews-are-people-headline-chyron-949834

Because the writing has been on the wall this whole time. Mr T doesn’t like reporters unless he has them in his pocket. He loves the Twittersphere because he controls the message. Our very First Amendment is in peril people, because a despot has won the keys to our kingdom. Celebrity apprentices will rule with abandon. 

It’s not funny. It’s not Entertainment News anymore. Reality TV and the real media are merging into a dystopian future we should have seen coming. 

I asked Zoltar if it’s time to sew my gold jewelry into the hem of my jacket. He said, “Yes.”