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Posts Tagged ‘history’

Banning Books and Things

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I invited the Love Bug to our local artsy cinema this past weekend to see the documentary, “The Librarians.” Book bans are nothing new, Ray Bradbury wrote about burning books in Fahrenheit 451 during the McCarthy era. But in this movie, in 2025, we learn how an ‘anti-woke’ cabal of parents is trying to criminalize school librarians!

 The film “…focuses on actions in Florida, New Jersey, Louisiana and Texas, where a list of 850 titles compiled in 2021 by State Representative Matt Krause, Republican of Texas, was used to cull the stacks. Nationwide, the group Moms for Liberty packs school boards with candidates who wield Scripture in the name of child safety. In one dumbfounding instance, the Bible is cited as the ultimate standard for nonfiction writing.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/movies/the-librarians-review.html?unlocked_article_code=1.7E8.a3Nf.WoFe1YRfvEHw&smid=url-share

When I first started covering school board meetings for our local newspaper in NJ, I was disillusioned. The meetings were public, yet our community didn’t show up. The school board members had been there for a very long time, in fact not one had a child in the school system. Granted the meetings ran late and parents in this NYC suburb didn’t have time to sit through lengthy discussions on curriculum. But this indifference prompted me to run in the next election for the board, and surprise surprise I won.

Some states appoint their members, while others leave it up to the people. Several states, including Tennessee, use a mix of appointed and elected members. The Bug asked me who appoints these people, which got me thinking. Obviously, if your Governor and or legislators are appointing school board members, the process is inherently political. I had never thought about this before; after all, why dig deeply into our bedrock educational system?

In NJ, school board members are not compensated for their time – in TN they are. I considered my time on the board as public service.

The Constitution doesn’t exactly guarantee a free K-12 education but the 14th Amendment requires “equal protection of the laws” with a due process clause. It’s why Title IX was passed giving girls’ sports programs parity with the boys! This piecemeal approach however, requiring equal protection and due process laws to every citizen, gets chopped up depending on a number of variables: your state and specific school district; and your rural (white) vs urban (brown) tax revenue. Does this sound like an equal or efficient system?

“An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” If Tom Jefferson didn’t say this exactly, he should have!

The Bride asked her daughter what she thought of The Librarians. Her answer – they banned the graphic novel of Anne Frank because of a picture of her in a garden with statues! And Maus, because the mice were naked! Even the Pumpkin was appalled. We talked about my time working with the school librarian at her Mother’s high school after 9/11, and how much I enjoyed it. But that was before Moms for Liberty stormed sleepy school board meetings demanding certain books be pulled from shelves.

What is most troubling, many school districts are pulling books in anticipation of an edict. This is the very essence of Totalitarianism. Create fear, harbor doubt. “Since July 2021, our Index records 22,810 cases of book bans across 45 states and 451 public school districts.” https://pen.org/report/the-normalization-of-book-banning/

This school year alone has seen 6,870 instances of school book bans. If you don’t want your child to have access to age-appropriate books dealing with LGBTQ subjects, like two male penguins who adopted a chick, then let your kids’ teachers know. You can opt them out of sex education right? Keep them in the dark about our country’s history of racism and sexism. Or send them to private Christian schools, or homeschool.

But don’t bring your White Christian Nationalism into the public arena, your MAGA ideology into our school system and act like Joan of Arc. This is me at my drag queen hairstylist’s salon.

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“A Very Radical Person”

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Today’s the day!

Because TN’s Representative R-Mark Green decided to run for office and then promptly give up his seat, our extremely gerrymandered Nashville district is holding a special election. Yes, last year at this time a scandal broke out about Green and he decided not to run, but Mr T called the former Army surgeon and convinced him to run again. After all, what’s a little womanizing between friends?

“Camilla Green, the wife of Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Green, texted a group of Congress members to warn them against the evils of politics, accusing Green of being corrupted by D.C. and having an affair with a woman 27 years younger than him. The scandal, which comes less than a month after Green filed for divorce, raises questions about the Tennessee representative’s brand as a pro-family conservative, including from his own daughter.” https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/mark-green-affair-daughter/article_6a06fb0c-7440-11ef-9875-670dc401c023.html

And naturally, he won! Then he quit.

Like most politicians, he had more money to make in the private sector and also, he’d have to pay for a messy divorce right? So now, in the middle of a rainy cold snap and holiday shopping, Nashvillians are being asked to vote again – for the Democratic candidate, Aftyn Behn, who is being called a “very radical person” all over the media, or the Republican West Point graduate and combat veteran, Matt Van Epps who would like to keep the GOP’s majority in the House. He was hobnobbing with Marcia Blackburn out in Franklin yesterday.

“The crowd milling around the sleek multimillion-dollar barn full of gleaming vintage cars was already a snapshot of the Republican elite in Tennessee. There were donors, state representatives, five members of Congress, the governor and the candidate for the state’s House special election on Tuesday, Matt Van Epps. Then Speaker Mike Johnson, who flew in from Washington early Monday, called President Trump and put his phone on speaker…“They like to talk about affordability,” Trump said in the Monday evening tele-rally for Van Epps. “To them it’s just a con job, it’s just a word.”

“The whole world is watching Tennessee right now, and they’re watching your district,” Mr. Trump said,…” NYTimes

Well Lordy! Seems our president has nothing better to do than to call a candidate in the state of Tennessee in a district he won by over 20 points! More than $1.6 million from the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC has been poured into this race in the last few weeks. They must be running scared about this particular radical person!

I mean Behn is talking about affordability and bringing health care costs down while VanEpp is being funded by hedge fund billionaires and special interest groups to insure they get their tax cuts. You can’t fool all the people all the time Mr T, your credibility is starting to crumble with your base. Killing people on boats off Venezuela may be your kryptonite. You are running the biggest con ever on the American people. Whether we win or lose by a few percentage points here in TN, you Mr President are a lame duck.

If Behn’s radical left agenda supports voting rights, reproductive freedom, clean air and water, equality and education I’m all in. When an administration changes the name of the DOD to the Department of War and closes the Department of Education, I believe we can all see through their extremist ideology.

I’ll be teaching the twins a new take on an old song this Hanukkah (which starts early this year on December 14) when we sing, “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.” We’ll be singing “If you’re radical and you know it clap your hands.” Here’s a pic from the Thanksgiving table, set with Grandma Ada’s china, as we were sitting down with the Groom’s parents. The Bride really knows how to throw a party!

Now get out and VOTE Nashville!

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Common Sense

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 11, 2025| 2 Comments »

November is a chilly month. There were snowflakes floating by our windows here in Nashville yesterday. The Pumpkin is the only family member, besides me of course, who likes the frigid temps. He’s coming off a winning weekend, where his team placed well in its Quiz Bowl competition. After all, this is his birthday month, 11 years old! And today is 11/11… The last of our string of Fall birthdays. His friends made gooey s’mores in the backyard, (mostly boys but also 4 girls, which did my heart good) followed by a scary movie.

We’re all looking forward to the release of the new Ken Burns’ documentary, “The American Revolution.” set to premiere November, 16th on PBS, but as always we will stream it on Passports. Flying in the face of this administration’s directive against DEI initiatives, Burns looks at our origin story from many points of view. And it seems there was not just one turning point that set us on our path to independence, but a constellation of events – including a little pamphlet called “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. Written 6 months before the Declaration of Independence, he convinces the people that breaking with the British Parliament is not enough.

We had to renounce the KING.

““We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” he promises at the end. In the 80-odd pages in between, Common Sense depicts “liberty and security” as the “end of government,” outlines a democratic one calculated to advance “the greatest sum of individual happiness with the least national expense,” and assures readers that, for such a cause, Americans could prevail against all the force that Britain could muster. Life, liberty, and happiness stand as founding ideals here much as they would in the Declaration of Independence six months later. “The will of the king is as much the law of the land in Britain as in France,” Paine writes in defiance of George III. “In America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King.” This became the animating spirit of 1776; it is why that year still matters.” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/american-revolution-1776-what-changed/684579/?gift=MZkyOCULmn5OA_9_ikIP-7yCQfhCLH_iVBq2ImNMOYc&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

“No Crown. No Throne. NO KINGS.”

When I heard the Gov of California, Gavin Newsom, say this after Prop 50 was passed and the Democrats swept up the last election handily, I felt it in my gut. It became a mantra, a meme. Certainly this would be a turning a point in our national nightmare. NJ elected Mikie Sherrill and Virginia elected Abigail Spanberger, surely Aftyn Behn will be next in TN? The Flapper said things happen in threes, but we’ll have to wait until Dec 2nd, a strange time for an important TN election – although dear Nashville readers, early voting starts tomorrow!

So why, riding high on the wave of this victory, did 8 Democratic Senators surrender over the weekend to a PROMISE from the most untrustworthy GOP in history? A party trying to downplay a violent insurrection with its leader bribing universities, major media (including the BBC), and law firms because…. why? He doesn’t like them? He’s vindictive? Or is it just that Mr T is lining his pockets while running the most corrupt, mob-like administration since Reconstruction. All while keeping the Epstein files under wrap.

Aunt Kiki said, “We need a new pamphlet,” on common sense. Let’s hope America watches “The American Revolution” this month. Maybe it will wake up a part of the MAGA folks who are about to witness their healthcare costs rise exponentially. Life, liberty and happiness are hanging on: one election at a time; one documentary at a time.

Here we are at High Tea at The Fairmont Empress in British Columbia.

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Pro Forma

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on January 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

As I watched VP Kamala Harris certify all the votes yesterday, I felt sick to my stomach. She was standing while the Speaker of the House was sitting, was this normal? People were applauding. And all I could see were the interns and clerks, the young people who have to haul and count and manage the certification of Trump’s election. No one objected to the results; it was done the way it has always been done, a pro forma procedure, with a few exceptions.

I wondered how many of the legislators and their staff were there on the House floor, four years ago, when they had to run for their lives from an angry insurrectionist mob.

I’ve felt betrayed and defeated before. I think about my very first vote for president in 1968 for Eugene McCarthy. I was a college student living in Boston, and it was a tumultuous time. Our leaders had been assassinated that same year, first Martin and then Bobby. We wanted the War in Vietnam to end, and Richard Nixon had promised to do just that. But he was a duplicitous, disingenuous politician. Only the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts cast all their votes for McCarthy! The only state in the Union to see through Nixon’s lies.

Serendipitously, I happened to be reading Eric Larson’s, “The Demon of Unrest” in California last week. I’d rather not carry paper books in my luggage, and so I’m left to catch up with certain books on my iPad’s Kindle App. I found myself settling back into Civil War history with Larson’s incredible narrative of the time just before Lincoln’s election to the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A period of just five months! All the intrigue, all the rebel-rousing, all the back room negotiating and the fear. The unbridled fear that a Southern way of life, based on slavery, was about to be extinguished.

” —a period marked by tragic errors and miscommunications, enflamed egos and craven ambitions, personal tragedies and betrayals. Lincoln himself wrote that the trials of these five months were ‘so great that, could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”

It was pro forma for congressmen to carry pistols to the floor, and Larson tells us that if they didn’t carry one, they carried two! President Buchanan, Lincoln’s predecessor, was not just a lame duck, he was the Neville Chamberlain of his time trying to avoid the tornado heading straight for his administration. State after state would secede from the Union, and there reading on a deck in sunny California, I understood the fear, the demonic fear of losing something so fundamental. Like losing the civil rights my ancestors fought for; it’s an existential threat.

In the past few months I’ve been focused on my recovery and not on the fact that Mr T was re-elected. And just as my bones are healing, my psyche is coming to terms with the inevitable inauguration. We are heading into a bleak political horror show, just as a bitter, cold week descends on us here in Nashville.

I’ve started making soup again, all the washing and chopping are good therapy for my hands. These hands must get strong to hold twins! My friend Les brought me cranberry muffins yesterday and while Bob headed over to the Bride’s house to help hang some floating shelves, we got to catch up. Her son went back to college and her husband, a pediatrician, went back to his office. I thanked her for watering my plants while we were away, and leaving us a warm pot of black-eyed peas for New Year’s Eve.

We certainly need all the luck we can muster for the next four years. And ALL the Legos!

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Hands Free

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on December 17, 2024| 4 Comments »

Yesterday my wrist splint came off so I’m hands free! Still doing PT but feeling lighter, like a bobble head doll stuck in a cage and not so much a soft shell crab.

To celebrate, I made the mistake of watching Rachel Maddow last night with Bob. It was either that or the Menendez Brothers’ story on Netflix. She was all about the OLIGARCHS, a word I thought was Russian; but actually Aristotle first used the term in relation to a coercive, oppressive rule by the rich, as opposed to an aristocracy. Its modern day usage centers on the corrupt control of government after the fall of the Soviet Union by extremely wealthy citizens.

“…one of a small group of powerful people who control a country or an industry.”

And what Maddow was saying last night was wake up and smell what’s happening right now in our country. We saw Elon Musk attached at the hip to Mr T, basically buying his way into political influence at a time when legislators are about to pass a bill about collecting (or NOT collecting) data on driverless cars, mostly Teslas. Maddow showed footage of a full self-driving (FSD) Tesla that stopped short in a tunnel causing a nine car pile-up. One FSD Tesla went around a stopped school bus and plowed into a child. There have been at least 13 fatal accidents since this hands-free feature debuted on Thanksgiving Day 2022.

I was reminded of the ability of gun lobbyists to keep the NIH from collecting data on gun deaths.

But for my own sanity, I prefer to think of all the things I can do now with my own two hands: I can knit, I can wash my own hair, I can open some bottles, and brushing my teeth is a lot easier! Maybe I should try flossing? I won’t be able to drive for six months but that’s because of my neck – another month in the C collar with no sudden twists or turns for me.

Maddow introduced a Yale Professor of History last night, Timothy Snyder, to discuss our current state of affairs. His current book, “On Freedom,” follows a seminal work about oligarchs titled, “On Tyranny,” and attempts to deliver strategies for democracies to avoid authoritarianism. He told us we must not keep looking back, but instead hold the GOP accountable each and every day for their twisted policies; you know like separation of families at the border.

“…he identifies five key determinants of a truly free society – and it seems highly appropriate that those tenets can be counted on the fingers of one definitely raised fist. Each one leads to the next. The foundation is sovereignty (not the resolve of narrow nationalists but the creation of political conditions in which individuals are safe and enabled to make meaningful choices about their lives, underwritten by empathy). That in turn leads to “unpredictability”, the freedom to behave in ways that authority (and algorithms) cannot control; and mobility (the possibility for young people, in particular, to “break free of the structures (and people) that allowed them to become [sovereign]”. That is only possible with the freedom of “factuality” (“the grip on the world that allows us to challenge it” – Snyder makes a particularly impassioned argument about the devastating effect of local news deserts on democracy); and finally, “solidarity”, the recognition that these freedoms are not just for the privileged 0.1%, but for everyone.” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/sep/23/on-freedom-by-timothy-snyder-review-an-essential-manifesto-for-change

So I am 2/3 free at the moment with just an Aspen aka Cervical Collar on my neck. I want to stay optimistic, I’m determined to keep typing, to keep you informed of my family foibles and all the while shine a light on our paradoxical politics. Merry Everything Everyone!

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Olympic Dreams

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2024| Leave a Comment »

It was forty years ago in LA, the Olympics that is, when we were living in the Berkshires and I was about to give birth to the Rocker. We lived in a farmhouse on the outskirts of a bird sanctuary. Idyllic and terrifyingly beautiful, surrounded by cardinals, chickadees and grouse, there was a dairy farm up the road. I had picked the date of his birth, a repeat C-section was scheduled; Reagan was president, I remember watching the Olympics live while nursing my newborn baby boy.

“Synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics debuted in Los Angeles as Olympic events, as did wind surfing.”

There is a picture of us at the Bris, tall gladiolus of every color stood guard while friends gathered. Two rabbis came and Grandma Ada was there. She would drive four hours from NJ, always bringing food, “Did you eat?” and a cousin or two. We loved to sit on the swing in the big screened-in porch; the bassinet was on that porch because babies need fresh air. I looked so young, so peaceful. Or maybe I was just exhausted.

“John Williams composed the theme for the Olympiad, “Los Angeles Olympic Theme” later also known as “Olympic Fanfare and Theme“. This piece won a Grammy for Williams and became one of the most well-known musical themes of the Olympic Games…”

I’ve just returned from LA, from visiting the Rocker and Aunt Kiki. My baby grew up to be a talented musician and composer. His company debuted two new trailers while I was there – one for a movie and one for an Apple series. I told them about the Woodstock themed 40th birthday party I’d planned for Bob’s big day, and we talked about my son’s generation – listening to Kurt Cobain, learning to design and create websites. Somewhere between Gen X and the Millennial Generation, the Rocker is a Xennial, a unique subset.

“You have a childhood, youth, and adolescence free of having to worry about social media posts and mobile phones. … We learned to consume media and came of age before there was Facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and all these things where you still watch the evening news or read the newspaper.” https://www.bos.com/inspired/xennials-what-you-need-to-know-about-this-micro-generation/

Their California home is like a tree house, perched on a hill with lush tropical plants. We watched the Paris Olympic skateboarding finals on Peacock, a streaming platform. I thought about my son doing tricks on a skateboard, playing rollerblade hockey, moving effortlessly through my dreams. He is tall and lanky like my brothers, Po the Cat drapes herself along his legs while we critique the athletes. And we cooked and played together in the kitchen to fantastical music Kiki curated. My baby is turning 40.

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EMTALA

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on January 9, 2024| 5 Comments »

Happy New Year to you! We’ve been getting off to a good start this year. There are no resolutions to feel guilty about – “I am enough” may be my next best mantra. The Bride and Groom have returned unscathed and refreshed from a trip to New Zealand and Australia with the Grands. And the Rocker and Aunt Cait returned from the East Coast, totally missing that rogue wave in Cali. And if you’re wondering what book is on my 2024 nightstand, it’s a nonfictional look back at the Golden Age of abortion.

I’m not talking about the 60s. I’m currently reading “MADAME RESTELL: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist,” by Jennifer Wright. Madame Restell, who lived and worked in the mid-1800s, would advertise her services in all the New York newspapers. She had learned to compound a pill to regulate the menses with a mixture of essential oils and paint thinner. And if that didn’t work, for $100 she could terminate the pregnancy with a whalebone. Surprisingly, her patients lived! But male doctors at the time, who were still using leeches, were threatened by her success and fame.

Madame Restell was not a surgeon, in fact she wasn’t even French. She was an immigrant, a widowed mother from Britain who didn’t want to go into service for a wealthy family (and thereby have to give or sell her child away) or become a prostitute, often the only two choices of the day for women alone. She was an entrepreneur who wasn’t afraid to flaunt her wealth with a carriage decked out in the finest livery. The moral crusaders of the day found such arrogance and lack of shame intolerable. And so Restell found herself in court often, even serving a year in Blackwell Island’s notorious prison.

Ah, the good old days of a medical procedure that is as old as the oldest profession. And since SCOTUS overturned Roe, physicians in some cases are having to reevaluate their care of pregnant women. In other words, The Bride, who is practicing Emergency Medicine in a red state, may have to choose between saving a woman’s life and being exposed to liability, including criminal charges and loss of license. How could that be true? Enter “EMTALA;” a federal law that was passed in 1986 and is the bedrock for Emergency Medicine physicians everywhere. Surely this law would save my daughter from criminal prosecution?

EMTALA is short for the “Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.” Think about it, most doctors in their offices require insurance or payment up front before your appointment; this law requires ER doctors to treat everyone and anyone who walks through their doors – or rides through on a stretcher – regardless of their ability to pay. Ever since the Bride was a young girl, EMTALA has been the law of the land, just like Roe v Wade. ER docs are quick thinking, fast acting specialists who are not willing to wait for a team of lawyers or administrators to decide if a patient is worth saving because she happens to be pregnant!

SCOTUS is scheduled to rule on this “contradiction” in April… I refuse to hold my breath. Texas has already taken the lead in banning emergency abortions, so sorry, if you find yourself carrying an ectopic pregnancy in TX. Your state has sentenced you to a death penalty already if something should go wrong.

“In the early years of Madame Restell’s business, abortion was classed only as a misdemeanor if performed before quickening, around 20 weeks. Over time, the punishments grew, along with the risks. Madame Restell advertised not just her services but her belief in their necessity. Lifting passages from the social reformer Robert Dale Owen, she likened abortion and contraception to a lightning rod — an invention that was “unnatural,” perhaps, but sensible and lifesaving. She published letters from grateful clients, who proclaimed, “God bless you dear madam, you have taken off the primal curse denounced upon Mother Eve in Eden.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/28/books/review/madame-restell-by-jennifer-wright.html

Lightening rod indeed, from the 19th to the 21st Century and women are still left dying by the hands of red legislators. Today, a third of our country, religious zealots for the most part, because of certain SCOTUS selections, may get their way. It’s not enough for them to ban abortions and outlaw morning after pills as if it were the early 20th Century, now the GOP wants to prosecute the physicians. It’s not just the Ob-Gyns, it’s the ER doctors who are being asked to violate their Hippocratic Oath, and EMTALA.

Here is a throwback to the 80s with my little Bride in her Daddy’s ER.

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A Saintly Endeavor

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on December 17, 2021| 2 Comments »

My Catholic school background leaves me baffled.

Memories come and go, but feelings remain and for me, boredom was predominant. Memorizing prayers and counting bricks in the building across the street filled my days, punctuated by feelings of humiliation. Nuns stood guard over desks with arms folded under their cassocks. They were prepared to smack a ruler behind a girl’s knee for chewing gum, or pull the small hairs at the back of a boy’s head for launching paper airplanes. Once I had to stand in a corner, with my back to the class, for speaking to a boy.

It’s no wonder when the time came to pick out my very own saint’s name for Confirmation, I chose Dolores – Our Lady of Sorrows, patron saint of the suffering.

But this isn’t a story about me… This week Bob, my newly-discovered-retired MD-social butterfly, attended a ceremony outside Germantown’s Catholic Church to dedicate its newly restored steeple. The Assumption Church, built in 1845, was severely damaged during the March 2020 tornado; it lost many stained glass windows and roofs and needed major structural repairs. Since then, every time I drive by the church and the rectory, I’m struck by another glittery new copper gutter or roofline.

Finally the repairs have been completed! Rising many stories above the red brick, Southern Victorian homes of our neighborhood, the steeple was replaced to the sound of cheers and bagpipes. Most surprising to Bob, everybody got down on their knees in the street to pray!

“The steeple exists to point to God to remind us, you know, God is in his heavens. And then really the purpose of a steeple is to support a cross. And the cross now is going back up over Germantown and so that for us is very important.”

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/a-symbol-of-hope-nashville-catholic-church-restores-steeple-after-tornadoes

“Do you know anything about relics?” Bob asked me when he returned.

I tried to look knowledgable. “Sure,” I said. “It’s like a toenail of a saint.” Of course it might be a piece of cloth the saint actually wore too. Then Bob was happy to report that there is a third level of reliquary – something the saint touched!

“Like the bed Washington may have slept in?” I chimed.

It turns out that the cross that was hoisted above the church’s new steeple holds a First Class relic from St Roch! It’s a piece of his bone! Now if that didn’t get my old Catholic juices churning. I’d never heard of this Roch, and so some digging googling was required. Born in Montpelier, France (1348 – 1379), St Roch is the patron Saint of many things, but first and foremost it’s PLAGUES!!!

The story goes that he was born into money, the son of a governor, but set out for Rome as a poor confessor during an epidemic of the Bubonic Plague. Supposedly, he would make the sign of the cross over people suffering and they would miraculously recover. He survived the “Black Death” himself and went into prisons and public hospitals to minister to the sick; Roch was known to casually lift his pants leg up to show his scarred “buboes.” Which is why some of his statues look vaguely naughty…

And even though Roch is also the patron of dogs and Single Men, I refuse to think the worst! Just as we are ready to bid adieu to Covid, Omicron sweeps in during this festive season. Just as our children and Grands are being vaccinated, we are warned of a January surge in cases and deaths. I don’t know about you, but if praying to a piece of bone in a cross up the street might help end this pandemic, I’m all in.

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Depression or Depressed

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, journal, Memoir, tagged , , , , , , , on August 29, 2020| 5 Comments »

You just can’t make this stuff up. Thanks Ana Navarro-Cardenas for reminding me of last week’s highlights cause you know, I didn’t watch the RNC rally at the White House this week.

  • “Bannon indicted for swindling Trump’s base
  • Trump ordered to pay Stormy’s legal fees
  • Trump’s niece recorded the sister saying he’s a cruel, phony, liar
  • Conway Family saga (see previous post)
  • Now, Jerry Falwell says his wife had an affair w/the pool boy (while he watched)”

And just to cap this wonderful week off, I managed to lift a very heavy box of paint – don’t ask – and now even my elbows are hurting. Lest I forget, yesterday was yet another Tornado Warning complete with sirens. If this pandemic/political/hurricane season isn’t depressing enough, I thought you’d like to hear the rest of the Flapper’s essay on the Great Depression!

To recap – It was 1935, my Mother put yellow food coloring in Crisco and called it butter. My Father was making $7 a week!

“Clothes were hard to come by, and each of my children had only two pairs of shoes, one for the wintertime and one for the summertime (and that was during a good year). I made a schedule of household chores for me to do all day. First, I would feed my children, and send Shirley and Brian off to school.

Then on Mondays, I would do the laundry (by hand on a washboard, since we had no washing machine). and hang it out to dry on the line. On Tuesdays I would iron the clothes. Wednesdays I’d clean the upstairs of the house, and Thursdays the downstairs. Fridays, I would bake for the weekend and do any shopping that needed to be done. Saturdays were my only free days, and Sundays we’d all go to church and our relatives would come over for dinner and a good game of cards.

On March 4, 1933 Franklin D Roosevelt became President! He was the answer to the prayers of the people, and the best president this country has ever had. Even to this day, there is a picture of him hanging in my kitchen, right next to the picture of Jesus Christ. I do not like to imagine what would have happened had it not been for President Roosevelt.

In 1935 Bob finally got a better paying job – $25 a week!! However it was in Jamestown, New York, so he had to move out there.It cost him $10 to rent a room and buy food etc. Back home in Scranton, we received $15 a week. A BIG improvement from the $7 we had been getting. In April, when I had my son Michael, Bob was not able to come home to see him. Soon after his birth however, my husband luckily found an even better paying job… and it was at home in Scranton! We were overjoyed to have him living with us, and to have $35 a week.

It sounds funny now, but we thought we were rich!

Life during the Great Depression was hard. I’m not quite sure how we were able to do it, but we did. We were lucky not to have lost everything, like some of my friends did. I think that our society to day has made it all too easy and normal to throw things away. Why throw away socks with holes when you can mend them? Why throw away food when you can save it for another time? People today are too wasteful. 

If anything good did come out of the Depression, it taught me not to waste things, because you never know when you could lose it all.”

We all know what we’ve got to lose in the next election.

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Me Me ME

Posted in an expository essay, books, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Memoir, tagged , , , , , on June 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“Do you get the impression the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?”

@realDonaldTrump

I actually chuckled! Could it be that Mr T has actually got a sense of humor? A favorite reporter of mine retweeted his latest Twittering. We’ve just returned from a trip to Whole Foods, masks and groceries on faces and in hands, to hear that the SCOTUS has knocked another decision out of the park.

The current administration, made famous by keeping children in cages, will not be allowed to send Dreamers, the undocumented adults who came to this country as children, back to their countries of origin. Amen Chief Justice Roberts!

I just finished reading a book about a child, a little girl who was abandoned at the age of 3 by her parents, who had to flee Nazi Romania and the invading Iron Guard death squads during WWII. They thought their child’s best hope of survival was to dress her in her finest clothes, and leave her in a stairwell of a fancy apartment building. They thought she might be kept alive by one of the wealthy families, instead she was found by the concierge who took her to an orphanage:

The Girl They Left Behind, (by Roxanne Veletzos) in this way, tackles not only the tension of life in the face of numerous bombings and political escapades, but also tries to encompass the emotional drama of adoption and how adopted parents and children alike struggle to adjust to becoming a family. This picturesque exploration compounds the ticking clock of war that Veletzos leaves in the story’s background, leaving Natalia and her adopted parents, Anton and Despina, to make their decisions in the face of bombings, communist rule, and a desire to stay alive and together. https://medium.com/the-coil/book-review-roxanne-veletzos-the-girl-they-left-behind-celia-daniels-89d645eb1168

The parallels in the rise of Fascism in 1940s Bucharest to today are compelling. Based on a true story, Veletzos’ tale is similar to her great grandmother’s experience as an orphan during the war. Though we had not visited Bucharest on our Viking trip, I remembered the shoes on the shore of the Danube in Budapest. And in particular, the small shoes of Jewish children who were massacred there. This book is a page-turner. It will keep you up reading until 3 in the morning.

I thought of our newly discovered niece, Tamara. Adopted at birth, she thought she was part Italian. Raised in North Carolina, she said, “I’m the first Jew I ever met!” We all laughed.

Talia didn’t know she was Jewish. I didn’t know that after WWI, Soviet Romania sold people back to their families, mostly to Israel, for large sums of money. At one time, 35,000 Jews lived in a typical city in Romania, now there are a few hundred. If your Jewish family members survived the concentration camps and Death Squads, you could have them officially smuggled out of Romania for cash, paying off loans, or oil-drilling equipment. How much is a life worth, George Floyd’s brother asked Congress.

I remember once my foster mother, Nell, told me that the Flapper never gave them any money for me. She said this proudly, even though Daddy Jim’s job barely paid the bills. Of course my biological mother was widowed with young children and didn’t have much money anyway. I was never officially adopted, I was just waiting. But I guess the Flapper did get a stipend from the government for each child under a certain age; it was called The Aid to Dependent Children Program passed in 1935.

It provided $18 per month, and $12  for a second child. So I guess she got $42 dollars a month for my two brothers and me, thank you FDR! But she did pay for summer camp at St Joe’s and ballet school. The young girl who used to sneak out of her window in Scranton to dance to Tommy Dorsey’s band, wanted her daughter to know her way around a dance floor.

Congratulations Dreamers! And welcome to your new home, Uncle Joe will seal this deal next year.

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