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Posts Tagged ‘Nashville’

Where’d Ya Go Kate?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »

We were all sitting around the Bride’s sunny porch, when someone asked, “Can anorexia destroy your stomach?” Well, the doctors on the porch reluctantly shook their heads ‘Yes,’ while the rest of us began speculating about the health of a princess far, far away. And this wasn’t the only social gathering IRL this past weekend that turned into a royal sleuth fest. Bob and I saw our Germantown friends at a St Patrick’s dinner where most of the talk was about local politics, but eventually we waded into the Case of the Disappearing Princess.

Where in the world is Kate Middleton? My bet was on a hysterectomy, Bob just shrugged, and lots of us ran with plastic surgery of one kind or another… with complications… but who books a pre-planned hospital stay for TWO WEEKS? I mean you are in and out in 5 DAYS after heart surgery in this country! You’re lucky to get 3 DAYS after a C-section! It doesn’t add up. And since the Palace released a picture of Kate with her children for Mother’s Day in the UK, the firestorm has only increased. My reaction was – honestly, who doesn’t do a little editing now and then?

After all, we edited the Groom into a holiday card during the pandemic because he had to work in the ICU. We just placed him in his hospital-issued, PPE space suit right next to his wife, a mere centimeter off the ground.

Here in Nashville we have a real mystery to unravel. A 22 year old college student from Missouri, Riley Strain, was kicked out of a honky tonk the night of March 8 never to be seen again. Except: homeless people have reported seeing him; he was spotted on CCTV stumbling towards the Cumberland River; his bank card was found on the river bank; he spoke with a police officer in passing who asked how he was doing, only to say “I’m good how are you?” https://www.yahoo.com/news/newly-released-video-shows-interaction-200326733.html; and his last outgoing text to a girlfriend made no sense – “Good Lops.”

So how does a 6’5″ guy just disappear?

It’s been over a week and I’m afraid the outcome looks bleak. Why didn’t a fraternity brother follow him out of that bar? Why didn’t that cop stop him and talk to him for awhile? And my final question about our right to privacy (Kate Middleton) and a society’s need to surveil its citizens for safety (Riley Strain) is:

Why can our Congress pass a bill banning TikTok and NOT pass a bill banning assault weapons? Admittedly I am not on TikTok, nor do I want to be. But if the App is a national security threat, I would counter that assault rifles are a national health crisis and have no right being in the hands of ordinary people. Leave these weapons to the armed forces, they do not belong on our streets or in our schools.

Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines are frequently used in the violence that plagues our nation. From 2015 to 2022, mass shootings with four or more people killed where an assault weapon was used resulted in nearly six times as many people shot, more than twice as many people killed, and 23 times as many people wounded on average compared to those that did not involve the use of one. Some states and Washington, DC, have enacted legislation to prohibit assault weapons.”

https://www.everytown.org/solutions/assault-weapons/

If we really want to keep young people safe…

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Us vs Them

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »

There were Nazis marching in Nashville this past weekend. They were downtown, near the Capitol building, waving their swastika flags and dressed in black and red, their faces completely covered in ski masks. Not as many as the Charlottesville event that killed Heather Heyer the weekend we moved out of our Virginia mountain home in August of 2017. “Blood Tribe” was the name of this group of men with mommie issues. It’s assumed they didn’t have a permit, since there were no police lines, barricades or counter-protestors.

Just a small bunch of fools that mistakenly made their way towards the honky tonks… where one guy confronted them.

“Video showed a counterdemonstrator following the men along downtown streets, not far from the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, challenging participants to show their faces. His video captured the march and his reaction.

“Cowards,” the man chanted, adding some expletives.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/neo-nazis-march-nashville-leave-challenged-rcna139415

He was actually yelling “F_ING COWARDS” to drown out their hateful speech. The Nazis retreated to a U-Haul and left the county. Sometimes it only takes one brave person, like the black and white photograph of a man in a German shipyard in 1936, surrounded by his co-workers who are all givng the Nazi salute. August Landmesser stands alone, with his arms folded across his chest. “Landmesser was opposed to the Nazis and their racial worldview. His partner, Irma Eckler, was Jewish.”

It seems fitting that the day before the Nazi rally, our family went to see the movie “Origin.” Director Ava DuVernay brought a highly researched, academic book, “Caste: the Origins of Our Discontent,” to the big screen in a compelling narrative.

“Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy.”

DuVernay filmed in Germany, beginning with the love story of August and Irma. Then she moved to the United States with its brutal history of slavery, where we learn that Nazi lawyers actually followed the Jim Crow template in devising anti-semitic rules and regulations. And finally we are shocked to discover the despicable caste system in India; how the lowest caste of untouchables, the Dalits, must live on the margins of society. We are shown, in exquisite detail, the way these three caste systems are similar; not so much rooted in race, but in keeping one segment of society down. Dehumanization is not limited to war, or one particular country.

I thought about how Confederate secessionist symbols are still on seven of our state flags. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/09/10/confederate-state-flags/ How it took a massacre in Charleston, SC to get Nikki Haley to remove the confederate part of her state’s flag. Germany does not allow any Nazi statuary or symbols to be displayed under penalty of prison. Those Blood Tribe miscreants would have been carted away to jail if they were in Munich.

I thought about how when I was a child, I was told by my foster parents that I couldn’t play with a school mate, because she was Puerto Rican. I heard that one girl couldn’t play with me because I was a Catholic. Bob’s best friend in middle school wasn’t allowed to come to his Bar Mitzvah because, you know, something might happen if he went in there. I didn’t understand it then, and I still don’t. But this weekend has been illuminating.

A portrait in brown, white and red.

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Will You Be Mine?

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on February 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I can hear mourning doves outside my snug window. Their cooing soothes me into Spring. Are they looking for a lost love, or just announcing their presence? The sprinkling of snow we had last night must have given them plenty to coo about…

The Love Bug ordered heart shaped candies with romantic sayings on my phone with a swipe. She’s making Valentine confections for school. Over the weekend, Leslie left us heart shaped shortbread cookies wrapped in red ribbon, her latest in a series of delightful porch surprise packages. Bob’s ordered a special dinner from our local restaurant for tomorrow, complete with champagne. Cupid seems to be alive and well in Nashville, sharpening his little arrow this week.

And to top off this romantic week, the Rocker and Aunt Kiki celebrated 7 years of marital bliss in their newly renovated MidCenturyModern LA nest, while I thought about their delightful desert wedding in Palm Springs. https://mountainmornings.net/2017/02/14/happy-valentines-day/

The boys in the band flew west from NJ along with friends and family. The Bug was their flower girl while the toddler Pumpkin sported a fish taco bow tie to match his Dad’s. We stayed in a house with casitas, and I’ve longed for a casita (ie DADU in builder’s lingo) ever since. We rode a gondola up a mountain into the snow with cousins, and we fed giraffes at the zoo. California is a fairy tale come true – I felt like I belonged there. Wasn’t I the only girl skate boarding in the parking lot across from my step-father’s office in 1965? How many lemons did I squeeze into my freshly washed hair to dry in the sun? Didn’t I play the Beach Boys on repeat?

I was born to be a California Girl!

I just met a Cali grandmother on our street strolling her recently arrived grandbaby. She and her husband live in San Diego, but they are building a house one street over so they can live on the same block as their daughter. And it is not a small house, compared to our Blue Ridge home. Construction noise competes with a dove’s plaintive call. They plan on becoming migrating snow birds, like the cranes I saw in the clouds. Like us, they have adult creative/children in California. Their trusses are up and the Tyvec is on! And I know I shouldn’t envy them, it’s not a helpful emotion. But maybe it’s bringing up feelings of House Regret?

Bob’s had that feeling for decades. Great Grandma Ada’s family owned a small piece of land in Chester, NJ where her father Pinky had built a bungalow colony. A summer escape from the heat of Brooklyn, it was passed down to relatives over time. When Bob was a teenager, the aunts and uncles sold the Chester property, called Four Bridges. He’s sad about it to this day.

For me it was a villa called Papillon in the 80s. It was an older, pink patio home with a pool on the windward side of an island in the South West Indies. Not too big, not too small. It would have made a lovely vacation home. Bob wasn’t ready to commit to returning to the same place every year. Of course we did, return to that island time and time again. And each time we moaned about our lost opportunity since Papillon’s price, when it went back up for sale, had risen far beyond our reach.

Surprisingly, I don’t regret selling our mountain home, the one we built on 14 acres with a gorgeous view of the Blue Ridge. I had plans for a pond, and bunk beds for grandchildren in the basement. But moving to Nashville was an easy choice, I was tired of driving 9 hours for a visit. Plus, you know when your adult children aren’t coming home any more, their work and their children’s education begin to take precedence, and that’s how it should be. Unless you live in Italy.

Then you cannot live too far away from your Mama, it’s the rule.

But our generation of Americans, if we’re lucky enough to have a loving relationship with our kids, we get to pull up stakes and downsize. I knew what I was getting into marrying Bob – a pilot and ER doc who never sits still. His knee was shaking my desk in high school when he first stole my heart. Maybe moving back and forth between two families as a child was preparation for our nomadic life. I certainly don’t regret marrying him. I would do it all over again because my home is with him.

A psychologist said that only 5 year olds have no regrets, and sociopaths. I hope your Valentine’s Day is filled with love, of family, friends and fur babies – and very few romantic regrets.

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Gray Swan Events

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on January 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I’ve finally chiseled my way out of the ice palace. Last week the state of TN suffered from an extremely long, sub-freezing, snow event. Every day was a snow day; schools and most businesses closed down and since we live in a western, residential part of Nashville, our roads were free for sledding. I didn’t see a plow until the day before yesterday, 8 days after the first snow. The truck tried going up our small hill, which was a sheet of ice at this point, then it backed all the way down our road, beeping its disappointment.

Climate scientists call these crazy weather events “gray swans,” meaning they are predictable and still unprecedented.

“…the way to think about climate change now is through two interlinked concepts. The first is nonlinearity, the idea that change will happen by factors of multiplication, rather than addition. The second is the idea of “gray swan” events, which are both predictable and unprecedented. Together, these two ideas explain how we will face a rush of extremes, all scientifically imaginable but utterly new to human experience.Our climate world is now one of nonlinear relationships—which means we are now living in a time of accelerating change.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/01/climate-change-acceleration-nonlinear-gray-swan/677201/

In other words, the winds will get faster at a certain altitude as the temperatures rise, and these jet-stream winds will accelerate much faster than predicted. I believe our little storm was a gray swan. The south has never had such a prolonged period of extreme cold – single digit days mixed with snow and sleet. Ever since Covid, I’ve hated using the word “unprecedented” but it certainly applies here.

The heat on the second floor of the Bride and Groom’s house stopped working. My friend, Leslie’s heat downstairs also went out on strike, so we spent an afternoon making soup in my warm kitchen. Turns out Leslie has an old fashioned wooden sled that the Pumpkin enjoyed luging down our street at record speeds.

One night, the Grands had a sleepover – we watched Home Alone 3 with Alex Pruitt instead of Macaulay Culkin. After a slow start, the kids were ROFL. The next morning we had fun watching Watson the Frenchie, aka The Little Emperor, try to retrieve tennis balls we launched into the snow. Also hilarious.

Gone are the days of building snow people in the sun. We had enough snow to build an army last week, but single digit temperatures kept us house bound. Plus, Bob reminded me that nose hairs freeze at 15 degrees. Since I’ve been in full-on soup mode all week, I thought I’d share a most comforting winter sweet potato soup

Sweet potato soup.
1 onion, 2 sweet potatoes and 3 big carrots. 1 big tablespoon grated ginger and half teaspoon cayenne pepper 1qt vegetable broth, 2 cups V8, 1 teaspoon sugar and half cup of peanut butter
Chop n Sauté onion and carrots
Add ginger, cayenne pepper a dash of salt
Add broth and V8 and peeled cubed sweet potatoes
Cook for 25 minutes
Add peanut butter and blend w immersion blender after it cools a little.

Thanks to the Bride for this recipe. Today we are warming up in Nashville, and I’m eager to get out and about. My fear of falling has finally subsided a bit. I hope you’ve all stayed warm and safe through our gray swan.

Grilled cheese and soup

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Snowflakes

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on January 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Good morning from beautiful, snow covered Nashville where the temperature is 17 degrees. I looked out at the picnic table in the low dawning light, expecting to see a “light dusting,” but to my surprise there’s at least 6 inches of the white stuff and it’s still squalling. Luckily, the schools were closed for Martin Luther King Day and I’m pretty sure every other business has closed as well.

I don’t want to brag, but this is where the lines are drawn between northeners and southeners. When our kids were little, they’d rush to put on the whole kit and kaboodle – thermal underwear and snow suits complete with scarves, mittens and pom pom hats! Let’s not forget the snow boots. They couldn’t wait to make maple snow and build snow caves with their friends in the Berkshire Mountains. OTOH, I don’t even think our Grands own a sled, or ice skates let alone snow boots, and I know for sure they have never seen this much snow.

Sometimes I wonder if I was just imagining walking through tightly packed snow tunnels on the streets of Massachusetts. Did we really get Nor’easters with a couple of feet of snow on a regular basis? That time Bob’s car flipped over into a snow bank on the way to his hospital in Northampton, was that real or just part of a narrative I’ve told myself so many times? The Bride was sitting in her highchair and I was feeding her oatmeal when Bob walked back into the house covered in snow. I didn’t hear a car coming up the driveway; hadn’t he just left for work?

Cognitive dissonance isn’t enough to describe such a feeling but I’ll bet it’s imprinted on us for life. It’s what some patients describe after a dose of ketamine for a procedure – like they are there…but not there. Like the time we heard that Hillary lost the 2016 election. We had to ‘suspend our disbelief’ for the next 4 years, we had to get comfortable with chaos, followed by a tornado and a pandemic. It was a lot to ask, and some of us did better than others.

I thought we’d be talking about Iowa today, but the snow has cocooned us and dampened the GOP. I thought we might look back at the legacy of MLK, Jr, but memorials have been cancelled. When I heard that the principal of an Iowa school had succumbed to his injuries from a school shooter, I was ashamed that I barely remembered the massacre. But I do remember the Covenant School shooting here in Nashville.

When I saw that our own TN Democratic representatives, the Justins, were sanctioned and silenced in the State House because they wanted to talk about gun reform, I was infuriated. Now, Republican-led members have changed the rules for public entry to the people’s house. Getting a ticket to sit in the balcony now, unless you are a lobbyist, is harder than getting a seat at a Taylor Swift concert. That is their scheme; the pleas of Covenant parents to protect their children be damned. Someone once said, “Cruelty is their point” and I’m starting to believe that maliciousness runs in their veins.

As a card carrying Democrat, I was proud to be called a “snowflake.” And I’m just as proud to call myself a Yankee. We know how to deal with a little snow, and we know how to start an avalanche.

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Early Bird Voting

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on August 29, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Naturally, the Nashville mayor’s race had to have a runoff. So instead of jumping into the pool for morning aquatics, followed by sitting down at my desk to write, Bob and I jumped into the car and drove to a swanky neighborhood for early voting. There were also many councillors on the ticket and we could choose four, except my little red, plastic coffee stir-stick would not work on one of them. I must have ‘tapped’ the name Burkley Allen ten times before it registered.

I alerted one of the election people afterwards because of course my mind thought ‘conspiracy.’ Every other councilor’s name popped right up as soon as my stick hit their box. Bob said he’s always used his finger on the monitor, it’s much easier and better for the environment. The red stick was simply a Covid precaution…VOTE FREDDIE for MAYOR!

I hate that my mind thinks of subterfuge first – that my trust in so many things has been slowly eroding. We trust our children to make the right choice, it’s the only way we can let them go into adulthood. We trust our mail to end up in our mailbox, how else would we know what’s on sale at Costco? But post-Mr T and January 6, I’ve felt a shift in my trusting neurons. Why is T’s name front page news still? Why did TN legislators pass a bill on decorum first, and remove grieving Covenant moms with signs from the gallery? After this special session on public safety, and the latest school shooting in NC, I’ve lost whatever faith I had left after Sandy Hook.

TN was the last state to cast the vote for women’s suffrage. It will most likely be the last to vote for any kind of law restricting guns.

In the good news column, our little Love Bug celebrated her birthday this past weekend. She and her friends went to the Barbie movie, they painted their nails like tweens do. And we had a discussion about cellphones at the family dinner table. Many of her friends have phones, tablets and/or iPhone watches… she doesn’t. It’s her parents’ decision of course. But she told me she’s glad not be on “text chains”that run into the night, instead she gets to sleep through the night. Her friends are always tired – FOMO does not seem to affect her, thank goodness.

When I was young, we only had gossip to contend with; like so and so said that so and so did this! And I was the kind of kid that went right to the horse’s mouth and called them out. Spreading rumors wasn’t called bullying back then, it was called gossiping. We didn’t need to fear that our words, or even our pictures, could be seen by millions of strangers and could linger for years in the virtual cess-pool of a world wide web. Here is an example of how we are all on our own when it comes to cyber-bullying. Two sisters had to track down their stalker themselves.

Technology has raced ahead in the 10 years since Madison’s photos first appeared online, and artificial intelligence combined with social media has made it even easier for abusers to distribute intimate images on the internet without consent. But legislation to protect victims still falls short. Most of the 48 states and the District of Columbia that have laws prohibiting the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, many passed in the past decade, require that victims prove that the distributors of their photos intended to harm them.“

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/08/26/revenge-porn-leaked-nudes-police/

HELLO?! I can only hope our laws will evolve to meet our basic humanity. My only wish is that people who are sworn to obey the constitution, will see through the fog of decorum in every state house, and a person’s intent to do no harm.

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Staining Fences

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on August 22, 2023| Leave a Comment »

It was the best of weeks. Mornings were cool, low 60s, and no humidity. There was a strange hint of Fall, in mid-August, in the south. So my handy husband Bob decided it was time to paint our six month old fence. A cedar fence can be allowed to grey gracefully over the years; OR you could preserve its beauty by painting it a color (like the black fences that dot Virginia) OR if one prefers, staining it with a natural wood pigment. And so the hunt began.

After much searching and trips to Home Depot, Lowes, and our local Sherwin Williams (SW) store, we picked a stain in its natural cedar color – an oil-based, transparent brownish/red. Bob power washed the fence in preparation and made a deal with a college neighbor to help. We bought 10 gallons of stain, pads, rollers, and all the accoutrements. On Thursday morning we drove to SW to pick up the stain, only to learn from a helpful young salesman named Hunter that a 40% off sale was starting the very next day! Believe me when I say I pleaded with him to sell it to us then and there at the reduced price, but Hunter said, “No can do.”

Meanwhile, in Maui, the death toll was rising from a horrific wildfire. I watched online interviews with people who escaped the inferno by jumping into the ocean and dodging embers for hours. I couldn’t turn away from the drone video of a charred, barren landscape; the historic town of Lahaina looked like the end of the world. In my lifetime, I’ve experienced a flood in NJ, an earthquake in VA, and right before the Covid lockdown, a tornado in TN.

But I’ve never experienced a fire, wild or otherwise. I thought of Hawaii as a uniquely American paradise. I loved climbing over black lava and watching the volcano on the Big island. I loved its people, its food, its culture. I felt a kind of existential, primitive grief for our Mother Earth that triggered my limbic system. Is climate change accelerating – was safety just an illusion – what state/country would be next?

And sure enough, in the middle of staining our fence, a once in a century hurricane was headed for Southern California.

The Grands came over to help Pop Bob for a bit, I frog-taped the iron hardware and ran back to SW since we needed double the amount of stain for our 2,700 sq ft backyard. Ingeniously I picked up a dozen donuts on the way back. Waiting, wondering if the torrential rain heading toward LA – toward my son and his wife, their dog and two cats, living in a beautifully renovated home, on the precipice of a hill overlooking a canyon in LA – might precipitate a mudslide.

Bob and I met our rollers dripping with stain in the middle of the fence on the east side of the yard Sunday morning. A job that was supposed to take a day, took three. But the fence is finished, the fence that can only protect us from prying eyes and not natural disasters. Our Mark Twain weekend ended with an undertone of terror. Did you know there is a name for the kind of wind that can boost heatwaves and spark wildfires? The wind is called FOHN.

It’s a word that, in German, also means “hairdryer”. And that’s just what it’s like. A hot, dry wind that sweeps down a mountainside, baking everything in its path. It is powerful enough to raise air temperatures by many degrees. This is the strange, and sometimes dangerous, weather event known as Föhn. This year, it has cropped up many times, including during heatwaves where it has pushed temperatures up to unbearable levels in local, literal, hotspots.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230817-the-weird-wind-that-can-supercharge-heatwaves-and-wildfire

This week we will see record high temperatures in Nashville, and the humidity is returning. No rain, all sun for our fence to dry. I will return to my meditative daily pool workouts, and I will listen to our Governor try and change a gun culture by focusing on everything but guns. Can we save our schoolchildren with bullet-poof backpacks? Will this be the best of weeks?

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Camp Nana

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on June 15, 2023| 2 Comments »

This is the week of Granny Grampie Campie!

The Grands are enjoying one full week of no scheduled activities – no school, no soccer, no day camp, nada. In other words, it’s the kind of summer we used to enjoy, that is before I was sent off to sleepaway camp at Camp St Joseph for Girls. Even the Virginia grandparents have arrived to join in the fun; so we celebrated by baking them a strawberry bundt. It tilted a bit to one side, but was delicious with whipped cream. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019441-fresh-strawberry-bundt-cake?searchResultPosition=1

Plump, delicious strawberries are in season at the Farmer’s Market, but you’ve got to get there early or they sell out. Same with flowers I’ve discovered. To create a kick off your shoes, care free, vacay-like vibe takes some planning – for example, our badminton set was in rough shape. The rackets had holes in them and the birdies were missing in action. I found the last set at Dick’s Sporting Goods, and now two of the three new birdies are resting comfortably on the roof of our garage.

And forget Pickleball, the Love Bug loves tennis. We happen to have tennis courts in the same park as the Farmer’s Market, just three blocks away; so a neighborhood crew of kids can just hop on their bikes and ride there like a Norman Rockwell print. Only these kids wear helmets. Luckily, we’ve been blessed with cool weather, and so far the only real bugs I’ve seen are the magical lightning bugs at dusk.

I know ninety plus degree-hot and humid days are right around the corner, so we’re enjoying the outdoors while we can. I’ve made a delightful “garden-gate-friend” who lives across the street, ie someone who freely walks through my gate to visit and vice versa. She has promised to teach me Mahjong and graciously invited us to her pool! Needless to say, the Grands loved swimming next door despite the cool temps.

Lucky us, there’s a public library in that same park filled with great children’s books and no limit on how many books you can check out. The Grands love nothing better than to curl up with a good book. Sometimes I find them both randomly reading on the couch, so without uttering a word I sit down and join them. I’ve just finished Ann Patchett’s “These Precious Days,” glorious essays she wrote about her early life and spending the pandemic lockdown with a new friend who just happened to be visiting.

I didn’t know Patchett had three fathers, or as she said her mother loved the idea of marriage. Of course, I started reminiscing as well, about the Flapper and my foster mother, about my three fathers – Robert, the pharmacist who was dead before I turned one, my foster father Jim, the railroad man at Picatinny who I loved with all my heart, and my stepfather Mr B, the judge who took me flying in his Cessna. Patchett has a picture at a wedding with all her fathers surrounding her that put a frog in my throat.

But I cannot live with regrets. They serve no purpose; wishing my father hadn’t died of a brain tumor would mean I wouldn’t have this life, this husband, these children and grandchildren. I choose gratitude instead, every day, despite a fractured finger. The sweater I’m knitting for the Pumpkin shows the very spot my hand was splinted. I have to embrace my imperfections, and keep moving, keep growing.

This week I’ll be bringing the Grands to a rehearsal for our Pride Festivities at the end of the month. The ban on public Drag Shows in Nashville has been (at least temporarily) lifted thankfully, and our hairstylist has enlisted lots of children to participate this year. I’m imagining they’ll all be munchkins in this fairy tale city!

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“Enragement Algorithms”

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on April 19, 2023| 2 Comments »

Good Morning friends! A cardinal is chirping outside my window, the lilacs are blooming and parents are walking their children to school. The Bride just called and we’ll be heading out to a garden center soon on this sunny spring day. But the biggest news is that the plaster cast came off my right hand and I’ll be wearing a removable splint for awhile.

Actually the biggest news is that a number of Nashville women, called #VoicesforsaferTN https://safertn.org/ including Moms Demand Action and my daughter and her physician friends, organized the three mile long chain of red-shirted people from Vandy’s Children’s Hospital to the State House yesterday! They wanted at least 3,000 people to link arms against gun violence and more than 8,500 showed up. 8,500 bipartisan people! One would think this would make national headlines, right?

Wrong… The 1st Amendment case between “Fox entertainment and alternate reality News” and Dominion was settled; China is planning to launch some new spy drones; and Whoopie is trending on Twitter don’t ask me why cause I’ve not watched the View in a very long time.

Now as an old-timey reporter, I know that fires sell newspapers, not the best cow at the fair. Still, only the Rolling Stone picked up the Wednesday linking arms action last night and this morning. Sure the local TV news gave it a few seconds, and the only reason RS gave it a storyline is because there were celebrities involved, including Sheryl Crow. Here is a local spin, which sounds weary if you ask me – the news anchor is probably thinking what’s the point.

“My son just turned 18 in February, he can now finally buy a lighter in Tennessee. He cannot buy cigarettes. He can buy a gun. He can’t buy a beer. I mean, it’s absolutely insane. Insane what’s going on in this country,” said Kirsten Deitelhoff, a supporter along the chain.

https://www.newschannel5.com/news/three-mile-line-supporters-linking-arms-for-a-change-in-gun-laws-in-tennessee

Yes I guess some states are more insane than others. But if you want to know how our divided nation went from zero to a hundred so quickly I can report it’s called “enragement algorithms.” Social media is the journalist’s evil step-sister. If you “like” a lot of cat videos, that’s what you get. And if you happen to “like” the previous twice impeached insurrectionist prez, your feed will take you down a rabbit hole of disinformation and conspiracy theories.

In this morning’s Tennessean, the 2.5 Billion dollar new Titans stadium is coming up for a final vote and their headline is: “Slim majority of residents oppose new stadium!” If you go ahead and read the article, it’s actually quite a big majority. But I guess football means MONEY, and children’s lives mean what?

I’m glad my children didn’t have mini-phones taped to their hands all the time, but chances are the Grands will. Ask your sixteen year old self if you can spot the difference between truth and lies. I think I’d start laughing, because of course my lie detector was strong. How is yours doing amid the algorithms?

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Pesach is Coming

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on April 3, 2023| Leave a Comment »

And I’m starting to forget. And then I get down on myself, for forgetting her smile, her voice. Although I do sometimes hear her words in my head – “Don’t wait to be asked; Always go with an open hand; He’s having a good day.”

The Bride asked me to make the tzimmes, which is basically Jewish for roasted carrots. And then I remembered that Ada would add dried fruit and some beef ribs, but I forgot what it was called. I’m bringing the brisket and the Kosher wine but my daughter is graciously hosting again midweek at her big farm table. She’s gathering friends and family to eat and talk about the Great Escape from Egypt. And she is making the haroset, which thrills me to no end.

There are some other lessons too, like which child is getting good at reading Hebrew, and who will be the master sleuth and find the missing matzah. Then I remembered, I have Adala’s “Jewish Home Beautiful” book copyright 1941! I have the cookbook she gave me when Bob and I married; a kind of How-To-Be-A-Good-Jewish-Mother guide sprinkled with recipes for celebrating all the holidays around your table. It’s a smallish blue book, its pages turning a brownish yellow.

IT’S FLANKEN! If you know, you know.

And then I thought about the seven families who will have an empty seat at their Easter table this Sunday in Nashville. Has the pastor lost his faith? He must have been in the chapel when the alarms went off, when his daughter was shot in cold blood. The other two children gunned down in their primary school were children of physicians in town. The Bride’s good doctor friend had sent her kids to Covenant, but then switched schools as the pandemic gained force.

Nashville is really just a small town in big city drag.

And since I’m not one for prayers, I joined the protest at the state capitol.

Bob and I left early Thursday with the Bride to march for all the laws that might help regulate guns in this state. Thousands of people gathered. Sure a “red flag” law may have stopped the shooter from purchasing seven guns in just as many months because she was being treated for a mental illness. But do you really think that would help? In Tennessee? The person trying to purchase an assault rifle would have to tell the store, oh btw I’m thinking of harming myself and others but don’t worry I’m under a doctor’s care…. Or wait, maybe they’d do a background check.

If I sound cynical it’s because I am. I watched a local business guy demonstrate a kind of glass film that stops bullets from shattering glass windows. Although the bullets DO go through and leave a hole, the window doesn’t implode. And the more I heard from Republicans saying, “It’s the doors, lock the doors, it’s the drugs, it’s a mental health crisis, we need more guns in schools, every teacher must carry a gun, more guns, more guns, guns, guns….” I say,

IT IS THE GUNS. Guns are the problem.

We must bring back the assault weapon ban. It worked in the past and there is absolutely no reason why our police should have to go up against these guns of war. It’s the one thing that will work immediately. Sure people who are determined to kill other people will find a way, but they won’t find killing so many that easy anymore. They won’t be able to spray bullets over a country music crowd in Las Vegas. Or into another school. There have been 376 school shootings in this country since Columbine.

There have been 376 school shootings since Columbine

“The federal government does not track school shootings, so The Washington Post has spent years tracking how many children in the United States have been exposed to gun violence during school hours since the Columbine High massacre in 1999…

Across all such incidents, The Post has found that at least 199 children, educators and other people have been killed, and another 424 have been injured.

Even as the list of incidents has expanded, however, the trend lines have remained consistent.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/

I don’t understand why our whole country has not decided to go on strike like the French. Today, schoolchildren in the city were going to walk out at the exact same time the shooter opened fire last Monday. My generation walked out of school to protest dress codes, and as a precursor to sit-ins over the Vietnam War. Schools don’t have to be a war zone. What would happen if teachers walked out tomorrow and police the next day? Imagine if nurses and doctors all went on strike. Why are we tolerating this?

Have you actually seen what an AR15 does to a nine year old child’s body?

If we cannot or will not protect our children, what kind of cowards are we? I will continue to cause good trouble, as I know many of my readers will until we fix this public health epidemic of gun violence. We have to change. It’s time to clean out the pantry and color eggs.

Or we could build a moat around every school in the country.

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