Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘Politics’

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!

Read Full Post »

Pardon Me

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on December 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

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!

Read Full Post »

Sequestered

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »

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.

Read Full Post »

Florida Man

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »

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.

Read Full Post »

Inegalite

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

VIVA LA FRANCE!

Have you heard the news from France? They have enshrined a woman’s Right to Choose, her own bodily autonomy is now constitutionally a “guaranteed freedom.” France is the very first country in the world to write this basic human right into their constitution. And why has a Catholic country decided to vote 780-72 in favor of women at this moment in time? It’s because they’ve been watching us, the American people; they have seen how methodically and malignantly our human rights have been stripped away by judges and politicians in the pocket of Mr T.

I caught a bit of Van Jones’ CNN special the other night about what’s been happening in Tennessee. He interviewed the “Justins” and he spoke with Republicans outside of Davidson County. He tried to find common ground, but what if that’s impossible? Here’s the problem. Christian Nationalists are overtaking the GOP. It’s not just that they didn’t want the government telling them to get a Covid vaccine; it’s that they would like the government to censor books in public schools. And along with books, let’s take control of reproductive healthcare for millions of women!

One cult sect of the Christian Nationalist movement, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), is an extreme branch of Christianity with its tentacles reaching very close to the American White House. I had to dig deeper into their mythology after listening to Terry Gross interview their founder about casting demons out of people. Yes, you heard me right. Demons.

“A central tenet of NAR’s belief system is that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society—including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses—to create a religious nation.“

https://newrepublic.com/post/176861/mike-johnson-flying-christian-nationalist-flag-outside-office

Our Speaker, Mike Johnson, has three flags hanging outside his office: the American flag, the Louisiana state flag, and a flag representing the NAR movement that wants to turn the US into a Christian nation. Its design is from a Revolutionary War flag and is called “An Appeal to Heaven.” Many of these flags, sporting an evergreen tree in its center, were seen at the Jan 6th insurrection. That bears repeating – the flag hanging outside our Speaker’s DC office was flying alongside traitors to our country on Jan 6!

Today is Super Tuesday and the landscaping companies are out in full force in my neighborhood. Loud machinery has replaced the annual raking of garden beds in preparation for planting. I wonder how many rabbit nests are being destroyed while my forsythia begins to burst into yellow bloom. A cherry tree has pinked out and the magnificent tulip magnolias wave from bare branches. Spring is here!

Bob wants to vote today, but I’m less enthusiastic. In TN you can vote for blue or red in the primary, which is funny don’t you think? Each state is different, in some you must vote for the party you’ve registered with, but not here. Doesn’t seem very “united” to me. So I could vote for Joseph R Biden or:

Republican Primary Ballot:

  • Ryan Binkley
  • Chris Christie
  • Ron DeSantis
  • Nikki Haley
  • Asa Hutchinson
  • Vivek Ramaswamy
  • David Stuckenberg
  • Donald J. Trump

Too bad it’s not November. Right after Halloween, in the presidential elections, Tennesseans will be able to vote for Joe and Gloria Johnson to replace Marsha Blackburn in the Senate! Johnson stood alongside the Justins demanding gun control legislation but wasn’t expelled from the state house, because, well maybe because she’s … a woman? Even Taylor Swift has called Marsha Blackburn “Trump in a wig.”

But it’s only March with a looong election season ahead of us. I’m hoping that TN Democrats will show up today, in the rain, and vote for Joe. We need to vote like our lives depend on it today and in November.  Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

TO THE BARRICADES, I mean POLLS!!! Here we are on a French island.

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

A Little Light Music

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on December 20, 2022| 3 Comments »

To prepare for the Festival of Lights, we watched the new Pinocchio movie by Guillermo del Toro with the Grands. https://www.netflix.com/title/80218455

At the very end of this stop-action masterpiece of a movie, which does not end in the way we all think the fairy tale ends, the Pumpkin said, “Well that’s a cliff hanger!” Spoiler alert, the conclusion keeps us guessing. Del Toro weaves a dark story – Pinocchio’s father drinks too much, there are monsters in the deep sea and poker-playing rabbits keeping watch over the rainbow bridge to eternity. It’s not simply an allegory about lying and noses growing. It’s an homage to love in all its purest forms.

Kate Blanchett, who voiced the endearingly ugly monkey, Spazzatura (a name that means “garbage” in Italian), said this about the film: “Del Toro is “able to somehow Trojan-horse these really big discussions about fascism and humanity into a really entertaining movie that’s going to spark conversation,” Blanchett said, according to Netflix press materials. “I think it’s about curiosity and humility and the death of innocence, the loss of innocence, and about the deep love, the abiding love between people and it’s a real true adventure.” https://www.npr.org/2022/12/13/1142418925/academy-award-winner-alexandre-desplat-scores-del-toros-pinocchio

Tomorrow is the Winter Solstice; it will also be the fourth night of Hanukkah. We Jews are in the middle of celebrating a little night magic – the oil in the Temple banishing the dark for eight nights, instead of one. I’ve placed my ‘vintage’ electric menorah in the living room window, while neighbors have felt the need to place signs reading, “We stand with our Jewish neighbors” on their lawns. We talk with our grandchildren about a little wooden puppet who wasn’t afraid to be different.

Starting tomorrow, the days, the light, will be getting longer. The temperatures are due to plummet to single digits. And by the grace of God, Merrick Garland may summon the courage to indict an ex, twice impeached president. As we say in the South, “He might could.” The January 6 Committee has shown us in stark detail what Mr T did for over three hours while a violent insurrection was happening at the Capital. He wanted to overthrow the will of the people, he was hoping for a coup, he did nothing to stop his base of proud boys and feckless women. He watched as one woman was shot in the face, and a police officer was crushed and beaten to near death.

I’m old enough to remember a time when Republicans actually stood up for their country above their party. We cannot compare the Nixon White House to the Trump years, although Intellectuals, Ivy Leaguers, and Jews were all equally despised. But we Americans found it in our hearts to forgive Nixon, or at least accept the Ford pardon for years of deceit. We found out about his shenanigans because he taped everything, probably for his library. Nixon too thought he was above the law.

“The Jews are all over the government,” Nixon complained to his chief of staff, H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, in an Oval Office meeting recorded on one of a set of White House tapes released yesterday at the National Archives. Nixon said the Jews needed to be brought under control by putting someone “in charge who is not Jewish” in key agencies.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/oct99/nixon6.htm

Every single election denier was defeated last month. Truth cannot be subjective, there are no alternate versions of the Holocaust. And I can still believe in miracles.

Read Full Post »

The Golden Ticket

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, Memoir, tagged , , on August 17, 2022| 2 Comments »

It’s opening night for my granddaughter’s middle school musical!

Y’all know I’m an old song and dance girl. Before I danced in my high school’s version of “Oklahoma,” I played the lead in “Camelot” at Camp St Joseph for Girls. I had to sing “If Ever I Would Leave You” in tights and a pillowcase and I must say I killed it.

My star kept rising with “The Music Man” and ascended to new heights when I played Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls.” Even if Bob (who played Nathan Detroit) and I were fighting one day, you know like if he may have not wanted to go to the Junior Prom or some such nonsense, we were professional enough to carry on with the show! The very first show tune I taught the two year old Love Bug was “A Bushel and a Peck.” We even had a dance number – if only we had had TikTok.

The Bug’s Mother is another story. The Flapper hung a tiny pair of ballet slippers over her crib when she was born in the hospital. Sounds like a fairy tale right? My Mother didn’t let a car accident stop her from dancing and by God, her new granddaughter would trip the boards like Terpsichore. And of course, dancing in the Berkshire Ballet’s “Nutcracker” would become our mother-daughter Christmas-Hunakkah tradition. Until…

One day the Bride announced in a letter that she no longer had the time to take ballet lessons. She was about the Bug’s age then, and too busy with school and horseback riding. I had to respect her wishes but I’m sure she knew my heart was a little broken. Little did we know that the Rocker would become the performer; maybe I should have taken him to tap classes instead of hockey practice!

Tonight my Bug will be playing an Oompa Loompa and I will be sitting front row center proud as a peacock! Will she catch Broadway fever from her first bit part in Willy Wonka? When she looks out at the audience tonight and hears the applause will something click? Is today the day she finds her passion in life? You never know but this is the age for making momentous decisions.

“I am preparing other surprises that are even more marvellous and even more fantastic for you and for all my beloved Golden Ticket holders – mystic and marvellous surprises that will entice, delight, intrigue, astonish and perplex you beyond measure. In your wildest dreams you could not imagine such things could happen to you! Just wait and see!” 

https://roalddahl.fandom.com/wiki/Golden_Ticket#:~:text=A%20Golden%20Ticket%20is%20the,find%20was%20a%20press%20sensation.

This is about the age I left my foster parents and decided to live with the Flapper forever, coming out of my sheltered chrysalis. Beware of the preteen, she is a powerful totem with her golden ticket.

In a world of pure imagination

Read Full Post »

Occupational Risk

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on January 14, 2022| Leave a Comment »

I remember when Bob was in high school, he scored a summer job at our local munitions factory, ironically named Hercules Powder Company. The pay was ten times better than anything else around because it was considered “hazardous duty.” After all, make the wrong move and the whole place could blow up.

When we lived in the Berkshires, and the AIDs crisis hit, it occurred to me that he was also at risk when he went to work. If a nurse or tech could not find a vein in an HIV patient, they would fetch my husband. Needle sticks were a fairly common way healthcare workers contracted communicable diseases like hepatitis.

Today’s healthcare workers are at risk each and every day, but not from a Blood Born virus, from the Coronavirus. We all know how it’s transmitted. There are no mosquitoes or fleas or rodents involved, and sexual transmission was never an issue. No, this novel virus likes to just hang out in the air we breathe. And with this new Omicron variant, it’s absolutely everywhere.

I’m bringing this up in light of the latest stupid decision our right-leaning SCOTUS made yesterday – that the risk of contracting Covid is “not a work-related danger.” Therefore businesses (of 100 or more employees) do not have the right to require vaccinations for their employees… even though an individual could opt out by being masked and tested weekly. This decision affects 84 million workers.

“In the end, Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates stood or fell based on judicial interpretations of federal statute, not principles of individual liberty or appeals to the greater good. According to a majority of the Supreme Court, Mr Biden had the law on his side when ordering healthcare workers to get vaccinated, but using a 51-year-old workplace safety statute to implement a vaccine-or-test requirement on all large employers was a bridge too far.”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59989476

So, the government can order vaccinations for government-funded healthcare workers, new armed forces recruits, and so far, for public schoolchildren, but not for private businesses. The reasoning?: “Although Covid-19 is a risk that occurs in many workplaces, it is not an occupational hazard in most.”

I disagree… IT’S IN THE AIR PEOPLE. It’s unavoidable – where ever you are – if you are a living breathing sentient being.. That’s why most of us have been limiting our indoor activities to a select few people, and not dining indoors, and not going to concerts or bars. If we venture into a Walgreens, we mask up!

Now this may be a jump too far, but I’m worried about how this thinking will play out when SCOTUS rules on the “All or Nothing” Mississippi abortion fight in the spring. One could argue that getting pregnant is an occupational risk if one is female. And pregnancy can indeed be hazardous – it can give you gestational diabetes, it can produce high blood pressure, anemia, pre-term labor, preeclampsia, infection, and like the Bride, you may end up needing surgery because the baby is upside down!

And surgery for a breech birth is not easy, let me tell you.

So I’m wondering how the government thinks that interfering with a woman’s Constitutional right to choose what she does with her own body is OK? Do you think it’s fine for old/White/mostly/male mostly Christian legislators to pass laws forcing women to carry a pregnancy to term, despite her wishes and her doctor’s recommendations? Isn’t this flying too close to a dystopian Margaret Atwood novel?

Let’s not forget, you can always leave your newborn at a firehouse.

In the middle of a two year pandemic, that has outwitted us largely because of the GOP’s strategy of misinformation and lies, our highest court has decided to bend to the pressure of big business. There was a time, early on, when the Groom’s ICU was filled with chicken factory workers. There was also a time when it was filled with pregnant women, who lost their much wanted babies.

If your work includes leaving your home to mix and mingle with co-workers, I’d argue that it is hazardous; whether it means in an office or on a factory floor.

I’m glad Bob has retired and doesn’t have to suit up in PPE just to see patients in an ER. The Bride is seeing so many people for stomach problems, bleeding and any random injury you could think of, and most are testing positive for Covid… as an aside, as an incremental finding. One of our friends was scheduled for knee replacement surgery, and her pre-operative blood work came back positive for Covid. She had no symptoms, but she was twice vaccinated and boosted.

Living can be risky. So be careful out there.

Keeping Calm and Carrying On

Read Full Post »

Love to Hate

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on December 13, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Admittedly I’m late to the party, but once I found I could stream HBO Max, I dove into “Succession!” I’ve never anticipated watching a TV show this much – not even “The Morning Show.”

Succession seems like a modern day “Dynasty,” only taking place in New York instead of Texas. Ruled by Logan, a ruthless Rupert Murdoch type character, it’s about a top 1% media family with power/money issues instead of oil. Bob has no interest in watching, calling it a “melodrama” with disdain. I’m only half way through the first season, but I just had to Tweet a quote last night from Tom to long-lost cousin, Topsider-wearing Greg:

“I’ll show you how to be rich.”

This was after they both ate a sparrow whole at a fancy restaurant. I was pretty surprised when that Tweet started getting hundreds of hits, until I realized that last night was the season finale of the third season. I’m lucky if a few people read any single Tweet of mine.

Since social media has taken the place of a water cooler, Succession has been all over different platforms this morning. An online newspaper actually had a quiz with quotes, and you had to guess if a real Billionaire said them or a fictional Logan Roy family member. Someone on Twitter asked which character you would most identify with on the series. I’m wondering what its popularity is saying about us as a country.

If I’ve had too much breaking news for one day, I used to turn to TCM movies from the Depression era. The actors speak with an upper-crust accent, as if Piccadilly Circus met Times Square. The women are always glamorous and rich, or scheming to get rich. Everybody’s smoking, all the time. The black and white film only serves to accentuate their luxurious lifestyle, jumping in and out of big black limos in white satin gowns.

I can picture the Flapper at that time, her short platinum hair curled into Marcel waves.

In other words, 30s and 40s films were aspirational for the working man who was down on his luck. You could see a movie for a quarter and escape into a make-believe world of wealth and privilege. Goodness would usually win the day; Fred Astaire would marry the girl. So maybe watching Succession now, after almost two years of lockdowns, masks and finally a booster, is helping us feel better about ourselves.

Money isn’t buying the Roys love. In fact, I’m not sure if any of the characters know what love is; of the four Roy adult siblings only “Shiv” (short for Shavaun) is getting married. And even she’s not so sure it’s a good idea. Right now Shiv and Tom’s lawyers are looking over the pre-nup. We can all sit back and say,

“Look what money does, look at that dysfunction, at least our family isn’t that screwed up.”

In my family I was taught you don’t lend money to other family members, you give them a “gift.” If they pay you back that’s fine, but no worries if they don’t. You’re not holding a grudge that way. Great Grandma Ada felt the same way, because she knew firsthand about such things after her divorce. She would tell me how her sister Mary would drive out to NJ for a visit and put a hundred dollar bill or two in her pocket.

Children who grow up expecting a trust fund can become twisted. They expect the helicopter ride out of town, why should they be stuck in traffic? They never have to face any consequences for their actions. I remember an interview with Anderson Cooper, where he said growing up everyone thought he was a wealthy Vanderbilt – when in fact, his mother was terrible with money and they often lived hand to mouth – although, I’m sure that hand had a pretty nice diamond on it.

I’m grateful this weekend’s path of tornadoes passed us by this time. We spent two hours in our somewhat safe place Friday night texting with the Bride. Seeing the devastation in other states is heartbreaking. I remember the wads of pink insulation sprinkled through fences in Nashville, right before Covid hit, the power line poles split in two like pick-up sticks.

“Life is not knights on horseback. It’s a number on a piece of paper. It’s a fight for a knife in the mud.” (One of the Roys)

Our Horseshoe Holiday Tree

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »