Senior Moments of Clarity

Red Tails: The Black Super Hero Movie

2012-01-27T16:38:00.001-05:00

I went to see Red Tails yesterday, without having read any reviews of the movie. I went because I saw George Lucas on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart explain how difficult it had been for him to get the picture made, saying “Hollywood isn’t interested in a film with an all-black cast.
My mailman, on the other hand, took his 13-year-old son to see it last weekend, when it opened. The youngster told his dad it was “the best movie he had ever seen.”
I am in favor of any movie that sets out to portray African-American heroes who aren’t totally fictitious and based on wishful thinking. The Tuskegee Airmen, the “experiment” in the U.S. Army to test the widespread belief that Negroes were innately inferior cowards who either couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up in the face of life-threatening combat, were and remain bona fide war heroes.
I was born six months after May 1944, the date stated at the start of the movie. My bio-father and all the other age-eligible men in my family were not there for my arrival because they were fighting in World War II. With my frame of reference so tied to the events covered in the movie, I was instantly along for the ride.
George Lucas is known for spectacle -- epic stories told with eye-boggling special effects. I might be wrong, but I don’t think he is the first movie producer who comes to mind when we think of pithy dialogue, historical detail or exemplary dramatic acting.
The story is becoming better known than it had been before HBO produced The Tuskegee Airmen made-for-television movie in 1995. A 1925 Army War College report concluded that African Americans might be effective soldiers, but maintained that "in the process of evolution, the American Negro has not progressed as far as the other subspecies of the human family." (Red Tails opens with a quote from this report.) “Colored” men, it held, were both physically and intellectually incapable of enduring the demands of combat, much less flight. And, they lacked bravery, the report claimed.
“Although African Americans had valiantly served in the Civil War, on the frontier in the Indian Wars, in the Spanish American War and in World War I, white politicians and military officers still publicly professed to doubt black ability and patriotism, as part of the ideology and propaganda that undergirded Jim Crow in all of its pernicious forms. The crucial change came in 1938, primarily because of the efforts of an African-American woman, Mary McLeod Bethune, who saw, before most other black leaders, a way to break the hold of racism on black participation in the military, by striking at the most resistant obstacle of all: the integration of the pilot program.” {The Root.com, 1/25/2012, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.}
The movie uses the quote from the War College report as the film’s jumping off point, apparently giving the audience generous credit for knowing their Black History.
I watched the movie as a clueless movie fan, without giving much thought to what critics might think. I was, at times, breathless with the excitement the cinematography provided. The video game quality of action we have come to expect from deftly-applied CGI is a major part of the film. One can easily see why a 13-year-old boy would find it captivating.

I left the theater very pleased. I had been entertained. I had seen at least passable acting, although I am starting to question what the very busy Terrence Howard brings to the table besides his undeniable fineness of face. I had fun, like I used to when I went to action movies with war themes.

There was, however, only one character who seemed to be bothered by the actual result of his unit’s heroics – the flight captain. It is fitting that he would have developed a drinking problem as a result of his concerns, but I had to conclude all that for myself, because the script never really makes the connection. The young pilots regarded their targets the same way our gaming children look at targets on their X-Boxes. There is no regard at all for the humans who are manning the ships they blew up or flying the enemy planes they shot down with glee. I told myself I was trying to be too evolved for the genre.
I came home and immediately searched out the critics’ opinions. Rotten Tomato.com was my first stop. I was stunned to see that most professional critics had panned the film. Fifty-five of the 85 critics who reviewed it, gave it negative reviews.

While not standing on their stadium seats cheering, the paying audience liked the film far more than they didn’t. And look at this:

Those movies that received the highest ratings last weekend also took in the least amount of money. And Red Tails came in second!
My theory is the following:

Movie critics take themselves way too seriously. Not every film has to be laden with historical context at the expense of entertainment. This film is more like a super hero flick, in the fashion of Dark Knight (Batman) and Iron Man. The difference is it attempts to stay true to the 1940s.
The one-dimensional character charge is unfair, given the intent of the film. No, we don’t learn the backstory of each of the pilots. Neither do we learn the slings and arrows the officers played by Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr. suffered to attain their ranks. Do we really need to?
One of my stepfathers fought in the Japanese theater of WWII. He came home from the war with a “souvenir”-- the dagger he had used to slay a Japanese soldier in hand-to-hand combat, blood stains intact. He spoke a language that was pure military. It was as corny as hell. That’s the way they talked back then. But the average age of the critics who reviewed the film on Rotten Tomatoes is probably at least half of mine. What would they know about the veracity of the dialogue? Roger Ebert, on the other hand, critic extraordinaire and a man of a certain age, rated the film much more positively.
Does every film that deals with race have to be somber and reverent, true to every aspect of what has gone before? Maybe, just maybe, we can teach a lot more white audience members more about black history if we don’t try to bludgeon them with deep historical dives. This story speaks for itself. Brave people lobbied for a chance; when given the chance, the pilots rose to the occasion; and the white pilots they protected and escorted to their destinations while fighting off enemy fire were damned happy to see them when they showed up.

What happened before and after this relatively isolated story of prejudice, valor and realization? Another movie; another time.

The State of My Resolve

2012-01-26T00:19:00.001-05:00

Someone asked me yesterday where my post about the President’s State of the Union address was. Of course I watched every second of it. I had decided not to write about it at all. Sometimes, it is best to leave the Debbie Downer essays to others who have far more practice.

However – that “someone” I mentioned above was the Reagan-loving ideologue whose last name I have carried for the past 34 years. He seemed to be itching for another round of our traditional Matalin-Carville impersonations. It was our way of life, even before he became my ex-husband waaaaaay back in 1985.

One thing my ex is NOT is a racist. It was his bright idea to walk his blue-eyed-blond self down the aisle with me back in 1978. That was a time when white men marrying black women was still very much an oddity in America. His conservatism is purely on the fiscal level, but what he doesn’t seem to understand is that these days, ALL conservatives run the risk of being suspected racists. And when he sent me his characteristically terse assessment of the SOTU – all bad, of course – my immediate reaction was just a tad irrational.

I have since recovered and remembered the debate ground rules we established all those decades ago. These debates had been the source of entertainment for us, especially during Presidential election cycles. We argued endlessly about Jimmy Carter during his term as President. But then he’d turn around and buy me a “From Peanuts to President” watch featuring Carter’s toothy grin.

Anyway, here is an excerpt of the email he sent today:

I look forward to your blog on the State of the Union address. I guess Obama figures "if you can't be good...be consistent" as he repeated themes from previous SOTU speeches.
What a piece of work, and what a waste!

He could have had a bipartisan health care bill if he would have told Nancy not to lock out Republicans.
He could have had a bipartisan finance reform bill if he would have told Messrs.'. Dodd and Frank to let Republican ideas be included.
He could have us on our way to some energy independence and some job creation if he would have allowed the XL Pipeline.
He could have us on our way to some energy independence and some job creation if he would lift the restrictions on drilling both on shore and off.
Instead he invests in Solyndra.

And the list goes on. He came to office with so many hopes and so much positive energy from so many people and he just devolved into a Chicago Pol, promoting at any cost an ideology. What a shame and what a penalty all of us will pay.
Hopefully a brighter day begins in less than one year from now.

Usually, such talk causes me to spring into action, countering with arguments to each point, defending my ideals, my points of view, and above all, my President. But this time, all I felt was battle fatigue.

This exercise we put ourselves through every four years feels more and more like the four years I spent in high school. We’d go to pep rallies and spout off these inane rhyming cheers declaring the other school’s players and fans our mortal enemies: Our team is red hot! Their team is doodely-squat! Aside from the coach and one or two of the returning varsity players, none of us had ever laid eyes on these people. Yet we were adamant that they were worthless clowns who should be playing with the Frosh. They had no redeeming value whatsoever, simply because they stood between us and what we had to have: THE WIN.

The truth is, I came away from that speech discouraged. It wasn’t that President Obama did a poor job of delivering the speech. He was fantastic! He looked more confident than I have ever seen him. Upbeat. Powerful. Presidential. He was on a high, and I was right there with him – as long as I didn’t listen too hard to the words. Because the words were just that: words. He lost me at “…America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about.”

I WANT to believe he is going to do what he said he was going to do. Nobody is prouder of his gutsy decisiveness in going after that bearded bastard in Pakistan who engineered the death and destruction of 9/11. That took nerves of steel and balls of pure titanium.

But every time he challenged Congress to send him a bill to sign, that little voice named Cynic started whispering in my ear. “Yeah, right.” Because in my mind, there is no chance in hell that Congress will ever do that. No matter how many times the President inches closer to the center on the issues held sacrosanct by the conservatives in Congress, it will never be enough, because they have one objective and ONLY one. “No more years!”

Just like the members of Congress who have made it their mission to unseat Obama, my ex already knows the reasons for the list he sent me today. And just like the members of Congress, he refuses to consider any aspect of those reasons as valid. He’d rather be upset because he can’t buy incandescent light bulbs anymore. That’s one of the two mistakes he will concede was made by George “W” Bush. The other was the GM bailout.

My guy has made a helluva lot more mistakes than two and so did Bush. I am still an avid admirer of the man who is Obama. The husband. The father. The regular guy who can sing an Al Green soul tune with genuine soul. The charisma and charm. But remember that question the Repubs just love to pose? “How’s that hope and change working for ya?”

It’s not.

Unemployment: Caught between Classes

2012-01-25T15:13:00.001-05:00

This post was written in response to an Open Salon open call to write about debunking the unemployment myths of poor work habits and the preference of government handouts over a paying job.

It’s not that I’m looking for sympathy; not the “woe is me” kind, anyway. I’m not interested in getting involved in pity parties. I abhor pity. Understanding and non-judgment would feel just about right. That’s what people like me, people who don’t deserve sympathy or pity, could use a healthy dose of.

I was one of the lucky ones. A childhood friend loved to point that out to me, especially if I had the audacity to sound as if I was complaining about my high-paying job. She worked just as hard. She put up with just as much bullshit from The Man as I did. But, in her mind, she was entitled to a little whining. I wasn’t.

My friend believed my success was the result of things over which I had little control. Brains. Looks. Skin color. Never mind how hard I worked in school. Never mind how much pride I had to swallow to survive in the corporate cesspool. I was lucky. She was not.

My so-called luck wasn’t worth much when The Recession That Is Really a Great Depression set in. I was just as laid off as my next-door neighbor or the stranger in the next neighborhood. One day I had a job, the next day I didn’t.

I had already retired from my 25-year career at a Fortune 100 corporation. My plan was in place and I was in the process of implementing it when I started to read the faint handwriting emerging on my wall. The way prices were rising, my retirement money was not lasting as long as it was supposed to last. I needed to unload my beloved home of 17 years sooner, rather than later. It needed updating to be competitive in what was fast becoming a buyers’ market. I had hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity, so pulling some of that equity out to remodel made all the sense in the world.

Until it didn’t. I had already completed the refinance and the remodel when I became uncomfortably aware of the softening of the housing market. By the time I was able to complete a sale, it was a short sale that took me 18 months to cajole the bank into accepting. I had lost all my equity, of course. My retirement plan was in shambles, much like my nerves.

I had taken a full-time job making less than half of what I had been earning before retirement. The small sales training company foundered when its corporate clients began slashing training budgets. The paycheck that was allowing me to make my mortgage payments without having to use funds from my 401(k) suddenly went away. I begged the employer to give me the proper paperwork to allow me to collect unemployment benefits.

I felt like a woman dropped into the middle of the ocean with only one water wing. Swimming in circles while I searched for another paying job, it soon became clear my full-time job had become doing battle with my mortgage lender. I was ashamed of having to go, in person, to the unemployment office and wait for hours to apply for UI. No matter how many people told me there was nothing to be ashamed of, I still was. This was my first dance with “government handouts.” I had never received any kind of government aid and I was raised to believe that was something of which I could be very proud. I felt foolish. I was a failure. And I was so ashamed.

But I also feel I have no basis for complaint. Throughout the recession, I have never had to worry about my next meal or my next month’s rent. Yes, it IS rent instead of a mortgage, which at one time would have been a devastating step down for me. I am able to get by on a small pension and Social Security, plus the small amount I have left in my seriously depleted retirement account. The lights are on, the heat is on, the dog is still a pampered diva.

I feel a strange sense of relief that I am no longer collecting unemployment because my benefits ran out. And that luck, for which I have been so envied, did send my way a six-month writing contract that added welcome new funds to my stash.

I no longer search for a job. At age 67, I feel guilty taking a job that someone who needs it more than I do could have. My life has changed dramatically and permanently, but it is not a bad life at all. I seem to have passed on the “Lucky Gene” to my son – or so my old friend tells me. Never mind that he has paid his dues in spades in Hollywood for 14 years, scraping together rent money any way he could.

One thing I have learned for sure: Unemployment is just as much a state of mind as it is fiscal reality. It does something bad to a person’s self-esteem. It has absolutely nothing to do with poor work habits or contentment with government handouts. It sucks. I would tell you to ask my next-door neighbor, if you don’t believe me, but you can’t. He committed suicide a year ago.

Newtie Had a Fit and Fell in It

2012-01-20T12:13:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine asked me yesterday why on earth I would watch the Republican Presidential debates. He wondered if I felt my blood pressure was too low and needed elevating.

I agree it is a rather masochistic thing to subject myself to, especially since they seem to happen every other day of late. I do it in order not to be guilty of the thing I deplore in people on the opposite side of any issue – not listening.

And so it was last night, when I made sure to be tuned to CNN at 8 p.m., so as not to miss anything, given the kind of wild day on the stump the GOP had on Thursday. Rick Perry suddenly discovered he was wasting his time. Rick Santorum suddenly discovered he had actually won in Iowa. And a woman once married to the man his mother charmingly referred to as “Newtie” decided to have a chat with ABC.

The elegant John King sat at the moderator’s podium and introduced the four remaining contenders for the Republican nomination for the 2012 Presidential election.

And then he said this:

And just as speaker Gingrich surged into contention here in South Carolina, a direct fresh character attack on the Speaker.

And Mr Speaker, I want to start with that this evening.

As you know, your ex-wife gave an interview to ABC News and another interview with The Washington Post. And this story has now gone viral on the internet. In it, she says that you came to her in 1999, at a time when you were having an affair. She says you asked her, sir, to enter into an open marriage.

Would you like to take some time to respond to that?

When Mitt Romney is presented with a question he would prefer not to answer, his slick exterior stiffens and his tongue suddenly twists itself into speech-defying positions. All that so-called “looking Presidential’ disappears and is replaced by bumbling. Not so Speaker Newt.

Nobody can say “Fuck you!” more eloquently than Newt.Gingrich. By the time he got through eviscerating John King and all the other “elite media” types who ever lived, somebody should probably have called the paramedics to attend to the news man, who tried desperately to look unfazed.

Oooooooowheeeeee! One can only imagine what it would be like to cross His Speakership in a closed meeting where he is unencumbered by the invasive media cameras. I pictured a meeting between Newtie and Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and saw the diminutive leader flying out of his shoes as the result of a Gingrich rant -- followed closely by the whine of missiles heading toward the U.S. coastline.
Can we change that slogan to "Anybody but Newt, please?"

Dr. King Would Not Be Pleased

2012-01-16T13:02:00.001-05:00

The ironies of human life are almost unbearable sometimes. Like today, the national observance of the birth of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Living as I do in the city Dr. King made famous, my local Atlanta news station covers the annual MLK services at Ebenezer Baptist Church minute by minute. Though I have frankly tired of the redundancy of the speeches delivered by members of his family and local politicians, I dutifully tuned in this morning in time to hear the preacheresque delivery of a stemwinder by U.S. Representative David Scott, my Inman Park neighbor whom I often see watering his front yard in his pajamas and robe.

Scott whipped the congregation of Atlanta’s movers and shakers into the appropriate frenzy, using the opportunity to encourage all of us to get out and vote in the Presidential election in November. He did a little Jessie Jackson rhyming. He threw in the list of Obama accomplishments that are so often omitted and ignored by his opposing aspirants. And he ended by dramatically reciting the lyrics of the great Billie Holliday’s God Bless the Child:

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own

Just in case the message of us- versus-them didn’t convey, the next speaker, Georgia’s Republican Governor Nathan Deal walked to the podium while the crowd continued to whoop and holler, as if possessed by the Holy Spirit they speak and sing so much about. This will be the first time I have ever had such a thought – much less articulate it – but I felt a tad sorry for the Governor. From the look on his face, so did he!

Nathan Deal was first elected to the U.S. Congress in November 1992 as a Democrat. But as soon as Republicans gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995 for the first time in 40 years, Deal joined the Republican Party then led by Speaker Newt Gingrich. He remained a member of Congress until he took office as Governor of Georgia in January 2011.

One would probably wonder how a man who has accepted the obligatory invitation to address the King Day congregation has acquitted himself on the topic of Civil Rights. On the Issues.org lists his voting record:

Nathan Deal on Civil Rights

Click here for 14 full quotes on Civil Rights OR background on Civil Rights.

Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation. (Nov 2007)
Voted YES on Constitutionally defining marriage as one-man-one-woman. (Jul 2006)
Voted YES on making the PATRIOT Act permanent. (Dec 2005)
Voted YES on Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. (Sep 2004)
Voted YES on protecting the Pledge of Allegiance. (Sep 2004)
Voted YES on constitutional amendment prohibiting flag desecration. (Jun 2003)
Voted YES on banning gay adoptions in DC. (Jul 1999)
Voted YES on ending preferential treatment by race in college admissions. (May 1998)
Supports anti-flag desecration amendment. (Mar 2001)
Rated 7% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
Issue a commemorative postage stamp of Rosa Parks. (Dec 2005)
Rated 0% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance. (Dec 2006)
Rated 14% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance. (Dec 2006)
Supports Amendment to prevent same sex marriage. (Aug 2010)

It will probably come as no surprise to the reader that Nathan Deal vigorously supports the Georgia law that requires a photo I.D. in order to cast a vote. In the speech he had just delivered, David Scott had urged those in attendance not to allow that law to get them down, which Scott believes it was designed to do. Many in the state believe the law was passed specifically to suppress the African American vote.
So there he was, at the podium, a little ashen, waiting in vain for the crowd to quiet itself. Even as he tried to begin his remarks over the din, some over enthusiastic members of the audience shouted over him.

What did Deal have to say? I couldn’t tell you. I did not stick around to hear the lies and platitudes that would make even a peacemaker like Martin Luther King, Jr. want to slap His Honor the Governor upside his head.

Weight Wars

2012-01-12T15:26:00.001-05:00

This is a sad story. It is not a new story, or a terribly original one, but it is sad.

At roughly the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, the American marketing machine began its annual assault on blubber. Never willing to miss a chance to capitalize on the foibles of undisciplined, sedentary couch tubers, retailers roll out the New Year’s Resolution brigade to peddle gym memberships, high-priced machines that allegedly evaporate newly-acquired fat cells surrounding abdomens and derrieres from coast to coast.

Most of the time I try to ignore the whole siege. I don’t make resolutions, New Year’s or otherwise. I just decide and do. Or I don’t decide and I don’t do. More of the latter, I confess, but it’s better than failing to meet a goal!

Two years ago I decided to drop at least 20 pounds in time for my 44th college reunion. I started in March, 2010 and by June 2010 I had lost 32. That was satisfying as all get out, but there was a bigger challenge, and I knew it. Almost anyone can lose weight when they put their minds (and mouths) to it. The real challenge is keeping it gone. I wanted to accomplish that.

The lowest weight I achieved stayed at that level for exactly one week. Even though I continued to eat the exact same way I had for the previous three months, fluctuations in water retention and other bodily functions kept my weight bouncing back and forth by a pound, but never as low as that all-time low again.

Between months 1 and 6 after that low, my weight crept up around four pounds, still with the same eating patterns, but with my mind games starting to creep in almost unnoticed by the conscious me. Salt and sugar seem to be the culprits in my metabolism. During the diet period, I was religious about keeping both at bay. But after the reunion, without a specific motive, my resolve began to slip. For example, popcorn as a snack is fine if it is popped with little or no oil and salt. But it is also pretty boring and bland. So I began “compromising.” Surely one gentle shake of salt won’t hurt anything. And I’ll just use one tablespoon of Smart Balance buttery spread to pop it in for flavor.

I got away with that for quite a while, with my weight staying more or less plateaued. In fact, it worked for a whole year, even with occasional “splurges” of steaks slightly bigger than the palm of my hand and frequent popcorn snacks. So for some 18 months after the diet, I was holding my own in the maintenance challenge.

Christmas 2011 arrived and with it the need for gifts for people such as the mailman, my former gardener who is still a friend, neighbors and unexpected guests. I have traditionally made cookies for these purposes. Last year I resisted the whining of my former gardener friend and skipped the baking. This year, I gave in.

If I ever doubted the notion that eating carbs causes carb cravings, I know it for certain now. On the first day of the baking, I succumbed to the habit of licking the mixer beaters and bowl after removing the batter or dough. The sweetness of real sugar was shocking to my taste buds – almost sickening, to be honest. Next came the warm cookies along with the intoxication of their aromas. One cookie can’t hurt.

Don’t make me write it. You know the rest.

It is five pounds later and I am up a total of ten pounds from my lowest weight after the diet. Add to the mix the fact that I quit going to my gym because of poor treatment of seniors by the staff and have ignored my intention of finding a substitute, and I am pissed at myself.

There is no getting around it. Maintenance of a healthy weight takes good habits and lots of movement. Head games are guaranteed to be lost by the person with the head. The older we get, the more difficult it is to do. If I continue to make excuses for myself, my health will pay the price.

I did it once, I can do it again. Ten pounds is a helluva lot easier to lose than 32. Back to reality. The weaning from salt and sugar has begun, the eyes are steely and the motivation has returned. My waistband is too tight. Dammit!

Ideology Doesn’t Work For Me

2012-01-09T14:33:00.001-05:00

While I was reading a recent OS cover piece by Ted Frier about Rick Santorum’s relentless Catholicism, the realization almost bowled me over: I don’t do ideology well.

I am supposed to be Catholic, too. I was baptized, confirmed and indoctrinated. Eight years of Catholic elementary school made sure I learned all the thou shalt nots I needed to be guaranteed a seat near the right hand of God Himself. There were a few thou shalts thrown in, mostly in the form of commandments such as behaving, obeying, keeping holy and honoring. Good works were encouraged, so long as I didn’t have to enter a Protestant, Jewish or Muslim house of worship to do it. Those were forbidden places.

I questioned myself into the principal’s office so many times, I had my own chair there. My six-year-old mind couldn’t grasp the concept of blind faith. Logic was more my style, although I didn’t know that word at the time. I did, however, know the word precocious, because I was constantly being described that way to explain why I asked so many obnoxious questions. They weren’t obnoxious to me.

There was lots of talk about the Virgin Mary, for example. I knew Mary was a girl’s name, but what is a virgin, I asked. Told to ask my mother, as usual when I ventured too far outside the boundaries of first-grade query, I soon got a satisfactory answer at home. Which then made the concept of a virgin birth a little outlandish in my book.

Miracles? C’mon now, I’d think. You really expect me to believe that Jesus was successful in feeding throngs of famished people with five loaves of bread and two fish? I was Doubting Thomasine, the classroom pain in the nun’s heavily clothed behind.

It was impossible for me to reconcile a “loving God” with the notion that “Catholicism is the one true faith.” We were even taught that only Catholics had a chance of getting into heaven. That didn’t make sense to my immature but logical mind.

Although there don’t seem to be as many of them as others, Catholics are really prime candidates for Republicanism. The Catholic faithful are used to thinking in absolutes, eschewing gray areas of human existence. They have been taught the practice of exclusion and of thinking of what NOT to do, instead of what to do. The Catholic way is the right and only way; everybody else are sinners, blasphemers and the doomed.

When the time came for me to determine my political stance, I often found myself straddling a line between the two parties – socially inclined to make sure all were included in the American Dream, but firmly entrenched in the work ethic demonstrated by the adults in my family, who would walk 10 miles to work rather than miss a day. Money was not abundant, but it was managed so well by my grandparents, the families of my friends were convinced we were far better off than we were. Paying as you go, saving and sacrificing were family credos.

When someone like Rick Santorum preaches both banning birth control AND banning abortion, I want to scream. That is taking Catholic conservatism to an insane level for thinking people. If contraception is “dangerous,” as Mr. Santorum believes, and abortion is murder, can chastity belts and/or penectomies be far behind?

But there are other elements of the conservative way of thinking that make a lot of sense, at least they do to me. The government has proved to be a very poor manager in so many ways. The level of waste and redundancy in the halls of the U.S. Departments of Everything is staggering and maddening. Politicians spend so much time running for office, there is little left for monitoring the practices of bureaucracies that simply plod along, growing bigger and less effective each year.

I agree we need a smaller government. I just don’t mean the same thing the average Republican means when I say that. I do agree we could do without a lot of the agencies created during some political fracas or another to appease the opposition or postpone the matter indefinitely. I do not agree that taxes are evil across the board and must be slashed indiscriminately. How are we supposed to maintain the infrastructure of the nation without taxes?

When I listen to Ron Paul talk about our individual liberties, I say an enthusiastic yes – until he goes a bit further and I realize that those same liberties are the arguments used by people who want to be able to make a profit at the expense of employees, customers and competitors using whatever measures it takes.
But then Dr. Paul talks about the U.S. pulling the troops out of non-combat zones of the world,and he talks about America needing to stop trying to “fix” matters that are none of our business in other people’s countries, and I am back to yes.

I don’t appreciate being pigeonholed by others because of my position on a single issue. I don’t like the double solid lines on the ideological highway painted by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the Libertarian Party or the Tea Party. I want to be able to think through each issue, come to a conclusion and be able to vote accordingly. I cannot do that now – not in my state. I am required to declare a party affiliation in order to vote in primaries.

This morning I was driving on the Interstate, listening to a black radio station. I am mixed-race, but identify as black. The on-air personalities were discussing a new GPS feature they said was introduced by Microsoft, which allows the driver to “avoid ghettos.” They took umbrage with that concept, based on the assumption that the designer of the software was thinking “black neighborhood” when s/he used the term ghetto. They imagined the use of the n-word in the product’s development stages. One of the announcers went on to ridicule “white folks” because “they strap things on their car roofs, trunks and hoods.”

I don’t get this. I don’t get how we “black folks” can make such sweepingly stereotypical statements about other groups and expect to hide behind the ideology of victimhood in America. Ask Dr. Laura Schlessinger if she could get away with a similar commentary.

When people adopt an ideology which informs their every waking thought, they are surrendering their freedom to think for themselves. It makes them sound like parrots and robots and thoughtless boors. That doesn’t work for me.

Reflections on an Icy Pond

2012-01-06T23:35:00.001-05:00

Two days ago there was a hard freeze in Atlanta. It was the first freeze of the season. The bubbling fountain on my patio froze solid, threatening the survival of the clay pot that holds its water. The robins came by, as usual, looking for a drink or a bath, but stood pecking at the surface of the ice, to no avail.
The pond in the local park was deserted by the water fowl. Lucy the Neighborhood Goose squatted on the shore, wrapped in her own down, head tucked snugly under one wing. The ducks were nowhere to be seen. Thin and crystalline shards of ice floated on the surface of the placid pond, too sparse to form a solid surface.

Today the sun is warm, the air is 63 degrees Fahrenheit, the sky clear and bluer than Muddy Waters' sounds.   The contrast in the two days' presentations reminds me of "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

My week was spent watching all 38 episodes of the Showtime series The Tudors. No one ever swore on the historical accuracy of this work by Michael Hirst. License was taken. I video-streamed the four seasons since 2007 via Netflix because I don't get Showtime on my cable service. I'm too cheap.
Not since I read James Clavell's Shogun have I been so riveted by anything, written or filmed. Period pieces do entertain me tremendously. I love the pageantry, the luscious frocks and jewels. I feast on the foibles of royalty. The story was close enough to true and the major elements stayed intact.

King Henry VIII was a spoiled latter-day trust-fund kid. His dad, Henry VII, was the last King of England to win his throne on the battlefield. Henry VIII's only qualification for the kingship was an accident of birth.

The king was a handsome, athletic and charming individual, especially as played by Jonathon Rhys-Meyers. He loved his food and drink, romping on horseback through the English countryside with his buddies, and bedding his wives' ladies in waiting.

His habit of wooing, wedding and ultimately dispatching his six queens would be funny if it weren't true. His idea of showing his discarded spouses mercy was to have them beheaded instead of hung, drawn and quartered. Nice guy, Hank.

If I hadn't struggled to stay awake through my Modern European History classes in college, I might have learned more about the power struggles between our mother-country's randy king and the Catholic Church. Episcopalians probably know far more than I, since their church was the product of those struggles. Henry didn't like it that the Pope and his minions thought they could dictate policy to the English throne. so he found a loophole in the law he rationalized to justify giving himself absolute power in his realm as head of the Church of England.

Throughout this truly entertaining series, I couldn't help but see the parallels between the shenanigans in Henry's court and what goes on in Washington, D.C. today. Power mad? Check. Womanizing? Check. Lying? Check.

The nobility of the 16th century didn't believe in equality among people. They used terms like "betters" and "riff-raff." They could walk by beggars and the handicapped as if they weren't even there. Once a week or so somebody in a crown might step outside and tuck a coin into the hands of a few "lessers." That allowed them to live with their consciences, if they happened to have one. Amassing more money and power was job one.

Sound familiar? The biggest difference between our far-right conservative politicians and the ones in King Henry VII's court is the costuming.

The 17th century Plymouth Pilgrims fled England to free themselves of religious persecution, but they brought with them the sensibilities of England's noble classes.   Rich versus poor. Class versus classless. Haves versus have-nots. Christians versus Muslims. Mormons versus Baptists.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Photo by L

The Woman in the Mirror

2012-01-03T01:19:00.001-05:00

A couple of recent lessons in humility have weighed on my mind for the better part of a week now. It is my nature to detest making what are normally called faux pas; those lapses in social consciousness that find us saying things that are offensive to another person, group of persons, or classes of persons.

It is mortifying enough when such a misstep is made knowing full well, a nanosecond after the utterance escapes from my mouth, how absolutely inappropriate I have been. But when the infraction is committed unbeknownst to me, in the midst of doing what I perceive to be a good deed…well,to my knowledge, that hadn’t happened to me before last week.

How I reached the ripe old age of 67 without knowing the origin of the word I chose to utilize in a good-natured post marking the December 26th birthday of a fellow blogger, I can only guess.

In the post, I said something about people having birthdays on or around Christmas Day often feel gypped out of attention – and sometimes gifts. A reader who usually makes delightfully supportive comments on my posts this time just included a link to a web page – nothing else. The topic of the page had something to do with tolerance. I couldn’t figure out what it had to do with this birthday announcement, so I shrugged and moved on.

A couple of hours later I received a private message suggesting I replace the word “gypped” with something less offensive. The writer wrote of living within blocks of a Gypsy King as a kid, and therefore knew how that term was used.

This was one time when only the word gobsmacked would suffice to describe my sudden realization of the origin of the word gypped.

I have never met a gypsy. I have never knowingly seen a gypsy, especially one who fits the description I carry in my imagination. In fact, I now realize that before very recently, I thought gypsies were mythical characters or long-gone memories of times gone by.

There were no gypsies in my hometown. When my grandmother threatened to send me off to the gypsies if I didn’t behave, I thought it was just one of her “sayings," of which there were dozens. And the only thing I knew about Gipsy Kings was on the back of the Hotel California cd in the cabinet.

An hour later I had read enough about the history of gypsies to be mortified at my ignorance. I had only learned of their victimization in the Holocaust in an article posted on Open Salon less than a month ago. And now I know there are American Gypsies living the “traveler” lifestyle, for which they are famous, throughout the United States.

Three days ago a neighbor and I were chatting outside in the unseasonably warm sunshine. She and I have known each other for at least a decade and have spent quite a bit of time together at neighborhood gatherings and events.

“Oh, Lezlie, I have something I want to … You always have an opinion…well, I was about to say you are opinionated, but…I want to run something by you.”

Opinionated. Now there’s a word that can get my attention. It certainly did about 20 years or more ago when my boss used the word while giving me a progress review.

Here is Google’s definition:

Adjective: Conceitedly assertive and dogmatic in one's opinions.

Synonyms: obstinate - headstrong - stubborn - self-willed

There are other definitions I found that aren’t quite as harsh, but I’m going with this one.

In my mind, a person who does not think about issues, who doesn’t have enough curiosity about certain topics to learn about them and form an opinion is not very interesting. I seem to be curious about virtually everything, which is probably why I spend so much time in my head.

In a given conversation I will be in one of two positions: either I will have thought about, read about and talked about the subject before and have a basis for discussion; or, I will not know anything about the subject and will proceed to ask a few pretty incisive questions, many of which can seem to annoy the speaker sometimes.

It is never my intention to come off as a know-it-all; in fact, I try hard not to. But I fail. And I am determined to tone down the conceited and dogmatic aspects of my assertions, especially if the person who is evaluating my contributions would agree that obstinate, headstrong, stubborn and self-willed (whatever that means) would also apply to me.

Individual, evaluative words and phrases have as profound an effect on me as the more commonly hated gender and race based pejoratives. A colleague who was not a fan of mine once told me I was “an inch away from brilliant.” Some would say that was a rather generous pronouncement coming from a detractor. Me? Comically, I worry to this day about that inch! But the hurt I felt from his telling me we were “oil and water” caused me to cry on the spot and it reverberates from time to time in my memory. This happened 20 years ago. I had thought we were friends or at the very least, friendly.

American English is packed with loaded words and expressions that come flying off the lips of well-meaning people who don’t question their meaning or origin. Just this week I have heard Indian giver, off the reservation, Irish twins, Chinese fire drill, and yes, I used gypped. I’m going to do better.

L’s 2011 Doofus Awards

2011-12-26T23:48:00.001-05:00

The Year of the Dumbass has almost ended, thank the Fates. 2011 has been a year of bountiful idiocy, served up in every category of life on Planet Earth. Never in history has the list of laughable lunacy competed in length with the laudable and annually lauded achievements of homo sapiens.

Though it was extremely challenging to winnow this list of moronic behavior down to a manageable number, listed below are my picks for my First Annual Doofus Awards:

Although there were some high-profile criminals such as Casey Anthony, Florida’s young mother who killed her three-year-old daughter (acquitted by a boneheaded jury), and Dr. Conrad Murray, Michael Jackson’s physician who administered the lethal dose of Propofol that took the pop star’s life (convicted and sentenced to four years), the Doofus Award for Crime must go to Tawander Simmons, the 35 year-old woman of Stone Mountain, Georgia who checked her 17 year-old son, Benny Brice and two other boys, out of Stephenson High School one Friday morning. The four then robbed a Wells Fargo bank in Lilburn, GA, 20 miles outside Atlanta.

There was no shortage of nominees from Hollywood, God knows. Is there ever? Kim Kardashian, of the Hollywood Kardashians, moguls of the famous-for-doing-nothing industry, was certainly top of mind at the time of these award considerations. Public opinion has deemed her infamous 72-day marriage to NBA player Kris Humphries an $18 million publicity stunt, while she plays victim and he gets booed at the arena for nobody-knows-what. But nothing holds a candle to the web-based meltdown of bad-boy Charlie Sheen. What fool who stars in television’s number one show gets on the internet and brags about his live-in goddesses, his tiger blood and his “winning” ways? All while looking like a drugged out mad man who is ultimately fired from his lucrative job and stages a poorly executed one-man show. Charlie Sheen, the Doofus Award for Hollywood goes to you, Bubba.

The winner in this category is getting the award solely for being the media person who I find unbearably irritating. You might be thinking Glen Beck or Bill O’Reilly or Howard Stern or even Piers Morgan – and each of them is surely a doofus. But my choice is a person who is really known mostly for writing memorable lines like “Read my lips, no new taxes” and catch phrases like “a thousand points of light.” I’m sure the Elder President Bush appreciated her admirable ability to turn a phrase, but the Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan is the worst political pundit on television. Her patrician, over-enunciated whispery speaking style makes me want to slap her when she finally manages to get a sentence out. Peggy, it gives me considerable pleasure to present the Doofus Award for Media. And yes, I know (or at least as FAR as I know) you haven’t done anything particularly stupid. You are just irritating.

This category is a veritable cornucopia of possibilities. Given my political leanings, one might expect this award to go to any one of the current crop of Republican Presidential hopefuls. Rick Perry’s “oops” moment was unfortunate; Herman Cain…well, pick one, I suppose, but his brain blip on Libya made him look even stupider than his arrogant assumption that his 13-year “friendship” with Ginger White would escape undiscovered; Mitt Romney’s $10,000 wager… But no, this year’s award is going, with “certitude,” to the Peter Tweeter himself, Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner. Sending a snapshot of one’s junk into the perpetuity known as the internet is a boneheaded move that assures his presence on the list of all-time doofuses.

This one is no contest. The biggest sports doofus in the land today has to be Kobe Bryant of the LA Lakers. The affable NBA phenom has reinforced the “dumb” in “dumbass” as late as today, the day after Christmas, when he is reported to be trying to save his marriage to the beautiful Vanessa “for the sake of the kids.” Since when did bank accounts count as kids? We first learned that Kobe was a doofus when he was accused a few years back of assaulting a hotel employee on a road trip. A $4 million ring eventually patched things up with Vanessa, but nothing was done about the fact that Kobe had no pre-nuptial agreement to protect his hundreds of millions in the bank. And Kobe continued to drop his drawers with women apparently too numerous to count. Now that Vanessa has not only had it up to here with his philandering, but has also allegedly found another strong shoulder to lean on which is attached to boxer Victor Ortiz, Kobe is scrambling to avoid losing half his fortune. When are these numbnuts going to understand they will have to pay to play? Kobe should have had a tête-à-tête with Tiger.

‘Twas Three Nights Before Christmas

2011-12-22T19:07:00.001-05:00

‘Twas three nights before Christmas, with time running out;

And the Congress was deadlocked, resolution in doubt.

The plane rides were ordered, the Christmas break called.

The Senate was screaming that they were appalled.

The people were jumping right out of there skins,

While visions of income cuts entered their noggins.

Mom sits in her jammies and Dad in his Snuggie

Crunching the numbers and going quite buggy,

When out in the great room there arose such a ruckus

That Dad said “Don’t tell me they’ve come HERE to f**k us!

Away to the closet he crept on his toes

Pulled down his rifle and with it some clothes.

The blaze in the fireplace was casting a glow

On the ceiling and walls, on the presents, their bows.

When, who to Dad’s shock and dismay did appear

But John Boehner himself, through the window -- with beer.

With the nose on his kisser so red and so lit

Dad knew in a moment that ol’ John was blitzed.

More swiftly than magpies his cronies did follow

To repeat his mantras and remind him to swallow.

“Where’s Santa?” asked Dad, where’s Prancer and Vixen?

Where’s Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen?”

Why are you here, and who are these clowns?

Why aren’t you working to bring them around?”

And then, in a sudden, Dad heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As Dad lowered the rifle, his mouth all agape

Santa entered the room through the fire escape.

He was dressed for the evening in his usual duds,

And he looked like he and Boehner had been sharing the suds.

The humungous bag he had flung on his back

Was as empty as the souls of the Tea Party quacks.

His ire – how it bristled! his temper how nasty!

His cheeks were on fire, his nose wanted rhinoplasty!

His droll little mouth was drawn taut like a bow,

And he spoke in a voice that was scary and low.

“Boehner,” he rumbled, “you fools are quite done.

You’ve lost control of your people. Dad, give me that gun!

Your minions are crazy and don’t care a whit

About children and elderly; you are all full of sh*t!”

“Now give me that bottle, you drunk knucklehead!

And get your ass back to D.C., not to bed.

The children are waiting for me to show up

And you need to agree to free that cash up!”

Dad nodded profusely, while Santa just glowered.

John Boehner pulled up and looked less like a coward.

He turned to his cronies and called for a huddle,

Their hearts started melting; beneath them a puddle.

They sprang through the window, Nick leading the way

And away they all flew to catch a ride on the sleigh

They got back to Washington and called for a vote

They strong-armed their holdouts; an agreement they wrote.

Santa backed from the room and walked back to his sleigh

The reindeer were ready to be on their way

And John Boehner heard, as they drove out of sight,

“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

Note from L: I was crafting this poem when the bulletin from the Washington Times hit my email saying the House had reached an agreement to go ahead and approve the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut and the unemployment payments recommended by the Senate. I would like to think of it as a Christmas miracle, but we all know it had more to do with political pressure and the looming elections. Whatever the reason, there will be a little more breathing room for parents who are scrambling to make sure Christmas happens for their kids. Alleluia!

The Intrepid Mr. Cooper, the Amazing Ms. Streep and Foreclosure in Cleveland

2011-12-19T01:20:00.001-05:00

I have watched 60 Minutes for as long as I can remember. Most of the time I am absolutely absorbed by at least one, sometimes two, of the three segments presented. Occasionally, I think the enduring CBS workhorse strikes out.

That was most decidedly NOT the case last night.

Segment One: Cleveland Mortgage Crisis

People have made jokes about Cleveland, Ohio for decades. “Mistake by the Lake” (Erie) comes to mind. Coming as I do from the Chicago area, I grew up thinking Cleveland was just a smaller, less “cool” place with lots of similarities to our own beloved environs. Whatever the reason for all the derision, the fact is that Cleveland has been losing population for years and has been hit hard by the current failure of the American economy.

So many houses have been lost to foreclosure and stand vacant month after month, year after year, the homes have become like shopping malls to thieves who take all the wiring, the plumbing the fixtures and even the aluminum siding off the bottom levels reachable without a ladder. The blight created by these ravaged properties has forced the city of Cleveland resort to demolishing these recently perfectly good structures in order to try to save the value of the remaining homes, most of which are worth no more than half of their current mortgages.

As the camera swept by the small, Cape Cod-style houses sitting at the back of deep, well-kept front lawns, my heart broke a little bit more than it already was. I know a thing or two about having to make the decision to ignore all my own Midwestern values and decide to strategically default on a home so far underwater I could never make keeping it make sense. I was lucky, though, because my house was in a market that was still very desirable, especially for people who wanted to cut down on the burden of gas prices and long commutes from the suburbs. I was able to browbeat my bank into accepting a short sale, after 18 months of intense battle. The people interviewed on 60 Minutes last night had no chance of making such a deal.

The extent to which Americans are hurting is not abating. It is simply not being discussed anymore. While our collection of clowns known as Congress continue to play their silly games in Washington, Americans are quietly dying, inside and out. One woman on the show was skeletal in physique. When asked how she had been getting by as she steadfastly scraped together a monthly mortgage payment even after losing her nursing job 18 months before, she replied that she cut back on food and blood pressure medicine. She went to food banks so that she didn’t have to be hungry “all the time.” She owes $100,000 on her mortgage. Her home is worth $50,000 today. We are not talking about a McMansion here.

Segment Two: Anderson Cooper, Scuba Diver

On a lighter note, as they love to say on broadcast news programs, we left Cleveland and its problems and traveled with Anderson Cooper to a coral reef located in what Christopher Columbus called the Gardens of the Queen, a secluded and largely undiscovered area of the ocean off the coast of Cuba. With with marine biologist David Guggenheim, Cooper took the viewers on an up close tour of a pristine coral reef, untouched by the problems shared by most of the world’s more ecologically disturbed reefs. Dodging sharks and gigantic Moray eels to explore this increasingly rare oasis, the apparently fearless Cooper went almost nose to nose with a curious, 200-pound giant grouper.

What a life this man leads. War zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, a populist revolt in Egypt’s Tahrir Square during the “Arab Spring,” a catastrophic earthquake in Haiti with millions displaced and/or severely injured. How difficult it must be to be Ben Maisani, Cooper’s boyfriend, who owns a New York city gay nightclub, while Anderson gallivants all over the world putting his life at risk.

Segment Three: the Consummate Pretender

Of all the female actors in Hollywood, Meryl Streep is the one I would choose first to share a meal with. Many actors are far more interesting playing roles than they ever are in their own persona. Streep is fascinating in her own right. She refuses to take herself too seriously, has a rapier-sharp wit and doesn’t seem to care a whit about her considerable physical beauty. Most recently she has inhabited the character of the Iron Lady, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

I remember vividly the moment I became a devoted Meryl Streep fan. I was where I could always be found at some point of a weekend in 1982; in a movie theater, this time watching Sophie’s Choice with my then-husband. In the scene, the character Stingo (Peter MacNicol) shows up at her door wearing a seersucker suit. Sophie, an immigrant from Poland, said in her thickest Polish accent “Stinko, you’re wearing your cocksucker suit!”

Since then I have loved her performances as everything from a all-too-familiar, pinch-faced nun in Doubt to a high-spirited,latex-wearing mother of the bride in Mama Mia. This extremely rare interview on 60 Minutes did absolutely nothing to dampen my admiration of this gifted thespian.

Sixty minutes well spent.

Kim Katches a Klaim to Fame

2011-12-15T18:37:00.002-05:00

Well praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! Some scientist has finally put a label on a Kardashian that we can all grasp. No, it’s not “annoying!” Well, yes it is, but that’s not the word I’m going for here.

Kim Kardashian is a poster child for a phenomenon called vocal fry. As reported in today’s (12/15/11) Time.com Healthland, vocal fry refers to the low, guttural vibrations that sometimes occur in speech, often appearing at the end of sentences. Listen here.

Now this is something to celebrate. Just last night, Barbara Walters, on her annual 10 Most Fascinating People broadcast, told the viewers that she had never, in all the years she has done this program, had she had so much bitching and moaning about her selection as she has about Kim Kardashian.

Jerry Seinfeld got rich and famous for creating a hit television sitcom, literally about nothing. Jerry Seinfeld is a hilarious stand-up comic, so his fame and fortune is most definitely talent-based. Kim Kardashian and her K-obsessed mother and siblings, on the other hand, have done little more than embarrass each other in public to earn their obscene number of millions dissing the intelligence of the American voyeurs known as reality show addicts.

Now Ms. Kim has a claim to fame. She will be forever identified with the latest language fad which I will now officially dub The Kardashian Effect. I wonder how much Mama Kris will get when she cashes in on that!

Photo from Wikipedia

Christmas is the Same but I’ve Changed

2011-12-13T18:11:00.000-05:00

The act of brushing my teeth triggers some of my most interesting thoughts . I’ve always been rather bored by the task, standing there gazing into the mirror, trying to remember not to skip the lower molars my dental hygienist nags me about. So I allow my vagabond mind to traipse at will.

This morning it dragged me into the hackneyed but timely territory of The Holidays. This is my 68th round of the most redundant set of annual celebrations known to humanity. Everything about it – from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day – defies change. Sure the various accoutrements have varied over the years. One year our family Christmas tree was pink fiberglass hung with hot pink ornaments and illuminated by a tri-colored rotating disk lit from behind. Then there were the aluminum years.

Mostly, though, every effort has been made to preserve the traditions that have spanned the generations. Variations on the Thanksgiving and Christmas menus are not welcome and they are not allowed. Recipes for the side dishes have been handed down as if by law. For instance, the stuffing, which my family calls dressing. The only thing about the dressing that has changed in the nearly seven decades I’ve been around is the oysters. Ever since I made the mistake of biting into one and glancing at the remaining portion on my fork, I have demanded that at least half of the dressing be mollusk-free. (Only vegetables should be green!)

As children, my sister and I lived for Christmas. The biggest stress we had was caused by the endless days and nights that preceded the big night. Everything about the season was magical. The feast on Thanksgiving produced a table laden with scrumptious dishes and surrounded by people we seldom saw. And the smells! Turkey roasting in the wee hours of the morning, sugar cookies and gingerbread baking in an oven that never rested. The sweetness of candy ribbons and peppermint canes as we passed the verboten-before-dinner candy dishes on the cherry wood buffet.

My grandmother was the kind of woman who couldn’t just sit and do nothing. Her hands, if not busy making something, would itch with restlessness. One year she took up creating elaborately sequined and beaded Christmas tree ornaments. Every year each grandchild received about a half-dozen new, stunningly beautiful baubles for their trees. Today I have around fifty, lovingly wrapped and stored every New Year’s Day, ready to eventually hand down to my son. Just as the lights and the smells of the season resurrect my childhood memories of the winter holidays, those handmade keepsakes represent my young adulthood.

When I think of my holidays as a young mother, the tone of my memories and imagery begin to change. Stephen was only one year old when his father and I divorced, so for the next seven years creating memories for this, the next generations, was entirely my responsibility. With a child so young and a demanding, full-time job I became physically run down and susceptible to every virus making the rounds. If I had to describe that period with just one word, that word would be exhaustion.

I remember one particular Christmas Eve when he was three or four and asking Santa for things that required assembly. I had a virulent sinus infection. I sat crying in the middle of the living room floor struggling to read the instructions and put together that year’s construction project. But my tears evaporated when, at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning I was awakened by the squeals of my delighted little guy.

As my son grew up and I grew older, the magic of Christmas gradually faded. Anyone who is of a certain age knows that our perception of passing time speeds up exponentially. Whereas as a child, the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed an eternity, now it doesn’t seem like enough time to get ready, and I don’t even have any grandchildren yet. And didn’t I just put all those decorations away a few weeks ago?

This year is different. My life has calmed down almost too much. I have time to get things done. I am 100% debt-free for the first time since I was 21 years old, and I have the money to buy the few gifts I’m giving, Yet most people would say I’m broke. Yes, the world is going to hell in the proverbial hand basket, our government has lost its way, and the future can sometimes seem bleak; but I am personally at peace. My heart and spirit have opened to the things in life that have the most meaning: good health; adequate food and shelter; the beauty of nature and its ability to endure our pillaging; kindness to and from others; and the hope that resides in the faces of every little child whose laughter tickles my ears.

Something tells me this is the way it should have been all along.

Wanna Bet?

2011-12-11T13:26:00.002-05:00

As entertainment goes, Saturday night on TV has become the epitome of an oxymoron. If one is not in possession of the pair of chromosomes that makes a person amenable to watching gigantic men run, jump, pass and collide in a sporting event, the menu on the boob tube on Saturday night justifies in spades the old vast wasteland moniker.

I had no date (hah! as if I needed to write that) and a dull throb behind my eyes was making reading too difficult, so I honored my commitment to stay abreast with what the other side is saying and tuned in to the 176th (that’s right, right?) Republican Presidential Debate on ABC.

Here is my review of the debate in a nutshell: I laughed, I cried, I almost puked.

Observations

Frontrunner of the week Newt Gingrich got off the best rejoinder of the evening – heck, of the loooooong campaign cycle -- in response to main rival of the week Mitt Romney’s assertion that “I am not a career politician….” In that feisty, reedy voice that literally trilled with self-satisfaction, Newt quipped “The only reason you aren’t a career politician is because you lost the election to Teddy Kennedy in 1994!” I laughed aloud along with the studio audience, and continued laughing while watching Mitt Romney sputter through a retort.

Speaking of sputtering, Romney looked a little green around the gills when called upon to elaborate on his “obvious differences” with Gingrich. For a minute there, he appeared to morph into his fellow good-haired opponent Perry, comically unable to come up with a single example for what seemed like a full minute. I don’t know. I think I would be able to tick off those kinds of things without missing a beat. Maybe he’s tired?

When Texas Governor Rick Perry successfully misquoted something from Romney’s book and refused to capitulate, Mitt extended his un-calloused, elegant hand and offered to bet Perry $10,000!!!!!! The late, great Ann Richards could be heard paraphrasing her old George Bush line: “Poor Mitt. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” I mean who the hell do you know outside of Las Vegas who pulls ten grand out of his…um.. back pocket as a casual wager? Nice, Mitt. Way to get down with your peeps.

Then there is Ron Paul. Now there is a guy who makes all kinds of sense, but does so in such a style that makes him seem like a composite of Pee Wee Herman, Gilbert Gottfried and Casper Milquetoast. The word charisma has never been uttered within a country mile of that guy. He holds steady with 18% of the votes in polls, but even the Sunday morning gab gals and guys keep forgetting to mention him. Paul is about as Presidential as I am, which does not bode well for his election to the White House. But when I listen to the things he consistently says – there will be no flip-flopping in the Paul campaign – he says it clearly, with total conviction and with what is commonly recognized in regular conversations as common sense.

As a woman, I found myself inwardly cheering for Michelle Bachmann last night. Let me be clear; I do not agree with any of her thoughts, ideas or statements. What I found myself admiring, though, is her steely ability to think on her feet, to articulate her point of view with quantitative supporting facts (at least I assume they are facts, which…well, you know), and her resistance to resorting to the Palinesque employment of her feminine wiles. I would just love to see a debate between Bachmann and Hillary Clinton.

Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman were there, allegedly, but neither said much. They might as well have stayed home and watched it on TV with me.

After watching for almost 90 minutes, I have to admit my mind began to wander. I think I might of gotten weary from hearing about how President Obama is responsible for everything bad that has happened in the last century. Diane Sawyer’s measured delivery of anything she has to say has always had a Sominex effect on me. So, I didn’t make it to the end. But based on the talking heads and their repetitious coverage of the debate, I didn’t miss anything.

Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground

2011-12-06T12:12:00.002-05:00

Jorelys Rivera, age 7

Her mommy had to work the night shift at the Canton, Georgia chicken processing plant. It’s the only work available for the young mother of three. A teenage family friend was the babysitter who watched little Jorelys and her two younger siblings. On Friday afternoon, around 5 p.m., the teen watched Jorelys leave the River Ridge apartment complex playground to return to their apartment to get a soft drink. She never returned.

Jorelys’ mom, Joselin, hadn’t seen her since Thursday. By the time she returned home from work Friday morning, Jorelys had left for school. After school, Joselin was sleeping while the children played outside.

A huge search ensued. For reasons not immediately revealed, the police quickly began treating the case as an abduction. And Joselin’s two younger children were removed from her custody by authorities who cited her for negligence in supervision.

All weekend, searchers went door to door in the huge apartment complex searching and questioning residents. Every registered sex offender in the area was questioned. Police searched the complex grounds and the trash dumpsters outside the buildings in the complex. Nothing turned up.

On Monday, December 5, someone discovered the trash compactor on the grounds had not been searched. Why? It was an oversight, they said. Apartment residents interviewed on the news said they had put trash in the machine several times during the weekend and hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

There she was. The little angel, as described by her mother, appeared to have been severely stabbed, beaten, raped and murdered and thrown into the compactor. Perhaps the killer expected her lifeless body to be compacted with the trash.

Look at that child’s face in the picture. Imagine how that smile must have changed when she realized her abductor meant to harm her. She was naïve, even for seven, her mother says, but eventually she had to have become terrified. How much did she feel? Did he knock her unconscious before he violated her innocence? Or was he more interested in her suffering?

Or was it even a he? Has the world become so alien that we now must consider that a woman could commit such a heinous act of violence?

This writer is haunted by this child’s fate. That she is dead before she even had a chance to live is a travesty. But the images that cross my mind as I contemplate the hours that followed her snatching are nauseating.

A Fly on the Cains’ Wall

2011-12-04T13:01:00.001-05:00

I happened to have flown into the patio door at the Cain’s suburban manse and was hanging out on the wall above the fireplace when the Pizza Man finally made his appearance. Being a fly and all, I’m not very tuned in to politics, presidential campaigns and such, so what happened next came as a bit of an unexpected melodrama.

To the best of my ability, I have tried to recall what I witnessed in the family room of Gloria and Herman Cain. Fact-checkers can go ahead and kiss my thorax now.

Gloria looked up from her needlepoint when she heard the sounds of her returning husband struggling to push his luggage through the door from the garage.

“I see you finally dragged your sorry behind back here,” she said without looking at him.” Her Southern drawl was even stronger than usual.

“Hi, Sweetheart. I’m so glad to see you. I’ve had one helluva bad week. Damned media!”

“Damned media?!? So now it’s the media’s fault that your little bimbo spilled her hideous guts? Don’t try that crap with me, Buster. You are home now, where everybody in the house knows your trifling ass. Save that disingenuous BS for your misguided “faithful.”

“Baby, I know you’re upset. I can explain. Just let me go upstairs and catch a shower and change my clothes. Then I will tell you everything.”

“Why, so you can wash the stench of whichever skank you had with you in the hotel before you left? No, let’s hear it right here, right now!”

Herman Cain ran a sweaty palm over his bald cranium. He threw his black fedora onto the granite countertop that divided their gleaming stainless steel kitchen from the spacious living area where Gloria Cain sat, strangely calm. I played dead, hoping nobody decided to take a swat at me before what promised to be a brouhaha began.

Herman Cain sat in his recliner, next to the sofa where Gloria sat stabbing the needlepoint project with her sharp-pointed needle – down…up…down…up – with a wild-eyed smirk adorning her pretty face. He cleared his throat.

“The woman is lying, Glo. I never touched her. You know how good-hearted I am. I saw a person who was struggling and I wanted to help. So I let her have a little money every now and then to keep her and her kids from being out on the streets.”

Gloria Cain laid down her work, threw her dainty head back and howled with laughter. She laughed so hard and so long, tears began to stream down her face. Then, without warning, her laughter changed to sobs.

“How dare you try that garbage with me, you sorry piece of shit.”

“Gloria! You never swear. What…”

“Oh, shut up! And don’t try bringing up God, the church or anything resembling a lecture on being a lady. It’s just you and me in this one, and I have had it with you and your foolishness. Now spill it, do you hear me?”

“Honey, I think somebody is paying that woman to say those things.”

“Really, Herman? You mean the way you were paying her up to two grand a month to, what, just be your friend? For 13 freakin’ years, you were worried she would be evicted? Even after you paid her rent…over and over and over again? Puh-leeze.”

“Well, I…"

“What the hell do you want from me, Herman? You know I’m not buying your lies. You know I never have. You have screwed up big time this time, and I’m done with you embarrassing this family. As far as I’m concerned, you can turn around and put those bags right back in the trunk of your car and get the hell out of here. And don’t forget to call your lawyer.”

“But, Baby, I need your help. I need you to stand with me at the press conference. If you want me to pull out of the race, I will, but I need the public to believe you and I are okay.”

Gloria Cain rose from the sofa and leaned into Herman Cain’s face. “Have you lost your goddamned mind? I don’t even want to be seen with you in this room. Why would you think I would help you mislead the public any more than you already have? Honestly, Herman, you are a piece of work!”

Herman cradled his face in his two hands. His shoulders heaved as he stifled his own silent sobs. And Gloria realized those sobs were not for what he’d done to her and their kids. She knew his despair was all about him.

After a long silence, Gloria grabbed Herman’s chin and lifted his face to hers. A sinister smile crossed her face.

“Tell you what. I’ll stand up there while you lie your way out of your campaign. I’ll even stand behind you a few steps and smile up at your lying face adoringly. But it will be the last time I ever do it. And it will cost you.”

Herman Cain was taken aback. He didn’t recognize this woman who was clearly seizing an opportunity.
“Wha…what do you mean, Gloria? Are you asking me for a divorce?”

“I’m not ASKING you for anything, Herman. I’m TELLING you. You will never be able to write another check to anybody ever again. You will sign over 100% of your assets to me. Today. And, no. There will be no divorce. Ever. But you will move away from this house into a condo that I will own. You will be given an allowance for food and gas. Everything else will go through me. Take it or leave it.”
“Oh, and Herman. On your way out, take that stupid-looking hat off my counter!”

Doctor Murray Catches a Break

2011-11-30T13:28:00.000-05:00

He took the oath they all take. First, do no harm. He spent a minimum of 14 years after high school earning the right to practice cardiology, the most demanding specialty in medicine. He can’t be stupid, so he must be seriously flawed in character.

Judge Michael Pastor sat seething on the bench as the principles in the case of the State of California versus Conrad Murray, M.D. presented their arguments to persuade the court in the sentencing of the convicted cardiologist who was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of pop star Michael Jackson.

When it was his turn to speak, Pastor’s disdain for the defendant was palpable. For three full minutes, he revisited the numerous ways the physician had failed to comply with the basic standards of care:

Exchanged medicine for $150,000 per month and willingly complied with the patient’s wishes without regard for the patient’s best interest
Administered a dangerous anesthesia outside a properly equipped hospital environment
After delivering the anesthesia, left Michael Jackson alone for a short period of time during which Jackson stopped breathing
Failed to call 911 immediately
Failed to tell emergency personnel that the patient had been given the anesthesia
Lied to emergency room doctors about the drug
Showed absolutely no remorse or sense of responsibility for the death of Michael Jackson

And then Judge Pastor threw the book at Murray. He sentenced him to four years in the Los Angeles county jail.

Say what?!?

Judge Pastor’s obvious pique was not just because he loathed the doctor and his obvious lack of character. He was livid because he couldn’t even send the man to the state prison to do his time. California law, recently revised, limited the penalty for involuntary manslaughter to a maximum of four years in jail.

But it gets worse. California’s jails are filled beyond their capacities. The only solution to that condition is to shorten the terms of inmates to make room for the newly convicted. So, Conrad Murray, in all likelihood, will serve no more than 2 1/2 years and even less when time served and good behavior are factored in.

In the meantime, people are going to notorious places like Folsom and Pelican Bay state prisons for non-lethal crimes such as possession of illegal drugs and burglary and serving out their terms.

There are times when the justice system in our country makes very little sense. This is one of those times.

What Do We Do About Santa Claus?

2011-11-29T14:53:00.001-05:00

The Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy entered the restaurant together. They figured the Big Guy was already seated at their reserved table, digging into a pile of Toll House cookies, a gallon jug of ice cold milk at the ready.

This was a meeting that probably should have happened centuries ago. These three timeless characters found themselves the objects of both adulation and scorn, year after year, while children around the world continued to have all sorts of cockamamie expectations about the fantastic feats each one could perform.

EB had never had much luck explaining to eight year-olds who have just had a science class how a mammal like him went about laying eggs. Little Johnny was confused by the long-eared hopster’s gender and his species. A little book knowledge plays hell with a guy’s credibility.

The Molar Pixie was plagued by her tendency to have lapses in memory. Try as she might, every night she was bound to forget to nab a fallen tooth or two and replace it with whatever the going rate for that decade was without waking the little snaggle-toothed darling.

Santa’s problems were becoming monumental. Literally. His legendary girth was the kind of problem even accomplished liars like parents had trouble explaining away. While his belly expanded by inches each century, modern chimney flues were getting narrower, not wider, and way too many of them had blue-flamed furnaces at the bottom, not hearths. Add to all that the recent collapse of the world’s economies, and Santa was having a tough time getting the investors he needed to keep his operation, er, flying.

This summit meeting of the world’s three most cherished pipe dreams was being held in the North Pole, hosted by Nick himself at the new Igloo Grill. A haughty elf dressed in an emerald green tuxedo led the two shivering visitors to their seats.

“Ah, you made it,” boomed Nick. “Forgive me for not standing. I seem to be stuck between the table and the back of my chair. Please…sit.”

As several waiters bustled about, tending to the wants and needs of EB and Pixie, Nick collected his thoughts. He wasn’t feeling his jolly old self.

“I asked you both here because I have serious concerns about the children in America,” he began.
“Yeah, I know,” said the bunny. “Things have gotten so tough in the States, people are starting to burst their children’s bubbles at every turn.”

Pixie shook her tiny head in agreement. “I can’t tell you how many kids I had crying just last night because their parents couldn’t afford the dollar I needed from them to put under their little heads. In desperation, their mommy’s or dad’s broke down and told them I wasn’t real.” Nick thought he heard a little sniffle come from Pixie’s direction.

“Last Easter I had to spend about a month going through landfills searching for those old-fashioned L'eggs pantyhose containers to color because nobody could afford to buy the eggs and dye them for me,” EB concurred.

Even though the entire world was struggling, the trio worried most about America’s children, because they believed in the damn-near miracles they performed more than any other kids on Earth. Over the centuries, these were the children who were taught by their parents to expect to receive more gifts, more treats and more money than all their friends. These were the ones whose families went to incredible lengths to prolong the belief in impossible dreams. And now their dreams were vaporizing as quickly as the bubbles that were blown by the electric machines at their latest, lavish birthday parties.

“So, what should we do?” asked Nick. “Unlike the two of you, I have a huge business to run here, with many little mouths to feed. Without the investment of the parents of the earth, I cannot continue to keep the reindeer alive and fueled for the annual flight. I cannot get the materials I need to create the toys. And Mrs. Claus is not getting any younger, so who knows how long she’ll be able to help?”

Just then, the maître d’ walked up and whispered something in Nick’s ear. As he listened, his cheeks began to pink up and that legendary twinkle started dancing in his beautiful eyes.

“Well, well, well,” Nick said to his companions. “It seems the Americans had something called a Black Friday last week. It’s hard to understand, quite frankly, because some 14 million of their people remain unemployed, but apparently those parents found a way to drop nearly 18% more money for holiday gifts on that one day than they did a year ago. As a result, their stock market soared 300 points on Monday and from what I can understand, people are practically dancing in the streets.”

EB looked confused. “But wait a minute. How many people went back to work since this time last year? It must have been a lot to make that big a change.”

“On the way up here I read the October 2011 unemployment rate is still at 9,0 percent. That doesn’t sound like that much of a change,” said Pixie.

“There was a .7 percent change since October 2010,” Nick told them.

They sat in silence for a few moments, each staring at the contents of their plates. How did this happen? Have the American parents learned nothing from these last several years of decline? Have they who have been lucky enough to either keep a job or secure a new one gone right back to their old habits?
Nick slammed his meaty hand against the tabletop and struggled to his feet.

“ ‘Ours is not to wonder why. Ours is just to do or die.’ Or something like that. I don’t know about you two, but I’ve got to get to work. Christmas is coming!”

Alfred Lord Tennyson was heard spinning in his grave.

Less on Thanks, More on Taking

2011-11-25T07:53:00.001-05:00

It is with deep sadness that I report the passing of the last family-focused American holiday.
Thanksgiving, the annual gathering of families to celebrate the gifts of bountiful harvests, blessings of the heart and the prosperity that enables a sumptuous feast for both the eyes and the body, was killed Thursday evening by America’s corporations.

My sister works for one of the major retailers as an office manager. Four of her grandchildren, ranging from age 5 to 18, look forward for weeks for her annual effort in the kitchen to turn out traditional Thanksgiving fare with their finicky palates well in mind.

Because she was scheduled to open the store at 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving night, everything had to be moved to an earlier time so that she could take a brief nap before heading in for a 10-hour shift. She would be in charge of crowd control this time.

As anyone who cooks these major holiday meals knows, many hours are needed to turn out those spreads. After working all day Wednesday, my sister spent most of the night cooking. By the time we started arriving around 2 p.m. Thursday, she was already exhausted. Offers of help from me had been declined. (Probably because I won’t cater to the whims of my grandnieces and grandnephews as much as she will)

Retailers interviewed about the resistance to this intrusion on their employees’ family time claim customer demands as the reason for their decisions to open on Thanksgiving Day. I call B.S. on that. Customers pile into those stores for the price bargains – period. The so-called Black Friday could start on Saturday or Wednesday or any other day; it is the deal they are seeking. Corporations have created the Black Friday phenomenon to suit THEIR own need to turn red ink to black in one fell swoop.

Bereaved survivors of the deceased include after-dinner conversation, football game banter and turkey sandwiches to go.

Another Lobbyist Running Amok

2011-11-20T12:40:00.001-05:00

“Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead, the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that the wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.”
Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone

Americans who actually listen to the empty words spewed by politicians, in this case of the Republican variety, often hear the name of Ronald Reagan invoked as the grand poobah of anti-taxation conservatism. For many of the GOP faithful, that’s all they need to hear to feel all warm and fuzzy about the state of the nation as soon as their guys and gals “take their country back.”

Other Americans, like me, pay very little attention to what is being said by either side, mainly because no one is saying anything particularly coherent. We are numbed by the failure of rhetoric and party-line catch phrases to move us out of the deep muck we slipped into in 2008.

This morning, however, the spectre of another critical deadline in Washington has gotten my attention, and for the first time I can recall, I actually listened to Candy Crowley interview members of the Deficit Super Committee. That’s when the name Grover Norquist penetrated my political brain fog for the first time. This is the guy who convinced the majority of the Republican members of Congress to sign a pledge written by his lobbying tool, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR.)P

^{photo by Gage Skidmore from Flickr}

The ATR web site describes The Pledge as follows:

In the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, candidates and incumbents solemnly bind themselves to oppose any and all tax increases. While ATR has the role of promoting and monitoring the Pledge, the Taxpayer Protection Pledge is actually made to a candidate's constituents, who are entitled to know where candidates stand before sending them to the capitol. Since the Pledge is a prerequisite for many voters, it is considered binding as long as an individual holds the office for which he or she signed the Pledge.
Read more: http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge#ixzz1eGPKi4Rb

Norquist claims he was asked by Reagan himself to form ATR in 1986. Apparently, there is no term limit on that pledge, no opportunity for renewal or a decision NOT to renew. The Huffington Post reported on November 9, 2011 that a growing number of House members want out of that pledge, but Norquist refuses to remove their names from the published list of signers.

In the meantime, Norquist’s pledge keeps coming up as a major reason the Super Committee cannot reach an agreement.

[The players: Sens.Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), and Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.).]

“The difficulty we find is that every one of these discussions, Grover Norquist seems to be in the room,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters last week. “I am hopeful that the Republicans on the super committee will break away from this.”

The idea that one man, not an elected official, but a powerful Washington lobbyist, can effectively bring the nation to the brink of yet another failure to do the jobs for which they were elected, is frightening to me. Even Republicans who believe it is time to take a look at forcing the rich to pay a more reasonable share of taxes are finding it impossible to circumvent the pledge they might have signed several campaign cycles ago, because “the voters don’t want any tax increases.”

I think it’s time for us who see things differently pay more attention to what the other side is saying and doing. I may be one of the few who, until this morning, was unaware of the name Grover Norquist or his organization, but I doubt it. If you, the reader, needs a concrete reason for my concern, see the chart below from the November 24, 2011 edition of Rolling Stone:

Measuring the Worth of My Words

2011-11-18T08:43:00.001-05:00

Do I write because I’m a good writer, or am I a good writer because I write? Am I even a good writer? Am I a writer at all?

Writing, to me, is like fine art. The beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I like it or I don’t. I “get” it or I don’t. Matters of technical execution on a piece of art are important only to those who make a career out of judging such things. Technique is a collection of motor and contextual skills, put together to create a work of art. And art is to be enjoyed, even by those of us who wouldn’t know an Impressionist from a cartoonist.

For me, the answer to just about all the questions posed above is: Who cares? But that’s just me.

People write for so many different reasons. Some are enamored of books with pages to flip and margins to write in and they imagine their own names on the cover of one. Others have received positive feedback on their efforts for so long, they see writing as a possible way to make a living. And others have a lot on their minds, things they want to say and they choose writing as the way to communicate. Of course, there are people motivated by some combination of them all.

So how do we know if what we write is good? The easiest assessment, or at least the base line for all assessment, is the mechanical: things such as spelling, grammar, use of literary tools like alliteration, onomatopoeia and repetition of words or phrases. Anyone who aspires to be considered a writer in the eyes of others is going to need to deal with the mechanics of writing.

And isn’t that exactly what we mean when we question our own abilities? How others receive what we write will be the accelerator for our trip to what we consider to be success.

I am always amused by the discussions I observe about the quality of writing. There is little agreement, if any at all. What seems to be the common criterion about what makes high quality is one’s own writing.

For example, I am a fan of writing for understanding. I prefer simple sentences with accessible vocabulary. I’m not the biggest fan of adverbs and adjectives, although I am capable of employing them when required. For me, lots of what my parents called 50-cent words strung end to end are not necessary when fewer 25-cent words accomplish the same meaning. Whether or not my preference for writing that way is based on my preference to read others who write that way is not clear. It’s possible.

Does that mean I cannot appreciate the work of writers who can wrap a sentence filled with descriptive prose around column inch after column inch? On the contrary. I am a fan of William Faulkner. Enough said?

But when I read writers like that, my reason for reading is completely different. Instead of being satisfied with getting the message the writer is imparting, now I have the added challenge of simply navigating the prose in order to unravel that message. It is a distinctly different process with distinctly different motivation on my part.

When I first started blogging, my only objective was to get some of the clutter out of my brain and onto something hard, as in paper or drive. Having no one at home with whom to converse about all these things, writing it down does the trick. The only person I knew for certain was reading what I wrote was the person who persuaded me to start blogging. So my writing was purely a heart and mind dump, meant mostly for myself.

But when I began to write on a writer’s web site, where competition for recognition was added to the mix, I was temporarily derailed by what just happens to be two of my most prominent personal values: Achievement and recognition. These were formally determined by a series of personality tests I’ve taken in my lifetime. Suddenly, I was writing, not for me, but for the editors who had the controls over which posts were selected for recognition.

In order to satisfy only two of my personal values, I found myself searching for things to write about that had a better chance of being selected. Why? To gain the approval of a single individual who is marching to a set of drums that have nothing to do with my own cadence?

I have come back to home base. I don’t want to whine about the relative quality of writing or the topics people choose to explore. There is really only one set of eyes I need approval from: my own. My currency, my payoff for any effort I put in at the keyboard, is in the form of reader’s comments. I live for the “conversations” that take place in the comment strings. I learn from the points of view offered in response to my own.

It is nice – very nice—to be told I am a good writer. The thing is, when I ask myself what that really means, I get no answer.

Sandusky Sinks His Own Ship

2011-11-16T23:05:00.001-05:00

Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State dirt bag accused of sodomizing a ten-year-old boy in the locker room shower, is one sick puppy. And by sick I mean the lowest form of human detritus roaming the globe, a predator masquerading as a tender-hearted do-gooder.

Bob Costas reportedly learned of his bluebird interview with Sandusky just 15 minutes prior to airtime of the new NBC newsmagazine program “ Rock Center” Monday night. Costas was originally scheduled to interview Sandusky's lawyer, Joseph Amendola.

The first version I heard of how things went down Monday night said Sandusky himself had called in and volunteered to be interviewed. I thought: "Woo Boy, I'll bet his lawyer is pissed at him!" I mean, I'm no lawyer, but even I knew Sandusky was flirting with disaster.

Now that I know it was Amendola who set it all up, all I can say is "bravo, Bob Costas," and hasta la vista Sandusky. Costas was golden in that interview, launching direct questions with no wiggle room, time after time after time.

On the outside chance that a viewer tuned in to that interview who had somehow managed to know nothing at all about the Penn State scandal, said viewer might have been convinced by Sandusky's denials of wrongdoing. Maybe said viewer would find some unconscionable way to give Sandusky a pass for "horsing around" -- IN THE SHOWER, BUTT NAKED -- with a ten-year-old!

So, just to make sure there were no suckers out there falling for Sandusky's pitiful I'm-a-good-guy act, my local TV station hired a voice analysis expert to take a listen to the taped interview.

According to the results, Sandusky was lying his frequently bare behind off.

TV shrink Dr. Drew Pinsky has gone on record predicting that Sandusky is so trapped by his own words in the interview, he will attempt suicide. Just the admission of "horsing around" in the shower with the boy is enough to convict him. But I’m wondering if this monster is in such denial about his own behavior he can’t accurately process the gravity of the case against him.

The 23-page transcript from the Grand Jury investigation was reviewed by the Daily Beast on Tuesday against the assertions of innocence Sandusky made to Costas. Eight pre-pubescent victims testified to everything from inappropriate touching to oral sex in that probe, and two adult eye-witnesses described seeing Sandusky perform oral sex on one and forcible anal intercourse on another.

Sandusky's dissembling performance on the Costas interview was both fascinating and disturbing. As I listened to his soft voice delivering lie after lie, it was easy to see how Sandusky slowly and deliberately persuaded his innocent victims to do his bidding. And, of course, he sweetened the deal with gifts of computers, sports equipment, clothing and outings to football games.

Jerry Sandusky's admission to horsing around in the shower with a young boy can and most likely will be used against him in court. Either his lawyer is convinced the evidence against his client is overwhelming and he's trying to build an insanity case or he is the poorest excuse of a defense attorney to come down the pike.

Penn State Matter Triggered Motherly Panic

2011-11-14T15:15:00.003-05:00

I felt the unwelcome signs of impending panic. It wasn’t rational. It certainly wasn’t timely. But there it was.

As often happens when I watch the news, I became emotionally involved as the details of the Penn State molestation scandal were slowly revealed. Disgust. Anger. Horror. Empathy. Questions.

As I put the pieces together, I realized the victim in this matter was a ten-year-old boy, and the alleged perpetrator was a Penn State football coach. That’s when the overwhelming, heart-stopping, breathe-impeding sense of utter fear swept over me.

My son, my only child, is 42 years old. He was a professional athlete who began taking instruction from coaches at the tender age of 5. As I sat there staring at the sportscasters debating the fate of veteran Penn State head coach Joe Paterno, I tried to count the number of men I had entrusted with the most precious part of my entire life. I stopped when I reached 25 and I had only gotten through his high school career.

Over the years I asked my son questions designed to produce answers that might alert me to inappropriate touching or time spent alone in suspicious places. There were no alarms, no alerts.

Curious, I did a computer search of the local news station I watch here in Atlanta. I found the following headlines:

^{BARTOW: Mayor accused of attempted child molestation}

DECATUR: CDC Deputy Director arrested on child molestation, bestiality charges

^{CANTON: Former sheriff's deputy arrested for child molestation}

^{SANDY SPRINGS: Preacher charged with child molestation}

All of these people, some men some women, are in positions of power we would teach our children to respect. And these were only the local incidents reported within the past three months.

I couldn’t shake the panic I was feeling. What if I had unknowingly exposed my son to one or more of the same kinds of people who were described in the news stories I found? What if he had been to afraid or too ashamed to tell us?

I picked up the phone and called my son. “I was lucky,” he said. “I only had good guys as coaches. I can honestly and gratefully say no one has ever done anything out of line to me.”

As parents, we can’t lock our children up and protect them from the dangers that exist outside their homes. All we can do is teach them what is appropriate and what is not, make them feel they can tell us anything, stay vigilant for signs of trouble and keep them as safe as possible. Child predators do not wear identifying badges. They look like the local coach, the neighborhood cop, the minister that delivers the Sunday sermon, the scout leader and the next door neighbor.

All I Want to Do is Read a Book

2011-11-14T15:15:00.001-05:00

Like the majority of the people reading this post, I love books. I devoured as many as I could carry from the public library as a child. I actually read the classics assigned in American and English literature classes; no Cliff Notes for me. In adulthood, when I started earning my own money, I purchased and read a minimum of a book a week, sometimes more.

Often around the lunch table in the company cafeteria, the discussion would include the best-seller of the moment. We would swap paperbacks and hardcovers, argue about their relative merits, then move on to movies, my other passion.

Sometime in my mid-forties, I started experiencing wild mood swings, outbursts of temper, crying jags, night sweats and depression. I thought I was either losing my mind or I had an exotic disease transmitted by some insect I encountered in the mountains of California or the sandy beaches of Mexico, where I had recently vacationed.

It was perimenopause. I was going to be one of those women who goes through the “change of life” -- as it was whispered by the older women in my family, as if it were an even worse form of “The Curse” than the womanly secret it follows and halts – rather early.

According to a web site I found on the subject, there are 34 separate symptoms one can experience in menopause. By the time I was 50 I had wrestled with at least 19 of them, but a tiny maroon pill called Premarin seemed to be all I needed to keep myself reasonably comfortable. But there was one symptom at work that I neither noticed at first nor had ever heard about from anyone.

In retrospect, I realize there was a gradual change in my ability to concentrate, especially when trying to read anything longer than a few paragraphs. Whereas in my prime my memory was as close to photographic as one can get without actually being one, little by little, I was having to reread sentences or paragraphs in order to retain the meaning.

If I was reading a book, instead of picking it up where I left off the last time, I might have to backtrack in order to refresh my memory of the plot. Unless the plotline and/or the dialogue was particularly exciting (or salacious, I must admit) I found my mind wandering into completely unrelated territory, losing complete focus on the words on the page.

According to my doctor, some women’s menopausal symptoms come to a complete end at some point after they began. Others, like me, have lingering, sometimes lifelong, side effects. In my case, the one that lingers and drives me up the wall is the inability to sit still for long periods reading a book. I also have a difficult time staying awake in a dark theater for an entire movie. The only exception, lately, has been a movie in which my son has a role. That seems to be enough incentive for my hormone imbalanced mind to stay alert for the entire length of the film.

I have tried all the remedies suggested to rule out other culprits that could be causing this troubling change. I sleep an average of seven hours a night. I eat a healthy diet rich in brain-friendly nutrients like omega-3 and omega-6. And I take my little maroon pill religiously.

In the meantime, I buy the books my blogging friends write because I want to support their work and because they are excellent writers with points of view I can learn from, or senses of humor I can laugh at and enjoy. I have dutifully read at least the first chapter of each.. but little more.

I have come to terms with the other 19 symptoms. I have finally let go of my dream of returning to my pre-menopausal weight and figure. I have resigned myself to the fact that, like my mother and grandmother before me, my thinning hair is going to keep on thinning and I’ll just have to get used to seeing my pink scalp through what remains of my variegated strands. Or invest in a good wig. And I’ve had enough brain freezes of my own to find a smattering of sympathy for Rick Perry and his oops moments.

But the last book I was able to read from cover to cover was The Di Vinci Code. That was what, eight years ago? This is a symptom I’m never going to be able to accept. Suggestions are welcome.