It’s a lot of fun. I get much more out of it. I can do videos. I can do podcasts. I can do live chats. All you have to do is subscribe.

To read and watch a four minute video, only of you want, you have to click on Substack and you Will be there.

See over at the Stack.

The post M M A H Make Mom Healthy Again appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

I am presently on hold – minute seventeen waiting for a Verizon one.

I never trust they will call you back if you ask them to. So, I stay online until a human voice is heard.  The longest I have ever waited was four hours at which point they dropped the call.

 This week alone I have been on hold with Hulu three times. Optimum Cable, Medicare, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Jet Blue, a random insurance company that I had to convince we had bought insurance to cover a trip we were canceling. Miele dishwasher repair. Progressive Insurance Car Department, and God knows who else.

Entire days seem to vanish into Password retrieval. Attempting to cancel subscriptions, when they refuse to let you do it online. Not to mention looking up phone numbers that often lead to nowhere in hopes of getting a representative.

I start to get worked up the second I realize I must go through one of these endless tasks. Wasting my precious final quarter of life listening to what is hours of music that makes elevator music sound like Mozart.

I know America is officially now the Third World, but a lot of this stuff works in the third world.  And it’s often the third world that ends up eventually helping you through the labyrinth of forgotten passwords, lost codes and mixed up answers to stupid questions.

At the moment I am merely trying to get through to Verizon who refuses to acknowledge that the answer to my “special question” to get me to the PW that I know is right and they swear is wrong, so I can log onto my account to change the banking information because our checking account was hacked this week when someone took the first check I have mailed in over a year out of the  public post box, washed it wrote in their name and cashed it.

The account had to be closed.  Now I am stuck with the task of changing the auto pay information on all our accounts.

The check was sent because Con Ed took our electricity bill from one hundred and eighty dollars a month to nine hundred when we haven’t done anything differently  since we moved into this apartment.

I refuse to pay it without a forensic report on why they claim we used that much electricity. Problem is it’s attached to the maintenance for our apartment, and they only use Click Pay. And Click Pay won’t let you alter the amount you click and pay.

I was not paying for that extra electricity without knowing what every kilowatt went for.

I have spent a serous amount of time this week talking to the bank, managing new debit and credit cards attached to the old account. And then the exhausting task of changing over all the auto pays.

I have to say I just ended my talk with Verizon and I had a wonderful girl named Tiffany, shout out to Tiffany at Verizon. We retrieved my password and reset my special question.

I felt badly as she was trying to help me save a few bucks while she would also make a few herself.  Life is hard now and Tiffany deserves extra bucks.  She had a great deal.

If I connected our Hulu which we stream everything through and our Max, Tiffany could bundle them for ten dollars a month. This seemed like a gift and worth waiting thirty minutes for.

The whole thing fell apart when I told her we had premium Hulu, with five devices and our Max attached to it   Though I I have to call Netflix at least three times a month and remind them we have the premium with  five devices program. Suddenly the two for ten was pretty much the larger sum I was already paying.

She was sweet and I was sorry I couldn’t give her that extra boost by buying her program. I was also kind of bummed I couldn’t get MAX and Netflix for ten dollars a month.

 She then tried to get me to go with them for a lower cell phone program.

But I pay for both girl’s phones despite the fact they are married. Does everyone pay for their adult kid’s phones? As far as I know yes. Family plan means you pay even if they have their own families.

No way we could leave our numbers and AT&T behind. Plus, I had recently gotten AT&T to get my bill way down in what was a two-to-three-hour endeavor.

Spending much of each day managing every part of our life online is driving me out of my mind.

I have Trump to drive me totally out of my mind I don’t need this.

When I’m not longing for democracy I ‘m longing for a time when once a month I sat down with a checkbook and paid my bills. When one could mail a check and it was not stolen, washed or computer generated.  I long for a time when everything did not have a password, a passkey, a code that comes through your phone, a question that is often hard to answer and even if it isn’t they don’t accept your answer.

Yesterday I started flipping out about Social Security for all the obvious reasons.

I also mis-read my Medicare Card.  I convinced myself I did not have Medicare A, which is hospital. And I had to go to the ER this week when a large piece of dry chicken ended up horizontal in my esophagus. Don’t ask.

I KNOW THIS IS KIND OF BAIT AND SWITCH BUT TO FINISH THIS HEAD OVER TO MY SUBSTACK

I’m trying really hard to build up that platform. I am not charging.

And I won’t charge for long form writing ever.

Once I get my footing I will charge for podcasts and longer videos

You guys are my crew….but I need to try and move into the next phase.

The post REPRESENTIVE appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

I know I said good-bye.  I would wake up days and regret it. And I would wake up days relieved. 

But on Friday, I got the news my most beloved Doctor and loyal followers of this blog had died. 

I had paused the send part of this. I could not seem to get it up. But I just had to write. And somehow Instagram would not do this justice. So, I actually did something I had been threatening myself to do, threat might be strong, pushing myself to do. I Substacked it. 

And in all honesty Substack is a great way to write. You are up against a gazillion people and super famous people. And it’s a Coachcellea of writing. Bands playing really loud all at the same time. But I got it up and I got it out. And it was like finding that part of me I had shoved in a drawer.

Then I felt guilty, well, I’d written for all these Substack followers, Don’t get impressed I don’t have that many, but it’s growing.

And my long game is I would like to end up there. I can podcast there, I can do longer videos there. It even edits my long videos down to one minute using AI and taking all the meat out and leaving my fluff behind. 

If you do follow me there, please stay, it will be my longterm home if I can pull it off. But this will always be my first house. 

And in terms of Ed, this is what he followed.  And I would often get a note back  encouraging me. Liking what I said. Sometimes adding his POV.  And it was always such a welcome smile in my inbox. 

So, even though I wrote this on Friday.  Ed, this was where you read me. And your death lured me back here.

I miss you so already. But at least lets let all my longtime readers, know who you were and how very much you meant to me. 

And if you want to follow me on SUBSTACK the place is   https://substack.com/@traceyjackson

Everyone has a love of a lifetime. A dog of a lifetime. A book of a lifetime. Maybe sometimes a kid of a lifetime. And often we have a Doctor of a lifetime.

Mine was the magnificent Doctor Edward Liu.

There was nobody like him. For decades he was one of the most successful OBGYN’s in Los Angeles.

Along with the success came a form of doctor worship the likes of which no doctor I have I’ve ever known has been the recipient of,

I met Ed in 1990 when I was pregnant with my first child. I had been told by one of LA’s then, hotshot Dr’s of the moment that the pregnancy was unviable. I should stop taking my prenatal vitamins and wait for an early miscarriage.

I left the office in tears and called a friend crying hysterically, this could not be true. She said, “listen you have to see Ed Liu, he’s the best there is. And not only that, I have researched him and he’s the only doctor I could find with no malpractice suits against him.” She was a lawyer.

I called his office and he saw me the next day. A habit he would keep for his entire career. And his office was always packed.

He made me feel instantly at ease. You know when you look into a face and you just feel it’s okay, this person has me covered.

He said, “look, we never know exactly when you conceived. You could be two weeks less pregnant than you think. You could be more. My guess is less. I’m not even going to look for anything today. No sonogram. Nothing. Your bloods are good. Go home. Take your prenatal vitamins. Live your life. Try not to worry.” A suggestion he would learn was impossible for me, but we were new to each other.

He continued, “unless you have extreme pain or start to bleed, I don’t want to see you for five weeks. Come back and my feeling is, I’m not promising, but my feeling is, there is a healthy fetus in there.”

I did exactly what he said, as I would for the next thirty five years. And he was right. Nine months later I gave birth to an almost eight pound baby girl.

He was my doctor and my friend from that point on. He appears all through my book, Between a Rock and a Hot Place.

We would have dinner with him and his beloved wife Cam. He loved a great meal.

Through his updates I would follow the progress of his two beloved daughters, Courtney and Ashley – from high school, to college, over the top weddings and grandchildren. He was so proud of them and I had never heard a father love and adore their children more than he did.

He waltzed me through a birth, an abortion, a miscarriage and menopause. And a few scares along the way. I felt safer knowing he was always there.

He was the Doctor love of my life. And one of my favorite people ever. Ever. Ever.

My last communication with him was January 10th during the LA fires.

I knew one of his girls had a house in the Palisades. She was the first person I thought of when I heard the village had burned down. I emailed him and said, “did her house make it through?” He wrote back “Destroyed. They are living with us. xxx Ed.”

His office just sent out a mass email saying, “he passed away February 16th, after courageously battling cancer.”

But for how long? He was treating us both. Taylor had eventually ended up with the doctor who delivered her as her doctor. Throughout his own health battle he never uttered a word about it. That was Ed Liu, patients always first.

He will be beyond missed by all of us who were lucky enough to call him our doctor for much of our lives. But my heart breaks for his family. Cam, the girls, their kids.

But I feel blessed he was in  my life for thirty-five years.

The video is one I did sixteen years ago in a series I did called 50@50. The topic is sex after 50 and is it the same as sex at thirty.

Take five minutes and watch it. You will learn something and be totally amused. And get a chance to see the great Ed Liu.

I loved you Ed. Now go rest in peace. And thank you for everything.

Especially Taylor. And all the laughs

This is a did of Ed for my 50@50 series.  The topic is Sex after 50!

The post Thank You, Ed Liu appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

First off, I hope you all had and are having a happy, healthy holiday season.

Secondly I want to thank you, all of you who sent money into my New York Cares Coat Drive this year.

We reached new highs. At the moment we are in the lead by over five thousand dollars. And outside of Evercore my constant rival, no group or person is even close.

I would not be able to do this year after year without the kindness and generosity of many of you.  You know who you are.

I could do a real wrap up of this year.  It was quite the year.   But my inclination is to not do that. There is no need.

I’ve been writing a version of this blog since Taylor was a senior in high school. She is now six months from her thirty-fourth birthday.

The original blog was Called Freshman Mom. The year was 2008, maybe the tail end of 2007. You can do the math. OK, I will save you the math.  It’s eighteen years.

It was so long ago, when I started I mailed it out through  Gmail. I remember there was a limit of 300 people you could BCC before it was deemed as SPAM.  Some of you, many of you, on that early list are still here. You have no idea how grateful I am for your loyalty.

The site has been through two facelifts and you all have been through an eyelift and a facelift with me. You have seen me through sending off my oldest to college and then my youngest. We’ve been through a pandemic. A host of Presidents. Housing booms. Busts. Stockmarket crash. Stockmarket rise. Wars galore. It’s been a raucous  almost twenty years.

When Taylor went  off to college I was Freshman Mom,   Lucy was still home and entering the fourth grade. I was Freshman mom and fourth grade mom at the same time.  How lucky was I?

Lucy was married this last September. Taylor has been married for almost two years. Our nest is very empty.

You have seen me through the travails with my parents, the making up with my parents. The death of my parents. The death of so many friends. And the triumphs of so many others. You’ve traveled with us. Eaten with us. Mourned and celebrated.

You’ve hung in there when I’m cranky, angry, ecstatic, funny- funny is what I normally shoot for. But life often moves the target.

During these years, I’ve produced and directed a documentary, written two books, had a podcast, sold a pilot, been on Oprah and god knows what else I have bragged about  since I started this.

I was deep in Bollywood, wrote about recovery in Gratitude and Trust with Paul Williams; that has its own website. Now archival. At one point I was running both sites at the same time.

I’ve been high and low. I’ve been funny and sad. Though all of it, my aim was and remains to always be – me.  Not the idealized version, the real one.

If I were to be a brand, which I have never had the skill to actually pull off, nor am I sure I had the desire: But if I had wanted it, or gone after it,  authenticity would have been the core.

My goal is and has always been to let people know they are not alone. That if I am feeling it, if I am going through it, others are too.

I was blogging pre Instagram. And god knows pre SubStack. I was doing “To Buy” lists, where to go lists. In some ways I was Instagramming pre Instagram. Many bloggers were.  We just didn’t have a name for it.

I was forty-eight years old  when I started this and in six months I will be sixty-seven.

I have memorialized so much of my life and feelings  in almost two decades of musings.

I have written one thousand one hundred and sixty blogs on this site alone. If the average blog is fifteen hundred words, I’ve written one million seven hundred and forty words.

Tracey talked a lot.

There were nights I’d write  for my day job all day, come home and blog deep into the night. When we traveled I always missed breakfast so I could get out a blog.

There were nights Lucy wanted me to lie with her as she fell asleep and I was busy writing. Now I wish I had stopped and gone in and spent the time with her.

I spent a lot. One can always spend more.  But I’m working towards a point here.

At forty-eight you can attempt to do everything you want. At sixty-six, sixty-seven ( between us my age will not be going backwards) time becomes more precious.

And as the internet tugs on the strings of our attention twenty four seven it all becomes too much. I’m so overwhelmed by all that is thrust at me it’s hard to be productive.

In some ways I think Substack is the last straw for me.

There  are really good people on Substack, but there are so many who are not good. There are so many out there who are not writers who just jam the highways of our minds with their words and opinions.

I’ve been writing since I was fourteen. I have two hundred journals. Yes, while I was writing for dollars and doing this blog I’ve been journaling since I was fourteen.

My life is deeply recorded. Not all of it legibly. Not all of it grammatical, but it’s there.

Though for the moment, or forever, as one does not know what the future holds, I am officially saying good-bye to Tracey Talks.

It’s hard to do. Obviously the output has become less and less. And thanks to  endless talks with Patricia Belen who I could have never done this without, we decided it might be time to say good-bye.

I do not want to be one more voice drowning in  sea of voices. I do not want to write about politics  during the next four years and if I have a platform, I am not sure how I will avoid it.

Today I finished a book, I want to share with all of you.  It’s called 4000 Weeks, Time Management for Mortals. Written by Oliver Burkeman.

Do yourself a favor and buy it.  It’s a great way to start out the new year.

The premise is, the average person lives to be eighty. That’s taking freak accidents, infant mortality and centigenarians into account.

If you go by that number, the average person will get  4000 weeks on planet earth.  Burkeman asks the question, How do you want to spend them?

At my age if we go by his math I have six hundred and seventy six weeks left. Now that may sound like a lot to you, but it does not sound like a ton to me. In terms of holidays, it’s 13 more Christmases. 13 more coat drives. 13 more summers.

And let’s face it, a percentage of those are not peak performance weeks.

If we get a bit more optimistic here, my mother got to 91, my dad got to 92 and my grandmother got to 87. So we could toss me an extra  eight (not to be greedy) and that gives me  around 1400 weeks.

Or the fickle finger of fate could decide to end it sooner and  run me over by a stoned, speeding, GrubHub delivering bicyclist at 70 which could leave me with only 156 weeks until I depart.

I’m not being macabre, but that is also what this book is about. How we cannot control time, we can only control how we use our time, while never knowing how much of it we actually have.

After thinking about my life and what I want to do, blogging is not at the forefront. If it were I’d be doing a lot more of it. Ive done it for close to 20 years.It’s like when I walked away from Hollywood, I did for twenty-five years.  I seem to have a shelf life with things.

I want to write my memoir. It’s begging me to write it. I wake up at four am and pages fall out of my brain onto the pillow.

I want to do more philanthropy. I want to spend time with my girls and their families.I want to travel with Glenn while we still have the energy and desire. I want to spend quality time with my friends.

I want to read more. I want to take classes in design at the Interior Design School. I want to workout five days a week. I want to be present for those who need me and present for myself, in this last quarter.

You never know, I may be back. I remain on Instagram, doing videos and postings. @traceydjackson

Still chatty after all these years.

You will all still stay in the database.

The site will be up and archival.

Patricia  had to turn off comments this month due to some Korean bots getting in and leaving 40 comments a day for months and I couldn’t take it.

Ive started out 2025 unsubscribing from so many sites. So many blogs. So many stores. When you start counting weeks, you don’t want to spend hours a week tossing things into spam, junk and going through the hassle of unsubscribing.

I am down to Apple News and The Atlantic. I get The NY Times for special articles and the recipes.

I took Facebook off my phone. I never use Tik Tok. I do have a fondness for Instagram.

I do not need every store I have ever thought about buying something from sending me an email or text every day.

So, consider  this my holiday gift to you.

You don’t have to unsubscribe.   If I really have something to say, I will say it. But I may just lie down until the urge passes.

For now…..

I thank you all for being loyal.  While my list has never been huge, it’s insanely dependable, I have an open rate of 55%.   Which is beyond high in blogging terms.

And that is thanks to all of you.

Happy 2025.  Enjoy your weeks. Enjoy your days. Enjoy your minutes.They go fast. They are unpredictable. But they are yours, use them wisely. And you will have few regrets.

Always,

Tracey

The post Time appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

  I want to say that I have not written intentionally.

No, nothing bad has happened. It’s just that the last… I think year really – and certainly the last four months have been so loud. Everywhere someone is yelling in your ear, or out of your computer or your phone. The endless texts asking for donations.

Every time you buy something there is a survey they want you to take.

The survey is followed by subsequent surveys about how did you feel about taking the last survey. Do you want to take another survey?

Do you like the product you bought? If not why?  Then  another survey and then fifty emails from the company you bought the socks from.

There is so much information out there. So much writing. Far too much writing and much of it from people who do not know how to write.

 There is writing that is true and fact checked. Writing that is false, annoying and disturbing.

There is Substack. Where the subs seem to stack up on top of each other at an alarming rate.

I know  I open my inbox only to trash 30 things, 16 of which I might have signed on for and the others of which just found their way to me. And I refuse to take surveys.

So, alas, I was giving you a gift. One less voice you had to turn off to get some peace during this very unpeaceful time in the world.

However, today is GIVING TUESDAY.  It’s funny how they do that, once you are totally tapped out from Cyber Monday and Black Friday, the world then wants you to give to charity. Do you think we should start with Giving Tuesday? Then we are too tapped out for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  And Black Friday now starts about two weeks ahed of the actual Friday after Thanksgiving.

Perhaps making it fall on Tuesday  is playing on our guilt.  OK, did you need that 96” TV when one out of eight school children in NYC is living in a shelter or homeless?

Which gets me to my meta message here, and it should come as no surprise as I have been asking and you have all been – not all – but many have been very generous over the years with my New York Cares Coat Drive.

In fact, I am now I think the record holder for single person, most coats raised for five years running.

And I am back at this year, only this year I do have a partner in Coat Driving.

My friend Jaime Rosenstein could not stand to see the freezing New Yorker and asked me what she could do. I said, you can donate coats to New York Cares. You can start your own drive, or you can join up with me, it’s kind of lonely ten years doing it alone.  So Jaime threw her coat lot in with me and we are really doing well. Thank you, Jaime. Two is more fun than one when it comes to this.

It’s same ole tune.  We are not accepting actual coats.
Twenty-five dollars buys one new coat for a person in need.

It also buys them hot meals.

Our mission statement is on our page, which you can see if you click here. The blue DONATE button on our page sends the money directly to our pot. Otherwise it ends up in the bigger New York Cares pot and I have to call them and they have to find it and put it with ours.

Anything you can give we are deeply grateful for.

For your amusement if you click here, you can see a video, I sent out to ask for help with this drive.

Also, I am doing much more content on Instagram than on this site.

I do videos these days.  Five minutes. No reading required. Just me talking into the camera and sharing ideas and thoughts, the way I have been on this site going on twenty years now.

My Instagram is @traceydjackson

Only if you miss me.

And I will still drop in here, when I feel I have something to say. Something that does not just fill the space and waste your time. And I promise no surveys.

For now, It’s GIVING TUESDAY….

Please help us help those in need.  I know I say it every year, but this year the need is more intense than ever.

And trust me without you, I would never have been able to pull off raising as much for coats as I have.

I am truly grateful – every Tuesday for the contributions you have made over the years to this very worthy cause.

In case you missed the link it’s here again.

The post DIDN’T SHE JUST DO THE COAT DRIVE? appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

As I was lying awake staring at the ceiling late last night, unable to sleep as visions of a Trump/Vance future loomed ahead of me-us, those of us who don’t hightail it out of here to another country.

I desperately tried to figure out a way to get through this without totally going off the rails.

A slight aside – if you don’t like my politics, I suggest you just unsubscribe now. It used to hurt my feelings, but honestly, it’s a relief not to have to apologize for my thoughts.  This blog is my safe space.

When I say “off the rail” I don’t mean anything violent. One does have to make those declarations these days. I can be verbally aggressive. But I am a total pacifist when it comes to physically harming another being.

 Nor would I harm myself. I do psychologically, by keeping the news on and watching the convention and following social media. And don’t bother telling me to stop, as I won’t. I need to know.

 Since Sunday, when the bullet missed DJT by that now famous ¼ of an inch.  A quarter of an inch????? Like he was almost a sharpshooter. I have been glued to the TV.

 I  feel very sad for the innocent man who died shielding his wife and kids.

Today, when I was listening to POD SAVE AMERICA, I found out that Joe Biden phoned the wife of the man who was killed to offer his condolences.  She refused to take his call. She refused to take his call.

Why? Because her husband would not have wanted her to as he loved Trump so much.  I repeat her dead husband loved Trump so much she would not take a call from the President of the United States of America.  He doesn’t sound like someone I would want to spend any time with, but he  did not deserve to be gunned down in front of his wife and kids while attending a rally.

This is the America we live in.  And it’s only getting worse by the second.

I admit – OK, I am a Boomer. I was raised to respect my elders. I was raised that the President – whether you voted for him or not, was the most important person in our country. And he was treated  as such.

Can you imagine Walter Cronkite speaking to JFK the way Lester Holt spoke to Biden this week?

 I was raised in a land, at a time, when an unstable twenty-year-old could not go buy fifty rounds of ammunition on a Sunday morning.

Many bring up 1968. “Things were this bad in 1968” they say this until the cows come home. But it’s not 1968. And what does that even mean?  Don’t the cows just come home for dinner? I’m off point, but I’m off point a lot these days as I don’t even know what the point is.

Yes, I do, the point is democracy is not coming to the USA, despite what Leonard Cohen once sang.

I do know that when Biden was elected and Trump was finally gone in his fury fueled fiery exit that left several dead; how quickly many forget, I was sooooooo relieved.  We would not have to ever hear from him again. It was a four-year tortuous blip on America’s laptop.

But he’s fucking back. And not only is he back, but he’s also now a hero. HERO. Yet he’s a convicted  felon.

The day before he almost got maybe killed he was supposed to be sentenced for the thirty-four felonies related to his porn star, campaign fund incident.

Which happened to be the same day the idiot, power grubbing Judge in Florida said he could not be charged for taking rooms full of classified documents home with him when he packed up and finally left the White House.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THIS COUNTRY?????   COMMON SENSE PEOPLE – IF NOTHING ELSE.  LAWS????? CIVILITY??

Yesterday afternoon, before I entered my night of restlessness and worry, I wandered around the house like a crazy person. Which I am sure you find easy to visualize as you read this blog.

 I could not focus.  I was posting on Instagram. I pondered micro dosing to calm myself. Nixed that. I don’t drink to ease the pain, so I can’t do that.

Glenn told me to get in my car and go buy something. He knows that is the one thing that calms me.  I also think he wanted me out of the house as he was closing a deal and I kept running in his office and yelling about the convention. He can actually focus under duress. I was absent the day they passed out that character trait.

 I told him I was too upset. He then said it was Amazon Prime Day.  I should go check it out. He handed me his credit card.

He was nine hours and forty-two minutes off according to Amazon’s countdown clock.

He was trying. Which was more than he was doing in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep,  as he can sleep through anything.

People have a misconception about marriage ( I told you I was all over the place today) if you expect cogent thoughts that fall into place, go read Thomas Friedman, as I may be jumping from the Second Amendment to Leonard Cohen,  without a breath in between or a thread that binds.

As I was saying, I think, misconceptions about marriage, right, that’s where I was…..the misconception is  if you are married you have someone to talk to in the middle of the night when you are losing your shit.

Well, you don’t.  Trust me. My friend Anne Margaret and I were talking about it today.

One sleeps like a rock.  Usually the man. As he does not have the same inner alarm system installed that  women do.  The stove may be on. The garage door is open,.  The baby is crying.  The dog just threw up. There is a sound next door, the neighbors house maybe getting broken into. Mayhem abounds.  They sleep in peace.

Even during our twenty months of hell, which had it gone south, would have been worse for Glenn than me, let’s face it, I would walk the house all night unable to sleep while he snored away.

Last night while I was up and agitated, visions of Marjorie Taylor Greene with a crown on dancing through my head – he slept. I tried to wake him.

Do you realize what this all means?  Then I listed it, from global warming to the fact we would be living in a Sovereign country where Donald Trump is King, and JD Vance is next in line to the throne. Where abortions are banned and maybe sex too. No gay rights.  Did anyone hear MTG say how there were only two genders? People get  cancelled for saying things like that.  They lose their jobs, for hinting at anything remotely like that. But she can say it during prime time with millions of people watching and no one calls her out on being anti-trans?

If you are anything other than cis-gender, white and have a cross dangling from your neck, I’d be looking for a place abroad now.

Despite what I wrote the other day about leaving the party, the guest list has changed and so has the theme.

While Joe is old, and he fumbles, as I told a lovely woman from South Africa in my Pilates class  yesterday, I would vote for Joe in a coma before I would vote for Trump.

Trump is a convicted felon. A rapist. He incites the very violence that was finally turned on him and he escaped it. That orange stuff he sprays all over his body, I’m now convinced it’s Teflon coating.

I’ve used up 1362 words and I don’t think I’ve made a really cohesive point.

Before this shit storm started up at such an amped up velocity, I vowed to stay calm.

I thought I could. I thought as I had gotten through our twenty months of malicious prosecutions, I could always “behave impeccably” as my friend, the designer Ralph Rucci, once instructed me.

Just when I wanted to blow, which god knows I did, I remained impeccable. And I was rewarded. People noticed and acknowledged it.

So, I really thought I could do it through this election. “Always be impeccable.”

No unfollowing people with opposite views than mine. No ranting and raving about the candidate that isn’t mine. No not letting any GOP voters into my world. No, mean spirited statements or posts despite the insanity one has to endure.. Just ride one more hideous situaion out  impeccably.

Then last night as Glenn lay snoring and I couldn’t even get blind Winnie to listen to me, I realized I couldn’t pull it off on this one.

That is what the DEMS do.  We go high when they go low. Well, look where that has gotten us.  Lower than low.

 Donald Trump is back, and he has an accomplice in JD Vance who is as monstrous as he is. In a different way.  But just as bad.  He would never pussy out, the way Pence did.  And that is why he was chosen. That and he harkens from the rust belt which they need to win.

I am not going to be impeccable. I will be loud. I will be relentless.

I am going to devote my entire fall to the Democratic candidate  whomever they may be. Hopefully, it’s Biden.

And the reason is simple. I don’t think anyone else can win. I think Arnold could beat Trump. But the fact he was born to a Nazi in another country makes it impossible.

We can survive four years of Biden. He may not survive. Then we get Kamala and time to regroup.

 But at least we will not be riding the dangerous roller coaster without guardrails that is a Trump presidency.  We won’t survive four years with Trump and Vance. We may be alive, but Democracy will be eliminated  from the USA.

DEMOCRACY

It’s coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It’s coming from the feel
that this ain’t exactly real,
or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It’s coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don’t pretend to understand at all.
It’s coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin’
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It’s coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we’ll be making love again.
We’ll be going down so deep
the river’s going to weep,
and the mountain’s going to shout Amen!
It’s coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on …

I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Leonard Cohen

The post How To Get To November 5th in One Peace appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

She used to say, “you must always know when it’s time to leave the party.”

Party applied to many things. Being the party lover she was, it originated that at a certain point in every evening there is no more fun to be had. Only trouble can lie ahead, so best to go home. I followed this rule and consequently had few incidents of staying at a party too long.

But she also applied it to jobs. Relationships. Marriages. It was a kind of plug in for – it’s time to exit the scene.  The party is over.  And it’s important to know when that time is.

This is extraordinary as she was a woman of excess in so many ways. But she even applied this to the end of her life.  She let me know it was time to leave the party of living. She wanted to exit.  And she did.

As much as I adored Ruth Bader Ginsberg, she did not know when it was time to leave the party. And thanks to what I think was her big ego and a certain narcissism, she stayed on and consequently we are stuck with right wing nutjob, anti- abortionist, Amy Coney Barret.  Who is helping to take women back fifty years.

Ruth’s unwillingness to leave the party tainted much of what she spent her lifetime accomplishing.

Last night’s humiliation of a debate made it all too evident that both candidates need to leave the party.

One of them needs his invitation snatched away.  But sadly, his fellow revelers do not have the balls to tell him to go home. The fact that convicted felon Donald J. Trump can even run for president of what is supposedly the most powerful nation on earth is so horrendous it takes my breath away,

I don’t care if he walked on that stage with the oratory skills of Obama and the New Deal map of FDR, he is a convicted felon.

The man has fifty-seven felony charges against him.  And he has been found guilty on thirty-four thus far.   If he wins, he could serve from jail.  His vice president may end up being his probation officer.  I wrote movies for 28 years and you can’t make this stuff up.

I’m not going into what he’s done, lies he has told, or the lies he told last night.

The man is a felonious, sociopathic liar. Who is already  a convicted felon.

I keep repeating it as I don’t think people grasp it. They fail to understand what an enormous mark against one a felony conviction is.

Unfortunately, as you now know, my husband was brought up on four cooked up felony charges, that were deemed malicious prosecution by Judge.

Despite that victorious conclusion to a hellacious situation, we have suffered and to a certain degree continue to suffer.  Just being brought up on charges, forget being found guilty, makes so many things in life impossible, I cannot begin to tell you.

You cannot get a liquor license.  Seems minor. Glenn was not out to precure one. His plan B was not if this goes south, I will open a bar. But Trump could lose his in Florida. Felons are not allowed to vote in most states. THEY CAN’T VOTE FOR THE PRESIDENT, but you can be the president.  Just spend two minutes pondering the lunacy of that.

Most banks do not want to do business with you, while you are under indictment, forget being found guilty.

Global Entry. Sounds minor.  Saving time at customs.  During the twenty months Glenn was under malicious prosecution, our Global Entry expired.  I could reup mine online.  Not him. His was revoked.  To get it back he must go to Homeland Security with all of his paperwork that shows his case was thrown out of court and he was Maliciously Prosecuted.

What does that mean if DJT is reelected?  IF he is allowed to leave the country, (they often take away your passport when you are convicted of felonies) will he have to go stand in the long line at JFK?

But, he may not be traveling so much as convicted felons are banned from thirty-seven countries. Maybe why he takes such a strong stance against NATO.  They won’t let him come to meetings anymore.

How’s this, convicted felons are not allowed to enter the United States. But they are allowed to run it?

Forget every other heinous thing about him. The pussy grabbing. The endless insults. The Georgia election rigging. The insurrection.  Just focus on he has already been found guilty and is a card-carrying member of the convicted felons club.

Donald Trump does not belong in this race. He belongs behind bars. The fact we live in a country where enough people have so few operating brain cells, they think he makes us safer is beyond comprehension.  The idea they overlook the facts of what being a convicted felon really means just – makes me want to move to Portugal. And I don’t even love it in Portugal. It’s nice for a week but…..

When he said I can stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and my base won’t leave me, he knew what he was talking about.  What we didn’t count on- his base would only grow.

And what is scarier, is people who have common sense, who did not vote for him the first or second time around, are looking at him like well, at least he can string his sentences together.

My dog groomer can do that too. I think we should throw his name in the ring. My Pilates teacher, very articulate. WTF people. Where is your  common sense?

Even if I’d been the biggest MAGA follower in the country, which we know I was not, this would make me stop and say, NO America, we cannot have a convicted, lying felon back in the White House.  Just say NO – GOP. Grow a pair, find someone else. I would vote for a Republican at this point, if he were the right candidate.

But we are so weak and confused and divided a country we cannot stand up for what is right anymore.

Why can he be allowed to run for president, when someone else who is a convicted felon cannot vote? Because like so many of the other archaic rules we cling to as our Democracy sinks like the Titanic, it’s not in the Constitution.

That Constitution needs to be ripped up from one end to another and tossed into a bonfire. And if not ripped up entirely, then it needs to be modified and revisited and big parts redone.  Starting with the Second Amendment, which was based on muskets not AK47s. The electoral college which was meant to suppress the black vote. But we still seem to be doing that in many other ways.

The French, not always the most practical of folks and tipping to the far right at this moment too, are on their fifth version of their Constitution. They will not alter one ingredient in the croissant, but at least they will revisit the document that sets the rules for their governance.

Take away his invitation. It is time for Trump to leave the party.

That brings us to Joe.  Last night was a heartbreaker of a night,  if you are a Democrat.  If you like Joe which many do. If you are deep down rooting for him as the only choice is a felon or the craziest Kennedy to be born, and that is saying something.

It is time for Joe to leave the party.  I hate to say it. Write on this page. Own its truth. But last night we did see an old man, who is only going to get older.

And frankly if last night was any indication of his daily stamina, memory, and ability to put thoughts in cohesive order, I would not want him babysitting my kids, much less running the country.

 It’s a stressful job. God knows everyone goes in looking pretty good, well Trump didn’t, but they all come out having aged 15 years even if they only served one term.

I think he was handed a mess of a country and a world. He put his nose to the grindstone, and he worked quietly and diligently and he had no scandals or departures in his administration.

Sure, Afghanistan was a disaster. But it always is. Do you know what the word for disaster is in Afghan?  It’s Afghanistan. No one on the planet has been able to make it work. Not the Russians. Not the English. Not the Indians. No one. So, Joe got us out.  Last night he forgot thirteen soldiers were killed,.  But he has a lot on his plate. And let’s face it, he’s just not that with it.

I think the whole Hunter trial has had a terrible effect on him. How could it not?

He’s lived a very long full life. The guy has been in politics for fifty-four years without a break.  He has earned a house on the beach, and chance to improve his golf game.

President of the United States under normal times, if there is such a thing is the most stressful job on the planet.

I think for someone of his age who took on what he did, he did a decent job.

The immigrants. I don’t know. I think DeSantos and Greg Abbott screwed up that more than Biden did.

He was not counting on Ukraine. October 7^th.

And let me take this moment to speak to my fellow Jews, why you think for two seconds Trump cares about us, is insane.

He let the dogs out baby. He let them out in Charlottesville. And he has a dog whistle that he blows and the antisemites follow. I’ve been a Jew for sixty-six years and I have never witnessed the antisemitism that has come to life, since he appeared on the scene.  He gave all racists and xenophobes and Antisemites free reign to let their hate flags fly. And if you think moving that Embassy was indicative of  his true feelings you are nuts. He did it because very rich American Jews paid him to. And I have family members whom I love, but they believe this horseshit too.

People say, he has Jewish grandchildren. My parents had Jewish parents and Jewish children and they were both antisemites.

Back to Sleepy Joe.  He is not just sleepy, he is exhausted.  He’s dead tired, guys.

 He is eighty-one years old. He has suffered in ways few have. He has governed for his entire life. He has buried two children and now may have to watch one enter prison.

He is too old to have to help unravel Israel and Gaza. Referee Zelensky and Putin.  Deal with China and Marjorie Taylor Green.

 He deserves a break. What was clear last night, was he is just too old to do this for four more years. He could not get through one debate.

Give yourself a break Joe.  You have served your country. You have served it well. And despite what the ignorant say, you were there when a very broken country needed you. And you helped to get us over the COVID hump.  You governed with dignity and perseverance and temperance.

Enjoy what years you have left. Hang with Jill. Take the grandkids to Machu Pichu. You won’t run into Trump, Peru does not allow felons in.   Take them to Hawaii too, kids love Hawaii. Make some lovely family memories. You’ve had too much family tragedy for one guy.

Just give yourself a couple years of peace. You’ve earned it.

And unlike RBG do not let your ego or false sense of keeping up the front of youth force you to stay at the party too long. It will not help your legacy. It will only hurt it.

As much as I hate to see you go – It’s time to leave the party Joe.

If anyone were to ask me what to do. And god knows no one will. I say we stop the election in November.  We take a year and find some younger candidates, without criminal records and with a little more energy and memory and do this right.

Otherwise we are really, truly….fucked.

The post TIME TO LEAVE THE PARTY appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

I don’t remember at what point I decided I would verbally slap five people and five people only.

God knows I had enough time to think about.  I had way too much time to come up with a list.  And week after week, more contenders entered the ring.

When you are silenced for a long time, you fantasize about what you will say when you can finally open the verbal floodgates.

You make mental lists as you cook dinner.  You come up with new names as you drive around doing your daily errands.

And then when someone whacks you, you instantly add them to the list.

It really hits you at night. As you yet again stare into the darkness wanting to sleep, sleep soundly. Waken at ten not four am. You have way too much time to think about these things. Whose done me wrong? Who do I hit with my best shot? Who gets left on the bench?

Someone must get it. Someone has to, if not pay for their misdeeds; at least hear them. Face them down.

I am not a physical person. I do not imagine myself hitting, slapping, or hurting another.  I think all the guns in America should be tossed into the sea.  I am a firm believer in overturning the Second Amendment. I am in fact a firm believer in redoing parts of the Constitution.  Several before November.

The point being, I never want to hurt another person’s body in any way.

But words are my weapon.  Always have been. They have been my source of income throughout my life.  I can do a lot with a few sentences. Words are my squad.

Anyone who has been on the other side of one of my verbal attacks will attest to it.

But in the last twenty months I/we have been on the receiving end of so much abuse, there was no way once I got the go ahead, I was going to be completely silent.

But how much was the right amount? How much was justified and at what point did I turn into an abuser myself?

At some point I landed on five.  Five people who would receive either eviscerating emails from me, pointing out their heinous behavior, or at least ones telling them how hurtful and destructive they were.

Five seemed good.  Half of ten.  One hand.  One hand’s worth.  Metaphorically -one verbal slap divided among five recipients.

I also still count on my fingers. OK, not always, but too much for someone who is about to be 66 in a few days. Or perhaps now in senior hood it’s  acceptable to count on one’s fingers. It’s likely the fifty proceeding decades I looked like I was auditioning for Sesame Street.

One of my Golden Circle girls, Lisa V. always laughs at me when I’m figuring out how much to tip and count on my fingers. But she’s Mensa.

I got through one hand’s worth of people and I stopped there. I swore to myself, five and you’re out. No matter what comes down the pike. Despite any real incident you forgot during one of your two am counting mean people instead of sheep nights, you are limiting yourself to five.

Five people, then you take the high road. Five people will scratch your itch and you then become the proverbial lotus rising out of the mud.

Five people and everyone else gets divided into various groups depending on how they present or misrepresent or choose to continue to ignore, or as several letters I received did, turned the tables on me, or were far too defensive.

I have a good bullshit meter. A much better one than I even had before.

For the most part I know who knew. And I also knew who might not. And there were many letters of pure empathy. Many professed they should have reached out, but are  yet to  follow through.

But, as I said in the first blog on this, I have my friends. And they are perhaps better friends than I have had in decades. Or in some cases the same people who were friends, they just morphed into better friends.

And people have been reinstated after that initial blog went out.  And some others were swept under the carpet.  Too little too late.

Let’s address a few questions that might be swirling through your mind.

If you have not gotten a “fuck you” email from me, you are not going to.

It does not mean I may not be thinking it, it just means you did not make the final cut. Or I cut you slack. Or you did just enough – sent an email. Reached out in some way even if that way did not result in a face to face.

You had to be really bad to be voted off the island. There are people who were pretty bad, maybe as bad as some who got letters, but when you limit yourself to five, you have to stick to your own rule.

I am also not going to out anybody by name. I don’t need to publicly humiliate people who I have personally told off.  I am not a fan of public humiliation.  I might have been at one time, but I say keep it under wraps for the most part.

Who Got it?

It’s kind of funny how the world works – sometimes. After I wrote that blog, the first two people who entered my cyber space were on my list!

Is that coincidence? Is it guilt? Perhaps just stupidity or narcissism. Not sure.

First one was a colleague of Glenn’s. But one I communicated with for some time.  They were first to respond with an email that was almost damning in tone.  And obviously distressed that more damage had not occurred. Their behavior had been negligent throughout the saga. But more from omission that commission.  I read the email they sent.

Wrote back “Dear….- Go fuck yourself.  Best T.”

Pretty banal if you ask me. When I read it now, it’s not only low key for me, but also very run of the mill. A third grader could have written it.

At the time it seemed to the point and I wanted it over with.  It was just to say, never knock on this door again. Which oddly they did with a few more (left unanswered) emails to me that day.

The second one, was odd. I must tell the story of it, to have it make sense.  I had held in the pain so long, but it was a pivotal moment in almost two years of pivotal moments.

It was winter of 2023. I was in the little market we all go to in Sag Harbor. A person we have known for a long time cornered me.  As was often the case, the topic of Glenn arose first. Some people backed into it. Clumsy people rammed into it.  This was clumsy and accusatory.  They then switched to a what’s going on stream of questions.

It was a bleak day to begin with. February cold. Midafternoon almost dark. The type of winter’s day on the Eastern End of Long Island, you start looking at your watch at three hoping it will say five.

I was stopped by this person, in the pasta, rice aisle.  I still see the boxes of Rice a Roni neatly lined up above their head.

Somehow, I confessed to not knowing what to do. Sharing how awful it all was. And blurting out, I don’t know where we will end up or where to live.  Their response was you can’t stay here. Not after this. You will never have a life in Sag Harbor again.  No one wants you here.

Sag Harbor is my spiritual home.  It’s where I really want to be much of the year. It’s the only place I felt/feel safe and moderately relaxed in the last two years.  It’s the place I have lived  the longest in my life. It is the only place on the planet I long for when not there.  And here was this person telling me I needed to get of Dodge as no one would ever have anything to do with us again.

I still see the line-up of Rice a Roni above their head as they spoke the words. Chicken. Chicken with Less Salt. Beef. Noodle Roni on the end.

Why don’t they make the Beef with less salt?

I left my cart without checking out. I ran to my car. Locked the doors and cried for a half hour before driving home.  But I never said a word at the time. I was waiting.

And then there they were, second email in. “Wishing you the best.”

Really. The best?

I wrote back saying I found this surprising and recounted the conversation at the market.

They denied it. I said if it didn’t happen how do I still see the Rice a Roni lined up above your head? What on earth would be in it for me to make up such a story?

We had a few back and forths. No swearing on my part.  Just a you kicked me to the curb when I was already crumpled on the sidewalk type of conversation.

And that was the end of that.  Two down three to go.

The third was a family member.  Not mine.  The end.

I did early on, the week of the trial write a not so kind, ok, kind of awful email to one of my half sisters.  I immediately apologized a few days later. I was wrong. Very.

I was at  the end of my rope and she was an easy but unfair target.  So I owned my poor behavior. Explained the kind of stress I was under and asked for forgiveness. Which I was given. And we are all good.

The fourth one was a twofer.  A couple I have known for decades. Like four decades plus.  A couple I think I have been very good to. And even recently, the year before the shit hit the fan, did them a big favor I did not have to do, out of kindness as I could have made a different choice – that likely would have served my needs better.  So, I reamed them. And I won’t repeat what I said. But much like my fifth – it had been building up for years. And it has such a long history, this is not the first stress fracture. But it is the last.

The wife wrote something nasty on my Facebook page.  In the name of not responding, I just deleted it.  I only responded to the Rice a Roni person.  That was another self-imposed rule, these are not going to get into lengthy debates.  It’s one strike you’re out and more importantly – I’m out.

The fifth was hard. But had to be done. It was someone who at this point is my oldest friend. We go way back. And they were there for me in the early days. Then disappeared.  And I could not figure it out.  They had even offered to go to a hearing with me. Something I did not take them up on. I would go alone. Or with Taylor.  But then they ghosted me. And I thought you are my oldest friend and in my hour of need, my you are gone?

At a certain point, I took the high road on that one. I wrote the person and said if I woke up tomorrow and found out someone in my life was dead, and I was not speaking to them, who would I be the most upset about?  Which unresolved conflict would haunt me forever?  And it was this person. And they reappeared, briefly.  Then ghosted me again.  And then when the victory verdict came through, not a word was uttered. Made the short list. It doesn’t make me happy.

But nothing to be done.

No one wants to deal with these things. No one wants lists like this. I’m not a sadist.

But many people are out there with many problems. I’m not comparing mine to anyone else’s. And many, many people dump them. And what do you do? How do you handle it.

This is the thing you hear first when you are dealt a severe blow, “You learn who your friends are.”

And something else you learn; people do not like to be called out on not doing the right thing. They will fight you. They will come up with excuses. They will say, this is a good one- Glenn and I have both gotten a bunch of these, I wrote to you but never sent it. I went to pick up the phone but put it down.

And the dog ate your homework.

What if you wrote  to me and you haven’t heard back?

• I don’t believe you.
• I’ve been really busy, and it’s starred in my inbox.
• I never really liked you to begin with.
• I only have time to be a good friend to X amount of people. Like I said I turn 66 on Sunday. No more time for bullshit. Real deal or I’m out.
• If you did hear from me, you know – while you may not be part of the Golden Circle, you are a part of my life and mean something to me.

And that’s five expalnations and I’m out.

The post Five Strikes I’m Out appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

In all honesty I was not planning on writing to you today.  I wrote to grandma when mom died. That was almost four years ago this summer.

You have now been gone for forty-eight years.

I guess I don’t have to tell you that. Or do I?  I don’t know what anyone knows or doesn’t know. I don’t know where we go. If we go anywhere. I am always flabbergasted by the people who are so sure they do know.

What I do know is I am now closer to where you are then I am to when you died.

You died at seventy-six. I turn sixty-six in four weeks. Can you imagine that?  Your little puchki – a senior citizen.

You have been dead for forty-eight years, and I now lose more people than I gain. I have more behind me than I do in front of me.

I don’t want to make this all about me. But it’s hard to make it about you as you left me before I was old enough to really know what life was or who you were.   I never got to ask you the big questions.  I never got to have conversations with you that now I long to have.

I have so many questions for you. I have often said, that if there is one person in the world I would like to come back from the other side and spend twenty-four hours with, it’s you.  It’s not mom. Especially after the last twenty months she would just yell and scream, more than usual.

 It’s not my dad. God knows, And it’s not grandma. I loved grandma. I really did. And I took good care of her after you left. I could have done better. I know that now. Though I tried.

I didn’t understand age then. I didn’t understand the world of the old. A world where life suddenly ignores you and you become invisible. I was young and selfish.

And mom was always such a handful. And she was left in my hands.

I want you to know, I buried grandma – alone. Not totally alone. Audrey, your niece, who died this year too, she was there. And I think Rose or Morrey. Mom refused to come. I know big surprise. I never forgave her for it. Never. I threw it up to her until the end of her life. I hold it against her to this day.

But she deserved my lifelong wrath on that one.  After all you both did for both of us. She couldn’t drive ninety miles to LA for grandma’s funeral? She couldn’t bury her own mother?

When Grandma died I was 33 and had a six-month-old baby girl. And mom just went I’m not doing this. I was like WTF. You don’t need to know what that means. You will say why do you speak like a stevedore?

So I did it.  Without her.  Because I love you both so much. And that’s what family does.  And even though grandma did not have many friends or speak to many of her relatives, I gathered who I could. And we put her in the ground next to you at Mt. Sinai.

I bought little pots of violets, her favorite flower, (in case you forgot) and I put some on her grave. I then gave everyone who showed up a little pot of violets to take home to keep her alive in their hearts.

After the ceremony I took everyone to Lawry’s for a big prime rib meal. As I knew that was what she would have wanted to do.

This was not what this was supposed to be about, but I’m on a roll and I have been carrying this around for decades.

That was the beginning of what was to become the norm after you died, I was the grown-up in the family.

Grandma was a grownup – but she was what they now would call neurodivergent.  And I don’t have enough words to explain it. People have very short attention spans these days. But it means she was just wacky in the head. We all are. It kind of covers the waterfront of mental issues, in keeping with the stevedore theme.

In a nutshell, after all these years and living a huge life, I have lived such a big life grandpa, but it means that in the history of that life you were and remain my most stable person who always had my best interests at heart.  And I only got eighteen years with you.

And in every life as you know because I know you came from nothing and made yourself into someone.  I know you had struggles, but I think losing you so young was maybe one of the worst things that could have happened to me.

The worst thing up until this year. The last twenty months of my life have been just hell. Like I have lived through things no one should have to unless they are truly a bad person.

Listen, I have had problems, who hasn’t? But, thanks to you, and hard work, I’ve had a good life.  Until twenty moths ago.

Twenty months ago, my husband was arrested and charged with felonies he did not commit.

Yeah, that happened. You were a lawyer. And you were very successful, why would you be surprised at that? Maybe you would be. One of the questions I have been longing to ask you.

The world is a very different place than when you left it. Rules, race, law, politics and media they are all in a giant unregulated soup together.

I’ve been a really good citizen. Like I pay my parking tickets the day I get them. I pay my taxes on time. I work  for charities. Take care of my kids.I try and be a good friend.   I am kind of scared of authority, so for me, this was like The Twilight Zone.,

Spoiler alert, it turned out OK. But you don’t know what spoiler alert means either.

However, before it turned out OK, it was just beyond horrific. And I would talk to you. You were the only person who is no longer here I would just sit and jabber at.

Grandpa what do I do?” How do I do this? Why did this happen? And I knew if you were here, you would have helped me. You would not have judged. You would have guided me through it.

You would have stood by me. Grandma would have too.  But it would have sent her to bed. And she would have needed oxygen.  And thank God they now have better drugs than Librium.  She meant well, but you know, neurodivergent.

Mom would have yelled that’s what you get for marrying a Jew. The world has gotten very antisemitic again.  It’s scary. But mom would feel very vindicated in her own antisemitism. She’s tucked away in her drawer in the Santa Barbara Mission.

But you would have been my rock and I just wanted you here so much.

I think you would have been proud of me. I did get through it. And I found a strength I didn’t even know I had. And I walked into the court room and I held my head high. And I did not buckle to those who abandoned me or said horrible things.

Every day I just put one foot in front of the other and I said,  What would grandpa have wanted me to do? How would he have wanted me to handle this? Just make Phil proud. Channel Phil. His strength. His steeliness. His devotion to his family. His ability and willingness to put them first. And maybe this will all turn out OK. And it did.

And you know something else you would like? Do you remember how you always said silver dollars were good luck?

I had a little envelope of your silver dollars tucked away in my safe. I have had them for almost fifty years.

I tend to always have one of those or a two-dollar bill on me as they were your good luck charms.

 Before the trial I took out that little envelope and there were exactly enough for me, Glenn, and my two daughters. And we each walked into that court room every day with one of your silver dollars with us.

I said, we need Grandpa Phil.  He will get us through this and to the other side. And you did.

Now everyone keeps the coins on them for luck. You love that?

And one more thing.  I don’t know if dead people remember stuff.  Do you remember the last time we spoke?

I was in San Francisco. It was the summer I had just graduated from high school. I was at ACT studying acting. I was in my apartment, that of course you were paying for, overlooking The Golden Gate Bridge.  We were on the phone.  You were failing and I didn’t know it, except I kind of did. And so did you.

And your last words to me were, whatever you do, just make something of your life.  You said, I’ve left you enough money if you invest it and you are careful ,you will be OK.  But you need to make something of your life and do something with it.

And I just always pray that every time I have done something good or made progress you can see it.

I’m not the most famous person in the world or anything.  But I have done something with my life. I’ve been successful enough. I have made my own money.  I have accomplished a lot in a difficult field.

As I said, my best years are now behind me.  But I am proud of what I have done. And the work I have churned out.

And I just always want you to know that. And when really good things have happened, like a book got on the best seller list or movies were made or I sold a big script, I looked up and said to you, see, I did it.

I have raised two wonderful daughters. One of whom carries your name as her middle name.  One is married and one is about to be.  And I imagine before long, I too will be a grandparent. Using you and grandma as my  models.

But when we meet again, and I so hope we do, I can look you in the eye and you will be proud of me and how I lived my life. Your approval has always been my measuring stick, even though I have lived most of my life without you.

And thank you, in absentia for getting me through this mess.

I love you with all my heart.

Tracey

PS – On Friday the S &P closed above 5000! Your money is heavy in tech now. It won’t make sense to you, but you can be very happy about it.

The post DEAR GRANDPA appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

I can’t tell you how much or little I have written.  But I can tell you exactly how long it’s been since I went quiet.

I’ve been hushed for over a year and half.

Twenty months almost –  to the day.

That’s eighty-six weeks.

Six hundred and five days.

Fourteen thousand five hundred and twenty hours.

871,200 minutes…………….

I imagine that is the way people break down prison sentences.  And for every one of those six hundred and five days, the first thing I thought about in the morning, and the last thing I thought every night – was prison.

 Honestly, in so many ways, minus the bars, my life felt like a prison sentence.

But, let me back track to when and what I promised to tell you about.

If you’ve followed this blog with any regularity, you know we moved out to California for what was to be one year during COVID.

It was partially for what I called the “experiment” a stab at seeing if we could live at least part of the year in California.  But it was mostly to take care of and oversee the death of my mother.

I thought mom would last six to eight months.  She passed away two months after we got there.  My father followed her one month to the day.

COVID marched on and we stayed.  We started to like LA. At least we liked the house we were in.  We liked being near Taylor and Randall, our daughter and son-in-law.

We liked it enough that in the summer of 2022, we sold our beloved home in Sag Harbor with an eye on buying the house in LA.  A deal I knew I was making with the devil.

I always knew two things about the house in Sag Harbor, that we should never sell it, because if something catastrophic happened, or if I was alone, I could afford to live there comfortably. And that the community was sophisticated enough, and we had enough of a life there to sustain us. I believe that to this day.

I knew this as I put 26 years of our life into boxes. I had lived in that house longer than any other.  The home cradled the best memories of my family and thus my life. I knew it as I closed the door and we drove away.  I sobbed all the way back to the city.

I remember begging Glenn to give them back the money.  End the deal. I really didn’t want the house in Los Angeles.  And what if it didn’t inspect and we couldn’t buy it? We would be homeless.

He told me the deal was done and we flew back to LA on June 15^th, 2022.  Leaving Sag Harbor behind.

On June 17th the house in LA fell through.  It didn’t inspect. It was a disaster in every way.  Down to black mold.

And there we were having sold our home of twenty-six years.  We had to be out of the house in LA by the end of month.

I had bought a wreck of an apt the summer before in the city. It needed a lot of work, none of which had begun.

We were as I had predicted – homeless.  I knew we could afford to get ourselves something, but the world felt like it was unraveling.  Little did I know what was to come.

On June 22, 2022, Lucy and I went to look at a temporary apartment that rented by the month in LA. We figured it would tie us over until the apartment was ready in six months.

We drove home to tell Glenn about it.  Between that and stays in hotels we should be able to work it out.

Except on June 21, 2022, he had received a call from the district attorney in NY.  He had been indicted. He was facing four felony counts. Four.

I remember too little from the hours that followed to be able to properly recount them.

I felt the floor fall away. I felt the room spin. I remember screaming what for?  What have you done?

He said he hadn’t done a thing – but they were indicating him for the Don Henley lyrics.  The Don Henley lyrics??????? You sold them like hundred years ago. Ten” he corrected me.

“What’s happened with them? What’s going on?”

“I haven’t a clue” he said.

But.But.But. But. But. Nothing made sense.

Two weeks later Glenn flew to New York to be arraigned. I didn’t even know what that meant.  I had to Google it. I know it makes me sound stupid. I didn’t know what the Grand Jury was either. Little known fact – few do, unless they’ve sat one or been a part of one.

In a year and eight months of more bad moments than good – Of all the hideous things that happened and  were said. Of being belittled and maligned by people. Not to mention the huge hit we took on our life savings and his forty-year old beyond successful business. The worst moment was the day he was arraigned.

The girls and I stayed in LA. We were told all sorts of thigs would not happen that in fact ended up happening.  We were out of touch with him. We knew he would be in court. We knew he would have to turn himself in.   We didn’t know if he would be put in a cell. He was. We did not know he would be handcuffed. He was. Along with the other legal procedures I was ignorant of  I had also never heard the term perp walk.

I watch no legal TV.

Other little known fact, most states don’t do the perp walk. It’s big in NYC.  And the only other country that has a grand jury is Liberia. Both antiquated and used to humiliate people of color.

We finally got a call from him when he was out of court. He was shaken up.  But in true Glenn style, a good sport.

May I take a moment here to say he has been the best sport throughout this. I have not. I have railed and hailed and yelled and screamed. I might have frightened Lear had he witnessed my performances. I wanted to run away. I wanted to stay and fight. I told him he’d ruined my life. I told him I would stick by him till the end. He never wavered.

He was innocent. And he was going to beat this.

Sometimes I would respond with,  “you are delusional. You are up against the government.”

Back to the day of hell, he said that he was on his way to meet a friend for a drink. He didn’t want to give us a lot of details, but would when he came home the next day. I think he didn’t want to upset us.

He was off the grid for a few hours.  But the girls and I were glued to the computer.  Being this was The Eagles, there had to be press. But how bad would that press be?

Nothing can prepare you for seeing your husband and in the girl’s case – father, handcuffed and dragged through a jail surrounded by big burly guards packing guns. They made him look like a serial killer. The man had done nothing.

When we saw that photo, we all broke down screaming NOOOOOOOOO.

And the one New York Times  photo and article suddenly morphed into hundreds before our eyes.  Every paper was picking it up. Even in Europe.

I finally got myself together and called him and told him to stop whatever he was  doing. I told him to go back to his hotel. Call his lawyer.  They had to do damage control and fast.

But another thing you learn when the GOVT comes after you, there is no damage control available.  They want you down and they want you out. They want to make you so miserable and broken you will plea to something you did not do. More than 90% of criminal convictions in this country end in plea bargains. Do the math on how many of those are just people who can’t take the abuse any longer. Can’t afford any more hour of representation. Just want it all to end.

At that moment nothing in the world made any sense at all.

And without going into legal detail nothing made sense until we got to trial six hundred and five days later.

I could sit here and tell you about the things we learned. I could tell you about how  I learned to read Grand Jury minutes, legal motions, speak and understand a small part of the language of what America calls its justice system. I could tell you I was the only wife that showed up at every single court hearing.

But I am not willing or yet able to dig deep enough into details to start sharing them.  I am saving that for a bigger project.

But what I can tell you is when the government comes after you,  they are out to destroy. Whether they have evidence or not.

I can tell you I knew Glenn was one hundred percent innocent.

I can tell you  twenty of our friends stood by us.  I call them the Golden Circle.  And I will love them and stand by them forever. I don’t know how we would have gotten through this without them.

I can tell you about the abject cruelty that was hurled our way.

I can tell you we live in a country where we are not innocent until proven guilty.  We are guilty until proven innocent.

 While I was accused of nothing, I might as well have been.  I was roadkill. And I am not making myself a victim here.  I was abandoned in every way except for those few wonderful people who stood by me.

We were abandoned. For Glenn it was worse as he struggled to keep his business alive. For me it was worse in a different way my life was ripped away from me.

I could not, would not write. I was silenced. Yes, I could have written about banal things. But, when your life is hijacked by something like this, the impulse to write about what lipstick you are loving or what art show to see is so trivial I could not bring myself to do it. And frankly, I was going nowhere and doing nothing. So, there was little to write about.

I sat in bed staring at Otter Pond, clutching my little blind dog much of the time.

If you’ve followed me, you know me.  I tend to write about the truth that is going on around me, or how I perceive it. And this was all that existed in my world. This non truth was now my truth. And I was not allowed to even discuss it or defend myself or my family.

I went private on Instagram. I became terrified if a jury member googled me, my moderately liberal politics, my open ended honesty and perspective on life, could work against Glenn.

Might one misunderstood word bring my innocent husband down?  This is the way your brain works when in this situation.

The night he was indicted I went to bed at seven. Something I would do for months and months. Sleep. Naps. I have never napped so much in my life. I think I slept through three quarters of August 2022.

I did find us a place to live. We did return to Sag Harbor. In the last twenty months we have moved five times. But always have kept something in Sag Harbor.

The apartment I bought with money I got from my mother’s estate; didn’t take six months to fix up, it took over eighteen. We basically moved in a month before the trial.

Oh, and the trial, it was postponed six times. Just when you think, OK, maybe in three weeks life would return to normal, no – hold on, your Sept 16^th date is now October 23. Your October 23 is now December 12^th and on and on.

And people would say the most ridiculous things. Let me tell you the most annoying thing several people, supposed friends said to me.

“You are the strongest person I know, if anyone can get through this you can.”

The perpetually perky socialite who first said this to me, though she was not the last, really meant, you are so strong you don’t need me to show up for you. Which she didn’t.

I’m  a writer. Remember?  Subtext is my second language.

And how do you know how strong I am?  I’ve cried more in the last twenty months than I have in my entire life. Crying and napping.

Half the time I was a warrior for justice, the other half a toddler with narcolepsy.

I went from a size six to a size zero. Without Ozempic.

Outside of the Golden Circle we were invited nowhere.

I started refusing to go most public  places, at least in the city.  I didn’t want to take the chance of what people might say if they saw us. And having to endure the whispers of nosey, uninformed idiots was something I could not face.

And one of the endless problems when you are embroiled in something like this is, you can’t set people straight. You can’t share the facts as you know them. You are not allowed to defend yourself.

And sadly, in this country unless you have real money, you can’t afford to defend yourself.  The best lawyers cost a lot. We were lucky with one of the best there is, and with him came his extraordinary team.  But jails all over the US are overflowing because many can’t afford bail or a proper lawyer who really works for them.

I’m not going to walk you through the trial. The bizarre twists and turns. The endless things that made no sense. There is a lot written online about it. And there is much more to come.

Though on my list of things and people I want nothing to do with ever again, many newspapers are on that list.

We hear that what we are reading is not the truth.  In these weird times we know much of what we consume is not the real thing.

But try sitting in a courtroom and hearing exactly what is being said and then pick up a paper and read something entirely different.

I am almost one hundred percent off news of any sort.

I am also down to my Golden Circle and have very little interest in the people who ignored me, publicly humiliated me, and left us out to rot for these twenty months. And if you add in the schadenfreude, OMG, the people so happy to see us fall – it was quite the group.

Believe me I have fantasized about outing certain people. But decided to take the high road. I now know who my real friends are, and I know the rest were transactional. And I probably knew that all along.  Not sure,   I am sure now.

If you see me walking down the street – and I don’t say hi – walk on by.

I have learned a lot.  I have learned the less said the better in most situations. Which as a writer is a bit of a conundrum. But I will figure it out as I go along.

On February 14, 2024, the jury selection began. As the potential jurors trundled in, it was decided to go with a bench trial. This means you use the judge as the adjudicator as opposed to a jury.

I’m not saying the average juror is uninformed and stupid. But this trial was so complicated,.  So old, going back forty-five years. It was supposedly a trial about theft (originally) but the supposed thief was not there.  There were so many labyrinths it was a veritable Dungeons and Dragons.

The trial officially started on February 21^st and it was dismissed six business days later – before the Prosecutors had gotten halfway through their witnesses.

Judge Curtis Farber brought the whole thing to a close. Or let’s say he “allowed” the DA to bring it to a close.  In the United States  .05% of trials end this way. Total dismissal mid-trial.

How are we? We are step by step returning to our lives.

It does not happen overnight. You do not recover from 14,520 hours of hell in a few days.

For the first week after it was over, I kept waking up and saying to Glenn,” it feels like it’s not over.  It feels like it’s still going on.” I’ve been told I have PTSD.

The girls are doing well. In the middle of this Taylor eloped. Lucy is now engaged.

Glenn’s business is slowly returning to normal. And this is my first stab at really writing. OK, I published one thing in Air Mail.

As I write this we are on our way to Costa Rica.  This is Glenn’s first vacation in four years.

In fact, once he got back to NYC, he has never left an 89 mile radius. His passport was not taken. He could have traveled. He chose not to.

I did take a break last February with one of the top tier Golden Circle members Alex de Jong.  I came down to Costa Rica for a four-day Barre Retreat.

I fell so in love with the hotel and the country,  I promised Glenn as soon as all this shit was over, I would bring him down here as a reward.

So, that is what we are doing.  Literally our first time away together since 2019. We land in an hour and forty minutes.

I think we’ve earned it!

We are coming in for a landing now. It was a very bumpy ride.  We are getting good at dealing with  that…….

The post THE ELEPHANT ON THE PAGE appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

I have given you so little content the last nineteen months. But as I keep promising, I will make up for it once I can. I will spill so much tea, you guys will be drowning in the stuff.

However, in the meantime another Christmas is upon us. And this one brings more need. More cold people. More houseless people. More hungry children.  More desperation of every sort.

New York Cares has already had one hundred and fifty thousand requests for coats.  That is all time record.

Thanks to many of you, I have for many years now been the number two coat collector in the entire city. Last year I collected a record amount even for me. And again came in number two after Evercore.

Five hundred and twenty eight coats and 5280 hot meals is what we all were able to donate to New York Cares.

I would like to out do that this year. But I  know it may not be possible. Though never say impossible is what I have learned.

The rules remain the same.  Twenty five dollars buys one new coat and ten hot meals.

The last two years I only did new coats and  kid’s coats. This year I am opening it back up to adult coats and I am accepting lightly used coats.

Since the worst of COVID is behind us and we know you cannot get it from a coat, New York Cares is accepting used coats again too.

Personally if you can swing it, I prefer the money as it buys the meals and being warm is beyond important, but being fed is a matter of life and death.

I know there are a lot of outstretched hands coming at you this time of year.  I know that inflation has and continues to take a big bite out of discretionary and all other funds.

But, this is so worthwhile and $25.00 makes a huge difference in someones life.  Maybe even life and death.

So please donate what you can, if you can.  And I will do what I always do, whenever anyone asks me for one of their causes I am there.

I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Black Friday! And Consider this officially  Coat Drive Monday

This is where I am now.. Can I get to 20K???????  🤞

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

The post IT’S THE MOST COAT DRIVE TIME OF THE YEAR appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

The first one is, it came with all the channels. I mean you took it out of the box, you plugged it into the wall. You fiddled around with the rabbit ears and boom you had every channel available.

That would have been three.  NBC, CBS, and ABC, plus around seven local stations.

That may sound like entertainment deprivation compared to the plethora of content out there today.  But honestly it felt like a perfect amount. There was always something to watch. Well, no- after one in the morning there was just static.

The other advantage was the remote.  Yes, remote controls have been around as long as TV has.  But they were easy to use.  You did not need a PhD in electronics or engineering or your child or grandchild to be in the house to get the TV on or change channels.

My grandmother and I used to watch a lot of TV together.  And grandma and I both knew how to work the remote.  She did not need me to walk her through twenty complicated steps just to see Laurence Welk.

When I went to sleep, she would go into her room, where she had another TV and use her own remote and do just fine.  She was a bit of an insomniac and sometimes I would wake up very early and find her sound asleep with the static still on in the background.

I know this was decades ago and we have come a long way with tech developments and cable. But like with many things it was easier.  And the idea of turning on the TV did not make you a nervous wreck.

I am not a stupid person, nor is my husband, but I cannot tell you how many nights we are sitting there, three remotes in hand, having pushed the wrong button on one and ended up in the bowels of TV land where we can’t get back to a picture.  We find ourselves staring at static or a choice of channels we have no access to.

The fact every TV is now different makes it even more difficult. We are renting a house this summer where the TV is not broken down to HDM1 HDM2 to get back and forth from cable to streaming.

No, this TV has HDR and somehow you have to find yourself at a spot (I swear to God) called Unknown. And Unknown is network on this TV.   Which is perhaps more descriptive of the situation than anything else. But it does not help if you planned on watching four episodes of Season Three of Ted Lasoo that night.

Our first lifeline when this occurs is to one of our daughters. But if they are not around or available, we indulge in a half hour or so of extreme frustration that can end up in calling each other names until we eventually we give up and go to bed.

I have a harder time giving up than he does. I worked in TV and film for most of my life, I should be able to turn the damn thing on.  But nine times out of ten I can’t.

Why three remotes? Why can’t they all be the same? Why does the Apple remote run out of power so fast? Have you ever tried to use one while you are charging it?

I have a lot of questions. And there seems to be no answer to most of them.

Except kids can walk into a strange house, pick up a foreign remote and it instantly works for them.  They speak TV 2023.

People our age don’t. It’s not intuitive. We grew up with on, off, up down. Any age can work with that. My grandmother didn’t have to move from Source to HDML2 to Apple TV, to Netflix.

Like with many things one often thinks it’s just you. You’re the only deficient person when it comes to getting the TV on and off.

You picture your friends and neighbors cuddled on their sectionals, happily watching Yellowstone while nibbling on low fat, pink Himalayan salted popcorn while you are hurling one of your three uncooperative remotes across the room screaming, “I hate you mother fucker.”

Last week I was talking to Chip, a lovely man who works at the Shade Store. It was the night after I had a total meltdown over not being able to access MAX formerly known as HBO and historically part of the cable package, we clearly pay too much for.

All I wanted to do was watch the Sarah Silverman Special. Despite the fact my oldest child Taylor spent close to an hour and a half guiding me through the labyrinth of HULU plus, and Amazon Prime, and several other apps, she eventually gave up, and ended up watching it on my computer.

Between picking shade fabrics and blackout options, I was telling this story to Chip, who confessed to having the same problem and said he spent more nights watching TV on his computer than his giant screen TV because he too got locked out by the tempestuous remotes and endless channels that lead to nothing.

Last night a friend admitted she stands in front of the TV trying to work the remotes for twenty minutes, before she yells FUCK YOU to the TV and goes to bed- TV less.

And my favorite is my friend Michele, who when asked if she too had issues with her TV and all the remotes said she never turns her living room TV off. She leaves it on all the time.  And she just turns the sound down if she doesn’t want the noise. She fears once she turns it off she will never get it back on.

While this is all annoying and confusing and I think a waste of time as there must be a less complicated way of getting the TV to work for people born after 1990, it’s doubly distressing as we all know, TVs no longer come out of the box with the channels included.

No, we pay. And  we pay more for less each month.

I will say when I relied on my Cable package combined with Apple TV, once I got the hang of the remotes, it I was in OK shape.

But suddenly the $222.00 a month we pay for Verizon no longer supports any of the premium channels.  Not to mention our cable was also $170 a month, until the last two months. They took away HBO and decided to charge more money?

It feels like overnight everything has turned into some streaming plus that really feels like a minus as they all cost way too much for what you are getting.

For instance, Taylor thought if I upgraded to Hulu Plus I could get Max Plus. Well not so fast, only for four weeks, then it will cost $16.99 a month, plus I am stuck with Hulu Plus, which I have no interest in.

Who makes these executive decisions? Overpaid executives who haven’t a clue what people really want.

They all need to be fired. But they are getting raises while the writers are on strike just to make a livable salary. STRIKE ON!

Until recently it didn’t matter much as with many premium channels you could bundle it into your cable package and then stream it through your Apple TV or whatever device you use. But now, nothing comes with cable, and everything is an add on.

I have been so frustrated by all of this, the coup de gras being my Sarah Silverman meltdown episode, I have been adding up what we spend and researching what we might need to add on to get what we actually want.

Like I said, we have cable. Verizon FiOS. Someone is going to say why do you bother with cable? It’s so 1995. Well, first off, we like local news. We like some of the networks.  My husband needs sports. Plus, we get our internet through them. And hold on to your hats, we have a landline. Do not tell me we don’t need a landline; we love a landline.  You ever drop a call on a landline? Exactly.

So, until tomorrow when I get them to adjust my bill, we are paying between $179- $222 dollars a month for this service, that used to give us access to all premium channels except Netflix and Amazon Prime.

I think when I started getting Netflix I was paying $7.99  a month.  I have not changed from minus to plus but the tab is now $15.99. The Hulu Plus is $14.99 a month. And then the tacked on MAX coming in at $16.99.  We get Apple Plus which adds on another $7.99 a month.  I think everyone in the family is paying for their own Amazon Prime, which used to be a great place to buy shows you could not find on other services but now not so much. However, I just logged on to find I am paying $129.00 a year for that.

I have no desire for Disney Plus, but once one of the girls has a baby, I will get it and God knows what it will cost by then. Now it’s $20.00 a month for the top tier.  Peacock, excuse me for the last 60 years Peacock was called NBC.  It was channel four across the country.  It came in the box with the TV. Now, it’s a Streaming Service Plus.  I call that a major minus.

This is a lot of money and a lot of bullshit considering if you are over 50, chances are you end up unable to access any of this much of the time.

 It’s not fair because the average American is trying to make ends meet and to charge them these amounts for things that were once either free or came bundled with your cable package is just robbery.

And it’s not working. The creators and writers outside of a handful make no money, thus the strike. On top of which, nobody watches 9/10 of what is on all these channels.  People watch Succession, Yellowstone, Ted Lasso. Curb Your Enthusiasm.

HBO, sorry MAX, and Netflix still have the best programming.

Like with Network TV most people tend to watch the same shows. The popular ones. But in the olden days if they show wasn’t working it was yanked. Now they live in the Starz Plus.

Look at this list.  Outside of Fargo and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, do you watch any of these shows?  You notice not one was produced after 2020.

Top 10 Hulu Shows

• Difficult People (2015)
• Fargo (2014)
• Harlots (2017)
• It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (2005)
• Justified (2010)
• Mrs. America (2020)
• Ramy (2019)
• What We Do In Shadows (2019)

A big part of me longs for a TV that comes out of the box, all the channels right there. If I must pay a little more for a few of them, I’m OK with that.

I want to be able to turn it on whenever I want to watch.  I do not wish to be tossed into TV purgatory because I happened to not be wearing my glasses, picked up the wrong remote and pushed the wrong button.

I also feel like an additional $100.00 a month, which is what you pay if you subscribe to the eight main streamers is unacceptable.

We don’t want to lose technology, but we also don’t want to be abused by it.

Though I fear turning back is not remotely possible

The post Remotely Possible? appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

I am not alone.  I did a survey on my scantily used Instagram page and asked people, “Has meeting for a coffee replaced meeting for lunch much of the time?” One hundred percent responded yes.

A new era, not only the end of the Power Lunch, but the end of  most lunches has descended upon us.

Boomers didn’t create the Power Lunch, but we certainly perfected it.

At the age of eighteen I moved to Los Angeles to be an actress. Within a brief period I ended up dating the owner of one of the most iconic Power Lunch places of all time – Ma Maison.

I learned young the power of the Power Lunch.   I also learned the rules, and boy were there rules.

First off, have one spot you go to all the time.  Be a regular. I learned this from Patrick Terrail,  the owner of Ma Maison.   He told me to find a spot, go all the time, be a regular and you will always have a table when you want one.

Power Lunchers tended to go to the same restaurant every day. Dinners, dinners were more let’s try that new place in the Village. But if you ever walked into any Power Lunch spot, you were sure to see the same faces day in day out.

In the Ma Maison years, your lack of power status was emblazoned on your forehead if you could not get a table there.  The only exceptions being young, pretty girls. Young pretty girls get a ton of entrance exceptions. At least they did before everyone got so WOKE. And it makes getting older that much harder; wait I don’t get a good table anymore just for being under thirty and cute.

In New York at that time, and up until Michael’s took off, The Russian Tea Room was the spot to be seen. Rewatch Tootsie, if you doubt me.

 These places were media “hot spots” as they were once referred to. And hot they were. On any day, you could walk into any of these restaurants and see not only the same faces, but all of them powerhouses in their industries. And if you were lucky enough to sit with one of them, well that made you powerful by lunch association.

Different groups had different places.  The big money guys and Real Masters of the Universe  used to go to The Four Seasons in New York. There was a time when what was once a socialite ( they like everyone else seem to have been replaced by influencers) used to go to La Grenouille.  The Europeans all went to La Goulue and Sant Ambroeus.

 For years, and when it was open, publishing people went to Union Square Café. For fifteen years, if you walked into Union Square Café at lunchtime, you would find my husband, in his corner table. After he moved offices he could be found at table number two at Michael’s.

This was another rule of the sadly departed Power Lunch, you HAD to have your own table. And if you didn’t get it hissy fits ensued. Nothing like a master of the universe stomping his foot and getting red in the face because someone deemed more important is sitting in his chair, at his table.

Having your own table was not arbitrary.  Your own table was essential for both your ranking on the power meter and other power players ability to find you.  If you didn’t have the same table, people “who just happened to run into you” would not know where to wander on their way to the bathroom.

Power lunches could make your career. And you had them almost every day. I’m not sure how we all got so much work done, stopping at 11:30 or 12:00 getting to power spot; eating the lunch, trying to get others to notice you so you could maybe close the deal. Getting back to the office, this was a chunk of your day. But the payoff at that time was so big you did it.

Pre cell phones, I think we all had a lot more time for fun activities that also helped us on our journeys.

I loved lunches. LOVED. LOVED. LOVED.  After my Ma Maison days and Ma Maison ended, I had a brief time of being a Eurotrash groupie (can we still say that?  I doubt it, but I am too old to care) at that time I went to La Goulue many times a week. If I was trying to climb up the actress pole, I needed to be seen at The Russian Tea Room.

When I moved back to LA in the nineties and was legitimately employed and considered a good lunch date myself, there were several spots to go to. LA being so spread out, driving  far took too much time by then. Proximity often equaled power spot.

So, I was thrilled when I was given an office on the 20th Century Fox lot and had access to the commissary. In its day nothing was more powerful than saying, “meet me at the commissary.”

This obsessive lunching was not all about ego, you really did feel that if you were seen out, people would be reminded of your existence. You would walk by a table, say, “hi, we have to get together” and maybe that person had a job you were right for.  Or the brief encounter gave you an excuse to pick up the phone and call them later that day. Yes, we did that, we picked up our phones, that sat on our desks, and we phoned people.

It was all so direct and personal, and it led to jobs, other opportunities and socialization. And we all had the fine art of social skills, conversation, listening to the person we were with as we did not have one eye on our phone. OK, one eye might have been cruising the room to see if there was someone more powerful  we needed to make contact with. But for the most part it was all social and career enhancing.

If the Power Lunch was not an essential element to your career they would not have created a whole wardrobe around it. Remember the power suit? Shoulder pads and swagger. If not, rewatch Working Girl.

Yes, Millennials, we actually dressed up every day.  We looked good. We did not wear jeans and sweats and sneakers between nine and five. But unlike you we had to go prance our power over lunch.

There are many reasons for this seismic shift, most people  are still not in their offices. And if they go into the office, many are going in three days a week. If you are only in your office three days a week taking a two-hour lunch break is not time well spent; especially if most of the other power players are not around.

I think for the Millennials cost is a huge factor.  Inflation has made lunches the cost of pricey dinners. And if no one else is doing it, then there is no reason to spend all that money to accomplish something you can get done over ZOOM.

And , like most everything else it’s tech that really changed the way we do lunch.

Lorraine Fox, who was a big player in tech and finance told me that Andy Grove, the renowned CEO of Intel, used to say, “Eat lunch or be lunch.”

I am going to LA next week, the biggest meeting I have on a project I am working on is being done over a coffee.

I have a lunch scheduled at The Polo Lounge, which used to be a Power Lunch place.  But is is now mostly women my age, with little to do, wanting somewhere to show off their largely unused wardrobes.

I am meeting my friend Sheldon as we both like to get dressed up and go there.  It reminds us of when we first met and worked together and used to have power lunches several times a week at place called the Columbia Bar and Grill.

The Columbia Bar and Grill is not a widely known power spot. I think it’s closed. But back in the Power Lunch days, it had a power patina as it was geographically  desirable for people who worked at Paramount or had offices at Sunset Gower Studio, where Sheldon and I  had overall deals with Sony.

Our offices were two doors down from each other.  If it were today, we might just Postmate in a sandwich or go pick up a smoothie across the street, or if I had my present-day way, grab an ice coffee and a muffin.

 I miss the Power Lunch. I miss cities bustling with people running in and out of places at lunch time. I miss having my own table and saying put it on my account. I guess those things made me feel special and like I had made it, which I had.  I got good tables when my youth had faded but I had accomplished enough to earn my spot.  I had a thirty year run of power lunches and success. Not bad.

 I guess I am glad the power lunch fizzled out around the time my own working prowess did too. I don’t feel so left out. I’m twenty pounds lighter! And I do still get in the odd lunch every now and then.

But mostly I just meet up for a coffee like everyone else.

The post Is Coffee the New  Lunch? appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

Loneliness is one of the biggest complaints from people of all ages. Loneliness and isolation which by most expert’s accounts really took off with social media. I’ve said it before, liking someone’s post or story on Instagram or Facebook is not a relationship or a friendship.

I actually scolded a friend the other day and said, look DMing me on Instagram is not friendship. I text or try and call you and you send me goofy videos. He picked up the phone and called me after that.

As Barbra S.  says, “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

One could update that to people who are addicted to Facebook are the loneliest people in the world.

It’s been surveyed and written about ad-nauseum, but it’s true.

People started disconnecting from other people with the advent of social media and COVID only increased the situation.  Then you add on top of it most offices have not fully returned, so people, especially young people, who should be out meeting new people, are working from their homes.

Thanks to that we have an epidemic of loneliness and isolation in this country which makes everyone stressed.

People are stressed because of the world in general. You can’t have thirty-six mass shootings in the first twenty -six days of the year and not be stressed. You can’t worry about going out and getting sick and not be stressed. You can’t be worried about money and not be stressed. I guess you can also worry about what feels like everyone who ever lived in the White House taking home classified documents, but I draw the line at that one. I have other things to be stressed about.

But when you’re stressed and you’re lonely it’s a deadly combo. And more people than ever are feeling that way.

Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. After starting with 724 participants—boys from disadvantaged and troubled families in Boston, and Harvard undergraduates—the study incorporated the spouses of the original men and, more recently, more than 1,300 descendants of the initial group. Researchers periodically interview participants, ask them to fill out questionnaires, and collect information about their physical health. As the study’s director (Bob) and associate director (Marc), we’ve been able to watch participants fall in and out of relationships, find success and failure at their jobs, become mothers and fathers. It’s the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done, and it’s brought us to a simple and profound conclusion: Good relationships lead to health and happiness. The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured.

 I am a bit cryptic these days. My adorable cousin Jennifer just told me as much. But, she didn’t have to, I am fully aware. But for the time being I have no choice.

I have also become aware of who my real friends are. I have learned I don’t have tons. But the ones I have are  truly my friends.  And they know who they are. And so do I. And I really know the ones who have disappeared.

The first thing to do if you are stressed and feeling somewhat isolated is reach out to a friend. Don’t wait for people to reach out to you. I have learned this the hard way.  And if they don’t meet you halfway or respond to your overture then you have learned they are not really your friend.

And most importantly – CALL. Don’t text. Don’t DM them on Instagram – pick up the phone and call.

When did we get to the place where we had to ask people if it was OK to call?  Have you noticed this? Do you do this? Text someone – “is it OK if I call you sometime before the next lunar eclipse?”

A phone call is not a dinner party. You don’t need to plan it in advance. If someone’s phone rings and they can’t answer it or are busy, they won’t answer.  And you can do what we’ve done since the answering machine was invented, you leave a message.

I feel like most of the people who read this are old enough to remember the answering service. When the worst words in the English language were, “no calls.”  HE DIDN’T CALL. Now that was stressful.

But reach out and call someone and make a date, even if just for coffee.

Nothing beats talking with a friend face to face.  Of course, we all need me time, God knows when that phrase came into being. Me time.  But we time is a good thing too. A very good thing. In fact, an essential thing.

Last night we had dinner with our good friends Linda and Randy.  And we all just sat and talked. And we didn’t talk gibberish. Gibberish is real estate prices, good hotels, or worse – wine.

We talked about hard things, some sad things, personal things, and we were all very open and honest.  We walked out of their house feeling better about the world and less lonely and that is what friends are for and why we need face to face time and not Facebook.

So, pick up your phone and don’t go and doom scroll and see who is pretending to have a better life than you,  use that phone to call someone and  connect.

The other thing I’ve been doing a lot of is reading. Not reading on my phone. Not reading people’s postings on my phone. Reading books. I made a vow at the beginning of the year to read a book a week. I am one book behind.  But every night we all read before bed.

The written word has always been one of man’s best friends and I fear we are losing that along with so much else.

How many people do you know who say,  “I just don’t read anymore. I can’t concentrate.” Maybe you say it.

I got to that place. The place from reading book after book to maybe one every six weeks or sometimes longer. I was spending so much time on the computer  and phone I  dropped books. I couldn’t concentrate for more than a few minutes.

I must tell you coming back to books has been one of the highlights of the last six months.

And you can concentrate. Maybe not right off the bat. Concentration is like a muscle.  You need to use it to strengthen it. But once you get back in the habit of reading, it is like the proverbial bike, you just pick it right back up.

And while I used to laugh at them, I am kind of longing for a book club. It’s a way of meeting people and seeing friends and being held accountable to reading.

My daughter discovered a great APP. I know this kind of goes against the grain of what I am preaching, read a book, use an APP. But the APP makes you accountable for pages and keeps track of your progress. So, if you are self-competitive, you will read 20 pages if you say you will.

It’s called The StoryGraph and I like it much better than Goodreads. Check it out. And friend me on there. We can compare books.

If you’re not reading or meeting with a friend, listening to uplifting Podcasts is a better way to spend the time than more bad news. I was addicted to The Daily, which is a very good podcast. But it regurgitates the same unhappy making news I already know too well.

My favorite uplifting Podcasts are Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris.  Between the Lines with Barry Kibrick. And then for a guilty pleasure Vogue has a new podcast out, which is just dishy and fun.

I know how many Ukrainians are dying and being displaced. Not listening to it all the time does not mean I still won’t do what I can to alleviate their suffering.  But I don’t have to make my information breakfast, lunch and dinner out of all the world’s problems.

I also follow two newsletters that are very inspiring. One is called Be More with Less.
And the other is Colin Bevan. Neither one litters your inbox. One email a week. Colin sometimes less.  But I always walk away with something I can use to make my days better.

This is something from Colin Bevan I wrote down in my daily TO DO journal this week.

• For a few moments, actively imagine your best possible future life. Think of all the areas of life from career to family to health to hobbies, etc. Think of the best outcomes in these areas in your best possible future.
• Now write about this for 15 minutes, being as specific as possible. Where would you be? Who would you be with? What tasks would you be performing, etc?
• Don’t give into temptations to consider past failures in these areas. Just envision a bright future where circumstances change just enough to allow it to happen.
• Repeat the exercise every few days for a while.
• Extra credit: If you hope to have a meaningful impact on our world, include in your vision for the sort of impact you will have.

And from Be More with Less this week, she gave a fantastic link to something to do to get yourself out of yourself and to help others.  It’s called Letters Against Isolation.  It’s easy and takes no time and it makes you feel so much better about your world, and you help those who are truly isolated.

Check it out. I was feeling a bit down the other day, I spent two hours writing to senior citizens, whom I don’t know, but who will get the  cards I wrote delivered with their meals.  And they will hopefully feel a little less alone. And in doing that you will feel a little less alone and hopefully more grateful. I plan on sending ten a week.

I think the ideal thing would be – call a friend, meet up for a coffee and some decadent sweet treat.  Discuss what is bugging you and what you are reading. Then go buy or make some pretty cards and sit down together and write some notes to isolated seniors.

FYI – seniors are considered anyone over sixty, so I am in that group!!! Write to me. No, call me. No. Not if you’re on my shit list. But it you’re not, you will know it as I will answer the phone when I see your name!

The post De-Stress with Less appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

 The world economic leaders are sloshing around Davos trying to figure out what to do with a world which is now in what they refer to as a “permacrisis.”.

 Greta Thunberg is being detained by police in Germany for her ongoing efforts to stop the world from melting and being destroyed, this time fighting the demolition of German villages to make way for more coal mining.

The American right is obsessed with Biden and his home stash of classified documents. The left is trying to figure out if newbie GOP Congressman George Santos is actually a Russian spy.

Meanwhile, it seems like every American is primarily concerned with why the price of eggs is suddenly as high as ten dollars a dozen in some places. And deeply upset that a trip to the market renders few items at what feels like and often is, twice the price.

Does that little group of food look like it should cost $135.00? I don’t think so.

Anyone who has followed me for any length of time knows that my relationship to consumption is not a stingy one.  I once made a futile attempt at something called Tracey Stops Shopping. Had I known then a mere pandemic would put an end to my love affair with clothes and bags I might have just waited and enjoyed those the last few years when retail therapy actually was a blast of therapy.

The last six months, starting with gas costing up to eight dollars a gallon in California and food creeping up to what now feels like the stratosphere I have become obsessed with the price of things.

Every trip to the market leaves me baffled, bewildered and pissed off.

How on earth did everything end up costing so much?  When blueberries hit $9.99 a container, I lost it.

My husband loves blueberries. He eats them every day.  I always have a fridge with a big bowl of blueberries for him and raspberries for me. For our entire life together, now going on 24 years, we have never not had them in the house.  They used to cost as little as $2.99, the organic ones a bit more.  They eventually capped off at $4.99 -$5.99 a container and that is where they stayed – until this year.

I was really upset when they hit $7.99 but when they got to $9.00 and up, I cut out the blueberries. It offended me to the core. Can we afford them? Blessedly, yes. But will I pay it? Absolutely not. I stopped my raspberries when they hit  $7.00. But, I don’t like fruit much anyway, so it was not a big deal for me. I temporarily replaced the blueberries with black ones, as they don’t seem to be as inflated. I wonder if they know we want blueberries as they are a super food and they are messing with us. I found some this week for $3.99, they were inedible.

There comes a point when you say I can’t pay this for this.  Perhaps if we all stop spending these crazy prices inflation will go down. You don’t have to be sitting in Davos to know that is what they want.

But while people can live without a new car, or another pair of jeans, we do need to eat.  And we all go to the market.  And while I thought perhaps it was only me, as I tend to go to the market alone or with my girls, I hadn’t really discussed the price of eggs with many people. Until this week.

This week, when I was checking out at the local grocery store in Sag Harbor, my two little bags of food were over a $125.00. And when I tell you I had next to nothing for a family of three, I had next to nothing for a family of three.

I packed my twelve items in my cloth bags myself, as we know they charge for bags now, and aligning with Greta we want to do what is good for the planet. And of course, there is no one to help anyone do anything anywhere anymore, so we all bag our own groceries, which is fine. I don’t mind. It means I know where the crackers are when I want to grab a few on the way home.

But as I stuck my debit card in the slot, I moaned “so expensive”  –  I then asked the checkout girl if people were complaining or was it only me. She told me everyone was pretty stressed out by the price of food

I then looked at her, she could not have been more than 25.  She must be making next to nothing.  And I felt horribly guilty.

I am complaining to her. She must look at me, a resident of a pricey part of the world, I am on my way to my gas guzzling Lexus, with my shopping bags with the names of high-end stores on them and I am complaining to her.

Then I spent the entire care ride home feeling guilty for whining to someone who probably can’t afford to buy many groceries at all these days.  She is not choosing not to buy something, she does not have the funds to buy them.

I started worrying about her and all the people who have kids, one salary, old people on fixed income, migrants at the border who barely have food. The Ukrainians, the poor Ukrainians, they likely have no food I just spiraled into this whole if I am this upset and I am financially stable, what on earth must most of America and the world really be feeling and be going through. I can really spiral quickly to a place where I absorb other’s pain and suffering and feel an instant need to help.  So, I decided I would go volunteer at a food kitchen.

But, in the meantime, I posted an Instagram story and asked people what were the items at the market they were the most upset about with the runaway inflation.

I asked people of all socio-economic levels. From the wonderful Ella who works at my hairdresser. She has a son Rocky I always want to know about.  Ella is upset as ten organic apples in the Bronx cost $25.00.  Again, you don’t have to be a financial genius that is 2.50 an apple.

One of the Doormen in my building, eggs, meat paper product

Then the group that follows me on Instagram.  Eggs seems to be the thing that has pushed most people over the edge. Eggs historically the least expensive form of protein. The necessary ingredient in so many things we eat.  Eggs- is it not our human right to have eggs?   Guess not.

Eggs were followed by toilet paper and then paper towels and all paper products. Cereal was a big one too. And my friend Lis said butter. Lis is one of my fabulous Barre teachers, and she has the body of life. I wrote back to her, butter not the answer I expected from her.  Maybe kale would. But then I remembered she is an passionate baker and of course butter is a huge issue.

The point is people are not upset because they can’t afford a vacation or to upgrade their laptop.  They want to be able to go to the store and buy the basic human needs we are all used to in this country and not feel like they will have to dip into their 401K’s.  And they are the lucky ones, others have to choose between, things like heat, or gas for the car or food on the table.

If usually try and end pieces that are not cheery, with some remedy I have come up with, or something we do in our household that I can pass onto others.

But in this case I do not have a clue.  I guess we give up things for now and hope the perma in permacrisis is not as bad as they predict.

In the meantime, I bet coupons make a comeback. Or maybe they never went away and that is how clueless I am about how most of the world lives.

The post Inflation Nation appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

As Dave Barry says in his always, true, and hysterical year end roundup –

“The best thing we can say about 2022 is: It could have been worse. For example, we could have had nuclear Armageddon.”

I’m with Dave on that one.

This has been without question the most challenging and flat-out worst year of my life.

Not that I have not had bad things happen to me in my almost 65 years on this melting planet. I have had real obstacles to overcome, crosses to bear and every other climb every mountain cliché thrown in my path since I was a toddler.  But 2022 will go down as the fuckiest fucker of a year.

And if you want to unsubscribe because I swear, be my guest, be my guest, be my guest.

While again, I cannot list all the things I am dealing with, suffice to say it’s a lot.

One of the worst things, and in the long haul it will likely turn out it was the worst, our beloved, adorable, big eyed, all heart, so cute she was on The Dogist, six-year-old, dapple, piebald, mini dachshund Winnie, went blind in October.

Suddenly, in the course of four weeks she could not see a thing. Or we think it was four weeks. We started noticing something was off six weeks before we took her to the vet to find out what was wrong.  She had come down with a rare disease called SARDS, Sudden Acquired Retinal Disintegration Syndrome.

Only four thousand dogs a year get it. The majority of them are dachshunds. There is nothing one can do. There is one Doctor in Wisconsin who deals with it. I don’t think he has made much progress.  I wrote to him and never heard back.

There are problems in life we overcome, some that just evaporate over time, and some leave an indelible mark on our psyches and souls.

 I don’t know that I will ever be the same person again. I will likely be stronger in some ways and more skittish and less trusting in others. I know I will not be as open to many people as so many have proven to be really shitty friends. But that is for another day.

Winnie will never see again.  We don’t know what she actually thinks or doesn’t think about this. We so often project onto dogs our own templates of thought.

We ask ourselves, “do you think she remembers what grass looks like?” Does she remember our faces and not just our smells?  Can she see her beds, toys and dog bowl tucked back in the recesses of her memories?

When she sleeps does her vision come back and she sees herself running across the backyard in LA on her way to climb up the rocks to chase a squirrel?  Is there a visual movie of her former sighted life on a loop lurking behind her dislocated retinal?

On the days when my own problems overwhelm me much of the trauma comes when I focus on the future in comparison to the past.  I play out scenes in my mind as I try and go to sleep, so I assume Winnie is doing the same thing.

Since Winnie is a dog she is not a critical thinker.  Her memories of the past as far as we know are all sense memories. She sees one thing and that means something else is going to happen. People do that too, but it doesn’t play out in the same way.  We can utilize logic and concepts dogs don’t have access to.

 For instance, when the suitcases came out, she knew we were leaving her, and she would get anxious and climb inside of them. She obviously couldn’t tell you it was for a week or a month or maybe we were not going anywhere, maybe we were looking for a lost t-shirt.  She saw a suitcase and she thought abandon. I get that.

When she saw the vacuum, she barked and barked and chased it around. She had a horrible relationship to vacuums. Which was adopted by the other two dogs. Vacuuming was bedlam, a cacophony of barks, squeals and the roar of the machine.

We always assumed it was the noise that bothered her.  But it turns out it was the look of the vacuum that made her crazy. Now when she hears it, she does nothing. And the interesting thing is, the other two no longer care about the vacuum at all.  Her anxiety was bleeding onto them, and they followed her lead.

Winnie was a very anxious dog. She was easily triggered. I am an anxious human, also easily triggered. Perhaps why I am aligning our thoughts and responses at times. Now that she cannot see, she is not anxious. Which is actually good. She is more relaxed. And of course, I carry enough anxiety for four.

The difference between Winnie and myself is Winnie is going with the flow. She is living in the moment as animals do.  She is not thinking, damn now I will never get to see the Grand Canyon or reread Chekov. OK, she is bright, but she’s never read Chekov and she hates to travel.

Despite her inability to read and lack of curiosity about The Wonders of the World, Winnie is teaching me things every day.

Where I have been focused on the future Winnie is living in the moment and she has not lost her verve, her chutzpah or her wiggle and waggle.

In the beginning we said she lost her sparkle.  This was actually the first thing we noticed, because Winnie was all sparkle. And suddenly she was more reticent and quieter. We chalked it up to age. What we didn’t know, and we are kicking ourselves for, she was losing her sight and was deeply confused.

But at a certain point, she clearly figured out she just had to get on with being Winnie and she was not going to do that by sitting in the corner.

Now corners have turned out to be a big thing since Winnie went blind.

Several times a day she will find herself literally in a corner.  It’s usually when a door is left partially open, and she ends up in that tringle formed by the open door and the wall.

The old Winnie might have flipped out over that, the new Winnie the Winnie who has figured out how to survive in the face of adversity stands there quietly and either waits for one of us to sweep in and pick her up or she carefully moves in semi-circles trying not to bump into the  doors or walls too hard, but enough to find herself turned around and able to get out.

I often feel like I am trapped in a corner these days.  Yet unlike Winnie I just get mad and metaphorically ram into the wall. Watching Winnie navigate her corners is helping me navigate mine.

Blind dogs do bump into the things. It’s unavoidable and hard to witness. You can put something called a Halo on them, that lets them know when they are about to bump into something.  But we are trying to avoid it and treat her as normally as possible. We want her to learn how to deal and not have to many aids.  Thank God she has a long nose.  Her snout is so far in front of her head, it usually gets to whatever is in her way first.

But the amazing and inspiring thing is when she does bump into the fridge, the wall, a chair, she just turns around or moves a bit to the left or right, and once she finds a clear path, her tail shoots up and she trots off in the direction of a safe space. She is not frustrated. She is not mad. She does not snarl. She is not self-pitying. All the things I have been for some time now. She is just peppy and on her Winnie way.

This is a lesson for us all in 2023, when you bump into the hard stuff that is standing in your way, just keep on trying until there is a clear path. Don’t freak. Don’t get mad. And when you find it, trot off to the treat drawer to reward yourself.

She clearly remembers where the good things are. In all lives, scratch that, most lives, there are pockets of happy making things, even in the toughest of times.  For me it’s exercise class, nature, writing in my journal, hanging with my family. I know what has the potential to make give me some peace and put me in a better mental place. Though I don’t always take advantage of it. Often I opt to mope.

Not Winnie.  In all fairness, she takes more naps. She does not run as fast, unless she is on a leash, and then she lets it rip. But she spends more time seeking out the things she knows she likes.

Winnie’s happy places, the treat drawer for instance: she knows exactly where that is.   And she will sit by it and stare at it, despite the fact she can’t see it, until one of us opens it and gives her a tiny tasty to make her smile.

She loves her walks. I think that is when she feels the most like the old Winnie.  Thus, you can often find her either sitting and again, staring up at where the leashes hang, to let us know, I need a walk.  It’s time for some happy. And then one of us takes down the leash, hooks her up to it, she shrieks and wiggles with delight and we hightail it out the door.

 This is when I say to myself, “why can’t I be more like Winnie?”

Like all dogs mealtime is the highlight of her day. Of the three dogs, Winnie always had the most reliable inner clock. Breakfast was at 9:30. Dinner 4:30.

Winnie was like a Swiss clock. At 4:20 everyday she started squeaking and making those aggressive feed me noises.  We always wondered how she knew it was 4:20. Even after daylight savings changed one way or the other, she was still on schedule. And in the morning, she started nudging around 9:15. Not being able to see has changed that. But not like she has forgotten it or anything. Remember, Winnie is going for what makes her happy. So, now around 8:15 she starts asking for breakfast. And I tend to give it to her.  Dinner is less predictable, where we are living it starts getting dark early, before four sometimes. So, she is either an hour late or an hour early, but often early. And without any ability to see, she still knows where the dog bowls are.

She is blessed to have her cousin/aunt Wednesday as her seeing eye dog. Wednesday knows something is not right, and she stands by Winnie when they are outdoors. She waits until Winnie is ready to come in and often stands between Winnie and something that could hurt her. She doesn’t hover or make a fuss; she just seems to turn up when she needs her.  Winnie’s trust in Wednesday’s care and love is beyond heartwarming.

Which is a switch as Winnie, who is nine months older, was always the one who took care of Wednesday.

Wednesday will often hide out in rooms and chill alone. She’s one of those gals who needs her me time.

This would inevitably cause one of us to freak out and start yelling Wednesday ran away. Usually, it was Lucy who took that stance.

Winnie would always find her.  We’d be looking all over the house. Opening every closet and crawling under beds, it would escalate and soon we’d all be screaming Wednesday ran away.

While Winnie would be standing by a random closed-door pawing, barking and looking at us like – dopes, she’s in here. We grew to rely on Winnie to always find Wednesday for us.

That has not happened since she went blind. And interestingly, Wednesday has not gone off to hide.

We still let Winnie go out in the backyard at night. We always stand and watch. But that is a habit that was built into us in LA after Wednesday was almost eaten by a coyote by our pool.

While we worry, we don’t hover.  It’s hard to witness sometimes, but we let her bump into a chair and navigate her way around the BBQ.  She finds her way to the grass, and she pees like a normal dog. She sometimes goes off by herself, and again, she will bump into things, but she pops that tail up, gives it a wiggle and a wag, letting everyone know – “I’ve got this.”

She then turns around or hugs the walls or whatever solid surface she can find and makes her way to the door, trots inside, and saddles right up to the treat drawer for a reward.

Her unwillingness to give into her disability has changed us all. It has inspired us and continues to each day.

Winnie will not let this ruin her life.  It’s taking her a while to get used to it. But, hey, who wouldn’t?   She still can’t do the stairs. Nor will she ever. This was the big indicator that she couldn’t see. She started by falling down the stairs a few times and by the time she was totally blind, she refused to go up or down at all. She would stand at the top shrieking for one of us to carry her.

This morning was the first morning she took a tumble down the stairs since before she went totally blind. I’m not sure how it happened as we are vigilant in watching her on that one. But I walked by, and she just shot down the first group of stairs, but in a straight line, she didn’t tumble, she skied the stairs. And she landed on the landing on her feet. Head up. Tail wagging. Looking straight in the direction of her food bowl. It was breakfast time!

Like most people we have endless totally random nicknames for our dogs. Wally is Bottle. Don’t ask. You don’t have time for the long and winding road to that name.

Wednesday is Schmenny. I don’t even remember how that came to be.

Winne was Minnie Mouse in her Minnie House. But since she lost her sight, she has become Mitzi the Spritzy. Depending on our mood, that can be Mitzi, or mostly it’s Spritz.

This started because after she was diagnosed, we were binging White Lotus; if you have seen it, you know they consume endless Aperol Spritz.’

Aperol Spritz is also one of the two things I drink, that or tequila.

And somehow, we started calling her Mitzi the Spritzy.   This new nickname wasn’t an accident.  First off, she has a fondness for cocktails. We are not irresponsible parents. We don’t get our dogs drunk. But the first night we brought her home at the age of seven weeks, we opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate.

One of us put some on our finger and Winnie slurped it up. And ever since then you can stick your finger in a large variety of booze, and she will lick it off.

But Spritz, cutened to Spritzy really describes her.  Spritzes are bubbly. They have Prosecco in them which is elegant and fun and fizzy. The Aperol is a happy shade of orange, and they don’t make you drunk, they just make you chill. Less anxious. OK, too many and you may bump into a few walls. But, they are effervescence personified.

Despite her blindness she remains bubbly and effervescent.  And Winnie the Minnie Dachshund, aka Mitzi the Spritzy has an indomitable spirit. Blind or sighted – she is a bright spot, a bubbly, happy girl and now it turns out in the face of adversity, an inspiration for us all.

You fall down, you get up and you march to your happy spot.  You may bump into the wall on your way, but you back up or move a bit to the left or the right and you find your way to the center of the room, or the inside of the house and you get to your treat drawer as fast as you can.

When you get backed or fronted into a corner, you don’t panic, you don’t yell or bemoan your fate, you quietly figure out how to get yourself turned around. And if you can’t you just sit and wait until someone comes and gets you.

And always know that mealtime is just around the corner. And if it’s not, pretend it is and someone is bound to feed you.

These are all lessons we can carry into 2023.

I say we all have a spritz and make a toast the New Year and to Mitz!

Happy New Year. And may 2023 be a better one for us all.

The post THE WISDOM OF WINNIE appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

Five hundred and eight coats will be or have been distributed  to those in need. And if it’s as cold where you are as where I am – this is a stupendous thing.

Then to top it off five thousand and eighty hot meals will be given to those in need.

So, this is the best gift, the gift of taking care of those in need. The gift of giving.

Those of you who sent in money, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Happy Holidays and a Safe, Healthy New Year to all.

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I know I have been MIA for some time now.  And while that is intentional, it’s not permanent.

Unfortunately, I am unable to write about some of the things I would like to.  But that will change in time. You just have to bear with me here.

In light of my absence I felt and continue to feel uncomfortable asking for favors from anyone.  However, as most of you who follow me know, The New York Cares Coat Drive is my favorite project of the year.

Thanks to the support of many I have been able to come in number two in collected funds and coats for many years. It always gets down to the same two names, Evercore and me.

Evercore, of course, is a multi billion dollar company. I am only me. And a me who has been a bit of recluse of late. That being said, this year again, by only going through Instagram and people I am really close to, I am yet again number two behind Evercore.

I was planning to stop last week.  I cut my goal in half this year. In light of life in general and inflation I felt I did not want to punch above my present weight and fail.

Failing is not something I like to do.

So, I took my goal down to ten thousand dollars and I got there. Ahead of schedule.  But unfortunately, due to the environment, New York Cares is behind in their goal at the moment. Which means that too many will go without a coat or those ten hot meals  $25.00 buys.

In fact I just got an email from them saying please don’t stop. We need to reach our goal this year and we are not yet there.

This year especially with inflation being what it is –  Any of you been to a market lately. OMG – more people than ever are in dire need.

So, if you are so inclined, and understand that I have gone radio silent for reasons beyond my control and nothing to do with my attachment to writing and truth telling, I would be eternally grateful for anything you can give.

It’s cheeky, no doubt, to show up in your inbox after seven months of silence with my hat in my hand. But this is for those in need. It has nothing to do with me or anything personal. It’s all New York Cares. And I care deeply about New York Cares.

Because even in times of personal challenges I am still so very blessed.

And my need to give back is even more intense.

I thank you in advance.

I hope you and your families are well.

We are presently all down with COVID. We managed to get through two years without it. But it seems to be all over the place now.

I will say it’s not as bad as stories I have heard and things I have witnessed. Which goes to show, even if you don’t believe int them,  the vaccinations do help with the symptoms.

We all thought we had bad colds for about three days. And we kept testing negative. Until I didn’t.
And the doctor said, one of you has it, you all have it.

So do be careful and try stay healthy while you enjoy your holidays. And know that giving is truly better than receiving.

xoxox T

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The post That Time of the Year appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

I don’t even know that I can write cogently. I don’t know that I can string words and thoughts together in any way that makes sense to me much less to  any of you.

I am a writer and I need to write. I also am a human and I need to breath. Something that has never come easily to me.  I forget to breath. I miss breaths. Sometimes I talk so much I forget to take them. Sometimes I fall into such despair I don’t bother to take them. I’m not breathing much this week.

I don’t remember a time in my sixty-three years of life where I felt what I do today.

Talking about the last two plus years seems trite.

How much more is going to be thrown at us?

It  started in November of 2016.  And we had to suffer through the monster in the White House. We were then hit in the face with the plague, most recent figures we’re nearing close to a million Americans – dead.

We’ve all lost friends, co-workers, family members. I don’t know of anyone within ten years of my age in either direction who has not lost a parent.

But we trundled on.  Jobs lost. Lives shattered. Plans put on hold or just erased.  Memorials for the dead not even addressed.

We’ve had two years of VAX tease. You got both – you can live a normal life. Well, not so fast. Booster, ready set, eat inside. Well, not so fast there is this thing called Omicron and that might get you harder and it breaks through your Moderna barrier.

Though the stock market went up. Until it didn’t.

Then of course we had the insurrection. A high moment in American history. Still not punished.

But nothing compares with what we are living through now. NOTHING.  I woke up today and all I could see was that 40 mile convoy snaking through the Ukraine.

I’ve been alive for everything since 1958. I am not old enough to remember the Cuban Missile crisis. And the Viet Nam war kind of breezed by me. I was too young.  It was not nearby. Kids were protected from those things. At least middle-class kids in Southern California.

I do remember having to dive under my desks in case the Russians dropped the big one. The Russians and the big one were always out there.  The big one was a drop away, or so we were told.

Not sure what good a third grader’s plywood desk would have done had it been dropped, but every few months under our desks we dove, just to make sure we knew the drill.

There is something about what is happening now that defies imagination. At least mine.

I don’t know if I am so over stimulated by the built up cortisol that has been cursing through me for the last two years  that  the road from ok to enraged was shorter than I thought.  But this has taken whatever equilibrium I’ve managed to hold onto and thrown it out the window.

I slam people on Instagram for not being serious. For showing off their holidays. Really. You’re on vacation? You can do that while this is going on? OK, if you are then shut up about it.

I don’t want to see your beach trip, your pedicure, your skis, your first-class cabin – I don’t want to see one single braggy thing. If you are just living your best life, then keep it to yourself. Please. Do the world a favor.

The Ukraine – a place I have spent little time thinking about. Now that I see the photos, I ask why didn’t we go. It’s so spellbindingly pretty.

Like many Jews I have relatives who were born there.  Not distant ones either, great- grandparents.

But it took this newly instigated atrocity to ignite me, to enrage me, to sadden me as if there was a death in my immediate family.  It’s horrifying beyond comprehension.  But there have been a lot of horrifying things I’ve seen in my lifetime.

This is as we know, the first invasion of a European country since  World War II.

I keep asking if we said “Never Again,” how are we sitting by in relative silence?  It’s again.  They’re doing it again.

I know the bomb. Well, let’s have some balls here.  I have a more substantial desk now, we need to  protect these poor people.

I know Biden wants to keep the cost of oil down. Oil the world’s malevolent ruler. The shit we do for oil.  The lives we’ve lost for oil. The countries we have defended for oil. Other countries we’ve invaded for oil. The murderous behavior we turn our backs on – all for oil.

I feel sorry for what we did to the Afghanis, but let’s’ face it , they asked for part of it.  And we stayed there for 20 years. And they wouldn’t even defend themselves.

There are Ukranian grandmothers armed with Molotov cocktails convinced they can hold back the “Russian Shits.”

Have we ever seen such a display of pride of country and sheer guts? I haven’t.

And we won’t even shut off the air space for the Ukrainians.

Peaceful Ukrainians, who just want to live their lives.

Our nervous systems are on such overload. I truly think this was the last straw.  It was for me.  My anxiety disorder is so out of order now I can’t even describe it.

And my response is what my response has always been to chaos and what I perceive to be abuse to others, I want to help. I want to go to Poland and serve meals.

I signed up for Jose Andres World Food Kitchen but the only place they will send me is Puerto Rico.

I don’t want to go to Puerto Rico now. I want to go to the front of this war and help. It’s likely madness and there is no way I can pull it off. I can’t even get there. But it’s the only thing that will make me feel like I am making a difference.

Sure, I sent money. I am sponsoring three Ukrainian families. Yet that feels like nothing.

I cannot watch this barbaric Soviet behavior.

It’s Hitler and we are letting him march into Poland.

As a Jew, as a global citizen, as an overly sensitive human and as someone who never thought I would see this their lifetime it’s truly unbearable.

And what can we do?  What?

They said never again.

It’s again.  It’s again.  It’s again.

The post  They Said Never Again     appeared first on Tracey Jackson.

It’s a question I have asked myself many times over the course of my life.

Was I crazy not to go to college?  I would say definitively yes.

Was I crazy to keep forgiving my parents for unacceptable behavior at times over the years? Hindsight – says no. Now that they are gone, I am at peace with the way I handled many things.

This is like my own self-generated private Jeopardy game. And only I have the answers. Watch out Amy Schneider I’m on your heels, gurl.

Was I crazy to sleep with all the people I did?  No. I will never get another chance. Nor will I ever have the energy again.

I can carry this on for pages, but you will all likely unsubscribe. Suffice to say, if nothing else, I am a self-examined soul.

But lately, say the last two weeks, I have started to question my approach to our family’s life.  An approach that I spearhead for the most part.

An approach that is defined by the fact we are hiding out in a canyon in Beverly Hills. See no one. Go nowhere except the grocery store.  And pretty much one grocery store. Not one of the biggies like Whole Foods, Trader Joes, or Ralph’s. But a small store in Brentwood, I used to go to with my grandmother. Which happens to be one of the best stores on the planet. And that is not being hyperbolic.

Or I am so deprived of stimulation, seeing Lady Fingers on a grocery shelf sends my summersaulting into a happy place.

I also go to a place called The Brentwood Country Mart, which really deserves a whole blog for itself.  We don’t go often but once a week.  And if it’s not crowded, we will get something to go and eat outside.

I’ve been going to the Brentwood Country Mart since I was a baby.  It’s one of the few places that has retained its authenticity for 60 years.

I have one story that from there.  It’s not a place with a lot going on, outside of shopping and eating.

You know I am short on content when I have to dig back into the first three years of my life.

When I was three,  my mother and my half-sister Linda and I went to the Brentwood Country Mart. According to my mother it was the only place my parents would take me. My father believed kids should be seen and not heard and seen as little as possible. So, this was pre dragging kids, with fifty toys and sucky cups to amuse them wherever you went.   I got to go to Brentwood Country Mart for an early lunch and then home.

This particular day  (Jesus I hope you are not expecting a big story here) involved carrot juice. My mother was an early adaptor to health food. Until later in her life when she threw in the towel and existed primarliy on sweets. At this stage she adored carrot juice.

I hated the stuff. I hate all vegetable juices. I hate green juice. I hate smoothies. I’m a chewer – always have been.  Even at three. I want to chew my meals until I can no longer do so.

But mom was insistent I drink carrot juice. And since these were the days when we were seen and not heard, even a big mouth like me knew I had no right to question her authority. Many years would pass before kids took over the family.  These were the father knows best days and when mom said you drink carrot juice, you drank the damn carrot juice until you gagged and even then you keep going.

It’s so weird the things you remember. I don’t’ remember what I ate yesterday. But I remember the cups they served the carrot juice in.  Some of you will remember these too. They were little paper cones, like ice cream cones that slid into metal holders. They are now considered “vintage.”

No question they were ecologically friendly, but not spill friendly.  As the top of the cup was heavy and the bottom of the holder didn’t always support it when it was packed with carrot juice.  I think. Or I am crazy. But this is a 60-year-old memory. Which means a certain amount of crazy can seep in.

This particular day, mom plunked two paper cones of carrot juice in front of each of us.

Linda is older than I am, and I looked up to her so much. She was an eight-year-old goddess to me. And mom adored her.

Linda, like mom loved carrot juice. She got that puppy and threw it back like John Wayne at the bar with a double scotch.

I on the other hand stared mine down. Like John Wayne and the villain about to shoot it out.

I don’t exactly remember how it happened, I suppose I reached for it and my little three-year-old fingers were not very agile. Perhaps the top heavy cup was sitting on a part of the picnic table that had a ridge.   According to my mother ( we discussed this day for decades to come) I did it on purpose. In order not to have to drink the devil juice.

I question that theory. Despite the fact I was only three, I was nobody’s fool. But the cup tipped  over and the gross orange liquid spilled all over the table.

I won’t say I was unhappy at the sight of the empty white paper cone.  Linda licking her lips hoping for another cup sat quietly.  She was a suck down and a suck up that day. I sat with that look of a kid who knows they were either just spared a terrible event, or a terrible event was coming.

Mom yelled at me. She told me I did it intentionally. She sang Linda’s carrot juice praises so the whole Country Mart could hear.

After she cleaned it up, finished berating me and glorifying Linda, she went and got me another one and sat there as I choked it down.

Despite this inverted Proustian memory, I still adore The Brentwood Country Mart and always have. FYI they no longer serve carrot juice.

What was my point?  My life. My life is usually my point.

My life, by my own choice and that of my family is we do nothing, but market, iced coffee, UPS when needed and Brentwood Country Mart, but only once a week.

I’m fine with this life, fine as one can be, until I  look at Instagram, which I need to stop doing.

Totally off topic, not that I actually have a topic… when your phone says, “Your phone usage is up 18% this week”.  Is that up 18% from the previous week when your usage was up 15%? Meaning your usage in two weeks is 33% higher.

Asking for a friend.

When I am on Instagram all I see is people living their best lives. In Mexico. Packed into the Dallas football stadium. Which to me is hell, pandemic or not, I feel about football the way I feel about carrot juice. Others are in Aspen skiing. They are indoors in restaurants. At  the airport going somewhere – they are living and I am hiding from COVID. And I start to question it.  Am I crazy and everybody else is sane?

Should I just throw caution to the wind, and live. Honestly, I was living more last year than I am this year with three doses of the vaccine swirling through my system.

So, I walk around thinking I am crazy, questioning myself. Until I talk to someone, or many someones as was the case yesterday. Every single person I was in touch with was sick. EVERY ONE.  And they had all gone out, done things, done things I don’t do. And they got sick, Some have been really sick.

I had to get one friend an infusion a few weeks ago. I know people with long haul covid who are really suffering months after they supposedly recovered.  Vertigo. Exhaustion. No taste or smell still. Horrible headaches. Foggy brain.

Before I sat down to write this, I read an article about a female screenwriter who killed herself because her long haul COVID was so unbearable she preferred to die than live with it.

Then I think I am not so crazy. Then I think I am sane and everyone else is crazy.

Which is pretty much how I have gone through my entire life.

Am I crazy or are they crazy? It started with my parents.  They totally tilted more towards crazy than I did.  But that took years of therapy for me to accept.

But this whole thing just feels endless. Endless if you try your hardest not to get sick.

I wrote to my friend Sheldon this am. I have two friends I talk to the most. My friend Sheldon and my friend Blair. We deep dive.

Today I texted Sheldon “I am so sick of this.” Then went on for paragraphs why I was so sick of it.  He told me walks help.

But I take long walks each day.

He then did what good friends do, he listened and  told me about someone he knew who didn’t’ leave their house and got it.
And that made me feel not so crazy. Sheldon and I help each other not feel crazy. And I am forever grateful to him for that.  I think I do the same for him.

So, I guess at the end of this day, that is like day 654 of identical days, I am not crazy as I don’t want to get COVID. And I don’t’ want my family to get it. And I don’t’ want long haul COVID or a blood clot or the other after effects.  I am not crazy.

I also did not spill that carrot juice on purpose.  At least I don’t think I did.  If I did, that was crazy as my mom was as determined as I was in the world, and in those days she had the power and the money to buy another and make me down it and I should have known that.

I guess I answered my own question. Thank you for listening.

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