tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6191500301842375492024-02-20T16:11:19.564-08:00Purl OnionsA day and opinions in the life of Purl....PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-25407216210197206122022-07-20T12:56:00.018-07:002022-07-20T13:03:02.414-07:00Middlemarch @ 70: After All These Years.....<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;"><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6LU6TF8PTj_hvkJJmBaKtrQxm4f4hxwl602RCW0ZLoV5kMXXudSWR6NeR8xqW3tPvV1AO7kT-WnhteJy1rl5N6xu-o7MWMU29HGpkem2GEGt5k9jgX916mqpUbnJVlT0bSW0mF_pXqaiJHusDjf005sXkVJAGr35KBObhDbpKVnFo02gcT4jasCTO/s1274/george%20elliot%20portrait.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1274" data-original-width="940" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6LU6TF8PTj_hvkJJmBaKtrQxm4f4hxwl602RCW0ZLoV5kMXXudSWR6NeR8xqW3tPvV1AO7kT-WnhteJy1rl5N6xu-o7MWMU29HGpkem2GEGt5k9jgX916mqpUbnJVlT0bSW0mF_pXqaiJHusDjf005sXkVJAGr35KBObhDbpKVnFo02gcT4jasCTO/s320/george%20elliot%20portrait.jpg" width="236" /></a></span></span></div><span face=""Arial",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 150%;"><span><br /></span></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Well, it’s that time again.
Time to re-read <i>Middlemarch</i>, and to see what it has to say to me as I
turn 70. I know what it said to me at 20, 30, 40, and 60. But 70 ain’t 20, and
it isn’t even 60.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">But first, a word about
Eliot’s Victorian prose. Padded with ivy, painted with ornate descriptions of
the simplest human emotions, and plastered over with obscurities to refer to (rather
than just <i>state</i>) unmentionable subjects, it requires patience to chew, swallow,
and digest. I once had that patience, and I used to think of this language as
gorgeous. Every secondary and dependent clause only added to the beauty of the
words. Now, I tap my fingers impatiently, waiting for the upshot of Eliot’s
long meanderings. (The only prose I now find gorgeous is Joseph Conrad’s and
Michael Chabon’s.)</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">When I last wrote about the
book, I thought Dorothea should have been trundled off to Bedlam before her idiot
uncle allowed her to marry Casaubon. I still think so. I once thought those
around Dorothea were somewhat awed by her notions of nobility, sacrifice and the
undefined moral mission that she was desperately trying to get a leg up, on,
and over. But I finally realized the functioning adults around Dorothea <i>did</i>
recognize her half-baked enthusiasms and hairshirted crusades for what they
were: hairbrained. The single adult who had the authority to intervene and stop
the marriage was the vacant and ever-vacillating Uncle Arthur. My opinion
hasn’t changed. But now, from my crone’s vantage point, I see it as Uncle Arthur
Brooke’s failure to act forcefully and effectively as her guardian. Dorothea might
carry herself like a queen, but she is still a teenager when she decides to
marry Causabon. And at 19, Dorothea’s is still those an inexperienced girl.
(Confession: When I was 19, I thought there was nothing my parents could tell
me about love and marriage. But that’s a story for another day.) At my first
reading, I fumed at her choice of because Casaubon was old and physically
unappealing, and there were clearly better, younger, sexier candidates
available. In later readings, I wanted to scream at Dorothea’s idiotic innocence.
But now I think it’s time I forgave her for her youth, her inexperience, and
her foolish aspirations. In the absence of education, she had idealistic fantasies
of how to shape and build a meaningful life. (Didn’t we all, when were 19? Hell,
I <i>had</i> an education, and I was still an idiot.) Dorothea grew up fast.
Her first, unhappy marriage matured her beyond her years. But the bottom line
remains: Arthur Brooke---forever waffling, and never making a firm decision---should
have stopped the hasty marriage plans. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Casaubon is somewhere between 45
and 50 at the outset of the book, and I used to see him as a grizzled old
buzzard. Well, that hasn’t changed. He remains the pasty, scrawny, physically
unappealing old bachelor I first envisioned. (Celia’s several comments about
his moles chilled me then, and still do now.)<span>
</span>Eliot’s portrayal of this sad, solitary man still rings true. He was old
enough to know that he didn’t really want a wife. His discomfort at the thought
of a secretary at his elbow---someone who is expecting some intellectual output
to be distilled into words and put on paper---is now transferred to the earnest
and eager Dorothea. She sits there patiently, expectantly, waiting for him to spit
out the brilliant work he’s been chewing over for the last 20 years. And worse
yet, unlike a secretary, she can’t be dismissed. To her credit, Dorothea
transforms her disappointment with Casaubon’s chilly intellect and emotional
vacuity into a tender and enduring concern for his health. Her unflinching sense
of duty is genuine and admirable. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">And yes, after all these years, I
find Dorothea’s endurance of her marriage to Casaubon a tribute to her patience
and strength. She wishes to love and be loved by a man who has absolutely no
impulse to love or be loved.<span> </span>The
Casaubon union remains a shining example of marrying in haste and repenting at
leisure. I once interpreted Dorothea’s submission to Casaubon’s emotional
flatline as a willing choice—a way of demonstrating her sacrifice to support
her very own Milton. But, no, in this reading of Eliot’s dense prose, I finally
recognize how lonely and desperate she is. And yet, despite her desperation,
Dorothea stands resolute, unwavering, and uncomplaining in her commitment to
her husband. </span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">In this reading, I’ve finally paid
closer attention to the two-dimensional view of women held by most of the men
in the book. For them, the ideal woman is a mirror in which they can admire
themselves. If all goes well, she is a convenience, a comfort, a loving pet. When
men do discover that a woman has brains and motives enough to devise and carry
out her own plans, they are astounded.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Tertius Lydgate is gob smacked—not
once, but <i>twice</i>—by beautiful women whose minds and motives were news to
him. There was Laure, the Madonna-faced French actress who murdered her husband
because he bored her. And then there’s the emptiest, vainest, most selfish
vessel in the world—Rosamund. The world, and everyone in it, exist to please,
pet, and admire her. If they fail to do so, she sulks, she grieves, and she takes
matters into her own hands to disastrous effect.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Casaubon initially looks at
Dorothea and sees, in her young, uncritical eyes, a flattering reflection of
himself as an intellectual. He never anticipated that this girl would do more
than stare adoringly at him—much less offer to pull together his cryptic,
useless notes. He expected silent, passive adoration, but what he got was
pressure to publish. Dorothea’s offers to assist him in wrapping up his years
of study make Casaubon uncomfortable and resentful. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Women are rarely acknowledged
as equal partners in a marriage; but equal partnerships do exist. Caleb and
Susan Garth are clearly equals in their union. And although Eliot muses upon
Susan’s sense that it’s a woman’s duty to subordinate her will to her
husband’s, that’s not how she portrays the Garths’ marriage. Caleb bows to Susan’s
faults and foibles---just as Susan does to his. They are loving equals through
the trials and triumphs of their life together. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Fred Vincy and Mary Garth are
another example of equals who form a partnership of shared goals, values, and
love. It may have required the aid of a couple of well-timed kicks to the seat
of Fred’s pants (administered by a would-be rival for Mary’s affections) to
clear Fred’s head of his childish habits. Fred may have been a youthful twit,
but he is clear and consistent on one thing in his life: that Mary is his
polestar. He depends on her common sense and judgement as being unfailingly
right. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">There is the little-mentioned,
but quite vibrant marriage between Elinor and Humphrey Cadwallader. Humphrey is
the rector at the church on Sir James Chettam’s estate, and Elinor willingly
took several steps down the social ladder in marrying him. Humphrey is
easy-going and good-humored. And Elinor is just one more semi-comic character
who energetically yacks away for the sole purpose of fleshing out the main characters’
back stories. But I finally realized I’ve been blind to Elinor’s rapier wit for
the last 50 years. Elinor Cadwallader is the Dorothy Parker of Middlemarch. She
fires off effortless barbs about Will Ladislaw’s Byronic looks, Arthur Brooke’s
famous penny-pinching management of his tenants and estate, and refers to
Casaubon as ’Thomas Aquinas’. How could you <i>not</i> want to have cocktails
with this woman?</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">And then there is the question
about Casaubon’s dislike and resentment of Will Ladislaw. Eliot dances around
it for a hundred pages, attributing Casaubon’s dislike to Will’s decision to refuse
further financial support from his aging cousin. Does Casaubon see it as a
rejection of his superiority and beneficence? That’s pretty thin
stuff---especially as this resentment springs up just as he marries a young
bride. The coincidence of timing overrides every possible nuanced and
far-fetched explanation for Casaubon’s attitude except the most obvious:
jealousy of an attractive, virile, young rival. I guess that would have been
too coarse a motive to attribute to a man she is trying to depict as human,
sad, and conflicted. Eventually, Casaubon tries to preempt any possibility of
Dorothea and Will having a future together by amending his will to cause her to
forfeit his estate and fortune if she ever marries Will. The little world of
Middlemarch is shocked at his display of malice, and the suggestion that he’s been
privately obsessing about this possible turn of events. Oh, my… <span> </span>Still waters run deep and spiteful. If that’s
not green-eyed jealousy, I don’t know what is.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">And speaking of wills and
inheritance… Peter Featherstone’s prolonged deathwatch is one of the least
sentimental journeys ever undertaken by family and friends. The family harpies descend
on the house to flatter and fawn on him, while the old man keeps them guessing
about the contents of his will. In or out? How much? How little? Is blood
thicker than water? The reading of the will plays out like an audience waiting
to learn who’s won tonight’s Powerball drawing. People avert their eyes to
silently mutter prayers for luck.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">Given enough time, we all
experience or witness the drama that surrounds family inheritances. I always
said that my husband’s family only showed real emotion when a will was read. Eyes
welled up on these occasions. For the rest of the time, they were dry-eyed
misers. Until I met Peter, I never imagined that comic villains like Featherstone
really existed. But then I met my father-in-law. Here was a man who delighted
in threatening his adult children that they were in or out of his will. It
might depend on his mood, the day of the week, or the offspring in question having
displeased him in recent or distant memory. I once asked him if he kept a
xeroxed copy of his will, complete with check-off boxes, a signature line, and
a space for the current date. He glared at me, but stopped threatening to
remove a daughter from the will for not having dropped her pregnancy weight after the baby’s birth </span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">fast enough to suit him</span></span></span>. He played that drama out to the very end of
his life---destructive and spiteful to the very end—culminating in a will that
clearly declared who was loved and who was not. From time to time, I reread his
will just to refresh my acquaintance with narcissism and evil. But I digress….</span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">I’ve read this book as a
love-struck teenager, as a wife experiencing the ups and downs of a life shared
with another flawed mortal, as a participant in the local community of
neighbors and business associates, as an observer of the greater community of
local and national politics, and now, again as a 70-year-old. The impetuous and
hormonally turbo-charged years are long past. But I recognize shades of my own
experiences in Dorothea’s foolishness. The most obvious, available, and best
life partner choices didn’t satisfy her---nor did they satisfy me. Nice, dependable,
steady, <i>menschen</i> were boring. Bad boys were alluring. It took me years
to realize that my nice, steady mensch of a father was a hero, a prince, and a
pearl of the greatest price. In the end, there is nothing more precious than a
man who cherishes you, cares for you above and beyond himself, doggedly goes to
work every day for 40 years, and replaces light bulbs without having to be begged.
My husband, Peter, fits most of the requirements. He has patiently put up with
me, my moods, and my acerbic humor. He’s fatally flawed. But then, so am I.
Neither of us is a saint.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">I’ve read this book as a
participant in the local community of neighbors and business associates, as an
observer of the greater community of local and national politics, and now,
again as a 70-year-old. My dealings and conflicts with prickly, narcissistic,
and plain crazy business associates are in the past. What is still current are
the larger community issues: The motives of politicians should always be
doubted and examined for possible motives of personal gratification,
self-aggrandizement, or self-enrichment. Is there a slender chance that they
are in it for the betterment of anyone other than themselves? Well, that would
be lovely, if it ever happened.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="line-height: 150%;">The most beautiful moment in
the book remains Harriet Bulstrode’s mature acceptance of her husband’s
failings and public humiliation. Their emotional joining in their shared shame and
pain is more poignant than anything else described in the book. Harriet steps forward
with a show of strength, love, and forgiveness that is beyond splendid. It is
grace itself. <i>This</i> is the stuff saints are made of.</span></span></span>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-15884965524808127812022-07-11T07:23:00.000-07:002022-07-11T07:23:54.566-07:00The Stories We Tell<p><br />
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">There are stories we tell, and
there are stories we don’t. The story of my abortion is a story I rarely tell
aloud. It’s been my business—and no one else’s---for 50 years. But the Supreme
Court’s imminent decision about the fate of Roe v. Wade has brought my chosen
privacy to an end. If I don’t speak my story aloud and very loud, then I am a
coward. If I don’t bear witness to the Republicans’ hypocritical intention to turn
the clocks back to the 1955, then I am a fool and a coward. If I don’t push
back against men who behave as if their every drop of ejaculate should be
bottled and worshipped like the shroud of Turin, then I am not a responsible
citizen.</span>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I discovered I was pregnant just
as I was turning 19 in 1971. I was a sophomore at Stony Brook University, a
Jewish kid from lower middle-class Queens, and the first girl in the family to
attend college. My own mother had returned to work in the early 1960’s so my
parents could afford to send my brother to college. That I ended up in college
rather than a typing pool was thanks to the NYC Department of Ed teachers and
counselors who explicitly informed my parents that girls go to college as well
as boys.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My boyfriend, Bill, was my
first true love. Bill was a Methodist from a poor family in upstate NY, and I
adored him. Think of every way there is to adore a lover—from the taste of his mouth,
to the scent of his skin, to the color of his eyes. And as much as I loved him,
my parents detested him. They hated Bill with the bone-deep aversion born of a
thousand years of Polish and Russian pogroms, and with the fear of diluting and
losing that essential kernel of Jewish identity through interfaith marriage.
This was a doomed love for two penniless youngsters.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I missed one menstrual cycle
in late March, and made a bee-line to the Infirmary for a pregnancy test. The
test came back negative, and the nurse suggested that… maybe my cycle was
irregular? But I knew my cycle was as predictable as the sunrise, or the timing
of the tides. It was impossibly, comically predictable: I woke up to it every
28 days, or four calendar weeks. Once a year or so, it would move by a day, and
a new 28-day cycle was established for another year as if my body made minute
adjustments to account for some cosmic leap year. When my period failed to
occur in April, I went for another pregnancy test. This time it was positive. I
must have been about eight weeks pregnant. I had no signs of pregnancy—no
nausea, no weight gain, no breast swelling. So unless I had been told with medical
certainty, I wouldn’t have known that I was pregnant.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">As the nurse talked, the alarm
bells of panic were going off in my head. She put a slip of paper into my hand
with the name, address and phone number of Manhattan gynecologist who did
abortions. I still remember—50 years later---the feeling of that paper on the
palm of my hand as I walked back to the dorm. Bill asked me what I wanted to do.
He was prepared to accept whatever decision I made—be it marriage, adoption, or
abortion. We had no financial resources, unfinished educations, and no life
experience that would help us wend our way through a forest of disapproving
parents, the emotional trials and aftermath of a shotgun wedding, and menial
jobs while we got our legs under us and a baby. I was still a kid, and I was
faced with the first true adult decision of my life. I was not ready to be a
mother, and he wasn’t ready to be a father. I knew what I needed to do.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The abortion was arranged
quickly and easily. I was in the doctor’s office in less than a week---May 5<sup>th</sup>.
Bill drove me into the Manhattan, and sat in the car waiting while the
procedure was done. It cost $100. I was 9 weeks pregnant. And then, the crisis
was over. Life could go on.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This was not a happy choice. I
loved that boy so much. Under controlled circumstances, I would have welcomed a
child—Bill’s child. But our dearest wishes rarely come true in the form we choose.
And in the given circumstances, this was the right choice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My parents went to their
graves never knowing about the abortion. They knew that Bill and I had a
tumultuous relationship that ultimately ended with my heart broken. And that
was all they ever knew. I never told my mother because…because she would have
lectured me about good girls and bad girls? We’d had at least two women in the
family who overcame loud parental objections to the boyfriend-in-question by
preemptively announcing they were pregnant. Check, and checkmate. I wasn’t
about to let an accidental pregnancy make the decision for me. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I made this choice for myself
and for the boy I loved. But I also had the benefits of legal access and geographic
proximity to abortion services, the financial wherewithal to take the necessary
action, and the dignity of privacy in making the choice. I was lucky then—and I
am grateful now—for those benefits. These same benefits should be available to all
women, and so I choose to make my private history public. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Note: An edited version of this article first appeared in the </span><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Albany Times Union </span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;">on July 9, 2022.</span> <br /></span></p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-29543797830440068232020-09-27T08:32:00.000-07:002020-09-27T08:36:48.420-07:00<p>
</p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Forest for the Trees</span></b></span></span></p>
<p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #741b47;">The
Republicans are staging a slow-moving coup.</span></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Is it just me who believes the
Republicans are staging a slow-moving coup right before our eyes? Selectively
following or ignoring rules for an impeachment, setting their own arbitrary (and
fast-changing) rules for consideration of a Supreme Court nominee, voting in
jackbooted lockstep again and again to pound the last shreds of Congressional
bipartisanship into dust under their feet…. The Democrats respond to each new blow
to the system with parliamentary flourishes, R<i>obert’s Rules of Order</i>,
and the outrage of a small child being repeatedly smacked by the schoolyard
bully. While my heart goes out to that small child, my head is screaming, <i>Do
something!</i></span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">While Mitch McConnell’s cosmic
villainy might once have been held in check by precedent and custom, his
relentless support of Trump’s actions over the last 3 ½ years signals something
new and dangerous. If Trump loses the election and goes whole hog in declaring
the election a fraud, who in the Republican party will have the courage to take
him aside and tell him to take the defeat gracefully for the good of the
country? Mitch McConnell? Lindsey Graham? Cory Gardner? Joni Ernst? Jim Jordan?
Chuck Grassley? <i>Yeah, right.</i></span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">So, what <i>is</i> going on right
before our eyes? What are we beholding, but not seeing? The Republican party is
<i>done</i> with compromise. Compromise is for weaklings. <i>It’s my way or the
highway, Jack</i>. Exactly what are the Republicans trying to accomplish? It
appears they are trying to create a nation in which ignorance is the new
knowledge, civic ugliness is our <i>lingua franca</i>, and suppressed voting
rights are the standard for our elections. It also appears that they will be
willing to risk civil unrest to remain in power. It’s high time for the
Democrats to stop bringing their best butter knives to what has clearly become
a knife fight. And it’s time to call the Republicans’ actions what they are: an
incitement to civil war.</span></span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style> <br /></p>PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-18468800445257745462020-09-27T08:11:00.000-07:002020-09-27T08:37:29.250-07:00<p>
</p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif;">Amy Coney Barrett and
the Meaning of Free Will</span></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 11.0pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif;"> </span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;">
</span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: courier;"><b>P</b></span></span>eople speak of Amy Coney
Barrett as if she were a Buick being chosen and driven off a dealership parking
lot. She’s been identified, selected, and put on the road to the Supreme Court.
But there’s an enormous flaw in this reasoning: she’s neither an inanimate
object, nor a pawn. She is being chosen—presumably—for her stature as a jurist.
A conservative jurist, to be sure. But still, a sentient being, an intelligent
jurist who understands the significance of her nomination in this time and
place. She must also understand what her nomination would mean to the
legitimacy of the Court in these contentious times. </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Today’s nomination stinks of
rank partisanship, anti-democratic court-packing, and the danger of utterly
destroying the legitimacy of the Supreme Court for decades—if not forever. If
she is seen as a convenient place marker—an inanimate object—who can be relied
on to rubber stamp the President as the winner of a contested election, Coney
Barrett will be the destruction of the Court and of her own stature as a credible
jurist.</span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"> </span></span></span></p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
</span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #134f5c;"><span style="font-family: "Arial", sans-serif; line-height: 115%;">Coney Barrett is only 45, with
plenty of time to be considered for a seat on the Court in the future. The best
thing she could do now—for the reputation of the Supreme Court, and for her own
place in history—is to decline the nomination. And she should do so publicly
and loudly, with a clear statement that three weeks before the election is not
the time to rush through a nominee.</span></span></span></p>
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</style><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;">"Begin at the beginning...and go on till you come to the end: then stop."</span></i></span></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><span style="color: #cc0000;"> --</span></i><span style="color: #cc0000;">Lewis Carroll,</span><i><span style="color: #cc0000;"> Alice In Wonderland</span></i></span></span></b><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And so, on to the final chapter of
the story. Well, I am <i>hoping</i> this will be the final chapter.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>BEFORE </b></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My pre-surgery appointment was
scheduled for Wednesday, May 27 at 10 AM. Kia Prescott, Dr. Muto’s Physician
Assistant, went over the particulars: this would be a complete hysterectomy,
removing the uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries. (By now I had given up on my
crusade to retain my ovaries. Dr. Muto had reasoned that at this point in my
life, my ovaries excrete <i>nothing</i>.
Zilch. Nada. Zero. “If you were 39 years old, there would be a reason to debate
this. But not at 63.”) Kia’s main focus was the aftermath of the operation.
“You’re going to be tired for at least 6 weeks. Listen to what your body is
telling you. Don’t lift anything heavy. Rest. Take naps. You will not be able
to run around because you will hit the wall and come to a crashing halt. And
when I say <i>hit the wall</i>, I mean
you’ll have no reserves.” She delivered all of this forthrightly and
cheerfully, patiently enduring my repeated assertions about being as strong as
an ox. I bounce back from everything in record time, I insisted. “You’ll see,
you’re going to be a hot mess,” she smiled sweetly.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This was followed by a brief
conversation with the anesthesiologist. I repeated what I always say when meeting
an anesthesiologist, “No ketamine.” The
doctor assured me that ketamine was no longer used on human beings. (“It’s only
been used on horses for years!”) But on the subject of ketamine, my motto is <i>Better Safe Than Sorry</i>. I’d experienced
it 30 years ago when New York Hospital reset my broken nose, and life became an endless screening of the <i>Sorcerer’s
Apprentice</i> for the next several months. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3vy67sM5hmOO39RSKyTOCs6xs1r72lQvqE3jrtmHpTangitkkaxs49H_s0yJxxyhfMd-DiWUaTmE5t5oABAaidVMZQuJOXCRSOA8rWPGzpHtEZsAbKB8GTPcE7h2vl3F6YLXK30S80oA/s1600/tumblr_mq2cwaCTUA1qkhhhso1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3vy67sM5hmOO39RSKyTOCs6xs1r72lQvqE3jrtmHpTangitkkaxs49H_s0yJxxyhfMd-DiWUaTmE5t5oABAaidVMZQuJOXCRSOA8rWPGzpHtEZsAbKB8GTPcE7h2vl3F6YLXK30S80oA/s400/tumblr_mq2cwaCTUA1qkhhhso1_500.gif" width="400" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Ketamine's aftermath</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">With the anesthesiologist’s guarantee
that ketamine was off the table, and armed with instructions to call and
confirm my surgery appointment for noon the next day, we went to Boston’s
Museum of Fine Arts to spend the afternoon. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>
</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfinSOT7uZgpB1hyphenhyphenQejuZnH060omh8G768Y4TuZ6zCL-pAA-hEjAdw5yRKQSjf5iRfLTAvZ5z8vgqdTXT5aUaifbGEEara02hz0OtZZBAmaCj3pFYuhF8_8eoNa1SEAx9cSR0V5sMAan8/s1600/john+singer+sargent+portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfinSOT7uZgpB1hyphenhyphenQejuZnH060omh8G768Y4TuZ6zCL-pAA-hEjAdw5yRKQSjf5iRfLTAvZ5z8vgqdTXT5aUaifbGEEara02hz0OtZZBAmaCj3pFYuhF8_8eoNa1SEAx9cSR0V5sMAan8/s640/john+singer+sargent+portrait.jpg" width="636" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">John Singer Sargent
paints sparkling white linen like no one else in this world. </span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ7Sk2UiEa6clEpWaTHclimIqaNuboivrzKN5_4UE78SXhjqQkb0hj6pvxTwVZYEqjjXByN8HUKl_9RGRvA7Wgps4-8mtPJAcaSC_FrU-AN5ms_Vc3zg92Q-1hzh9bostkuZ8J0LOFVmg/s1600/Chainsaw_Cut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ7Sk2UiEa6clEpWaTHclimIqaNuboivrzKN5_4UE78SXhjqQkb0hj6pvxTwVZYEqjjXByN8HUKl_9RGRvA7Wgps4-8mtPJAcaSC_FrU-AN5ms_Vc3zg92Q-1hzh9bostkuZ8J0LOFVmg/s320/Chainsaw_Cut.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>zzzzZZZZZZZZ</b></span></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I called to confirm the
surgery and was informed the surgery had been moved up to 9:30 AM. I was to be
at the hospital by 8:15 to be prepped. Even better! Less time to
wait around Thursday, tapping my little feet in anticipation. I am not
especially nervous about impending surgery. I have absolute confidence the
doctor will do a fine job. But being as driven as I am, I’m always impatient to
get the show on the road. Peter equates this perpetual impatience with my
ambient sound—the high-pitched <b><i><span style="line-height: 150%;">zz<span style="font-size: large;">z</span></span><span style="line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: large;">ZZ</span>zz</span><span style="line-height: 150%;"> </span></i></b><i> </i>of a chainsaw being fired up.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Prepping for surgery is a little
like watching your life pass before your eyes. Only in this case, it’s not your
life's story crossing your field of vision, but an entire surgical team that comes
through, introducing itself one by one, asking if you know why you’re here, what
kind of surgery you’re expecting to have done, and if any of your teeth are
loose. (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Again</i> with the teeth?!) One member
of the team was a standout—Dominick, the anesthesiologist nurse. I wish I’d
asked his last name, because he was wonderful. Dominick took the time to
explain every move that would take place once I was in the operating room,
walking me through everything I would observe before falling asleep. This was
obviously done for the benefit of nervous patients, and it was the absolutely
perfect touch. The explanation included everything from how I would be moved from the
gurney to the operating table, to the moment when he would cease speaking to me
and turn to the surgical team to give them a status update.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The last thing I
recall before the lights went out was Dominick patting my shoulder, assuring me
that he would take good care of me, and promising me that I wouldn’t wake up
during the surgery. It hadn’t even occurred to me that this could happen. Hmmm, now <i>that's</i> a</span></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfyRiJrHpntf5j3WNt_1QrZwTrxdbonYE4_NoB2cn4bMLP_Nnr9UdTjAOI9TBO1Yuyi9iGmwkiUontSkUv2USj_mxBTOxLbwx-2zy09XfrxnLk72WY7DwDfJRi4KLQQQnfzTDuYsWRMtw/s1600/fabulous+hat.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfyRiJrHpntf5j3WNt_1QrZwTrxdbonYE4_NoB2cn4bMLP_Nnr9UdTjAOI9TBO1Yuyi9iGmwkiUontSkUv2USj_mxBTOxLbwx-2zy09XfrxnLk72WY7DwDfJRi4KLQQQnfzTDuYsWRMtw/s320/fabulous+hat.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Now <i>that</i>'s a party hat.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">nightmare worth contemplating. (Best pre-op line, uttered by Dominick as he handed me a paper
surgical cap: <i>Let’s give you a party
hat!)</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-size: large;">AFTER</span></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I awoke to Peter’s and my brother,
Steve’s smiling faces. The recovery room was bustling beyond my pleasant haze
of drugs. I was offered vanilla pudding in a tiny dixie cup. I ate it with
drug-sodden gusto and was reduced to a gaga bleating of Oliver Twist’s, <i>May I have some more, please?</i> For the
time being, the usual <span style="font-size: large;"><i>zzZZZ<span style="line-height: 150%;">ZZ</span></i><span style="font-size: small; line-height: 150%;"> </span></span>had been reduced to <i>hmmmmmm</i>.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Steve, had come up from New York to
be with me. Over the years, Steve and I have made it a practice to sit with and
for each other during surgeries. Steve kept me company while Peter underwent back
surgeries. I sat with him while his wife, Susan, had surgery. We’ve never
discussed why or how this tradition came to be. As children, Steve and I fought endlessly. (I used to say that my
brother never spoke a civil word to me until I went off to college.) In a quiet
moment my mother took me aside and told me we shouldn’t fight because someday
she and my father would be gone, and Steve and I would have only each other. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7OPJznzTzR3R0If3YoHNnN-GWxO-oMfyd6LZw195pTBij9tpceIXICzQi7KjYkdurqhWVQfzbGqTX7zGBTwUg8YCJGbDl_2MC3zp4Bg6I2AypT62JrWxnCPIZROkXWOX4OmOAvlFcnLo/s1600/Steve+Directs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7OPJznzTzR3R0If3YoHNnN-GWxO-oMfyd6LZw195pTBij9tpceIXICzQi7KjYkdurqhWVQfzbGqTX7zGBTwUg8YCJGbDl_2MC3zp4Bg6I2AypT62JrWxnCPIZROkXWOX4OmOAvlFcnLo/s320/Steve+Directs.jpg" width="227" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Steve Doloff</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> She
spoke from her own experience of having lost her mother and finding her greatest
comfort in her brother and sisters. And so it is with Steve and me. It’s always
an immeasurable comfort having him with me. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Somehow I got dressed. Peter must have made that happen. I was still so gaga
that I could easily have pulled my panties on over my yoga pants and thought I was ready to go dancing. I was poured into a wheelchair and rolled out of the hospital.
Although our hotel was two blocks from the hospital, Peter brought the car
around to pick me up. Steve stood beside me holding my hand, while I sat in the
wheelchair, blissed out, dreamy and secure in my brother’s company and care. </span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The hospital sent me home with scrip’s for big honkin’ bottles of 600 mg
Ibuprofen and OxyCodone<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>.
The amount and magnitude of the
medications seemed vastly out of line with the minor discomfort I was
experiencing. True, urinating did sting for the next day or so, and I
did feel
like my bladder had been neatly folded in quarters, and then unfolded and refolded a few more times. (Having your hooha clamped
wide open
for almost two hours and your organs moved around like chops on a grill
will have
that effect.) But over-the-counter Advil would have done the trick. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">AFTER AFTER</span></b></span></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Life is an elaborate and endless to-do list, and I </span></span> plan my own life with bullet-points, indented sections and
subsections. But the list was put aside for the next
several weeks. I slept a great deal, I ate a very little, and somehow the time
passed hazily, pleasantly and uneventfully. The mild soreness passed, the fatigue that
Kia predicted did overcome me in many small ways over many late spring
afternoons. Amazingly, I was smart enough not to over-exert myself, so I never
did live out her prediction of becoming a hot mess. The lethargy was so pleasant, in fact, that I wondered if I would ever get beyond it. I missed the habitual <i>zz<span style="font-size: large;">zz</span></i><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>zz</i><span style="font-size: small;"><i>zzz</i> in my head, and asked myself, <i>What happens if it doesn't come back, and I'm stuck in hmmmmm for the rest of my life?</i> I needn't have worried. It came back with a vengeance (albeit, in fits and starts), and I am happily making and checking off long to-do lists again.</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The pathology report was a howling success. The cancer was confirmed to be early, slow growing, and making only minor inroads into the muscle. Even better, the genetic testing showed no
inherent </span><span style="font-size: small;">predisposition to the cancer. As Dr. Muto termed it, <i>This was </i></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>just a lightning strike.</i></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeT090kMydRE9trgOnHJ2RA-iBhEBCAF-Qii9uIIgOXhFpr-0XW7O8JaHOC8h_AIIOLtQ6vmXJBRf2ZsAiCAy42ggKnThV2cRsngKcrWm46TzX58rsbFVOtwhynWs0v4tE2rWLrFU9Se0/s1600/jean+luc+picard+winner+winner+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeT090kMydRE9trgOnHJ2RA-iBhEBCAF-Qii9uIIgOXhFpr-0XW7O8JaHOC8h_AIIOLtQ6vmXJBRf2ZsAiCAy42ggKnThV2cRsngKcrWm46TzX58rsbFVOtwhynWs0v4tE2rWLrFU9Se0/s320/jean+luc+picard+winner+winner+.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"> A fluke. It was
completely contained and had been cleanly removed. The cure rate for this kind
of cancer is 90%. But there are no guarantees. </span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">And so we move forward. I dodged a bullet this time, and am immensely
grateful and relieved to have done so. But my blithe certainty of many
healthy years ahead is rightfully shaken. And the fragility of life and its
tender connections to beloved husbands, brothers, friends and memories are spread out before me </span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">plainly</span>, just as they were when my mother and father died.</span></span><br />
<br /></div>
PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-4601455129017865192015-05-25T06:44:00.000-07:002015-05-25T06:46:58.726-07:00This Is Your Uterus<style>
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</style><span style="color: #741b47;"><i>I'm sorry to say</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #741b47;"><i>but sadly, it's true</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #741b47;"><i>that Bang-ups</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #741b47;"><i>and Hang-ups</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #741b47;"><i>can happen to you.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #741b47;"><i> -----Dr Seuss</i></span><br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The first meeting with the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and
Dr. Muto went well. I mention Dana Farber because I’ve found that it
will be a fully realized presence and personality in this narrative. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">While I am not a connoisseur of all things hospital, I have
dealt with enough medical facilities--on my parents’, Peter’s and my own
behalf—to recognize them as living, breathing entities with distinct
personalities. New York Hospital (now New York Presbyterian) is huge and
impersonal. The magnificent machine grinds irrevocably forward for its own
inscrutable purposes, processing patients at its own pace and
with its own—and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> its
own—convenience in mind. In stark and happy contrast is Overlook
Hospital in Summit, NJ, which has adopted patient-centered model of care. Their processes are designed to make patients welcome
and comfortable. Compassionate care and a good-natured common sense typify Overlook’s patient
treatment model. And then there’s Dana Farber—it’s the Overlook model ramped
up, souped up and super-charged by high-end high tech. The staff contact you when they say they will,
scheduled appointments are on time, the staff is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eager</i> to help and ceaselessly cheerful. The gadgetry is fabulous (you're given a GPS while you're on the premises so they can locate you), the place <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chimes</i> with good vibes, a motivated
staff and doctors who seem genuinely interested in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> rather than their jam-packed schedule.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But enough about them, for now. Let’s talk about me. Right
now, it’s all about me. I’m trying to stay out of the swamp, but I am
in a foggy place where I knit ferociously, play solitaire mindlessly and
endlessly, and remember nothing effectively. Friends around me are having all
sorts of surgery, and I find myself shame-faced and embarrassed about
remembering their life changing events only when reminded. </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiS0ZM2YcMoxer6qzyz10Y34TgR2xShll-hEGiYsOvOrnvu24czI1ILjPkSEpGsctdzXg3DmfjXHqE1U7OfcIGai0UOd7YgU8lTlYzPbUcEryGm4FfkUr8NMeKbNYDVyBYn8AyR8-TCjg/s1600/que+sera+sera.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiS0ZM2YcMoxer6qzyz10Y34TgR2xShll-hEGiYsOvOrnvu24czI1ILjPkSEpGsctdzXg3DmfjXHqE1U7OfcIGai0UOd7YgU8lTlYzPbUcEryGm4FfkUr8NMeKbNYDVyBYn8AyR8-TCjg/s400/que+sera+sera.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I know, the moving lips are a little creepy....</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We’ll see if this get’s better or worse as my little drama makes its way towards its inevitable conclusion. </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">That's not being morbid. It’s neutrally fatalistic: what will be will be. And what will be
may not be bad at all. I just have to wait and see. </span>But, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oy</i>, the waiting is starting to wear on me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So let me get to the details you’ve all been waiting for. Dr.
Michael Muto looks like a taller, thinner version of John Hodgman. He was calm,
reassuring, and apologized for not having his usual posse of assistants in tow. His minions were elsewhere attending computer training
to bring them up-to-speed on the newest version of an already state-of-the-art
system. Since I was quite happy with the level of intelligent attention and
care I’d received thus far, I am still trying to imagine what other services
the posse provides. Fresh omelets? What he did have was a third year </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Harvard </span>medical student (John) who listened with rapt attention to every word that fell from the doctor's lips.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">In a nutshell, I have a very slow growing form of
cancer, and happily, I discovered it very, very early. Dr. Muto took a piece of
paper, drew a uterus and proceeded to describe who, what, where and how. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA1ZlThghngR3Q3Q5zRLw5yUGkItUXPWsrTIBMMqfiW_d0Xjqdbn-n8kuYPjnuoKs74RuzvHUmzQ1NJPfYOfReg02tMrKfhiwr6ewdyJmtdSqALt270VYv2zE3HxID4pSUR-ax6qJqxzI/s1600/your+uterus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA1ZlThghngR3Q3Q5zRLw5yUGkItUXPWsrTIBMMqfiW_d0Xjqdbn-n8kuYPjnuoKs74RuzvHUmzQ1NJPfYOfReg02tMrKfhiwr6ewdyJmtdSqALt270VYv2zE3HxID4pSUR-ax6qJqxzI/s400/your+uterus.jpg" width="308" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ovary on the left has just realized what's coming her way.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To
paraphrase Dr. Muto, the uterus is simply a big muscle whose sole purpose is to
push out babies. “Think of it as a thick slab of steak,” he suggested. There
are several possible scenarios for the cancer. It could still be on the very
surface of the organ’s lining, or it might have starting growing into the
muscle, with its severity being judged by how far the cancer
has penetrated. It’s also conceivable the cancer could have migrated into the
fallopian tubes and/or the ovaries. But it’s all speculation until the uterus
and ovaries have been removed for examination and pathology tests.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This will be a laparoscopic hysterectomy<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a>,
with four tiny incisions in the abdomen through which the blood vessels to the fallopian
tubes, ovaries and uterus are severed and cauterized. An incision is made
inside the vagina to separate the uterus, and the organ is removed intact through
the vagina. (By the way, I am sparing you some graphic pix that would have put you off your feed for several weeks.) The lovely little thing is handed over (literally, it seems) to the
pathologist for immediate examination and an initial appraisal. Dr. Muto
referred to this as being done in ‘real time’: the patient is still anesthetized on the
table while the pathologist reads the tea leaves. Any further
exploration into suspect lymph nodes or surrounding organs is determined by the
pathologist’s first read. If all appears reasonably clear, the surgery is
concluded, and the final pathology results are ready in a week. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihDN-Y4DN-OHzx-TJRJgqwofVq5Mb_pMRZkNoxrPkpsdSvQ7kYuyACnG95tMwriPLBmXQJ5y8coON0odgKq3au3sj3v3A0MLmp7UqSMEExCWyM2RgTfTZaXCIbstPhzlV90oUDU0xgXh0/s1600/set+for+life+lottry+ticket.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihDN-Y4DN-OHzx-TJRJgqwofVq5Mb_pMRZkNoxrPkpsdSvQ7kYuyACnG95tMwriPLBmXQJ5y8coON0odgKq3au3sj3v3A0MLmp7UqSMEExCWyM2RgTfTZaXCIbstPhzlV90oUDU0xgXh0/s200/set+for+life+lottry+ticket.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I have absolutely no concerns about the surgery.
To paraphrase Mick Jagger, hysterectomies are like babies--they happen every day. It’s the <i>pathology</i>
results that are the clincher. And the seeming unpredictability of the
pathology findings reminds me of a lottery ticket: you’re either a winner or
you’re not.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But back to the meeting with the doctor. He finally paused
and asked if I had any questions for him. Dr. Muto turned to young John and to tell him
that the explanation so far should have anticipated most—and optimally, all—of
my questions. And amazingly, it had. I skimmed my list, realizing that he had covered everything. Then</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">, explaining that he was about to use this as a teaching moment, </span>he asked John to guess how much of his
explanation the average patient might be expected to retain. Always the first
kid in the class with her hand up, I volunteered, “40%! I think I got about 40% of what you said. But every time you said the
word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cancer</i>, I think my pupils
dilated and then I blanked out for a few seconds.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAiIDm4jF0snYGH6KVRVU-aybKmQ_GvBK-AYwf7KV_BmC6dR_8SU0wrdZdopOtpFbFvYL_b87MA87_54dOLW9m5dEvW_KU5dEo0SinIv8Ddl2mLa_GYEbl9ryjgRWl4XTqMHCzrX7mTc8/s1600/cookie+monster+lost+in+thought.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAiIDm4jF0snYGH6KVRVU-aybKmQ_GvBK-AYwf7KV_BmC6dR_8SU0wrdZdopOtpFbFvYL_b87MA87_54dOLW9m5dEvW_KU5dEo0SinIv8Ddl2mLa_GYEbl9ryjgRWl4XTqMHCzrX7mTc8/s1600/cookie+monster+lost+in+thought.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Gesturing in Peter’s and my direction,
“See <i>them</i>? They’re educated and they came prepared. The average patient gets
between 10 and 30%.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, prepared or not, we are moving forward, with the surgery scheduled for Thursday, May 28. Here's hoping for sufficient serenity to see me through 'til Thursday, and then a winning lottery ticket.</span></div>
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PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-13287990797417176892015-05-17T13:06:00.002-07:002015-05-17T13:13:06.168-07:00Just a Touch of Cancer<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">These last few weeks of holding on<br />
The days are dull, the nights are long<br />
Guess it's better to say<br />
Goodbye to you<br />
Goodbye to you<br />
Goodbye to you<br />
Goodbye to you<br />
Goodbye baby<br />
So long darling<br />
Goodbye to you</span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><i>Goodbye To You</i>--written by Smith, Zachary Holt </span></span></b></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I am about to say a tearful farewell to my uterus. </span>There's no graceful way to ease into this, so I
might as well jump right in. I have a touch of cancer. Just a touch. Not much. Let’s
call it cancer <i>lite</i>. It’s called Endometrial AdenoCarcinoma Grade I. (The capitalization is mine—out of respect for the sheer terror the words arouse.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Let me warn you now: if you are squeamish about lady parts,
their related discharges, fluids and generally messy information, then </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">stop reading here.
I’ll get back to you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">This latest rich life experience started in early March
when I found some light bloody staining in my panties. Who ever liked finding a bloody stain
in her panties? Aside from ending the monthly PMS (the bloating, the wide and
wild mood swings and the raging temper) it used to mean the onset of cramps and bleeding. <i>Real</i> bleeding. You know, the gushing, clotty kind of bleeding. Ah, that
wonderful phenomenon—the monthly signal that you aren’t pregnant. Remember how relieved we
used to be to find that we weren’t pregnant? Remember lengthy discussions about boyfriends and birth control? Over time, those early topics gave way to discussions of birth control and husbands, and even later to fibroids and menopause. But those days are gone. So
this latest appearance of an old friend could not be a good thing. The staining
lasted for about 6 hours ending as suddenly as it had begun. I thought about it for a few hours
more and decided to take the grown-up course of consulting a gynecologist.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">We were in Florida when this happened. But my medical plan is based in Maine, with a tenuous trellis of network
connections across the US and an annual deductible and maximum out-of-pocket that
would trouble Sheldon Adelson. I found a participating gyno in Port St Lucie who
had gone to medical school at Emery. (I was having no truck with doctors whose degrees
came from Alabama State or medical schools located on islands better known as
vacation destinations than centers of medical research.)</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Friday, March 13</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The gyno, Dr. Robert Paré, was easy to talk to and willing to
answer questions—no matter how repetitive or stupid. I like that in a doctor.
He did an initial pelvic examination and found nothing exciting. (Lying there
with my feet in the stirrups, </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I prompted the doctor with a little </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvxM44IgHbmxXOZdZqfK4CCDKwcITb9K3IVc-M6wZCly5ejnnrxd0sVDIGn4Edw3QevWtVfIOsBmZSXPqn9Gtt0lWwLh07OrtEgLgMmYPsa0OPncIkTqx6S8zh-qSo5k10eEN5risevw/s1600/gynecology-stirrups.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTvxM44IgHbmxXOZdZqfK4CCDKwcITb9K3IVc-M6wZCly5ejnnrxd0sVDIGn4Edw3QevWtVfIOsBmZSXPqn9Gtt0lWwLh07OrtEgLgMmYPsa0OPncIkTqx6S8zh-qSo5k10eEN5risevw/s320/gynecology-stirrups.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">uterine humor,</span> “Let
me know if you come across Jimmy Hoffa.” He’s not from New Jersey and didn’t
get the reference, much less the joke.) I’d had a pap smear in summer 2014, with no remarkable
results, so he suggested a biopsy of the uncharted land beyond the cervical trap door. Never having borne children, I still have the cervix of a child. The
doctor thought a femoral block might make the insertion of a pipette
bearable—or not. I might end up clinging to the ceiling by my fingernails… He
suggested we start with a trans-vaginal sonogram to see if we could find Waldo.
</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Monday, March 23</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The trans-vaginal sonogram revealed nothing very exciting
either. The ovaries appeared normal but there was some ‘congestion’ in the uterus.
The doctor recommended a D&C—that ever-ready solution to any uncertainty about
your uterus. If in doubt, scrape it out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Thursday, April<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>16</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">So I found myself in a surgi-center on Route I in Port St
Lucie, Florida. This was hardly the epicenter of medical excellence on the East
Coast, but it would do nicely for a mundane procedure. I underwent the usual surgical prep with an
inadequate surgical gown, rubber soled socks, a little paper shower cap to
cover my hair and an IV line insertion. These preparations were accompanied by
repeated questions such as, “What are you having done today?” and my personal
favorite, “Do you have any loose or rotting teeth that might fall out?” WTF is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> about?, I wondered.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I answered civilly the first
two or three times. By the fourth inquiry into the state of my teeth, I assured
them that none of my teeth were rotten, none were removable, and
none were likely to fall out of my mouth any time soon. So let’s give it a
rest already. The staff smiled politely and dropped the subject.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The D&C went smoothly. I sailed through it, thrilled by
the prospect of the best kind of nap to follow the procedure: drugged sleep. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Better living through chemistry</i> is my
motto. The doctor promised lab results within 4-5 days. He told Peter
everything looked fine. He’d removed one benign polyp and had found nothing
else, so the pathology test should be nothing more than a formality.
But as we all know, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Should be</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">are</i> can be two entirely different
things. </span></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Tuesday, April 21</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">The doctor called to tell me that—to his own amazement—the
pathologist found some squamous cells in the D&C tissue sample. Just a few.
There’s no mass, there’s no tumor. This is in the very early stages and very
slow growing. This is the best kind of cancer to have. (Now <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that’s</i> a fascinating statement, if ever
there was one.) “You’ll have a complete hysterectomy, and you’ll be fine.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpDxhtxe5eeSI_1ZM0F20d0jOjskI68Vk1ZdsmGJ1ENnPmzYGkTYrJb2bDagYU9lEN3BsuqNm1FhRheJRuV4wA-9F8mt9jVdr4yAAkehrObSobmwbqGPChpdAsJQFUN4czKdYR0SZ7XyI/s1600/Plush-Knit-Uterus-Hi+there.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpDxhtxe5eeSI_1ZM0F20d0jOjskI68Vk1ZdsmGJ1ENnPmzYGkTYrJb2bDagYU9lEN3BsuqNm1FhRheJRuV4wA-9F8mt9jVdr4yAAkehrObSobmwbqGPChpdAsJQFUN4czKdYR0SZ7XyI/s320/Plush-Knit-Uterus-Hi+there.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">At
least I think that’s what he said, but it’s hard to know for sure with that tornado siren wailing in my head. My first response was, “The ovaries too? I am
inordinately attached to my ovaries. Do they really have to go?” </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioN_kSh7rdB5SOkCN06u5H52bozy4LENn7ps2saowBnlZ8pFNt5-iGfmk7-8mjeC3QzRXXUBfcp1XNPpkbOVrWR-dhgxuB7cSJhtAq7jASPO-8yQjIPAkkeaIIIFYZINtOluy0_Ika5zs/s1600/Ovary-Plush_3637-l-500x333.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioN_kSh7rdB5SOkCN06u5H52bozy4LENn7ps2saowBnlZ8pFNt5-iGfmk7-8mjeC3QzRXXUBfcp1XNPpkbOVrWR-dhgxuB7cSJhtAq7jASPO-8yQjIPAkkeaIIIFYZINtOluy0_Ika5zs/s200/Ovary-Plush_3637-l-500x333.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwH3AKgbhALohOxh6-Pwpkp838hRfuab_GHSDyVJMAiUJRKxwCCU9b7jJ-91qx3kCIJfTND578VbkJ9B5v5sbfkb0NVIQ3CsgTWd5WuoIqj75UqibbnRZD7_4D5Nuo216ozDDh1ZzI-aY/s1600/trucknuts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwH3AKgbhALohOxh6-Pwpkp838hRfuab_GHSDyVJMAiUJRKxwCCU9b7jJ-91qx3kCIJfTND578VbkJ9B5v5sbfkb0NVIQ3CsgTWd5WuoIqj75UqibbnRZD7_4D5Nuo216ozDDh1ZzI-aY/s200/trucknuts.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">I am always
astonished at the absolute ease with which male gynecologists are willing to jettison
women’s ovaries. If we were discussing doing away with their testicles, there
would be the equivalent of Supreme Court arguments mounted to debate the ethical
and medical pro’s and con’s. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ovaries</i>?
Those are expendable. The doctor was cheerfully assertive, “Oh, yes, of course.
Everything goes.” I muttered something to the effect that we would be talking
further about that particular point, and suddenly realized that I was utterly
breathless—as if I had been running a race. I finally gathered my wits
sufficiently to ask what I needed to do next, and he told me that his office
would contact me to set up an appointment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Well, I knew I wasn’t about to have anything more done in
Florida. If I really had cancer I was heading to either New York’s Sloan
Kettering Hospital or to Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute. All those years
of corporate discipline and logical thinking may have paid off. I evaluated who
among my friends and loved ones would have a clear head and useful information
regarding a choice of doctors. A good and sensible friend, Dr. Susan Black, came to mind. (More about Susan in
another blog, I promise.) Susan named Dr. Michael Muto at Dana Farber. I
checked my medical plan, found him to be a participating physician, and kicked the machine into gear to make an appointment with him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">My first appointment with Dr, Muto is scheduled for Tuesday, May 19.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">Am I freaked out? Yes and no. If I sound nonchalant about the coming storm, it's because I'm </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">in a golden barge </span>floating </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 150%;">serenely</span> down my very favorite river--denial. As long as I can go to the gym and run my flabby little ass off, what could possibly be wrong? But reality will set in on Tuesday. Stay tuned for more. After all, if it’s not one thing, it's another.</span></div>
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<br />PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-29599649881375631672013-01-30T07:41:00.001-08:002013-02-02T13:24:32.405-08:00My Life and Thighs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>May your hands always be busy <br />May your feet always be swift<br />May you have a strong foundation <br />When the winds of changes shift<br />May your heart always be joyful <br />And may your song always be sung<br />May you stay forever young<br />Forever young, forever young <br />May you stay forever young.</i></span></span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">---Bob Dylan</span></span></span></b> </span></i></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirr-24RcjEVi4raig8BLaPcMPr9CflU2bchplWfx-JwpTHo8cb-vzj_Cqko1Im6LM-KbLlJfzZz_rTcIMOODv621jYG2RgvcPT17R4RvCrOvMQ-ZQ1sLdED7dfKE1f28SguZFkFm21kmE/s1600/yellow+suit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirr-24RcjEVi4raig8BLaPcMPr9CflU2bchplWfx-JwpTHo8cb-vzj_Cqko1Im6LM-KbLlJfzZz_rTcIMOODv621jYG2RgvcPT17R4RvCrOvMQ-ZQ1sLdED7dfKE1f28SguZFkFm21kmE/s200/yellow+suit.jpg" width="101" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Then</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Remember when we looked like <i>this</i> in a bathing suit?<span style="font-size: small;"> </span> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">No? Well, okay, neither do I. But I’m
reasonably sure we didn’t look like <i>this, </i>either. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheWHcm3bkdjoYZIwjZDC52e4qMXLbCBHfBDpTAKKumoDNVFWiLPWWQ0xS1gQAapCE9ojy8G1MbInWUHB-pXUMCYeTAWG1wrMgic2fgLoUCcw8WwaSs924pMWHw2s24wPYPWGYjgJ1teO4/s1600/old+lady+in+a+swimming+cap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheWHcm3bkdjoYZIwjZDC52e4qMXLbCBHfBDpTAKKumoDNVFWiLPWWQ0xS1gQAapCE9ojy8G1MbInWUHB-pXUMCYeTAWG1wrMgic2fgLoUCcw8WwaSs924pMWHw2s24wPYPWGYjgJ1teO4/s200/old+lady+in+a+swimming+cap.jpg" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Now</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgasvQVoiFl2DX6QAcJ0UQO5MP2tY5r3MnEKKVNsZgxy9PyDXvfJfTWshi3FvqSNVI6C-e037cD4oB6PB3bB10X8yb8IWzY0cEiFYrDMTWFG1Tcg8isxbGNJXv1m_QukHpR6gmu45yo0yg/s1600/bug+eyed+doll.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgasvQVoiFl2DX6QAcJ0UQO5MP2tY5r3MnEKKVNsZgxy9PyDXvfJfTWshi3FvqSNVI6C-e037cD4oB6PB3bB10X8yb8IWzY0cEiFYrDMTWFG1Tcg8isxbGNJXv1m_QukHpR6gmu45yo0yg/s1600/bug+eyed+doll.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fat is a constant in my universe.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For many years I considered myself
a poster child for Weightwatchers: a success story who actually kept the weight
off. But that was then, and this is now. Today I could still be on a
Weightwatchers poster, but now it would be titled <b><i>MOST WANTED</i></b>. Time and fat march on. (By the
way, did you know that is a constant amount of fat in the
universe<span style="font-size: small;">?</span> If I lose weight, someone else gains it. It works like one of those
liquid filled google-eyed dolls. If you squeeze the body, fluid rushes
to its head and its eyes bulge out. Fat works the same way. If my butt gets smaller, someone else's grows that much larger.) Anyway, things have changed enough so I am horrified by the sight on my thighs on parade. The
cut-off jeans I once wore—the ones that flashed my nether cheeks—were packed
away long ago. The bathing suits sat in the bottom dresser drawers so long that their
elastic dried out and turned to powder. I assiduously, religiously and
carefully avoided wearing a bathing suit for many, many years.
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOiI8oIxE4vzUcSRg4HEVgkeW5DmrNvbkpWvRJNx1yXbIkMa2qJVmixB5VPyGQNcaFhFIbs77PbPDUSbXEJMdMjf5vWuR045rwPg8IOwq4ZzfI72rAGrxht1TDtwdOCRywN8W9UHnVp8c/s1600/strong+men+crying.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOiI8oIxE4vzUcSRg4HEVgkeW5DmrNvbkpWvRJNx1yXbIkMa2qJVmixB5VPyGQNcaFhFIbs77PbPDUSbXEJMdMjf5vWuR045rwPg8IOwq4ZzfI72rAGrxht1TDtwdOCRywN8W9UHnVp8c/s200/strong+men+crying.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">I think I've made Daniel Craig cry.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But an upcoming Florida vacation
has brought my thighs back to light. I discussed the aging-body issue with one
of my stalwart Stony Brook friends, Barbara. We agreed that a potato sack swathing
me from neck to knee would be the kindest way to go. So I screwed my courage to the sticking-place and headed to L.L. Bean to shop for a bathing suit in the dead of January. No
more two-piece deals with lots of ribs and hips and butt cheek on display. The
sight of my aging, ample flesh would make strong men cry. And they would not be crying with joy.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2YewBQiiT5zXuJ-7mO933WnmilWs2Mm45HS6I04nti571osCsQFCvfFS-T3W5D07P0F0vaHFb0O0bSmsdJq4QZDYeqiBv7l7woXC0uAyHQGEgHy-gbD5eYvw28Nq1X8xadPVew4TSA1M/s1600/remote+cabin+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2YewBQiiT5zXuJ-7mO933WnmilWs2Mm45HS6I04nti571osCsQFCvfFS-T3W5D07P0F0vaHFb0O0bSmsdJq4QZDYeqiBv7l7woXC0uAyHQGEgHy-gbD5eYvw28Nq1X8xadPVew4TSA1M/s1600/remote+cabin+2.jpg" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Remote fitting rooms</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I found a remote set of
fitting rooms near the bathing suit racks, where I hoped to encounter as few life forms as possible. The last thi<span style="font-size: small;">ng I wanted was <span style="font-size: small;">sympathetic</span> cl<span style="font-size: small;">u</span>cking from another</span> surivor of the Age of <span style="font-size: small;">Aquari<span style="font-size: small;">us</span></span>. I proceeded to drag piles of bathing suit tops and bottoms into the tiny cubicle for a brutal trying-on binge. <span style="font-size: small;">T</span>his <span style="font-size: small;">w</span>as a way to methodically desensitize myself to the horrific sight of myself in a bathing suit. If I s<span style="font-size: small;">aw</span> myself in enough suits, I would numb m<span style="font-size: small;">yse<span style="font-size: small;">lf to the</span></span> sight. <span style="font-size: small;">Since we have finally </span>hit 0˚
Fahrenheit up here in the northern paradise, I was layered in shirts, sweaters,
scarves topped with a down parka. That doesn’t include the requisite jeans,
sweat socks and bra. Peeling off the layers of winter clothes, I faced myself
in a full-length mirror. I think Joseph Conrad said it best: <i>The horror! The horror!</i> I was staring at myself wearing ill-fitting
swimming shorts, navy blue sweat socks and a tankini top that covered ribs,
hips and still had more folds of fabric looking for a place to fall. The dimpled thighs completed the picture. I shuddered.<span style="font-size: small;"> I wasn't suffic<span style="font-size: small;">ien<span style="font-size: small;">tly numbe<span style="font-size: small;">d yet.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Finally, I settled on a tankini top (the
better to cover the ribs and hips) and a bottom with a modesty panel (the
better to cover as much thigh as possible). The names alone are enough to<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=619150030184237549" name="_GoBack"></a>
make me gag. <i>Tankini</i>? WTF is that? <i>Modesty</i> panel? I used to strut around in teeny, tiny two-piece affairs that barely covered the cleft of my ass. Nowadays I
find myself using the term <i>age-appropriate</i> a lot. </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_O66vWp09b6lotMSZu3h-AXsBn7hrWXwKeUsCJ2GL1Ubt2V6AaO88wVtw9Lv5CsrRrIsoVJvc6dHfhahKT5Wpff96T34_wImHwIc37tEMKDZ0ywCm0YYS6do9rO-LGRMV7f26ken44cI/s1600/old+lady-in-her-swim-suit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_O66vWp09b6lotMSZu3h-AXsBn7hrWXwKeUsCJ2GL1Ubt2V6AaO88wVtw9Lv5CsrRrIsoVJvc6dHfhahKT5Wpff96T34_wImHwIc37tEMKDZ0ywCm0YYS6do9rO-LGRMV7f26ken44cI/s320/old+lady-in-her-swim-suit.jpg" width="317" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">My current reincarnation</span></span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So this is it. I am officially old.
I am wearing an old woman’s swimsuit. This is where I should be launching
into a moving meditation on aging (gracefully or otherwise) and the female
body. Suffice it to say I just don’t have it in me to spin that yarn. </span></span></div>
PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-63176824285660681092012-10-01T11:30:00.000-07:002012-10-03T13:13:57.754-07:00The Wit and Wisdom of Mitt Romney<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> GUENEVERE: <i>What else do the simple folk do </i></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> To help them escape when they're blue?</span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> ARTHUR: <i>They sit around and wonder what royal folk would do</i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> And that's what the simple folk do. </span></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">
---Alan J. Lerner, <i>Camelot</i></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">On Yom Kippur eve, I found myself hesitating to post a
snarky criticism of Mitt Romney. No doubt, Mitt has a tin ear. Tone deaf and
elitist, yes. Too many years as a corporate executive, being yes-ed to death by
underlings. But he seems to be a doting husband and father. And whatever else
his tax returns may reveal, they do demonstrate one thing: Mitt tithes faithfully and
generously. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So what is it about him? It’s the <i>quelque manqué</i> factor—something essential is missing. I find his
view of the poor and the struggling appalling, and his detachment chilling. These
are our fellow human beings, and there--but for the grace of God—go Mitt, you
and I.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Five days later, I've overcome my hesitation.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOIMzUcmrbDM8MeOTkDm5bMYfcAIGFDRLeQYOetTgRPWijMErEBBQ6XJr0KwrkXWjtFz2P_zQIJluslurhG2Ne-MnHatNosUFQ-LuOE_LEtrBk8AjjPHhg85rhqNlPv0Z7gFQI1taxbzM/s1600/money+rose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOIMzUcmrbDM8MeOTkDm5bMYfcAIGFDRLeQYOetTgRPWijMErEBBQ6XJr0KwrkXWjtFz2P_zQIJluslurhG2Ne-MnHatNosUFQ-LuOE_LEtrBk8AjjPHhg85rhqNlPv0Z7gFQI1taxbzM/s200/money+rose.jpg" width="110" /></a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>1.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></b><b>If Mitt wins, everything will be coming
up roses. Markets will spontaneously right themselves. Elusive capital will magically re-appear, and all will be right with the world. Or maybe not…. </b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">…if we win on November 6th there will be a great deal of
optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back, and
we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the
economy. If the president gets reelected, I don't know what will happen. I can
never predict what the markets will do. </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion: A. Who knew governing could be so easy?</b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b> B.
Didn't he just contradict himself?</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 1.25in; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>2.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></b><b>Mitt is a man of the world, with a sophisticated understanding of other countries and their cultures.</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">…When I was back in my private equity
days, we went to China to buy a factory there, employed about 20,000 people,
and they were almost all young women between the ages of about 18 and 22 or 23.
They were saving for potentially becoming married, and they worked in these
huge factories, they made various small appliances, and as we were walking
through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per
day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with little bathrooms at
the end with maybe ten rooms. And the rooms, they had 12 girls per room, three
bunk beds on top of each other. You've seen them.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And around this factory was a fence, a
huge fence with barbed wire, and guard towers. And we said, "Gosh, I can't
believe that you, you know, you keep these girls in." They said, "No,
no, no—this is to keep other people from coming in. Because people want so
badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out, or they'll
just come in here and start working and try and get compensated. So, we—this is
to keep people out." And they said, "Actually, Chinese New Year, is
the girls go home, sometimes they decide they've saved enough money and they
don't come back to the factory." And he said, "And so on the weekend
after Chinese New Year, there'll be a line of people hundreds long outside the
factory, hoping that some girls haven't come back and they can come to the factory.”</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion: The man can’t recognize
slave labor when he comes face to face with it.</b></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>3.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></b><b>On Ann Romney’s value to the campaign:</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We
use Ann sparingly right now so that people don't get tired of her.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion:</b><b><span style="font-style: normal;"> I wonder if Ann</span></b><i><b><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></b></i><b><span style="font-style: normal;">owns a gun</span></b><i><b><span style="font-style: normal;">. </span></b></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>4.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <b>Mitt</b></span></b><b>
inherited nothing. Really?</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By the way, but my dad and Ann's dad
did quite well in their lives but when they came to the end of their lives and
passed along the inheritances to Ann and to me we both decided to give it all
away. So I have inherited nothing. Everything Ann and I have we have earned the
old fashioned way.</span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion:
No, he did not inherit <i>nothing</i>. He may not have chosen to keep the money. But he did <i>receive</i> the money. Odds are he decided that it was more advantageous to turn the inheritance into a tax deduction.</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>5.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <b> </b></span><span style="font-size: small;">On
the 47%:</span></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">All right, there are 47 percent who are
with him [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are
victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who
believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to
you-name-it -- that that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to
them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. ... These are
people who pay no income tax. ... [M]y job is not to worry about those people.
I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for
their lives."</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion: </b></span></span><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? </span></span></b><b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And who gave these parasites the right to vote, anyway?</span></span></b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6B1V2Zc39wKoQZsPaq-lHckJQfOikf1Ret98wIn2Od_UCZOtmf5CzL2D4DWfOBToMd6YWZx2wzrLDfUoVsw26PsLOJv1s1uuU3bQfeW4kfZL3d0FGRMVPavsn0vWDz3JxZpI1z_MLqrs/s1600/ebenezer+scrooge.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6B1V2Zc39wKoQZsPaq-lHckJQfOikf1Ret98wIn2Od_UCZOtmf5CzL2D4DWfOBToMd6YWZx2wzrLDfUoVsw26PsLOJv1s1uuU3bQfeW4kfZL3d0FGRMVPavsn0vWDz3JxZpI1z_MLqrs/s320/ebenezer+scrooge.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.25in; page-break-after: avoid; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>6.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <b></b></span></b><b>Mitt
has the common touch.</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">I tell you what! $10,000 bet?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion: Rarely have so few words conveyed so much. That was Mitt
challenging Texas Governor Rick Perry to a bet—on camera and before a national
audience, no less—on whether he (Mitt) had advocated an individual health
coverage mandate while he was governor of Massachusetts. Perry responded like a reasonable adult dealing with a bragging, blustering teenager,
“I’m not in the bettin’ business.” </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>7.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></b><b>More of that wonderful common touch. </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">[I don't follow NASCAR] as
closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are
NASCAR team owners. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZQ_WBUOZbUCICZF0uf_hRxQzGZuT_WmWcCnaXUEoE68zguJfShNW4cfUxWSA-t6wE1rczv_bZa5IaRr7yR0AmRt-C7M6GxtsYMr4wRlpE2lsQcIlRiq8RLMwMEBJUJL37ngZBFq_0nFs/s1600/origami+money+car.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZQ_WBUOZbUCICZF0uf_hRxQzGZuT_WmWcCnaXUEoE68zguJfShNW4cfUxWSA-t6wE1rczv_bZa5IaRr7yR0AmRt-C7M6GxtsYMr4wRlpE2lsQcIlRiq8RLMwMEBJUJL37ngZBFq_0nFs/s200/origami+money+car.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion: I think this is where Mitt bursts into a heartfelt performance of <i>What Do the Simple Folk Do?.</i></b></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYdsxFRYtnfiu_Y5holyGkRVoNTBsA6eDJw7DuJc3cIRSrXE9_iObjMy1Z26vsNCH9PIG1w_nlS6jjq9rgIO9brDndn49TOIOQtctvpfLmT0jUkTcgyjGd4XpsX7rHuX_m7myrpoiWblU/s1600/richard+burton+as+king+arthur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYdsxFRYtnfiu_Y5holyGkRVoNTBsA6eDJw7DuJc3cIRSrXE9_iObjMy1Z26vsNCH9PIG1w_nlS6jjq9rgIO9brDndn49TOIOQtctvpfLmT0jUkTcgyjGd4XpsX7rHuX_m7myrpoiWblU/s200/richard+burton+as+king+arthur.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>8. <b>Empathy is everything, and Mitt has it in
spades.</b></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: small;"> I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvHNlUnv1QYQJc8oRgAgmyupssRVS-MyzApnyh_UoPx2dFAAu3ZXUdIF8zCulxHRykdsvVXWodp5SQ4ZpAqPFWYI6ub58QCDxAHHhFWeQBzP7C7m4NzHaWdnfik0ixys3hDMlu88WcoII/s1600/uncle+moneybags+shrugs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvHNlUnv1QYQJc8oRgAgmyupssRVS-MyzApnyh_UoPx2dFAAu3ZXUdIF8zCulxHRykdsvVXWodp5SQ4ZpAqPFWYI6ub58QCDxAHHhFWeQBzP7C7m4NzHaWdnfik0ixys3hDMlu88WcoII/s200/uncle+moneybags+shrugs.jpg" width="182" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Conclusion:
That was Mitt joking with an audience of unemployed
people in Florida. Can this man read an audience, or what! The audience laughed nervously but politely. They could have lynched him, but they didn't. Now that's what I call charitable.</b></span></span></div>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"></span></i></b>
PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-71930406914528093112012-08-15T06:13:00.001-07:002012-08-15T06:16:53.288-07:00Wisconsin Death Trip--Next Chapter...College Station, TX: two dead and four injured by a deranged shooter whose Facebook page included a list of snipers he found <i>inspiring</i>. In the words of his stepfather, Thomas Caffal was "crazy as hell".<br />
<br />
Make that three dead: Caffal died of the wounds he received in a wild west-style gun battle with police.<br />
<br />
Madmen and guns don't mix.<br />
<br />PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-5185675030597691052012-08-08T15:42:00.001-07:002012-08-15T05:55:34.280-07:00Wisconsin Death Trip<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">People turn their heads and quickly
look away. Like a newborn baby it just happens ev'ryday.-- </span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mick Jagger,</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Paint it Black</span></i></div>
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Another vicious and senseless
shooting, this time in Wisconsin. A crazy man entered a Sikh temple and
starting killing people with a semi-automatic weapon. This comes close on the
heels of the July 20<sup>th</sup> Aurora, Colorado movie theater massacre. And
the Aurora shooting followed the April 2<sup>nd</sup> slaughter of seven people
at a college in Oakland, California by a crazed former student. On February 7,
a student shot three and injured six more at an Ohio high school before being
stopped. Oh, wait—I’ve skipped over the May 20<sup>th</sup> shooting in a
Seattle café (three dead and two wounded in the café, and one more shot dead<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>while the shooter was on the loose ).</div>
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The list goes on and on. We don’t
even hear about the smaller massacres anymore. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></i></div>
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In the wake of the Wisconsin murders, one of CNN’s talking heads suggested the Sikh
community take this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">opportunity</i> (yes,
the twit really did call that appalling carnage as an opportunity) to educate the world about their
faith. The only thing lacking from this breathlessly tasteless comment was the
teachable moment metaphor.</div>
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And our politicians? Useless. Utterly useless. If Romney or Obama
utter one more platitude about tragedy and loss and overcoming sorrow, I’ll
throw up. Platitudes are cheap to toss around. <b>Do something!</b></div>
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A friend of mine, Susan, a
doctor who spent years in South Africa providing healthcare to women and
children, despises the men of South Africa. She sputters with disgust as she
describes their reckless spreading of
HIV to the women in their lives. People are dying like flies from HIV, but the
culturally accepted norms--polygamy and male promiscuity--are still attuned to the 1800’s. Susan is furious
that these men don’t understand that the real world around them has changed, and that they must
change their behavior in order to survive. It occurred to me that the South
Africans have stalled at a cultural blind spot. The age-old practices are
killing them, but people keep on keepin’ on as if it were 1812 instead of 2012.
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hello! Is anybody in there?</i></div>
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And doesn't that apply to the United States? Haven't we stalled at a long-standing assumption about guns? I’m sure that wholesale
slaughter is not what the founding fathers had in mind when they spoke of bearing arms.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDCniZmjyMRyuFMzzJqdbftFwx29a6I9LMGegfz4ANeudxTaR_bkxWRLNqJ2xcaMkSsMH8gWB1o4Oduue5el3z75sKYtT8eBDaynk_eHKUz3m2CxMSgGc8K9CfDuLGAI6QU_HfnmzVr10/s1600/semi+auto+gun+and+bullets.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDCniZmjyMRyuFMzzJqdbftFwx29a6I9LMGegfz4ANeudxTaR_bkxWRLNqJ2xcaMkSsMH8gWB1o4Oduue5el3z75sKYtT8eBDaynk_eHKUz3m2CxMSgGc8K9CfDuLGAI6QU_HfnmzVr10/s200/semi+auto+gun+and+bullets.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUv9Ddh7I5W3drtmpe-LmSLgG2-8vKrigOiYfW_WZIDbedVAoWjR-N6ZlQtEFpllxhAoo2WVh1_yvIcI5bIOBD8jL6kM6dV9xRUIbgCExgZprAE_31euaMYv6Odm23Pb_onNq61ix6HfI/s1600/revolutionary+war+handguns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUv9Ddh7I5W3drtmpe-LmSLgG2-8vKrigOiYfW_WZIDbedVAoWjR-N6ZlQtEFpllxhAoo2WVh1_yvIcI5bIOBD8jL6kM6dV9xRUIbgCExgZprAE_31euaMYv6Odm23Pb_onNq61ix6HfI/s200/revolutionary+war+handguns.jpg" width="200" /></a>Most of the shooters seem to be
mentally disturbed and yet the NRA is still insisting on the untouchable perfection and clarity of the Second Amendment. Having
guns for hunting—and even for self defense—is one thing. But making weapons
that were clearly intended for battlefields and wars accessible to un-medicated
schizophrenics is quite another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The NRA
and gun activists would better represent their cause by joining forces with gun
control advocates to solve this one, obvious problem: how to keep weapons out
of the hands of the clearly dangerous and delusional. Surely this is something
we can all agree on. The NRA would be enhancing its own reputation as a
responsible organization leading the movement to curb excesses and
dangers inherent in its sport. And the gun control lobby would be thrilled to
have a working partner in its concerns. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hello! Is anybody in there?</i></div>
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PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-60461369756408211082012-07-19T10:34:00.000-07:002012-07-21T07:51:16.865-07:00The Pirates of Craigslist<style>
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<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-generic-font-family:auto;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-font-pitch:variable;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-font-signature:-1610612625 25 0 0 507 0;}
@font-face
{font-family:"Comic Sans MS";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">panose</span>-1:3 15 7 2 3 3 2 2 2 4;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-font-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">charset</span>:0;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-generic-font-family:auto;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-font-pitch:variable;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-font-signature:647 0 0 0 159 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">unhide</span>:no;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">qformat</span>:yes;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-parent:"";
margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">Arial</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-font-family:"MS 明朝";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-font-family:"Times New Roman";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>;}
p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraph</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraph</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraph</span>
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-priority:34;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">unhide</span>:no;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">qformat</span>:yes;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-add-space:auto;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">Arial</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-font-family:"MS 明朝";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-font-family:"Times New Roman";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>;}
p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst</span>
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-priority:34;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">unhide</span>:no;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">qformat</span>:yes;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-add-space:auto;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">Arial</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-font-family:"MS 明朝";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-font-family:"Times New Roman";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>;}
p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle</span>
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-priority:34;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">unhide</span>:no;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">qformat</span>:yes;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-add-space:auto;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">Arial</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-font-family:"MS 明朝";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-font-family:"Times New Roman";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>;}
p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpLast</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpLast</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoListParagraphCxSpLast</span>
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-priority:34;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">unhide</span>:no;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">qformat</span>:yes;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-type:export-only;
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:0in;
margin-left:.5in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-add-space:auto;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">Arial</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-font-family:"MS 明朝";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-font-family:"Times New Roman";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>;}
.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoChpDefault</span>
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-style-type:export-only;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-default-props:yes;
font-size:11.0pt;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">ansi</span>-font-size:11.0pt;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">Arial</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">ascii</span>-font-family:<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">Arial</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-font-family:"MS 明朝";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">fareast</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">hansi</span>-font-family:<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">Arial</span>;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-font-family:"Times New Roman";
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>-theme-font:minor-<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">bidi</span>;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-header-margin:.5in;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-footer-margin:.5in;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-paper-source:0;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
/* List Definitions */
@list l0
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-list-id:119961882;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-list-type:hybrid;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-list-template-ids:1488757534 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715 67698703 67698713 67698715;}
@list l0:level1
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:left;
margin-left:.25in;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level2
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-format:alpha-lower;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:left;
margin-left:.75in;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level3
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-format:roman-lower;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:right;
margin-left:1.25in;
text-indent:-9.0pt;}
@list l0:level4
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:left;
margin-left:1.75in;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level5
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-format:alpha-lower;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:left;
margin-left:2.25in;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level6
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-format:roman-lower;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:right;
margin-left:2.75in;
text-indent:-9.0pt;}
@list l0:level7
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:left;
margin-left:3.25in;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level8
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-format:alpha-lower;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:left;
margin-left:3.75in;
text-indent:-.25in;}
@list l0:level9
{<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-format:roman-lower;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-tab-stop:none;
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">mso</span>-level-number-position:right;
margin-left:4.25in;
text-indent:-9.0pt;}
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">ol</span>
{margin-bottom:0in;}
<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">ul</span>
{margin-bottom:0in;}
-->
</style> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 150%;"><b><i>But ships are but boards, sailors but men: there be land-rats and water-rats, land-thieves, and water-thieves,—I mean pirates</i></b>—Shakespeare, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Merchant of Venice</i>, Act I, Sc. III</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB0X-_2ld9MDOOrNjLCYZDmMeMwt7SNaLIsPpYoVGdJG0KFagz_ZczbwTMiU3b2iiTPIpelosqdy3v3CBSUh_RZsMmlEbdBTBGPVpS8tyOswjVpJHLzW4caUwxOh99LQ2m7cick6-KHKw/s1600/Springfield+DR+Aft.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB0X-_2ld9MDOOrNjLCYZDmMeMwt7SNaLIsPpYoVGdJG0KFagz_ZczbwTMiU3b2iiTPIpelosqdy3v3CBSUh_RZsMmlEbdBTBGPVpS8tyOswjVpJHLzW4caUwxOh99LQ2m7cick6-KHKw/s320/Springfield+DR+Aft.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="color: #0b5394; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: large;">We’ve been trying to sell our old dining room set on craigslist. So far, I’ve been contacted by more marine engineers than I knew existed on the face of the earth. Eva, Kimberly, Sean, Lisa and Jim are all stuck at sea, with limited access to the internet. Despite their limited access, they’ve managed to squeeze out precious minutes to comb craigslist for an expensive dining room set. And by some miraculous coincidence, each and every one of them wants to surprise a son, father, brother or some other member of the family whose life will be made complete by the surprise delivery of a mahogany-crotch veneered dining table the size of a Volkswagen minibus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Eva, Kimberly, Sean, Lisa and Jim may have limited access to their bank account, but they seem to enjoy an easy and limitless relationship with PayPal.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">And they also have transport agents available at a moment's notice. (I don’t have a transport agent in my contact list or rolodex. Do you?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here’s an example of their introductory spiel:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Thanks for the prompt response.. I am ready to buy it now but i am not in town at the moment as i am a marine engineer manager and due to the nature of my work, It hard to make a phone calls and visiting of website are restricted but i squeezed out time to check this advert and send you an email regarding it. I really want it to be a surprise for my dad so i wont let him know anything about it until it gets delivered to him, i am sure he will be more than happy with it. I insisted on PayPal because i don't have access to my bank account online as i don't have internet banking, but i can pay from my PayPal account, as i have my bank a/c attached to it, i will need you to give me your PayPal email address and the price so i can make the payment asap for it and please if you don't have PayPal account yet, it is very easy to set up, go to <a href="http://www.paypal.com/">http://www.paypal.com/</a> and get it set up, after you have set it up i will only need the e-mail address you use for registration with PayPal so as to put the money through. I will make a solid pick up arrangement with my transport agent after i have made the payment...</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">I thought the first message was odd, and I responded with the suggestion that the intrepid engineer drop by to inspect the furniture once he was back on shore. Cash and Carry only. And don’t you want to take a closer look at what you’re buying before you plunk down $4000? And once variations on the same message began to arrive in bulk, I knew there couldn't be that many ships at sea.... I also couldn't resist answering. And once the email exchange began in earnest, things fell apart. Lisa, Kim, Sean, Eva and Jim have limited English vocabularies. If the original message looks a little hinky, once my pen pals were forced to improvise, the narrative crumbled into something bordering on gibberish. I began to take perverse pleasure in watching them tie themselves into linguistic knots, and finally concluded there was nothing more coming from craigslist than the pleasure of pulling the wings off flies.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">So what have we learned from this latest rich life experience? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">1.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Marine engineering does not suffer from gender bias. From my scientific sampling, fully 60% of the profession is made up of women.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">2.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">My life is lacking a solid relationship with a transport agent. These people are at sea, but seem to have moving companies at their beck and call at all times. Why is this luxury missing from my own life?</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">3.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">What lonely lives marine engineers have! Every one of these missives was sent in the middle of the night. They’ve been reduced to trolling craigslist at 1 AM for dining room sets for the loved ones they miss so desperately.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">4.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">Surely these folks are related to that African diplomat with the million dollar bank balance who wanted only the opportunity to transfer his balance into my checking account.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;" /></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: large;">5. There be pirates out there...... </span></div>
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<br /></div>PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-27377109281359799832012-04-04T10:57:00.000-07:002012-04-04T13:19:49.147-07:00Medical Care and the Constitution (Yes, I can bleed you. It’ll cost you a chicken.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirRa9hH9vPxEixc21lLSMPP49m4_pGnrOrMvIWSO8n7y-fii0nckLQ_vh1bVQH4w2YrZgCqzr7Ryqx86qk-4wSQ6e-3T5BXZT3dcZBcA1jauqEHvZTRcAqbZAn_2UML9rxFoG1lYJzqOU/s1600/leeches.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirRa9hH9vPxEixc21lLSMPP49m4_pGnrOrMvIWSO8n7y-fii0nckLQ_vh1bVQH4w2YrZgCqzr7Ryqx86qk-4wSQ6e-3T5BXZT3dcZBcA1jauqEHvZTRcAqbZAn_2UML9rxFoG1lYJzqOU/s400/leeches.jpg" width="263" /></a></td></tr>
<tr style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">18th century high-tech equipment</td></tr>
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I<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">n answer to the burning question
of whether the mandate to contract for medical care is constitutional or not….
Let me answer with another question: did the original Constitution—written in
the late 18</span><sup style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> century—anticipate massive and influential medical and
pharmaceutical industries? I don’t think so. At the time medical care amounted
to bleeding and poultices. </span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim6tkBrbnuAp_6pJxRId7EqEM6j2TiQZDZn4YSxY-DvexPy-7eqwAZbxuhXuANJBoDjrKNnaSWkBjsacfZ5QjnnmXj2dJIJqQDyp6WetieJeEPMcsW0dM_qv0nT1zFfTKhcXutEUspKJw/s1600/bloodletting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim6tkBrbnuAp_6pJxRId7EqEM6j2TiQZDZn4YSxY-DvexPy-7eqwAZbxuhXuANJBoDjrKNnaSWkBjsacfZ5QjnnmXj2dJIJqQDyp6WetieJeEPMcsW0dM_qv0nT1zFfTKhcXutEUspKJw/s1600/bloodletting.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">State-of-the-art medical care</td></tr>
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No antibiotics, no cancer medications or treatments.
No x-rays, CT scans, MRI’s or blood tests. Precious little surgery. No
maintenance drugs for high cholesterol and blood pressure, psychological issues
and a thousand other chronic medical conditions. No hospitals or rehab
facilities. The local surgeon (who doubled as a barber) was paid for his
services with a chicken or two. There was no such thing as catastrophic medical
care that would take you to the poorhouse. Infections killed you, childbirth
gone-wrong killed you and the baby, and most people didn’t live long enough to
suffer from the diseases of old age. So the founding fathers could not have
foreseen the commercial juggernaut into which the medical industry would grow
two centuries later. And trying to shoehorn today’s healthcare business into
the simple medical paradigm of the 1780’s… well, it makes no sense. The logic
seems to be that if the founding fathers didn’t address it, then we won’t
either. By this exquisite logic, slavery and child labor would still be
legal.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzgYY5p-A5GQnT3q_D5Vs6RTn2daYhmAu8RkQRSAbclA9VVZH2qXjZfRQvGbfSYTFwVAdszSNLBkxfvs0yzZannsguMj3bmok-XVmo9DQoCVWEUSXlbmu7CDJ527NtDWmwZ6ICl2qYoVs/s1600/just+how+blind+is+justice+after+all.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzgYY5p-A5GQnT3q_D5Vs6RTn2daYhmAu8RkQRSAbclA9VVZH2qXjZfRQvGbfSYTFwVAdszSNLBkxfvs0yzZannsguMj3bmok-XVmo9DQoCVWEUSXlbmu7CDJ527NtDWmwZ6ICl2qYoVs/s200/just+how+blind+is+justice+after+all.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lady Justice is blind. Not stupid.</td></tr>
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As for the Supreme Court—secure in
the safety of their own guaranteed, life-long medical coverage—and having the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nerve</i> to spout obviously partisan
questions about the political policy of the healthcare mandate…. Scalia’s and Roberts’
partisanship is not even thinly veiled. I’m speechless. In this century the
court has twice proven that it is not above partisan politics (Bush v. Gore and
the more recent—and quite crazy—ruling that PACS and corporations are people),
and it looks like they may head down the same path this time. So much for the
Court’s impartiality: Judicial activism in the name of conservatism is still activism. </div>PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-88022980784419688652012-03-13T18:29:00.002-07:002012-05-22T06:38:11.684-07:00My Life in Real Estate--Part 1<style>
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<i>Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged!---John Wilkes Booth upon shooting Abraham Lincoln</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpza6thSc0AB4WvdnwQSugsqlPwReoQACRW_E0cY9T8mAOVqe4g1J47IVC2hcrwZmv-zFW6ZwlGGXI5N55rHOwimYFieKIt4mmWcvHkczEexhM7sIpj3cbiKTwph-F51ogBCdYgGTcnq0/s1600/604+e+broad+st.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpza6thSc0AB4WvdnwQSugsqlPwReoQACRW_E0cY9T8mAOVqe4g1J47IVC2hcrwZmv-zFW6ZwlGGXI5N55rHOwimYFieKIt4mmWcvHkczEexhM7sIpj3cbiKTwph-F51ogBCdYgGTcnq0/s320/604+e+broad+st.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">We
bought our first house in late 1985. It was a 1920’s Dutch colonial on the main
drag of Westfield, NJ. At first glance the house had two strikes against it: it
was on a busy road, and it was across the street from a municipal building--a
big old red brick schoolhouse. The trees around the house, planted too close to
the house as saplings 60 years earlier, were overgrown and brushing the roof of
the house. From its front, the house looked neglected and dark, with moss growing
on the roof where the trees blocked the sunlight. But...it was gracious, dignified and somehow familiar.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWTvut9y7LjRT0Q6apqaze1Jhe8Qnx3_seNXLobezkTvW8OlkyxUs1t7mk5KkoFioIM240u1RDEs-r_jMU_5HXlPsY4Fh049q8wtWNkPVgV42SxzMSWHghE_adt_MJGQmLECX2K_84uDA/s1600/hummel+up+close.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWTvut9y7LjRT0Q6apqaze1Jhe8Qnx3_seNXLobezkTvW8OlkyxUs1t7mk5KkoFioIM240u1RDEs-r_jMU_5HXlPsY4Fh049q8wtWNkPVgV42SxzMSWHghE_adt_MJGQmLECX2K_84uDA/s320/hummel+up+close.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Doris, t</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">he realtor, had listened patiently to our list of
must-have’s, wants and no-way’s. She recognized two babes in the woods when she saw them.
And although we were clear that we didn’t want to be anywhere near municipal or
commercial buildings, and certainly not on a heavily trafficked street, she
suggested that we ‘just take a look’ at the house on East Broad Street. I
walked in the front door, took one look at the 30 foot living room, the French
doors and the fireplace, and I heard Chopin rippling in the background. “Peter! Do you
hear music? I hear music!” Peter took one look at my enraptured face, and
offered his own take on the situation, “Stop gushing!” I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knew</i> this house. I’d lived in this house somewhere, sometime, in
some other life, and I had <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=619150030184237549" name="_GoBack"></a>found my way home again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">So much for the romance. Now we moved on to the
business of buying the house. The sellers, Larry and Marge Pipes, were
corporate nomads, misplaced, displaced and disconsolate South Carolinian's.
Larry worked for ITT and was being dragged around the continental US forcibly
and by the nose. He had been relocated from South Carolina to NJ in May, and by
October he had been reassigned to Colorado. No doubt Larry was being well
compensated for his inconvenience, but his charming wife, Marge, was clearly
not taking these life changes in stride. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSVPuqvCx6SjA7fuOVIJuy-piH-qKJ6VF0GoE93ByGEI8KZagUXFsuanOHOODadiikFSDZQ7IlzHr_Ixtg6OYg8zRZDv6O02LVpbO36qllLs_GiXyVGvxxW2Iik_kID0QDGkSmGOnLgA/s1600/3564345_f520.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSVPuqvCx6SjA7fuOVIJuy-piH-qKJ6VF0GoE93ByGEI8KZagUXFsuanOHOODadiikFSDZQ7IlzHr_Ixtg6OYg8zRZDv6O02LVpbO36qllLs_GiXyVGvxxW2Iik_kID0QDGkSmGOnLgA/s320/3564345_f520.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial;">The Rhett and Scarlett of East Broad Street, as we came to think of them, had not
completely unpacked their moving boxes when ITT packed Rhett off to Colorado.
And Scarlett, aside from being in her first trimester of pregnancy, morning-sick, openly
racist and anti-Semitic, was left <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">alone</i>
in New Jersey to sell the house. Well, not completely alone. She had half a
dozen nasty Lhasa Apso’s and a house full of fleas to keep her company. (When
we moved into the house we learned that she had thoughtfully left the flea infestation
for us.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">From the end of November until mid-March, the run-up
to closing on the house was spent with Scarlett on the phone to Peter each weekday
evening. Rhett came back east on the weekends, but in his absence she needed to
vent her concerns about the progress and state of the sale, informing us repeatedly
that she’d once had a civil service job with the state of South Carolina, and
how awful the North was. Scarlett ranted about New Jersey real estate law,
insisting that she shouldn’t be required to hire a lawyer to close on the sale. And if she was, her good ol’ uncle from South Carolina could advise her by phone. And why
wasn’t she getting interest on the escrow account with our deposit? (Why? Because
that isn’t part of a standard sale agreement in New Jersey, and since she refused
to have an attorney read the sale agreement, she hadn’t asked for anything
outside the standard. Doris, either wasn't taking Scarlett's calls, or wasn't explaining the terms of the contract to her satisfaction.) Scarlett was in a constant and consuming hissy fit.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBumE8P-3UR7CVWAyQO1nuoNHrh-_-5EFmvNDYoBEBRctdWfSwKpK7uckcju6JgfVOqSpfc36td-GxLL2_1DLbG_5AKtHB26-NAKv5TW7OBzZlm589rkwshKH04q0T-l1wk-AMjsc4zg/s1600/i'll+never+go+hungry+again.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBumE8P-3UR7CVWAyQO1nuoNHrh-_-5EFmvNDYoBEBRctdWfSwKpK7uckcju6JgfVOqSpfc36td-GxLL2_1DLbG_5AKtHB26-NAKv5TW7OBzZlm589rkwshKH04q0T-l1wk-AMjsc4zg/s1600/i'll+never+go+hungry+again.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">At Scarlett’s request, the closing took place at a
place convenient to her—rather than, as is customary in NJ, at our attorney’s office. Scarlett took her sweet time and arrived 45 minutes late for the closing. Then she warmed up the crowd by regaling us
with tales of how cold Yankees were, how she <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really</i> felt about Jews, and wrapped it up with a charming anecdote about the only
friendly person she’d met in the entire nine months she’d been captive in the
North—a NY State Trooper. Finally she returned to her favorite topic—the
interest she was due on the deposit in the escrow account. Since the $25K had
been sitting in a non-interest bearing account for 3 months, Scarlett wanted us to
write her a check for the interest. Peter and I said f</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">latly, "No". There was a
long pause while Doris, the realtor, contemplated the sale swirling down the
drain. Then Doris pulled out her own
checkbook and offered to write a check for the $200 Marge wanted from Peter’s
and my Jewish hides. But Scarlett paused for a dramatic moment and finally announced, "Oh
no, dawlin’, I don’t want <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</i>
money," and let it drop.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeiTw98Rs9tVvYolfOVBGXwRBl2kbbjN_6kUJZQduTVc6IVnVoFLVgXalk8f4-FK43HAb9GYp87FQuNn7JwQn9uRr2Jf4WhS8c0g6Q09K-KKL02LyIJLjCTSHnVAUprfPUNqLzhNq9J0Q/s1600/gonewiththewind3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeiTw98Rs9tVvYolfOVBGXwRBl2kbbjN_6kUJZQduTVc6IVnVoFLVgXalk8f4-FK43HAb9GYp87FQuNn7JwQn9uRr2Jf4WhS8c0g6Q09K-KKL02LyIJLjCTSHnVAUprfPUNqLzhNq9J0Q/s320/gonewiththewind3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Scarlett and Rhett left us a dirty plastic jar full of
unidentified house keys, a flea-infested house and a roll of mailing labels to
forward any wayward mail. No stamps, just mailing labels. No doubt, they went
on to charm the pants off their new neighbors in Colorado. And by now, Scarlett’s baby is well out of
college. But whenever I think of Scarlett, I usually wish her lifelong morning
sickness, just as I have for the past 26 years.</span></div>
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<br /></div>PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-15070637520907288532012-02-16T08:44:00.000-08:002012-02-17T12:16:16.171-08:00Bring on the Sugar Daddies<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_AkY4K6m55QcDSxgGAMAA7zfpmhaPQmDIZA4F9MrmtdddO_85qR4MfGpIHx2rU80R8Eu0E8BOru7petNVMPjAHkVhB2DkyeVjuVV87xCms4vx-XsbWwocCRa4y73ejVPsn832uqkvYeU/s1600/sugar+daddy+candy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_AkY4K6m55QcDSxgGAMAA7zfpmhaPQmDIZA4F9MrmtdddO_85qR4MfGpIHx2rU80R8Eu0E8BOru7petNVMPjAHkVhB2DkyeVjuVV87xCms4vx-XsbWwocCRa4y73ejVPsn832uqkvYeU/s400/sugar+daddy+candy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Rick
Santorum has Foster Friess. And, as unappealing as Santorum is, he even has a
back-up donor in the wings—a Dr. John Templeton—who has already forked over
$250,000 to Santorum’s PAC.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYqLuKubpWmn4CH8KoOe3djZL_70UK2tIJ35HX5h_hARgCRApeRUVKKXDoQlFPQpcY4K1ylT6vg0voAg4OXp2vPoofBI2jJWYLMCHsGvs4NOGl6MZng0WSIvHz0UMYsgxU5lVabIBdqU/s1600/sheldon+adelson--what+is+he+thinking.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCYqLuKubpWmn4CH8KoOe3djZL_70UK2tIJ35HX5h_hARgCRApeRUVKKXDoQlFPQpcY4K1ylT6vg0voAg4OXp2vPoofBI2jJWYLMCHsGvs4NOGl6MZng0WSIvHz0UMYsgxU5lVabIBdqU/s200/sheldon+adelson--what+is+he+thinking.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>What</i> is this man thinking?</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Newt
Gingrich, as utterly improbable and inexplicable as it is, has a Jewish
billionaire underwriting his campaign. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inexplicable</i>
doesn’t begin to describe Adelson’s choice. And I say that as a Jew. If Newt
continued to repeat Saul Alinksy’s name to the raw-meat chewing mob, I don’t
know what I would have done. How could Adelson fund such overt Jew-baiting? Of
course, Sheldon Adelson, is smart enough to have his own back-up—a back-up
candidate, this is. Adelson has already made overtures to Mitt Romney—when Newt
finally does hoist himself on his petard, Adelson will be ready to jump on
Mitt’s bandwagon. (Romney doesn’t really need a sugar daddy. He has enough of
his own money to burn. But, a wise man never looks a gift horse in the mouth.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">I’m not
sure I quite understand why Adelson would back Romney either—a member of the
enigmatic Mormon religion. (Aren’t Mormons the faith that posthumously baptized
Anne Frank and a host of other Holocaust victims in absentia? They didn’t want
the Jews lost to history to be lost to Christ. Their actions are a little tone
deaf in modern America’s world of multicultural sensitivity, but well intended,
nonetheless.) Adelson must be thinking, what do I care what Romney thinks of
the dead? Just as long as he takes care of the living—those living in Israel,
that is. Because Romney sure isn’t interested in the poor souls living in the
US.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAW7acgY_xQA4w9w2E7nq_t2b3fRQkHZ38pa8MceVSygHrH5WEiugNaOyBN4DMULET5cLgm8ktRPe6fWXUf0fEGhl5cQr3TlbRBQMO1vxjOP7f8jCHFLwAeSRRJHPr_8iBQXvTXon3WCI/s1600/corp+jet+dollar+origami.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAW7acgY_xQA4w9w2E7nq_t2b3fRQkHZ38pa8MceVSygHrH5WEiugNaOyBN4DMULET5cLgm8ktRPe6fWXUf0fEGhl5cQr3TlbRBQMO1vxjOP7f8jCHFLwAeSRRJHPr_8iBQXvTXon3WCI/s320/corp+jet+dollar+origami.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Well, as
usual, I’m losing my way. There’s so much ground to cover…. Obama’s campaign
has signaled that it is ready to hold its metaphoric nose and open the deposit
chute to its own PAC. So now we will be deafened by the <i>ka-chink</i> of money on
both sides. Those campaign jets don't fly themselves, ya know.</span></div>PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-71658325594357280982012-02-07T12:14:00.000-08:002012-02-10T06:53:46.974-08:00Newt Gingrich and Captain Renault<span style="font-size: small;">I'm shocked, <i>shocked</i> to find that gambling is going on in here!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"> --Captain Renault on ordering Rick’s American Cafe shut down in <i>Casablanca</i></span><br />
<br />
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Watching Newt express horror at having his own character assassinated reminds me of Captain Renault expressing shock at finding gambling going on in Rick’s establishment. Remember this is Newt--whose impassioned denouncements of Jim Wright, Tip O’Neill, President Bush (41) and anyone else whose name would resonate on C-Span were delivered in the well of the deserted House after hours. Never fail to exploit a good photo opp--even if you have to jerry rig it yourself. (Apparently Tip O’Neill also understood the power of imagery, and he ordered the C-Span cameras to pan around the chamber so viewers would understand that Newt was grandstanding to an empty House.)<br />
<br />
Newt, the self proclaimed ‘transformational figure', has indeed, been one of the driving forces that poisoned and crippled the Congress. It was Newt who introduced a vocabulary list that the Republicans memorized and recited like obedient school children. From his mid-90‘s GOPAC memo, <i>Language: A Key Mechanism of Control</i>, here’s a small sample of the words Republicans were instructed to use against Democrats:<br />
<br />
<i>destructive... destroy... sick... pathetic... lie... liberal...sensationalists... hypocrisy... permissive attitudes... self-serving... greed... ideological... insecure... corrupt… excuses… shame... bizarre... cynicism... cheat... steal... abuse of power... patronage…</i><br />
<br />
Since the GOPAC days, many of those words could be applied to Newt. He’s been compared to Greek tragic heroes, but I think that’s giving him too much credit. It’s quite possible to be the poster child for helium-filled <i>hubris</i> and have no redeeming qualities at all. Newt ain’t no Agamemnon. Phineas T. Bluster? Now, that's got potential.<br />
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But back to my original premise: the man who perfected the politics of character assassination blubbers like a baby when his own tactics are used on him. So perhaps Newt’s life is a cautionary tale after all: if you live by the sword you will die by the sword, and the petard on which you are hoisted may be your very own.PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-56063654108090764522012-01-20T09:53:00.000-08:002012-02-10T06:52:41.370-08:00Behind every sitcom….<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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…there is another story waiting to be told. Fred and Ethel Mertz had lives before they met Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Yes, they talked about being on the vaudeville circuit for 20+ years. But they were also committed members of the Communist Party in the 1930’s. Fred had been a very young doughboy during WWI, spending a few horrible months in the trenches of France. After the war, he followed the Russian Revolution with great interest. But it wasn’t until the Great Depression that his socialist ideals came into focus. He met Ethel at a Party meeting in a rundown flat in Chicago. And that, as they say, was that. They were both out of work and willing to try anything, and that’s how the vaudeville act came to be. Their travels took them to backwaters and through railroad yards where the hobo camps swelled throughout the Depression years, only confirming their politics. They snapped out of it after WWII, coming to realize that the worker’s paradise and Uncle Joe were not everything they were cracked up to be. At that point they were growing a too little old and a little too thick to continue hoofing it on stage. They hung up their tap shoes, bought the apartment house on East 68th Street and the rest is history.<br />
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Millie and Jerry Helper, the next door neighbors to Rob and Laura Petrie, didn’t come from nowhere. Millie’s over-eager, wide-eyed stare masked the over-achiever she really was. Millie Krumbermacher graduated from Sarah Lawrence with honors. Millie was earning a master’s degree in foreign policy and working for the UN when she met Jerry. He was finishing dental school, and as the era demanded, Millie quit her job and graduate school to marry and start a family. So much for that promising career in diplomacy. By the late 1960’s, Millie had followed her inclinations and she fell—at first, reluctantly, and then exuberantly—into the counter culture. She left Jerry and their son behind, dropped <i>Millie</i> in favor of <i>Justice</i> and reclaimed her maiden name. Justice Krumbermacher hitched her way ‘cross country to enroll in graduate school at UC Berkeley. She eschewed the Weathermen—too violent for her taste—but became rabidly anti-government. She washed the hairspray out of her hair, let her hair grow down to her knees and wore it in braids to keep it out of her way while she picked grapes with Hugo Chavez and the migrant workers. Justice married a migrant worker and is now a retired social worker. To this day, she wonders how she ever tolerated discussing cupcakes and recipes with Laura Petrie. <br />
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On the evening news Jerry watched Justice and a mob of women burn their bras. He remarried just as the Watergate was being burgled. He and his second wife raised little Freddie and had two more children together.<br />
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<i>The Andy Griffith Show</i> made Mayberry look like a serene and quiet little Eden. But Aunt Bee, that chirpy little dear, brought a great deal more to the table than we were led to believe. Yes, she cooked and cleaned for the widowed Andy, made Opie’s lunch and packed him off to school each day. But what did she do before she came to live with Opie and Andy? Even doting and dotty maiden aunts have private lives and histories. Aunt Bee’s life and history rolled out in Charlottesville, where she worked for a patent attorney. She may not have been the brightest bulb on the tree, but she was a hard worker, learning the in’s and out’s of her job thoroughly. And as a young woman, she had a porcelain skin and soulful blue eyes that brought men to their knees. She worked for the attorney for 30 years,<br />
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and was his mistress for the last 20 of those years. Like Nelson Rockefeller, the attorney died in his mistress’ arms with a smile on his face, in the lavishly furnished love nest in which he kept her. Bee came home to Mayberry with a small fortune in stock, cash and jewelry. Andy’s job as sheriff, as heartwarming as it was, wasn’t going to make it possible for Opie to attend an ivy-league college. Aunt Bee put that child through Yale undergrad and law school. And she did it with a smile on her face. As Bee trilled throughout Opie’s college years, “What else is the money for?”. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc6rie2Jo66UdR763lQt-ftousDIsR4wwtYilDN-kA-SF30D7CMYc1aWBtr-WVZW7Zx4IcsuMYcH2OCc2qhOsKLyOXPwifwGB1RShDNwjacuV290wefvL9SPlH90Dtb_QEN2qSw5aUOIw/s1600/Uncle+Moneybags.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc6rie2Jo66UdR763lQt-ftousDIsR4wwtYilDN-kA-SF30D7CMYc1aWBtr-WVZW7Zx4IcsuMYcH2OCc2qhOsKLyOXPwifwGB1RShDNwjacuV290wefvL9SPlH90Dtb_QEN2qSw5aUOIw/s200/Uncle+Moneybags.jpg" width="200" /></a>There’s a point here, somewhere. Beneath the carefully presented fiction, there’s more to the story than we’ve been told or shown. Just ask Newt Gingrich about his marriages and his affairs. He jumps ugly, and I don’t believe for a minute his reaction is a chivalric and protective impulse towards the women with whom he has slept and/or married and/or divorced. Ask Mitt about his money, and he alternates between the <i>Aah shucks</i> shuffle (“I really didn’t make that much.”) and rich Uncle Pennybags boastfulness (“I’ll bet you $10,000!”). Ron Paul bills himself as a libertarian. But behind him trails a history of newsletters laced with racism. So enjoy the debates for the bread and circus they are, and remember that entertainment--even when presenting itself as news--is pure fiction.<br />
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The town's snow plows knocked our mailbox right off its post on Friday. The headless post is still standing proud, and Peter got to dig through the snow in the culvert to recover the mailbox. he laid it neatly on a mound of snow <i>next</i> to the headless post. Next step: I came up with the idea of using industrial-strength velcro to put the mailbox back on the post. The snow plows can kick that can down the road all they want, and we will just velcro it back on the post. Since it's a nice round 9 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, we will hold off installing the velcro until the temperature reaches mere freezing. If that fails, I am moving on to the ultimate repair tool: duct tape. In the meanwhile, the PO has left us a polite postcard informing us that all is not right with our mailbox and that they will hold our mail at the PO until the headless mail post is once again topped with a functioning mailbox.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEAk-8chK0A7CIKUWI07hYLejO_lkhPaMn7uu1LJFYFdVKL3rj-4_h3TowfJXpiA0-pLmeNUmdGThBfBX0_ZHtlrTmLPMFte_4PakJP4QZUyc43G-jzxr3aHlvn4ZEu4symsxAehsqak4/s1600/DSCN1109.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEAk-8chK0A7CIKUWI07hYLejO_lkhPaMn7uu1LJFYFdVKL3rj-4_h3TowfJXpiA0-pLmeNUmdGThBfBX0_ZHtlrTmLPMFte_4PakJP4QZUyc43G-jzxr3aHlvn4ZEu4symsxAehsqak4/s200/DSCN1109.JPG" width="194" /></a>Like every woman, I dread hat hair. But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do... If <i>this</i> doesn't qualify me for sainthood, tell me what will. Bye the bye, Peter won't even allow a camera in the same room with him when he's got this hat on. Don't laugh, folks. Forget about those lovely little hand knits that were last year's holiday gifts. Next year everyone gets a mad bomber hat luxuriously lined with squirrel fur. <br />
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Along with Teddy in his new winter gear, we are quite the sight. And yes, you can see from the look on his face, Teddy is not thrilled to be wearing a coat.<br />
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<br />PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-9319814555316942202011-12-21T11:17:00.000-08:002011-12-21T11:26:37.847-08:00The Unexamined Life<div style="color: #0b5394;">
ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ ...</div>
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The unexamined life is not worth living.—Socrates</div>
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Fuck Socrates. What does he know? This fall I spent five weeks examining 40 years worth of my life’s detritus. And I can tell you with certainty, it wasn’t worth the examination.<br />
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The occasion for the exercise was the cleaning up and cleaning out of our NJ condo in preparation for its sale. I finally dug into the many boxes of high school memorabilia and uncovered honor roll certificates, notebooks from sophomore English and more. PSAT score, SAT scores, National Merit commendations, Iowa scores and more. I threw away 30+ years of birthday cards, handwritten notes from my parents, friends and more. Much more. Then I plunged into the books of college text books, spiral notebooks filled with class notes, doodles and love notes, research and term papers and final exam blue books. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. There were computerized print outs of final grades, freshman orientation materials, campus maps and more. Much more. I shredded journals, diaries and love letters and photos that still made me tear up, congratulating myself on how much lighter I felt. I shredded long-winded Hay job descriptions written in the mid-80’s, folders full of work memos and correspondence (including a mid-‘70’s letter to a pension-holder apologizing for miscalculating his benefit and offering “May I be struck by lightning if this quote isn’t correct.”). I am not good with nostalgia. It’s the next best thing to radioactive. It consumes me unhealthily, and so I try to stay as far away as I can get. This kind of disciplined avoidance creates a mountain of ancient history collecting silently but steadily in the attic or the basement or the back of your head. I threw away 99% of it. There are some love letters and pictures even I couldn’t let go.<br />
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From there we moved on to Peter’s office where nearly 30 years of income tax returns were spilling out of a tall file cabinet. Peter’s office—and the collection of cobwebs, candy wrappers, coffee cups, dust moats and ancient stuff that filled it—is off limits to everyone. That includes me and our housekeeper, Adria. So the dust fairies have reigned supreme for a long, long time. But now, Peter had to clean out his stuff. Actually, shovel is a better description than clean. <br />
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And so, finally, it was done. From the clean up we moved on to the newest way to sell one’s house--staging. No, <i>staging</i> doesn’t capture the essence of it. <span style="font-size: large;"><i><b><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Staaaaaging</span></b></i> </span>is nearer to the fact. And the story of staaaaaging and selling the condo will appear in the next blog.PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-4533835911776811502011-08-15T08:24:00.000-07:002012-02-12T06:59:17.909-08:00Peter and The Belle of Amherst<i>I like a look of agony,<br />
Because I know it’s true;<br />
Men do not sham convulsion<br />
Nor simulate a throe.</i> — Emily Dickinson<br />
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It’s not often that Peter comes face to face with the splendor of 19th century American genius. But this July I dragged him to a local production of <i>The Belle of Amherst</i>, staged at Centennial Hall on Harpswell Neck. I’ll start by saying that Marion Jeffery gave a remarkable and moving performance as the annoying Emily Dickinson. Emily must have been a finalist in the crazy maiden aunt category—twitchy, nervous and jerky, self conscious of her talent, yet without the imagination or nerve of the Brontë sisters who managed to get themselves published. (Of course, the demand for bodice ripper novels outstripped the call for obscure poetry—even then. The Bronte’s were producing the 19th century equivalents of <i>The Delta of Venus</i>. Who knew what to make of Emily’s precious squibs?) Anyway, one-woman shows always require the star to hold prolonged one-sided conversations with invisible people and to go through exaggerated pantomimes of waving out imaginary windows, drying imaginary dishes and worse. <i>The Belle of Amherst</i> is no exception. <br />
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The last time Peter came face to face with a formidable American Master was in 1979 when I dragged him to a showing of <i>The Europeans</i> at the Paris theatre on West 58th Street. This was a gorgeous Merchant-Ivory production of the Henry James novel, replete with lavish period costumes and luscious photography of New England filmed through a golden autumn haze. Lee Remick was exquisitely turned out: richly ruched, ribboned and corseted in ivory silk and lace. If it weren’t for the absence of indoor plumbing, modern dentistry and antibiotics, her wardrobe would have been enough to make me wish I were living in the period. But gorgeous dresses aside, one must have a taste for Henry James—which amounts to savoring the sound and quality of one’s own saliva being rolled around in one’s very own mouth. There are lots of long, meaningful gazes, laden with heavy meaningful emotions. The world is filled with slight gestures of the wrist and twitches at the corners of one’s mouth that conjure up entire lives of meaningful consciousness. Indescribably beautiful shafts of sunlight and the very dust motes floating in them are moments meant for eternity… I couldn’t live with that much endless subtlety. But it is a lovely place to pause and appreciate the endlessly examined life—if only for a short time. A <i>very</i> short time. After that, I want to stop rolling the saliva around in my mouth, swallow it and get on with the rest of my life. Peter’s tolerance for this kind of preciousness is considerably lower than mine. He spent the first half of the movie alternately smoking, squirming and sleeping. I woke him, thinking he wouldn’t want to miss another minute of Lee Remick’s costume changes. To my utter shock, he expressed deep annoyance and stomped out of the theater. I think he walked around the corner to the Oak Room to drown out the horror of what he had just endured. Too much, too slow, too subtle for his robust appreciation of life, art and adventure novels. If there is anything Henry James lacks, it is explosions and violence.<br />
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Since The Europeans, I’ve kept Peter away from 19th century American geniuses until <i>The Belle of Amherst</i> beckoned. I’ll hazard that the temperature was still in the mid-80’s in time for the 7:30 PM curtain, and Centennial Hall’s AC is functional, but fragile. To the credit of its AC, the Hall was actually comfortable throughout the performance. Emily had to e-nun-ci-ate until her cheeks ached to be heard over the whoosh of the AC, but she did an admirable job of it. <br />
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This was my first exposure to the production, as well as Peter’s, so I didn’t know what to expect. I was hoping for more biography and less poetry, but it is what it is. And Peter, to his credit, was polite and attentive. He had no choice but to be so. If he so much as cocked his eyebrow in impatience in this tiny, one-room theater, Emily could have seen him, come down from the stage and slapped him for being rude. He had ample time to count the number of people in the audience (40) and to note that there were all of three men in attendance. The rest were women in varying stages of menopausal decay and worse. (This reminded me of my last high school reunion, when I demanded to know who <i>are</i> these old people? Oh that’s right, they are <i>us</i>.)<br />
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At intermission, Emily went backstage to rest her aching cheeks, and we stepped outside into the mosquito-filled evening air, where the gnats proceeded to swarm Peter. Usually they go for me, and so I’ve foresworn Nine Ricci and Chanel when in the country. But on this evening, Peter was their preferred meal. He stood there, swatting at the gnats and mosquitoes and sweating in the heat. Couple that with the discomfort of tiny, folding chairs set up for the occasion of <i>The Belle’s</i> performance, and he was just about done in. I took pity on his many complaints and returned to watch the second act alone. The air conditioning was still feebly chugging away and Emily was still heroically enunciating over its drone. <br />
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Peter went home to walk the dog and then returned to pick me up at the show’s conclusion. When he asked what he had missed, I gave him the same answer I did when his aching knees kept him from sitting through the second act of <i>Copenhagen</i>: If you’ve seen the first act, you’ve seen the second.PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-75309993100207439502011-04-12T11:00:00.000-07:002012-02-12T07:00:40.713-08:00Middlemarch and MeI can’t count the number of times I’ve read George Eliot’s <i>Middlemarch</i>. Eight times? Ten times? I read it at least three times during my undergraduate years, and maybe another two or three times in graduate school. After that I found that it nourished the soul to read it at least once every decade.<br />
<br />
I first read <i>Middlemarch </i>when I was 19. I read it as a romance about Dorothea, an altruistic heroine who wants to do something meaningful with her life. In an earlier century she would gladly have been a nun—a Saint Theresa. But in the enlightened 1830’s, such radical career choices are not readily available to young ladies of the English landed gentry. Dorothea makes some idiotic choices in her journey, including a brief, loveless marriage. In the end, she renounces her late husband’s sizeable fortune to marry her true love. Best of all, she still has her own (not inconsiderable) inheritance to carry her and the true love over life’s roughest shoals. I thought this was grand, but then I was 19—when all of life is viewed through a pulsating, roseate scrim of hormones. (For me, <i>blood lust</i> had nothing to do with violence and everything to do with the panting desire to make babies.) <br />
<br />
In these early readings, Dorothea’s quest for a meaningful love made her the central sun around which the 300+ pages of lesser, annoying characters orbited. Never mind that there were scandal, murder and other interesting marriages in the mix. Never mind that Dorothea’s true love was more of a cipher (with a ravishing curve to his nose and a divine mop of brown curls) than a realistic man. The story was about Dorothea’s choices in love, and not my literary criticism.<br />
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I revisited <i>Middlemarch </i>at 29, and it was like reading the book for the first time. <i>Middlemarch </i>was about making responsible choices in a life partner. This time around, Dorothea is a bona fide twit whose choices made me want to reach out and slap some sense into her. Her first marriage is to Edward Casaubon, a dried out husk of a man—lifeless, loveless and lacking in either passion or charity. Dorothea thinks of him as a latter day Saint Augustine. But who in her right mind wants to marry Saint Augustine? In fact, Dorothea believes that it would be a blessing to marry a blind Milton if she could be his handmaiden. In the absence of a suitable medieval monk or tortured genius as a suitor, she settles on Casaubon, whose overwhelming draw is a rambling treatise about ancient mythology at which he has been hacking away for 30 years. Dorothea, anxious to improve the world, wants to be Casaubon’s amanuensis, a helpmate in bringing his key to all mythologies to a bookstore near you. And who wants to sit across from either Saint Augustine or Milton over breakfast? Imagine either of those rays of sunshine beaming at you over orange juice and oatmeal.<br />
<br />
Dorothea has already passed on two perfectly wonderful possibilities. The first is Sir James, a neighboring member of the local gentry who is eligible, appropriate and attractive in every sense of the word: he’s of suitable age and fortune, physically appealing, good natured and wild about Dorothea. But who would want any of <i>that</i>? The second, Doctor Tertius Lydgate, is as blind as Dorothea; the two meet and pass each other like ships in the night, each dismissing the other as not meeting his and her own ideal image of a mate. Lydgate, intelligent, handsome and fired with noble ambitions about the newly burgeoning sciences, arrives in Middlemarch with the intention of spending his days practicing medicine and his nights performing medical research. Meeting Dorothea at a social function, Lydgate thinks the lovely girl isn’t his cup of tea. And with that, he makes a bee-line for Rosamund, a beautiful bubblehead, whose own life ambitions are more in line with fine society and fine furniture than refined science. Lydgate and Rosamund are quickly married and Lydgate’s noble goals are just as quickly forgotten. Rosamund ruins him with debt (fine furniture doesn’t come free, you know) and Lydgate’s own choice of patrons in Middlemarch’s tight little community smears him with the taint of murder. The bottom line from this reading: Everyone seems hell-bent on marrying in haste and repenting at leisure. With a few notable exceptions, no one seems to talk to their prospective or current spouses to find out who they really are and what they really want. And on those few occasions when the minds do manage to meet, one or the other partner is disappointed, heartbroken or horrified.<br />
<br />
By this time in my own life I clearly understood that prospective life partners should be chosen with an eye to bearable breakfast conversation, a companionable personality and a world view that is tolerably close to one’s own. Marriage is about compromise and acceptance as much as it is about love. The question is not, as Carole King put it, <i>Will you love me tomorrow?</i>. The real question is,<i> Will I love you tomorrow…and all the days that follow?</i>. (Was it Christie Brinkley who said that being a genius didn’t make Billy Joel a nice person? Or maybe that was Claire Bloom reflecting on her unhappy marriage to Philip Roth….) If you shudder at the thought of returning your beloved’s stare over the breakfast table, give it up. It ain’t gonna work. If your prospective life partner is a virago or a dybbuk, no amount of money or genius will make it worth your while or your life. And if their outlook on life makes the blood run cold in your veins, consider yourself forewarned. In the end, compatibility is everything. Marry a mensch.<br />
<br />
As I approached my 40th birthday, I went through an 18 month-long maelstrom about the meaning of life. More accurately, Peter went through the maelstrom. We were on vacation in Kennebunkport, walking on the beach, when the angst hit me like a mallet. And so I let Peter have it. <i>What is the meaning of life? Who are you? Why am I married to you? Why are we here? Is <b>this </b>all there is?</i> Birthdays have no such hallucinatory effect on Peter, so when this storm hit, he was taken by surprise. I treated him to a similar tirade almost daily from September 1990 until my 40th birthday in March 1992, and he patiently let it flow over him. That’s what you call love. If he had dished that out to me for a year and a half, I’d have disemboweled him. On the morning of the looming 40th birthday, I woke to the prospect of a birthday celebration at the office and a lovely dinner out with Peter. Like it or not, life moves forward. Get used to it. Peter was relieved to find the rabid virago was gone and I was back. I, in turn, was thrilled to realize that I had, indeed, wisely married a good-hearted mensch.<br />
<br />
Around this same time, <i>Middlemarch </i>enjoyed a pop culture revival. It was made into a BBC Masterpiece Theater serial, and all across England yuppies were staging Victorian dinner parties replete with mutton, butlers and period costumes. I settled for rereading the book, and this time the book was about community and how one lives out one’s role in it. The neighbors, business associates, family members and community concerns that make up the warp and woof of our adult lives now stepped forward with their own demands and concerns. In this reading, railroads and the industrial revolution creeps toward England’s bucolic countryside, the very real limits of family finances determine whether sons go to college (or not) and political discussions rage about the value of spending money on refurbishing dilapidated peasant cottages (or not). Even more clearly, the theme of <i>What goes around, comes around </i>flows faintly but steadily throughout the book. There are good eggs and bad eggs in every age and every setting—and while the good eggs warm the cockles of the heart, it’s the self-righteous hypocrites, meddling know-it-all’s and rich relations wielding their money like an auction gavel who capture the imagination. <br />
<br />
Throughout the book, Nick Bulstrode, Middlemarch’s powerful banker and most upstanding community pillar has bullied, cheated and shortchanged strangers, family and business associates. He barely registered on my seismic scale in earlier readings, but this time I found it positively gratifying when Bulstrode turns out to be a pious fraud who has spent years concealing his early history of theft, duplicity and deceit. With the discovery of his sordid story and with the suspicious death of a former associate who was blackmailing him, Bulstrode is publicly shamed and broken. At this lowest moment of his life, another minor character comes forward in a moment of sublime grace: Bulstrode’s wife, Harriet, wordlessly promises him her continued love and forgiveness. Grace comes in many shapes and forms. And this time it arrives in the form of Harriet Bulstrode—a gentle, middle-aged dumpling of a woman whose love for her husband is mature and infinite even in the face of public disgrace. <br />
<br />
I’m 59, and it’s time to read the book again. I wonder if, this time, I will feel more empathy for the bloodless and sickly Casaubon? The rest of the middle-aged characters will, no doubt, have more to impart to me this time around, too. I can’t wait to be enlightened.PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-79777011335485164942011-03-02T15:04:00.000-08:002011-03-03T06:02:55.918-08:00The Doloff Upholstery ShoppeI am recovering my dining room chairs. This adds up to new opportunities to staple my feet to the floor or simply and directly—to maim myself. The dining room chairs—all eight of them—are handsome, heavy pieces, with wide hips and 25 year old upholstered seats begging to be put out of their misery. I am more than happy to oblige.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnoC3N5U2gy2sLfKUVGbeHyNb662HfHNiWkCaM18qYNJP3uP4R12lmh8q3bncDYj0IXrV_wvd_IkMqH5QIW9x720_XH3P8iXGGbATv1yePSoXaf2fYAGR1Pb4q93QbkpYxWkGaijZIV40/s1600/Before.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnoC3N5U2gy2sLfKUVGbeHyNb662HfHNiWkCaM18qYNJP3uP4R12lmh8q3bncDYj0IXrV_wvd_IkMqH5QIW9x720_XH3P8iXGGbATv1yePSoXaf2fYAGR1Pb4q93QbkpYxWkGaijZIV40/s320/Before.JPG" /></a></div><br />
First I spent some time getting a 21st century education in the 18th century craft of upholstery: I watched YouTube videos. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos in the last few years to learn that shame and discretion are lost graces and that Charlie Sheen is in need of more assistance than conventional rehab can likely supply him. I’ve even watched the boil-popping video (enough to gag a maggot, but riveting none the less) and Alan Dershowitz doing a stand up routine on oldjewstellingjokes.com. But, there is actually useful stuff out there. After about 45 minutes of culling through videos of expert and not-so-expert upholsterers, I came to diyuphosltertysupply.com. These guys really know what they’re doing, and—best of all—they demonstrate and explain the craft succinctly and clearly.<br />
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With my new education under my belt, I headed to my new Bloomingdale’s—Home Depot—for $200 worth of new tools for my new trade. This included a work table, an elegant and functional staple remover, a heavy duty electric stapler and staples, pliers and work gloves. And by the way, that doesn’t include the cost of the upholstery fabric, the polyester batting to put the <i>cush </i>back in the cushions or the cambric liner for putting the finishing touch on the underside of each chair. I was ready and set to make history.<br />
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I successfully removed the seat of one chair, pulled the staples from the old cambric liner and the old seat cover and was ready to start stapling the fresh poly batting to the seat. Everything was going nicely until the first shot of the stapler. Have you ever listened to an electric stapler? It sounds like a gunshot. If you shoot several staples in rapid succession, it sounds like a volley of gunfire. And that’s when Teddy suddenly recalled his earlier life as a World War I veteran who fought in the trenches. At the sound of the first shot he hit the ground like a seasoned combat soldier and lost control of every sphincter in his little body. Teddy spent the rest of the day trying to crawl into the arms of whoever would hold him and scanning the ceiling overhead for incoming fire. There was no comforting him. And at 3 in the morning, I had to take him out for a walk. His little bowels were still spasming.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsPi0sWyItdGkhK1sVmlXeKaTa7o7Om6iAzuf8Bh2go2DCXOVcGYe3lMdRN1vAeIj1VRoobU8n7_oSAY0tqU9kEMVxrcCmE-D2zrU0weZvoAcM8dqAOEWsxgfUZ_8DOaFArQB8NiR9E8Y/s1600/mid+process.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsPi0sWyItdGkhK1sVmlXeKaTa7o7Om6iAzuf8Bh2go2DCXOVcGYe3lMdRN1vAeIj1VRoobU8n7_oSAY0tqU9kEMVxrcCmE-D2zrU0weZvoAcM8dqAOEWsxgfUZ_8DOaFArQB8NiR9E8Y/s320/mid+process.JPG" /></a></div>The factory had to close for a day while I figured out what to do with the little dog with post traumatic stress syndrome. The solution seemed to be simple: I gave him a mild sedative, tucked him into his crate/bed upstairs in our bedroom, turned on NPR to supply him with a sound track of civilized conversation and shut the bedroom doors to muffle the sound of gunfire going on downstairs in the living room. I spent an afternoon working on the chairs and when I went upstairs to free the little prisoner, he was shivering with terror, but (Praise be!) didn’t have diarrhea. Okay, so this worked fair to middling well. But how often could I dope the little dog? And besides, even slightly foggy with a sedative, he was still not a happy camper. He continued shiver and scan the horizon of the living room ceiling for the next barrage of shells.<br />
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On to the next solution: on Saturday afternoon, Peter took his Kindle and Teddy for a trip to the Watchung Reservation. He would give Teddy a good long walk on the green and then enjoy reading in the car with the dog asleep in his lap. This worked out pretty well, if you don’t mind a lapful of snow-melted mud. But it did work. He brought the dog home, in time for the little veteran to suffer the misfortune of hearing stray stapler fire. Done went the tail, and Teddy resumed his place in Peter’s lap, scanning the skies for incoming and seeking safety from the hell of a vaguely remembered past life. At 5:15 in the morning, Teddy and I once again answered the call of his unhappy bowels…<br />
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The chairs are finally finished, and they look pretty good if I say so myself. My hands have been put through hell. I managed not to staple or slice myself, but this is hard work on manicured hands unused to manual labor. No matter! Peter foresees a new career for me. I think he has his eye on some flea market sofa that he thinks I will reupholster from the bones up. But although he’s getting ready to hang out a shingle for <b>The Doloff Upholstery Shoppe<i></i></b>, I am not.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRaEYQ3ejbZHvUB3XcxBHVBHXdAFJBpIGVECXWN6hbXKc91-CXNNFyn_0OoeNqvYID0GZetcvV4TCTCGPEUMMgrAKcTOEYlNTe4t82u145eiweHXYFVBqwS2ynqvbHziu7SzW5R6o5WHg/s1600/012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRaEYQ3ejbZHvUB3XcxBHVBHXdAFJBpIGVECXWN6hbXKc91-CXNNFyn_0OoeNqvYID0GZetcvV4TCTCGPEUMMgrAKcTOEYlNTe4t82u145eiweHXYFVBqwS2ynqvbHziu7SzW5R6o5WHg/s320/012.JPG" /></a></div>PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-2427071242742602122011-02-06T16:35:00.000-08:002012-07-24T11:58:32.668-07:00The Everlasting Condo<i>“You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave.”—The Eagles</i><br />
<br />
The family burial plot—or as I think of it, the condo—has been on my mind of late. <br />
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My maternal grandmother, Anna Sulzer, died in February 1963. With her passing, the Sulzer clan needed a burial plot pronto. Uncle Irv, ever planning ahead, suggested that the entire family purchase burial plots side by side in Mount Ararat Cemetery on Long Island. That way, the banter, bickering and general family mishagoss could go on forever. And I do mean forever. The four Sulzer siblings bought a stretch of adjoining burial plots that looked more like a land development deal than a final resting place. With the exception of a tiny patch of plots that had already been bought up by some other family’s forward thinker (and who refused to sell to our clan) and that stood in the midst of the Sulzer real estate, the field seemed to roll on uninterrupted and forever. My own parents bought eight plots. Either this stuff was going at rock bottom prices, or my parents were planning on inviting the neighbors to pitch tents of their own. Anyway, I guess this is what’s meant by buying the farm.<br />
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As it turned out, the Sulzer condo had only one rule for admission: you had to be a member of the family through blood or marriage. But if the Sulzer condo had its ground rules, so did Mount Ararat, which allowed only for family headstones. Individual graves were marked by brass plaques that were flush with the ground. It was dignified and serene, if somewhat sterile. In contrast to Mount Ararat’s absolute stillness was Mount Hebron Cemetery, where my father’s parents, Charles and Sadie Doloff, were buried. This was an old fashioned cemetery with a headstone sprouting from every grave. Each headstone had personality, art work, exotic carvings, even tiny enameled photo portraits. There were infants lost to at birth, teenagers forever in our hearts, octogenarians finally at peace after tumultuous lives. It was as if every grave’s soul were talking aloud, anxious to be heard. The place was crowded, undignified and busy. And within this bustling village, Charles and Sadie were buried in the Lomzer Young Men’s Benevolent Association. To access the graves you walked through a dramatic entrance gate of tall marble pillars topped with a beautiful wrought iron arch that announced the name of the burial society. The marble pillars were engraved with the names of the association’s first members. If not exactly lively, it still fairly bristled with life. <br />
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But back to Mount Ararat… In 1963 there was just the one grave—my grandmother’s. But over the years, the plots were filled by the very people who had thought ahead. My grandfather, Joe Sulzer, died in 1965. The eldest of the Sulzer siblings—Sylvia Sulzer Bram—died suddenly in 1978. Esther Sulzer Danton, my favorite aunt, died in 1991 and was buried in one of the eight plots my parents owned. As each family experienced a death, a family headstone was erected. The plots were slowly filled, the vibrant voices stilled, the aged hands were folded in final repose and the great empty space has filled with foot stones. My mother died in 2003, and my father died in 2007. They lie there now, and my heart is with them. <br />
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But cemeteries don’t exist and burials don’t happen without the living. And my family is no exception. My own parents, thoughtful to a fault, had their own family headstone erected in 1997. As my mother put it, <i>This way, you don’t have to worry about it. It’s all taken care of!</i> A little ghoulish, I thought at the time, but eminently sensible. She and Dad cheerfully forked over $8,000 for a headstone the size of a Volkswagen, with DOLOFF engraved on it in huge letters. I have never felt so taken care of in my entire life. It was about that time that I developed an aversion to the condo, as I had come to call the family burial village. Even with both parents alive and accepting compliments on their brand new headstone, I had difficulty visiting it. That headstone chilled me.<br />
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Peter and I have, of course, discussed our own final arrangements. There’s never been any doubt that I would be buried in the condo. Peter’s own family does cremation in a big way. I don’t think any of his family has actually been interred—in the conventional sense—since they came to these shores in the 1800’s. There must be many jars of ashes that have passed from one generation’s mantles to the next—or wherever it is that jars of ashes go. I haven’t seen them, and I fervently hope I never do. And although Peter’s family may not do a bang up job of parking the departed in clearly designated final resting places, they do memorial services with a nice flourish and refreshments about a month after the dear one departs. But I am losing my train of thought…<br />
<br />
Peter plans to die before I do. And like the rest of his clan he wants to be cremated. His exact words on the subject are: <i>I don’t care what you do with me after I’m dead. You can hang me upside down outside the front door and paint my balls blue, for all I care.</i> Now there’s an image I don’t care to contemplate closely. What’s more, Peter really wanted our first dog, Chester to be freeze dried, stuffed and kept on our mantle until the whole plan could come together: when I am buried, Peter’s urn of ashes should be tucked under my arm and the little freeze dried dog laid at my feet. He reasoned that any casket in which I was laid would have plenty of foot room for luggage. So far, we have done a slipshod job of executing the plan: Chester was not freeze dried when he died. So it looks like it’ll be just Peter’s ashes and me in my allotted plot at the condo.PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-78759188413371243582011-01-21T08:50:00.000-08:002012-02-10T07:30:15.614-08:00Nanook Heads NorthWednesday, January 12<br />
Most people go south for a break in the winter. But not us. No, we make a beeline for the epicenter of everything I detest—snow and cold.<br />
<br />
So here we are in Maine. I am seated at the kitchen island, enjoying a view of the relentless snowfall outside the window. How bad can this be? I’m warm, drinking coffee and working on my computer. For starters, I had to drag poor Teddy out into the snow for his morning walk. Dragged isn’t quite accurate. I shoveled a path for the little prince. The snow was too deep for the little dog to make his own way through. I put his red leash on him, even though I knew I wouldn’t really be using it. Teddy wouldn’t venture far off in the snow. But thinking ahead, there were contingency plans to be made: if he sank too deep in the snow, the red leash could provide a visible trail for me to locate him. I eyed the little dog, thinking even further ahead, <i>If all else fails, that is a source of meat.</i> Visions of the Donner party are never far from my mind.<br />
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Two days ago—long before it ever snowed—I was making a pot of soup. (You can never have enough stick-to-the-ribs soup on hand throughout the winter. And at this rate I will be foraging in the snow for root vegetables to make more soup.) Peter came up beside me and offered instructions, “You’re cutting the carrots too small.” <i>Jesus Christ! Get out of here! </i>I screeched. If I run out of dog meat, Peter may be my next source of protein. <br />
<br />
Peter just told me he thinks the falling and drifting snow is pretty. Pretty? I think it portends death and starvation. But that’s just me. I’m not a <i>Georgia on My Mind</i> kinda gal. I have more of a <i>Wisconsin Death Trip</i> outlook on life. Well, if not all of life, then certainly winter. <i>Wisconsin Death Trip</i> was a 1973 book of photos that testified to the unsettling effects of Wisconsin winters on rural townspeople. The book is chockfull of wild-eyed portraits of the living who look like they’ve recently dined with Death, of the dead sweetly tucked up, dressed up and ready to meet their Maker, of elaborate funeral wreathes, of mutilated bodies and other evidence of the less than salutary effects of prolonged winter oblivion. Without benefit of cable TV, Facebook or (most important) antidepressants to while away the endless winter, raging cabin fever and bursts of inexplicable violence passed the time. <br />
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Where was I heading with that? Oh yes, if Peter doesn’t stop micromanaging the minutia of life, I may lose my mind. <i>How big are the carrot slices?</i> I can see blood in the snow already.<br />
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Thursday, January 13<br />
My sister-in-law (a licensed family counselor with tales of dysfunctional families that would curl your hair) tells me that a single day stuck in the house does not beget cabin fever or any form of winter/snow madness. She was explaining this to me on my cell phone while I was driving from my favorite coffee house to my favorite antique shop in town. After more than two feet of snow, the secondary roads have been completely and exquisitely cleared, and even the tertiary roads are plowed. Our landscaper plowed our driveway yesterday. We had only to shovel out the excess snow blocking the garage doors. The sidewalks, curbs and streets in Brunswick are easily walk-able in shoes (rather than boots). I have to admit: They really know how to manage snow up here. No muss. No fuss. <br />
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So perhaps I was over-reacting yesterday. After the antique store, I met Peter for lunch in town. After that I trotted off to the super market where I picked up some lovely Clementine oranges. Okay, so we’re not the Donner party, and Teddy is not on the menu for the time being. <br />
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Friday, January 14<br />
We had dinner in a charming little Italian restaurant last night. I am refreshed and restored to my usual equanimity—such as it is. Pasta and wine are wonder drugs.PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-619150030184237549.post-15027293390677209852010-11-17T10:17:00.000-08:002012-02-10T07:29:00.105-08:00Making the Breast of the SituationRighty & Lefty. A & B. Teeny & Tiny. Frick & Frack. I have called the ladies many names over the years, as I have come to terms with their <i>stature</i>—for want of a better term. I have been blessed with modest breasts. I think I stood on the wrong line in that heavenly motor vehicle department that doles out physical attributes. I waited patiently on the line that distributed generous portions of butt and thigh. And so to my never-ending chagrin, the ladies are what they are: small. <br />
<br />
When I was younger I desperately wanted cleavage. Was that so much to ask for? I wasn’t asking for the world. I would have settled for completely filling my 34A fiber filled cups. But no, it was not meant to be. When I looked down, I had a clear view of my feet. I could hold bags of groceries between my breasts. I mean I could clutch them directly to my breastbone—no breasts to speak of getting in the way. Let’s call it the grocery bag test.<br />
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I have experimented with padded bras, acquiring along the way, an extensive knowledge of the limits of polyester and foam padding. Miracle Bras are just that: miracles of male engineering. No woman would have spent time coming up with a tourniquet that squeezes your breasts up to your collar bone. No, it’s not painful. But it doesn’t feel or look natural. And for me, it still doesn’t quite achieve real cleavage. True, I can’t hug the groceries directly to my breast bone, but I can still see plenty of daylight between the ladies. <br />
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Henny Youngman used to do a routine pantomiming a woman squ<i>eeeee</i>zing herself into a girdle that rolled her body fat up and into her bra. That actually looked like a good idea to me. My bottom half is zaftig enough to make that work. And while Henny’s routine was just a dream, surgical breast augmentation is not. The first augmented breasts I ever encountered were those of a dorm-mate in college. At least I think they were augmented. Ronnie always wore a baggy gray Stony Brook gym shirt and no bra. The girls—two unnaturally perfect globes—pointed optimistically towards the sky whether Ronnie was cold or not, and the boys followed Ronnie and the girls around like puppies. She never said that she’d had surgery, and in 1971 no one even knew to ask. But honest to God, those could not have been natural human endowments. I recall a group of hall mates discussing the famous pencil test. (The pencil test is simple. Place a pencil under your breast. If it’s held in place by a fold of flesh, then do everyone a favor: Wear a bra.) Everyone shook their heads no, they didn’t pass the test. Everyone except Ronnie and me. Smiling from ear to ear, Ronnie announced that she certainly did pass the test. I remember thinking she was positively chirpy—as she had just discovered something brand new about herself. Well, God bless her and her two close friends. Ronnie would have failed the grocery bag test.<br />
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After graduating college and working for a couple of years, I discovered my first breast cyst. I shot straight into locked-down panic mode, with the emergency klaxons blaring in my head around the clock. If I were destined to die young, I was going to India and live in an ashram before I departed this life. I would visit Tibet. I was going <i>anywhere</i>, but I was not going to spend my last few months at a desk in the Pension Department of Mutual of New York. Until that moment, I may not have thought of myself as being especially fond of Rhett and Scarlet, but I was amazed to discover just how attached to them I was. It’s one thing to take complain that Frankie and Johnnie are not everything I’d like them to be. It’s quite another to imagine being disfigured or dead. My family doctor was a bit more sanguine about it and suggested a mammogram as a first step to determine the nature of the lump.<br />
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In 1975 a mammogram was quite a different experience than the tourniquet and torture it is today. What it lacked in pain, it made up for in humiliation. The machine resembled a free standing fireplace in a ski chalet. Stationed in the middle of the room, it consisted of a stove pipe that hung from the ceiling and widened into a square stainless steel hood. The open end of the hood was filled with an enormous white balloon that extended out like an upside down muffin top. Below this contraption was a glass topped table, with the mammo film under the table. The technician instructed me to hop up on the table, lie on my side and lay Frankie flat on the table. That was easier said than done. The hood would be lowered toward the table, squeezing the breast between the balloon and the glass table top for the picture to be taken. Sounds reasonable, no? It is reasonable if you a reasonably sized breast. The technician struggled to gather enough breast tissue to pin down under the balloon. I obligingly rolled from side to side, angled my ribs, my back and my hips. But the mammary in question was not to be reasoned with. I don’t know if the tech ever did get a useable picture. No matter, the doctor pronounced it a benign cyst. My mother explained that the entire family (my grandmother, my mother and both her sisters) had cystic breasts. (“They come. They go. It’s nothing.”) I never went to India, but I did go back to work. Most importantly, I had gained a new appreciation for Ethel and Lucy. To paraphrase the US Army slogan, they were being all that they could be. And they were not to be faulted for what they were not meant to be.<br />
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Over the years, the ladies have come into their own. As I approached 40, and went through a brief midlife crisis lamenting the loss of youth and questioning the meaning of life, Teeny and Tiny made it possible for me to once again go bra-less. Once I was satisfied there was life after 40, I regained my sanity and put my bra back on. And even as I round the bend approaching 60, Abbott and Costello are still perky. I can’t complain.PGDhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07841969084847125482noreply@blogger.com0