I don't suppose many people will see this, as I don't suppose many people read or even see this blog, but I shall write it anyway. Now that Boehner has finally decided to stop saying he hasn't had a conversation with the president, shut up and stopped listening to the moronic part of his 'party' (the so called 'tea party' group), I just want to weigh in with my feelings. Actually, my only feelings on this are that hopefully, everyone with any brains will vote against ANYONE who has ever supported Boehner, the 'tea party' or anyone in the far right wing of the republican party. Remember, oh ye who have lived through this... who they are! Now and forever, AMEN.
After having to look at the smarmy, shiny faces of Ted Cruz (does he grease it up before he spouts his trash?) and Michelle Bachman for the last couple of days, I am almost ready to drag myself out of the house and run for office. I am not happy with ANYONE in Washington, D.C., and I personally, feel we need to clean Congress out of the building they NEVER seem to have time to go and work in. We have a Congress that is a non-working body... at least for us. They are all working for themselves, palling with the lobbyists and billionaires to make sure that they will keep getting money to keep their miserable jobs until they are able to retire on full pay with free health benefits, and a job waiting as another lobbyist, so they can stay and play in Washington... the party capital of the world. Am I disillusioned with our government and its people......
I think you might possibly... or certainly, say that I am.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Friday, October 11, 2013
That Must Have Done it...
Here it is around a week later, and I'm fine. Happy as a lark, singing and feeling really happy. Guess getting it out about feeling miserable must work. Well... I'm back to having purple hair, so people see me again. Even had a guy delivering some poor old man into an ambulance, shout out to me, "Hey, I love your hair... nice, goes with the outfit, very pretty," when I was waiting for my cab after my therapy session. And, have had a series of wonderful cab drivers this week and last. Couple of days ago I was going up to Davies in a cab and the driver was playing a wonderful Jobim album. I told him I had been listening to Jobim at home and how much I admired his music. He said he should make me a copy of his CD... I didn't think any more of it, and a couple of days later, Michele and Monet handed me a CD from the little box at my door as they were leaving my apt. It was Jobim... and I couldn't imagine how it got there... so when I was going out to get the mail, I ran into Linda, the girl who handles tenant stuff in the building. She asked me if I had gotten the CD she left at my door... that a young cab driver came in and asked her to give it to a nice older woman with purple hair... and of course she knew it was me. Wish she had just told him where my apt was, so I could have thanked him. He was a darling.
Then today, I had a darling Hispanic driver who lives out in San Bruno and told me all about his garden and fruit trees, and I told him how to make Hungarian fruit soup... we had a ball driving up to go to see Michelle Spicer, my terrific therapist, who almost killed me exercising. Then... amazing... the same cab driver picked me up to come home and gave me a big hug at the end of the trip. I love the Luxor Cab drivers, they are such fun. Everyone I met today was sweet and kind and interesting... life is good, after all. And Michelle got me in the pool classes for four more sessions... hooray! Now I have to do all the exercises she has given me EVERY DAY... and get out there to the lobby daily and get on the recumbent bike. My poor old back may wear out, but I promised... and I don't want to be like Kirk, and forget half the promises........
And... I have a new correspondent who bodes well to become a friend. All this exercising and letter writing will keep me very busy for some time... and has obviously cheered me up. I guess I do need to get out and see and talk to people... or at least write to someone. I probably should do something about starting a poetry group... and maybe even a social group for older people, as I have discovered a lot of old guys on OKC live in this neighborhood... what a surprize (oh, there I go being English again.) Oh, I am sure they wouldn't like my calling them old... but they are. I have to find out how to put different fonts on here!!
Then today, I had a darling Hispanic driver who lives out in San Bruno and told me all about his garden and fruit trees, and I told him how to make Hungarian fruit soup... we had a ball driving up to go to see Michelle Spicer, my terrific therapist, who almost killed me exercising. Then... amazing... the same cab driver picked me up to come home and gave me a big hug at the end of the trip. I love the Luxor Cab drivers, they are such fun. Everyone I met today was sweet and kind and interesting... life is good, after all. And Michelle got me in the pool classes for four more sessions... hooray! Now I have to do all the exercises she has given me EVERY DAY... and get out there to the lobby daily and get on the recumbent bike. My poor old back may wear out, but I promised... and I don't want to be like Kirk, and forget half the promises........
And... I have a new correspondent who bodes well to become a friend. All this exercising and letter writing will keep me very busy for some time... and has obviously cheered me up. I guess I do need to get out and see and talk to people... or at least write to someone. I probably should do something about starting a poetry group... and maybe even a social group for older people, as I have discovered a lot of old guys on OKC live in this neighborhood... what a surprize (oh, there I go being English again.) Oh, I am sure they wouldn't like my calling them old... but they are. I have to find out how to put different fonts on here!!
Friday, October 4, 2013
Wasting Away??
Doggone... sometimes I feel I must be getting close to death. First, I hurt all the time... I mean really hurt. Pain in the back, bad, and now the old feet hurt most of the time, there is pain in the hip, even my left breast hurts some of the time; it's like the whole damned left side hates me. And I’m not much good with pain, although I am sure getting a lot better than I used to be... gotta keep moving.
Next: time seems to have speeded up so much that I feel like this should still be around February (pronounced Feb-RUE-ary people!) or March and Spring in full bloom (well, this is California, after all). Amazing that I manage to get my rent and all the other bills paid, as I’m not too good at looking at the day or date, and often must be reminded it is time for same.
Then there’s the horrible fact of life that most of my friends have given up the ghost and left me standing (I know... more like sitting) here all alone and lonely. Or have gone back to live with children all those long, long miles away back East. What are they thinking? How can they bear to go back to the heat and cold and floods and hurricanes and tornadoes and blizzards... yahhhhhhh! Not for me, if I must live and die alone out here, at least I shall be comfortable.
Last, I am falling again into a sort of lonely depression -- with me in various forms ever since my darling K deserted me, when I asked for so little. A desertion after 10 years, made even worse by the fact that he promised never to do that, but did, saying that he had made promises and had to keep them. So much for ‘what kind of promise... are there good and bad promises?’. Guess so.
With K's desertion and the death of my dear, sweet, kind Al, I have no one left even to write to, so the days lie forgotten as they fly by in the terrible wind now, and I seem merely to waste away... soon to be swept up with the days, the leaves and all the rest of the blowing about trash....... fade to pale blue
Next: time seems to have speeded up so much that I feel like this should still be around February (pronounced Feb-RUE-ary people!) or March and Spring in full bloom (well, this is California, after all). Amazing that I manage to get my rent and all the other bills paid, as I’m not too good at looking at the day or date, and often must be reminded it is time for same.
Then there’s the horrible fact of life that most of my friends have given up the ghost and left me standing (I know... more like sitting) here all alone and lonely. Or have gone back to live with children all those long, long miles away back East. What are they thinking? How can they bear to go back to the heat and cold and floods and hurricanes and tornadoes and blizzards... yahhhhhhh! Not for me, if I must live and die alone out here, at least I shall be comfortable.
Last, I am falling again into a sort of lonely depression -- with me in various forms ever since my darling K deserted me, when I asked for so little. A desertion after 10 years, made even worse by the fact that he promised never to do that, but did, saying that he had made promises and had to keep them. So much for ‘what kind of promise... are there good and bad promises?’. Guess so.
With K's desertion and the death of my dear, sweet, kind Al, I have no one left even to write to, so the days lie forgotten as they fly by in the terrible wind now, and I seem merely to waste away... soon to be swept up with the days, the leaves and all the rest of the blowing about trash....... fade to pale blue
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Finally, A Sample From My Memories
Our Own Man Who Came to Dinner
Jessie had an unending parade of people who came to visit us, particularly when we lived in Pittsburgh. We had, of course, the old school crowd from Michigan State, Daddy’s friends from years of companionship at General Motors, theatre friends from all over, particularly those in the cast of whatever was playing in town, artists, writers and friends from such organizations as AAUW or the League of Women Voters. Everyone who came to town for anything, called Jessie and often came to stay with us for a night or two. I got very used to Jess calling down the stairs, “Tell Helen (or Ruby or Lessie, or whoever was in charge of the kitchen at the moment), to set another place at the table.”
I was generally the one to set another place, as I was often the sous chef, down there learning all I could about making magnificent dinners for our family and friends. Seldom did we have less than six to eight people for dinner. One frequent dinner guest was a writer friend of Jessie’s named George Lockart, who lived with his brother and worked for the Veteran’s Administration. When his brother moved back to Eastern PA, Jessie invited George to come and stay with us until he found another apartment. He never did find one, and lived with us until we moved to Chicago. He was then inherited by P.B. Burgwin and his family. But that is another story.
George had been drafted into the Army to serve in W.W.II. He was about as good a candidate for soldiering as one would imagine David Sedaris would be. First of all, he was the shape of a cantaloupe, with little arms and legs attached. However, the Army put him in something called the “Timber Wolf Division” with a bunch of hillbillies from Kentucky. But luckily in that group he made friends with the only three other intellectuals who were also privates in that division. One was a famous writer whose name I cannot remember, the next a guy named Joe Schaller (also a writer) and a fourth a young college professor from back East.
After George moved in we were regaled with stories about the adventures of those four men, who landed in France and moved with the armies that fought battles across the country, and actually beat back the Germans to win the war. Not that those four did much toward that win. We were told that they never fired their guns (one of which was constantly jammed), but apparently simply sat on their backpacks or piles of damp army blankets, playing bridge as the army moved across France.
“It always rains during a war,” one of them told me, “so we were never dry.”
“Yes,” would chime in another, “we sat on those damned wet blankets for weeks. Damned things never dried out.”
“I got some kind of foot fungus,” one would say, “Still have it... the miserable stuff never goes away. Wet socks, that’s what did it!”
The only time they were ever comfortable during WWII was one brief stint spent in a captured castle in Germany. It was also the only time any of them had worried about rescuing the ‘souvenirs’ so many of the soldiers were picking up. The hillbillies broke into chests and safes in the castle, looking for money or something valuable, pocketing any souvenirs they thought might get them a little money, tossing out great bunches of clothing and handmade lace. George managed to rescue a few exquisite linen hankies with thick lace borders and embroidered initials that one of the boys was planning to use to clean his gun, and some of the lace yardage, which later was sewn into his sister’s wedding gown, having come back in a pillow case in George’s backpack.
My favorite story about these guys is actually only about Joe Schaller, who was visiting George and so having dinner with us. Our dining room was downstairs, the children’s living room was upstairs and all sound carried easily from it and the piano, down into the dining room. My younger sister had been ‘teaching’ one of her friends to play our battered, out-of-tune upright piano and the friend was practicing, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la (or thumb, up all the fingers, then back down to thumb, up one note, repeat the same. Slowly, obnoxiously.
Joe finally couldn’t take it any longer and shouted up the stairs, “Hey, jazz it up a little, kid, will ya, the customers don’t go for that classical stuff.”
Jessie had an unending parade of people who came to visit us, particularly when we lived in Pittsburgh. We had, of course, the old school crowd from Michigan State, Daddy’s friends from years of companionship at General Motors, theatre friends from all over, particularly those in the cast of whatever was playing in town, artists, writers and friends from such organizations as AAUW or the League of Women Voters. Everyone who came to town for anything, called Jessie and often came to stay with us for a night or two. I got very used to Jess calling down the stairs, “Tell Helen (or Ruby or Lessie, or whoever was in charge of the kitchen at the moment), to set another place at the table.”
I was generally the one to set another place, as I was often the sous chef, down there learning all I could about making magnificent dinners for our family and friends. Seldom did we have less than six to eight people for dinner. One frequent dinner guest was a writer friend of Jessie’s named George Lockart, who lived with his brother and worked for the Veteran’s Administration. When his brother moved back to Eastern PA, Jessie invited George to come and stay with us until he found another apartment. He never did find one, and lived with us until we moved to Chicago. He was then inherited by P.B. Burgwin and his family. But that is another story.
George had been drafted into the Army to serve in W.W.II. He was about as good a candidate for soldiering as one would imagine David Sedaris would be. First of all, he was the shape of a cantaloupe, with little arms and legs attached. However, the Army put him in something called the “Timber Wolf Division” with a bunch of hillbillies from Kentucky. But luckily in that group he made friends with the only three other intellectuals who were also privates in that division. One was a famous writer whose name I cannot remember, the next a guy named Joe Schaller (also a writer) and a fourth a young college professor from back East.
After George moved in we were regaled with stories about the adventures of those four men, who landed in France and moved with the armies that fought battles across the country, and actually beat back the Germans to win the war. Not that those four did much toward that win. We were told that they never fired their guns (one of which was constantly jammed), but apparently simply sat on their backpacks or piles of damp army blankets, playing bridge as the army moved across France.
“It always rains during a war,” one of them told me, “so we were never dry.”
“Yes,” would chime in another, “we sat on those damned wet blankets for weeks. Damned things never dried out.”
“I got some kind of foot fungus,” one would say, “Still have it... the miserable stuff never goes away. Wet socks, that’s what did it!”
The only time they were ever comfortable during WWII was one brief stint spent in a captured castle in Germany. It was also the only time any of them had worried about rescuing the ‘souvenirs’ so many of the soldiers were picking up. The hillbillies broke into chests and safes in the castle, looking for money or something valuable, pocketing any souvenirs they thought might get them a little money, tossing out great bunches of clothing and handmade lace. George managed to rescue a few exquisite linen hankies with thick lace borders and embroidered initials that one of the boys was planning to use to clean his gun, and some of the lace yardage, which later was sewn into his sister’s wedding gown, having come back in a pillow case in George’s backpack.
My favorite story about these guys is actually only about Joe Schaller, who was visiting George and so having dinner with us. Our dining room was downstairs, the children’s living room was upstairs and all sound carried easily from it and the piano, down into the dining room. My younger sister had been ‘teaching’ one of her friends to play our battered, out-of-tune upright piano and the friend was practicing, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la (or thumb, up all the fingers, then back down to thumb, up one note, repeat the same. Slowly, obnoxiously.
Joe finally couldn’t take it any longer and shouted up the stairs, “Hey, jazz it up a little, kid, will ya, the customers don’t go for that classical stuff.”
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
More Anger
After a long day of reading ALMOST ALL the columnists, both Democratic and republican (well David Brooks agrees with me, Mark Shields is too busy getting married to write of it), and their feelings on the cave-in by Boehner and the rest of the republican party big-wigs, I am shocked and awed that this could happen. What are they thinking? Where are their heads? Are they joining the DoogieBushGang in ignorance? Are they afraid of these ignorant kooks who have very little education (I don’t care if they went to Harvard, they obviously didn’t LISTEN), and less sense. I am further shocked to see that so many of them consider themselves “middle class.” They had better scrape the scales off their eyes and SEE that there is NO middle class anymore. I know, I used to be one of the upper middle class and I am now one of y’all... 90% of the people of the United States are THE POOR. Only the RICH should vote republican... and that’s the 2% who OWN ALL THE MONEY IN THE COUNTRY. Look it up people... it’s all there in Google. They will tell you exactly how POOR and STUPID you are if you vote with the 2%... you’re just handing them your taxes, plus a lot more. So here’s what I wrote in answer to all the nuts arguing about guns, healthcare and money in the New York Times:
What’s the matter with the ‘tea party’ or ‘conservatives’ or any weird non-thinkers, that keeps them unaware that most people in this world live happily and peacefully in countries that have universal health care and laws that forbid ordinary citizens from having any guns. I can’t understand why the poor (that’s 90% of our citizens) are so easily swayed by the 2% with all the money, and constantly vote to make the 2%’s will be done (make sure they keep getting more money) and let gun manufacturers, heads of insurance companies and other corporate heads rule the country.
Go to the Constitution and RE-READ the Second Amendment. It doesn’t say that every nut should have an Army gun and carry it around all the time. It says that we should have a militia with guns (kept at HQ), so we will be protected from intruders or some crazy who thinks he/she can attack others. Police and members of the National Guard (militia in the old days) are the only ones who should have guns - not for personal use, only when on duty. Period.
As long as ‘poor’ people keep allowing guns made to kill a maximum number of people to be bought at gun shows by crazies or relatives of same, you can easily figure out how many children will be killed in the next year. We need to close the gun shows, stop the manufacturers from selling war weapons in this country and impose extremely strict penalties on anyone with weapons excepta one-load-at-a-time weapon, (hunting rifle). I include the wealthy 2% in that, even the Wal-family, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and that brilliant speechmaker, Ashton Kutcher.
What’s the matter with the ‘tea party’ or ‘conservatives’ or any weird non-thinkers, that keeps them unaware that most people in this world live happily and peacefully in countries that have universal health care and laws that forbid ordinary citizens from having any guns. I can’t understand why the poor (that’s 90% of our citizens) are so easily swayed by the 2% with all the money, and constantly vote to make the 2%’s will be done (make sure they keep getting more money) and let gun manufacturers, heads of insurance companies and other corporate heads rule the country.
Go to the Constitution and RE-READ the Second Amendment. It doesn’t say that every nut should have an Army gun and carry it around all the time. It says that we should have a militia with guns (kept at HQ), so we will be protected from intruders or some crazy who thinks he/she can attack others. Police and members of the National Guard (militia in the old days) are the only ones who should have guns - not for personal use, only when on duty. Period.
As long as ‘poor’ people keep allowing guns made to kill a maximum number of people to be bought at gun shows by crazies or relatives of same, you can easily figure out how many children will be killed in the next year. We need to close the gun shows, stop the manufacturers from selling war weapons in this country and impose extremely strict penalties on anyone with weapons excepta one-load-at-a-time weapon, (hunting rifle). I include the wealthy 2% in that, even the Wal-family, John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and that brilliant speechmaker, Ashton Kutcher.
I Should Lighten Up... but I can't
I cannot seem to write anything positive or pleasant these days. Only one after another... depressing little notes on the terrible greedy, not too bright, professional politicians in Washington. All of them seem to come from the Ronald Raegan/Doogie Bush school of “I-wanna-wreck-the-guvment-and-make-big-bucks-doing-it” school of permanent politicians. The latest seem to belong to the dumb-and-dumber class of people. For example... take the idiot who ran for V.P. in the last election, Paul Ryan (I think I got the name right... hard to remember a non-entity), a congressman who has never had a ‘real’ job, outside of being a ‘gofer’ for an older congressman and a stint at McDonalds. How does that make him capable of ‘running the country?’ Then there is Ted Cruz, thinking of running for president, yet he holds a citizenship in Canada (doesn’t that make him a foreigner?), and quotes the likes of Ashton Kutcher as a great speechmaker. His other examples were as bad also (again, who can remember ignorance). I do love Dr.Seuss, but as a reading to Congress?
If I weren’t so damned OLD, I’d move to Sweden or the Netherlands... they not only have great systems of government, fewer crazies running around and less homeless and starving on their streets, but have learned how to take care of their old and feed the poor. Even better, they have lots of great looking, super tall guys with lots of brains. An old intellectual could have a great time finding a man to talk to over there! Sigh! Blue... blue... blue!!!
If I weren’t so damned OLD, I’d move to Sweden or the Netherlands... they not only have great systems of government, fewer crazies running around and less homeless and starving on their streets, but have learned how to take care of their old and feed the poor. Even better, they have lots of great looking, super tall guys with lots of brains. An old intellectual could have a great time finding a man to talk to over there! Sigh! Blue... blue... blue!!!
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