Lost Again......

So I must start over... and it was so good. But only I shall know this. Behind me 'Downton Abby' is playing, a new "Upstairs Downstairs" replaying over this summer. I believe this is the end. Rebellion, rebellion. What a lovely time for it to come... for now is the time we need another revolution in this country. A revolution against the fools in Congress... the dreadful so called 'tea party' ruled by people who have no idea why this country was founded, or by whom (oh sure, Jefferson freed the slaves) and have never read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, I am sure. Ah, my poor old ancestors are spinning in their graves back in New England. For this they fought and died in the revolution and every other war in our 'run-by-the-men' past. I fear we are too often 'run' by cheney types who do so love rounding up the children and sending them to be killed. Each time I read the PNAC writing I am sick that the people of this country could be so ignorant that they would vote in a patsy chosen by men who worked to ruin the country for their own power-mad schemes. Now those same people, with no idea why we are a country, or what we originally stood for, are backing these ignorant tea party people, who have no more intelligence than they do, and certainly do not know much about running a country. And so, we begin to sink into the morass, becoming more and more like the third world countries, run by greedy dictators. More and more we have two class of people: the very rich and the poor, so many now the poverty stricken, homeless and starving. I suppose my two children are among the very few left in the 'middle class' although they may be only a few paychecks from joining me in the lap of poverty. Ah, what greed has done to my blessed country. Perhaps we will all move up to Canada, to my daughter's house there and a better life. Or, perhaps they will move to the Netherlands, as I wanted to a very long time ago. A possibility, for this country has little to offer these days. England does not seem to be much better. Oh god... where to hide? Any place without the Wallmart children, cheney and bush (all the rich-white-trash bush family and friends). Oh, is there anyone who can save my once beautiful, once happy beloved country.

So here's a prayer I sent to a friend... a prayer for my poor (literally) country:

OK, god... you are supposed to be so great... how about you wipe out all of the U.S. Congress, and send us a bunch of really good angels to rewrite the rules, so that the people who are in Congress from now on are on Social Security, have worked at real jobs and are planning on going back to them... and while you are at it, make sure the people are half from minorities and a good divide between men and women. That's my atheist prayer for the day.

I have found a group who are at least attempting to do something about the mess that is our 'government.' Take a look, you might find them interesting, and then again you might not, particularly if you are a lifetime politician: http://www.fixcongressfirst.org/
Perhaps you might find this interesting: http://www.democracymeetup.com/
Or this: http://www.callaconvention.org/
And I found this one very interesting: http://www.leftyblogs.com/
But then, I like my mother before me, am something of a Progressive (or even Radical)

I would love to see a complete overhaul of Congress, with all Congresspeople on Social Security, and made to go home after serving a definite number of terms (or years), and not allowed to sign on as lobbyists for any corporations. Perhaps this is only possible with a convention... so let us call for a convention and rewrite or amend the Constitution, which was written for an agricultural nation. We are no longer that... life changes, therefore government should change.

We seem to have come to an impasse, with two do-nothing parties simply fighting each other instead of what they were elected to do... make laws and serve us, the people, as our representatives, then leave Washington and return to his/her 'job.' For I would like to see no more lifetime 'politicians' -- but instead actual 'representatives' of the people who voted for them. I am sick of labels. I want to see a Senator being a Senator, a Representative being a Representative, not merely a party hack, but serving The People and actually working at being In Congress daily, actually there, working at doing the tasks of our government, reading and understanding the bills brought before them, and assisting in the task of getting them through Congress, or defeated... but doing either in short order, with televised, not only speeches, but also a sweep of the entire 'audience' of a speech, so we can identify our representatives at work.

Is this all a dream. I sincerely hope not, for if it is, and nothing can be done quickly and well, perhaps the next thing is what also was done before: Revolution. I'm all for it. Perhaps it is up to me to form the next group. Revolution Now.

Title, We Don't Need No Steenkin' Titles......

Well, at least tonight we don't, as I cannot think of one. Funny, I notice that as always I did too long a 'title' for my blog, so that it shows up on my dashboard page as "Through a Tall Wind" -- not a bad title for SF at least. The wind is often so bad in our wind-tunnel of a driveway that small people have a problem getting into the yard. At any rate, neither the rather long title I did for my blog, nor the above 'lack of' is as long as one I did for a poem recently, it was around 8-10 lines long...about a silly woman who said she was switching her vote to McCain (from Hillary) because he was a 'feminist' -- she could tell because after all, he had chosen a 'woman' as his VP! (or perhaps because he dropped a wife who was no longer beautiful and married a pretty young one with money?) That's even worse than the Russian woman who told me she was voting for McCain because "THEY (ye gods, I thought that kind of talk had gone out of our country looong ago) are all stoopid." So, I said in return, "Gee, did you graduate Harvard with a magna cum laude? If not, don't bother talking to me again." Be that as it may (a favorite expression of Jessie's):

For me it is still Tuesday ("Tuuesday, dear, NOT Toosday"), so, let me see, day before yesterday (Sunday, as I could simply have said) I had a great day. Went with Pat Jones (no relation to Uncle Collie, kids, but she's from England, and with a name like Jones, obviously another Welsh type) to the Yerba Buena Gardens Theatre/Music Festival, which was a day of fun out in the sun, dominated by big time acts like Beach Blanket Babylon, but also had room for some very interesting little theatre groups and solo acts, some of whom will be seen at the Fringe Festival, which I do plan to try to attend.

Actually, I may even work up an act myself for next year's Fringe. That should shut some of the people who keep asking when I am going to 'be in something' up for a bit at least. If I do, I will have Pat and Elvira appearing with me...they have said they would love to, and I must ask Collie if he would like to dance in as the waiter in what I plan to call, "My Dinner With Peggy" (or should I call it "My Dinner With Pat?") We, Elvira and I, got hysterical talking about it...well, we also had a few laughs about her calling the jello she had made and then hidden behind a bunch of stuff, so that I had neglected to eat it, 'yello' and then saying gelatin quite properly. Interesting, I wonder if all Hispanic people say 'y' for 'j'.....but can say the 'j' sound when it is spelled with "g' as in 'gelatin?' Pat was after me on what accents I can do as we walked the MILES it takes to get through the Metreon to the outside doors. "Can you do Cockney?" (I can even do the rhyming Cockney, 'so oi tikes the apples 'n pears to 'er sea shore...') "Can you do French? ('Ah, mais oui, ah am gooing to 'eight street to z' baak-ary...'), etc. See, I can even write in accents. I have lots of people to study...my darling little El-vee-ra (NOT El-vi-ra, please!) for S.&Central America (they do NOT have 'Spanish' accents, as they do NOT lispe), my Parisian friend Michele (NEVER Michelle for a woman, she says), and of course, I can do Russians beautifully.....my building is full of them. I do the little martinet who lives on the second floor best....the one who prances into our manager's office and says, "Yuuh, I need mon come my a-pat-munt, NOW!" Isabelle: "I am busy talking to someone else at the moment...and I don't have 'mon' here today. What do you need?" Martinet: "I need shen-da-leerr poot up NOW, bot rrooms!" Isabelle: Well, sorry, but as I said, I am busy talking to someone else, and my MAN won't be back until tomorrow. I'll write up a request and he'll get up to see you when he has finished all the other jobs written up for him. Martinet stomps out and she turns to me and says, "He may get the damned chandeliers put up some time after next Christmas if he's lucky!!" I love having him come down to see her, as I am often there to hear all the dialogue, which I will use in an act someday. Friends who have heard my stories about him and another Russian I see often have begged me to go to a comedy club and do them....I'm considering it. As I have said often, everything is grist for my mill, particularly lovely accents. I even have a native SF one that always ends with, "Thank you for sharing that with me....." The 'native' S.F. person doesn't really have an accent, but most are so sweet and kind...I love them.

Now I got off track again, where was I? Ah, yes, the perfect Sunday....Pat and I walked through ALL of the Metreon building and out onto Mission, where she went over to Market St and I went across Fourth to the Mission bus stop and sat down next to a charming Russian lady who told me we had JUST missed the bus, so we sat and chatted a bit, and a very attractive lady sat down on my left. She was just coming from the Theatre Festival also, and was from Bombay...she had wanted to stay to see the rest of the performances her daughter, who lives here, didn't want to see, so she sent them off and said she'd take the bus home. Now the three of us chatted about SF, about the Festival, about ourselves and had a jolly time waiting for the Mission bus. We all were going to almost the same spot, so I pulled out my card (and lost my change purse...damn!) and gave it to her, so she would have my email address. She went me one better, and seeing how close to her daughter I lived, said she would call me when her husband goes back to India and come and see me. She is staying on for a month after he leaves.....he has to get back to work. So now I have a lovely friend from Bombay, and will undoubtedly meet her daughter and family, who live a couple of blocks from me.

I LOVE San Francisco -- where else does everyone talk to everyone else.....at theatres during the intermission, at the symphony before a performance, on the bus....and the cab drivers are the most fascinating characters anywhere. They are from all over the world and darling. I've gotten recipes from Brazilian drivers, been sung to by an Italian one, and the Venezuealan (sp?) driver who drove me to the Sunday Festival loved one of my poems I read to him, and when I told him I have three or four novels in my desk drawer, wanted to be my agent....I had a hard time getting out of the cab, he wanted to finish our conversation. I told him I'd see him at the cab barn, as I have an idea for a book about cab drivers in SF, and he insisted that the next time I called for a cab to ask for him. What a day.....and what a great city I have come 'home' to, for this has been my Spiritual Home ever since Ned started telling me about it when I was around sixteen years old. I never could understand why my kids don't feel exactly as I do about it, particularly when Whitney spent her fifth birthday here, and even got to 'help the drivers turn a cable car around.' She walked between two of them, pushing the car at the turn-around, yelling, "Look at me, mommy -- I'm helping," while they chuckled at her pleasure. Such a funny, darling child! And Mark spent part of his fifth year here, running into the water with Joe Bullock at Ocean Beach, and riding on his shoulders in the park during the 'summer of love.' Mark didn't want to leave -- he had Jenny and Joe to entertain him -- and neither did I. I should have stayed, sent for my money and bought a house, as I wanted to. Shoulda, coulda, woulda means nothing..... perhaps that is the weird break in the life-line of my LEFT hand. The lifeline on my right hand goes on forever up around my thumb--God! I am another 'Mama' without the miserable temper. She'd have lived forever had it not been for that blod clot they didn't catch in time which killed her at 100. I have a better doctor (the best dr. in SF, Liz is!) so who knows!!! However, I find I am suddenly getting the stigmata on right hand that I used to get when I was a kid and the left hand itches miserably in the same spot...terrible! If anyone thinks this will get me back to church....think again!! Oh, well, maybe a short visit to Father Mickey in the old Mission across the street will help. Naw, he'd just laugh at me and tell me about how the graveyard our building was built on was for the pagan Indians and the Episcopalians. (I love that man, he reminds me of the dear priest we had at school, Father Pauley who was a nut like Mickey.)

So, fun and weirdness aside.....life is pretty great! And it is definitely TIME for BED! 'Nite all, it is way, way past tomorrow.....Ah, well................

'I Get Carried.....Yes Carried Away....'

And now just musings and nonsense and politics oh my......

Amusing NYTimes headline in ‘Business’: ‘Weekend Without Bernie” (pic of Madoff)

Also interesting in article in same about healthcare:

<<< Mr. Luntz advised Republicans to show they “understand and empathize” with voters’ concerns about soaring health costs. “You simply must be vocally and passionately on the side of reform,” he wrote.

He urged Republicans to argue that the Democratic plan would “deny people treatments they need and make them wait to get the treatments they are allowed to receive.”

Mr. Luntz recommended this language: “If you have to wait weeks for tests and months for treatment, that’s a health care crisis.” >>>
(you will not find this in Canada, no matter what 'they' say....my daughter owns a home in Canada and her friend who had breast cancer at almost the same time that she did had much better care, faster service, and longer stay in hospital then she did....and paid nothing for it, while my daughter, who had "excellent healthcare" through her company, paid over $30,000 of her own money for her op and care.) This 'excellent' care failed a bit. They left a tiny bit of the cancer in, and had to operate again, shortly after her first operation. She worked all during the chemo sessions she had after the op, and during the radiation they recommended, as she had to pay off that $30,000. Oh, and she had to wait some time for the operation (probably longer than her friend in Canada).

And here are the final sentences of an article entitled: ‘Democrats Uneasy Over National Security Policy ‘:

<<< “This is going to be a problem from now, through the big bill, through the next year,” he said, adding that discontent will grow if the situation worsens in Iraq or Afghanistan or if there are further events like the killings of five American soldiers by a fellow American that underscore the severe strain on the troops.

“The public is not focused on the war at all,” Mr. Murtha said. “But they are going to be focused on it if it goes bad.” >>>

Then this, close to my feeling.....the ‘gun lobby’ scare hell out of me
“Whose Senate Is This? “ http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/opinion/14thu3.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

And do read this one: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/opinion/15Francese.html?em
About diploma Latin -- not the Latin of my or your childhood. Fun.

I have a few things to say to Garrison Keillor, Op-ed contributor, whose article is “We Are What We Are”.........
My dear mother had one thing to say about old men, when, after my father died and her friends urged her to get out and meet other men:
Jessie: “Really, I cannot stand OLD men, they cough and spit!” Somehow I cannot see Noel Coward doing that....but that’s just me. And I do prefer younger men....or those who MUST know everything....they are my favourites.

Of course, I can turn to ‘Broadway’ and all the comments on the Tony Awards. Ye gods....”Hair” has been revived. And “Mary Stuart” and “The Norman Conquests” -- and “Waiting for Godot?” Sometimes I do wish I were back in NYC....but I should have to BUY tickets, while when I was living there so many years ago, I simply had to call someone I knew who was in the cast. ("Waiting for Godot???")

I found an ancient “Best Plays” volume recently that listed plays in which at least ten of my friends were working. I guess I just miss them...Perry, you never should have quit! ah, well.

No MAN For Me

Funny, I find McCain such a typical MAN. He would never be able to see a woman’s point of view, while I think Obama does, for he seems to have a softer sensibility somehow, and he is stronger mentally. McCain adores Hemingway, the ‘hero’ of “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Of course. I dislike Hemingway and most guys who think he is the best -- they are usually basic wimps who would like to be the big tough MAN, as poor old Ernest did They have nothing to attract me.

As I read of all the great leaders, past and present (Newsweek, July 14, 2008), who admire Lincoln I realize that Lincoln was not like many of them (or Hemingway), but had a kinder, much more thoughtful nature and didn’t spend all his time being a MAN, or I should say, trying to be a MAN, for that is what most of them do. Not that I am throwing rocks at men in general, just at the false ones...and I certainly consider McCain a false one, along with ‘doc’ robo & philll of my AOL group, and Kristol, cheney, dubya, etc. of the PNAC and bush gangs, for they are the ones who would use power, superior strength, hubris, lies and false pride to try to gain what they want, particularly with women, when they even consider them. A big gun in the pocket or on the shoulder is more their speed.

And to the men who claim that ‘war is good,’ or ‘God does not hate war, after all there were good wars in the bible,’ or other fundamentalist’s arguments for war, I say this: Most of the real men I know have grown enough, studied, and learned enough to realize that religion is a crutch and man-made thing, that the great prophet of ‘Christianity,’ Jesus, did not believe in war (read the NEW Testament, dears, not the folk tales of the Old), and no war in history has ever been a ‘good’ thing. Those who still argue for war should listen to, and hear, Dylan’s song “With God On Our Side,” one of the best arguments against war I have ever heard.

Meanwhile the bright men in my AOL group; my dear friends Colin, Mel, Bud, Bruno, John and Mike; my darling son, and my own love, K, use an innate kindness, inner strength and intelligence to reason and figure out the correct solution to problems and do not immediately sweep in with a pretend sword or a specious argument to attempt to kill their adversaries before they even know what the problem is. And so, they are the ones I turn to, or even argue with once in awhile, for I know I will be listened to and my argument treated fairly. For this I give thanks, and for this I also have hope for MANkind.
Peggy Cartwright, 7/2/08