Sarah Smile

Don't know that Sarah Palin will be doing much smiling in the next days, weeks and months. It would be lovely if she could enjoy being the first woman ever on a Republican presidential ticket, but given that she was already being besmirched with the story of how she fired her brother in law the Alaska State Trooper and was under an ethics investigation even BEFORE McCain announced her, I am guessing that she will get little pleasure and lots of grief. Why anyone would want to run for public office, I sure don't know. There isn't anyone without something that someone wouldn't designate as a skeleton in his or her closet that couldn't be neutralized by an enterprising other side.

As to her "experience". I am less concerned with Barack Obama's experience than I am with his political positions and an abiding belief that he is a demogogue, the likes of which this country has not experienced, though other countries have, to their great misfortune. We think we are invulnerable to take over from "within". What was it that Krushchev or someone said, "We will bury you!". They'll use our democracy. They are. They have been. Mr. Obama is not alone seeded within the government. He is just the current incarnation. It seems I am now become my father in my prophesy of doom and gloom. Obama has the gift of Orwellian gab and half the country, intelligent people, no more or less than I am, are buying it. But IF I were concerned about experience, then my answer to those of the liberal democrat persuasion is this and it is not my answer alone: The Vice President can and often does, learn on the job.  One also might remember that Harry Truman was so out of the loop that he knew nothing about the Manhattan Project and the Atom Bomb until after Roosevelt died and he was taking his place. The President arguably has less wiggle room in that regard, is expected to take the reins upon the prior resident's vacating of the White House.

But back to Sarah herself. I don't exactly know what caused it, but when I read about Ms. Palin, after hearing the selection, I found myself smiling. A lot. I donated to McCain, something I had no great inclination to do before, though I planned on voting for him. Aside from the fact that I am more in accord with her political views, I think yes, it was risky, but she is not cut from the usual mold of politicians, male or female. She appears to be nobody's fool and in nobody's pocket. She is more articulate than any candidate I have ever seen, and I am hoping that she will blow Joe Biden (btw why are his old skeletons so happily back in the closet that were so well publicized in days gone by while Sarah is being so curiously focused upon by the media?) out of the water in their debate. I assume they will debate, unless Joe is taking Obama's tact and avoiding anything but canned conversation.

Of course, time will tell, and probably not much by the way information moves in this society and opinions run rampant. My opinion? Well, something about all this has me doing something I have never done before, openly stating them. I live in California and if you are not against W, and drilling for oil in the glaciers, and pro-abortion, you keep quiet at dinner parties, in movie theatres, at your office, well, pretty much everywhere where you'd think free speech would be allowed, that is, liberal turf. But no more, I hope. Sarah somehow has done that for me, one woman for another.

And anything I can do to keep her smiling, I'd like to. And if she needs a shoulder to cry on in these next weeks, as I am suspecting she will, as her opponents tear her reputation apart, I offer mine. And while I take issue with McCain in some things, he represents the America that maintains itself as a beacon of freedom and with her, let us hope no demogogue will prevail against them.

 

 

Tags: vote McCain Palin, Sarah Palin

Meanderings

 

All these idle thoughts pop in and out of my mind.

As I drove home, there was a man wearing sneakers and a pork pie hat walking down the street.

                                  

Why are these hats popular again? There was a book about the so called "Tipping Point" in events, trends, views, something that was not paid attention to that suddenly because of some group, or individual, becomes the cat's meow. Who wrote that book, Malcolm something. Anyway, back to the hat. Why that hat? Not the most beautiful of hats, but it is kinda what? Kinda cool. Kinda devil may care. Kinda, look at me, ma. Kinda everything old is new again.  Kinda whas' up, although that phrase is already outdated, tipping its way out of sight.

Watching an old Law and Order: Criminal Intent with Vincent D'Onofrio. He really has gone from lean to, well, not lean. I forgive him. I understand the problem, she said, having eaten far too many flour tortilla chips with fresh avocado tonight. But I wish he could do someting about it. I should worry about my paunches, and not his.

After 26 plus years in the same apartment without airconditioning, this year I broke down and bought a small one for my bedroom. What was I thinking before? Idiot.

I have been reading a book about sociopaths. They say one in twenty five people is a sociopath. My feeling is that in the legal profession, that the percentage is way higher.

Went to another HB (Hollywood Bowl) outing on Saturday. Donna Summer. She was great. But the real show was in the audience, in particular four girls in front of us who drank and talked (occasionally danced, or was it weaving?) through the show as if they were in a 1970s bar. One of them swung her arm in a moment of inebriated and joyful reflex and she it the woman next to her in the nose. But not too hard. The woman behind her flashed a little light in her face in an effort to get her to quiet down. She talked even louder in response. Oddly, none of these goings on detracted from the experience.

Admission:  Haven't watched one minute of the Democratic Convention. Further admission. I won't watch the Republicans either. I would watch an Independent Convention, if there were one. Maybe not. Is it possible for there to be a McCain-Clinton ticket? I might go for that, who'd a thunk it? I apparently am not the only one.

If you don't have an Ipod, buy one. They're really cool. It's great when every song is one that you like. No channel changes necessary.

A friend sent me some pictures of her trip to Nantucket. I wished I could be sucked into the photos. Poof. What happened to the Djinn from the Bronx? Shouldn't a Djinn be able to do that, appear and disappear places? I got cheated. Or maybe I just have to cultivate the power of the Djinn.

The new Star Trek movie was supposed to come out in December 2008. I have the poster. But the date was moved to May 2009. I wonder if the poster is worth anything, not that I'd give it up. Just want to know. Yup, I'm a Trekker. That's Trekker, not Trekkie. And I have never been to a convention so I'm not really obsessed, right?

At work I got an automated call about some warranty on a car. Well my car is liketen years old, so that can't be, and I was annoyed that I was getting telemarket type calls in my office, yet. So they said "if you want to speak to a customer representative, press 1". I did. He asked for the make and model and year of my car. I said, "I have a question, first, who are you?" Click.

This was fun. I may meander again. But no more tonight!

 

 

 

 

Remnants

First week-end back to regular life, after Honolulu. Errands. And some needed follow up at my father's apartment. My uncle has laid down new linoleum in the kitchen. The refrigerator which nearly burned down the place was removed. Today, I finished shredding years old bills of my father's, and thought how a life's manifestations fade. About three or four weeks ago, an old friend, reading my blog, opined that I was suffering from major depression and needed a psychiatrist. I appreciated his concern, however abrupt, but I have been in major depression  in the past thirty years, and despite my melancholy entries, this is not what I was experiencing. Grief, certainly. Loss, absolutely. When I was away, I kept thinking to call my father and let him know what was happening. I worried a little about his reaction to our mission of mercy. But it seems, given our long and close and sometimes conflicted, relationship, these feelings are not unusual.

Today, also, I made another quick visit to the cemetery. A beautiful day as seems usual there. A bird flew in the block, sitting, nearby on a flower holder, high up on someone else's niche, and spoke to me. It seemed to be a connection to Dad, one of many possible messages. The breeze caressed me as I walked about in the sun seeing who was new in the "neighborhood".

Time passes apace.

 

 

Shaka Brudda and Aloha

 

When I told people in the very beginning of August that I was going to Hawaii, their first reaction was to that I surely was going on vacation, and lucky me. I certainly took the time off, as in vacation, and I was certainly going to a paradise on earth known as Waikiki Beach

 and its even more beautiful environs,

which sure as sand sounds vacation-y. But, the purpose had nothing whatsoever to do with vacation.

My mother's eldest sister retired in Honolulu some 27 years ago, when she wasn't much older than I am today. Then she was able to get around without needing anything more than a nice location and some newly made friends and a little bit of money she inherited back east from someone, who knows who. And time on the beautiful Island passed. The Island stayed as it was. She did not. She got old. And being without any family became an issue. She never said it was, but calls to her youngest, still living sister, and my cousin and I, her only direct relatives at this point (lots of  other cousins of hers but no longer really in the picture so many years hence), revealed a subtext of health issues, and money problems, although with a small pension and social security, she should have enough to sustain her reasonably comfortably.

I was there two years ago for business and visited her. She had aged, but she still seemed all right in her senior residence, going to sing-a-longs on Fridays, and puttering around her cluttered apartment. I knew then that there was the beginning of a hoarding issue, but it seemed harmless enough at that point.

Then a neighbor of my aunt, called my aunt's sister in New York. You know it's got to be trouble when the intervenor is older than the person she is calling about. My aunt is 86. The neighbor is 92 and though unable to walk without a chair is still keeping up her apartment and dresses like Donna Reed of the great grandmother set. She doesn't go very many places, but she sure looks like she could go out and paint the town. Anyway, this lovely lady, a caring friend of my aunt's, let us know that things were deteriorating, both in her health and financial circumstances. Mostly, it was the financial she was pointing out because my dear aunt has been asking for loans. She tries to pay them back but the requests have come more frequently, and the reason for the problem, although having many explanations from my aunt, all seem to be outrightly bogus. They are old themselves, and there is a limit to their help.

So, I made the reservations (thank you Expedia) and got a pretty good deal given the locale to which I would going to resolve as best as I could the family crisis and its unnatural cost in these gas high and hotel high days for August 5 to 12, taking a red eye back, to preserve that very last day for any emergency appointments. My cousin in New York decided that it was as much her responsibility as mine, although frankly, the extra miles and extra cost really made it less hers than mine, in my view. I was closer, just 3,000 miles across the Pacific. But she insisted (God Bless her, for it was good to have her with me) and came to meet me a day before my trip and joined me bound for the land of the hula and a cold call upon our dear Aunt. We did not want her to try to shove anything under the carpet.

So off Hawaiian Airlines we came and dropped our stuff at the Aloha Surf and Spa,

 

 off the main beach (less expensive) but with a nice view of the Ala Wai Canal and the cloud moody mountains beyond it from the lanai.

 

 

 And made a b-line for our ailing aunt's place.

In truth she couldn't begin to hide her situation, even if she had a day or two of preparation. It was that bad. She and her apartment had decayed in the two years since I had seen her and her apartment. . .well, it was not just cluttered any longer, it was unbearable in heat and smell. No longer could she easily take care of herself and clearly she wasn't getting any help from anyone and clearly, even more, though she told us she was seeingdoctors, she hadn't seen one (as I confirmed with one) in three years, a year before I last saw her. She received us happily, but as if we had just taken a cross town bus rather than a hefty flight. She hadn't seen my cousin in ten years. We had our work cut out for us.

The next day we talked to a lawyer. The same day we called the Public Guardian and Adult Protective Services to consider our options. We also called a couple of those privately run social service entities that are there to help folks just like ourselves, the family of elders who don't live nearby. By Thursday, we had someone set to meet with her on Saturday afternoon. By Saturday afternoon, we had paid for an assessment and arranged that she be taken to a doctor about her edemic legs and feet--for my aunt seemed cooperative in her liking for the woman. We also had a state social worker involved, a nice but bulldozing lady, who also met with my aunt the Tuesday just before we left. Things almost fell apart again by the time we got back on Wednesday after the red eye, with the state social worker trying to subsume the efforts of the paid social worker by interposing a less well paid former nurse (in the Phillipines), that neither my cousin or I or my aunt had met. It wasn't that we were necessarily against her, but we had no prior visual of her and who was she? As my cousin wended her way back on the nightmare flight to New York (thunder showers meant that her plane circled for nearly two hours over JFK), I had to prevent the paid social worker from bowing out and keep the state one from mucking things up. I think I succeeded, but I won't really know till next week, if my aunt gets to the doctor in fact and in truth, rather than in theory.

In between trying to set these things into motion, we went to a sing a long and were the center of attention for the lovely residents who meet regularly on the fourth floor recreation area. One made leis for us, one material, one out of kukui nuts. We made sure we wore them when we visited again. We brought food for our aunt for lunch and dinner every day, and she seemed to revel in the attention, in her quiet implicit way that I remembered from my childhood.

And in between, yes, I guess, we vacationed a bit. And spent a great deal of that bit in the ubiquitous ABC Stores buying this or that my aunt or we needed, as well as at the Ala Moana Mall, which has EVERY store known to commercial man and woman. And we saw the naturethat makes these tropical islands so enticing, visiting Waimea Bay and the still raw and dangerous Sunset Beach,

 

where no one in his or her right mind would actually swim, given the currents, and Kailua, where Obama was also treading water. We bought pineapple at the Dole Plantation and had the requisite pineapple ice cream cone, a lovely but sticky little sweet. We learned what red dirt really is, the result of volcano ash and iron that makes the ground this incredible deep bright red, not unlike the color of the taut bodies of the surfer natives. We loved the little showers that come at a moment and then dissipate as quickly, the perfeft and timely spritz for our short clad selves. We noticed the chasm between the beautiful hotels on the beach and the run down apartments just blocks away. We decided it was a nice place to visit, but we wouldn't want to live there. Although we'll miss Spotz and Harvey, our temporary pigeon pets, eating muffin bits on the lanai every morning with the red headed sparrows. We always shared our continental breakfast with others.

We tried to hang loose in a small family crisis. I guess Hawaii isn't a bad place to have one.

I have been watching a DVD of Hawaii Five-O, since I got back, to see if I recognize anything. Ok, brudda, aloha. 

Lady Luck, Providence and Constantine, An Addendum

My uncle yesterday reminded me of something that warrants an addition to the last entry. One of the things I knew. The other related item, I did not.

Just after WWII, in 1945, my father's family, including my uncle, lived in a Bronx apartment on Davidson Avenue. My father was living there at the time, presumably while he sorted out his post-infantry life.  One night, as my father returned home from a late evening of galavanting (my uncle said that he did quite a lot of galvanting in those days) he came home to a well in progress fire at their apartment. He somehow was able to alert the fire department AND get his family to waken and out the winter's icy fire escape, all the more fortunate, given just how white hot the fire was, leaving nothing but the stones. His new wardrobe. Gone. His then fiance's (my mother's) engagement ring. Gone. All mementos from his time as one of the administrators of a prisoner of war camp in Florence Italy, including a portrait of him, in copper, by a German artist. Gone.

But all lives saved!

That part of the story I have long known, although I had not thought of it in conjunction with the events of the other night, specifically the part where my father's alert saved his family.

The other part, which I did not know, makes what happened the other night even more a case of cosmic synchronicity.

I am told by my uncle that refrigerator electrical fires are exceedingly rare for a variety of reasons.

The fire on Davidson Avenue all those years ago was caused by a refrigerator.

Food for thought.