I will never forget. I will never sensationalize. I will never politicize. I will never use that clear blue sky day as test of patriotism. I will never test another’s patriotism. I will never put G-d into the equation. I will not hate.

Bruce said and sang it best

After 9/11 they didn’t allow concerts downtown for a few weeks. WFUV had a free one and I can’t believe I can’t remember the venue or most of the performers. But there was Phoebe Snow in her first performance in years. I remember every second of her performance; I watched the glasses on the table to see if they would break k or sing though I knew they weren’t crystal

Here’s an article from Peoples archives. When Phoebe was young, pregnant and didn’t know that a doctor would smother her baby who would be severely brain damaged. Valerie was only supposed to live a few years but Phoebe gave up her career to care for her.

Phoebe was from Jersey and here’s an article that has several of her songs

I truly believe that the world is a slightly sadder place today. Though she had a brain hemorrhage in January, 2010 and never really recovered. Maybe it’s a better thing.
I apologize for my writing. Really feel sad right now. Phoebe Snow was two days older than I am and….I always thought her beyond talented.

Dear Mr Stewart
My Aunt Adele is 83 and a half. She’s been a practicing Buddhist/Jew* for over 30 years, and has slept at the Dali Lama’s feet.  Aunt Adele went to Russia to be a clown for kids in institutions with Patch Adams.  She’s taught art in college and raised two daughters.  Recently her first great grandson was born.
She has one major item on her bucket list and only one item–she wants to meet you!  Please Mr. Stewart could my family have tickets for your show and we’ll secretly arrange for Aunt Adele to meet with you.  Please!!!
I was picked to write the letter as I have a blog and I went to the rally for sanity.  As I live in South Carolina (cue the laughter) it was an amazing experience.  I spent a day traveling there and a day traveling home for two nights, and one amazing day of being around people who think for themselves.
I left NY because it became so pricey, and crazy after 9/11.  While I don’t regret the move, I will always be a New Yorker in my heart.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you have been doing for the first responders.

Thank you for being alive.

And if you decide to run for President…..

*Well she’s been Jewish for 83.5 years.

¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶¶

My family asked me to write a letter to Jon Stewart.  I’m having some problems–if you have any suggestions!  For some reason I couldn’t link or embed the 12/16/10 Jon Stewart show which is completely devoted to 9/11 first responders.  For anybody who has been reading my blog for any period of time you know how important that is to me–and if the city I live in now has a memorial next year that barely mentions The World Trade Center I will film everything.  It upset me to go to a memorial that was supposed to be for 9/11 but really was a warm up for the tea party rallies the next day.  That was the day I knew The Tea Party was going to be a force to be reckoned with.  I hadn’t been living here a year then and didn’t want to make waves.  I love making waves and won’t be quiet if my taxes ever go for something like that again.

I know this is supposed to be about my Aunt Adele and Jon Stewart.  I can’t think of two people who would agree with me more.  I love coming from a family where we were brought up to think.  And we’ve come together in mutual homage to….

I have no right to be sad when I live at the beach, have some resources, and a life some people would look at with disdain–too self centered; and others with envy–self centered, beach, people to laugh with, a Manhattan Upper West Side apartment that if not mine is there for me when I want or need it.

Yet every year this time of year comes and kicks me in the tuchus with stunning strength and an alacrity I’m always shocked to feel.

I’m lonely; I miss my mommy, and my daddy too–though he will be gone 20 years this coming 3/31.  Actually I miss him more than ever–and never know what to call death though that’s what it is to me.  I can’t believe in passing to another life in another side but it sounds so inviting I would love to.  I can’t believe in the big sleep and one day the Messiah will come though I will always identify myself as Jewish for reasons I have discussed too frequently.

My Mom–well Courting readers know too well how she fell 33 days after 9/11, lived for fifteen minutes while she cried into her Companion button that didn’t save her, she wanted to live.

I’m not John Gunther.

I can’t think of expressions like Death be not proud.  hell I studied that book at least twice: once  in elementary school or junior high,  and then again high school, and really have no idea what the expression means. For death, something I was too familiar with at too young an age, has never lent itself to the grandeur in that statement.

I’m jealous.  Of all of you who have lost loved ones in the blogging/facebook era.  People, often strangers or semi-strangers, reach out to you with plaudits and condolences.  I’m jealous but don’t begrudge you it.  I love that mourning has become something people can do so openly and with so much companionship (tune “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” prepare to puke.)

I can’t help it.  I belong to the sardonic life school.  Because I’m so frigging nice which apparently is fashionable, I embrace irony to keep me from being the sucker I truly am—but I really don’t want to go there now.  I don’t miss having kids or having a partner but either or both would have made life so much easier during both my parents deaths

You’ll never know what it’s like to take the LIRR alone (train from Great Neck to Manhattan) after planning your mother’s services with your sister and brother in law, not knowing what to do, and literally running into a crazy woman in what was Gristede’s that year.  A large basement super market that never had people in it.  I would go when I couldn’t deal with Fairway, Zabar’s, or even Citerella.  Invariably it would change names every year.

It was famous for being in the Ansonia which is not only a famous apartment building, former home of Plato’s Retreat, now classy,pre-war, too ornate for my tastes but….and mostly famous in many circles for being the supermarket closest to the Ansonia Weight Watchers. The supermarket had all the right foods.

What do I do when I’m waiting for a funeral, and all my friends are mourning buildings?  Rhetorical question.  I become embittered and then try everything to lose the bitterness for I have always been called a “lady” when not being called other names.

Empathy flew out the city when my mother died.  I don’t fixate on that; I have forgiven and moved on.

But damn last night in a rare sleepless night I realized exactly why I reacted so badly to a house fire, in another person’s home, that awaited me when I arrived home this past Monday 9/13.

The smell.  It was the same once wonderful smell of smoke that wafted uptown into my apartment that week.

Obviously it’s something I will never forget. Scents are visceral; remembered long after memories are gone or the mind might be robbed of intellect.  I wouldn’t want to forget.  I only want to remember when I want to remember.  Tomorrow (Friday night through Saturday evening–Yom Kippur, the traditional day of mourning.)  I don’t believe in God, dislike organized religion yet view my Jewishness as a culture that has survived too many years of people trying to wipe it out.

I think I was a bitch when my mother died.  Demanding.  Scared,  Unhappy.  Trying to hang onto my youth though I was no longer young.  Yet doesn’t a person have a right to be all that once or twice in a lifetime?

OK many other times.  To be brutally honest menopause changed me into a much better person.

But I always gave 200% of myself and would have done anything for people that I loved and they knew that.  I was too accepting of faults; would put up with things until I could no longer stand to be around the person and then end the friendship.  Sometimes a friendship of many years.

I believed, and believe, in Karma.  I was just going to say something and realized how critical the statement was of me and couldn’t say it.  One thing I have learned in the past nine years is that it’s up to us to be kind to ourselves; that in this journey called life in educated America, we call the shots.  I, and I alone, am responsible for me and my happiness.  For you who have known me a half decade or a lifetime–that’s obviously much progress.

I try tricking the sad season into not coming each year, and each year I’m a bit more successful.  I’m already not looking forward to 9/11/11 for I can imagine what Christine O’Donnell will do with it–she’ll probably make it into a tragedy that happened to her and people who don’t believe in masturbation alone.

I believe when people talk about wanting to forget they want to forget the polarization and politicizing.  The event itself, it’s American history we all lived through.  I would no sooner forget it than I would my mother’s death (bad example, I mean her life) or President Kennedy’s assassination though I will always see it through the eyes of a thirteen year old who thought herself much smarter than she was.  Or maybe I was smart then and each year since have declined a bit–I waver on that.  I blamed the assassination on me.  It’s the first major event I remember taking responsibility for.  It was President Kennedy’s first trip that I hadn’t been following.  As I was involved in Unpopular Girl Eighth Grade Things. Oh how I wallowed in unpopularity.  Wore it like a badge….Who knew that I would grow into an eighteen year old people (boys) would love to be with?

My mother did.  She never lost faith.  And my father thought I was the smartest kid who just had to try a bit harder–in every area of life. He thought me beautiful and managed to make me feel proud, embarrassed and sad all at once.  For my beauty was always marred by my talking with my hands or being sloppy.  Or something truly minor in the larger scheme of life but to him it was the world.  So I have no perspective.

When I turned 25 we did have that rapprochement that allowed me to become the person he told his problems to.   Though really those days began when I was 20.  Things happened that made my father lose faith in life for a short while and my mother asked me to come home and be with him.  I did because by coincidence I had been to a rally that put down middle aged white professional men.  And I thought, “but I’m demonstrating against my father,” and I couldn’t be radical anymore though I could be anti-war and wanted equality for women etc.

Oh daddy, how you would have loved Mad Men. Peyton Place for another century.  Actually they refer to Peyton Place. It’s almost too clever yet just right.  Reminds me of the time we were visiting one of the Bob’s in London.  They were two years behind and we gave plot summaries.  That night was the first time you didn’t let me meet Mick Jagger   I do understand now, of course.

The character’s are like your friend/clients.  The ones mommy disdained but entertained.  Served them chopped liver and they kvelled over what they called pate.  She smiled sweetly.  Nobody knew how cutting she could be.  How she could force me to re-examine my like or dislike of people, my ethics, my beliefs with just a few words chosen wisely

She wasn’t one to endure foolishness but some of these people actually paid daddy in a good year.  Sometimes big time; sometimes–well I have an original oil painting and the romance book cover it graced.  Sometimes daddy would insist the pot in his big time poker game go to whoever was starving or destitute  or sick.  How could you not love a man like that?  A man of valor and  great compassion.  I miss his friendship as I miss hers.  I was so blessed.  Honestly few people ever have that opportunity.

My cousins Gena and Tina did.  This past Saturday celebrating the life of their father was a wonderful experience.  I do get a warm and fuzzy feeling when I think about it but know how hard it is for them to lose such a wonderful father.  Our mothers, sisters in so many ways besides biological, did pick great men.  Though their father won the sanity award hands down!  And yes he knew how to make them feel good about themselves without lecturing on what they were doing wrong.  (Please understand I forgave my father years before he apologized to me unbidden about two months before he died., suddenly of a stroke so it wasn’t a death bed apology.  Or maybe it was.  But the important part is that I had understood he couldn’t help himself and appreciated him for himself for a long long time.)

This post, meandering and woeful as it is, is dedicated to the memory of my Uncle Jack who read everything I wrote that was published or I blogged.  It’s a bit harder to write knowing he won’t be reading. Though I should feel less censored, I don’t come from a family where people had to censor themselves and I thank ya’ll for that.

Someday I will have the sad season down to a science.  Probably in another 20 years though I always next year! Or whatever is remaining of this season–less than a month to go!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••Oh right, New York was never the same after 9/11.  More beautiful than ever with incredible parks and the High Line–I have to download pictures–it’s the priciest most artificial place and I love it when I don’t hate it.  But I blame Karl Rove for everything.  So the shit I should eat–agreeing with him about O’Donnell is unbearable.  Vote Democrat in November even if your candidate is Alvin Greene.

My brother in law’s father died at the end of June.  Between Irving and Jack I have no older men left, in my life,  and feel so strange

This post is raw and needs much editing.  Yet I want it out as it epitomizes blogging as I knew it in the beginning.  And makes me feel like Yes I Really Am A Blogger!

By the time I got to the airport on Monday I was exhausted from the long activity packed weekend, rain, and search for a cab.  I expected security to be more stringent than normal after the near miss in Times Square on Saturday night.  I had been there around 4:30 PM and and a bit after One AM and hadn’t noticed anything amiss.

I was totally spacey Monday morning as I stood on the security line.  In the summer of 2001 I had bought a pair of clogs that have Botticelli’s angels on them.  They were pretty and different.  I didn’t know they would become my designated airport shoes–first because I thought it was clever/cute to walk on the wings of angels.  Then for all the reasons people would wear clogs with angels after 9/11.  Maybe they did have special powers.  Sure.  Definitely because they’re easy to slide on and off.

The man in front of me had coarse gray hair tied into a messy ponytail.  (Love long hair on men as long as it’s neat and this was the opposite.)  I stared at his beige tee shirt.  For a few seconds I thought the beautiful lettering was advertising a new drink company.  “NJ teaparty…”  Then I woke up.  I live in the South and have never seen a teaparty tee shirt.  The writing underneath said “save the country from tyranny.” It was a beautiful shirt.  Retro looking as if it were advertising a late 60′s rock concert.  Not  a concert I would want to go to or a tee I would want to wear.

I felt physically sick.  He was with a much a younger boy who would probably set the alarms off from all piercings he had.  Maybe not but I’m too or something to appreciate pierced unkempt eyebrows.  Maybe I wouldn’t have been so turned off had the eyebrows been tamed just a bit.

The older man turned to me and smiled:  Going to Ohio?

Ohio?, I thought, oh today’s May 3, 2010.  Tomorrow’s the 40th anniversary of Kent State. Please god if there is one don’t let this man be a former hippie going to mourn the deaths of four people I never met but have always felt a connection to.

There were National Guard stationed throughout the airport.  I heard the man say to the boy: See them?  You never saw them before Obama.  It’s an infringement on our rights

I wanted to tell him what an idiot he was. And I was confused.  Don’t Tea Party people like having military or quasi-military around?  Aren’t they into national security and think Obama is screwing that up?

Had he never been to Penn Station?  Manhattan in general?  Airports for the last almost nine years?  I remember seeing many more when Bush was president and never thought it a horrible thing.

I felt almost physically ill.  Kent State and Tea Party people mixed together.  Not in my America.

The National Guard went crazy in Kent State.  Now they are troops, good people usually who don’t shoot just to kill Americans they disdain, and serve too many tours in wars I don’t understand.  President Obama is trying to do something about that.

I changed lines to a faster one.  Really I changed so I could get away from the man and boy.  I didn’t want to spend the morning after a great weekend feeling sick.  I did anyway.

Here’s a link to an article I wrote for The Long Island Press’s award winning series: Our Children’s Brains.  Of everything I did this past decade this article was personally the most meaningful.  If I increased awareness of non verbal learning disorder (NLD) just a bit then I did a lot.

I meant to end the year decade with a salute to bloggers because I think we’re at the forefront of a major revolution in communication.  Without blogging there really couldn’t have been Facebook.  Without Facebook there couldn’t have been Twitter.   I don’t know whether I fear or look forward to what comes next.

I began this decade, and I believe decades truly begin when something significant happens, in deep agony.  True the Trade Center had imploded and my mother died suddenly the next month but it was more than that.  I felt as if I were losing my grip on sanity.  I didn’t know about NLD then.  Had I known when I was a decade younger, ha, the worlds I might have conquered.

But I have to remember that I put this blog together and if I have been harping on its former glory lately it’s because it opened doors I never knew existed.

I became friendly with Bone over four years ago.  His writing amazed me and still does.  He keeps getting better.  But it was Bone the person who helped change me.  When we became friendly I realized that I didn’t have to fear the South.

My first three days visiting here I was more than a bit scared.  Actually it rained the first two days and I was glad I could bring my incredible rain making skills to a then drought stricken area.  (Not glad I have that talent now as this is shaping up to be the rainiest December on record.)

The third day I ventured out and nobody bit me.  North Myrtle, so familiar now, seemed like another country.  I knew the New York metro area, South Florida, parts of New England and California.

This is a new world.  My world now and I go into a new decade knowing I can face whatever comes.  I might be a decade older and one of the oldest known bloggers but that never stopped me….

I thank you all who have taken this journey or parts of it with me.

When did 9/11 become Todd Beamer Saved The White House From Destruction Day? I remember two big very buildings imploding, and a smaller one and…. They were barely mentioned. Hell they weren’t mentioned in a 9/11 memorial. Something’s wrong with that.

A teary voiced fireman talked about people who disrupted firemen’s funerals. WTF? They were sacred. We cried for the firemen, went to fire stations gave money and more money and more money. My mother died suddenly and I thought tragically the next month. She kept cash in her apartment and I gave my half to a firehouse that lost fourteen.

No person who thought Bush pretender to the presidency as he was the first appointed by the Supreme Court, certainly not elected president disrupted a funeral. Fox News and every other news source would have been all over it. LIAR!!!!!!!! My friend knew Rodney Gillis’s mother–the last cop to have part of his body identified and hence the last to have a true funeral. We all cared about every first responder.
I remember some religious fundamentalists picketing a funeral. Yes I remember a little girl with a picket sign. It was beyond gross. They call themselves Christian.Nobody else would. But they aren’t LIBERALS and the fireman made it seem as if liberals protested. I have been sick and second and third guessing myself ever since hearing him speak.

Oh the speaker who spoke for the Congressman (not Joe Wilson) Real funny when he said the Congressman couldn’t be there as he had to work on health care. Only it was Friday night and Congress goes home on weekends. Oh Tea Party Saturday. Right. Not on my dime and I’m the new face of North Myrtle Beach. The person who actually bought a house and renovated when nobody else was. I’m so willing to respect you in the morning but….

Getting people riled about the never mentioned directly, LIBERALS, is great politics. Really brings people together. Only quoting W, priceless. W came to Ground Zero once. New York got its promised 9/11 aid 3 years late. Wyoming needed it more. So populated; such an obvious target.

They’re calling 9/11 “Patriots Day” and apparently you can only be a patriot if you’re Republican. Everybody else wants to forget it. No, many of us have that day seared into a large spot in our brain.

We were told to go on; be like Brits during the blitz so we did. We went on because to not go on would be to mean we were insane.

Manhattan changed after 9/11. It would be easy to blame Bloomberg and the spirit of “make money, make money.

I moved to this city as it is so different from Manhattan. I had been living there since 01/03/76 when I moved daddy approved and found 5 East 63rd St. I was the uptown girl on the downtown train but when it came to buying I bought on Riverside Drive @ 75th Street on the Upper West Side.

I’m never going to stop being a New Yorker and you’re never going to stop being a small Southern city with a beach music theme. So keep the beach music and lose the telling people who is good and who is bad because there are more people like me here now.

I keep forgetting Friday night was about 9/11. Yours was very different than mine.

Two articles that put a human face on the health care mess.

After this weekend I have lost all faith. In NY I only knew people who had my beliefs except for the “Jews for Bush” family–Saturday was “Heroes Day” Yes lets salute the troops the day after 9/11. Lets keep up the pretense the war in Iraq was a response to the attacks. I have nothing against the troops and can’t believe the job they do and redo and redo–all the re-deployments. But the war had nothing to do with 9/11 and everything to do with Bush, Cheney and let me throw in Karl Rove as he’s my biggest hate, egos.

After Friday night my friends from home who live here want nothing to do with anybody here unless they can produce documentation stating they voted for President Obama and I can’t blame them.

Because you would still think the president is Bush. The local newspaper is pretty balanced so I assume most people get their news from each other and from Fox

Go Rob Miller. The new face of South Carolina and the face that represents me. Cos I ain’t leaving. And when I get angry I’m dangerous. Ask any man who has dated me.

The next will be more relevant to today. I found myself reliving a memory and wanted to write it without including my father’s POV. Frankly his views befuddle me though I understand more than most people. I suppose I will be going back and forth from memory posts to what’s wrong with the world today?
Hi Daddy
Do you remember when you told me that if I went with you to a meeting of the Mir Young Men’s Club, I would meet a bootlegger?

I knew that the club consisted of people from your parents generation and you were the youngest active member. I was eleven and in lust with the lure of both gangsters and FBI agents You had told Elka and me, many times, how when you were a boy during the depression you would go to Montauk with the bootlegger and ride shotgun–which makes no sense considering your youth and your fear of guns.

You probably went once or twice but in your stories you went often and while you didn’t explicitly say you were central to the operation a daughter can dream. And you knew that. After you died mommy told me that half your stories were made up and she was so surprised that I of all people fell for them Of course she wouldn’t tell me which half nor would she tell me how much you embellished. My parents. What jokesters.

Off we went from the garden apartments in Queens to some stuffy over furnished dark dingy, smoky but with doilies apartment somewhere in the Bronx. Everybody but you and I had white hair if they had hair at all and that did include the few women. Before the solemn reading of the minutes they made a big fuss over me.
“What a shana maidela.” “You look just like you looked at two.” I heard that one until my 30′s when the last of them died out and never considered looking like Shirley Temple a compliment. Or even looking like me at two. Note for you if you ever comeback to life: a girl wants to be known for her age appropriate beauty not her toddlerhood.

Then they told me how much I looked like you. And I did. We had the same deep set eyes and smaller than I would have liked mouth. I liked that one because it meant people forgot that I was adopted. Fortunately neither you nor mommy would mention that fact but thank whoever for that meant you too were good looking.

I have never forgotten that apartment or the meeting. There was rugelach (a pastry) during the reading of the minutes and new business. New business basically consisted of discussing who died and was buried in one of the cemeteries The Mir Young Man’s Society had sections in. In the cemetery you and mommy are buried in, The Mir Young Men’s Society is next to The Jewish Actors and even I know some of the names. Once Elka and I were wondering around as you had taught us to and we found Barbra Streisand’s father, between our society and the Jewish Actors.

I don’t remember what else was discussed People sat in folding chairs. The room became hotter and hotter and I could smell jars of schmaltz herring (in a an onion and white sauce, I think) being opened. I still think herring except for kippers a vile and gross food. The smell and smells of tuna and egg salad beginning prepared made me sick and I wanted to leave but didn’t dare say anything. I knew you wouldn’t make me eat anything as you thought the same of tuna and egg salad as I did You were worse as you thought if mommy didn’t make chopped foods you would immediately die.

So we sat in the stuffy stinky room and I wondered where my bootlegger was. I wondered if he looked like a gangster on TV or more like an FBI agent. You let me watch an hour of TV a day and most of my TV time then was consumed by “hip” shows catering to teenagers which I would be in a year and half–77 Sunset Strip Hawaiian Eye and Surfside 6 which took place in Miami Beach and whenever we went I would take Elka and make a pilgrimage to the house boat.

I didn’t know that the houseboat wasn’t part of the show until right now when I Wiki’d it. I’m assuming that you learn about Wikipedia and other things where ever you are. Since you’re not on this earth I can make assumptions or not that I couldn’t normally. I do stick to truth in stories. It’s just the world’s changed so much in the past almost eighteen years and I don’t want to waste time explaining unless I do. (Uh, I sound just like you.)

I don’t know how I was able to watch TV in peace as we only had one set and you insisted on watching with us. Maybe “my shows” took place on your poker, pinochle, civic associations or classes at The New School nights. I think poker and classes were on the same night–more about your life outside work, and your work in other letters.

But I think I also watched FBI type shows and was confused as to whether I wanted to be an FBI agent, not that girls could be, or a gangster. I can’t explain how excited I was about meeting the bootlegger. You had told me so many great stories.

When you introduced me to an old frail man on crutches I wanted to kill you. Somehow I hadn’t accounted for the decades gone by since the depression. Your eyes were smiling. You looked as if you wanted to laugh loudly. I remember thinking “he’s trying to teach me some important life lesson,” but I still can’t think of what it could be. That I hadn’t factored in the passage of time? Daddy we all learn that one when we’re ready. That I shouldn’t expect one thing, when the possibilities are infinite?

I got my revenge quicker than I would have imagined. We went to the Botanical Gardens or The Bronx Zoo. When you looked for parking, on the street, so you wouldn’t have to pay, you the world’s most careful driver, drove the wrong way down a street and you got a ticket.

I keep deleting posts as my writing is awful, and I’m depressing.

I’m confused and can’t seem to get out a coherent thought.

I was making concession after concession for the buyers who have VERY IMPORTANT JOBS and are buying in VERY DIFFICULT TIMES.

Yesterday I reached my limit. The closing was changed so many times–always at their request that I had to keep changing arrangements, appointments and more.

What am I, chopped liver? This isn’t just about the buyers. I hope that when I buy I never forget that.

I had the closing changed once more and feel much better.

I apologize if this blog has become boring and has been obsessed with real estate and the economy.

On 10/16 I will be beginning a new life in another state and hope that my mind will be able to focus on other things.

Judith Warner totally pinpointed the things I think about Sarah Palin. I have written something similar though not as good in my head while doing something

Then I read this comment from a male resident of Alaska and stopped feeling sorry for somebody so in over her head. When I’m antsy and it’s raining and I don’t have stairs to climb in my own abode I scroll through Google lists or NY Times comments. Things that can be a total waste of time but are better than splitting hair ends, biting nails or thinking about cigarettes.

Governor Palin, on the other hand, shows a pinched meanness of spirit that makes me wonder just what she is made of. What kind of person wants rape victims to pay for their medical examinations or believes that that some sort of triumphal Christianity has destined her for political greatness? Only a hypocrite espouses belief in democracy, while appointing childhood friends to high positions in the government. And allowing the First Dude to ignore a subpeona from the State legislature.

I don’t think Governor Palin is untalented or without potential but she is not ready for the master class in government, and the current alignment of foreign policy and economic challenges are too great to be left to somebody “just like us.” These are exceptional times and we need exceptional leadership.

•••••••••••••••••••••••
Henry, whoever you are, I appreciate the video you left in comments and am not about to analyze the half truths. The music was great.

I’m trying to stay away from all politics but Sarah Palin as its not as simplistic as the vid you left would have people believe. Sarah Palin I do understand.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

The period between 9/11 and 10/14 depresses the hell out of me. In recent years it’s become an almost subliminal thing and I couldn’t understand why I was so depressed after I arranged for movers to come here on 10/10 as the closing was supposed to be on 10/14 and my building doesn’t allow move ins or outs on weekends or holidays and 10/13 is Columbus Day.

I had hoped to have closed on 10/01 as it would be eleven years to the day since I closed as a buyer.

I’m conflicted as I want to honor my mother’s memory. She was quite biased and loved my writing though she could critique it impartially. I had planned to spend the time between 10/10 (her birthday) and 10/14 (date of death) in a marathon writing session in North Myrtle Beach. I need to get back some of the confidence.

I read some blogs and am blown away by the lines. I used to be good. I hope that I can regain the zest and freshness.

That weekend happens to be the birthday weekend of two good friends who are married to each other. It will be my last weekend in New York as a resident and though I treasure the thought of becoming a recluse–a good recluse, I’m a mite too social….So the marathon writing session will have to wait.

For luck I’m not saying another thing about the closing until it’s over. I have already written the post with appropriate vid.

I have begun obsessing over the fun part. Getting there and finding a house.

It’s just kind of hit me that I’m selling my home and for the first time in my adult life will be without some kind of lease as I stay at a friend’s house

Fortunately the only place I sabotage myself in is this blog

My bff Lucia and I saw Jersey Boys
A new type of Broadway show that brought me some faith in Broadway. I don’t generally like it or even Off-Broadway anymore. As both are very pricey I can be picky But that’s a whole other post

She wanted to leave when she was 40 in 91 but her father died suddenly and her mother was needy.

Her office on Jerome Avenue in The Bron_ had graffiti all over the windows No matter how often it was taken off it would be back the ne_t day. The strange thing was she found The Bron_ a relief from Manhattan. She knew chop shops were all over Jerome, and she was never more than a few minutes from crack and drive by shootings, but her office was a DMZ. When she would walk the streets, men would come out of the buildings “Ms. Savage, that’s Ms. Savage. She cool.”

Generally she hated that type of attention. The roar of the construction worker, whistle of the Con Ed worker, but there was something almost innocent, something refreshing, in these boys.

She trusted them to keep her out of death’s door. She wouldn’t trust them for anything else and they knew it. Though she smiled and laughed more easily than the other white women she worked with, there was a certain coolness about her. A sort of “don’t fuck with me, mother fuckers,” resonated from her cream turned gold in summer skin

Though she lived in what was then the richest zip code in the city, probably the country, she would count the Olde English malt liquor bottles strewn on the sidewalks as she practically tripped over homeless people sleeping and would make her e-cuses.

That spring or summer a subway motorman went postal and killed a number of people Service on the East Side IRT was disrupted for months. The normal 20 minute ride took two hours.

She was the last legal tenant on her floor. On one side of her apartment the new landlord put $10 ho’s; on he other side small time drug dealers. She had five floods the landlords refused to do anything about and soon she had cockroaches coming from the ceiling. It was vile. It was gross. Call the city to complain and give her address, yeah really. She would hear ten minutes of laughter before they hung up. For years the city had ignored the lack of heat complaints also.

She could take not having heat. But cockroaches, mice and rats that ran from the fireplace once the new 63rd Street subway had opened, that was intolerable.

She could have waited to be bought out but she would probably be dead from something. She was only 40; the best dressed white woman at the Jerome Ave Social Security office where all the other Jews her age acted as if they were going to be eligible for SSI tomorrow.

Her laughter was infectious but half the time she felt it was the hysterical laughter of the soon to be legally insane. When her best friend would come to the office to meet her for lunch at the Paradise Coffee Shop, beloved by generations of native Bron_ites, all work would stop. All the guys wanted to meet her. Only later would they notice the wedding ring.

Claimants would ask for the “pretty well dressed” white girl. “Well dressed” she laughingly told her friends meant that if she were to wear plaid, and she wouldn’t, it would clash as a fashion statement. She was always shocked at how often “well dressed” was applied to her. She was just another city girl.

She moved to Riverdale, The Bron and the high point of her day was walking down the hills of Riverdale, over The Major Deegan and up the hills of Kingsbridge Heights and around The Reservoir that stunk of mold most days.

She wore silk short suits and would put on her pantyhose once she got to the office no later than 7:30 AM so she could do “undertime” or OT in the morning. Not because she wanted the money but otherwise the work would just pile up. She hated that job and didn’t yet realize if she was to remain in New York it was Manhattan she needed.

When the crack/drive by shooting years were safely over she moved back but never loved it as much as she had before the days of the $10 ho’s.

As others dreamed of the city she dreamed of escaping. It wasn’t Final Payments She didn’t live with her mother. Her mother didn’t stop her from doing things, but she couldn’t leave as long as her mother was living on her own. And her mother had no intention of ever giving into age and fraility.

Her mother died a month after 9/11 and it was so hard. She felt wounded and alone. First she couldn’t leave because of estate and patriotism reasons. Then there was another reason and still another.

Si_ years after her mother’s death she began to get her apartment ready. The closing is scheduled for midway between 9/11 and her mother’s death.

Every New Yorker has their 9/11 story. Hers isn’t that fascinating. She didn’t know anybody who died in the attacks but many who lived.

On Wednesday or Thursday she will walk down to the old Trade Center, walk further to the water ta_i to the new Ikea in Red Hook, Brooklyn and come back at night to look at the twin beacons of lights emenating from the site. Her best friend, daughter and some other friends went yesterday but she couldn’t go. They mainly talked about the ride and the food in the after event phone call. The beacons of light will always be meaningful

It’s been seven years. A missing person can be declared dead after seven years. Bankruptcies e_punged, debts cleared. Crimes e_cept for murder and rape are usually no longer prosecuted. Seven is the age of reason. Seven means so many many things, but most of all it means letting go.

She’s made up with the friends she fought with seven years ago, and hasn’t spoken to the false friends.

Her new future awaits not where she thought it would seventeen or even three years ago in Santa Monica or San Diego but in South Carolina.

She’s tired. Oh so tired. It took forever to sell her apartment and sometimes she think hers was the last one bedroom in Manhattan to sell for a half decent price. The doormen saga–she doesn’t want to go there.

She’s tired of people with their hands out. She’s tired of living in a city that’s so pricey and so crowded and people are defeated as living here is hard. Her neighbors are jealous–but there’s no longer a market for their apartments

She thought she suffered from a terminal case of bad timing but it turned out to be pretty darn good.