The thing is my great-uncle cut his finger off because of “blood libel.”  He didn’t want to be conscripted into the Czar’s army and have to shoot his own relatives or any Jew.  My grandparents and their parents somehow escaped to England where they took ships to America.  We never knew how they escaped as they wouldn’t talk about that part of their lives, or their lives in Belarus.  “Past is past” they would say.  America was their future.  And their children’s future.

But my parents told us about “blood libel.”  I can’t remember when I was first told that people in Belarus thought Jews used the blood of Christians in matzohs.  My parents, both born in Manhattan, would have only known if people in their family told them.  They knew so little about their parents lives before New York.  “We didn’t ask then.”  “If we asked they wouldn’t have told us.”  Or I might have read about it.  A friend might have told me.  It could have been conversation around the court.  I don’t remember but I always knew the truly horrible concept, if not the name.  I do remember reading The Elders of Zion.  My father gave it to me.  We talked about it.  It made me ill.  So did Henry Ford. (I think I wanted to know why we never had Ford cars.)

I know both my grandfathers came over on the same boat and were roommates for awhile in a boarding house.  They didn’t meet again until after my parents began dating.  I always loved that story. I had wanted to give my mother something with both their names on it as tangible proof that my grandfathers knew each other. But when I found the boat I could only find my maternal grandfather on it.  I’m sure my paternal grandfather used a fake name.  It sounds like something his family would do.  “Blood libel.”  Until they reached America, they didn’t want to be known as Jews.  We were raised on the few stories of the pogroms my parents knew, and my maternal grandmother would tell stories.  Except about the week she was caught in a pogrom, separated from her family and saved by a family of “friendly Christians,” as people who helped Jews were known.   She was eleven.

I can’t believe that even Sarah Palin knew the history of the phrase she was using.  Yet she used it in a way she (or more probably her writer) thought was empathetic.  It never is.

I hope that this past week brings back unity to this country.  I hope we have all stopped to examine our own behavior and beliefs.  I know; I’m seeing too much good in people.  But people are basically good.  Who wasn’t sickened by the shootings?  And President Obama was everything I had hoped he would be, for two years,  last night.  He made cry in a good way.  He made me proud to call myself American.

And I’m ready to put this issue to bed.  I have to focus on all the good that’s happening in my life right now!  Did I tell you I totally lost my ability to write?

•••••••••••••••••••••••••

Etta James is only 71–too young, way too young to be suffering from dementia.   She has cancer, too.  I think this is one of the most beautiful songs in the history of songs

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!

I’m reaching a stage in life where I think I should be mature and wise. And I’m not. I wonder how many people truly are.
It’s 94 feels like 103 which isn’t as bad as yesterday’s 97 feels like 107. I can’t be turning into somebody who can’t take heat; I can’t. Though this heat feels different. Read the post and see how. It also colors the tone of the post. Sorry
This state’s a frigging embarrassment. I had no idea that Spirit Air was my lifeline until it went on strike. Of course I had no idea it was going on strike until my friend called from Atlanta to say she couldn’t get here as her husband had been relying on Spirit to get back.

I looked in all last Friday’s newspapers here. Nothing about the strike in the print version of the Sun News. Nothing anywhere.

Then of course there’s the candidate from hell. Poor man probably doesn’t even realize he’s supposed to lose to DeMint. South Carolina bought voting machines from Ohio. Ohio, state of massive voter fraud in 04.

Ever since Westboro I have been feeling alienated. Where I come from we don’t turn the other cheek. Where I come from we believe in debate and protest.

But I moved here. And it’s hot. Not as hot as it was on Sunday or Monday but even inside with AC I feel the need for more and more water. I don’t like AC though it’s the one thing I won’t be green on and will put down to whatever I feel like. In a normal year there are a few months where you need neither heat nor AC. This year there was only one.
I like heat. But except for nights, the air hits me in a way I’m not used to. Then when I come in I sneeze. And sneeze. And sneeze. Couldn’t figure it out until I saw the pollen report. It’s very high which is strange as pollen is supposed to stagnate when the temp becomes high. Apparently the long winter has done something weird. Or something.
But there’s no such thing as climate change. Oh don’t get me started. I’m feeling very “L”"J” today. Neither are good in South Carolina.

Yes I do take it take personally!!!!!

I’m having friends come–by car–next week and am focusing on my book. Unfortunately this blog is like a nervous tic. Something I have to keep up. So…

I haven’t seen my friend Noel who is coming next week in quite awhile. He asked if my musical taste was still eclectic. It is but “Ophelia” has been my absolute favorite song for the past two years–and Levon Holm’s taking over Warren Zevon’s spot as inspiration

I nominate my BFF, Lucia, for VP. She’s a hockey, uh, soccer, uh goth single mom.

One of three children of hardworking parents originally from Puerto Rico, who have gotten their reward in heaven we know, Lucia’s brother Eddie is a successful businessman. He’s blond as were two of his four wives. So he has all these adorable blond children plus adorable dark haired children from his two Italian-American wives.

Lucia’s sister, my good friend and landlady in North Myrtle, CLo is married to W who happens to be WASP. One of his sons is a civilian employee for the CIA (linguist). His other son is equally dorky but has adorable children. One has Aspergers–or so CLo thinks.

In CLo we have a true bonus, Her first husband was African American. Thus her two children have African American spouses and children. CLo was that American ideal; a mother by nineteen. Unfortunately she’s intellectually astute but that’s tempered by her love of body work. CLo believes in helping the American economy by spending as much money as possible. W, a founder of a large home supply company. is COO of a huge sports supply company. He’s on a mission to supply hockey equipment to every American, for a decent price of course.

Lucia, herself, epitomizes the American ideal. She was a girl contractor when it was a boy business so she can slug back a si_ pack like nobody you have ever seen. She’s an engineering consultant now so gosh darn it she can help e_pedite a bridge to nowhere.

Lucia swears she’ll get her reward before heaven cos….LucianaMae, the seventeen year old chippette off the old block and high school grad doing a gap year refuses to let Joey her boyfriend impregnate her. She’s said some gosh awful things about not wanting to have a child until after she’s finished grad school and worked a few years. Her plans might or might include Joey the very faithful boyfriend who follows her like a moose to icecaps. Lucia tells the chippette that God has room in his heart for all beings, and darn it, she wants a grandchild to raise spoil.

However LucianaMae’s father George has a few kids who seem to be walking on the wild side so there’s hope!!!! Gianna is nine, Nicole and Nick are ten. Their mother, Nina, a teacher , who invented that award winning course, “Global Warming: God loves to keep you warm and close to his heart” was attacked by a student and is in a vegetative state. She will get such a great reward when God sees fit to call her to heaven. No, we’re not stopping the feedings or liquid intakes. She’s as alive to us as when she was conscious.

Lucia is helping George raise the children. She finds time to visit Nina daily.

Lucia really really deserves to be VP. Though she has the misfortune of being an East Coaster, she’s a real American who encourages all the children to play hockey and soccer

I’m Lucia’s campaign manager. We’re not sure who she is running with or what the issues are but golly gee that’s half the fun. We can learn everything in just a month!!!
When there are things to be done we role up our sleeves and get the job finished. No looking back at pesky mistakes. The future is ours!!!!

America has been made by risk takers who dare not to think of yesterday but to think of the new e_citing future when everybody will be equal as everybody will have much less than most had.

Lucia’s large multi rainbow family runs onto stage. All e_cept LucianaMae who looks sullen and embarrassed rush to Lucia to kiss and hug her. I continue

The Gonzalez family e_amplify American values at its best. This is a rare single year for Lucia who believes in marriage, e_tended family, and solving problems as they happen within the family unit. And by gosh any friend soon becomes a family member.

Unfortunately non of the family will be available for interviews. Between you and me, you just never know what those wacky funny Gonzalez’s will say. We like our family to be shown–and probably we’ll let them speak after the lobotomy.

Why e_cuse me. I have just finished my third si_th pack since this morning.

American ingenuity and gumption will solve all problems.

*********I haven’t done satire in many a moon so please be gentle. On the moving front I finished everything but the change of address Apparently you can’t do it on the Internet if you’re having your mail sent to a UPS store. Who knew? As I’m used to doormen I like the UPS store cause you can rent a mail bo_ for fourteen dollars a month, and if you sign up for a year two months are free!!!! They receive packages for you and you know you’re accepted in town when the owner stops giving you strange looks and start telling you jokes.

This is my second to last Friday as a resident of this building!

Alaskan women reject Sarah Palin. (Thanks Panthergirl–I have since gotten it in numerous emails) Read about and then think about this:

After the cascade of financial failures and rescues in the last two weeks, what is easy to forget is how just recently the presidential election seemed to be turning on Mr. McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his vice presidential running mate, shaking up the election dynamic to elevate cultural issues and personalities alongside the economy as the focal points for the campaign. Mr. McCain’s campaign manager had even said that “this election is not about issues” and that voters’ views about the candidates would be crucial to the outcome.

Palin spends a lot of time deriding “community organizers.” Community organizers stopped redlining, or banks not lending money to people in specfic neighborhood (before they would lend to anybody.)
Community organizers teach people how to make and successfully live in a neighborhood. Community organizing is a multi-discipline field that calls for e_pertise in many different and sometimes opposing areas.

It seems to me that an organizer would have every skill–from economic to people–needed by a president.

My undergrad major was Urban Studies. It also could have been called Urban Economics as everything came back to finances.

But to be a successful organizer you have to know how to speak to people. How to make them trust you. How to give them the tools to enrich their own lives and as the term goes “own” both their problems and their good points

I don’t think the Democrats have spent enough time talking about this. Community organizers have aways been around. They just haven’t always been called that.

When I was a little girl I was proud that my father started the first credit union in coops (not for profits ones). I was only proud because people were constantly telling me how much the credit union helped them and it was because of my father….

Later when he was the accountant for Theater Development Fund (TDF) mostly known for its half price tickets booths, he began something I think much more important– affordable group health insurance for people in the arts.

I know many many people who didn’t know my father or his name who used TDF’s health insurance.

I can’t help but believe that the four greatest problems facing the USA today are healing our nation’s wounded spirit; the economy; the Supreme Court; and making health care accessible and affordable for all.
Somehow I don’t think McCain and Palin have the knowledge, insight, instinct and guts to address these issues. Aside from making the Supreme Court even less respected by the world than it is now by appointing justices who would overturn Roe V Wade, and continue to turn The First and Fourth Amendments around.

I believe that Obama and Biden would make every American who loves and respects The Constitution proud.

And Sarah, “under God” wasn’t good enough for The Founding Fathers. They kept it out of the Pledge of Allegiance on purpose. It wasn’t put it until the 1950′s—Joe McCarthy time.
Sarah I realize you weren’t born yet and anything before 1964 is unnecessary history, but somehow I think being grounded in American history is necessary for any legislator. Even a part time governor.

It took me a year of Sundays and weekdays to find this apartment. I never e_pected it to go up 300% in value in eleven years. I was lucky, and I saw many many toads on the road to the prince. Buying a house is scarier as I know the Upper West Side well and feel comfortable everywhere in Manhattan though I can live without the crowds and the prices so I will.
I’m looking for a patio house on the East side of 17 in North Myrtle Beach in specific hoods that I won’t say here. I know I will want to do the floors, bathrooms and kitchen over so I don’t want to pay much. I do have some specific houses in mind but new ones come o the market often. I did let the house of my dreams get away….but there’s always a new dream or house
I wrote a post last night when it was pouring that was pretty good but I deleted it. This isn’t a reconstruction but a reaction to what seem to be general feelings.

In a quick look at non political blogs that talked about Sarah Palin people say not to judge her based on her values. One even said she has good family values implying most of the rest of us don’t. I don’t think that’s what the blogger meant to say judging by other parts of the blog

The New York Times (a paper I will read on weekends forever or until my dotage) public editor was slightly defensive in his defense of the paper’s coverage of her. He did say the FBI hadn’t vetted her before the announcement. Actually only one person asked questions about her before the announcement

By choosing a running mate unknown to most of the nation, and doing so just before the Republican National Convention, John McCain made it inevitable that there would be a frantic media vetting. It turns out that Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it, that she sent e-mail complaining about a lack of disciplinary action against a state trooper who was going through a messy custody battle with her sister, and that she never made a decision as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard, one of her qualifications cited by McCain

.

There’s enough in that paragraph alone to wonder about her qualifications. I don’t care that Todd had a DUI over 20 years ago. I might care that he was a member of a separatist party. Yet if Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin’s plan for New York City to succeed from the state had taken off I might have joined it. That I was only eighteen wouldn’t have mattered in the long run and some people (well, me) remember Mailer not only for his brilliant writing but for his championing of a killer who killed again when Mailer got him out. That’s two things people could use against me before I even hit 20–there’s more but I’m not running for office and understand that we live in Google forever now.

The point is we live in an age when every little decision we make at every stage of our lives can both boomerang and come back to hit you in the face. Only the decision Sarah Palin made not to talk about her daughter Bristol’s pregnancy is neither in the past nor irrelevant to her future. It has everything to do with her “qualification” to be VP and probably President if McCain wins because just look at him.

I’m not Christian. This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in “Christian values.” It does mean that Palin presented her daughter’s pregnancy in a way that was a slap in the face to everybody who has different beliefs than her. The public doesn’t have a right to know usually. This isn’t “usually.”

As an adoptee I might have liked to have heard her mention discussing adoption with Bristol. I would have liked to have known that her daughter knew about safe se_ because if Palin and McCain do win they will do everything in their power to stop that from being taught to teenagers and any study will show that abstinence only doesn’t work.

People keep telling us to “play nice.” Ask the Democrats who saw themselves portrayed on Recount how they felt as being portrayed as decent, honorable but inept people.

This coming week will be the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened with Gore as president. For proof of that one only has to look at the 8/6 memo that Gore wouldn’t have slept on.

Bloggers were told during Katrina we couldn’t cast blame and help at the same time. We could and we did.

The USA is one giant mess. We all felt so good and became complacent as we believed that the radical right was a dead force. To have to live with the consequences of that belief is beyond my comprehension.

I and most”liberals” don’t care what kind of mother Sarah Palin is. That’s none of our business. It is our business to care that she’s trying to foist her values on us.

I’m not going to dredge out the original draft of The First Amendment again–the one that very distinctly spelled out that church and state shouldn’t meet. When people haughtily talk about how “under God” was good enough for the founding father’s they should remember that Madison and Jefferson cared more about separating God from government than anything else.

We can’t and won’t give Palin a free pass. We did that to Bush after 9/11 and suffered. If we say anything negative about Palin, we’re talking se_ism.

I have never defined myself as a feminist but I married young and kept my last name at a time when that entailed walking around with a marriage certificate for banks, apartments, even some hotels. The only male I have ever been dependent upon for money I called “daddy” and that kind of went with the job description.

I’m buying a free standing house and one of the reasons I think I’m so into this is because i am an economically empowered woman and owning a house represents the final challenge. One day, in the townhouse, I thought “what responsibility is missing here? Roofs,” and I realized that I could dial a roofer with the best of them. Though my nail tips (long story) keep me from doing anything nail related with the ease I once knew, I can be both the girliest woman and the most strident of feminists in one breath.

Don’t call me “se_ist” when my entire adult life has been about challenges.

Don’t think that the choice of Palin is going to go over well with moderates who were sitting on the fence or leaning toward McCain as too many of them have children. And they want their children to learn about responsible se_.

And if people weren’t around when abortion was illegal, it’s up to those of us who were around to tell them that many women chose to have illegal abortions in unsafe conditions. The daughter of close friends of my parents died of sepsis when I was fifteen. It’s something that stays with you for life. So needless. The parents were affluent, but the daughter felt she couldn’t confide in them. By that I mean the daughter could have gotten a safe abortion.

We can’t go back to those days. There is a very real possibility that if McCain and Palin win we will. I understand that many girls chose to be teenage mothers but in the world I come from that was not an option–just as abortion isn’t an option to Palin.

I believe that it’s up to the individual who is pregnant.

By saying talking about Bristol’s pregnancy is off limits we’re closing ourselves to a much needed debate. No not a debate–we have to keep abortion legal as girls and women will always have them.

We’re letting them win once again by being nice and we can’t be. The future of our country in every way is at stake.
Here’s the unrequited love of my life Frank Rich.

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction

Fiction–in an era where everything can be vetted–fact checking is a life style, people look something up on the Internet and call it “research” Palin thinks she’s above the rest of us and can re-invent her life.

I went, not willingly but to support a friend, to the modern version of est the other night–actually the night Palin was giving her speech-and they said you can reinvent your life. I thought how wonderful to live in a world you make that has no basis in reality–reframe yes, see through different lenses, but reinvent? Apparently est and Palin have much in common.

Cooper this post is for you. I think Cooper the secret prognosticator should be the tagline of wonderlandornot, and once a week you should tell some aspect of somebody’s future. Or not.

It’s past time for all Americans who truly understand the Constitution to take a stand. We can’t give this country over to bigots who will do our deciding for us.

I was much moderate, but too much is at stake now, and I live in South Carolina most of the time where I don’t feel free to e_press my views. I will, I need time.

It’s not sex I’m against. It’s not acknowledging there are choices other than continuing a pregnancy–that’s very telling to me.
The Republicans haven’t played fair in eight years and America has suffered greatly for that. I remember reading that certain Democrats were upset at being portrayed as wimps in Recount. I thought they were honorable. Honorable doesn’t play anymore. I’m not condoning breaking laws, or violent protest. I am condoning fighting with words. I wish more than anything we could relive the past eight years. We can’t. Hurricane upon hurricane, nine whales found dead from Florida to North Carolina, China—this feels like a Stephen King novel.
Sarah Palin’s seventeen year old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. It’s a good thing as Bristol will marry her boyfriend and have the love and support of her family.

My friends and family spend much time teaching their daughters that teenage sex isn’t good. It’s messy, kids usually aren’t really in love, and yes it can lead to consequences.

I’m not saying my friends are against sex but we have lost many friends to AIDS. We also know first hand what it’s like to have sex with boys we don’t love. We’re not expecting them to listen to us on the subject of sex completely. We are asking them to be responsible.

By doing what she’s doing Palin is undoing the teachings of many many American families. This is a perfect example of radical right teachings. Or not teaching, really.

I wouldn’t expect her to throw her daughter out but I might have expected her not to accept the nomination. She said she told McCain before the election.

What would have happened if Bristol contacted AIDS? Would Palin have gone public with that?

What does that make them? Hip? Renegades left from the summer of love? I can go on

Sex is always going to happen. But this isn’t a good message. And teenagers should, if they choose to have sex, always always use condoms.

I thought Sara Palin represented family values. Is this the kind of family value we want represented.

I’m not participating in 3WW this week as I’m going to New York to see friends and family and eat too much food I wouldn’t usually eat as it’s Passover and my sister is a great cook.

I hope to have news about my apartment soon.

I will say that if Obama is an elitist, then I’m____. He said what many of us say and/or think including people of faith. I used to say I would give people the Second Amendment if they would give me The First Amendment but…..The First is being slowly and not so slowly tampered with while the Second remains intact.

Boston Legal was incredible tonight. Nantucket, the Island, wanted permission to make a nuclear bomb. To truly over simplify they wanted to show that because of the present admin, every country has permission to make one–which means the country can use one The Judge was really incensed as Pakistan probably has one and that’s the country Bin Laden is probably hiding in. Of course he couldn’t grant Nantucket permission. My personal favorite line was “who will save us? The Vineyard?” I guess I am a Northerner.

Meanwhile, Shirley’s (Candice Bergen) father has end stage dementia. She had to go to court to get an order to let him have a morphine drip. Again this is a bare outline. Alan (James Spader) did a brilliant summation and talked about his best friend Denny (William Shatner) who has the very early signs. Someday Alan will have to make decisions about Denny–who unknown to Alan was watching the summation.

I have worked with many people with all different stages of dementia. I have also worked with people who were about to die yet they couldn’t get hospice care which would have allowed them a morphine drip. I have screamed at nurses and doctors.

The nursing home argued that this would set a bad precedent as so many teens and middle aged people try to kill themselves. Alan said it should be done on a case by case basis.

I disagree. Every person who is considered “terminal” and is or might be in dire pain–they argued that Shirley’s father was too far gone to feel pain–she said his agitation showed that he feels pain–should be allowed to have morphine drips. If they become addicted, so? The slight fallacy with her argument is that people with mid dementia become agitated simply because they are so confused.

I cried watching Shirley. She talked about what a great man her father had been. Now he was a shell. I have always said the greatest gift my father gave our family was dying within five days of having a stroke.

He died over Passover, his favorite holiday. My father discovered religion when we went to a seder in Mobile, when I was fourteen.

Now I live in North Myrtle Beach only it feels so North. Everybody is from somewhere else. I spoke to a woman from the Jewish Center, who invited me for a seder though I’m not really a believer. I thought that was very nice. Especially since I told her so–but many Jews aren’t. It’s a cultural thing for me.

She told me that if I just go 20 minutes South from here I will be in the real South. Maybe, baby.

If I had a countdown clock it would be counting down the hours until Wednesday morning. People keep saying “wow, you’re going to be living in America,” as if life outside of New York, Southern Florida or California requires a passport and shots. So many people have been doing big and little things for me, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude and happiness under the anxiety.
My sister has not just come to terms with it but seems to like the thought of the move.
In 1997, I was self employed. My health insurance premium was $347–found checks when going through files. It’s now over $1200 a month–not because I’m older or have any conditions as anybody can buy health insurance in NY who can afford to. I bought my apartment that year. The monthly charges were $535–now over $1200. Most of the increases happened after 9/11. Yet they say inflation is just beginning. Not in New York.
This all began to be real to me when I canceled my subscription to The New York Times.

This move to a place I didn’t know before last year couldn’t have been possible before I began to blog. I learned so much about people and this incredibly wonderful country that just needs a lot of fixing.

Lucia and I took Little Luce to this Simon & Garfunkel reunion concert when she was eight months old. Her father was scared that something bad would happen–but Lucia and I know Central Park. I don’t know if anything will be in my skin and bones as much as New York, but I’m going to look.

The first concert my sister and I went to was a Simon & Garfunkel concert in Lincoln Center. Our parents sat several rows away. It was horrible that they insisted on coming. I wasn’t going to admit knowing them nor would I be seen talking to them.

This has always been one of my favorite songs. It reminds of being the age Little Luce is now when life was one of infinite possibilities. I’m beginning to feel the possibilities again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCbOEZ8c8dM]

This next one is for the friends I saw last night and a few more. After 30 years, so far I think we’ll be sharing park benches somewhere when we’re 70. It has a bonus song with one of those seminal 60′s words
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB0nt22Sgi8]

I will be commenting and posting more regularly once I’m a bit settled.

I delete spam pingbacks so don’t even think about it. Actually you can’t as I turned pingbacks off. Tired of deleting them. Don’t know who pings to everything I post–at least twice but they don’t even get the name of this blog or my blog right. which would be the only thing saving them–but I don’t like blogs that are made just to ping articles and then sell products that would land in any persons spam

Cooper has great Obama posters.

Here is Frank Rich. on the “Kennedy myth.”

Here is Nicholas Kristof on “Christian evangelicals.” I don’t think that Kristof understands that many liberals talk about the radical right–no religious denomination–for a reason. We are intelligent people who can separate the good from the bad.

I care about the zealots losing power and believe that they have.

It does upset me that so many minority group members in New York are planning on vote for Hillary. Fact: Downstate New York has long supported Upstate. Any good she has done for Upstate has been mitigated for what she hasn’t done for Downstate.

She’s a carpetbagger (I was never in love with Robert Kennedy) who has had one aim and one aim only since she began to run for president, uh that was a typo I will live in–since she began to run for Senator. Read more…