How could Kamala be worse?

She can only be a different type of bad.  Her lack of success in finding the border leads me to believe she will be incompetent at whatever she tries to accomplish.

That 's a nice change, isn't it?

Oliver Cromwell had a way with words:

with a few edits, it would apply to Congress:

 

It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place,

which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.

Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.

Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?

Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.

Caligula's horse

 A fact too good to check, from Ancient Rome:  The emperor Caligula is supposed to have appointed his horse to the Senate.  We Americans, however, have elected only the horse's ass as president. Where is the rest of the horse?

Why are we worrying aboout CRT theory when kids can't read?

It's a bait and switch sort of thing.  Instead of scrutinizing reading and math scores, which truly are deplorable, we try to teach children about race.

 It's easier. 

The nightmare continues

 What would you say if I told you I lost my Social Security number?Well. my SS # actually lost me. This was in a dream, mind you.

I  had a reservation for a place to sleep.  When I got to wherever this was, I was dead tired.  I wanted to get into the bed, but the bed rejected me.  When I complained to the management, I was told this was not my Social Security number. The number was printed upon the bed. I protested, but was turned away.

2020 was horrible, and now we've got Biden

 I lived in Delaware for 16 years, and Joe Biden was my Senator.  In fact he was so mouthy that I believed --knowing how absurd it was--that he filled both Senatorial  seats by special dispensation.  I knew that this could not happen but I sort of kind of believed it anyway.  He just sucked all the  oxygen from the atmosphere.

I never took him seriously, anyway, as presidential material.  He seemed as a nice enough guy, though.  (He isn't. I was wrong.) So when none of the  rest of the 330 million citizens  was available, I had no illusions that he would be to my liking but thought we would muddle through well enough and the republic would still be standing in four years.  

wrong again!  I am wrong as often as Paul Krugman, and he is a noted economist who is paid to be wrong. What Joe seems to have done is take a list of everything Trump ever did and sought to undo it, no matter how inconvenient this would be or how deleterious  for the country.  He has managed to make the price of gas go up, allowed the country to be overrun by immigrants and drug cartels.  Well, people can disagree about these actions, but what is the upside of kissing up to Iran?  Aren't they the bad guys?  I seem to remember that they took some Americans hostage and were very nasty about it, so why are they our new best friends?  What positive developments can we expect from our friendship with them?

Perhaps they are offering a really good job to Hunter?

On the treadmill

I was on the treadmll for thirty minutes, not listening to music, not watching television, certainly not reading, just enjoying the tedium of it all, when someone asked me if I didn't get bored.

Bored! I who have sat through at least a hundred--it seems more like several rhousands, but I'm not that old--library Board meetings, many budget hearings, city council meetings.   I welcome boredom.  It certainly beats listening to the countless orations of mayors and other politicians.

  As a young person, I had great respect for politicians.  I thought they were knowledgeable about arcane matters.  I was disabused of that notion when I started dealing with New Jersey politicians, who are the smallest of the small-minded. They will go on about light bulbs for hours, but require the police to change a light bulb if it becomes necessary. Their only distinction is a low cunning.  and it is very low.

Passover memories

miriam's ideas When I was a child seders seemed to last for eons. All my mother's family, my parents, my two uncles and their wives and children were always present, because anything bubbe hosted was a command performance. The good linens, china, and silver made the table gleam under the light of bubbe's two candelabras. We children were excited beyond hysteria until the ceremony began, and we were forced to come to the table and stop hanging upside down from the sofa, climbing the walls, and knocking down the furniture. I particularly enjoyed the presence of my cousins because I was an only child at the time, and lonely. My eldest cousin, three and a half years older than me, was a goddess of sophistication to me; her brothers were rowdy playmates. Uncle Doc's little girls were too young to play with but they were mighty cute and dressed to the nines. Once the youngest child present had recited the four questions the prayer competition began. Both my uncles and my cousin Bernie read the haggadah aloud --individually--in Hebrew as quickly as they could. The conversation went like this: Uncle I: It's time for the first (or second, third, or fourth) cup of wine. Uncle II: I haven't gotten there yet. You read too fast. Uncle I: It's a long service. Uncle II: All right, all right. Come on everybody. Drink the fourth (or third, or second) cup. Where's the bottle? Pass me the wine, somebody. They raced through the prayers and then had to stop and wait impatiently for the others to catch up. It was rather like riding in a car that alternately speeded up and stopped dead, causing you to lurch forward and back. Meanwhile, my cousin Sam and sometimes one or two of the other children would drink too much wine and slip quietly to the floor. It taught me the meaning of drinking yourself under the table. After a brief nap the culprit would re-appear, refreshed. The two little girls were too small to read, so they raced around the table fighting with each other until Uncle Doc started yelling at them and threatening to spank them. My aunt, his wife, would burst into tears because he had shouted at the girls. She would threaten to leave. They would yell some more until he calmed down and apologized to the girls and gave them some candy or gum he just happened to have in his pocket. The girls, of course, would stuff themselves with sweets and would not eat the festive meal when it appeared. The festive meal! Chicken soup with matzoh balls. We called bubbe's matzoh balls cannon balls. They were heavy but nourishing. Then we had chicken. With the chicken came potato kugel and chopped liver. Gefilte fish. Someone probably slipped a green vegetable in there somewhere, but I don't remember it. Bubbe didn't hold with all this greenery anyway. Her idea of a salad was: take one cucumber; add pint of sour cream; eat. And we couldn't have that, this was a fleisheke meal. Bubbe would heap each of the children's plates with massive portions of food and then bawl them out for not eating it all. We were starved and ate voraciously. If someone had thrown one of us into the river we would have plummeted to the bottom and sunk without a trace. Dessert featured, but was not limited to, Manischevitz macaroons, served in the can. The featured wine was Mogen David. After eating, there was a timeout while the children searched for the afikomen and the adults sat still and burped. Since I was not used to staying up late, the remainder of the seder was one big blur to me, except for opening the door for Eliyahu hanovi. Then came Chad Gadya, which meant the end of the service and blessed release.

Looking out for our great great grandchildren

I always thought the people running Texas were pragmatic, hard headed souls, but the weather events of the last couple of weeks have disillusioned me. Texas has loads of oil, but decided to rely on the untested and unproven pipedreams of the treehuggers, and were looking to heat their homes and power their vehicles with wind power and solar power, both of which failed them.

Their energy needs were completely okay today, they thought, but they were worried about how climate cnange would affect future generations. So existing children were allowed to suffer freezing temperatures so people who aren't even born yet could live better lives in the future, if there is a future. (More presidents like Biden might eliminate any chance of our having a future)

So the present is being sacrificed for a future that may never exist. We all might be living on another planet in the future, or the environmentalists might have acheived their dream of the extinction of humanity so the earth t will be safe for gophers, polar bears, and cockroaches, but devoid of people. Predicting the future is a tough call. I was alive 50 years ago, and nobody could have dreamed of what our lives would be like today. Did anyone ever anticipate computer games? Or Netflix? Or college degrees in Chicano studies? Or college students who would run the colleges, while the administratrrs cowered in fear?

A dissenting view of a Man Called Ove

If I hadn't done time in various libraries for so much of my life, I might have been more tolerant of this book. Unfortunately, as a library director, I met my share of curmudgeons. What other, more tolerant people might like and admire, I frankly don't want any more of. "Curmudgeon" is a synonym for a rude. overbearlng person who freely shares his views of the world even with those who don't want to hear them. Especially with those unfortunates who really don't want to hear them. Every day, some curmudgeon with an axe to grind would corner me with their ideas, particularly ideas relating to the library. But not necessarily. I was informed that the Holocaust never occurred, that Kennedy was killed by Lyndon Johnson, abd that their neighbors were stealing their mail and reporting to the KGB. So the hell with a man called Ove, and all their heirs and assign. It didn't warm my heart, it gave me a pain in my stomach. Read it at your peril.

The death of print

I'm a reader. but I haven't always been one. I learned to read when I was four, but didn't think much of it until I finished my first chapter book, at seven or eight, A Bobbsie twin book. I don't remember the title, but the author was Laura Lee Hope. I know now that it was a book produced by a factory, like the Hardy Boys books. But it made an inpression on me. I still remember the names of the twins; Nan and Bert, Freddie and Flossie. It was illustrated with line drawings, as I remember. I had other books that I liked just for the pictures. One was a compendium of nursery rhymes illustrated by a number of artists; arther Rackham was one. My aunt owned a bookstore in Danver, and she would send me books. among them was Mary Poppins, and The Wind in the Willows, and the christopher Robin books, books that I loved and re-read until the covers fell off and the books deteriorated. I loved the Englishness of them, so different from my American childhood. I longed to eat scones and ride in lifts; the foreignness of them made them more exciting. I became an Anglophile, though I wasn't familiar with the word until I was much older. w When I was thirteen I was miserable from circumstances beyond my control. I was waiting for my mother in a drugstore, which had a rack of books. I pulled out a book by PG Wodehouse, one of the earliest Jeeves books, a collection of Bertie Wooster stories.I felt like stout Cortez when on a peak in Darien.* I hAD discovered a new reason for living. Fortunately the Bexley Public Library had plenty more Wodehouse, having not weeded the collection in the last 25 years, blesss their hearts! i have to confess that I prefer reading books the old-fashioned way, line by line. But no one else does. People encourage their children to read, but they don't read themselves. People appear to believe that books are an excellent thing for somebody else and act accordingly. Meanwhile, there are no more books in drugstores, department stores, or grocery stores, so no one just picks up a book in the course of their lives, by serendipity. *Look it up. Hint: it's from a poem by Keats. .

Grumpy

I just got done trying to place an order for delivery with Walmart. I have a 15 day free trial period. But Walmart snd I are having a tough time arranging a meeting of the minds. I am grumpy, as often happens nowadays. I had a procedure Monday and got sick immediately. The hospital said it was pneumonia. However, they did not hear it through their stethescopes.Anyway, I now have a bunch of pills to take at varying times of the day.A very modest pneumonia. I want to thank Reader Tat for recommend ing Philip Kerr. I am now reaading one of his books right now. thanks, Tat. Can IO recommend an author to you? Lionel Davidson. You can get his output on Abebooks. The rose of Tibet is one of my favorites. Try him and see whether you like him. I don't always like authorz I am supposed to like. I'm not saying they are not good, they just don't suit me. Faulkner is one writer I don't have much time for. I concede that he is brilliant and a genius. I just don't want to read him. If I had been assigned his work when I was in college, I might have enjoyed his work. I read Fitsgerald in college.But he is a more accessible writer. Faulkner is a lot of work, like Beowulf, another book not on my top 50 favorites list.

Inanimate objects are malevolent

Inanimate objects have it in for me. A case in point: my new Eufy robot vacuum cleaner. It worked three times, whizzing all over my new apartment and then returning to its home base. so i lovingly cleaned it, emptying the receptacle for dirt and removing the brushes and filter and cleaning them. So how did it repay me? I turned it on yesterday and it went merrily about the place. It seemed to be working. But it never returnined to its charging station. It's smeowhere in my home but seems to be hiding. I looked in all the posible sits where it could be hiding, and then in the impossible under the beds, etc. and then the improbable ones, then the impossible ones. Could it be lurking in a closet? Perhaps it had leaped into he bathtub? It's nowlere to be found. Perhaps it realizes that when I find it, it is gning back to Amazon toute suite. Meanwhile, the dust accumulates and I have to clean it myself!

Isn't every dog entitied to one bite?

If you are paying attention youo might notice that BLM-antifa rioters did not get the same treatment as the Pro-Trump crowd. Resiglnations and tut-tuts all around, especially from bad sport supreme Mitt Romney. Chris Christie weighed in, he of the Fort Lee crossings fame. Another hypocrite reveals himself. I don't know exactly what happened last Wednesday night nor does anybody else. The prese is purposely vague. One gathers from press accounts that the pro-Trumpers enraged the ire of the press by even existing, let along showing their faces. Did the police encourage the rioters? What happened? Maybe the attorneys investigating the deaths will shed light on this. Surely the deaths of four people can't be passed over. But what of the rioters who have kept us entertained all Summer? Will they suffer any consequences? Probably not.

Did Al Sharpton get a nasty letter from the IRS? Did Tim Geitner?

So I got a letter from the IRS that if not nasty was imperious and abrupt. They threatened to seize my property. It was sort of the iron had in the velvet glove, except there was no glove. I'm just wondering whether the "reverend"* Al Sharpton got a similar letter? If so, what did he do? I don't know just who reveres the good rev. Not me. But I understand President Obama had hin as a guest in the White HOuse more than once. I won't say he is an anti-Semitem but he is.

Looking for my glasses

I have three pairs of glasses and finally found one of them. The other two are somewhere in the upheavel of moving. This was the worst moving experience I've ever had. The movers lost a 40 in television set. Youo would think this would be hard to lose, but not for the boys and girls at Overland Movers. They also lost the two bedside tables and two matching lamps I had in the second bedroom. All that's left of them is a single, dented--but not dented by me--lampshode. My ssecond bedroom does n't have room for them anyway. But I would like to have my digital scale, my shower chair, and my robotic vacuum cleaner, and the $100 antenna which are also missing. And the television. I actually found the remote for the television set in another box. How do you lose a television set? Well, how do you lose your glasses. I don't absolutely haxve to have them since I had cataract surgery. But I like wearing them because they are progrsssive, so I can read with them. I found one pair but the earpiece was hanging by a thread. So I called America's Best, which fixed these glasses before. You have to have an appointment with America's Best because they are frightfully busy. Anyway, they put me on hold so I could listen to their commercial about what bargains they offered for about 5 minutes--an eternity in real time--and when I finally got a sentient body on rhe phone, she asked my if I had bought them from America's Best and I had to answere in the negative. The sentient body then informed me that they could not fix these foreign glasses. I asked why and was told if was because of Covid. What the hell is the connection? Covid 19 a wonderful excuse for not doing your job or doing a half-assed job. The United States Post Office apparently suffers from this disease. Important documents which were mailed to me never came. So when I ordered new glasses I opted to pay extra for two-day delivery. I did this the day after Christmas and I am still waiting for this lightning fast delivery. By the way, WalMart's optical department fixed my glasses. They were very gracious about it and did not charge me. I guess Covid has not spread to WalMart.

Some books I like that nobody else has ever heard of:

I am re=reading "The Menorah Men," by Lionel Davidson, Davidson also wrote "The Rose of Tibet," A great adventure story,reminiscent of Alexandre Dumas. I just looked up Lionel Davidson, the author, and discovered that he was a three-time golden dagger winner. He was an englishman, and had that particular felicity of style more common in English authors than in others. His books are sure pleasure to read.

Dr Jill and other stuff

For some reason, blogger is making it impossible to publish comments. Thanks for commenting anyway. I know who you are. You few, you happy few, I appreciate it. When I wrote aboout "doctor" Jill, I didn't want to single her out. Az majority of doctoral dissertations in the field of "education" are as bad or worse than hers. Of course the University of Delaware had to grant her a garbage degree. They were happy to do it. All their education degrees are garbage. Colleges and universities no longer have standards. Do you think Michele Obama got into Princeton because she had scholarly qualities? Rid yourself or that notion. She was a legacy; her brother had a basketball scholarship. Do you think that airhead Chelsea Clinton was accepted at Stanford because she was smart? Judging by her current vapid comments, IU hink she got in because of her daddy and mama. It's not hard to get into Princeton or Stanford; what's hard is to get less than an A average. And not because all the students do A level work.

About Dr Jill's dissertation

People are sneeering about Dr Jill's dissertation: I've got news for them: All the dissertations at the University of Delaware's Education Department are like hers--stupid. This is what an education dissertation is like, at the Univdersity of Delaware and everywhere else. It's a sstupid degree for sstupid, but pretentious, people.

I've just been reading my old posts

Gosh, I was witty then. Could I refer my readers to "Horrlbie Harold,"? Talk aboout sparklling prose. I'm not funny any more. I've become an old grouch. I'll try to go back down Memory Lane, since 2020ffers so little levity. Or should I just pack it in?

Hello everybody

I am back online with barely energy enough to whistle. Nevertheless grateful to be alive and kicking. I will soon start to shoot out witty apercus but not quite yet. Consider this the only holiday greeting I am capable of. I wish you all well, better than well for sticking by me. I have a feeling that if I survive 2020 I will be alive, for a while at least. Keepthe flags flying, happy new year!

I'm still alive and living in Maryland

Happy Chanukah and Merry Christmas

I'm seriously thinking about GoFundMe

I just got the news that my new mortgage. It's going to be about the same as my old mortgage. I could not pay my old mortgage without guests from airbnb supplementing my income. If I made $1000 from airbnb every month, I was doing fine. Without this, I am totally up a creek. What am I going to do? No answer suggests itself. I can't work. I could not last a day. I can barely stand up. Everything has gone crazy. My old IRA, which took almost all year to get out of AIG. My credit report, which was a total fiction, but they will not correct it. So my new mortgage will cost extra points. I'd rather eat barbed wire, but I may go to GoFundMe.

My interesting year

I was just reviewing my adventures of 2020 so far: January: Serious anemia February: Mini stroke March: Immured in a horrible place, the bryn Mawr rehab hospital, where you lie in bed for 23 hours a day and receive useless physical therapy. I left AMA, thank God. They were giving me so many blood thinners that you could have brushed your teeth using my blood, what there was of it, short as it was of hemoglobin. A friend helped me escape. April: My dentist told me of a hematologist who would give me iron infusions. Finallly got to see him and get blood tested. For some mysterious reason, it is difficult to get iron infusions, which made you feel better instantly and are readily available. One of the mysteries of the medical system. Meanwhile, the government gets Covid-19, which maes it impossible to get any medical attention or get your hair or nails done. May, June, July: restaurants close. Delivery. Medical professions fire everbody who knew what they were doing, and suspend any meaningful phone contact. voice mail takes over the world. You can never talk to anyone again except by downoaading their rotten apps, and then you might grudgingly get attention. Aside: why can't you see a podiatrist? Another 21st century dilemma which appears unsolvable. Getting your ears cleaned out is completely ruled out, it can;t be done. Although why ear and foot doctors are needed by covid-19 patients is never explained. August: Put my 2-story house up for sale so I can live near one of my daughters. Discover the value of the house has increased $300.00 over the last 16 years. Another mystery. discovered that property in MD is higher priced than property in DE. Another aside: I don't like MD. They gave Lincoln a hard time during the Civil War and have been corrupt ever since. Also produced Nancy Pelosi. August to present: troubled by Realtors, Banks, and credit bureaus. because I was paying my car payments to the wrong account. Nissan reported me as deilnquent. This is costing me money on my new mortgage. No one can, or will, do anything about it. So they ruined my credit, and won't fix it. Sucks to be me, right?

Chutzpah

Experian, the credit bureau that is ruining my life and my credit, offers me a new credit card! no reasoning with them. It would be like reasoning with the wind. . Congress, if you have nothing else to do, look into these credit bureaus, they are a blot on the body politic. Of course, Congress does have the duty to make sure that everyone at a Trump rally is wearing a mask and that keeps them busy. that and stealing the publicc's money. When I see stores full of people wearing these masks, somehow they remind me of the German Jews willingly sewing Mogen Davids on their clothing, thinking this would keep them safe.They thought Hitler would leave them alone now that they were humiliated and labeled, not allowed to go to school and attend concerts. Falso beliefs. Nothing keeps you safe from your enemies. I know the analogies are far fetched, but this is how I see them.

Thanks

 It was really heart-warming to see the responses to my kvetching.  Thank everyone of you.  L love you too.  You are the true comrades of my heart.

Tell me if you are still here.

 I would like comments from my readers just to inform me that I, and they, are still alive.

I know I am not as amusing as I was once, but I'll work on it, if you are stil reading this thing.

Protection racket

The Mafia should take a hint from their spiritual cousins, the Credit Bureau.  I just opened my experian credit  report, to discover that I had 6 (six) black marks on my credit report.

One of them is from Nissan Acceptance, which totally muddled my credit by keeping three accounts open and not accepting the checks which my bank faithfully forwarded to them.  I was never told I was in arrears ro this company. They just kept sending me bills.  They reported my account as delinquent to the credit bureau but not to me.  I I am trying to purchase a new home and was informed that I was delinquent.  I then looked into the matter and discovered that I was paying into the wrong account.   Attempts to rectify the situation were shrugged off.  A credit report is as final and irreversible as death, apparently.  From the Nissan dealership and Experian I received no help and no courtesy whatever.  Sucks to be me, was the final answer.

At long last, Nissan sent back the payments I had made  to the wrong account.

I finally asked to look at my credit report.  To my amazement, I had 6 (six) black marks on my credit report.  One was from Macy's, where I had had an account for about 40 years.  I never had a complaint from them.  The other four were baseless.

Experian offered to "repair my credit" for a payment the amount of which was undisclosed.  I refused.  I want no further dealing with these weasels.

It was just another protection racket, but apparently legal.  So the Mafia ought to rethink their business practices.

 

 

 

 

 

A license to be rude in horrible 20/20

Now that we are enduring a never ending wall-to-wall corona-virus public health emergency, people are enjoying the luxury of being rude to their fellow citizens.  Commentors on websites no longer restrain themselves from wishing those who disagree with them slow lingering and painful deaths.  Or from releasing personal information about those they consider in error .  Or showing up at the homes of their fellow citizens to threaten death and destruction and keep their innocent neighbors up to all hours by shouting, dancing and singing, 

 

Every day brings idiotic but necessary tasks, like figuring out why $970 worth of car payments did not reach Nissan although the money came out of my bank account.  The person taxed by Nissan to figure it out was very reluctant to help in any way; in fact, he audibly rejoiced in  his inability to be of any assistance.

 

I persisted, and eventually he informed me that the money went into the account for the car I traded in for this one.  You see how boring and stupid this was, right?  How uninspiring it was?

 

Now,  I have to prove that my EZPass is not working.  There are no actual humans involved in the EZPass system.  It's voice mail jail all the way.  If the problems they prefer are not the actual problems you have they hang up, saving themselves endless effort.  Although, being government emloyees, they never exert themselves anyway.

 

 

The wheels have come off, and the nation is merrily rolling down a cliff

 When I worked at the library, I was the secretary of the library board.  That meant I took the minutes, and I could put whatever I wanted into them.  if something had been mentioned at the meeting I did not want discussed, I left it out of the minutes presented at the next meeting, and it was officially a dead letter.  If I wanted action on something, I included it in the minutes and we eventually worked on it.

 

This worked well when I had harmonious relations with the Board; they trusted me.  When the politicians got their greasy fingers on the minutes, our treasurer insisted on hiring a stenographer to insure that the minutes were completely opaque and revealed nothing.  The money to pay her came out of--where else?--the book budget.  But that was okay, because no-one on the Board actually read a book and had no idea why we had a book budget.  

I recalled this handy arrangement when I heard of the FBI's Form 302.  The 302 reports were written by the agents who interviewed the subjects.  Though these were treated like holy writ, in truth the agent could claim whatever he/she liked and the subject had no recourse.  HThe interviewer could revise the 302 to say whatever he wanted it to say.  What a great way to slander and vilify people!  And how unnecessary, especially in a day and age when everyone has access to video tape.  A video tape of an interview would transparently reveal the facts of the case.  But this was not done.  It appears that videotaping interviewees is still not being done.  Suggestion:  why involve the subject in the interview at ll, why not just let the agent make up whatever he or she wishees to say without even involving the subject.  Yes, that would save time and have the same result.  Much easier all around, no?

When I heard about these Holy 302 the scales fell from my eyes, and the FBI was revealed as the corrupt and useless organization it truly was.  Subsequent events revealed just how malevolent the FBI was and still is. Totally politicized, it's only reason for existing is to set traps for the duly elected President and pull him down. It's a jobs program for the useless and malevolent like Brennan, McCabe, Lisa Page and her lovers and no doubt countless others, all of whom make far more money than the taxpayers, poor fish, who support these parasites.

But I digress.  I really wanted to draw attention to how awful routine daily living had become.  Try to make a dental appointment, or get your hair done, or have your eyes examined.  They really rake you over the coals for attempting such impudent activities.  Everyone is hiding behind a screen of voicemail, using Covid 19  as a justification for their rudeness and incompetence.

According to the poet e e cummings: "There's a hell of a universe next door, let's go!"  I'd like to be transported to that universe as soon as it becomes feasible.  As soon as I get the app on my phone, and can a leave a message on the proper person's voicemail.

still alive and trying to stay that way

 Yes, I am still alive.  I miss the old days of blogging, when other bloggers read your posts and reacted to them.  Now, it's all Facebook and other, still more horrible websites.

I loved the old blogger sites: Matt Peak, where are you?  Also airforcewife, whose life was so interesting and lively.  Johnny Virgil, a really talented writer who lived in Upstate New York, could always make me laugh.  Texas scribbler? Tatiana/?  If I forgot to mention you, sorry.  I can barely remember my dentist's name, and I see him every six months.

I am depressed by our country's plight, and my own.  The whole country seems to have been led by a pack of idiots for years, and now we know it.  The jig is up, but the masks remain.  Whose idea was it to quarantine the healthy, anyway?

 

How in the world did, in a country of 330,000, Bill Di Blasio, rise to a calling in life higher than a pizza delivery man?  No one is more qualified than him?  Really? If you can explain it to me, please do.

Joe Biden, really? The most pressing issue for Democrats is how to pronounce K Harris's name, while Joe can't remember to put his socks on before his shoes.

 

 

 

experts

Instapundit has a link to all the experts of the last 50 years.  Their record so far has been dismal.  I noted that when Obama took office that many of his appointees had degrees from Harvard.  I found this information scary, but I didn't know how scary it really was.

The place ought to be closed down before they do any more damage.  Let's turn it into a homeless shelter.

Running around wtih deadly weapons

Israel is full of young people carrying deadly weapons.  Why is it okay for them, but dangerous for us? Don't they have the normal percentage of crazy people?  Especially crazy young people?  All the young people I know are at least somewhat crazy, but they do not go berserk and attack harmless civilians.

Maybe it's something in the water.

Miraculous recovery

So for the last year I've been seeing medical specialists, none of whom thought I needed antibiotics, all of whom prescribed tests, My whole body was tested out.  The last prescription was for a chest x-ray, the third one in three months.  I threw it away.

Thanksgiving rolled around, and I got sick and tired of feeling lousy since the previous Thanksgiving, feelling tired, so tired I couldn't even read, but sat on the couch clicking the remote control.   When I am too tired to read, it's time to start pricing coffins.

What is it with doctors who don't prescribe antibiotics? I understand that teir overuse is to be avoided, but come on, one year of feeling  lousy is a year too much.  Will tne entire population of the mid-Atlantic region become immune to antibiotics if one person takes them needlessly?  And if that is the case, I am willing to risk the sacrifice of the health of the entire region  If that will make me feel better. I'm selfish that way.

My dentist told me I was anemic, and recommended a hematologist.  She had had the same thing.

So--I got my antibiotic and also iron pills that made me sick to my stomach.  After three days, I was able to sit up and read a mystery--the Ranger, by Ace Atkins--and enjoy it.  After five days I went back to the gym and lifted weights.  I have come out of the comatose state!

And that is where I've been for the last year and why I haven't posted anything.

Scene from the Soviet Union, or business as usual?

I was brought to a local  hospital emergency room due to shortness of breath at 6 p.m.  I was there until 4 a.m.  No explanation was given to those in the waiting room.  At around 10:30 p.m a young man who was accompanying his wife lost his patience and began to remonstrate loudly.

  Immediately, this young man was surrounded by 6 security guards and driven out of the building. I attempted to record this on my phone but one of the security guards made me stop.

  The rest of the patients either slept, purchased snacks at the snack machines and ate them, or stared aat their cell phones.

  At 4 a.m., a nurse came and got me.  She explained that there was a shortage of rooms and a shortage of nurses.  There were doctors waiting who were unable to see the patients because there was no room in which they could see them.  I complained, jokingly, that people could be found dead in this emergency room.  She admitted that this had actually happened.  She was not joking.

  I can't complain about the care I was given.  The doctors and nurses were very professional and thorough, except that they neglected to ask what medications I was already taking.  However, I had brought my medications with me and was allowed to take them, after the doctor had been consulted and permitted it.

  Imagine what this scene would be like if we were all on Medicare--better yet, imagine the scene in the UK, where patients are made to wait for life-saving surgery for months, or until they die of their diseases.

Abolish the CIA and the FBI

I have a queasy feeling that none of the wrongdoers: Brennan, Comey, Susan Rice and the rest--will ever suffer for their crimes.  Correct me if you disagree , but I have a feeling that none of them will spend an hour in jail unless they take the tour of Eastern State Penitentiary.

  All of these guys will either be working as well-paid lobbyists or will be hired by CNN, MSNBC, Netflix or Disney.  Will Hillary Clinton pay any price for her disregard of the rules on email or her dastardly behavior at Benghazi?  Decidedly not.

  The FBI appears to be rotten to the core.  The only recourse we have is to abolish it.  It has served its purpose, if it had a purpose.

  A great deal of indignation was heard from the left when Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon.  Nixon was less guilty than any of these presumptive felons.

  Much is made of Trump's extra-marital activities, but it was perfectly okay for Ted Kennedy to have left a woman to drown, among his other escapades.  What about Bill Clinton?

  More and more I am inclining to believe that justice is for the little guy or the unfortunate people who are caught in the crosshairs, like Scooter Libby.

I keep forgetting how old I am

Sometimes I feel it would only be courteous to be dead by now and stop wasting government money.  If I lived in one of those enllightened countries where they refuse surgery to people above a certain age, I would most certainly have died by now.

I   was reading about Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie Jerome, who in middle age said that she could not get used to not being the best-looking woman in the room.  This was not a problem for me; I was probably number 10 of the 50 best looking women in any room in my youth, providing here were more than 50 women in the room..  I would be happy to settle for that now.

  In other news, I ordered a jacket from wish.con in size 2XX and it was too small for a child or 12.  I don't want the jacket but can't figure out how to return it.  So I won't order anything from them again.  Too bad, it is a pretty color.  Anyone knowing a n extremely slim midget is invited to write to me and I would be happy to send it to him/her/them/zhem.

I wish everyone a Happy New Year, even if you're not Jewish.  A janitor who used to work with m,e said the Jewish hollidays always have good weather.  It doesn't make up for 6000 years of persecuation, but I'll take anything these days. 

  No more mews at present.

Don't mess with old ladies

True story:

Years ago, an elderly lady in Paterson, NJ was playing cards with a couple of friends when someone attempted to break into her house.  She chased him away and went on with her card game. 

  Later that evening, when she was alone, he came back and attempted to break into her house again.  The fearless codgerette shot him.

  She was then arrested by the police   It seems it is illegal to shoot a gun in peaceful, bucolic Paterson.  

  There was a public outcry and the charges were  dropped.

A dissenting view of "A man for all seasons"

Instapundit has a post today invoking the movie, "A man for all Seasons"  posted by Gail Heriot.

  Not so fast!  Thomas More sent Protestants to the gallows very enthusiastically when he had the power to do so.  He also courted martyrdom.  Plenty of Catholics escaped to France when they realized they were in danger.  Escape might have been difficult but it was possible.  Instead,  he courted martyrdom, no matter how unpleasant this outcome would be for his family.  The man slept in a hair shirt, for God's sake.

  The movie was esthetically very pleasing, beautifully acted and photographed.  The script was very persuasive.  But you don't get to change history for esthetic reasons.  Facts should not be falsified.  But they are.  Look at all the movies about the Hollywood Ten.  They may have been persecuted but they were unpleasant individuals.  Dalton Trumbo was particularly elevated to undeserved sainthood.   And Elia Kazan was vilified.

      I'm not saying More should have been executed for his beliefs; no-one should be.  But he might have saved himself and did not attempt to do so.  He was not a martyr for free speech, as portrayed in the movie.  He sought martyrdom for religious reasons.  It must have been an unpleasnt surprise for him to die and wake up in hell.

Life for the working classes is not nasty, brutish, or short anymore.

I have been hosting airbnb lately,  which has given me the opportunity to meet lots of young men in the building trades.   They are not poor.  Unless $50 an hour with time and a half for overtime and double on Sunday is poverty.

  These guys are not only not poor, they are not stupid.  They study hard to qualify as journeymen--for electricians, it's a four year apprenticeship and the training is rigorous.  Those I have met are nice, polite young men who make their beds and bring in the garbage cans and offer to help me if they think I need help doing something.  They are respectful and polite.

  A college degree is no longer a golden ticket for young people.  Taking courses in diversity and inclusion will get you nowhere, and they are an insult to the liberal arts.   Spending hours in a classroom listening to some gasbag rave about the injustice of everything is tedious and a waste of time.

The Mueller investigation

In investigating what, if anything, can be learned from the Mueller report, I discovered that FBI agents do not videotape or record their interviews.  Instead, they file what is called a 302, a paper document summarizing their impressions!  This cutting edge technology was no doubt instituted by J Edgar Hoover, the great blackmailer of presidents of both parties.


In an age when every high school dropout has a cell phone that can photograph any interaction, the FBI files a 302.  Has no one ever suspected that an agent can say whatever he wants on this document, in other words, can lie, and no one can contradict him?  

  The Attorney General should order all agents to videotape all interviews by government agents.

College life in the twentieth century

I went to college in the twentieth century.  They were pretty strict.  One sex dorms, with curfews, which were rigorously enforced.  If there were student organizations, I was unaware of them and didn't participate in them.  There was a student government, but I never knew anyone who participated in them or even voted in their elections.  They were powerless in any case and did not matter.

  There were not many officials in the administration.  Each college--arts and science, art, etc.--had a dean, and there was a dean of students.  I met only one dean in my time there, and that was when I wanted to drop Italian because I was simultaneously taking French and German and it was making me crazy to learn so many languages at the same time.  He gently remonstrated with me, suggesting that there would come a time when I would want to read Dante in the original, but reluctantly signed off on my request.

  Each dorm had a housemother.  Fraternities had them too, but I didn't belong to one.

  Here's how we spent our time.  There were classes all week, including Fridays.  During the week, we students studied, played games like ping pong, gossiped, hung out with friends, and went to the movies.  There were sports team, like football and wrestling.  Weekends we hung out with friends, dated, and drank.  No one coordinated our activities, unless we came to the attention of the police.

But our thoughts were our own.  Yes, you could believe anything you wanted to!   No one sought, in the words of Queen Ellzabeth, to have windows into our souls.

Trying to understand the Mueller Report

It's too much for me.  Trump did nothing we can prove, but he must be guilty anyway. 

  I don't recall when O J Simpson was acquitted of murder, that the verdict was Not Guilty with a Side Order of You Did It all Right.

  I'm also not happy with process crimes, like lying to the FBI about some matter of which you know nothing but you're going to jail anyway. as happened to Scooter Libby.  But that is a side issue.

  The thing that has me gobsmacked is the filling oout of form 302 by FBI agents.  In a day and age when cameras are obiquitous, agents do not record or film their interviews with "persons of interest."

Instead they fill out Form 302, afterwards, possibly with a chisel on a stone tablet.  How quaint!  Or maybe it's on sheepskin.

I no longer expect any government official to do his job.  They get paid for just showing up, doing anything must be contracted to an outside agency.

California dreaming, nightmare division

I just got back from California, aka Democratic headquarters.  Everyone is a Democrat there, including children, pets, and wildlife.  I really felt very lonely.  Wrong--I felt like a criminal.  I actually felt like someone in one  of those science fiction movies who finds himself dropped into a strange new universe which is not subject to gravity

I don't mind being thought crazy, but I  object to being told I have blood on my hands because of maniacs shooting innocent people some place I have never been.  I'm not a second amendment freak, I've never shot anyone with anything, even a slingshot. 

Are all the people in the US delusional?  Or is it just California ?

I miss the old blogwolrd

 I am nobody, coming from a long  line of nobodies, respectable but  obscure, all of whom minded their own business  and did not share their innermost thoughts with anyone.  

  Contrary to this distinguished but uncommunicative heritage, I began sharing my thoughts, ideas, prejudices, and daily occurences on blogger in 2004. For one thing, it was free!

   At that time, the web was full of blogs by ordinary people like me- laymen, civilians, call them what you will-but they had a variety of interests, activities, professions, and were fun to hear from.  I used to have a blogroll, with 18 or 20 names on it, and I enjoyed interacting with them.

 Most of them were amusing, some very talented and witty. I would comment on their blogs, and they on mine.  Comments flew back and forth.  Most people posted every day or two -three days a week.  It was Facebook avant la lettre, but much more interesting.  People did not regularly post pictures of their pets, for one thing.  One really felt connected to fellow bloggers, unlike Facebook friends, who I am sure don't care a straw about me. Nor, to be honest, do I care for most of them,with exceptions.

    I liked to post about my family, growing up, about New Jersey, which I was about to leave or about Delaware, where I was headed,  about being Jewish, and about Mr Charm, my late husband, and his peculiarities.  Books I had been reading.  Weird stuff, and ordinary stuff.

  But what does it matter? That blog world is long gone.   I don't know what happened.  Perhaps the blogosphere was taken over by experts or poisoned by politics.  Or maybe most people had better things to do.  

  I miss my former blogfriends.  I wonder what happened to them, but I guess I'll never know.  Unless they post something on Facebook.

Countertops updated

Apparently countertop replacement requires the skills that Eisenhower brought to the invasion of France.  Materials must be chosen and paid for.

  Then the fun begins.  Your old countertop must be removed.  Including the sink.  Next, special estimators will arrive to measure the size and shape needed, leaving the kitchen unusable and looking like a crime scene..   So no cooking or washing in the kitchen.  If the procedures duplicate my previous experience with contractors, since they have been paid, they will return some time in the future which suits them.  The remote future.

  Some day, if you're lucky, they will return with the new countertop, which you have to pay them to install, or do it yourself.  I can''t picture myself wrestling unaided with a large and awkward  sheet of quartz weighing approximately ten tons, so I will have to wait until they condescend to send someone to install it.

  So I started with new flooring, which does so much for the kitchen, and the countertop returns to the wishlist behind the longed-for trip to Australia.  In short, in Neverland.

Books I like

Since I dislike so many books, people want to know what books I like.  I must like some of them since I waste so much time reading. 

  First I want to mention why I hate writing review of books I like.  I am not sure why I like them, or what about them I like.  When I re-read a book, I find so much in it that I didn't appreciate more.  There are depths in a good book, layers of meaning.  Every time I re-read anna Karenina, I find something new--re-reading  opens up unending new insights and I appreciate it not better, but differently.

My favorite classic fiction: Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, Great Expectations, anything by Dickens, practically anything by Trollope.  I have no objections to long books, if they are good.


Books I hate is a much longer list: Anything with a political message, particularly progreesive.  Anything "transgressive," anything by "women" writers, published because the author is a woman.  Anything where the characters have winsome names, like Turtle or Tempest.

I like American history, because I am an American and learned something about American history, albeit reluctantly, because I had to,  in school.  Other countries, not so much, because I know so little about them that I can't fathom the background. I would need to know much more, to know where I am. English hisotry, about the Tudors, particularly Elizabeth I.   British and Irish modern history, because I typed so many papers about them when my husband was getting his PhD in British history, and because the Irish are such greeat writers.  I particularly like Conor Cruise O'Brian. 

  I also like reading about musicians, and musical instruments.  I recently read a biography of Maria Callas,  and an auto-biography of Placido Domingo, and one by Julie Andrews.  I recommend them unreservedly. These people knew who they were at an early age and believed in themselves, a revelation to me, who still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, even in the face of mortalitty.

  Music reveals new depths every time. That's why you can listen to the same pieces over and over and find new things to love and admire.

The dog that didn't bark

The Mueller report was a bullet to the brain to the democrats, but unfortunately it takes more than a bullet to the brain to shut up these guys.  Possibly they don't have brains.  Or maybe they are the undead and it takes garlic to silence them.

  In any case, they are a hardy crew, who have the stamina to arise from their graves every four years to vote.  Not like the rest of us, who do nothing useful to anyone and just molder in our graves, taking no part in public discourse.

YouTube fixes my toilet

sorry I haven't kept up with current issues. such as what senior citizen will win the Democratic nomination.  I actually haven't even done my income tax yet.  I've been too busy watching youtube. 

  Ever since I heard a kid say he taught himself to play the tuba on You Tube, I have been fascinated with YOu Tube.  I taught myself tai chi--sort 0f--and practiced singing lessons.  I read about the Nickolas Brothers and the Clancy brothers.  followed the Hedy Lamarr story. 

  But the YouTube videos about toilets have been taking up most of my time.  I have one toilet which stops up regularly, and of course it is the one I use most.  YOuu might think there is not much that can be said about toilets, but you would be wrong.  There are several competing philosophies from people who take toilets seriously.  There are discussions on how to use the plunger properly.   How to keep the toilet from getting blocked in the first place. What substances to use to keep things -flowing. 

  After much waste of time,  I have gone with the white vinegar school of toilet maintenance.  In the unlikely case you have never heard of this, the theory is that the jets get blocked with minerals and will no longer wash away offending matter as they should.  The theory involves pouring white vinegar in the tank, which clears the jets.

  It seems to work, too.  Only don't use too much toilet paper.

So what happened to my new year's resolutions?

I resolved to practice my singing for half an hour every day.  I also resolved to do tai chi for ten minutes every day.Also to work on my painting every day.

  I haven't done any of that.

  I also resolved to replace the kitchen countertop ASAP.  I did not do that either.  I looked into countertop replacement and found that it would be easier to tear the entire house down and start all over again.  So instead I had a kitchen floor installed.  The installers were the Platonic ideal of installers.  The flooring which they replaced was installed by my hairdresser's daughter's volleyball coach's unemployed husband.  And it looked like that, or worse.  And now it is gloriously beautiful.  So beautiful that it makes the countertop look shabby and the walls appear to need a new paint job.

  But nobody's perfect.

Sexy politicians

We certainly have come a long way since Ted Kennedy's affairs were greeted with a wink and a nod.  If that.  Ted was forgiven because of his advocacy of progressive issues.Not issues that would cost him anything financially.  He had fleets of accountants to shelter his income and that of the rest of the Kennedys.  It was always your taxes that would pay for his grand ideas.

  Other politicians come to mind.  Nelson Rockefeller was a Republican, but one who loved to spend the taxpayer's dollar, so he was forgiven for being a Republican and something of a sex fiend. Your daughters would not be safe in the same room with him, but that was their lookout.

 Then there is the hardy perennial, Bill Clinton. Given the evidence, you wouldn't want your daughter in the same government building, even if it was the White House.  Is conduct was shrugged off repeatedly by feminists, because he approved of abortion.

  It's amazing what conduct is unforgiveable .  The requirements are always changing.  It was enough for Al Franken to run his hands suggestively over a poster.  His career was over.  I would be inclined to cut Northam some slack for the photo.  Bad taste is forgivable.  I find his views on abortion morally repugnant, but no one else does.  I would certainly go after his medical license, though.

 

My take on Northam

I know the whole world has been waiting for my opinion of the scandal surrounding the Virginia governor. Well not everyone in the world.  In fact, hardly anyone in the world.  The fact that nobody reads my log is so incredibly freeing.  I can express my thoughts honestly without incurring hostility, or even criticism.

  So here goes my opinion on the Northam sccandal:  I think it's dumb.  Undoubtedly he wore that outfit to a Halloween party and after a few drinks everyone thought it was hilarious. Or even transgressive, but in a good, ironic way. Drunks are easily entertained.

  The problem is Hallloween parties and the fact that people who are presumably adults take them seriously enough to put on costumes and make jackasses of themselves.  In my childhood, children dressed up in costumes and went around the neighborhood begging for candy.  The adult role was to sit in the house and dole out the candy when the kids rang the doorbell.  If the weather was nice, they might even sit out on the porch.  In my opinion, the performed their role superbly.

 In my day, folks, you can attend a party in regular clothes and have a good time.  Actually, people dressed up in their best clothes.  Women wore dressses  and men wore something called a necktie.  Parties are for socializing with your friends and having a good time.  Getting drunk and/or hitting on a member of the opposite sex is optional, and was frowned upon in the best circles.

  When I was a child I dreamed of growing up and dressing up and going to parties or nightclubs.  My role model was Myrna Loy in the Thin Man movies.  You can bet that Myrna did not dress up like Butterfly McQueen.  She wore amazing long gowns and high heels.  But by the time I grew up no one dressed up for parties.  Most people wore T-shirts,  The elegant ones wore T-shirts without slogans.  The getting drunk etc part was still part of the scene.  However they did not dress up as Batman or Cinderella.

  So I say, cut the governor a bit of slack.  Sure he advocated killing newborn babies, but no one minded that apparently. It's just abortion carried a bit too far, and we're all okay with that, aren't we?  The fact that he is dr Gosnell light disturbed almost no one except oddball people with extreme religious views, like Christians.

On reading

  I have to have at least two books in hand--one that I am currently reading and the one i am planning to read next.  i actually prefer to have a stack of unread books in case of emergency. unfortunately i find most books tiresome, which limits me a bit.  i like popular fiction, but the choice has to be well written and have credible characters and action which is not too implausible.  A little bit implausible is okay.  I'm not talking Great Books here. But I don't like to read about superhuman powers, for instance, or plans to blow up the planet. 

  I have tried to read to improve my mind by catching up with the books I didn't get a chance to read;  I was a literature major anyway and stand for Great Literature and culture generally.  I utterly failed to be impressed by most Great Books..  For instance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Don Quixote.  Not crazy about Faulkner, either. 

 .  I like books about American history and English history  and Ancient Rome.  Biographies of great men, but only British and American ones.  I particularly like to read biographies of musicians and musical gossip generally.  I even like to read the notes in music programs.  

Vexing questions

Can someone please tell me the rationale for the continuing existence of Publishers Clearing House?  Nobody subscribes to magazines anymore except doctors' and dentists' offices.  Anyway, thiey no longer even pretends to be selling magazines.  Or books.  Or anything, really.

  So why does this pestiferous organization continue to exist, to broadcast television commercials, and to send out direct mail solicitations.  Why do they still award money to people?  Or are the persons who are televised swooning, shrieking and jumping up and down in their doorways really paid actors?  In short, just what the hell is going on?
  
  While other organizations which have outlived their mission--think Boys Town--have quietly ceased to exist, Publishers clearing House appears immortal.

Modern travel.

A very old friend has died.  This lady and her husband were close friends when we were young parents.  The male half of the team was best man at our wedding.  So we go back a long time.

  It brought back memories of the death of my husband.  He suffered from some neurological disease, and to make matters worse he had fallen and broken his femur.  We hoped against all expectation that he would get better and come home, but that goal was receding farther every day.

  After two years in the nursing home, aka Roach Motel, my daughter in California wanted me to visit her.  He seemed no worse--and no better, either--so I decided to go.

  After an 11 hour trip on United Airllines, I arrived on a  Thursday.  On Friday I was exhausted.  Sarturday morning I was starting to feel like my old self when I received a call from the nursing home that he had had a sudden heart attack and died.

  It was Easter weekend, and there were no flights that day, so I booked a ticket for the next day, which was Easter Sunday.  Then my troubles began.  You can't fly direct to Philadelphia from San Luis Obispo, so I was booked to go to San Francisco, or Los Angeles, I can't remember which.  But neither could United Airlines.  When the flight I had booked arrived, the B team who were in charge on that weekend could not print a boarding pass.  So I was not allowed to board the plane, but there was another plane due to the other city, whichever it was, so they would get me on that one.  But they couldn't, because they could not print a boarding pass.

  All this took a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, yelling and screaming, and agita of the highest order.  Not on the part of the United team, however.  They took it stoically.

  Finally, there were no more planes either coming or going, so someone came and got me and I spent another day in San Luis Obispo. On Monday, I was able to catch a flight which left SLO early in the morning and arrived in Philly at almost midnight. 

  The advantage of this epic drama were that my mind could not linger on the death of my husband, so filled was I with impotent rage at United airlines, San Luis Obispo,  and the State of California generally.

How the hospital killed my father.

  An item on instapundit's blog brought to mind what happened to my 99 year old father.

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/16/677054343/bleed-out-shows-how-medical-errors-

  He was hospitallized because he had had several episodes of losing consciousness.  It was determined that the solution woud be the inertion of a pacemaker so the blood would get to his brain. 

He had the surgery and was discharged from the hospital but got sick again.  Returned to the hospital, where it was discovered that he had been implanted with an infected pacemaker.  So they removed the pacemaker and inserted a new one.  The infection was still in his bloodstream, however, and they discovered that one of the valves in his heart was damaged.

  They decided that they would not or could not replace the valve.  The infection continued and he soon died.

  I know what you're going to tthink, because t thought the same myself:  he was 99 years old, and was lucky to have lived as long as he had.  We could  sue the hospital, for loss of earnings, perhaps? The whole idea was ludicrous.  Nevertneless, he was dead and he was my father.  I thought he had more mileage on him.  Before his recent fainting spells, he had been going to the gym, taking care of himself, and cooking dinner for himself and my stepmother.  He had his wits about him  And we were all sorry to lose hum.

  Could he have lived another year, or three, or ten?  Nobody knows.

  Some slob was careless, and someone died. 

  I asked my Uncle Max, who whas a doctor, "When did doctors start curing more people than they killed?"  He said it hadn't happened yet.

Me at 10.  I find it very hard to upload pictures on this computer.  This is a test.

Lone Republlcan

I joined the Republlican Jewish Coalition because I am the only Repupblican Jew I know, although I have subspicions about the rabbi.

  I was surprised and pleased to receive an invitation to a Chanukah party.  So I went.  I wanted to see a real-live Republican Jew. 

  There were a lot of them.  Most of them were couples, between 55 and 75, and very nice. Thei all pretty much knew each other.   Most from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.   No one from Delaware.  No young people.

  Where are the young people?  If we don't atttract young people, Republican Jews are going to become extinct. Or do the young have better things to do on Saturday night?

My late husband, in 1952, when he was 21, in the U S Army.

Miriuam the Killer

In general, I hate the animal kingdom, and all its members hate me.  Every kind of pest has invaded my space: raccoons, mice and now ants.  A deer almost wrecked my ccar a year or so ago, and squirrels keep eating the bulbs I plant. In general, everything smaller than an elephant is my enemy, and I sm theirs.

  I have ants!  Every year, in the Spring, they invade my house, and every year they are smaller.  The first year, I had normal size aints, about the size of a fly or a little bigger.  The next year, they were smaller.  Those that started the Winter--of all the nerve!--are even smaller.  I suppose that eventually they will be the size of microbes and I won't be able to see them.

  It really annoyed me that they came at this time of year; I consider it unsporting of them.  The antbaits I put out this past Spring are inoperative, and I can't find new ones  in the stores.

  So when I saw a few humdred of them creeping around my stovetop I was so enraged that I picked up the nearest spray can and pumped the contents all over them.  It happened to be Scrubbing Bubbles.  I poured it on all the surfaces of the kitchen, and lo and behold they were gone!  So I have discovered a non-poisonous antkiller. 

  Peace has been reigning for days now.  However, I used the bathroom adjoining the kitchen, and I saw one--just one--on the floor.  So I guess they will be coming back.

Macron criticizes nationalism

What a pygmy he is!  Criticizing the American Presidency but too gutless to mention the name Trump!

This is truly a cheap shot.  France is a mess, areas of Paris are No Go places because they are governed by either Muslims or criminals (But how can you tell the difference?). Cars are burned in the streets. Jews are attacked on the streets while just minding their business. A bit of national shame is in order.

  And they criticize us, who saved their country, spending our blood and treasure to insure that they lived another day to insult us.  They, who would not fight to save themselves but left it to others.

  I'm not defending Trump--he can take care of himself.   But Macron  has no right to try to shame the United States in the presence of our elected leader.  They are not fit to drink the water in which we wash our socks. 

  Just another smart-ass with an unwarranted sense of superiority to the crude Americans.

Curdling the milk of human kindness

I need a vacation from facebook.  I was surprised by my reaction.  I felt sick from all the hatred spewed by normally inteligent people.  The rancor against Trump could not be worse if he had been seen pulling the trigger dressed up in a Hitler uniform.  People want to remove him at once, throwing 200 plus years of orderly government in the dumper without reflection.   If such a thing took place, we could not get our system back.  Because we are pygmies.  We are not worthy of the government bequeathed to us by the founders.

  How did these people get the impression, no really the unshakable conviction, that Trump was a racist?  He is crude for sure.  He is not one to take an insult without fighting back.  His Tweets are apparently not dignified nor fitting for a statesman and the leader of the free world.  He should be above reacting to insults. So say his opponents.

  Then I remember George W Bush, a gentleman, who took the high road, affeciing not to notice the slanders hurled at him every day .He never defended himself.   It did not stop his opponents from calling him Bushitler among other nasty things.  Trump must have taken note of what happened to his aristocratic predecessor and refused to play the same game. 

  I hope the election results will discourage the democrats' rage and show them the way to improve their methods.  It would be nice to have a two-party system.

   

A tale of two Weiners

Believe it or not, there are two candidates named Weiner on the ballot in Delaware.  One is a boy and the other is a girl.  The girl spells her name differently.I thought the name was out of style.  After all, how many guys named Adolph do you know?

  I'm not comparing Anthony W with Hitler.  He was just a sex offender and ugly to boot.  Another mystery: How did he attract the lovely Huma?

  I guess they were both passionate about politics.

Senate bullfight

I was in New York City during the hearings, and everyone had their televisions blaring.  All New Yorkers, aka Democrats, were prejudiced against Trump's choice before they knew who wound be chosen.   Because Trump, you know.

  A standout in the crowd of picadors was Cory Booker.  Booker obviously sees himself as a sort of Obama manque, which is odd as no-one could be more manque than Obama.  He is so full of hot air that I expect to see him  floating toward the ceiling.  A few hat tricks, a baritone voice,  a censorious rhetorical style, and  a  Chicago-style way of dealing with opponents were all he had.  But they were enough to derail the country for eight full years.  

The stuff that's in the car @ the wreckers

You could probably reconstruct my life by analyzing the stuff that's left in my car, a car that's at the body shop waiting for the insurance company to approve its repair for $9,000.

  There's my handicap plates, and the handicap placard, and the cane I use from time to time to make everybody feel sorry for me, or to not fall down, whichever comes first.  I'm not allowed to fall downuntil I retreive these items. Of course I have a brush, comb and mirror, doesn't everyone?  in the console.  Also multiple lipsticks and a small bottle of hand cream, in case I have to wash my hands.  My electronic thingy that gets me into the Jewish Community Center and the bag containing my swimming stuff, including a clean towel, a bathing cap, and spare underwear.

  Another electronic gizmo that allows me to sign up at the gym and the gym bag, also with clean underwear and a towel.  And earphones, with wires to plug them in.  Then there's the cell phone charger that's always plugged into the car.  The EZ-Pass in case I want to drive somewhere.

  A couple of umbrellas and a sunshade for the car, also a snow shovel and a brush to clean off the windshield in case it snows.  I don't need that immediately, but will soon, because my scheme to open a GoFundMe account to buy a condo  in Florida hasn't had many takers.  I guess thee money is more urgently needed to pay the legal fees of crooked FBI officials.  Their GoFundMe accounts are flourishing.   Maps.  Coupons from Bed Bath and Beyond and many other retail establishments.

The Runaway countertop

The kitchen countertop is self-destructing.  It is made of some composite material and its day--maybe its era--is done.  So I have been saving money for a new countertop.  It seems to cost $3,000-4,000.  I actually had over $2,000  saved up for it but I happened to get into a car accident that was my fault and I have an insurance policy with a $1,000 deductible, which makes sense when you don't have any accidents that are your fault, but if you do, it doesn't.  I hope I have explained this properly.


  Originally I planned to get the countertop at Home Depot.  I approached a man who was ostentatiously busy on the phone and tried to geet his attention.  I said I wanted a countertop.  He told me he was  frightfully busy and told me to make an appointment.  Apparently he had never heard of the philiosophy that the customer is always right.  I didn't feel that I wanted to make an appointment to give someone who was too busy to see me my money.  I decided to go elsewhere.

  This house could easily use $12,000 worth of work.  A paint job.  New kitchen floor.  New bathroom floor.  But I thought a new countertop was doable.  A good start.  Maybe not.

 I can see the countertop receding into the future--a very distant future. 

The homeless are back, and better than ever

It's a Republican thing.  Whenever a republican occupies the White House, the homeless spring up like flowers in May.

   So naturally now that Trump is President, they are all over the place.  Particularly in California.

 
They  had existed, no proliferated, during George W Bush's presidency, no doubt as a direct result of his Hitlerian tendencies and his cruelty and unfeelingness. What a relief it was, that during Obama's tenure, we heard nothing about them.  We had eight long years of not having to worry about the homeless.  Where they went is anybody's guess. No doubt at least some of them managed to buy those expensive comdominiums advertised in the Sunday New York Times. 

They are back, big time! pooping it up in San Francisco, building tent cities, living under bridges, and panhandling from tourists.  Now that Trump has taken over the Hitler position, for the time being, until the Democrats manage to dislodge him, by fair means or foul.

Was anybody else revolted by the McCain funeral games? I assume that he has at last been placed in his final resting place., after dragging his body all over the Mid-Atlantic States and orating over it.  The fervor of the obsequies led me to believe that perhaps he would rise from the dead.

a long thirty minutes

I generally do 30 minutes of walking on the treadmill, while watching something on  television.  Today, I started my stint just as Joe Biden began his eulogy of the sainted John McCain.  To hear him tell it, they were like brothers or even more so.  Soulmates would be more like it.  Used each other's toothbrushes, practically.

  He managed to drag himself into the discussion, speaking---at length--of the tragedies he had suffered in his life.

  I always thought that McCain was a testy sort of fellow, stubborn and opinionated and not too easy to get along with.  Biden disabused me of that notion.  McCain was apparently a saint who had walked among us unawares, on water when necessary.  Biden took plenty of time to reiterate his virtues.  And to inform us that someday the sun would shine again, after we had suffered sufficient grief over the loss of the holy man.

  My thirty minutes were up but Biden was still going strong. . I tore myself away.

Honors student

When I learned that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was near the top of her graduating class, I was not surprised.  She is a fine example of what we are buying with our education dollars: an empty-headed post adolescent who has never thought straight in her life, but echoes the garbage fed to her by her lefty professors.

  Our institutions of higher education are a disgrace.  Everyone gets good grades no matter what they have actually learned.  Most students learn nothing and are as empty headed when they graduate as they were when they entered. Judging from newspaper accounts, all college students do nowadays is demonstrate against those who think differently from them,destroy ststues, nourish their hurt feelings, drink, have sex, seek revenge against their sexual partners, and complain to the bevy of administrators who are paid to validate their idiocy.

  Unless they have figured out a way to get more than 24 hours in a day, when do they have time to attend classes, much less study?

I find myself totally baffled by the ongoing investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.  None of it seems to make sense.  The British statesman Lord Palmerston is reported to have said: “Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it.^{"  The stuff that is coming out is so beside the point--prostitutes, ostrich coats.  So what ?  The government is making an ass of itself I assumed people who worked for the government were operating in good faith.  I was so wrong..} The whole country has turned into Chicago, writ large.




 ^{Now I hate everybody: the FBI, Homeland Security, Congress (both parties), the IRS.  The list is endless.   All crooks and traitors.} 

 

I plan to come up with an incisive solution to the Russia meddling thing...

as soon as I complete my analysis of fhe Watergate affair.

Continuing my last post

I forgot to mention my new bete noir, E-Z Pass.

  I like gadgets, or used to, so I was an early adopter of E=Z Pass.  We were living in New Jersey at the time, and you know what hell the New Jersey roads are. ( If you don't know, you haven't missed a thing.  But I digress.)  At any rate, The late Mr Charm detested traffic.  He took it as a personal affront that anyone else wanted to use the roads at the same time he did.  He particularly hated being stuck in a line waiting to pay a toll, along with his objection to paying for tolls at all, since he already paid taxes.

  Anyway, my E Z Pass payments were supposed to come out of a credit card.  Unfortunately, the card had an expiration date, and duly expired.  So I was in arrears  on the bloody thing, and Delaware sent me a nasty note.  They wanted $4 for the toll, plus $25 administrative fee, plus $10 for some worthy cause and another $15 for another worthy cause.  The total amounted to $54, for a $4 toll.  A whole new definition of highway robbery.

  EZ Pass was supposed to make my life easier, not more complicated.  So I called New York, snd told them my tale of woe.  They promised to send me another E Z  Pass transponder, but wanted to know the license number of my car.  I can never remember what the license plate is, so they asked if I still was driving the 2011 Nissan Sentra, which they apparently considered the license  number of record,  I agreed, although I am actually driving a 2017 Nissan Sentra.  They don't need to know that, though, so I'll keep it a secret.

Have you ever noticed that many improvements become burdens?

E-mail, for instance.  I welcomed e-mail for a variety of reasons.  I could get in touch with my friends.  I could order things online.  I could complain quickly and painlessly with providers such as Comcast.

  Now I dread it.  I get around 200 e-mails a day.  The only reason I look at them is to avoid a pile-up of epic proportions.  So I have to keep up with them in order to avoid being inundated by unwanted and unsolicited messages and missing the few--very few--from people I actually want to hear from.  When I miss a week I have so many messages that I just delete them all.

  The people I have financial accounts with want to send me e-mail bills.  Its cheaper and more convenient for them.  But not for me.  I prefer to get my bills from the post office.  In that way I can look at the charges and see if they really are something I charged or some kind of hack.  Ditto for bank statements.  More than once I have been charged two or even three times for something I only ordered once.  I was charged four times for "audible," which I never used and particularly loathe as I don't like books read to me.  The only thing I want to hear broadcast is music. 

 Another irksome feature of modern life is voicemail,  I long ago gave up answering my landline because of all the unwanted solicitations.  Now I am getting them on my cell phone.  So I never answer the cell phone unless the number is known to me.  But it's still annoying to hear it ring at inappropriate times.

  I'm not a hater of modernity, nor do I long for a simple life.Modern life is great.  I love air conditioning, ice makers, and Japanese cars, among other things too numerous to mention.
Including blogging.  And I appreciate those few, those happy few, who read my blogs.

Praying for unbelievers

Some of my Facebook friends who are in distress ask for prayers from their friends.  I'm willing to comply, but frankly I'm not sure if my prayers are answered or even heard.  I'm rather dubious about the whole thing.

Not to say that I am not a believer,  or even a non-believer.  I am in the position of whoever said:  "Lord I believe--help thou my unbelief."  I have friends who are deeply religious and who derive comfort from their beliefs.  I cannot say the same of myself.  I can only say that I hope to believe, but have serious doubts.

Why would I want to believe?  I would like to believe that those  I lost will be restored to me, that I will some day see my mother, my father, my dearest cousins whose departure has left such a hole in my life.  I would like to believe that there is a realm where those who suffered will be free of pain, that sinners will suffer., that the good and virtuous will get their reward. 

I cannot understand  ardent atheists, especially those who proselytize, and take joy in converting others to their ardent hopes that this life is all there is.  Those who nourish such hatred of God that they must proclaim their disbelief from the rooftops.

I remember the late Christopher Hitchens, when he was dying of lung cancer, telling those who said they were praying for him that that was fine if it made them feel better.  Well, I was one of those who prayed for him, which in my case meant that I was sad for him, thought of him often and ardently wished he would be spared.  Or if not spared, that his suffering would be lessened.

  I never believed that my prayers or ardent wishes would be efficacious. They were not.  He subsequently suffered greatly and then died.  Would I like to believe that his witty spirit somehow survived him and still exists in some other realm?  Of course.

FBI agent escorted from FBI building.

I'm just going to call him Peter S.  His name is too hard for me--he is seriously deficient in vowels; also in morals.   Apparently he spent his time at work texting his inamorata, the lazy bum, and conspiring against the president.  I hope he does serious jail time.  Not that he will.  None of them do.

I'm  seriously pissed at Laura Bush.  She sounded off about these immigrant children being separated from their parents.  It was okay to separate these children in her husband's administration, as well as under Obama.  It only became heartless and wrong when Trump did it.  I liked the Bush family, because they kept their mouths shut unlike that whited sepulcher Jimmy Carter.  They have spoiled their record now.

Last on my shit list is Netflix, who hired the Obamas. I canceled my subscription.  That'l learn them!

Losing friends permanently

Some of the people I've been following on Facebook are taking drastic steps to sever relationships with friends and even family because these individuals voted for or even defended Trump (also known as the President of the United States). They are even unfriending people who by not enthusastically agreeing or  offering no opinion on the topic  appear to offer tacit support.  Off with their heads!

Friends come and go, and Trump has come and will eventually go. Someone more to your liking will be President eventually.  What will not come back, if they have any sense, are the former friends.  People who used to invite you to Thanksgiving dinner or come and see you when you were in the hospital or just wish you a happy birthday are gone forever.  Your former colleagues, second cousins, neighbors who used to babysit for your kids.  Those who you rejected can now reject you.

How painful it is to read the screeds of the Trump haters1  They act as if the secret police have invaded their homes in the middle of the night.  Their whole way of life has been destroyed.  The ideals of the founders (all racists anyway and all dead white males) have been betrayed!  The whole country is pervaded by racism!  Everyone who did not vote for Hillary is anti-woman!

Unpleasant evening at the Kimmel Center

I had tickets for Tosca, supposedly the hottest ticket in Philadelphia, for me and my daughter. It was a special occasion, a birthday celebration for her.   As we approached the Kimmel Center, we saw a group of activists blocking Broad Street.  The police were monitoring the situation--I think.  Not very well, it turned out.  These activists were all over the place, like ants at a picnic.  At least two of them approached me and more would have. They were in the street, in the lobby, everywhere.

What was it all about?  These mostly middle aged white women were protesting the orchestra's plan to perform in Israel.

The Kimmel Center was showing signs of age, or perhaps of deferred maintenance.  There were buckets here and there set to catch leaks from the roof, fallen plaster was all over the place and one of the water fountains was out of order.

There was a full house. We took our seats, the concert master came out, then the conductor,   Yannick Nézet-Séguin, . He bowed and tapped his baton on the lectern, and...a female voice erupted over the speaker system, shouting about justice for Palestine.  The conductor left the stage, and some of  the musicians also started to leave.  The woman continued shouting.  We could not see what was going on, but the disturbance lasted maybe ten minutes. Ten minutes is a long time when you are waiting for a musical performance.  Then order was restored, Yannick and the musicians returned and the concert commenced.  It was handled clumsily.

It was a sort of semi-staged version of Tosca.  I did not enjoy myself very much.  Trying to follow the action of the opera distracted me from enjoying the music, and the music distracted me from following the plot. I blame the Palestinians. They and their supporters have a lot to answer for.

It was a very long opera, made longer by an interval toward  the end when the action was interrupted while a couple of stage hands moved some furniture, without musical accompaniment.  The audience stirred, ready to leave, but a supertitle warned us the opera was not over.  That was awkward, not to say weird.

All in all, not what I expected when I plunked down $158 for two seats in the third tier.

I am sorry to hear that Melania Trump now has a "cause."

I liked her just as she was, heart-stoppingly beautiful.  Silent was good too.  A nice change from the noisy, opinionated Michele, who I don't miss..

To my readers, and maybe to myself

I know very few people read this stuff, but that's okay.  I write these blog posts as a discipline, and to reveal my real feelings.  For all practical purposes it's almost anonymous, which means freedom for me.

  I have a Facebook page, but I use it to display my artwork and post photographs.  Sometimes I mention Memorial Day or something, or talk about my relatives.  The only reason I don't post cat pictures is that I don't have a cat.  Mention my political views?  Not on your life.

  Back in the day, my stepmother was notorious enough to be on a file of Communist sympathizers. And that was before the Internet.

 I am nostalgic for the old days when bloggers with interesting or amusing ideas used to post a lot.  those days are gone.  Now they post amusing things on Twitter, and I am not on Twitter.  That is intentional.

Is there anything so small and insignificant that environmentalists won't make a cause.of it?

First they came for the  showerheads; then they came for the light bulbs.  Plastic bags.  Nothing is so insignificant that they can't make a cudgel out of it,  controlling people's lives, but not enough to make anyone really mad. enough to do anything.   It's like a series of little tick bites; they don't kill you but they annoy you 24/7.

I could go on.  Did I mention top loading washing machines?  Detergents that don't deter anything? CAFE standards for cars to save fuel so that there is more for Al Gore and Leo diCaprio to circumnavigate the globe, hectoring everyone from the comfort of their air-conditioned palatial mansions? This is a partial list, I'm sure.  So what's next?

  The latest is straws.  Drinking straws. In London, they are making them illegal.  They are trying to do the same in California.  Never mind that the State has super-high taxes, unfunded pensions, and people living in the streets because they can't afford housing. Straws are destroying the
Environment--it's an emergency!

  What's next?  Toothpicks, which are destroying the redwood trees?  Never mind, I'm sure they can come up with more.  It's what they do.