Lida at the Arts Club of Washington, D.C.

On Wednesday of last week, Cathy and I went to yet another of Lida Moser's shows, this one at the MacFeely Gallery of the Arts Club of Washington, D.C. It's always a wonderful experience to be in Lida's presence--even if she's not there in person. A bad fall last month on her 89th birthday has sidelined her at home while she recuperates. Microphone in hand, however, she and her walker did manage to address the crowd on opening night two weeks ago. As Lida's friend Lenny says, "Tough New Yorker." Indeed!



Lenny--F. Lennox Campello--who blogs as Daily Campello Art News, reported:

This almost 90-year-old photographer is not only one of the most respected American photographers of the 20th century, but also a pioneer in the field of photojournalism. Her photography has been in the middle of a revival and rediscovery of vintage photojournalism, and has sold...at Christie's auctions and continues to be collected by both museums and private collectors worldwide. In a career spanning over 60 years, Moser has produced a body of works consisting of thousands of photographs and photographic assemblages that defy categorization and genre or label assignment.

Additionally, Canadian television a couple of years ago finished filming a documentary about her life; the second in the last few years, and Moser’s work is now in the collection of many museums worldwide.

She was once called the "grandmother of American street photography" by an art critic, which prompted a quick rebuttal by Moser, who called the writer's editor and told him that she wasn't the "fucking grandmother of anything or anyone, and would he [the writer] ever describe Ansel Adams or any other male photographer as the 'grandfather' of any style."

Tough New Yorker.

The show is a reprise of her contributions to a major 2001 exhibit of contemporary realist artist John Koch's paintings at the New York Historical Society. The exhibition notes on the Historical Society's website include this remark:

Koch's work resisted the trend toward abstraction prevalent in his time. He chronicled a variety of relationships as experienced in the mid-twentieth century: friends, lovers, spouses, artists and models, teachers and students (even apartment dwellers and contractors!). Many of the paintings record members of John and Dora's social circle, most of them artists, writers and musicians, who participated in their European-style salon, an oasis of high culture and refinement in New York City.

Lida's unique photographic vision is made for elegant, contemplative spaces in which visitors can savor her love of capturing extraordinary artists in their everyday milieu. Lida was enamored of the MacFeely Gallery space and the whole building, and so were we. She feels the atmosphere fit with Koch's own elegant home in NYC. Koch (1909-1978) and his wife, Dora Zaslavsky, were friends of Lida's. She took many photos of both John and Dora and his work in their apartment. She says, "They were a sweet, LOVING couple--to each other, to other people, and to his art."

Cathy resting in one of the galleries.


Simplicity and light.







Get well soon, Lida! We love you!

Darlene shares the good stuff!

The incomparable Darlene, of Darlene's Hodgepodge, emailed this yesterday. Darlene is 83 years old and not willing to give up. Her series on the health care debate is without peer. She finds the good stuff and posts it for all of us to read. Thank you, Darlene. (If nothing else, I can repost your work and share it with my (Canadian) readers. Well, they're not all Canadians...there's at least one in California, which is fast sinking as a real state.)

This item, however, it not just about health care. It's about how one beautiful, idealistic, intelligent, and compassionate young man has found himself in a supreme pickle: Being president of the United States, which has sunk into a strange, un-American inertia. The author is Bill Maher, again, at his best:

New Rule: If America can't get its act together, it must lose the bald eagle as our symbol and replace it with the YouTube video of the puppy that can't get up. As long as we're pathetic, we might as well act like it's cute. I don't care about the president's birth certificate, I do want to know what happened to "Yes we can." Can we get out of Iraq? No. Afghanistan? No. Fix health care? No. Close Gitmo? No. Cap-and-trade carbon emissions? No. The Obamas have been in Washington for ten months and it seems like the only thing they've gotten is a dog.

Well, I hate to be a nudge, but why has America become a nation that can't make anything bad end, like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, the drug war, useless weapons programs - oh, and there's still 60,000 troops in Germany - and can't make anything good start, like health care reform, immigration reform, rebuilding infrastructure. Even when we address something, the plan can never start until years down the road. Congress's climate change bill mandates a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions... by 2020! Fellas, slow down, where's the fire? Oh yeah, it's where I live, engulfing the entire western part of the United States!

We might pass new mileage standards, but even if we do, they wouldn't start until 2016. In that year, our cars of the future will glide along at a breathtaking 35 miles-per-gallon. My goodness, is that even humanly possible? Cars that get 35 miles-per-gallon in just six years? Get your head out of the clouds, you socialist dreamer! "What do we want!? A small improvement! When do we want it!? 2016!"

When it's something for us personally, like a laxative, it has to start working now. My TV remote has a button on it now called "On Demand". You get your ass on my TV screen right now, Jon Cryer, and make me laugh. Now! But when it's something for the survival of the species as a whole, we phase that in slowly.

Folks, we don't need more efficient cars. We need something to replace cars. That's what's wrong with these piddly, too-little-too-late half-measures that pass for "reform" these days. They're not reform, they're just putting off actually solving anything to a later day, when we might by some miracle have, a) leaders with balls, and b) a general populace who can think again. Barack Obama has said, "If we were starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense." So let's start from scratch.

Even if they pass the shitty Max Baucus health care bill, it doesn't kick in for 4 years, during which time 175,000 people will die because they're not covered, and about three million will go bankrupt from hospital bills. We have a pretty good idea of the Republican plan for the next three years: Don't let Obama do anything. What kills me is that that's the Democrats' plan, too.

We weren't always like this. Inert. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law and 11 months later seniors were receiving benefits. During World War II, virtually overnight FDR had auto companies making tanks and planes only. In one eight year period, America went from JFK's ridiculous dream of landing a man on the moon, to actually landing a man on the moon.

This generation has had eight years to build something at Ground Zero. An office building, a museum, an outlet mall, I don't care anymore. I'm tempted to say that, symbolically, all America can do lately is keep digging a hole, but Ground Zero doesn't represent a hole. It is a hole. America: Home of the Freedom Pit. Ironically, it's spitting distance from Wall Street, where they knock down buildings a different way - through foreclosure.

That's the ultimate sign of our lethargy: millions thrown out of their homes, tossed out of work, lost their life savings, retirements postponed - and they just take it. 30% interest on credit cards? It's a good thing the Supreme Court legalized sodomy a few years ago.

Why can't we get off our back? Is it something in the food? Actually, yes. I found out something interesting researching last week's editorial on how we should be taxing the unhealthy things Americans put into their bodies, like sodas and junk foods and gerbils. Did you know that we eat the same high-fat, high-carb, sugar-laden shit that's served in prisons and in religious cults to keep the subjects in a zombie-like state of lethargic compliance? Why haven't Americans arisen en masse to demand a strong public option? Because "The Bachelor" is on. We're tired and our brain stems hurt from washing down French fries with McDonald's orange drink.

The research is in: high-fat diets makes you lazy and stupid. Rats on an American diet weren't motivated to navigate their maze and once in the maze they made more mistakes. And, instead of exercising on their wheel, they just used it to hang clothes on. Of course we can't ban assault rifles - we're the first generation too lazy to make its own coffee. We're the generation that invented the soft chocolate chip cookie: like a cookie, only not so exhausting to chew. I ask you, if the food we're eating in America isn't making us stupid, how come the people in Carl's Jr. ads never think to put a napkin over their pants?

Bill Maher is host of HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher"

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-if-america-cant_b_299383.html"

And here is one of my favorites from Darlene's Hodgepodge, September 11, 2009. Be sure to click the link so you can see the cartoon:

It's The Money Stupid

I thought this article on Truthout was a funny 'tongue in cheek' rant that simplifies why we should have health care reform. If you don't think it's funny, just look at the facts it contains. Facts are still stubborn things.


( I have edited it a tad. If you want to read the entire article here is the link:

http://www.truthout.org/090909A?print

by: John Cory, t r u t h o u t | Perspective


The media tells me that health reform is a very complicated issue, that it is hard to understand and even harder to explain to simple-minded and politically unsophisticated people like me. It is about money and costs and free-market and big government socialists versus real America, or something like that.

So, I ask: How can the majority of other industrialized nations manage to provide affordable health care to their citizens?

The fabulous media roll their eyes and show me the following Organization for Economic Development (OECD) report:

Total health care spending per person as of 2007:

US: $7,290
UK: $2,992
Japan: $2,581
Canada: $3,895
France: $3,601
The average OECD expenditure: $2,964


Next question: If other countries spend less than half of what the US spends (on average) with good results, where does all our money go?

This is where my neat-o media suddenly points across the room at the man jumping up and down about wanting his country back or the lady hollering about the Muslim socialist in the White House. Look, look they say, Jerry Springer politics is so entertaining!

But I still want to know where all that money goes. Don't you?

We spend twice the money on health care as most other countries and we are supposed to just accept this as the cost of a free market, the price of being American? Let's face it folks, if health care was manufacturing or Walmart, the jobs and services would already have been outsourced to the cheapest foreign competitor.

I'm not a journalist or a particularly educated guy, but golly, gee whiz Batman, it seems to me that somebody is getting ripped off here - and that somebody is, us.

Here's more figures I hear tossed around without examination: The administrative costs of Medicare run about 3 percent while the corporate health insurance industry administrative costs hover at 30 percent.

How can that be? I thought the government was really bad at managing anything while private enterprise is expert at cost containment. But the businessmen require ten times as much overhead costs as big government politicians?

Whatever happened to the old adage "follow the money?" Who in our media or journalist-pundit class is willing to give up the ratings gold of raucous town hall meetings to investigate where our money is going?

How much of that $7,290 per person in the US goes to exorbitant CEO salaries? How much goes to lobbyist funding to deregulate the insurance industry? How much is waste and fraud? How much of that money is actual medical treatment?

This is America, the greatest nation with the best health care in the world. I know, because my TV tells me so. But something is not right here. Something is off.

America is the home of innovative capitalism. Europe is a bunch of socialistic democratic republics. How can they provide health care at a lower cost? How do they get lower drug prices than we do? Why can't we?

Lift one rock and you find more and more. Medical bankruptcy comprises 50 percent of all bankruptcies nationally. And 80 percent of medical bankruptcy comes from people who have insurance.

Treatment clinics set up by Remote Area Medical on American soil from California to Kentucky just to provide basic health care to those who cannot afford it. Think of that: A medical organization that specializes in Third World underdeveloped countries has to fill a need in America, the wealthiest country in the world.

Is this what we've come to? The value of a healthy life is determined by deductibles? Does the value of a life have a monetary cap? Is life itself a pre-existing condition? The corporations that sell insurance think so. They sat before Congress and justified "rescission" as a cost-effective management tool, and no matter the examples of ruined lives shown to them, when asked how many of those executives would put a halt to these practices, not one manicured hand was raised. No need to fear government death panels - they're already here in tailored suits and silk smiles that say, "Show me the money."

US: $7,290 - the average: $2,964 - results: Quality is fairly equal. How can that be?
It's always about the money.

Wotta week!

Folks, do you ever just WONDER how in touch with reality the people are who think they are running things?

Emily's List sent a message tonight about the urgency of electing more WOMEN to Congress. The message includes this gem:

During debate of health care amendments involving maternity care, GOP Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ) made an unbelievable statement: "I don't need maternity care. And, so requiring that to be on my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the policy more expensive."

Without missing a beat, EMILY's List alum Sen. Debbie Stabenow (MI) fired back: "...I think your mom probably did."

Ever consider women, Senator Kyl? We find time to vote while we're having babies.

But the biggest jaw-dropper is THIS quote from the September 28, 2009, issue of New York magazine:

In an article by Robert Kolker, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York is quoted as saying

"Sex is not a human right, even if modern culture has made it appear that way."

Huh?

A little further on in the article, the Cardinal says,

God made me with a particular soft spot in my heart for a martini.

I'll bet. The Cardinal is a regular good sport. And good old God, too, always thinking of ways for Cardinals to lighten the load of weird thinking they have to haul around.

Happy birthday, dear Sally....happy birthday tooo YOOOO!!

Our Sally is inching toward another demographic crossover, these days--a BIG one--and she's still the delightful person she's always been, even from her first moments. Most babies yell and cry after they're born, but not Sally...she looked all around and sucked her fingers noisily all the way from the delivery room to our room at St. Alexius in Bismarck. Sally was born at suppertime, and she was looking for the dinner cart. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration. She really had no experience with dinner carts in a hospital, but SOMETHING was telling her it was time to eat.

Anyway, here's to you, dear Sally. You've brought us lots of joy and happiness in your sojourn on this planet as a member of our family. I can't imagine now, looking at "Dirty Dancing," why we got so upset when you snuck off to Cedar Rapids with your friends to see it when you were in high school. and I know all about the MUSHROOMS...(I think that was you and Suzanne, but I'm getting old and can't quite recall all the details.)

Thanks for being such a wonderful wife, mother, sister, and daughter. We love you. Ad multos annos!!!

Deaf Driver

this guy is sooooo funny!

kids vs marshmallow

My former neighbor posted this on FB, saying "How can you not love this?"

today is somebody's birthday....

i looked and looked at the date this morning....i knew it was somebody's birthday, but whose? ah! the light dawned...it's sarah's, of course. sarah was born on september 17, 1935, in grand forks, north dakota. we entered the convent on the same day. i left five years later, and she stayed, becoming novice director, finishing her masters program in mythology, studying film-making in chicago and NYC. she died in january and was buried on ground hog's day, 1985. here's a poem i wrote then:

Groundhog’s Day

You cast no shadow
The day you left the ground
Though light poured into light
Inundating trees, houses, our faces
A celebration of all keen air,
Of all awakenings, of all
Bright gladness, of sun.

And I could smell your warm
Scent beside me and feel
Your breath, the animal vapors,
Sweet and intimate and newly of the
Earth. And I could see the
Day’s splendor radiant in
Your soft, fresh eyes.

You cast no shadow.

Mine foretold more dark,
More cold,
More winter still to come until
The green roots
Overcome the snow.

Hell Explained - by a Chemistry Student

This oldie but goodie arrived this a.m. from M'reen, who lives somewhere in AZ--which explains the location of the school in the story. It could have been UCal Berkeley, whose chemistry department is in a league of its own.

The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry mid-term and an actual answer turned in by a student.

The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time.. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely.. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.


Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:


1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct..... ...leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

don't ask....

Here ya go, Charles....

Deep Fried Mars Bars Recipe #43463

Invented in Scotland, this dish has now become famous worldwide. It is an excellent source of fat, sugar and calories. For a seasonal variation you could also try deep frying a Cadbury's Creme Egg.
by Sackville

10 min | 5 min prep

1 deep fried mars bar

* 1 Mars bar or Milky Way bar
* 1 cup plain flour
* 1/2 cup cornflour
* 1 pinch baking soda
* milk or beer
* oil (for deep frying)

1. Chill the chocolate bar by keeping it in the fridge, but don't freeze it.
2. Mix the flours and bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) together.
3. Add milk (traditional) or beer (which gives a lighter result) until you get a batter with the consistency of thin cream.
4. Heat the oil until a small piece of bread will brown in a few seconds, but don't allow to smoke.
5. Remove wrapper from chilled chocolate bar.
6. Coat completely in batter.
7. Carefully lower into hot oil and fry until golden brown.
8. Serve, with ice cream or french fries, if you're so inclined.

© 2009 Recipezaar. All Rights Reserved. http://www.recipezaar.com

homemade ice cream--no cooking!

lately I've been enjoying some wonderful homemade chocolate ice cream from a fairly common online recipe:

2 cups chocolate milk
5 oz. evaporated milk
1 can (14 oz.) of sweetened condensed milk (and those of you who want to avoid the Nestle-affiliated (boo) Carnation evap. milk, look for SANTINI ORGANIC SWEETENED CONDENSED MILK--i got some at YES! gourmet friday for about half the price Safeway charges for Carnation.)
1/2 can of Hershey's chocolate syrup

mix it all up in the blender, then chill it for a couple of hours.

then pour it into your ice cream freezer and let it process until it gets nice and thick. it tastes like fudgesicle! yum!!

i don't really know how long to work my ice cream freezer--i think it's getting old and needs to be replaced. But i process the mixture until it gets to be almost the consistency of Dairy Queen, then pour it into a 2 quart freezer container and put it in the freezer overnight. (Natcherly, i can never wait for it to sit overnight. i'm always in there with my ice cream scoop around midnight so i can have a little taste....ha.)

yesterday i got the bright idea of using coconut milk instead of evaporated milk (not the sweetened condensed milk--that's where all the sugar comes from). and i chopped up half a bar (2 oz.) of 100% cacao unsweetened chocolate and added that instead of the hershey's syrup. and i used 2 cups of SILK chocolate soy milk instead of regular milk. no cholesterol, for whatever THAT's worth.

lemme tell ya, this stuff is GREAT!!! warning, though: it'll keep you awake at night with that 100% cacao. you may find yourself at 3 a.m. having yet another little bowl of your very own homemade chocolate ice cream....don't worry. life is short. enjoy that chocolate ice cream while you can.

Eight Years....

Most of us remember clearly what we were doing on September 11, 2001--eight years ago today. I arrived at the dentist's office for an early appointment just as they were setting up a TV on one of the dental chairs. They got it tuned in just in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center in NYC.

The article by William Rivers Pitt (linked above) describes clearly how I feel about what has happened here in the US since that time. We have been and continue to be attacked by lies more than anything else--there were no weapons of mass destruction, a major "justification" for the invasion of Iraq (Iraq?? The men who commandeered the planes were mostly Saudis). The liars are still at it--still lying in their best effort to bring down President Obama. Rep Joe Wilson of SC yelled "You lie!" during the President's speech Wednesday night, but Wilson himself had his facts all wrong.

William Rivers Pitt writes:

Afghanistan started eight years ago today, as did Iraq. Bush stood before the American people on live television and told us about 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX gas, 30,000 munitions to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program ("noo-clee-urr," not "nook-yuh-lurr," by the way; he never once got it right), mushroom clouds, doom, fear, and all the rest of that tremendous, deadly lie. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians were torn to pieces because of those lies, but he got away with telling them, thanks to the best day of his life: Tuesday, September 11, 2001, eight years ago today.

A French newspaper declared "We Are All Americans" on September 12, but it was all downhill after that. By the first week of October, with a pall of poison smoke still hanging over New York City, Bush declared that, "We have to counteract the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates," and the world threw up into its collective mouth. He took us to war; he took us to Hell, and we are still far, far from anything resembling recovery.

Goop's back

Not that it was gone, exactly, but GOOP newsletter seems to have taken a sensible vacation--and returned today with some great recipes. There are more recipes than just for bibimbop, the dish demonstrated on the video. It doesn't look like the bibimbop I remember from that great little restaurant on Gilbert St (?) in Iowa City (no meat), but it's basically a bowl of rice that you top with various items and a special sauce, then bibimbop--mix it all up!

I wish our farmers market here offered burdock--but as Gwyneth says, you can substitute any other root vegetable. The best part is how they chop it into matchsticks. And take heart, seniors, it's not just your blender that can offer you supremely digestible vegetables via green smoothies, all that fancy chopping shown here cuts that wonderful fiber down to something your teeth can manage. It's making me hungry already.

Happy Labor Day

....Which I have insisted on calling "Memorial Day" all day today. That's ok, I'm not embarrassed....YOU will be old and funny yourself someday! Ha.

Here's a good post from Democracyforcalifornia.com, and the author also quotes a good article from the Anchorage Daily News! (As you may have suspected, SheWhoIsNotToBeNamed is NOT as popular in Alaska as cable news and the repugs would have us think.)

Anyway, I spent a lot of the day working, thanks to a wonderful friend who shoved a job my way. So it's time to lick the container of my chicken dinner with mashed potatoes & gravy and broccoli and check out the blogs I follow.

Henry sent me some more fabulous African music, and the rain kachina came to bless the day, arriving shortly after midnight last night. I loved the instant quiet on the street after the first downpour sent everyone inside.

Here's to a big city enjoying a day off.

Peccavi

Those of you who remember your British history will recall the one-word note sent by General Napier to his commander, telling him he had conquered the province of Sindh in India: "Peccavi." That's Latin for "I have sinned."

So have I. I confess I have been reading bits and pieces of the NYTimes this month--nothing big, and certainly nothing by the guy in the pink shirt (the so-called "good" conservative), but I do enjoy Gail Collins when she writes alone. (The sneaky Times has been pairing her occasionally with one or another of their gawdawful right-wingers.)

Collins was especially hilarious yesterday in her "End of Summer Quiz" column. Even funnier was the first reader comment on this piece by one "KT" of NYC:

Match the social behavior with my reaction:

A. People without health insurance, jobs or money call the POTUS "Hitler" because he wants to provide them with affordable health care.

B. Fox talk show host gets high ratings when he declares Rockefeller Center to be laden with communist symbols intended to subliminally corrupt tourists.

C. Guy gets finger bitten off at Town Hall meeting.

D. Republicans pull kids out of school so that they will not hear POTUS talk urging them not to drop out.

Answers:

1. Someone please call the EMS guys, and tell them to bring a really big net.

2. How fast can you get me to Canada?

3. Purell for All.

4. I keep clicking the heels of these cool red slippers, but cannot seem to leave Oz.

Answers: Pick whichever one you want; they are all interchangeable.

But I digress. Worst of all, I have just purchased another year's subscription to...no, not the whole paper...the crossword puzzles!! Of course, they've changed the system. It's not so easy to get in there and open up the puzzle any more.

They've had my $40 for about an hour, and I still can't open the bleeping Sunday crossword. I've downloaded Across Lite, as in the past, and its cheery little crossword-y icon is parked on my dock. But nothing I do makes the puzzle open.

Plus, the crossword FAQs have nothing to do with my problem. They are all about how to open a puzzle with Across Lite IF YOU HAVE WINDOWS. Dear Times, you mean AS IF!!!

Fooey. I only wanted to save what's left of my mind. It took me two days to work last Sunday's puzzle, which I filched from the BFF's recycling pile. I figgered I'd better get exercising the old brain cells. FaceBook is not gonna do the job.

Thank God for Al Franken

at least one elected representative from Minnesota has his head on right!

Check This!!

Democracyforcalifornia has a great post today--and here it is:

Healthcare and Gomorrah

What is behind the shrill and seemingly irrational opposition to healthcare reform?

Award-winning journalist Max Blumenthal delves into the deeper meaning of the increasingly rancorous side-shows surrounding this and other public policy issues in his new book Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party . In the book, Blumenthal traces the GOP's transformation from the “big tent” party of President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the “one-ring circus” it has become, culminating with the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate in 2008. His explosive thesis: culture warriors such as Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson “cultivate Republican shock troops” by preying on people’s fears and insecurities to “turn personal crisis into political resentment.”

In the interest of full disclosure I've only read excerpts from the book. I did, however, catch Blumenthal’s lengthy discussion of Republican Gomorrah this morning on the Pacific Network's Democracy Now! and it started me thinking.

Applying Blumenthal's narrative to healthcare reform, the ongoing controversy bears little resemblance to the picture presented by the corporate-controlled media: a spontaneous expression of public discontent with costly, inept government intrusion in our lives. Indeed, beneath the chilling rhetoric and town hall theatrics of the lunatic fringe is nothing more than a power grab, pure and simple, by reactionary forces that will be satisfied with nothing less than the establishment of what Blumenthal calls "a theocratic dystopia."

Forget cost, forget "socialized medicine," forget Washington bureaucrats coming between you and your doctor, forget rationing of treatment, forget “death panels”...what really terrifies Them is that a public-funded, private delivery healthcare system (in other words, Medicare for all) just might work! For any government solution to common people's problems will mean death to their sadomasochistic empire – and the powerful business interests they are in cahoots with.

How this shotgun marriage of convenience works to draw people like sheep to the slaughter and embrace policies that are against their own best interests is well-documented by now.

Promise prayer in schools and give them tax cuts for the rich; promise immigration reform and ship their jobs overseas; promise to outlaw gay marriage and call-in their subprime loans; promise to overturn Roe v. Wade and give them The Health Insurance Industry Preservation Act of 2009.

In short, millions of poor souls have made a Faustian deal with the leaders of a “religio-political subculture” (to quote The New Yorker’s Henrik Hertzberg) who care not a whit about anything but prospering from the personal trauma of others. Meanwhile their corporate masters have channeled these shared psychoses into a state-by-state scheme to game the initiative process in order to pass pro-business ballot measures.

In what the White House is hoping will be game-changing speech on healthcare, President Obama on Wednesday in prime time is scheduled to address a joint session of congress. Perhaps a better idea would be to call on Pastor Rick Warren to perform a mass exorcism.

Please look at the original post (link above) so you can follow up their own links, too.

Now What?

Everybody I know who is retired is so daggone busy doing meritorious stuff that I've really begun to think about just what kinds of things I could be doing. The books and magazine articles say we all have things we're GOOD AT, and that these are the kinds of things we should be doing now that we don't have to punch a time clock every day.

It's not that easy. I've tried to think of what I'm good at, and the list doesn't really spell YOUR PERFECT POST-RETIREMENT CAREER. For example, one thing I know with certainty I was always very good at was target shooting. I think I can pretty much rule THAT one out for my golden years. And I was pretty good at some parts of teaching (like making the kids feel good about the natural world) but very lousy at others (like handing back papers after I'd corrected them).

I took that test that Red Nose posted about this past week: the Strengths Finder quiz. According to that, my top five strengths are Adaptability, Relator, Actuator, Empathy, and Ideation.

I can see all that. Adaptability means I'm perfectly happy to switch gears if something isn't working. Relator means I pick my friends carefully and (probably) drive them up the wall with my attention. Actuator is another way of saying patience is not exactly my strong point. Ha. Empathy means I can sense what's going on with people (whether they like it or will admit it or not), and Ideation means I can have really cool ideas. I like the last one, and I can even admit it's been true in a certain area of my life: I have great housing karma, and I've been able to work with the light and space in a dwelling so that it's actually pleasant for me to live in. And I've loved painting and drawing, though the art provides all the fun there--I've never earned any $$ at it.

How all of this fits into retirement is beyond me. I do think I need to find someplace else to live. Maybe I should just quit dillying around (which is going against my strong point of Actuator) and get with finding a place. That, of course, will mean going against the Relator thing. I'm not particularly social, but moving house will mean giving up what little social life I have at present. The Adaptability will help with that, though, because I've been able to survive in a number of highly disparate environments, doing all kinds of weird things.

When I retired, I had worked as an editor for almost 30 years, most of which was in management. But due to circumstances (like being deaf as a post for 46 years) it was not always easy to find or get a job. Thus, I've had to earn my living at various times by teaching 7th & 8th grade life & earth science, walking beans (if you're from Iowa, you'll know what that is, otherwise, don't ask), painting houses, doing kitchen prep in a restaurant, hemming pants for a dry cleaner/tuxedo rental place, cleaning student apartments (gah), and cutting down trumpet vines in a wildly wooded apartment complex for $3/hr. Plus, there's that big chunk of time working as an editor. I liked that, but it's really hard work. Thanks be I could do that without having to hear much, but if I'd had my druthers....

Actually, this may be why I've spent the past year loafing or riding my bike--I'm resting. But since I'm running out of quarters, I'll have to get with it again. My piggy bank is looking emaciated.

If I moved to the Midwest, I could cut my housing expenses in way less than half, but who wants to freeze?

Anyway, each stage of life has its own challenges. I feel as if I've run out of ways to entertain myself.

Any advice?

While We're At It....

Life always has so many surprises, some of them really wonderful. A newcomer commented on one of my posts this week, and I've been busy enjoying the heck out of her blog. I like the way she thinks, and I like the way she writes. So please visit Cop Car's Beat and see for yourself that riches actually can come out of a freakin' red state!! (I don't know how I feel about writing that...I am so bloody fed up with red staters acting like yahoos and hauling guns to town meetings and shouting "keep your government out of our...whatevers." But see for yourself.)

I especially liked her post that commented on an article in Kansas! Magazine about "15 Reasons to Love Kansas." (Following in indented text is the post...I didn't write it, Cop Car and somebody else did.)

I lied...er...forgot: so, sue me!

In the posting, This & that from The New Yorker, August 3, 2009, I wrote, "These days, the only magazine subscription that I maintain (apart from "house organs" that come with memberships) is to The New Yorker." Kansas! Magazine, to which I've subscribed for (I'm guessing) over 40 years, had slipped my mind. There is a small item in the Fall 2009 issue, in the section titled "15 Reasons We Love Kansas".

[Reason] 3 - Good Works

When the economy took a dive last year and business started to slow down at B&W Trailer Hitches in Humboldt, founder and President Joe Works (below) [referring to a photograph of Mr Works] decided it was time to give something back to the town and his 180 employees. At Joe's direction, the manufacturer of high-quality truck beds and trailer hitches (Humboldt's largest employer) turned its attention to sprucing up the town of 1800. Employees went to work cleaning the playground, refurbishing the baseball diamond and painting churches while still getting full pay from B&W. The result is a revitalized town busting with pride. "We've had good years and lean years," Joe says. "There's no need to be greedy." ...Beth Barlow, Humboldt

Wouldn't it be nice if Wall Street took a page out of Mr Works' playbook? I sometimes weary of living in such a red state; but, if all of the State's residents were like Mr Works....Wow!

Sweet Jebus...wouldn't that be great if the rich guys in DC could do stuff like that? We'd have to quit whining and maybe half the population would quit SHOOTING each other!!

Back to Health Care--What Moyers Thinks

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=6CF29607-18FE-70B2-A81F4C1852C7AC81

We can't give up and allow this spinelessness to go unremarked. It's not too late.

More on Ted Kennedy

Sarah Vowell's opinion column, in today's NYTimes, talks about the effect Ted Kennedy's work in the Senate has had on her.

I like this excerpt especially:

I paid my way through Montana State University with student loans, a minimum-wage job making sandwiches at a joint called the Pickle Barrel, and — here come the waterworks — Pell Grants. Thanks to Pell Grants, I had to work only 30 hours a week up to my elbows in ham instead of 40.

Ten extra hours a week might sound negligible, but do you know what a determined, junior-Hillary type of hick with a full course load and onion-scented hands can do with the gift of 10 whole hours per week? Not flunk geology, that’s what. Take German every day at 8 a.m. — for fun! Wander into the office of the school paper on a whim and find a calling. I’m convinced that those 10 extra hours a week are the reason I graduated magna cum laude, which I think is Latin for “worst girlfriend in town.”

Twenty years after my first financial aid package came through, I have paid off my college and graduate school loans and I have paid back the federal government in income taxes what it doled out to me in Pell Grants so many, many, many, many times over it’s a wonder I’m not a Republican.

But I would like to point out that my perfectly ordinary education, received in public schools and a land grant university, is not merely the foundation on which I make a living. My education made my life. In a sometimes ugly world, my schooling opened a trap door to a bottomless pit of beauty — to Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong and Frank Lloyd Wright, to the old movies and old masters that have been my constant companions in my unalienable pursuit of happiness.

I’m a New Yorker now. Every now and then when I have time to kill in Midtown, I duck into the Museum of Modern Art to stare at Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” I love looking at the picture, but I also love looking back on when and where and how I first saw it — on a slide in a first-year art history course in which some of my fellow students were ranchers’ sons who wore actual cowboy hats to class. It was a course I paid for, in part, with a Pell Grant, a program always and as ever championed by “my senator,” Ted Kennedy, a program so dear to Barack Obama’s heart that increasing the maximum amount of Pell Grants for needy students was the first bill he introduced upon arrival in the United States Senate.

Pell Grants are named after the 6-term Democratic senator from Rhode Island, Claiborne Pell, but Ted Kennedy worked alongside Pell to establish the original bill, called the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, in 1972. Subsequently, Kennedy's own website notes that he was a key supporter for Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Direct Lending program in 1993. These have allowed so many, including Xtreme English and her children, to get an education.

Living in the District of Columbia means we don't have a voting representative or senator in Congress. I relied on Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts to represent my concerns, and he did so admirably. I'm happy to have contributed whatever small funds, if any, I had at the time whenever I received an email from Senator Kennedy pointing out a person or group with a particular need.

Senator Kennedy came from a wealthy, illustrious, close-knit family, whose support he was able to take for granted all his life. He was given much, and in return he gave unstintingly to others to the end. He would be the first to admit that his actions have not always been those of a perfect human being. But to his everlasting credit, he did not allow his failings to drive him from public life or stop his work on behalf of those who need the help of a community.

Today's Writers Almanac notes that it's the birthday of Molly Ivins (rest in peace, too, Molly). WA cites a biographical blurb she wrote about herself that says "Molly Ivins is a nationally syndicated political columnist who remains cheerful despite...politics. She emphasizes the more hilarious aspects of both state and national government, and consequently never has to write fiction."

addendum: Photo of Funeral procession from US Capitol to Arlington Cemetery.