Love - A Snippet

Sometimes, a company gets it right.

Allegiant flies between Phoenix-Mesa Gateway and South Bend International airports every Monday and Friday, but only on Mondays and Fridays.  The rest of the time, you have to travel on a major carrier, at three or four times the price.

But this year, there are flights on the Wednesday before and the Sunday after Thanksgiving and Little Cuter wondered if Grampa and Gramma wanted them for the holiday.

I'm still doing my happy dance.

If Allegiant Airlines were a human, I'd be kissing her right now.

Having the Conversation

Rain brought up facts and figures in her comment yesterday.  She's less than enthralled with rich entertainers disrespecting the flag, and I understand her, completely.  We've been connected through blogging (hers at Rainy Day Thoughts) ever since I started in 2009; she's never been anything but thoughtful and polite. 

I often wonder how she has time to craft elegant comments across the interwebs while writing romance novels, keeping up two blogs, and running a working ranch with her husband.  I thank the internet for her whenever our pixilated paths cross.  Her opinions are well-researched; she lives a life much different from mine and I appreciate the window into her world. 

But I'm disagreeing with the basic premise of her argument, the fact that the athletes were disrespecting the flag.  Waving a giant flag horizontally violates the Flag Code, if we are going to be picky about it, but I'm going for a broader perspective.  There were many reasons given over the weekend by many different athletes, but none of them involved the flag or the anthem. 

Racism, targeted policing, civil disrespect, calling out their mothers, Charlottesville, DJT in general (see LeBron), the rot crawling out from the rocks this administration has turned over..... the young men I heard were using their platform to make a statement.  Whether you approve of the politicization of America's blood sport or not, you cannot deny that their statements were heard.

Suddenly, the hair salon is a hub of what do you think about it discussions.  The teacher's lounge and the gym and the French bistro were scenes of the conversation I overheard, conversations on all sides of the issue. And I think that's a good thing. 

I have no problem separating love of country from disappointment with my country.  Sometimes she is wrong.  Sometimes her representatives need a kick in the pants.  Sometimes, things need to be shaken up.  I do think this is one of those times.  Whether you think they are right or wrong, those on the other side are certainly upset.  It behooves us to listen and figure out the whys.

No one side owns the flag; Nixon tried to take it from me during the Viet Nam War, conflating flying the flag with admiration for his war.  It pissed me off then and it pisses me off now.  The best explanation for this came from a source I can no longer find on Facebook.  A parent asked her daughter what it meant to take a knee, and what she thought about the protests.  Her answer went roughly like this:

You take a knee when a player on your team or the other team is hurt.  You are showing that you care and that you hope it's not too bad and that it gets better soon. So, kneeling near the flag means our country is hurting, and we want to help it get better, soon.

Out of the mouths of babes.

 

 

Facebook, Football, Alabama, and Us - A Rant

This has been a very weird week and it's only Wednesday.

Facebook did or didn't know that the Russians were using the platform to influence our Presidential election.  They did or didn't notice that the paid advertising in question came from Russian banks.  They did or didn't alter the algorithm to send inflammatory fake news stories to groups which would naturally fall on either side of the issue.

Do we believe Mark Zuckerberg?  I saw The Social Network, I know that he stole the idea from those good looking rich twins.

NFL players were protesting Donald Trump attacking their mothers.  They listened to his words, parsed them carefully, and determined that the President thought they were sons of nasty women.  NFL players were protesting police brutality, systemic racism, President Trump's feeble response to Charlottesville. 

Or..... overpaid professional entertainers were making mountains out of molehills, disrespecting the flag and veterans and police officers and our country as they knelt instead of singing the National Anthem.

And that National Anthem turns out to be a racist anthem, referencing slaves who escaped bondage and fought for the British in exchange for their freedom.  Who knew?  I never got past the first stanza, though Daddooooo claimed to know all four. 

And while I'm on the suAlbject, why is our anthem un-sing-able?  Is now the time to rouse the populace to the cause - Make America, the Beautiful our country's song?

Alabama Republicans' choice for the United States Senate is Roy Moore, a man who was removed not once but twice from the judiciary for ethics violations.  He brandished a pistol at his last campaign rally, demonstrating his love of the Second Amendment.

And here I am, again, back at DJT and the Bill of Rights and Freedom of Speech and protest on your own time and it's against the Flag Code to display the flag horizontally, no matter how many uniformed humans are making it wave, and all the while Houston and the Florida Keys and Puerto Rico are underwater and North Korea thinks war can be declared on Twitter.

It's been a very weird week. 

Do You Buy the Insurance? - A Snippet

I always buy the insurance.  

The HVAC guy told me that the surge protectors on our furnaces were out of date.  It went something like this: If lightning strikes the house (and it could happen) they are likely to explode (not expected to, but it could happen) and then your appliances are fried. Fried.

Since no one wants fried appliances, I agreed to replace the surge protector on each furnace with new and improved models.  The technician kept explaining the wiring and the lighting but I was focused on the warranty.

If lightning strikes my house sometime in the next three years, either those surge protectors will do their job or somebody will be replacing my furnaces, free of charge.

I feel very safe and protected.

I Sat

The Twitter-verse is all a flutter.  NFL team owners are falling over one another, re-framing what were obviously well-chosen talking points distributed by someone with sense.  Smart, thoughtful, inspiring, involved young men were inspiring and admired, despite the President's divisive, disappointing, and inappropriate words. 

All of a sudden, Colin Kaepernick is a folk hero.

It's spread to Major League Baseball, too, and that hand on his shoulder makes me smile.

http://tinyurl.com/yaslsy5z

And then I remembered sitting during the national anthem.  A lot.  In many places.  And not because I was busy nursing an otherwise inconsolable infant at the time.  It was 1969 and 1970 and 1971 and '72 and my friends were being shipped off to what is euphemistically referred to as an unpopular war.

There were bloody protests and enormous peaceful gatherings.  There were the Black Panthers and SDS and SNCC and the Weathermen and the yippies and the hippies and everyone had an agenda.  No one liked the war.  No one agreed how to stop it, once Bobby Kennedy shouldered Gene McCarthy aside and then found himself assassinated on an L.A. ballroom floor.  We were left with Hubert Humphrey and were stuck, again, with Richard Nixon.

I was young and female and not very interested in being arrested.  I avoided sit-ins.  I marched, I held signs, I did not chant.  I went to teach-ins and learned facts to amplify my outrage and fuel the somewhat acrimonious conversations with my father on the telephone, every Sunday night, after the rates went down.

I went to Washington, D. C. for the Mobilization Against the War, and came home safely.  I heard fabulous music at free concerts against the war.  I worked for a losing leftist running for the Senate.  It was all part of something larger than the space I was occupying myself, but that personal space felt vaguely empty.  I was good at going along with the crowd.  What could I do to mark my protest as a personal statement?

So, I sat.  I wasn't alone; others who looked like me and dressed like me were sitting, too.  There were stares and glowers and more than one shaking head.  No one ever approached me or asked me why. I always felt conspicuous, and I was more than a little bit proud of myself that I was taking a stand.  I never felt threatened; but perhaps I was just naive.

Okay.  Not perhaps.  I was naive.  

I knew that respect must be earned, that patriotism cannot be commanded.  I loved my country, but I was ashamed of my country.  I couldn't extol her virtues when she was so obviously in the wrong.  I was young and filled with certainty. I knew I was right. So I sat. 

I put nothing at risk, not my job or my reputation or my safety.  I was just one short Jewish girl making a small statement in my own way.  I'm impressed by those who are willing to take my small act of courage out onto a larger stage.  They are shouting from the rooftops, heads bowed, kneeling before us all. They are taking the conversation into America's living rooms, on Sunday Night Football, where I imagine folks debating whether sitting or kneeling or standing with arms linked is best... and maybe, just maybe, the ideas behind the gesture come out from the shadows.

Did I mention that I was naive?

How Am I Doing?

I'm exhausted, thank you very much.

I was structurally integrated, trigger point manipulated, rolfed and stretched and pressed and pulled today.  This is not a therapy for amateurs; it requires allowing the practitioner to gain access to the deepest muscles, the ones hiding behind other organs, nestling up against the spine.  They are not easy to touch, since normal human beings prefer to keep them safely stashed away.  Getting in there is filled with intense sensations.

"You are going to thank me later," she said, recognizing in my growling a threat to her immediate safety.  She asked me to extend my right leg, flexing my foot at the ankle, reaching my heel toward the window framing her blue doorway.

BREATHE, painted in yellow on that blue lintel, was mocking me as I gasped.

Instructed to drop my pelvic floor as her forearm pressed and rolled inexorably down my IT band, I found the sensation somewhat more bearable.... emphasis on the somewhat.  By her third pass around my outer thigh, my breathing was almost back to normal.... almost.

After a little bit of this and a little bit of that, my shoulder girdle was seated comfortably atop my spine, which was hanging delightfully from my skull, neither tethered to my back nor straining to remain erect.  My hips were even; the left side of my neck was no longer holding up my right hip.

And I felt great.

I felt even better when TBG smiled around "Great walking this afternoon!"  My undamaged ball rolled around in my repaired hip socket with nary a hitch as my knee bent and my arms swung freely and there was no lurch at all. Nothing hurt.  Nothing felt stronger than any other part and nothing asked for help.

She was right.  I am grateful.  As Gabby said in her last fundraising letter, rehab from gun violence is the hardest work I've ever done.  And just like my Mommy told me, hard work is rewarded.  I proved it to myself today.

Happy New Year

A friend was born in 5700; he's celebrating his 78th birthday this year.

With (the apocryphal) 613 pomegranate seeds of good wishes

http://tinyurl.com/y72ga3tc

Happy New Year !

Good Friends - A Snippet

We met when the Jews came to visit after I was shot.  They brought a Shabbat meal and words of comfort and left me with a new friend for life.

Our husbands embrace their alone time with the same degree of passion.  Writing is a passion and political activism is part and parcel of our beings.  We love our two kids and our one grandchild (each) with reckless abandon.

We don't like to shop, but sometimes we give in to the urge.... and this is what happens when that urge strikes us at different times, in different stores, with different motivations.....

but the same outcome.

Sometimes it's obvious that we were meant to be in one another's lives.

It's Ba-a-a-ack

And yes, there's an ack in the title.

TrumpCare is back, and it's worse than ever.  John McCain's best friend, Lindsay Graham, joined with Louisiana's Bill Cassidy in introducing a revised repeal-and-replace bill that Ohio's John Kasich tweeets eliminates the guardrails that protect some of the most vulnerable among us.

In a sop to my own Senator's NO vote in July, Arizona is poised to receive heaping piles of pork from Graham-Cassidy.  Can he be bought off?  I tried to ask his office that very question this morning, but the phone was busy ... very very busy .... in the car (on speakerphone if I had ever gotten through).. from home ... on my cell on the way to pick up the mail.  I'll comment on his website and his Facebook page, but I wanted to have my voice heard, too.

Indivisible has a lengthy but readable outline of the bill here.  There's a sample script for contacting your Senators here.  If you live in Arizona or Ohio or Tennessee or Alaska, they've created special scripts for you - asking for a return to regular order in the Senate where those Senators can speak their mind in the time honored traditions of their institution.

I'm asking you to take the next two minutes, the ones you'd have devoted to reading a typical post in The Burrow, and make those phone calls right now.  If you can't get through, go to the Senators' webpages and comment as a constituent.  Ask for a response.  You can start here, at our government's cleverly titled Contact Elected Officials site.

If you don't act, you don't get to complain.

Fall

It's hard to think of autumn when I'm sweating in shorts and a tank top.  It's too hot to plant, too hot to rejigger the irrigation system, too hot to revamp the containers and replant that which needs more or less sunshine.  The euphorbia along the edge of the roadway are scorched, I hope not beyond repair, but I'm too uncomfortable to help them.

A lot of Tucsonans are sharing these thoughts.  Buying a frame for our new 11x14 FlapJilly portrait by JPetersenPhotography, I had this same conversation with the cashier.  It's not that we're complaining, necessarily.  It's that we're bored.  We're ready for light sweaters and narrow wale corduroy slacks.  We're tired of sleeveless blouses and ready to don our cowboy boots.  But boots when it's 98 degrees, humidity or not, lead to very sweaty feet.  We agreed that we'd have to wait.  We agreed that we were pretty peeved about it.

Michael's has everything Fall on sale.  Halloween decor and Thanksgiving serving pieces and stickers and candles and everything in between, all colored orange and brown.  I wandered the aisles, filling my cart with an owl and a pillow and some small ceramic pumpkins, laughing at the heat rising from the parking lot as I schlepped my treasures to The Uv.  The thermometer might be telling me that it's time to swim, but my purchases announced that it was time to drag out the autumn tchotchkes.

We'll be in Indiana for Halloween with the grandbaby, so my decor will be less scary and more generically seasonal this year. It's not that much of a problem;  I discarded my witches several years ago, along with the kindergarten treasures my now-30-somethings created.  I struggled with the turkey candle holders and turkey platters and turkey lawn ornaments; it seems counter-intuitive to venerate that which I am soon to eat.  For now, they remain in the box.

But the new owl sits cozily beside the farmers and the pumpkins and the curcubits in all their many incarnations - paper squash, ceramic cucumbers, plush pumpkins, etc etc etc.  JannyLou is the only one I know who consistently decorates for each season; last night she told me that Marshall's (a store whose threshold I have never crossed) has lots of cute things you don't need but really want to have.  I may stop in this week, on the theory that you can never have too much of a good thing.

If only I could wear my wool socks and a cut-off sweatshirt while I'm carting things from the garage to the mantles.  Then it might actually feel like Fall.  For now, it will just have to look like it.

Feeling the Years

I'm trying to buy a wedding present, but I'm getting stuck in the past.

I'm remembering him as a toddler, as the 3 year old birthday boy, as the suburbanite living across the street from his school until his parents finally returned him to his proper place, the city.

I'm remembering his mother's gigantic cell phone and her fiendish attachment to it... and to him... when our sons were quite a bit smaller than they are right now.

I'm having a hard time adjusting to the fact that it has been three decades since the boys hid under the kitchen table together.  I don't feel that much older, but one of those little ones is tying the knot in 6 weeks ... and pre-schoolers don't get married in fancy hotels downtown.

Where have those years gone?  Amster's oldest is in high school.  I'm on Medicare.  The calendar pages keep turning and I don't notice anything changing.

I suppose that's a good thing.  I suppose I should be flattered that the Uber driver thought I was late 40's/early 50's at the most.  But sometimes,  the reality of buying a crystal carafe for a kid whose diapers I changed just stops me dead in my tracks.

Brief and Random Thoughts on Sports

TBG watched about 10 minutes of Monday Night Football this week.  My campaign to minimize the intrusion of football in my life is gaining ground.  On the other hand, while I was visiting FlapJilly, he and Big Cuter spent much of the weekend dissecting the actions of overgrown men running into and away from one another.  They've been betting against the spread since the kid was in elementary school; they have years of records to prove it.  I suppose it's too deep a bond to sever.... at least, for now.
*****
TBG's having another hometown moment, with the Cleveland Indians now proud possessors of the American League's longest winning streak.  The Tribe has won 21 in a row and ESPN is all Cleve-town all the time.

It's nice to see my guy smiling.
*****
Thinking about the Indians reminds me of my Marin friend, a self-described scary black man several decades my junior.  Talking with Dana Carvey (yes, I'm name dropping ... and I'm smiling as I'm doing it!  He was just one of the guys.  Oh, I did love living in Marin.) one afternoon in front of the gym where we all trained.

The news was filled with outrage over the Redskins' ownership's refusal to consider a name change.  Someone in the group asked me if I'd like a team named The Hebes, then asked my friend how he'd feel about cheering for The Aunt Jemimas.  Without skipping a beat, his reply was (and still is) perfect:

I don't know.  Are they winning?

*****
FlapJilly is playing soccer at pre-school.  The program comes to them, one morning a week.  She has an orange jersey, of which she is quite proud.

Monday was the first session.  They learned to kick and to shuffle side to side and they ran very very fast.  In the email the coach will send to the parents each week there was also The Word of The Week.  This week's word was Respect.  Respect for each other, for the coach, and for the game.

I'm going to like hearing about this..... I'm going to like it a lot.
*****
My favorite sport these days is American Ninja Warrior, the timed obstacle course that favors the quick and the brave, the strong and the flexible, small people and tall people and men and women, all of whom compete on the same course, with no accommodations.  It's fast and fun and weirdly inclusive; we find ourselves moving in sync with the athletes as they fly and run and leap and fling themselves from pillar to post.  It's exhilarating to watch.

You need agility, grip strength, focus and tenacity.  It's only dangerous if you miss the objective and fall 18' into a pool of water, or swing on a rope into a heavily padded landing area.   The fans are up close and personal in bleachers paralleling the course, and they wave signs and wear matching t-shirts and cheer.

There is lots of cheering in Ninja Warrior, from the stands and the competitors, too.  They all want to win, and they all want to watch someone win.  They admire and gasp and applaud, marveling and despairing as we do, taking real pleasure in everyone's accomplishments.

It's everything wonderful about sports.

I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No

When we moved to Arizona, I made a promise to myself:  You don't have to go to any more meetings.
Today, I agreed to steward two meetings a month.  I couldn't help myself.  OFA asked, and I said yes.

Our Southern Arizona leader, a woman with the wonderfully appropriate name of Mary Darling, met me this afternoon at Crave, a coffee bar cum gathering place which deserves its own post.  Her husband, the oldest 16 year old you'll ever meet, and another organizer were introduced, and then we retired to our own little table, where she pitched her idea.

Filling every paragraph with and you're so good at that, she outlined a series of information sessions and postcard writing opportunities, visits to Rep. McSally's office, and personal commitments by the participants to further amplify the message.  

Amplifying the message means tweets and Facebook posts and Instagram pictures and, more to my skill set and comfort level, letters to the editor and op-ed pieces.  My role is to help the attendees find meaningful connections to the bullet points on the one page fact sheets OFA will prov, ide, which we'll start the meeting by reading to ourselves.  Facts may be indisputable, but they are less potent than personal stories, especially when it comes to connecting with staff, interns, Communications Directors, and, perhaps, one can hope, the Congresswoman herself.

It's a way to amplify my own voice while helping others.  It's making my little corner of the world just a little bit better.  It's two afternoons a month, on my schedule.

I really couldn't say no, although I feel like I should apologize to myself for breaking that promise... and doing it with a smile on my face and a hug around my heart.


(If you're local and want to be kept informed, let me know.)