It's Not My Fault

There are humans on this planet who think that RFKjr is qualified to be in charge of health care in America.  

I can't write about it.  There's nothing I can do about it.  

Thousands of government workers aren't sure if they have jobs any more; they can't find the answer because they're locked out of their computers.

Nothing I can do about that, either.  

The airwaves are filled with moaning and groaning but there's little information and I don't want to hear about it, anyway.

And an atmospheric river is sending fire ravaged hills flooding Southern California, Brother in Maryland made a serious sized snowman,  and I'm powerless there, too.

So TBG and I began bingeing The Newsroom, which is quaintly optimistic while pointing a sharp finger nail at broadcast media.

It's a much wiser choice.

 

Passwords - A Short Rant

After one account might have been hacked, I changed passwords on most but not all of my accounts.  By the time this caught up with me I was so frustrated that I started all over again with a play on something that makes me happy.

This was quite successful for many years.  If it was not recognized I knew what to add to make it so.  I never saved it anywhere because I liked typing it in.

Then, one day, it didn't work anymore.  Then an account established requirements it could not meet.  Bluesky blew up entirely when I used it to log on from the laptop.

I have been spending this week thinking about a new one.  It's alternately frustrating and delightful.  At the end there will be hours devoted to clicking Forgot Password and verifying that I am who I am, and that ain't great, but it's sure better than the shitshow that's passing for the Federal Government right now.

Happy Birthday, Abraham Lincoln

He'd be appalled at what's going on.  So am I, but I've got nothing constructive to add..

Andy Kim wants to shut down the government on March 14th.  AOC asserts she is not a Nazi.  My Congressman is glad I took the time to call about DOGE and he promises he'll remember what I said should the House take action.  It must be true, I have it in (what passes for writing these days) an email.   

Should the House take action..... now there's a thought.  

The 1st US Court of Appeals denied FFOTUS's request to lift the restraining order.  That leaves us with the delightful prospect of the Supreme Court weighing in on whether the separation of powers really does exist.  That decision might just end our democracy as the world knows it.  

And I've got nothing.

I can't lose myself in college basketball because the Big 12 games aren't as available as were the Pac-12's and we're not paying for ESPN+ to watch them.  I tried reading Alexander McCall Smith's latest Botswana detective story but the real world kept poking at the edges of my brain.  

Tomorrow is another day.  I'm hoping for some good news.

A Brief Escape As We Teeter On The Edge

Will the Executive Branch refuse an order from the Judiciary?  What happens if the answer is yes?  

Nothing for me to do about it tonight; all the offices I call are closed.  Why wallow, then?  Instead, I'll leave you with photos of Prince scholars eating lemons.

Why?  I do not know.  I had a shopping bag filled with some of my neighbor's harvest, and it's a good thing she has offered me more.  They were lining up for a wedge, then half a wedge, then wondering if I'd have more tomorrow.

Of course, not everyone was thrilled.  

I sent her home with some seeds in a pot; her visit to Grandma's Garden wasn't a total disaster.  

Isn't that leaving you with a better feeling in your heart, even for just a minute?  

What?  You need more?  How about this example of cooperation and problem solving and willingness to help?

That's three cubic feet of soil they are toting, weighing somewhere between 75 and 150 pounds.  They rearranged themselves to get through the gate, without resting it on the ground or asking for advice.  

They certainly didn't whine. After all, it says it on the t-shirts: Mustangs find a way, not an excuse.

There, now.  You must be filled with just a little bit of hope for what kind of a country these kids will inherit.  They believe they are the change.

Super Bowl Supper

I think it was on The Splendid Table that I heard it - the notion of having dips for dinner.  The panelists were laughing about A Super Bowl Supper consisting of all the foods you'd eat at a Super Bowl Party, and how all of it was finger food.

Dr K and Not-Kathy were, of course, joining us for the last Sunday of the season.  I prepared enough food for their entire families and mine - most of it from containers of sour cream and plain yogurt and Penzey's enhancements.  

It took a lot longer than I expected, so tonight all I have left is the energy to share the photos.  I thought I'd write about the commercials and the game, but they were all quite ignorable.  My food was much more interesting.

Add in six or seven pretty ramekins filled with different tastes and textures; raspberries and basil leaves as embellishments; cups of soup; sliced beef; and brownies and a lemon yogurt pie and you get the general idea.

Put in an exhausted hostess who sat down and enjoyed the fruits of her labors instead of taking more photos and you've spent the evening with us.

Thanks for coming.

Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza - One Woman's Reaction

https://tinyurl.com/b25zms2x

That's Susie Wiles, his chief of staff.

What exactly did you think you signed up for, girlfriend?

She Never Got Into Watching Old Movies

Doom scrolling and reading the major headlines have morphed into one another.  Taos Bubbe and I have a small scale political action promise similar to the one JannyLou and I created when Martha McSally was my biggest concern.  I'm going back to when the world was aright on its axis.

Linda's comment yesterday (cf title) got me thinking of how I got into watching old movies.  I cannot think or write about the coup happening right under our noses (anyone else remember 1933 Germany?  They aren't burning the books, they're deleting the websites and all the information stored therein.) so I'm taking myself to a happier place.  

Daddooooo's parents watched the Marx Brothers movies with me when I was very young.  I didn't understand it all, but Harpo made a lot of sense to me.  My recurring desire to pull a giant horn out of my pocket and blast away at stupidity comes straight from Sunday afternoons and Million Dollar Movie.  

G'ma and I laughed uproariously at Buster Keaton's The General when I was in high school.  If Errol Flynn knocks on the door, 

Wikipedia

your father knows to leave the house.  That was the reason I knew about his swashbuckling before I met TBG, who is still obsessed with it.  

I went off to Cornell, where there were seven movie outlets on campus.  Classic films, cult films, X-rated films; remember I Am Curious (Yellow)? There were first run movie theatres downtown and at The Crossroads (which really was at the crossroads of many diverse paths), but those required a car and a modicum of advance planning.  And they were expensive.  Ours demanded not much more than our attendance.

Then I took myself to Chicago and TBG came to visit and we walked into The Biograph Theatre

Wikimedia Commons

where the audience was convulsed in laughter.  It was the second half of Bringing Up Baby (neither of us can remember which main feature we were there to see) and although we had no information at all it took about 10 seconds before we, too, were howling as Cary Grant yelled Susan!!! at Katherine Hepburn.  

The blonde at the film

It was the beginning of a love affair with screwball comedies and the Biograph itself.  

We usually walked, my graduate school friends and I, through the (then) largely ungentrified DePaul neighborhood.  When it was super cold we'd pile into Big Steve's car, park in the lot that only locals knew about, walk through the alley where John Dillinger was shot, and pay $2.50 for the late shows.  \They started at 9pm, which was just about when we'd finished school and work and dinner and, if it were a weekend, a game or two of Clue. 

There was The Granada, a big, beautiful, ornate and overdone masterpiece of a real movie theatre,

Chicago Magazine

all the way up Sheridan Road but absolutely worth it.  Bogie and Bacall deserved to be seen in such a setting.

DVD's and Netflix helped when we moved to Marin.  TCM has saved us in Arizona.  I try to go to The Fox Theatre and sit in those two person upholstered couches in the loge

Historic Theater Photos

when oldies but goodies are shown around the holidays.  Taking Mr (now 19 and 21) as tweens to see Princess Bride (an old movie for them, after all) and Robin Hood was like transporting them to another dimension.

And isn't that what a good movie experience is supposed to do? 

*****

For Linda and anyone else who wants to start at the beginning, arranged roughly:

Casablanca

Charade

Singing in the Rain/anything with Jeannette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy

Bringing Up Baby

Robin Hood/The Sea Hawk/Captain Blood (and TBG would be furious if I left off The Mark of Zorro)

The Lady Eve

North by Northwest/Psycho (if your heart can stand terror... serious screaming out loud terror)

If you're not hooked by then, tell me what you want.....

Credit Where Credit Is Due

After all my ranting and raving about no one doing anything , Sister's Senator, Andy Kim, proved me wrong.

Sen. Kim was Representative Kim when, in his blue suit, he cleaned up the poop left in the Rotunda by the January 6th Insurrectionists.  That suit is now in the Smithsonian.

nbc news

Yesterday, he was, once again, where he needed to be.  His first government job was with USAID.  His reaction to the illegal shut down and reorganization under the State Department was obvious - he walked over to talk to someone, to see what was happening.  

He was denied access.

So he went outside and started talking to reporters.

Hours later, other Senators joined in the hue and cry, but it all started with the junior Senator from New Jersey.

I said it before and I'll say it again - we need to make lots of loud noise.  Let's hope this is the beginning.

*****

This is the Facebook post Sen. Kim wrote on Monday morning, as the lock out began.

Andy Kim for New Jersey 

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 As Trump and Musk gut USAID today, I think back to my first day ever working for the US gov, showing up at the Reagan Building to start at USAID. Shame on them for demonizing Americans who are serving our nation, often in difficult and dangerous places.

We can have a policy debate about how much to spend internationally or what programs to fund, but their hate and paranoia towards other Americans go much deeper. I’m proud I worked at USAID.

I worked in USAID/Africa bureau where we helped rehabilitate former child soldiers in Uganda, helped with an emerging famine in Malawi. Trump admin complains about China’s growing influence in Africa but then shuts down one of our best tools to fight this.

USAID helps strengthen our nation’s reputation, showcasing our power and our values. Trump admin is now doing extraordinary damage to our reputation not just in trying to stop USAID’s work but by denigrating the mission of humanitarian and development assistance as a whole.

Their vindictive way of trying to shut down USAID sends signals all over the world that we are a nation at war with itself. It tells authoritarian adversaries that America is distracted and divided. It tells other nations we don’t care about them as China and others try to woo them to their side.

To the workers at USAID, I’m sorry you have been treated the way you have, disrespected in your work, maliciously had your patriotism questioned. You serve your nation and should never be attacked, especially by our own. As someone who once worked at USAID, I stand with you.

These actions by Trump/Musk show America as a nation trampling the rule of law. Trump/Musk cannot unilaterally close USAID or transfer under State. USAID is codified by the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.

Any action to shut USAID down would need to go through Congress, and we will fight this. This is all self-inflicted damage. We face real national security threats, and right now our adversaries/competitors are loving what they see — America at war with itself.

I didn't plan to write about movies.  I thought I'd be describing the eerie overlaps between the book I just finished and the series the Cali kids and I binged after getting everyone else in the house settled in.

Instead, every time I sat down on the couch, laptop on my lap, TCM tempted me away.  It's Oscars Month, and the line up is irresistible.  

We saw snippets of some (The Great Dictator..... I've never been able to get through a whole Charlie Chaplin film) and avoided others (All About Eve was too bitchy,  1937's A Star is Born was too melancholy, 12 Angry Men was too preachy).  

Some we've never seen (In the Heat of the Night) and are in the queue where TBG can find them and where I could, too, if ever took the time to learn.

And some start out as pretty music as we clean up after dinner and by the time we're comfy on the couch it's obvious to both of us that we are in for the whole film.

I've lost typing time to Singing in the Rain, and Brigadoon, and, tonight, the movie we watch and listen to from the opening credits through to the final copyright seal - The Sting.  Newman and Redford and Scott Joplin reimagined by Marvin Hamlisch keep us glued to the screen.  

There's always something new to discover, a nuanced look, a so that's whose glove it is moment.  When the Oscar qualifying nomination is for cinematography or art direction or musical score, I look at a familiar film in an entirely new way.

As our leaders begin to make some righteous noise (Sen. Andy Kim's press conference outside the shuttered ASAID office), as I begin to develop a phone friendship with Brendan at Rep. Ciscomani's office, as the occasional judge says WTF????, I'm delighted to be enchanted with songs and dances and memories (The Sting is driving through Wisconsin in our MGB; Music Man is watching on the couch in Cleveland with TBG's dad; The Way We Were is me sobbing on the phone to TBG, a thousand miles away, my own Golden Boy).

I don't mind adding a pleasant soundtrack to what seems like a teeny tiny awakening.  

It's a much better mindset than reading my BlueSky feed and going down the rabbit hole.  I'm going to imagine a scenario with a hopeful outcome.  And that scenario will be set to great music.

Rest In Peace, Thomas the Wonder Dog

He lived 15 years with his adoptive family, loving SIR and Little Cuter first, then adding FlapJilly and Giblet as they came along.  He accepted TBG as his Grandpa, trotting over to him, leash in mouth and tail wagging, as we put down our suitcases in the hall.  My husband didn't need a dog of his own; he had his Grand Dog.

He was the fastest, smartest, strongest fellow, routinely being asked to retrieve balls for owners whose own pets were unable to swim that far.  

He was the most patient and kind and loving pooch.  His periscope tail left him exposed to FlapJilly's Baby Proctologist forefinger.  We stopped it just barely in time, but he didn't flinch.  The kids perched headphones precariously over his ears and he shrugged and went along with it.  

He was alert to every intruder in the area, barking sonorously at bicycles and other dogs and random trucks and cars.  They didn't need an alarm; they had Thomas.  

His snuggles are legendary.  

His eyes burned a loving memory in our hearts.  

He was finished with this world, which was so lucky to have him for such a lovely long time.

Rest In Peace.

Maybe Tomorrow

My plan was to expound on Taos Bubbe's plan of action.  We were college roommates on the edges of the effort to stop the draft and the war and we ended up closing Cornell two Springs in a row and thwarting LBJ's run for reelection.   

As she said,  we were loud, we were disruptive,  and we were colorful. We were young,  as were most of our compatriots across the country,  and we stuck together, making noise,  until we could no longer be ignored. 

There's a lot more to say on the matter,  but I'm her lagged and altitude readjusting and my heart's just not in it. 

Maybe tomorrow. 

Starting The Day Off Right

Bluesky (find me @ClumsyGrammy - Giblet's moniker for me) was awash in the end of democracy.  I'm still surprised at the unconstitutionality of FFOTUS' Executive Orders; why, I do not know. There was ranting and raving from the usual suspects,  most aimed at the White House,  but many targeting the  feckless Democrats who refuse to do more than send angry letters upstream. 

There was a script to use when calling one's elected officials.  I dialed Juan Ciscomani's Tucson office and read it to Brendan,  the lovely gentleman who answered the phone.  He said the Congressman had called the White House,  "sent a Q &A" requesting information,  and reassured me that Social Security,  Medicare,  Medicaid, SNAP, and Pell Grants were still operational. Further research found that to be marginally accurate but I didn't have all the information at the time so couldn't refute it. 

I wondered if the Congressman was concerned about those who use Meals on Wheels. Starving lonely seniors didn't sit right with me.  I reiterated my larger point - the fact that the House, not the Executive, holds the nation's purse strings.  It's Civic 101.  Was the Congressman concerned about that? 

He had no answer.  I thanked him, hung up the phone (a phrase with no meaning any more except for those of us still clinging to our landlines), and turned to my messages. 

There was JannyLou, claiming to be unable to insulate herself from the barrage. I could have texted back,  but I clicked on the phone icon instead. 

We laughed.  We cried. We howled at the wind.  

We ended by agreeing that we were now fortified to give the outside world a chance. 

It was a much better way to start the day. 

Better Late Than Never

The day got away from me.  Actually, two days sped by without my paying much attention to anything except my expanded family.

1440 has replaced the NYTimes and WaPo as my early morning news fix.  It's fact based information curated by humans, not an algorithm.  This morning it told me that Colombia, like Mexico, was refusing to allow FFOTUS's deportation airplane to land.  A mini tariff squabble ensued.  There were links to follow for a deeper dive, but I'm trying to limit my doom scrolling.

It also mentioned that an alcoholic, serial abuser was confirmed as Secretary of Defense.  I certainly avoided those links.

Instead, I went downstairs to hug the babies.  I invite to you to pretend and do the same:

 

Don't Tell Me To Ignore What I Saw

 

This was not an expression of love for the audience.

Those who live where it started understand that.

So should we.

Do not let them gaslight you.

Stupidity

Stupidity

Having trouble dealing with those you love who've somehow gone over to the dark side? 

I know that I am.  It breaks my heart.  I feel helpless and flummoxed and at a loss for words.... which,  for me,  is really saying something.  

As if she felt my angst over the miles,  Susie Q sent this today. 

Clear, thoughtful, and beautifully illustrated,  it's worth a listen over lunch. 

Bonhofer on Stupidity

A Brief Respite From The Broligarchy

MLK Day

The MAGA hats are disappointed.  Their fearless leader won't be outside to see how few of them showed up.  His Inaugural Committee has ordered that the Jumbotrons be removed, so there won't be an outdoor live performance of any kind. Many are asking for refunds of their hotel and travel expenses (good luck with that,  but keep buying those coins, boots, and bibles).

Democracy dies in darkness. 

WaPo used to have this as a header, but its avatar will be in the Rotunda (oh, wait, they know how to get in there; no refund needed) so his hair doesn't get mussed. The rest of us will weep as Democracy sobs. 

I leave you with 2 things as we DON'T WATCH:

1. Do something for someone else today,  in honor of a man who saw the goodness and promise of our society. 

2. Enjoy this cartoon. 

Dear Sen. Joni Ernst

Re: Confirming Pete Hegseth

"I was so busy keeping my job that I forgot to do my job."

(Michael Douglas in The American President)

Indulge Me

There were MagnaTiles for connecting