Luck in the Library

There were no books by authors I recognized on the open shelves in the library's lobby.  There's a New Mysteries bookcase and a Large Print bookcase and New Fiction and Non-Fiction and Children's bookcases and nothing there caught my eye.  

I took a chance on the only mystery which didn't have another in the Detective So-and-So series on the cover.  I don't like picking up the backstory in the middle.  When I've chosen a book in the middle of a series I wonder about the minor characters who are referenced as having done something notable two books before.  

It turns out that The Busy Body is the first of three novels by Kemper Donovan.  

I liked it.  Didn't love it but found myself thinking about it after I turned the last page.  Went to return it to the library and there on the New Mysteries shelf was Loose Lips, book 2 in the (so far) 3 book series.

These aren't my usual fare.  The author is an Agatha Christie junkie, and these are cozy mysteries with over the top characters.  The narrator is unnamed; for the first 50 pages or so of The Busy Body I wasn't sure what pronouns to use to refer to her.  That was annoying until it became obvious that this was one of the tropes of the series.  

It's called The Ghostwriter series, because that's what she is.  She's the literary brains behind other people's stories.  Anonymity is her gift.  There's a back story alluded to but not yet revealed.  There's catty dialog and great attention to tiny details;  I can describe every hair on every head of every character, every ingredient in the dishes served.  Those aren't details included in most mysteries, but they are crucial to these.

Like most cozies, they are short, hovering around 200 pages.  Unlike most mysteries, I didn't race through them.  The prose is dense and satisfying.  The characters are memorable and their words are often hilarious, though their actions are less so.  I've spent a fair amount of time today imaging myself on the Loose Lips' cruise ship; it's been a long time since that's happened.

There's one more book in the series.  I'm hopeful that it will show up on the shelf when Loose Lips is returned.  I'm feeing lucky.

A Different Approach

I know I've made the right decision when Sister goes out of her way to agree with me.  These occasions are few and far between.  I treasure them.  This time, it helps that we are on the same side in America's ongoing battle to regain its democratic footing.  

I'm still coming to terms with my decision to pull back from attending marches and rallies and demonstrations.  A private company will be running an ICE detention center not too many miles from my house.  I stopped following the plans to present a peaceful presence outside..  I had to. Thinking about it made my heart race.  

I'm working on an op-ed for the local paper, and that helps.  But the need to actually do something in the world is part and parcel of who I am.  Being thwarted, even if I'm doing it to myself, does not sit well with me.  

Then, Penzeys came to the rescue.  With every purchase of the eponymous spice came a sheet of these stickers.

Ten little stickers to subtly announce my presence.  I leave them everywhere.  On grocery carts, on No Parking signs, on the edges of trash cans and recycling stations.  Each sticker feels like an adventure.  Subtlety is the key.  I'm sure that some are removed by the close of business, but I like to believe that my little reminder to the rest of the world is making a difference.

It's reminding me of the red raised fists that showed up on random storefronts and stop signs in the late '60's and early '70's.

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they are in stock!

We wanted to end the draft and end the war and we were, as Taos Bubbe always reminds me, loud and colorful. We forced a sitting President not to run for reelection, we tormented another, and I do believe that the unhappiness and the unrest and the persistence of it all had a lot to do with ending the war.

My little stickers aren't loud, but they are flashy.  I love the verbiage in the middle - typewritten, just as it would have been in the '60's.  It's a throwback to Gilroy was Here ... we are everywhere... or so the polls are beginning to show.

Will the voters turn out in November?  Will the Cabinet step up and invoke the 25th Amendment?  Will Congress impeach him?  Will there be just one too many stops at Mickey D's?  I'm done putting my hope in others.  I'm done putting my body at risk .

I'm stickering and that feels fine.

A Moment in the Garden

I was just biding time until the kindergarten's whistle blew.  I was admiring the worm the boys dug up in the yes, you can dig there raised bed when I felt a presence at my side.  That's not unusual; my arms are often found embracing someone in the garden, often for no reason at all.

But this was different. She was a 4th grader.  She was the only big kid and she was not happy.  I sat back on the bench, and so did she.  She agreed with my assessment of her face - she was sad.  Four classmates decided to say bad things about her mother.

I didn't ask what they said.  Instead, I asked her what she hoped would happen.  Her English wasn't adequate for all of her feelings; she's an Afghani refugee still picking up the pieces, one by one.  I gleaned most of my information from short questions using small words. Did she want them to leave her alone or to be her friends?  Did she want an apology or just to be respected?  

We agreed that they were not the kind of people whose words should be able to hurt her heart.  They weren't kind.  

The whistle blew and I hustled the little ones out of the garden, leaving her alone with her thoughts in the most peaceful place on the playground.  She watched me walk over to the swings where her assailants were slowly swaying.  She watched me put my hands on my hips, look over at the garden, then begin my chat.

What did we dooooooo? didn't get very far with me, nor did It wasn't me.  Their faces said it all - they were miscreants and they'd been found out..  I talked about kindness and the Prince family ethos.  I asked them to look in their hearts and see if they found the person who'd been so mean, or if their hearts were telling them that I'm sorry might not be the worst outcome here.

I left them swinging.  The Assistant Principal stopped me as I walked between the soccer goals.  Was everything okay?  Did he need to talk to those girls?  I assured him that their chastisement had been sufficient, but that the lonely kid in the garden could probably use a hug.

I turned and watched it unfold - his tall and lanky frame loping across the grass, ready to offer succor where it was needed, while the Mean Girls, sure he was coming to them, watched the attention switch from their behavior to the one who had been wronged.  

I went on to read Bear Despair to eager 5 and 6 year old faces, too young to taunt and hurt one another.

They Won

At the beginning of the season I had TBG explain the whole betting thing once again.  Math challenged as I am, it took me but a split second to understand that if I put $100 on Indiana University to win the National Championship, at the odds of 100-1 I'd have $10,000.

He did not agree with me that doing so would be wise.

I'm sitting here this morning, mourning my financial loss.

My team, Little Cuter's team, Sir and FlapJilly and Giblet's team, pulled out a win despite the best efforts of the University of Miami to thwart them.  There was a blocked kick run in for a touchdown.  There was an interception that saved a game-tying win.  The quarterback ran for a touchdown, extending his body over the line in a leap of faith and pain.  

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He got hit from all sides, but stood up grinning.

I'm glad that everyone is happy.  I know that I am too.  I know that I'd be a lot happier if I had that $10K in my pocket right now.  

Oh, ye of little faith........

MLK Day

There's no school.

The trash pickup is delayed one day, and so is the US mail.

I was driving home after lifting with Amster (in her fully equipped home gym, the result of living with her 20something health and fitness freak eldest son), wondering how one celebrated this holiday.

Used to be that Washington's Birthday, February 22 for the young, signaled the annual winter White Sales, when bed linens and towels and comforters were with our financial reach.  Memorial Day and Veterans' Day and 4th of July have parades.  

But this National Holiday, I remembered, can be a day of service, as President Obama suggested.  I had fond thoughts of the Obama's at food kitchens and classrooms and I smiled when I realized that my go-to-good-deed place was closed, too.

Haven't heard much from the administration about this particular three day weekend.  I suppose there will be golf and deception and deflection and, perhaps, an assault on another foreign land.  

I kinda doubt that any good deeds will be done.

I Just Didn't Have It

Pilates was killer hard, testing my balance and my damaged right quads.  My classmates are thirty years younger than I am, and those three decades of flexibility were on full display this morning.  Modifications for my injury made little difference.  Sometimes, age is the determining factor.

I drove down to Prince only to find all three kindergarten classrooms engaged in story time... and I wasn't reading the story.  

I looked at the playground, I looked at the front door, and I realized that I just didn't have it.  

There was nothing I could summon to make me walk across to the garden and bring a smiling attitude along with me.  So, I said goodbye to Miss Mercy at the front desk and took myself home.

It's dinner time now and I still don't have much to offer.  I'm going to take the night off and avoid thinking about the Insurrection Act.  I'm sure I'll be able to muster my thoughts by Monday's post.  

Going to Hell in a Handbasket

 .... and I'm not enjoying the ride. 

FFOTUS wants to own Greenland because it's way better than leasing or renting it.  There's a difference between diplomacy and real estate.  Would someone please tell him that he's in The White House and not Trump Tower.  

The DOJ has opened a criminal investigation into the chairman of the Federal Reserve over cost overruns on the renovation of their Washington, DC headquarters.  No one is amused, but Chairman Powell is now on the hook for legal bills in order to defend himself.  Before he was FFOTUS filing a lawsuit was his go-to tactic when he was displeased.  But now he is, unfortunately, in charge of our government, so our tax dollars are being used to screw around with one of the pillars of our republic - the separation of the Federal Reserve from the political process.  Would someone please explain Alexander Hamilton's rationale for this to him. 

Our military deposed another country's president, but left his henchman in charge.  Our Secretary of State and National Security Advisor and I'm-Running-Venezuela guy hasn't been able to articulate a plan for what will happen going forward.  Exxon/Mobil told FFOTUS that Venezuela is un-investable and he responded by threatening to exclude them from any deals going forward.  Would someone tell him that they don't want to be included in those deals anyway.

The EEOC has asked the University of Pennsylvania to identify all the Jews on their campus.  They want membership lists and faculty lists and student rosters and there's no sense of irony in their request.  They say that they are trying to identify anti-Semitism on campus, but they aren't asking for lists of Nazi's or ultra-right organizations or Turning Point USA members.  Think I'm overreacting?  Read this from About the Holocaust

In territory occupied by Nazi Germany or its Axis partners, Jews were identified largely through Jewish community membership lists, individual identity papers, captured census documents and police records, and local intelligence networks.

When I used to worry about them coming for me I was able to push the thought away; I live in America, that won't happen here.  Now, though, I'm not so sure.

I'm afraid to join organized protests; the other side has guns.  

I felt obliged to go back and edit Tuesday's post.  When published, it was possible to read through the blacked out section to the words below.  I don't want my friends injured because I'm blogging.  

This isn't my America.  I want that on the record.

I Love My Husband's Girlfriends

Really, I do.  

TBG has been an avid cyclist for decades.  He had his custom measured titanium Hincapie frame in Marin, riding around Tiburon and Belvedere with colleagues who also happened to be on the US Postal Service's professional biking team, or neighbors who took him on unexpected 60 mile jaunts to Point Reyes and back, but mostly he rode by himself, feeling fast

Then an unreplaced sewer grate on a newly paved and very narrow and twisty road snagged his front tire, throwing him ass over tea kettle past the handlebars, cracking his helmet and his bending his bike in the process.  

37 stitches in the face and a warning from his superiors to go home and not come back anytime soon -  his Frankenstein look was scaring the new recruits - made it clear to him that his days of outdoor cycling were over.   

He had a gory tale to tell when asked why he was in spin class instead of out on the road.  He didn't have to worry about the weather.  He met Miss Nancy on the bikes and soon she and I were hiking every weekend.  He was happy, getting in the miles and not worrying about another fall.

We moved to Tucson and found a gym and changed our licenses and got library cards before our furniture arrived.  I found likeminded adults in the weight room and the yoga and Pilates classes.  He found The Girls.

He takes the same bike in the same corner near the door every time.  He arrives to class half an hour or more before it begins to warm up.  The same women sat around him, coming early to warm up and chat.  I figured this out when the same names kept coming up in our conversations.  

Lady One and Lady Two were telling me that.....  explaining that they shared a first name so he'd come to identify them by number..... and I didn't ask how he decided who came first.  

There have been joint replacements, not all of them going as well as they should have, but he and The Girls were there to cheer on the patients when they ventured back to the bikes.  The power of their friendship to inspire courageous performances made him happy.

Pictures of their grandbabies and travel adventures peppered his chatter when he came home.  When one was missing he was concerned, when there was joy to be found he came home elated.  When one died (suddenly, in her home, right after spin class) the sorrow hit him hard.

I began to wonder about these women.  

You know them from the gym... from yoga.... and it turns out he was right.  Our Yogi (also one of The Girls) began teaching classes outdoors at Tohono Chul and there they were.  Of course we knew one another, but, like so many gym friends, names were secondary to the connection.  Suddenly, I had a new group of acquaintances, but I still didn't know them all.

That changed when he came home befuddled.  There was a lot of whispering going on that did not include him.  The Girls were making lunch plans and not inviting him.  Was he somehow off putting?  He wasn't angry, he was confused.  

Finally, here was something I could fix.  I mentioned his quandary to My Yogi and she laughed out loud.  The whispering wasn't about him.  It was about another classmate whose company they wanted to avoid, despite the tenuous obligation they all felt toward her.  All of a sudden, my husband had lunch dates.

The Girls celebrate birthdays and holidays and they are always giving things to one another.  They recruited me to bring him to a surprise birthday party at one of those lunches.  While he did receive gifts, so did everyone at the table.  

When I asked if we should bring a dish to a dinner party, I don't speak that language... what did the text say? was his response.  It just had time or place, but these are his friendships and I decided that it was his responsibility to find out.  We went with a hostess gift; they laughed - a lot- when I explained why we were otherwise empty handed.

All of them were teachers - even at Prince.  They are witty and smart and interesting.  Other spouses were at that dinner party and they were pretty wonderful, too.  All of a sudden, my husband is providing a friend group.  That hasn't happened since we were in Chicago, and we left there in 1992.  

It's one of the more fabulous things that have happened since we moved to Tucson.  I love that TBG is in the middle of it.

Finding The Happy

We found gigantic radishes in the garden on Thursday.  

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They popped out of the soil all at once, all of a sudden, solving the problem of how will we know if they're ready?

They were very tasty and there were so many of them and Grandma Suzi said they could eat as many as they wanted and that led to some hilarity.

They were too fast for a great picture.

Friday morning, I won three games at mahjongg, a rare and wonderful occurrence to start the day. Taos Bubbe and I had a lovely lunch at Teaspoon, catching up on our lives since November.  I've seen Little Cuter more often than my college roommate who lives across town.  Sometimes life really does get in the way.

The waiter said Welcome back! when I joined Taos Bubbe at the table.  I'd been there twice before, with Amster and various parts of her entourage.  Amster always pays, and she tips very well, so it wouldn't surprise me if he remembered her, but all the rest of us?  

After a few days of cogitating, it hit me that I was older than everyone at all the pushed together tables we occupied, in one case by 70 years.  The rest of them were in their 50's and 40's and 20's, and I was certainly the only one with grey hair.   

Of course he wouldn't forget Grandma.... or Great Grandma.

Friday afternoon, Little Cuter and SIR's Indiana Hoosiers and their Heisman Trophy winning quarterback (who turned down Yale for Cal then UofA) trampled the Oregon Ducks in the Peach Bowl.  That puts them in the national championship game next week.  TBG summed it up best - it just makes me happy to watch it, any and every minute.

That night UofA basketball proved to the nation that they are the team to beat this year.  True, they are boys, and their attention wanders at times.  But there are 8 potential starters and nobody seems to mind coming in off the bench.  They are big and strong and not afraid to assert themselves, they are well coached, and they tell reporters that they really like one another.  

That this game was accessible to our multi-channel-and-still-not-enough cable package was an extra added bonus. Smiles came easily.

After I spent Saturday afternoon filling new plastic containers with the Xmas-When-You're-Going-Out-Of-Town decorations, Dr. K and Not-Kathy came over to watch the Bears.  Like Taos Bubbe, too much time had passed since we watched sports together.  We ate, we talked, we sat outside, then went in to watch Dr. K's Bears put on a performance for the ages.  That won them the right to move on to the next round in the gazillion team NFL playoffs.  

With that and the Wildcats and my new clear storage containers I went to sleep happy.

Big Cuter's 49'ers get to move on, too.  They filled Sunday afternoon with texts and phone calls and exclamations of surprise and delight between TBG and his boy who was playing catch with his boy and a Nerf football.  What goes around comes around, and I went to sleep happy again.

And now it's Monday and I'm trying to hold on to the happy.  I'm trying not to panic a friend writes that she's signing up for more ICE watch shifts.  I omit her name to protect the social justice warrior from governmental retaliation as I try to hang on to the happy.  

I watch my Senator sue the Navy and my heart breaks for him as TBG turns from the talking heads back to a football game.

The happy is hard to find these days.  I'm going to pick up an old Robert Crais book and lose myself in a fictional somebody else's problems, problems which are certain to be resolved in a way that will leave me happy.  

If I have to orchestrate the joy, I will.

Writing Saves Me

I sat with the keyboard all day.  My fingers tried to make sense out of Minneapolis and Portland and ICE agents making up the rules as they went along.

I finished three different posts, intending to make my initial stab at publishing on Substack .  I lurk there every day.  I began to comment last month; I am tickled when the algorithm tells me that someone liked what I wrote.  I thought that the confluence of the murders of Renee Good and Christina-Taylor Green would be an easy segue into the forum.  

People who didn't know my story could hear it from me, first hand, if they clicked through from my comment to my post.  I thought that the similarities and the differences might make a difference for someone.  I thought I had something worthy to share.

I liked the first one I finished.  It had my voice and CTG's voice and the voices of all of us who are still reeling from January 8th.

I left it on the computer and ran some errands and left a stone on the memorial outside the Safeway where it all happened.  I came home to televised images of people leaving flowers in the snow by the tree where it all ended for Renee Good.  I held back my tears, reread the post, and watched, stupefied, as the interwebs gathered it up and lost it forever.

I tried to post it and notify those who follow me (all six of them) and Substack ate it.

I groaned.  I laughed.  I sighed.  I railed against the universe.  I sat down to write it again.

This one was tighter, less emotional, more concrete.  I didn't like it as much, so I left it alone while I made dinner.  I changed a few sentences, added a quote or two, and, once again, watched it disappear.

My aggravation was obvious to TBG.  As always, he tried to fix it.  There was no fix.  The post went from preview to nowhere.  He suggested I try again.  Agreeing that the site would not win this battle, my fingers flew over the keyboard.  The result was drier, less reflective, more outrage than anguish.  

I wasn't thrilled, but I didn't hate it.  Besides, third times the charm, right?  

Obviously not, because that one was lost, too.  It seemed that my attempt to join the Substack community was doomed from the outset.  I'm not looking to get paid for my writing.  I was looking for a wider, perhaps more diverse, audience.  Perhaps it's not meant to be.

In the end, it's become a funny story: Ashleigh Burroughs vs The Internet.  I can't let it aggravate me; there's no more room inside for that.  Instead, I'm taking it as the world intervening in my recovery. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote all day, and when I stopped writing I realized that my head wasn't pounding quite as hard.

My fingers let the anguish out, one tap at a time.  I was forced to think about and examine events and thoughts which were crazy-making and turn them into intelligible verbiage.  In doing so, I found that I had soothed my soul.

I'm still raw, just not as raw.

I'm still furious, but without the white hot anger that fueled my first attempt.

I'm terrified and sorrowful and wondering about the next steps.  But I am also reminded that I have an outlet, right here at my desk.  When all of that becomes too much, my fingers seem to pave the road to salvation.  I didn't need an Ativan.  I just needed to write.

Thank you, denizens, for being here to read it all.  

I Took The Day Off

Sometimes it's just too hard to write.

I miss my little friend.

January 8th

My son and I operate on our own frequency sometimes.   As I was thinking about calling him, but worrying about disturbing his work day, Big Cuter called my cell.  Had I been watching the news?

He was troubled, deeply troubled, by the morning's events in Minnesota.  His worry wasn't about me or for me but for what might have been me and for what our country is.

I told him that I'd been rethinking my plans to protest when the ICE Detention Facility opens nearby.... and that's just what they want me to do.... but I have to weigh the risks.... but.... aieeeeee.

I wasn't doing anything remotely radical 15 years ago, although was definitely antifa.  Fascists don't meet their constituents outside a grocery store, ready to answer questions from all comers.  I know this is true because my own Congressman, a proud FFOTUS loyalist, has never met with his constituents without charging a fee.  

We were standing in the shade on a sunny Saturday morning and we were shot.

Renee Nicole Good was in her car on a snow plowed street and she was shot.

Mental illness and gun safety vs paramilitary thugs unchecked in their authority.

Our shooter was flattened by onlookers and arrested at the scene.  Her shooter got back in his official vehicle and drove away, protected by his boss's boss's boss' boss' description of the lady warning her neighbors that ICE was around as committing an act of domestic terrorism.

I'm sorry.  Masked men with badges and weapons opening fire on a city street should sound like Mogadishu, not Minneapolis.  Exercising her first amendment rights should not have killed her.  Were they unhappy that she was blocking the street?  They could have followed the other cars passing by her. They could have called the local police and had her removed or cited or done anything but shoot her as she was turning away from them and driving away.

I did nothing wrong when I took Christina-Taylor with me to shake her Congresswoman's hand.  I was being a good citizen.  Renee Good was being a good citizen, too.

Used to be, that meant something honorable.  Now, it seems, it's likely to get you killed.

Christina-Taylor Green would be 24 years old right now.  I like to think that she'd be manning the barricades beside me. 

Enough calling for briefings.  How about impeachment? America can't wait another year of this. 

 

A Respite From The World

I need some self-care.  It's just too much for me right now, what with Greenland and pardons and vaccines and all.  So, if you're in the mood for fluff, revisit our trip to see the Cuters and the Mini Cuters. 

There was dining out.

Focused on savoring every last morsel.

There was dining in

and cleaning up.

There was New Year's breakfast

with a touch of silliness.

There were contemplative moments,

and there were giggles.

There were moments of connection.

Jr and IV

There were books to be read.

and explanations to be given.

No, sweetie, you don't need to watch Elsa on Daddy's phone.

Birthdays were celebrated

and manicures were given.

Basketball was played 

and parks were enjoyed, 

the rain just an extra added attraction.  

The Ferrari store with Grandpa was on Giblet's bucket list,

and Indiana's decisive victory was icing on the cake. 

I-U Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoosiers!

I could go on and on, and in fact that's just what I've been doing all evening as I worked on finishing this post.  Scrolling through the shared family album had me giggling out loud which put a smile on TBG's face.

Suddenly the world isn't such a bad place at all.

Calling Out Congress

Did you listen to Cory Booker calling on Congress to step up and do something about the authoritarian regime they are supporting?  It's worth taking the time to listen to his words.  He says what I've been silently screaming.

Senator Chris Coons said it very plainly this afternoon - these kinds of action are what leads us into forever wars.

Remember the "no wars" president FFOTUS promised us.  I know. I know. His promises are like vapor vanishing into the ether, but that was one I thought he might keep.  Silly me.

Flooding Congressional phones with protests probably won't sway any elected officials' positions.  Those who are beholden to him are chained to the situation, those who oppose him are powerless.

Yet the Constitution sits there, with its insistence that wars are declared by the people's body, not the person inhabiting the White House.  All those who were voted into power by their constituents last year or two years or four years or six years ago did so with their hands on a significant tome (loving Mamdani's Quran if for no other reason than that it annoyed so many).  

They swore, just as I did when I became president of the school board, to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  There is very little doubt that FFOTUS and friends are waging a frontal assault on that document (attacking birthright citizenship, interfering with the States' rights to hold free and fair elections).  Those who are not speaking out are breaking that solemn vow.

That oath does not expire.  I'm still bound by what I said in the last century.  Although the audience laughed when I waved my gavel, I was dead serious then and I am dead serious now.  

I pledged to protect my country.  I am bound by that, today and yesterday and forever.  So I make phone calls and I vote and I write letters to the editor in service of that promise.  There isn't much more that I can do.  

But our elected officials have more power than I do.  Kudos to Senator Booker for calling them to action.

January 6th was the darkest day in our history.  But for Mike Pence refusing to get into a car driven by the Secret Service, for Nancy Pelosi insisting that the certification would continue, for Capitol Police redirecting rioters away from the chamber where Congress was hiding, we might be living in a very different world right now.

There was no budging FFOTUS while he was flinging ketchup on the walls of the dining room, and that was when there were some human guardrails in the building.  There is no one there to do that now.  

There is only Congress.  

Here's hoping they grow a spine.

Can Someone Explain It To Me?

The man campaigned on releasing the files on day one.  His Justice Department is a month behind the Congressionally mandated release date.  More and more files appear as night turns to day. 

Who are the hundreds of lawyers rushing to redact?  Do we need a video with J. Michael Luttig and Joyce Vance and Jack Smith reminding them that they are obligated to uphold the law and not the whims of a man?

Have you seen Wag the Dog?  I, for one, am not distracted.  The thought of anyone, let alone a child, being forced to touch that man turns my stomach.  Whatever he is hiding in those files must be really really awful and indisputable and it needs to be disclosed.  

The same person is the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor.  Which role suggested that the citizenry of the United States is safer now that we are running Venezuela?   

Pardoning former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez after a jury found him guilty of all sorts of nefarious drug related offenses and then ousting and indicting Nicolas Maduro for doing the same sorts of things has me wondering what Hernandez offered FFOTUS.... and what Maduro would not.

On the other hand, pardoning a convicted former president probably sounds like a sweet song to FFOTUS, if he ever stops to think about his own future.

I don't understand how this has happened to us.  We can nibble around the edges of the disastrophe he's created, but measles is back and we've overthrown the President of another country and Ukraine's looking to Europe for leadership and through it all we have to celebrate our country's 250th birthday with a madman at the helm.

Truly, I don't understand.