Overload

"I'm not ranting and raving... you're just dishonest people."

There's a Russian intelligence ship 30 miles off the coast of Connecticut and the President's (fired) choice for Director of National Security lied to the FBI and nobody seems to be minding the store.

Peter Alexander wondered what to do when the President, after reviling the media for presenting Fake News, presents as fact that which is demonstrably untrue.  "The leaks are absolutely real.  The news is fake because so much of the news is fake," may make sense to the Commander In Chief (pause... catch your breath.... I know.... I know...) but it wasn't much help to anyone else.

Alexander Acosta, nominee for Labor Secretary, wasn't at the press conference ostensibly called to announce his selection.  MSNBC's Kasie Hunt couldn't get a Republican member of Congress to admit to having watched the press conference, let alone appear on camera.

For fifteen minutes, the news was all about the press conference, until another in the series of certainly-illegal-but-highly-entertaining leaks coming from the intelligence community or the White House or long-time civil servants or Obama staffers or aliens from one of the 60 new planets discovered by Kepler appeared.  At this point, the fact that Gen. Flynn lied to the FBI hardly seems to register on my bizzaro-meter.

I'm going to spend the next few hours mourning the loss of the Monopoly thimble.  It's only an existential loss; we've been playing with scavenged Parcheesi pieces for years and I see no reason to invest in a new version and this is exactly the antidote to the news that I need to get through the rest of the afternoon.

Remember how the judge on SNL wanted just one day without a terrifying news alert from Washington?  Right now, I'd give anything for a full hour without fear.

Deja Vu All Over Again

"What did the President know, and when did he know it?"

I've been trying to hold it together, immersing myself in reading aloud to kindergarten kids,  but I've had enough.  The New York Times is not fake news.

You can argue if Flynn was a rogue actor or if the President has any idea what a two-state solution actually means or if Jeff Sessions can possibly oversee an impartial inquiry but one thing I cannot countenance is calling The New York Times fake news.

"Don't do anything you wouldn't want printed on the front page of The New York Times" was Daddooooo's mantra.  When The New York Times ran a bold headline that fact was reported by other outlets.  Having your wedding or death reported there in anything other than a paid advertisement signified something.... I'm not sure what, but it was something.  A friend counts their publication of his Letter to the Editor as a milestone achievement in an otherwise quite successful life.

Everyone makes mistakes and there have been errors and there is certainly a bias but please, Mr. President, do not call The New York Times fake news.  You grew up in New York; you should know this in your bones.  As a 6th grader on Long Island, my Uncle Abby explained "yellow journalism" to me by reading the New York Daily News and the New York Post aloud. They were not The New York Times.

Besides, while we're obsessing over who's running the asylum, the world is going to hell in a hand basket.  I wish I felt confident that someone was actually in charge.

Valentines at Amphi Middle School

It started out neatly, on 4 cafeteria tabletops.

That didn't last long.

There was happiness.

and there was seriousness

and there was silliness.

They worked alone.

or together

and some shared a bench

and inspiration

There was candy

and there was love

(please note the foam press on earrings)

and there were lots 

and lots

of balloons.

As I was leaving, I stopped to hug Miss Levine and to admire this last heart of the day.

Happy Day After Valentines Day.

Hugs

The substitute teacher for the kindergarten class cancelled her scheduled appearance 15 minutes before the school's corridors opened for the morning. The substitute substitute could come right away, but she had to leave at 11. The students, all of whom showed up on time, had to be divided between the remaining teachers after lunch recess.

Chaos is troubling for many of these kids.  School is the rule driven place, where expectations are made clear.  It's safe.  They know what will happen and when.  Disrupt the routine, and expect a reaction.

An unfamiliar sub is hard enough when you're 5 or 6. When outside you are bigger and taller than everyone else but inside you are a lot more scared than everyone else, when the new morning teacher doesn't come back so your whole class is scattered into strange rooms, when you find out that it's going to last for the whole rest of the day..... well, it's all just too much.

And so he stood there, sobbing as quietly and unobtrusively as the biggest kid in the line could sob, and I watched as three then four then five littler boys put their arms around him and told him that it would be okay... and that their room was really, really nice … but mostly they just hugged him.  

I drifted over, being Grandma, making sure everything was okay, and I found myself in the outer circle of a huge hug, all of us concentrating on the least among us.... no matter how big... in a Horton kind of way.

He caught his breath and the tears stopped and I told them how proud I was of boys taking care of boys who, themselves, were brave enough to ask for help. We hugged and patted some more; as I peeled away, one of the littlest ones followed me. 

His small tug on my cloak and his very serious face stopped me.  Once certain that he had my total attention, he reported the following fact:

"Grandma, we were doing one of our things - we were doing kind."

Love shows its face and it's impossible not to smile.  

Happy Valentines Day to the grown-ups at Prince Elementary School,

who teach and model kind each and every day. 

💖💖

💖💖💖💖💖

Abe Wasn't Born Yesterday

I first published this in 2011. 

 It remains one of my favorite rants, although now, with fake news all the rage, it feels just a little bit creepy to celebrate things which didn't happen.

*****

Mary Ball Washington gave birth to a boy child on February 22, 1732. Unlike many of the stories surrounding this man (think cherry trees and coins across the Potomac and standing up in an open boat as it crossed the Delaware) this is an indisputable fact.

Mary was not in labor on the third Monday of February.  She produced her child on a specific day - the 22nd day of February.  His birthday didn't move around with the vagaries of the federal holiday calendar.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln met her second son, Abraham, 207 years ago today.  Like Mrs. Washington before her, she was not in labor on an indeterminate day sometime in the middle of the month.  It occurred on a certain day, a day formerly commemorated by school children and mail carriers alike.

Alas and alack, these fine gentlemen have been conflated into Presidents and their birthdays combined into a generic celebration designed primarily to afford employees the opportunity for a 3-day weekend in the middle of the winter. What was wrong with the old system, I wonder?  As an elementary school kid I looked forward to those random days off in the middle of the month.  One day, breaking up the routine.  One celebration for each president - pennies examined on the 12th, leadership and lying (not) on the 22nd.

There was no time for a weekend away (not that G'ma and Daddooooo could have afforded to take us anyplace anyhow) and there was no competition between students for who went the furthest and had the most fun.  It was an opportunity to go sledding at Bethpage (the Black Course was used for many things in my youth; this was the best of them) or to meet friends at the bowling alley and then walk to Smiles (our precursor to a 5-and-dime) where we cruised the aisles until our parents picked us up.

It was grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon on the side, eaten on paper plates and accompanied by the admonition Don't Tell Daddy since the bacon was not exactly kosher and he cared a lot more than did G'ma.  There were snow forts to be built, snowball fights to be fought, snow men to be built. The entire neighborhood roamed from front yard to front yard, creating and tumbling and finding warmth and drinks and the occasional bathroom in whichever house we happened to be in front of when the need arose.

And now?  Now President's Day is always an event.  It's a long weekend for which plans must be made.  It has no intrinsic meaning, no relationship to George or Abe or any of their colleagues.  Their faces are used to advertise white sales and car sales and furniture sales and The History Channel runs back to back episodes of The Presidents but that's about the size of the historical component.  What began as tributes to great men has devolved into spending opportunities for the masses.

Am I bitter?  You bet.  A day off followed by another one 10 days later.... what better way to combat the winter doldrums than that?  A random day, a day to cuddle under the blankets with your sweetie or to do all that laundry that interfered with your weekend plans and so still sits in the basket, mocking you.  A day to explore the neighborhood and have lunch in that place you've driven by 100 times before..... a day just to be.

Sometimes, when I was a girl really was better.

And Now, A Break From Controversy

Big Cuter reports on the horizontal rain afflicting northern California.

Little Cuter complains that this winter has been lame, as, snow-less and frigid, she watches the East Coast dig out.

We are having unseasonably warm temperatures, here in the desert Southwest.  In honor of the sunshine and the light breeze and the hint of spring in the air, I wore shorts and began to refurbish my containers.

There was a lot of work to do. Last week I cut back all the obviously dead pieces from most of the containers, leaving only that which seemed likely to bloom.  

The results were appealing in a what will these flowers look like? sense, 

but they all need to be cut back and repotted. 

I bunched this snapdragon

 with two other survivors in one pot,

but the rest of them will have to wait while I cogitate. 

Some of the containers are still quite beautiful, even if the colors are a holiday or two behind.

We see this basket-on-a-post from our bedroom.

Geraniums have a peculiar odor, but these 

are viewed from afar. 

 I don't know how they'll do in summer's full sun, but right now, they are gorgeous.

This is a much nicer inner space than the political sphere and a much nicer outer space than either of my children enjoy.  Feel free to come back over the weekend if it all becomes too much.

Feeling The Love

A columnist teased me about stealing his next story. Friends of friends emailed friends who emailed me, making sure I knew they were glad to read what I wrote.  Classmates smiled.  Old friends shared the link.

And my family wondered how I was doing.

I'm not reading the on-line comments. I'm sure there are people trying to put a gun in every hand who think I'm over-reacting. They are entitled to their opinions and, after a while, I'll read them all.  Right now, I'm still pretty raw.  Willful ignorance, perhaps, but necessary.

I'm waiting for a response from Rep. McSally to the message I left on the tape after her tele-Town Hall.  I asked where my article misrepresented the facts, where it was flawed.  I'm sure there were a lot of us leaving messages for her; I'm not faulting her for taking her time and answering everyone with respect.  I don't mind waiting; I can't be disappointed while I'm waiting.

And I'm tired.  I'm very very very tired.

I'm working hard to keep the tears at bay..... because, behind the quibbling over rules and procedures and political theater lie dead and injured daughters and grandmas and heroes and it's all so very very sad.

That's what Rep. McSally is missing.  It's not about her.  It's about us.

Called Out By My Congresswoman

Rep. McSally held a "so called" tele-Town-Hall today, and I called in from my car, sitting atop a parking garage at the UofA.  I gave my name and hometown and the subject of my call (my op-ed in The Star) to the staffer managing the queue for questions.  I listened, and then I started screaming at my dashboard.

My Congresswoman drew a moral equivalency between my words and the words of Kellyanne Conway.  "I cannot believe the paper allowed this misrepresentation of fact to be published."

Nope.  Facts are facts.  (Unlike her assertion in that same response that this is Social Security... it's our Seniors... old folks.  Sure, but it's also the younger, disabled recipients of SSI.)

She may disagree with my interpretation of her motives, but there are no misrepresentations of facts.  (And while we're on the subject, I think we need a word for not-a-lie-because-I-don't-know-what's-in-her-heart-but-it's-obviously-not-a-fact.)  Her handlers knew that I was in the question queue; if it were truly a Town Hall she might have engaged me in conversation once the topic of my words arose.

My words.  She affronted my words. TBG says that even though corporations are people that doesn't mean my words have the same protections.  So I'm left to plagiarize Dr. Seuss and The Lorax:  I am the writer!  I speak for the words!

I wrote from my heart, and I spoke for my town, and I channeled my family and friends who suffered then and suffer now and who cannot understand the Congresswoman's tone deaf response to this issue.

No where during the conversation did she express regret for what happened.  Not once did she mention it.  Not at all.

Raging beside me on the couch, TBG summed it up like this:

At the time, I was consoled by the outpouring of caring.  I was surprised by the level of comfort I took from it.  And it's missing here. It's as if she watched the whole thing and was untouched by it.

What do you care about if you don't care about the basic safety of your constituents?

Speaking Truth to Power

I want to make double sure you're certain you want to do that. 

The question surprised me.  I hadn't considered the consequences.  That felt like progress, and I let myself smile.  Then I shrugged my shoulders and typed back my only regret: that I wasn't angry enough.

Remember all those rules the House of Representatives overturned last week?  Among them was the Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 (NIAA) (Formerly Disclosure of “Mentally Defective” Individuals (NICS submissions)).

Behind all that verbiage my Congresswoman agreed with her Republican leadership that individuals already adjudicated incapable of managing their own financial affairs by the Social Security Administration ought to be protected from the FBI's don't sell to these people because they are too dangerous to own and operate a weapon list.

I know.  Unbelievable, right?   She apparently thinks that enabling his ability to shoot me is a higher good than is enabling my ability to enjoy my unalienable right to life.  Unalienable - cannot be taken away or denied - and yet here's a plan to prevent exactly what happened to us and she's against it.

The rule allowed the affected individual to petition a court for reinstatement of that right.  Apparently, that is government over-reach; she seems to believe in gun first/court later, and damn the human cost.

I choose to believe that if you can't manage your finances somebody ought to investigate whether others are safe if you are armed.  I choose to believe that along with making treaties and raising an army my government has a responsibility for my well-being, and the sharing of information between federal agencies is a natural outgrowth of that duty.

Getting shot was not conducive to my well-being.

I've spent the last six years wondering if there were something I could have done.  It never occurred to me that my elected Representative would refuse that opportunity.

I wrote a letter expressing my displeasure, and copied it onto her web form.  I printed it out and I'll hand deliver a copy to her tomorrow.  And, I sent an abbreviated version to the local paper

That's what the editor way up there at the beginning of this post wanted to be certain I wanted to do - publish my screed as an op-ed, with a brand new head shot and all.  And no, I'm not afraid.  I'm furious and I'm right and I have standing on this issue.

I cannot choose to sit silent about this.  If I do not speak, then they have won.  If they think we are not paying attention, they will continue the carnage.  Words matter.  Facts matter.  I matter and I cannot sit still.

(Here's the link)

A Good Use of Five Minutes

No, it's not another post exhorting you to take political action.  It's video that can be watched without sound (imagine the music as you will).

It's the 84Lumber commercial from the Super Bowl; the one which crashed the website as gazillions of people tried to connect to see the second half.

That second half, starting about 2.30, is Deemed Too Controversial for TV by the graphic on the website.

You decide.


Spoiler Alert.  Don't read any further if you haven't seen the ad.
*****
I have a quick rejoinder for those who will make this about illegal immigrants pouring across our borders, unchecked:

It's a door, not a window.  It's solid, but there is light on the other side.  

.

And Then There Was This

Jeff Flake ‏@JeffFlake  19h

19 hours ago

Lest there be any doubt about how I'm voting on @BetsyDeVos she had me at "school choice" years ago...

I can't get past the Lest. Only a person who received a quality education would start a Tweet with a word that Webster defines as formal.

Jeff Flake, my junior Senator, is up for reelection in 2018.  Voters are watching.  We've been calling and emailing and sending postcards; I know because I am connected to all kinds of on-line and in-person groups lobbying on the issue and I've watched the calls being made and the cards being sent.  We've gathered at his office and we will gather again (Friday at 10:30 for the big group or anytime that day at his office, in case you are anywhere near 6840 N Oracle Road  in Tucson).

Does it matter?  

I was enthused when Big Cuter told me that the news outlets he follows predicted that Flake might be the third Republican to break with the leadership and thwart her nomination.  I went to bed with a plan in mind; I'd call all three of his offices (202-224-4521  DC Office -- Press 5 to speak to a human

520-575-8633  Tucson Office 602-840-1891  Phoenix Office) and I'd email all my friends to do the same.  I'd stop in to the Tucson office on my way to the movies with Scarlett, making my opinion known, once again.  

I slept well.  Woke up, dialed the DC number a few times until I got through, left my message and my zip code with the lovely woman who answered the phone, and felt damn fine about myself and my country.  I was going to make a difference.

Then I came across that tweet.  

It was like a punch to the gut.  Apparently, it won't matter what I say.  My Senator is against me.  

It's hard to feel so alone.  I moved to Janet Napolitano-Gabby Giffords-Maverick John McCain's Arizona and I've got Governor Ice Cream and  Martha (never voted for a women's issue) McSally and Jeff Flake... Jeff Flake who talks a good game and is in all the right places and now has a chance to do good for the nation and who won't be listening to me because he's already made up his mind.

He's in love with Betsy DeVos (because that's the movie reference, Sen. Flake, so you are stuck with it).  

I know that I will remember this in 2018.  I know that I will be reminding my fellow voters of this in 2018.  It may not make a difference, but it's all I've got left.

It Was Sad.... Until It Wasn't

My heart sank.  Literally.  I felt a deep hole in the middle of my chest.

"I'm sorry. All lines to Senator Flake are busy at the moment and no one can talk to you right now. Please leave a message.......ooops, that part is chock full up so Good bye!"

That was the gist of the recording I heard as I dialed my junior Senator's office this morning.  He'd replied to my "No on Betsey DeVos" email by telling me that he wasn't on the confirming committee, but that he'd heed my views if her nomination came to the full Senate.  I dialed his office, intending to tell him that it was time to grow a spine, to deny a plagiarist a Cabinet office, to.... my dander was up, my mind was racing, and then I was sad.

It was an absolutely awful feeling.  I can't march, but I can make my voice heard... if only I can get through to a human.  Indivisible, created by current and former legislative aides, encourages phone calls over emails and postcards.  Staff is obligated to answer phone calls; they cannot do other work when the phone is ringing.  Disrupting the process is not a terribly bad idea these days; I was ready to join the fray.

Frustrated.  Angry.  Feeling disenfranchised.  It was not a pretty sight.

"Once more," I said.  "I'll dial it once more and then I'll allow myself a hissy fit."

And, I got through.

I talked and talked and talked and talked, telling the young man about my email exchange, about plagiarism and lack of knowledge and public schools making Americans and charter schools picking and choosing students and Prince Elementary School and when I stopped to take a breath he interjected that he would "be sure to inform the Senator of your concerns."

I spoke truth to power this morning.  It felt great.

I went on to dial the Senator's Phoenix and Tucson offices, which answered quickly. I left the same sort of message with each staffer:  We are making Americans in our public schools - let's do it well.  The whole process took ten minutes, and while the kids answering the phone sounded somewhat less than enthusiastic, they listened because I spoke.  Our Representative Democracy is not easy, but it's ours.  It warmed the cockles of my heart to be a participant.

If you have the time, type YourSenator'sLastName.senate.gov in the search box and the phone numbers will appear on the linked web page.  Indivisible suggests targeting one issue per contact, citing specifics if possible, and being friendly to the young person answering the phone.

Gramma On The Phone?

FlapJilly asked her mom to call us.  Our girl giggled as I answered the phone; "The kid asked to talk to you so, do you wanna FaceTime?"

It was just a matter of finding the iPad and getting comfortable in a viewable position; we were back to her within 5 minutes.

And, in that time, FlapJilly had apparently decided that she didn't need us at all; she turned off the lights in her bedroom and took herself into the closet, closing the bifold doors behind her.

"Well, I love you, anyway," said Little Cuter.

Time passes and the faces change but the love is still the love.  Our hearts are full and our souls are content, even if the grandkid is hiding from us, in the dark, in the closet.