Horrified, Redux

Bloomberg Opinion made me smile with this headline:

Democrats Are Putting Gun Control Front and Center

The party has recruited Mark Kelly, who has made the fight against firearms his top issue, to run for the Senate in Republican-leaning Arizona.

Then Facebook made me wonder if this could be true:

Roger Stone Posts and Deletes Photo of Judge With Crosshairs

I followed the link to Time, which I deem a reputable news source, and found the original article along with this comment, toward the end:

some wondered aloud whether the image constituted threatening a federal judge.

Some wondered?????  Threatening?????

The last time I heard about crosshairs on an important person's face a federal judge ended up dead, and the Congresswoman who was targeted took a bullet to the brain.  I'd say that Judge Amy Berman Jackson has every reason to feel threatened.

I hope she is not naive enough to assume that she is not.

Been there.  Done that.  Ended up in a good place, but can't really recommend the precipitating event.  Take care, Judge Jackson.  Take care.

Why?

If you are going to see the Live Action Short Oscar Nominees, this is a SPOILER ALERT!

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Unfortunately, on Saturday, six of us saw the Live Action Short Films nominated for this year's
Oscar. We probably should have paid attention to more than the starting time.  We should have examined the subject matter..

The nominees tell the stories of:

1. A child alone and in danger
2. A tween and quicksand
3. Unrequited love and dying
4. Ten year old child killers
5. Children, guns, racism 

Four of them didn't end well.  The fifth was just melancholy, bordering on maudlin.  Bathos came to mind.

After the first one, told from the mother's perspective, The Doula and I found ourselves looking at one another, palms upraised, wondering "Why?"  By the time the toddler was kidnapped by the bigger kids, my head was spending an inordinate amount of time in my hands.  When, at the end, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, a son shot the father he adored, we could hardly wait to get out of the theater.

Whose sensibilities are reflected in these films?  Who would voluntarily subject herself to these experiences?  Was there not one film in the entire world with a message worth remembering?  Do any of the nominators ever smile?

Those are the questions I pondered on the way to dinner, where yes, we'll have the large margaritas started the healing process.  For suggesting and promoting the activity, The Kibbitzer and I owe our friends a debt that will be hard to repay.  

All of us were glad the sun was out the next morning.  Gloomy weather would have been one blow too many.

Valentines at AMS

It was controlled chaos.

There was collaboration

and independent work.

Grandma brought scrapbooking tools for making round edges with hearts,

odd edged scissors,

 stickers,

and magic markers of varying viability.

Some were immediately enthusiastic

and some took a little more convincing.

And, in the end, 

it was all about love.

Open House in Grandma's Garden

It was Tuesday and the Scholars were surprised to see me.

There was a lot of work to be done to ready the garden for the Open House for donors.

Although some were disappointed by the emphasis on work, 

after a little bit of cheer-leading

the empty pots were filled with aloe 

and random seeds harvested from those spilled on the bench. 

The hanging garden received a careful hand watering.

And there was raking. 

Lots and lots of rakiing.

There was also mischief.

The rules are few and simple.

1.Don't climb on and don't fall off  the rocks.

2. All tools must stay below your shoulders.

Sometimes you just have to stare at Grandma and see how far she'll let you go.

Big smiles and giggles go a long way toward mitigating my wrath,

specially when my heart is soothed by a kid who found a quiet place to dig with a pint sized trowel.

Grandma's Garden is a good place for that.

Wednesday was warm and partly cloudy, perfect for showing off our space.

TBG and Lady Jane were regaled with stories and scallions.

while Beth Hargrove, from Rilllito Nursery 

explored the onion sets and the irrigation system. 

She showed a Gardener how to find and spread the marigold seeds hiding within the moribund flowers remaining on the stalks.  They never really recovered from the freezing nights.  Beth showed us how the garden reseeds itself, with just a little help from its friends.

Grandma's Garden is lucky to have lots of friends.

@Shuttle CDRKelly

Find the video.

This is a man who believes in science, in facts.

This is a Navy pilot, the Commander of the Space Shuttle, and, because his wife showed him how to use public policy for the common good, his is a powerful voice for responsible gun violence prevention legislation.  

Also, he is very well behaved.

He likes his brother and his brother likes him.  He's friends with the rich and famous (Nancy Sinatra congratulated him on Twitter) and his friends from college. His wife's family likes him.

My family and friends like him.  We all saw him on the worst days of his life.  He always had something for us: a smile, a phone number, a space geek conversation.  He's a real guy, the same person in the video as in his living room.  

He's running to wrest the Participation Trophy from our appointed-by-the-Governor Senator, Martha McSally.  It is true that McSally is not my favorite human, true that I probably would have supported the Democrat no matter who it might turn out to be. But now I have a chance to support someone with whom I agree on my two major issues - health care and guns - and who has a real chance to make a difference in our world.

Did I mention that he is well behaved?  

Mark Kelly for U S Senate.

What To Do? What To Do? - Random Thoughts

Amy Klobuchar stood in the snow.

Mayor Pete discussed his book from a chair in a gigantic South Bend lobby.

Elizabeth Warren stood on a stage with a gazillion flags behind her.

Howard Schultz is on a book tour, too, as people wonder if buying a venti latte is also making a political statement.

A lot of people are running to be POTUS.  It's a plethora of riches.
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Democratic Socialism is being defined in the newspapers.  Racism is roiling Virginia's governance.  Gun Safety Legislation is being passed in State Houses across the land.  Nogales wants the Feds to take down the newly-installed concertina wire; the Feds say Sorry, Charlie.

I'm quite confused.
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Legislators known for their negotiating skills were tasked with finding a way to keep our government open.  Between funding a see-through-steel-barrier (see-through-steel being my favorite Trump-ism these days) and limiting the number of ICE's detention beds, we're really between a rock and a hard place.  Should the government shut down, the negotiators will still be paid, even if other employees are not.

There's something very wrong with that picture.  Where's the noise on that front?
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It was 40-something degrees outside this morning.  The birds are migrating, perching atop the crepe myrtle, picking at the seed pods.  The poppies are pushing up through the soil,.

Instead of gardening I'm searching for a clean sweatshirt to keep me warm between the car and the gym.  Puget Sound is bracing for the 4th or 5th snowfall in two weeks, trying to function without enough plows or salt or worker bees to clear the streets. 

The world is trying to decipher the difference between weather and climate while our Tucson visitors stare at cold, wet, gloomy skies, and we who live here apologize profusely for the rain and the wind.
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What to do?  What to do?

Subject: warning shot
Keeping this short... we know you're busy.

We are still 22 months away from the 2020 elections, but Chuck Schumer is already recruiting a new political puppet to throw their hat in the ring and run against Martha McSally next year.

Schumer's PAC has even started running television ads against Martha. Washington liberals are dying to get rid of her because they know she'll never back down to their radical agenda.

This is a warning shot Friend — the fight to de-fend this seat has officially begun.
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This assaulted me in my inbox last week.   I ignored it.  It reappeared this morning, forwarded by my Junior Senator herself.  Aside from the obvious grammatical mistakes, the content was no better than the subject.

This is what I emailed in response:

A WARNING SHOT????

Senator, you are the most tone deaf individual I have ever encountered.  

A WARNING SHOT????

You rose to prominence in the seat held by Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who took more than A WARNING SHOT to the brain while doing what you were too reticent, to reluctant, too dare I say it cowardly to attempt - meeting her constituents while standing in front of a grocery store.  

No tickets.  No fee.  No red tape.  Just Gabby and a few dozen constituents...... until the bullets started to fly.  Ron Barber sat in that seat next, and, just a little more than a year after being perforated himself, he stood in the same spot, doing the same thing.  Ann Kirkpatrick, who represents us now, held one last Saturday.  You may say on your website that you are deployed to Washington, but your deployment does not seem very fraught with danger.... or constituents.

A WARNING SHOT?????

We who were there had no warning, none at all.  

Once you were elected to the House, we tried to get you to meet with us, publicly and privately.  I've written to you, publicly and privately.  I've been in your Tucson office more times than I care to remember.  I have spoken with your District staff and your D.C. staff.  I have never heard from you.  You have never explained why you think I lied, though you did manage to malign me in your telephone town hall when the article appeared.  

You are no more approachable as a Senator.  You have no office in Tucson, where you live, though you have one in Phoenix, where your patron, Gov. Ducey, lives.  Your office has responded "I haven't had a chance to speak to the Senator about that" to each and every phone call I've made.  

I make a lot of phone calls.

I signed on to this mailing list to find a window into your world.  I'm sorry I unlocked the sash.

Cooperation

A lot goes into the creation of a garden space.

Logistics is a big part of it.

The hanging garden required soil.  I required help getting it into and out of my car. The salesclerk at Home Depot put the bags in the trunk.  A young woman in a UofA sweatshirt took pity on me in the school parking lot, re-parked her car, and wheeled the bags I'd dumped onto my dolly all the way into the lobby.  Perhaps, in a pre-perforated lifetime, I might have managed it myself.  This week, not so much.

The rest was up to the Garden Club.

Balancing the load by hand seemed simpler than moving the bags themselves.

Pushing required three or four hands. 

Making the curve around the empty planter led to a mini-disaster. 

Having learned their lesson around the planter, the Garden Club used momentum and a lifting motion on the bags to make the turn toward the garden itself. 

With the end in sight, their gazes were uplifted. 

The girls got the heavy lifting done, depositing the bags at the entrance to the garden.

Their work was done.  They ran back to the playground, feeling very proud of themselves.

The next day, after the kindergarten girls tried and failed to move one of the bags to a more relevant location, these two he-men bent, counted, lifted and moved it without being asked. 

There are so many lessons to be learned.

There are so many ways to help.

There are so many opportunities to get very dirty.... to eat scallions.... to plant seeds and seedlings.

As always, you are all invited to drop in, any Wednesday over lunchtime.

What They Told Me About Myse;f

I was born at French Hospital in NYC. Daddooooo had issues with the nuns. He wanted to be certain that, if it came to a choice between saving the mother or the baby, that the Catholic hospital would choose the soul he knew (G'ma) rather than the soul they’d created (me). “I can always make another baby, but I know and love my wife.”
*****
Though they had both taken LaMaze classes,

Daddooooo was not allowed in the delivery room. When he first saw me, around 2am, I opened my eyes and looked at him, straight on, connecting to a part of himself that I’m not sure he knew was there. He patted my head, welcomed me to the world, and went home to sleep.




*****
Mary Johnson was the baby nurse for all 3 of their children. She was tall and white and wore a uniform; I remember her wondering why Brother and I had the pots and pans out on the kitchen floor early on the morning that our sister was born.
*****
Apparently, I loved Mr.Kelly, a stuffed clown with a ceramic face. When the crawl space flooded in the 1960’s, Mr. Kelly floated out. G’ma and Daddooooo were surprised (and, I think, a little sad) that I didn’t recognize him at all.
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We lived in London Terrace, in NYC. G’ma would take me to the local pocket park, where I reclined in the pram while the hobos (20th century homeless males) made sure that no strangers bothered us.
*****
I went ice skating at Grossinger’s Resort in the Catskills when I was just learning to walk. I was probably more competent then than I ever was.
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And that’s it. I have the cards that were sent when I was born, but not many stories. I wonder why. Was I boring? Was their present too disappointing to allow for happy backward glances?

I wish I had asked for more.  It's too late, now.

Memories of My Mother

~1956, the front seat of the Chrysler she was driving at the time, delivering campaign materials for Adlai Stevenson. She pulled up to a tree shaded driveway, stopped more suddenly than I expected, and I tumbled off the seat onto the floorboard. (no seat belts then!) After being sure I was okay (we weren’t going very fast, after all) she looked me in the eye and said “Don’t Tell Daddy!”

~That same morning, feeling like she was dawdling on the doorstep, I thought “Step on the gas!” and I laughed - hurry up out there AND drive the car away. Probably the first joke I ever told. And I was the only one there to hear it.

~1963, a neighbor telling me to ask my mother what whore meant. We sat at the kitchen table as she described sex to me, laughing at the faces I made. For a woman who avoided uncomfortable conversations, this was a milestone.

~ In Junior High, struggling to rewrite my social studies notes in Cornell Style, G'ma staying awake in the kitchen. Keeping me company but not helping me do the work. It was a lesson I took to heart - she had my back, but I was on my own as far as doing it was concerned.

~1968, on a college trip to University of Michigan, sitting next to her in a movie theater watching Joanne Woodward in Rachel, Rachel…. both of us squirming during the steamy sex scenes, saying nothing, looking straight ahead.

~Early 1970’s, visiting Bubba and Zayda in Brooklyn, walking past the druggies nodding out in the hallway, G'ma telling me how Bubba woke one up and asked him to change a light bulb in the ceiling, laughing at her mother’s surprise that such a young man could be so sleepy in the middle of the day.

~Early 1970’s, talking about WWII, wanting to join the WACS but being dissuaded by her mother’s cry: “How many of my children must go to war? Isn’t your brother enough?” The regret was palpable, the lost opportunities still raw.

~1984, VERY late meeting us at LaGuardia Airport racing toward our gate (before TSA), baby Big Cuter in her arms. “We lost track of the time! And I’m giving you a shitty baby!”

~1994, trying to teach Murphy to retrieve a ball, laughing for 45 minutes before declaring, with emphasis “You’re right. This is a STUPID dog!”

~2008, next to me in the front seat, driving around Tucson, admiring the big sky, reminding herself that now she lived in Tuck-Son…said that way so she would remember how to spell it, because spelling counts, especially in her perfect, small, printing.

~2010, when asked how she could keep such good spirits when she couldn’t remember anything and knew she couldn’t remember anything: “Will it help me remember if I get mad? And, besides, who wants to be around a cranky old person?” Best advice. Ever.

~2012, Little Cuter and SIR's wedding, wondering where she was (“Look around; what does it look like? ” “There’s a bride, it must be a wedding!”), and not wanting to go home “until Suzi wants to leave.” Reminded that she was at my house, she laughed and wondered if Brother was tired and wanted to leave. She was having a grand time, surrounded by everyone who loved her, even if she couldn’t remember why she loved them back.

~And, randomly, that she loved cowboy songs and Christmas Carols, horseback riding and skiing (“before I had children and responsibilities”). She was the slowest reader, but she always had a book nearby. She over-packed for everything (the beach, vacations, car trips to Brooklyn or Queens) but somehow we always needed what she had stowed away. She loved the beach, “except for the sun, the sand, and the water.” You knew it was really hot when G'ma deigned to take a dip in the pool - side stroke only, please.

~ And mostly, that she loved me. Unconditionally. Totally. Without question. Every day. I never seemed to disappoint her. She always looked at me with pride. I made her happy. That was a gift she gave me throughout her life. and what I remember (and miss!) the most.

A Day of Starts and Stops

I set my alarm early.  I had 60 more pages of The Sound and the Fury to finish before class.  I read ten or fifteen and drifted back to sleep.  I should've stayed in bed.

Rousing myself once again, I stumbled into the living room, found my space at the end of the couch, took TBG's feet in my lap, and tried to read some more.  Stephanie Ruhle was trying to distract me, but the sound was set at 6, and that's way to quiet for me, especially before I insert Thelma and Louise (yes, I've named my hearing aids.  You may laugh now.)

I managed to get through five or six more pages before my eyes closed once again.  Really, I should've gone back to sleep.

A shower and change of clothes from nightshirt to tights and I drove cross town to Pilates.  Expensive stretching it may be, but it takes my hips out of my glutes and my lats out of my shoulders and rights my head above it all.  Today was no exception; I walked out taller and stronger than I walked in. 

I was no more awake than before, though.

Not-Kathy and Dr K were home, so I stopped by, settled into the comfy chair by the window, and finished off Faulkner.  Apparently, one of the Quentins died, although I missed it in the original telling.  Jason is perhaps the nastiest character with whom I've ever had the misfortune to spend quality time, and I don't care how many times his hopes had been dashed.  He has a malevolent soul and I'm sorry that the course required me to let him into my brain.

I watched my friends decorate their walls with fiber hangings, then checked my email before heading over to Scarlet's house so we could drive to class together.  Did I mention that I should have stayed in bed?  Our teacher sent a blast email informing us that she broke her wrist and is in no condition to teach today; she hoped that she got to us before we trekked to campus.   

I called Scarlet, who was happy to continue packing up her closet.  I said goodbye to the decorating couple.  I drove home and found TBG dead asleep after spin class, Perfect Patty making my home clean and beautiful, and a refrigerator full of food for lunch. 

I'm ready to eat and tackle the next Faulkner opus..... if I can keep my eyes open.

And Then I Did This

I'm laughing as I type this.Hey, Amster, I saw on FB that Ann Kirkpatrick is having a Congress on Your Corner event way east at a Safeway on SPeedway.  Do you or your boys wanna go?  
I can't believe I'm typing those words :-)
Anyway, I'm going after Pilates, at 11.  Mr. 15 can drive my car if he wants.

She laughed back and explained why life got in the way of us all going together.

We laughed. 

That's progress. 

So, I confronted my demons on my own on Saturday.  My Congresswoman wanted to shake my hand and say hello and answer my questions and I was up for it.... once I determined that there would be security.

Once bitten, twice shy. 

I drove farther south and east than I usually travel, feeling grateful for Google Maps and a full tank of gas.  My worries went no further.  I turned into the parking lot and the first thing I saw was a police officer, hands on his hips near his weapons, eyeing my vehicle.  Slowing to a crawl, the better to survey the scene, I found two other armed officers before I slipped into a space and got out of the car.

Christina-Taylor wasn't there.  She and I are at our own Safeway, closer to home.  This was all about me and my demons.  I wasn't sad.  I was scared.

Scared but not terrified, and that, too, is progress.  When Ron Barber was our Congressman I couldn't make myself attend his CoYC; even after a personal email and a kind and loving phone call.  He understood, as I knew he would.

But I'm not letting the shooter take this from me.  The chance to shake the hand of a sitting Congresswoman, to have a meaningful conversation about H.R. 8 and its chances of passage in the Senate (cautiously optimistic... it might happen), to have a photo op with the promise of a hard copy to come in the mail - NO, he does not get to win.

It was a lovely fifteen minutes of signing in and meeting the local staff and promising to visit them often in their newly opened offices, of talking about the future and Mayor Pete (who needs lots more publicity if he wants to be more than a blip on the radar), of participating in my democracy.  Both The Congresswoman and her District Director (Ron Barber, reappearing on the scene) knew that this was a thing for me, and I admit that I enjoyed the personal as much as the political. 

We shared some snark about the absence of such events when Martha McSally held the 2nd Congressional District's seat, posed for the photograph, and I was done.  I thanked the police officers for keeping me safe, and walked back to my car.

It was a non-event.

Except that it wasn't.

The Hanging Gardens of Prince

There's a long red fence along the outer edge of Grandma's Garden.

It seemed like the perfect place to install the Hanging Garden baskets.

The Garden Club members found partners

and wrote their names on paper from Grandma's pad.

The notes went in the watering troughs after the baskets were attached to the fence with long zip ties.

The soil was transferred from the bag

to the baskets with Grandma's old plastic cups.

The big white one is from the Lincoln Park Zoo, when The Cuters were the age of my Prince gardeners.  I knew there was a reason I held onto them for all these years. 

The watering troughs were created by turning the plastic inserts upside-down-and-backwards.

The spatial relations challenge was harder for some than others. 

Soil was added until all the irrigation holes on the trough separator were covered. 

The Hanging Garden is ready for planting.

Unfortunately, the whistle blew before the seeds could be settled in their new homes. 

Their labeled baskets will be waiting for them when next we meet.