Fury and Humor. Let's Eat.

Anger is not a useful emotion. It breaks things. It does not serve me well. I do not wish to keep it. Yet, as 2017 comes to a close, I find myself unable (or unwilling) to let go of my fury. Perhaps my fury is what’s holding me together. My amusement at political jokes and cartoons has an angry edge. If it was an emoji, it would be a grinning sledgehammer. Perhaps I could sell that concept to someone at corporate HQ for Walmart. Imagine Walmart shopping bags depicting a demonic grinning sledgehammer that read “Have Another Day.” Another day of tamping down the fury in an effort to stay positive.

Warning:  political content and questionable Jewish jokes ahead.

I regularly contact senators and representatives (i.e., congressional reps) via phone, email, and postcard to speak my mind. While I do occasionally contact my own congressional reps, I usually lean on the ones most needed and most likely to make a difference with their vote. Honestly, I’m not angry at my own congressional reps, so why holler at them? I want to holler at the imbeciles who actually make me furious. At the same time, I want my actions to have strategic impact. So I carefully choose Republicans who are wavering on key issues and I don’t tell them I live in Cali, I just give them a piece of my mind in the hope that I will help tip the scales when they vote. I also regularly call the handful of most vulnerable Republican congressional reps from Cali during off hours when no one is answering the phones and leave them spit-flecked messages saying “you don’t speak for me and you are not my voice in Congress and we are going to vote you out of office,” even though I can’t actually vote them out because I don’t live in their feeble-minded district, for obvious reasons. I don’t want to live somewhere that people actually vote for these morons. This is my blog. I’ll say what I want. Don’t judge. It’s the fury speaking.

On weekends I write postcards and make calls to leave messages on machines at congressional offices. I wonder if the aides who answer the phones on Monday morning even listen to my entire message. I should probably throw in something to get their attention, such as, “Do they sell kosher salami anywhere in Kentucky?” Thus one of my improved call scripts would be something like:  “Vote no on this tax legislation that gives huge tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations and will devastate the lives of everyone else, all of us seniors, the middle class, hardworking people, elves, Redwood trees, waffle irons, and polar bears. The only things that will trickle down to us from increased corporate profits are toxic chemical-laced food, dangerous prescription drugs, deranged store-bought politicians, yet more creative living situations for the impoverished, and tweet-lies. Do the right thing. Vote no.” (Well, they didn’t, so I need a tax accountant who is also a qualified therapist.) Actually, the polar bears will now be devastated for real since somehow the GOP has recategorized drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge as a tax issue. How they managed to lump this into tax legislation baffles me, but they wrote it into the margins at one o’clock in the morning and jammed it through. Since polar bears don’t vote, and would probably be disenfranchised even if they did (because, let’s face it, who is going to shuttle polar bears to the nearest polling place, or should I say poling place?), the GOP can’t pass out cigars fast enough to celebrate turning the Arctic Refuge into the Arctic Refugee.

I’m not looking forward to Al Franken leaving Congress, despite my disappointment in his inappropriate behavior. The Dems are throwing him under the bus to take a moralistic stand and make a point. But not one Republican pedophile or rapist is going to resign as a result of tossing out Al. It hurts me to lose Al, who has been a strong voice for me and my beliefs in Congress. Not worth the sacrifice. He should stay. He just can’t run for president, since apparently now committing sexual assault is required to qualify for that office and Al doesn’t have the credentials for that. Sigh.

I plan to change my activist tactics in 2018. It appears that delusion and mayhem work better than truth and reason. It works for Mitch and his cronies who map out how to increase homelessness on dinner napkins in the middle of the night and it works for the Predator-in-Chief to advance his catastrophic agenda. Here is my new plan. I will call Republican congressional reps and leave Jewish jokes on their answering machines. They won’t have a clue. While the percentage of Jewish congressional reps has risen in recent years, almost all of them are Dems. There are about two Republican reps who self-identify as Jewish, but I suspect they are simply confused Mormons. So, with Jewish jokes in mind, here are some I have up my sleeve. If you are not Jewish, you will probably think you get these jokes, but you will probably get them at about 60%. Enjoy as much as you can decipher. As for Jews, have fun. I am contemplating leaving these on the answering machines at the DC offices for the most morally corrupt, mentally deficient, and malicious lawmakers. This should confuse them, perhaps distract them, and, in my fantasy future, derail them. I live more and more in my fantasy future these days. Everyone there is compassionate, considerate, and helpful.

A Jewish man is on his deathbed and he whispers to his daughter, “I think I smell your mother’s delicious kugel.” The daughter confirms that he does because her mother has baked kugel. “Please bring me some to taste for one last time,” the father gasps. The daughter goes away and comes back empty-handed. “Where’s the kugel?” her father whispers. She replies, “Mom says it’s for after.”

This one from Jewish comic Billy Crystal (not a Jewish joke, just a Jewish comic’s sense of humor):  “Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.”

Four Jewish women are eating lunch and the waiter comes to the table and asks, “Is anything alright?”

The Jewish comic London Lee said he once had a German shepherd as his pet until it found out he was Jewish and bit him.

A Jewish grandmother comes across a beggar in the street who holds out his hand to her and says, “I haven’t eaten in four days.” The grandmother says, “Force yourself.”

All Jewish holidays can be explained as “They tried to kill us but we survived. Let’s eat.”

A Jewish grandmother is at the beach with her grandson. As she watches him at the water’s edge from a beach blanket, a huge wave comes and drags him out to sea. The woman raises her fists above her head and shouts at God, “How can you do this to me? I’m a righteous woman! I obey all your commandments! Why have you taken my darling grandson?” A huge wave comes in and when it leaves her grandson is sitting on the shore unharmed. The grandmother looks at the heavens and says, “He had a hat.”

Finally, a true story about the Jewish comic actor Walther Matthau. He and his wife were on vacation in Europe with the Jewish comic couple Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. Stiller relates that one night, he and his wife heard the Matthaus arguing loudly in the hotel room next to them for quite some time. At breakfast the Matthaus were clearly still fuming at each other. The two couples went to Auschwitz with a tour group. After walking through the museum at Auschwitz, Matthau’s wife turned to him with tears running down her cheeks, and said, “This puts everything in perspective and ought to make us both realize how foolish we are for fighting.” Matthau replied, “Now you ruined Auschwitz for me.”

I imagine that after weeks of receiving Jewish jokes on the congressional office answering machines, there will be a rash of resignations by congressional aides and office workers. If I can gut their staff, maybe I can force a few Republicans out of office. You never know. They have tried to destroy us before, but we survived. Let’s eat.

  *******

If you have stayed with me through this year of fewer blog posts and the necessity to dig deeper to find humor then I thank you for your loyalty. I try my best to raise a few laughs and keep hope alive. It isn’t easy, and getting harder with each passing day. I would like to imagine that these difficult days are actually the first tumultuous years of a better world being born. In "Laudato Si," Pope Francis writes:  "May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope." The pope is a hard act to follow, but let me say that I wish you much hope, much joy, much wonder, and the shelter of peace in 2018. We will continue to care for one another and lift one another up despite the heartless and greedy machinations of this incomprehensibly mean government. Remember to keep laughing. Blessings to you and those dear to you in these stressful and uncertain times.

  

Image of a better world from Hao's Blog.

Communication Conundrum Resolved

The moving day communication conundrum began when the Russian movers arrived. Expository interlude ahead (possible spoiler alert). My son and his wife decided to move from SoCal to NorCal. (My son has a portable profession.) They sold their townhouse in SoCal and asked if they could move in with us while they explore communities, schools, housing prices, etc. in NorCal. My son wants to bring my five-month-old baby grandson to live with me; and he asks me if that’s OK? Seriously? How long has he had a Jewish mom? The answer was written in the Talmud hundreds of years ago. We have a win-win situation here. They get a landing pad while they regroup, and my husband and I get a baby. They had commitments in SoCal to finish up before making the exodus. Hence the moving van, with their belongings to stash in storage, would arrive in NorCal before them. Ron and I agreed to meet the movers at the storage unit to unlock it and keep track of the inventory during the load in. We recalled loading stage scenery on and off of trucks and in and out of theaters during our salad days as theater techies, and Ron went off in search of his adjustable crescent wrench.

Moving day dawned dark and stormy with sheets of rain pouring down. The movers, scheduled to arrive at the storage unit early in the morning, would call from the road one hour before anticipated arrival to give us a heads up. We roused ourselves at a demonically early hour on a morning made for lolling around in bed reading and listening to the tap-tap of raindrops, and stood by for the call, like Neo in The Matrix. Except when the call came, we did not get transported from one reality to another, like Neo. It only seemed like it.

We met the movers, Vladi and Andrei, at the storage facility. I told them right away that I’m hard of hearing, that I wear hearing aids, which help but aren’t all that, and so I would probably need to ask them to repeat what they said through a megaphone. Vladi, the lead mover, told us right away that he and his coworker Andrei are Russian and that he could speak English but Andrei was still learning. These guys were not throw-the-election-and-sabotage-America-so-it-loses-all-credibility-and-influence-on-the-world-stage Russians. They were simply your garden variety of hardworking Russian immigrants. Vladi walked us through the paperwork, which, fortunately, was in English. We and the movers each had a numbered inventory of every item on the truck. Each item had a magic green sticker with a corresponding number on it. Andrei lowered the elevator-tailgate and prepared to unload in the drenching rain. Luckily, only a few feet separated the truck from the hallway leading to the storage unit and the green number stickers seemed waterproof.

The storage unit did not have any lighting; but Vladi produced an excellent flashlight that Ron held up so we could see into the depths of the 10x10 unit. Ron has less than 20/20 vision, especially in dim light, so it was a good thing for him to control the flashlight so he could sidle up close to any object and look at it from three inches away to make sure it didn’t bite. The situation was shaping up as a potential comedy sketch in my imagination:  the woman who can’t hear, the man who can’t see, and the Russian movers unload a truck full of mystery objects in the pouring rain and stash them in a dark 10x10 space guided only by numbered green dots.

“I didn’t load the truck,” Vladi informed us worriedly, “so I don’t know how much I have here. I hope it will fit in that storage.” Our children’s belongings were not the only items on the truck. After unloading for us, the Russians would drive another 100 miles to unload the rest of the stuff for someone else. I tried to reassure them that my son knows what he’s doing and everything would fit. Vladi still looked skeptical in both Russian and English.

Necessity breeds invention, and we figured out a system for unloading and inventorying. Vladi remained on the truck and moved items to the tailgate (marking them off on his inventory list) while Andrei carried them into the storage. Vladi got to do this because he was the boss. Andrei did most of the heavy lifting. Ron said he felt like a supervisor (he even started to swagger a little). I looked for the green numbered sticker-dots while Andrei called out the numbers as he carried objects in. He had a Russian accent and didn’t always speak up so sometimes I understood him and sometimes I didn’t. If I didn’t hear him, and missed seeing the number, then the failsafe was Supervisor Ron, who made use of the flashlight to spot the numbers (often from two inches away) and repeat them to me or point them out to me. I marked off each number as it went by, which was a super-satisfying task for a Virgo, and I had to restrain myself from humming.

Andrei did his best to stack things sensibly to get the most out of the space, but in no time at all Supervisor Ron was moving things around and restacking them more efficiently when Andrei was out at the truck. Andrei didn’t seem to mind, or perhaps he didn’t notice the rearrangements. It’s interesting watching someone else’s possessions get stacked in a storage unit. I’m not judging, mind you; but I have to wonder why the kids have so many snowboards. The one I bought for my son was stolen from his room at the frat house when he was in college, so maybe he’s overcompensating.

When they had unloaded about half the items, Vladi came off the truck, looked into the storage unit, and panicked (in Russian and English). He didn’t think it would all fit. I talked him down off the ceiling (in English) and convinced him to keep unloading. I had faith in my son’s judgment. If he said it would fit, it would fit; and as we neared the end of the inventory, sure enough, it became apparent to Vladi that it would indeed fit. When he declared the inventory unloaded, Vladi and I compared notes about which items we had checked off our inventory lists. I had two things still missing and he swore he had unloaded them. One of them was identified as “framed pictures.” We had no framed pictures in the storage unit. Because the customer is always right, Vladi went back to look in the truck and he found both of the missing items. One of them was the framed pictures (camouflaged because they were wrapped in a protective pad). We almost wound up with a small plastic tub belonging to someone else, but Andrei caught it at the last minute and took it back to the truck. It didn’t look like something my children owned since we could see that it contained a mess of photos (of people we didn’t recognize), small tools, cat food (they don’t have cats), papers, and rubber bands randomly thrown into it. I could not imagine my well-organized daughter-in-law “packing” that disorderly box. Besides, it had no snowboards in it.

As the movers removed the padding from the last few pieces of furniture, I noticed that Andrei had a small, bleeding cut on his hand. I ducked into a nearby phone booth and emerged wearing my Jewish Supermom outfit and wielding antibiotic ointment and a bandaid, which I happened to have in my handbag, because that’s how Jewish moms roll. I ran an X-ray on the wound, tested it for mercury, reset the bone, doused the hand in antibiotic ointment, and bandaged him up. He was astonished. As I recall, Russia threw out all the Jews, so he probably had not yet experienced the awesome energy of a Jewish mom.

Before hopping on their truck and riding off into the pouring rain, Vladi showed me photos of his beautiful multiculti children on his phone. His wife is Korean/Russian. He has a little girl and a two-month-old son. Although he was supposed to remove the moving company pads from all the items and take them with him, he said he was leaving my children’s crib wrapped in the pads to protect it because he has a baby too. How sweet. I asked the Russians to teach me how to say “thank you” in Russian. Spasibo. Diversity rocks. I remain ever grateful for the goodness and kindness that I find everywhere around me in the many different people who touch my life.

Halloween Scrooge

I’m relieved to have survived another Halloween. I’m a Halloween scrooge and I don’t care who knows it. Surely my quarrel with Halloween has roots in trauma I experienced as a child from this holiday; trauma that has nothing to do with the undead and everything to do with myopia. I am comically nearsighted and, as a child, wore glasses with lenses thick enough to burn bugs. I have had contact lenses since the age of 16, but during my trick-or-treating years, I wore glasses. It doesn’t require rocket science to understand that when you put a plastic Halloween mask over a pair of glasses, they fog up. For this reason, I spent many a Halloween night stumbling over lawn furniture, falling in birdbaths, arguing with garden gnomes, and attempting to hack my way out of labyrinthine hedges and shrubbery with a plastic fairy wand. As my friends with 20/20 vision leapt joyously down the street, I was left in the dust extricating myself from the obstacle course of yard accoutrements and crawling through petunia beds retrieving my candy, which had spilled.

It took me years to wise up and wear costumes that did not require a mask. I’m not sure why I bothered to trick-or-treat anyway because I got to keep very little of my candy. One of my brothers has Celiac, and in order not to traumatize him alone with the unfairness of not being able to eat most of the loot we hauled in, my mother traumatized all three of us by restricting us to the same candy that my brother could eat, namely pure chocolate. So when we got home with our bulging bags, we poured the full colorful array of candy out on the kitchen table, separated the paltry few pure chocolate items from every other blessed treat, and got to keep that and that alone. My mother took our discarded candy to the local children’s rehabilitation center and gave it to the bedridden children who couldn’t go trick-or-treating. Now, all these years later, I appreciate my mother’s beautiful altruism and her brilliant system for preventing her own children from ingesting pounds of toxic junk. But as a child, I could not get on board with the good deed of treating all the little children at the rehab center to my hard-earned candy. I wonder how the nurses felt about Mom’s kindness since they had to deal with all those children jacked up on sugar who were stuck in bed. You can only play so many games of Parcheesi.

These days, as a nutritionist, I know that sugar is the devil’s brew, one of the most toxic substances in the universe, in the same league with radioactive waste and tweets from the Tyrannosaurus in the White House. Halloween is my personal nightmare on Elm St. When my children came home with their candy, I told them to throw out everything they didn’t like. “It’s not food,” I told them. “It’s garbage, so if you don’t like that kind of candy throw it away.” They sat at the kitchen table with a trash can and discarded at least half the loot because it was stuff they didn’t like. For a few years, when they were very little, I got away with telling them to choose a small selection to keep and that the rest was going to disappear to appease the candy ghost who would come during the night and look for candy to snatch instead of snatching little children. I managed to pare the stash down to a dull roar that way. But that didn’t last long because my children quickly figured out there’s no such thing as a candy ghost. They each had a bag of goodies and every evening after dinner for weeks they chose something for dessert. I couldn’t wait for those bags to dwindle. Unfortunately nothing keeps like sugar. That’s probably why dinosaurs had such bad teeth. Thousands of years from now, when humans have become extinct, candy will rule the Earth.

For a few years I handed out toothbrushes to trick-or-treaters. They looked somewhat confused. Only I could turn Halloween into a dental holiday. One year I gave out tangerines. I have a friend who worked as a doctor in a low-income community and she told me that she gave out condoms to all the teenagers who came trick-or-treating at her house. (I hope the teens didn’t try to eat them.)

The fact that I don’t like dressing up in a costume definitely poses a serious stumbling block for me when it comes to surviving Halloween. Weird and unfamiliar clothing makes me uncomfortable and self-conscious. I can never come up with good costume ideas anyway. My costuming efforts are too obscure for others to understand. One year I dressed in green and went as chlorophyll. When I told people what I was, they looked perplexed. One guy asked me if that’s an energy drink. I told him plants use it to conduct photosynthesis. He excused himself to talk to a woman in a revealing bodice about their favorite King Kong movies. It creeps me out to see other people looking strange in their get-ups. Too hallucinogenic.

The final nail in the Halloween coffin for me is that scary things actually scare me. I can’t watch horror movies because they give me nightmares. I can’t even watch normal movies with violence and torture in them. I hid under the table whenever the Wicked Witch of the West appeared in The Wizard of Oz, until I was eleven years old. My daughter watched every minute of that film at the age of two and laughed her head off (not literally). She couldn’t figure out why her mom cowered behind the couch whenever the flying monkeys appeared. I went to see the 1978 remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers because it was filmed in San Francisco and a lot of people I knew in the tech theater biz worked on the sets. Big mistake. I spent almost the entire film hiding my face in my husband’s shoulder and asking him what was happening. Some guy behind us finally told me in exasperation, “Just look at it, lady.” I had nightmares for weeks from listening to the soundtrack.

I don’t see the humor in fake blood and gore. It looks real to me. Zombies terrify me and I can’t understand what everyone else thinks is so funny about beyond-dead creatures. Space aliens better look benign because if they look like inside-out people then I am so not watching. When someone comes to my door with a pretend axe in their skull and fake blood dripping down, I run screaming to hide under the bed, even if it’s a fourth-grader and the fake blood looks like congealed BBQ sauce. Even if it actually is BBQ sauce. Even if it’s organic BBQ sauce. I don’t mind the fairy princesses and bumblebees, but the ghouls and serial killers terrify me. Masks creep me out. So if you come to my house on Halloween, you will find all the lights out. Perhaps a small pumpkin will grace my front porch; uncarved and still edible, later to be made into a pie sweetened with honey (not the evil-demon sugar). I will be nowhere in sight. Life is already scary enough, and getting scarier by the minute, without purposely finding more ways for us to scare ourselves. My costume for this year? Bacteria. Invisible to the naked eye. (Not an energy drink FYI.)

Benign picture. Not scary.

Techno Geeky Old Lady

It happened again a few days ago. I was in the bookstore perusing the sci-fi section and a young man (about 30 years old) wearing hip young-man clothes and a fashionable super-cool young-man hairdo (long down the back and almost shaved off on the sides) with a tattoo sleeve up one arm initiated a conversation with me. Why is it that young men who read sci-fi can’t resist the urge to “school” an old lady who is into this stuff? Can they see my bionic gamma-gooble forcefield aura of sapphire? I thought that was invisible. According to Tor it is, but maybe Tor is wrong.

The hip young man asked me what I was looking for and I told him The Fifth Season (first book in N.K. Jemisin’s Hugo-award-winning Broken Earth Trilogy). The store was out of it. The man went into raptures about how great that series is. We speculated about whether or not Ursum from Planet Bigarthia had bought up all the copies to prevent me from reading it. (He has been known to engage in malicious activity like that.) Then he said he was thinking of reading Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, and asked me if I had read it. I told him I read that book probably about fifteen years before he was born and that I don’t remember it but I remember loving it. I guess I should read it again. But the thought of rereading all the books I have read, enjoyed, and forgotten gets a bit overwhelming. At some point one has to move on. Now I am considering talking to Professor Semi-quark about inventing a memory quasar ray that can blast a reread into consciousness in under fifteen seconds. How cool would that be?

Not long ago I was at the library picking up a sci-fi novel and a young man saw the book I was holding and approached me to ask if I had read anything else by that author. Before I knew it he was writing down titles for me. He asked if I had read Neuromancer by William Gibson. I gave him the look. “That’s a classic, of course I have read it,” I said. He apologized for assuming I am a neophyte. I almost called him “sonny” but caught myself in time. He showed me his transmogrificator ring and whispered that he has a friend who is secretly an animorph.

In a conversation with another kindred spirit (young man) recently I mentioned that I read Ready Player One a few weeks ago and had a blast. That book is written to make the reader feel as though inside a video game called the OASIS (no camels involved). It’s a read you can’t put down if you are a young geeky gamer or an old lady into sci-fi. So anyway this guy told me that Spielberg just made the book into a movie that’s coming out next year. I got so excited I nearly grabbed the guy in a grandma-hug and danced around with him. My kinetic intraverse wristband started glowing purple and I tried to cover it up with my sleeve, but he saw it and gave me a knowing smile. I confessed that I have never actually been abducted by aliens, but it’s not for lack of trying.

Totally the best sci-fi I have read this year so far was Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway, and that was recommended to me by a young guy at the library who saw me returning Ready Player One. I find it endearing that these young guys want to guide my sci-fi education. They seem thrilled to find an old lady who gets into even the most techno-geeky kinds of sci-fi, like Red Mars (about terraforming). Once upon a time I was not an old lady reading this stuff but a bookworm child and then teenager, trying to make sense of the world through the lens of extreme imagination. Young sci-fi enthusiasts don’t reform, they just turn into old sci-fi enthusiasts. (Hi, my name is Amy, and I read sci-fi.) It all started with Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (which has also been made into a move to be released in a few months) when I was a little girl. That one was truly special because it was the first time really that a girl was a heroine in a sci-fi fantasy adventure of this sort. It broke the mold. Meg Murry O’Keefe was me.

I do read other kinds of books. I read nonfiction, memoir, serious novels by winners of the Man Booker and National Book Award. I learn a lot from them. They help me make sense of things. They are often beautiful and moving. But nothing compares to leaving the planet and stepping into an alternative universe that informs the one where we live. So open the pod hatch doors, Hal, I’m always ready to leap.

Recovering from Post-Traumatic Election Disorder

On Election Night 2016, once I realized it was all over except the crying, I figuratively slumped to the floor, and I couldn’t manage to rise until the birth of my first grandchild seven months later. That momentous event in my own little life lifted me up, even though I now fear for my baby-boy’s future in a world where Tyrannosaurus T (i.e., the nefarious dotard-in-chief of the USA) and his buddies soil the nest daily and then proudly crow about their latest poo-poo as if it deserves enshrinement in a trophy case for worship. Like so many others, I suffer from Post-Traumatic Election Disorder.

After the election, I worked my way through the usual stages of grief, and I added new stages not previously invented, such as the stage of avoiding any discussion analyzing how this catastrophe happened, the stage of listening to fifty different artists perform their version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, the stage of the recurring dream that the Obamas still inhabited the White House (and that they invited me to a dinner featuring organic vegetables from Michelle’s healthy-eating garden), the stage of imagining moving to Canada, the stage of fantasizing a different election outcome over and over and over as if in Groundhog’s Day, the stage of refusing to look at media images of (or listen to) Tyrannosaurus T, the development of a survival plan stage, the media diet stage, the find new kinds of organic dark chocolate and consume large quantities stage, the fear of traveling anywhere in the U.S. outside California stage, the despair about the failure of those in power to recognize and address climate change stage, the visit the ocean stage, and the reading sci-fi escape novels stage. (To name a few.) The stages continue. I will never completely shake this grief. I continue to seek new ways to cope, to shake this pervasive sadness, to resist, to deflect the onslaught. I write postcards, call, and email congressional reps every day. I have contacted McCain, Murkowski, Collins, and other senators so often about healthcare that they probably confuse me with their health insurance provider.

Lately, with Tyrannosaurus T shouting “YOU MAMA” at the deranged Korean kid next door who got nuclear weapons for Christmas, I’m having Bay of Pigs imminent nuclear annihilation flashbacks. I feel tempted to practice the 1960s duck-and-cover safety position under my desk. But at my age, with these knees, I can’t risk it. I would get stuck under there. (I should probably stash some chocolate under my desk just in case.) If things weren’t so dire, it might make a good joke. What’s the first thing to go in a nuclear holocaust? Your knees. Last month, scientists warned not to use conditioner in our hair after a nuclear bomb detonates because it will cause radioactive particles to bond with our hair follicles. This begs the question, what hair? But apparently a lot of people in Kentucky have stopped using conditioner as a precautionary measure, even though Tom Price has debunked the warning as fake science. Although Price would not recognize a scientific fact if it sat on his face.

My children humored me when I insisted that they renew their passports in case we need to flee the country. A Jewish phobia, they said. Then Charlottesville happened. We have secured current passports. A few weeks ago, my daughter, who lives in SoCal at the other end of the state from me, said, “Mom, if the world collapses, I’ll try to make it home to you.” I replied that she should do that, and that I would find something for us to eat, adding that I know how to process acorns to make them edible. (Edible, yes. Tasty, no. I think tasty requires assistance from authentic indigenous people.)

This is the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. For Jews like myself, this is a time of reflection, revelation, resolve, renewal, and rededication to the work at hand. We contemplate how to turn things around to improve our lives and do a better job. During this time of teshuvah (turning), I am making a concerted effort to get past the election and to really move forward. I will always grieve for how much potential we lost in that election. How much progress we lost. So much loss. But I do not want it to prevent me from forging a hopeful and meaningful life; a continuing joyous life. Especially so if we have limited time left on this glorious planet with the miracle of our loved ones. I will join the hopeful, those who believe in the future and will work to make it become. Fundamentally evolution does not happen in the realm of politics, anyway, but in the life of the spirit.

During two months this past summer, four grandbabies arrived for me and three of my peers. These dazzlingly miraculous babies deserve to have beautiful lives in a beautiful world. Visualization to manifest such a future is not enough. Resistance during this perilous time in our nation’s history is not enough. There is no alternative planet. Mars remains incapable of supporting human life. You can’t make chocolate there. But despair is not an option. So I have talked my figurative knees to getting me up off the floor. It’s much easier to coax the figurative knees to work than to coax the real knees to work. (Because they are fake knees. Wow, the art of humor is coming back to me.) I must get to work to build a future for my children and their generation, for my grandson and these other new arrivals and their generation, and for those yet to come whom I will never know but whose lives depend on my ability to recover from my election trauma and get back on the job. I have to say that I agree with Groucho Marx:  “I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.”

Eclipse-mania

How delightful, this shared passion for a galactic alignment during a time when my country rates an “F” in shared alignments. Tomorrow’s rare solar eclipse, with totality over a large swathe of America, will give our torn country a brief respite from manifesting our uniquely rich tapestry of dysfunction, aesthetic deficit, limited vocabulary, and preponderance of bad food. While I love the kumbaya togetherness this event inspires, I can’t help but notice the more ridiculous aspects of the obsession people have developed for this upcoming two minutes of daytime complete disappearance of the sun, which, I might point out, people could also accomplish by hiding under the covers. However, I will (of course) participate in appreciating the eclipse, by standing in my own front yard and watching the light change.

Yesterday, friends driving deep into the wilds of northern Oregon to find their happy spot in the Band of Totality posted a photo on Facebook of the bumper-to-bumper traffic surrounding them on Highway 95 with the caption, “Why are we doing this, again?” Exactly. I’m glad I decided to stay at home, where we will experience an 80% eclipse. At my age, 80% works well. I’m skeptical about 100% of anything these days, since moderation seems fundamental to longevity. Except when it comes to dark chocolate, which one can never get enough of. (Did I just end that sentence in a preposition? I might have a mild case of pre-eclipsia.)

Apparently people living in the Band of Totality have publicized rental space in their homes, yards, and fields for eclipse-followers to use when they travel to the 100% region. For $1000, an eclipse-follower can obtain a place to pitch a tent in a field in the Band of Totality in Nebraska. Access to a restroom costs $2000. Prices are higher in the Band of Totality in South Carolina, where enterprising people know more about how to make a buck. Every outhouse in the Band of Totality in Kentucky (the outhouse capital of the country) has been rented. I predict that the next up-and-coming musical group of the year will call themselves The Band of Totality. They will wear eclipse glasses to perform, and their first album will have a completely black cover (kind of like the Beatles’ White Album only in reverse).

I worry about dogs. I hope that people with dogs know how to prevent their dogs from looking straight-on at the sun. Dogs in the wild probably know how to act in an eclipse, but perhaps not domesticated dogs. I especially worry about people protecting service dogs, since it would be a catastrophe if service dogs lost their eyesight. Then we would have the blind leading the blind, which seems particularly dangerous in the kitchen. The best plan is probably to lock all dogs in the laundry room. I hope people with dogs think of that and have a laundry room. I have cats, and a cat could beat a dog at chess on any given day, so I figure that with their super-intelligence, cats will know not to look directly at the sun. But what if the eclipse creates an animal-impact force-field that causes cats to forget themselves and act like dogs? It would distress me if my cats suffered negative effects from the eclipse and began to drop sticks at my feet for me to throw for them to fetch, roll in every mound of stinky goo they can find, meow loudly at the UPS driver, and ask for a Frisbee for Christmas.

I wouldn’t complain if wild turkeys and opossums looked at the eclipsed sun and lost their eyesight. I retract that wish. It’s cruel for me to wish blindness on innocent wild creatures. Maybe the eclipse could cause them to develop a selective form of impairment that causes them to lack the ability to see or recognize grapes. Then they would stop eating mine on the vine even before they ripen. (Dream on, right?) I wonder if the flowers will close up as if at night. Will hummingbirds fly backwards? Will my dishwasher spontaneously turn itself on? Just in case, I’ll fill it with dirty dishes and soap beforehand. I hope everything metal in my house doesn’t get sucked to the refrigerator door.

Barring any bizarre unexpected occurrences, we have thought things through and are well-prepared. My husband even obtained a pair of eclipse glasses so that we can watch the event without burning our eyes. I hope he got 3D eclipse glasses. Wait, real life is always 3D, isn’t it? I saw a sign on the door at the public library stating that they have no more eclipse glasses. I didn’t realize that there had been a run on eclipse glasses at the library. Fortunately I missed that. I don’t know how my husband would have explained it to my children if I had died in an eclipse-glasses stampede at the library.

If you failed to obtain eclipse glasses (what were you waiting for? next time think ahead), you can make a device that will allow you (and your dog) to watch the eclipse safely. I have seen many schematics and architectural drawings of eclipse-viewing devices online. Just google the name “Rube Goldberg.” You can make a simple eclipse-viewing device using a paperclip, cardboard box, four safety pins, tennis racket, silly putty, two coconuts, baseball cap, standard box of Legos, floor fan, and three feathers from the Indonesian yellow short-beaked Doody-bird. A picture of a viewing contraption that you can put together handily in your basement appears below. If you correctly assemble this device, you should seriously consider applying for a job at NASA.

Well, bring it on. Our love and awe, as humans, for this wondrous planet, lifts my spirit and fills me with gratitude for the beauty and magnificence of the natural world. The excitement about the total solar eclipse allows us to collectively transcend our differences and ongoing strife in this country for just a moment as we step back, take a breath, and join in our shared appreciation of this amazing galaxy that surrounds us, with forces beyond our comprehension. I have not lost sight of that. Pass the eclipse glasses.

Here is a picture of a device you can make at home to view the solar eclipse safely.

Teens Still Having Sex

A couple of weeks ago, I laughed when I saw the headline on an online news article that read Teens Still Having Sex. Seriously? It makes for a good blog heading, but this does not qualify as news. They call it “news” for a reason. The teen sex headline could have appeared carved into a rock in the Stone Age, and it would not have even been news then. I suppose this just goes with the territory nowadays as we wander through the wonderland of fake news, fact checking, biased information, distortions of research findings for monetary gain, and obfuscation of truth. News has lost its identity. These days, people define true and false according to their own personal and often fairly random belief system. If someone doesn’t like a “fact,” they will google around until they find information supporting their desire to un-fact that fact. So I’m not surprised that journalists are grasping at straws to provide news that is absolutely 100% true. You can always depend on teens having sex to be an indisputable fact.

These days, we have to track down the source of news and information, and then decide if we consider it a trustworthy and real source of true information or not. For instance, it drives me crazy when I see articles touting “research” about how wonderful statin drugs are, and that everyone should be taking them because they effectively lower cholesterol. Studies cited are generally those commissioned by the drug companies that make and sell statins. (Surprise.) Meanwhile, the truth, and this is real news, is that cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease. In fact, statins interfere with our ability to process cholesterol effectively, and they have serious health consequences despite the fact that Big Pharma has brainwashed doctors into thinking statins are benign. Follow the money, as they say. Research promoting statins is brought to you by the folks who profit from you buying statins.  Rant over. Where were we? Oh, right, teen sex. It’s safe to say that teens really are still having sex. The lucky ones anyway. So that qualifies as true information, albeit old news. Let’s call it olds.

Over the years, as a grant writer, I have occasionally been offered work writing federally funded grants to promote teen abstinence. I always turn these projects down since I subscribe to the research that indicates that a fundamental developmental purpose of adolescence is to explore sex. Teaching safe sex makes more sense to me than trying to convince a creature pumped full of exploding hormones that they don’t want to have sex. Preaching abstinence does not end well. Look what happened to Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood in “Splendor in the Grass.” If you look up the antonym for sexual abstinence in the dictionary, it says “teenage boys.” Trying to convince a teenage boy that it’s not a good idea to have sex is like trying to dissuade a cat from eating tuna. Hardwired.

I read an article by novelist Daniel Handler (A.K.A. Lemony Snicket) in which he discusses how his most recent teen novel was classified as an adult novel because it has so much sex in it. He says he purposely put a lot of sex in it to encourage teen boys, who make up a large proportion of “reluctant readers,” to engage in the activity of reading. Handler argues, and he has a good point, that teen boys are far more likely to read books with plenty of sex in them. I think this is largely the case with the majority of males of any age. I abandoned Oscar Hijuelos’s Pulitzer-prize-winning The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love in mid-sentence because I got bored with the continuous boinking on every page, and began to yearn for a story about something more thought-provoking than the feel of a woman in nylons. When I mentioned this to my husband, he immediately dropped the nonfiction tome that he had been reading and snatched up my copy of Mambo Kings. They never really outgrow it, these guys. The fact that Mambo Kings won the Pulitzer prize only cements my contention that men dominate the Pulitzer prize selection committee. Which is why a book in which a man converses with his penis is a surefire candidate to win the Pulitzer. It worked for Phillip Roth and Junot Diaz. (I just googled “Pulitzer Prize winning novels in which men talk to their penis” and I got over one million hits.) I just realized that if I write a book in which a woman talks to a penis I may finally have a fighting chance of getting a book published. Does this qualify as news?

I seem to have wandered pretty far astray from where I started. My point is that teenagers having sex will never be news. Wake me up if they stop.

Why the picture of the daisies? What picture do you suggest for this blog post? 

In the movies they always cut to a field of daisies during the sex scenes, right? So here you go.

That Journey

On Monday June 5, 2017, we got the call. Our son’s wife had gone into labor with our first grandchild. For two weeks, we had been prepared to hop in the car on a moment’s notice and drive the 530 miles from Mendocino County in NorCal to Orange County in SoCal. Let me amend that. I was prepared. Ron pretended he was prepared. He put four tubes of almost-finished toothpaste on the bathroom counter and refrigerated twelve travel boxes of juice. He was definitely thinking about being prepared. An hour after we got the call, my son’s mother-in-law texted me to ask if we were in the car and on the road. Hilarious. She has clearly never seen how long it takes my husband to put his shoes on. I texted back that we would roll out the next morning.

If you google “Ukiah to Orange County,” the first thing you get is the flight information to fly Alaska Airlines from Sonoma County Airport to John Wayne Airport. Also hilarious, since the cost of an airplane ticket bought one day in advance of travel is approximately the same as our monthly grocery bill. And the flight does not include a meal so any way you look at that scenario we go hungry. I am partial to eating. In fact, the first thing I did when I found out that my grandchild was finally on the way was to go to the Natural Foods Store to stock up on edibles for the long road trip we faced. The first thing my husband did when he found out my daughter-in-law had gone into labor was put his underwear in the washing machine. You can never have enough clean underwear. Or organic snacks for the road.

I called the neighbors to let them know it was time so they would look after our cats in our absence. I organized our food, which is no small feat since Ron is diabetic and I have a refugee mentality when it comes to food and travel. I wrapped up my duties on a work project (my colleagues knew my situation). I packed my bag. I loaded up the car. I remembered the sewing machine and comforter we would drop off for my daughter, who would meet us in L.A. for dinner on our way down. By the time we had prepared for a sudden departure early the next morning, it was nearly midnight and we were exhausted. When we woke up on Tuesday, my daughter-in-law was still in labor, which did not make me happy. She would be tired after a night without sleep. As we steered our car onto the highway, I hoped things would move faster for her and that the baby would arrive soon.

We decided to drive over Highway 20 in Lake County toward Sacramento to avoid the San Francisco Bay Area traffic. I have rarely been over that way, but Ron knows the area since he traveled to Sacramento fairly often on work-related business. He took me to a mouthwateringly amazing deli in Williams (near Sacramento) called Granzella’s to use the restroom and switch drivers. He nearly lost me in Granzella’s among the rows of olives and preserves. And the cheese. Oh my. When he emerged from the restroom, he found me with a jar of olives in one hand, a variety-pack of sheep and goat cheeses in the other, and in dire need of a drooly-bib. He dragged me to the checkout, and as he propelled me through the door, I suggested, “Let’s live here.”

In the roasting-hot oven of the central valley, we stopped for lunch at a quaint roadside rest stop with a parking lot that smelled impressively of vomit. I carried our soft cooler to a picnic table in the shade, far enough from the parking lot to escape the odor. The minute we opened the cooler, a blizzard of small, fat, ground squirrels engulfed us. It was like a Hitchcock movie. (As in “The Squirrels.”) When I googled “what do ground squirrels eat,” it said they eat everything. These ground squirrels certainly wanted to eat whatever we had. Salad? Great. Kind bars? Even better. Napkins, sneakers, Swiss army knife, thermos, sunscreen? Fork ‘em over. Ron became obsessed with chasing them off and spent most of our lunch break stamping his feet, clapping his hands, hooting, and jumping up and down. The squirrels cackled. They seemed to think they had stumbled on a terrific variety of dinner theater. I speculate that they were so fat not from eating too much in general but from eating junk food from the vending machines near the restrooms. I’m pretty sure I saw one of them pick up a stray quarter, drop it in the slot, and select a bag of potato chips. I think the rest stop was near Coalinga, which sounds like an athletic position in the Kama Sutra. I don’t recommend the Coalinga rest stop for a fine dining experience unless you plan to shoot and roast a ground squirrel. (I just figured out why the parking lot smells like vomit. Duh.)

From Coalinga, we drove to Santa Monica, where we met my daughter for a dinner that was indeed fine dining. While we were eating, my son called to tell us that the baby had arrived. It was not long after 7:00 in the evening. My daughter-in-law had gone through a long and fairly difficult labor, but she was a warrior. When my son called, he could report that the mother and baby were both well. He did not know the baby’s weight yet and would not disclose the name. We had a grandson! A photo soon followed on the cell phones. He looked exactly as his father had looked as a baby. (Or maybe I was looking at my son’s baby photo on my husband’s phone. Not sure.)

We left the restaurant and transferred the sewing machine and comforter to our daughter’s car. I was standing on the sidewalk saying goodbye to my daughter when Ron joined us. My daughter yelped. Ron had left his car running with the driver’s door open when he came to give her a hug. “Never, ever, ever leave your car running with the door open in L.A.,” our daughter instructed. Then she added, “Seriously, you guys shouldn’t even be allowed to drive in L.A.” I have to agree. People drive like Satanic ground squirrels down there. Driving in L.A. goes beyond defensive driving and enters the realm of fighting off deadly alien zombies with a shovel and pitchfork.

Finally, at around 9:00 that evening, Ron and I arrived at the hospital, where we parked and found the top floor of the maternity wing. In a small waiting room, we joined our machatunim, who had waited there since the afternoon. Machatunim is a Yiddish word denoting the relationship between the respective sets of parents (and in-law families) of a married couple. There is no comparable word in English, so thank goodness for Yiddish to help us relate. Our machatunim had not been allowed in to see our children and grandson yet. Although I would have wished for an easier and faster delivery for my daughter-in-law, under the circumstances we actually arrived “in time,” despite the irresistible seductions of the most alluring deli in the world, deviant squirrels, and a near-carjacking in L.A. In fact, we waited another couple of hours with our machatunim before the hospital allowed visitors into our children’s room. It was a state-of-the-art maternity hospital where they put the baby on the mom’s chest for an hour right after he was born, then cleaned up the baby and sent mom for a shower, then weighed the baby and ran a bunch of tests (he passed the SAT with a high score in math), then moved the family from the birthing room to a hospital room, then settled them in; and all of this between the first couple of breast-feedings (which brought all other activity to a complete standstill) and changing of diapers and swaddling and cooing and arrangement of hats and booties and all the rest.

As we waited with the machatunim to go in to see our mutual grandson for the first time and to find out his name from our children, I took a moment, took a breath. Because life is not about the destination but the journey. We know it, but we often need reminding. I thought back over the years of babies, toddlers, children, teenagers, and now having adult children. I have heard that grandchildren are your reward for not strangling your teenagers. It’s funny, and true, and also not-true. My children have been a delight to me at every age and stage. They are the journey, the breathtaking path, the greatest adventure of my life.

Zev Eugene Reed Wachspress was born at 6:51 on Tuesday June 6. He is named after my father Eugene, who is alive and well and delighted to have a namesake. Zev means “wolf” in Hebrew. Our wolf cub weighed 8 lbs. 9 oz. and was 21 inches long at birth. He is an Irish/Welsh Eastern-European-Jewish Pentecostal African Native American Catholic Spanish/Mexican Hispanic. Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it, my friends. He is a blessing. He is my newest journey.

About My Voice

On Election Night in November of 2016, I lost my voice. I lost it in two ways. The first way was that, as a Cali voter, I felt disenfranchised. Because of the antiquated Electoral College system, my vote counted for a fraction of the value of the vote of a heaping hayride of inbred good ole boys in Wyoming and Kentucky who put my future and the future of my children and grandchildren in jeopardy with their Paleolithic misperceptions of reality. The election left me devastated. When Michael Moore excoriated us stricken liberals for wallowing in “the seventeen stages of grief” over Hillary losing her chance at the White House, he spoke to me. That was me. He was telling us to get over it, to pick ourselves up and go out and kick some shit. He helped me laugh at myself. Because I was grieving. I’m still grieving. But that’s not a good enough excuse. I have moved forward and found ways to resist, to survive, to hope, and to laugh. I have reclaimed my sense of joy.

Moore’s words were not the main reason I managed to pull myself out of my post-election funk. The biggest thing that set me on the road to recovery was having my children come home over the holidays. They remain so optimistic, so positive, and so funny, that I feel that I can do no less. The biggest reason why I stopped blogging after the election was that I could not find the humor in things. My children swiftly found the humor and they helped me begin to laugh again. Since their visit, with a renewed effort, I have searched for, and found, more humor than I thought possible in these bleak times.

I have had a lot of unexpected laughs. The reenactment of the Bowling Green Massacre at Mar-a-Lago. Waking Frederick Douglass and Luciano Pavarotti from the dead to waterboard them into signing an affidavit stating that they are the fake-president’s BFFs. The ICE hotline the fake-president set up for people to call in and report suspected criminal activity by “illegal aliens,” which has been jammed nonstop by gleeful liberals calling to report questionable activity by space aliens (true fact, not alternative, call 1-855-48-VOICE to report Martian activity). And how about Hasan Minhaj? Don’t you just love him for his words at the White House Correspondents Dinner? If you have not read his jokes yet, go do it. He’s brilliant. Here's the link.

So even though I still feel disenfranchised, even though I continue to grieve, even though I fear that the fake-president will pause long enough from golfing to cause a disaster of apocalyptic proportions, I have found a new voice (with more than a touch of humor in it) as an active member of the Resistance.

The other way that I lost my voice had to do with a personal “dark night of the soul.” In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t published a book in five years. This is not for lack of trying. I have several books on the shelf that don’t seem to interest any publishers. They don’t interest any literary agents. They don’t even interest my cats, who would rather sleep or play with catnip toys. I completed yet another novel in October, and it has joined the tribe of Amy’s unpublished manuscripts. I feel like the world has told me to shut up. And why not? My voice is of little significance in the larger scheme of things. I lost my voice because I wondered why I bother to write. I feel unheard, unread, and simply foolish to think that my words make any difference. So I quit writing. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I liked being off the hook. I still do. I feel relieved to accept that I, and anything I might deign to say, are not that important to anyone outside my tight little circle. All my life, I have put pressure on myself to produce, to write something that matters. So maybe I can’t do that. I still believe in the power of narrative to change lives, just not my narrative.

What motivated me to consider returning to my blog? It was you. Recently, in the space of a few days, a surprising number of people in my life asked me when I would start blogging again, or went out of their way to tell me how much they enjoyed my blog and how much they miss it. I had no idea that so many people were reading me, that my words matter to them. To you. Thank you for encouraging me to begin again. Maybe I have inspired a smile or a chuckle or a sympathetic nod. Maybe I have, in fact, provided a little insight or lightened your load. It’s not much in the context of the infinite universe, but the infinite universe doesn’t have much bearing on our daily lives. The infinite universe is not very funny. In fact, I’m not sure it’s even infinite since physics is not my strong suit.

My strong suit is writing. I’d like to think I’m also not half bad at humor when the light strikes me in just the right way. So here I am again. I can’t say I will go back to writing every week. But you can find me here on my blog again sporadically, when I have something to say, when I’m feeling up to it, when something makes me laugh and I want to share. Here I am again, flinging my microscopic voice out into the vast reaches of space. It’s just a blip, but it’s my blip. Whoever you are out there, reading my blips, thanks for listening. 

Hasan Minhaj at WHCA Dinner 2017

Outlook for 2017