We the People...Is it Wednesday yet?

Well, there’s just one more day left until election day, and let me tell you, I will dance for joy when it’s finally all over. I am so totally disgusted by the electioneering process that I may vomit.

Notice the word electioneering. You know other words like this: buccaneer, privateer, puppeteer…pirates, mercenaries, and manipulators, oh my! Gee, do they have anything in common? This is not disgust with the election process, this is revulsion at the way the parties, all of them, have abused the national tolerance for bad taste with an endless barrage of lies, damned lies and statistics. (Thank you, Mark Twain, for bringing that phrase back from England.) What we have witnessed is the debasing of the fundamentals of democracy though abuse of the media. And what’s worse, the media has aided and abetted in that exitium veritas.

Call me a naïf, but I used to believe Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley told it to us straight, without rancor and hyperbole; unvarnished truth even when we didn’t want to hear it. The news was delivered without bias; you could listen, hear two sides, and make up your own mind.

Enter the opinionators. What they offer is not news.  I don’t need shrill screed pouring out of my television to know that there are differing opinions in America. I don’t need the verbal assaults of Glenn Beck or Chris Matthews to know that they are both twisting the truth, if not lying outright. They are not about electing the best possible candidate; they are about influence peddling. They are clearly not interested in reality; they are only interested in self-aggrandizement at the expense of our democratic souls. 

Because we have permitted those pseudo-journalists to twist and turn every utterance, the electioneers have used that vituperative, vitriolic meanness in an unceasing barrage of negativity concentrated on slander, obfuscation and prevarication, treating us as if we are too stupid to understand the basics of economic theory and practice.  

But we are not too stupid. In fact, most of America is pretty smart…or at least we’re smart enough to know when our chain is being jerked. And to that end, I would make the following statements for the benefit of the others who haven’t figured it out:

• Anyone who thinks that the Federal budget can be balanced without raising taxes should think about what alternate mode of transportation he/she is going to use when there’s no money to maintain the crumbling interstate highway system.

• Anyone who thinks fighting two wars didn’t cost our country billions in squandered resources, both human and financial, has never given much thought to where his/her tax money  goes…and doesn’t go.  

• Anyone who thinks we need less government oversight of industry has never heard of Toyota, Wright County Egg, Enron, BP, or thalidomide.

• Anyone who thinks that this nation’s economy can be turned around on a dime has forgotten that it took 8 years of reckless economic policy or lack thereof to get us here in the first place, and it’s going to take some time to staunch the bleeding and begin the hard work of economic repair.

© 2010, Emma E. Simon

This is no longer about being a Democrat or a Republican. This is about being an American. If we fail to let our would-be elected officials know this is unacceptable behavior, we get exactly what we deserve. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were right: stopping this insanity is up to us, We the People.

We the People have two years until the next presidential debacle. Let us use this time wisely; let’s make sure the unelected electioneers know we’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Wifely Person’s Tip o’the Week

Vote

It’s just that simple.



Burning Candles

Since starting this blog, several people have asked if I would write one especially for them. That’s a hard thing to do, and my standard answer is, “let me mull it over,” which is my version of “maybe” which is mom-speak for “not happening in this lifetime.”  And just as I say that into my life an exception must fall.

A friend sent me his version of a story he heard from another friend. This conversation, he wrote, “just hit home and I don’t know why.” And he asked if I could “do something with it.”

The story told was of a truly good woman. She and her husband were just beginning that phase when all things are new again, but instead of setting off on that next adventure, she was diagnosed with ALS. The disease has progressed more rapidly than they hoped, and the adventure she is facing is not the one she and her husband had eagerly anticipated.

While visiting this good woman, and in the course of conversation, they spoke of all the candles the friend of my friend had given her over the years, ones brought back from world travels. And the good woman said, “I should have burned your candles.”

Truth is everyone has a candle that should’ve been burnt long ago, but sometimes you can’t bring yourself to do it. Perhaps the candle is too lovely. Perhaps it evokes a memory. Perhaps it’s just comforting to see it sitting in the same place waiting for just the right moment that never quite arrives.

It would be far too easy to pen some stale platitudes about wasting time or having bucket lists; I suspect the lady’s comment speaks to a different issue. It’s really about not using what we’re given. Whether it’s the gift of a candle, the gift of song, or even the gift of friendship, we often subvert the intent of the gift. We smile, we say “thank you,” then tuck it away. We hide behind the exterior loveliness, afraid we’ll use up that which has been handed to us.

Given trust, we repay with suspicion. Shown daylight, we linger in the shadows. Extended friendship, we mirror antipathy. When our heart of hearts recognizes a remedy proffered, we rarely accept it without first looking for attached strings. Given a candle, we put it on a shelf and never get around to lighting it.

The interesting thing about candles is that while they burn, they provide light, warmth, and if we’re very lucky, a bit of scent to spirit us away to another place. Lighting the candle and allowing it to burn is a commitment to letting the candle to do its job while giving ourselves permission to enjoy the experience.

With all my heart, I hope this good woman has enough quality time to burn every one of those candles.

The Wifely Person’s Tip o’the Day

It is easy to hoard things for a rainy day, 

it's difficult to determine when a day is rainy enough.

Thoughts while sitting at the bottom of a ski slope in autumn.

This weekend, I went to a wedding.

I’ve been to lots of weddings, some in synagogues, some in cathedrals, some in clapboard chapels, some on the beach. This one happened to be on the side of a ski hill….a very particular ski hill.



Ziggy - spring 1975

I didn’t realize where I was going until I was driving down the gorge to the chalet. And it wasn’t until I was shown to my seat that I looked up…and my breath was sucked right out of me. You see, I knew this hill. Back in the day, when I was the one with the car and my buddy Ziggy wanted to go skiing, I used to pack my books, and sit in the chalet with a hot chocolate, pretending I was studying but really watching out the window to see him swoosh down the hill, his long hair flying, doing that  hip thing he did.  I was so tolerant of his dragging me out to Afton Alps so I could sit like a latke while he went up and down that hill.

It was hard to sit there and focus on the wedding when, in my mind’s eye, all I could see were those swiveling hips. And they were cute. Trust me. I married those hips. They were cute right up to the end.

Anyway, onto the wedding. I was very excited about attending this wedding and not just because the groom is one of my favorite people…as well as my go-to guy for Greek translation of the Septuagint. These two are the poster children for gorgeous. They are devout in their faith and you knew that every syllable of that wedding would be carefully chosen. I was anxious to see how they made the ceremony their own.

And that’s what confused me. There was so much talk of death and dying in the prayer songs they chose and in the pastor’s sermon that I was almost depressed! I understand the part about Jesus dying on the cross, but for a wedding I wanted the minister to talk about how they are now charged with bringing faith and grace into their new life together. I wanted him to tell them their home should be a place of life and joy and light.

Seated with groom’s family at the reception, I learned I was not the only one who noticed the death and dying part… which made me feel at least a little less weird. One of the groom’s aunts, a Lutheran minister, assured me that she’d not seen anything quite like this either. And the questions I asked were the same questions they asked.

There was great comfort in that; we all had questions about the ceremony. There was no rancor in the queries, no mockery, no judgment, only a real desire to understand the meaning I think we were supposed to get...but that some of us did not. The conversation at that table was spectacular: lively, forthright, and full of honest exchange. There was learning at that table, and I was glad to be a part of it.

I suspect this is the true meaning of faith. What one believes may differ from what others believe, but it is not for any of us to judge what delivers anyone into that place where our spirits are nurtured. That we care enough to want to understand is ultimately what binds us even when we do not share the belief; that we care enough to ask is the real kindness.

Wifely Person’s Tip o’the Week:

Confronted with something foreign and seemingly incomprehensible?

Ask a question.

We the People....part 2

“Blumenthal also demanded to know why McMahon didn’t create jobs in the United States instead of having W.W.E. action figures made in China. This was the moment when McMahon really should have promised a study. Instead, she claimed that the United States does not 'have the kind of policies in place here that are conducive to manufacturing,' citing, among other things, 'high labor costs,' which could not have been much of a comfort to the state’s workers.” 

Connecticut on the Ropes

By GAIL COLLINS

The New York Times

Published: October 6, 2010

Wanna know what I wanna know? I wanna know what jobs they’re gonna train people for after they’re laid off their jobs.

© 2010, Steven G. Artley, ARTLEY CARTOONS.

I have this theory: if you don’t manufacture anything, you have no employment in the blue collar sector and all those people that had manufacturing jobs are now unemployed and can’t afford much more than groceries to feed themselves and the kids, but the kids still have to go to school so they go to Walmart to buy cheap stuff that’s manufactured off-shore, mostly in China, thereby sending their unemployment dollars NOT to an American factory that pays American workers but to a Chinese factory that under-prices and therefore costs more Americans their jobs so that those Americans are now sending their unemployment dollars to China which in turn causes more US factories to close….and on and on ad nauseum. And then, to add insult to injury, we reward companies that off-shore their manufacturing with tax breaks.

If I wasn’t such a Little-Miss-Sunshine optimistic sort, I might think that this is a global conspiracy to bring down the US. Pity that Ian Fleming isn’t alive to write this, and Lord knows, he would’ve done it justice and then some. He could’ve called it THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN WONTON. 

There are all these campaign ads promising new jobs and retraining, but I keep saying, “show me the factory!” I think we have enough burger flippers and besides, there’s no future in flipping burgers if no one has any income, disposable or otherwise, to spend on fast food with no nutritional value.

So now, you have no income, no money, but you still have mouths to feed, so you purchase inexpensive food that you can extend relatively cheaply: lots of pasta, potatoes, that sort of thing.  REAL juice seems expensive so you turn to “juice drinks,” soda, and flavored water. It’s easy. It’s cheap. And it’s much less effort than cleaning and preparing fresh fruits and vegetables. You and the kids just keep getting bigger and bigger because you’re just eating more and more over-refined sodium laden, nutritionally empty processed foods.

In the old days, poor people were always skinny; now they are obese.  Shall we talk about the diabetic testing supplies and medication you’re gonna need even though your health insurance has run out and there’s no state or federal safety net for you, not to mention your kids because as a nation we cannot afford to provide basic medical care for our most vulnerable citizens?

Tax revenues are down because people aren’t paying income tax on money they don’t earn. The government has to make substantial cuts…social services, street repair, snow-plowing...pick a service any service. And the cuts come on the backs of the poor and middle class…all of whom are in jeopardy of losing even more jobs BECAUSE WE DON’T MANUFACTURE ANYTHING HERE.

There is an ongoing debate in this house and I have no idea if there is even an answer. If foreign-owned company opens a factory here, hires American workers and puts paychecks in American dollars into their pockets, banks, and tax rolls, isn’t that better for the country than outsourcing? 

So while I’m ranting away, I would pose the following question: 

• If FORD manufactures and assembles a car in off shore in another country, and markets that car here, in the US, is it an American car?  
• If TOYOTA or VW or any foreign auto maker assembles cars for sale in one of its many US assembly plants, does that constitute an American car?

 Or am I just being Pollyanna again?

Please send in your votes/comments/criticisms/witticisms to thewifelyperson or enter them as a comment. I will present the results in the next blog.

The Wifely Person's Tip o’ the Week

Thinking about shopping at Walmart?

You, too, can support Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo’s free room and board in his Chinese prison cell

Win-Win Situations.

Back when Ziggy was Ziggy and all was wright in my world, we would snuggle on the couch and watch the news until he would announce, “It’s time to make the donuts.”  He'd disappear into his study and write Ziggy’s Joke o’the Day, and then I would be summoned for the final edit.

Lying in state on the couch this evening, watching ANTIQUES ROADSHOW, I suddenly caught myself thinking it’s time to make the donuts.  Okay, then. This one’s for Ziggy.

There is nothing more challenging in the state of Minnesota than having to live with a displaced New Yorker. We are a surly bunch, feeling like we live in exile in a place where no one understands/appreciates/likes us. We tawk fuhnny, we wawk fast, we don’t put mayonnaise on meat sandwiches or eat hot-dish, and we know the differences between half-sour and dill pickles. We take our baseball very seriously, and we have a long standing love/hate relationship with ALL our teams, past and present.

My first love was Peewee Reese. I thought he was great. The BROOKLYN Dodgers were the best team on the planet. It was a personal affront when they went west, one which I will personally never forgive. Out of sheer four-year-old spite, I became a Yankee fan.

In 1969, the year of the miracles, I was in high school. I watched Neil Armstrong take that one small step for man in front of a teeny-tiny TV in Jerusalem. I listened to first hand accounts of the mud mess at Max Yasgur’s farm in Woodstock from my friends. But it was jumping up and down in the Wellington C. Mepham High School cafeteria when the Mets took the World Series in Game 5 that made me believe in miracles.

But the Mets are the new team, and they have their issues.  During the Subway Series in 2000, I bought a t-shirt for the senior son: THERE’S A REASON THEY CALL IT FLUSHING.  Need I say more? (Sorry, Dad.)       

Being a Yankees fan is forever. There is nothing to compare to going to the Bronx on a Sunday afternoon to sit in the bleacher cheap-seats of old Yankee Stadium where we could get a tan, read the Times, and occasionally crack a book. The game went on; we watched and we cheered as part of our very consciousness.  Life was on the field. And it was as close to heaven as you could get. You never lose the love for that bombastic, pompous, overstuffed pin-striped roster, and you just have to give yourself up to living with it. 

But here I am in exile on the tundra that is Minnesota, and you can’t help but love the scrappy Twins. An original Homer Hankie hangs in the study…even though one of the opposing Cardinals was a kid I occasionally babysat...and talked to on the phone right before Game 1 of the ’87 series.  They are so clean cut. One lives here in our little town; another I used to see in Lund’s supermarket in the Village where he always had time to reach cans on the top shelf for the little old ladies who knew his grandmother. They are nice guys, clearly good teammates, and community savvy. You want them for your neighbors.

I have always maintained that a Twins v. Yankees game is a win-win situation for me and any other New Yorker living on the tundra.  Either way, we see a team we love progress, and we have learned that here in the heartland of passive/aggressive to keep our otherwise acerbic opinions to our own small ranks. And that’s okay.

But I have to be honest, in my heart of hearts, in the deepest part of my soul, I hope they win.

Tip o’the Week

Love baseball? Support your local little league.

Free at last, free at last!

So I was sitting in the pew during Sukkot, reading something other than what I was supposed to be reading, but trying to learn more about my place as a widow in Jewish society. Granted, I’ve figured a lot of this stuff out on my own, but any insight is good insight. And then, I almost fell off my pew. I couldn’t believe my eyes, but there it was in black and white.

A mature woman who is widowed or divorced and not under the control of her father can have all the non-adulterous sex she wants. Not only that, we can even take a lesbian lover since there’s no prohibition against female homosexuality in Torah, only male (and that’s the ol’ seed-on-the-ground issue.)

When I had stuffed my eyeballs back into my head, I immediately shared this with the other widows ...who had the same reaction I did. This was great news. Or so we thought until it was pointed out that to have all this sex we would need to find someone to have sex with, and to be honest, the pickins’ around here are kinda slim.

Still, this is an interesting concept. I guess I always presumed there was a “no sex without marriage” rule somewhere in Torah, but not only isn’t there a rule like that, Torah actually deals with bride price issues where pre-marital sex may have been involved. Apparently, it’s no big whup if the parties are unattached and consenting.

Which led me into my next search: bride price…and do I have one?

Now, all things considered, I am not without assets. I am, however, past (without a whole lotta hormore theapy that I really have no interest in) child-bearing age and I have adult (IMHO) children. Therefore, I’m sorry to say, I have no discernible value in the marriage market.

In other words, I am a free agent.

What a totally awesome, empowering statement on so many levels! What a concept! According to Jewish law. I am my own woman! I am under no one’s control. I can take all the non-adulterous lovers I want.

Or not.

[Note to self: at this time, I am excluding George Clooney and Alec Baldwin from consideration because I do not know either of them personally nor are they Jewish. They may be the epitome of good looks and charm, and they are both really, really smart, but neither one is here, so they’re off the table... for the moment.]

I wasn’t kidding when I said the pickins’ were slim. There isn’t a single guy I know with whom I would want go to dinner, much less to crawl between the sheets with. They just aren’t all that attractive. Picking a lover is more than whether or not he’s a hunky guy; he has to have a mouth attached to an active brain. My intellect has to be aroused. If the conversation is boring, the rest of it will probably follow suit.

What part of this is shocking? That I feel this way…or that I think this way? If you know me at all, neither. I've always been the practical, nuts and bolts type. You really have to work hard to sweep me off my feet. And to those of you who might be wondering...the answer is yes, I have been swept, and I've got the sons to prove it.

I want dazzling conversation and rapier wit. I want passion. I want the romance of Paris, the spice of India, the hot springs of Iceland, and none of the Bologna. I want an adventure.

Of course, should I ever feel a compelling need to do someone else’s laundry, I could just decide to remarry.

Tip of the week:

Only marry someone who laughs when you fart in bed.

Bonus tip 

Mom, do not read this to Dad. He'll get upset.

Exalted Guests....or WWJT: What would Jefferson Think?

Just to wrap up Yom Kippur for those of you who are curious about how I survived: I did and it sucked. I spent about as much time crying as I did not crying. It’s very hard to concentrate on atoning when you’re a functional waterworks. End of conversation.

This week the holiday fest continues with Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles for my gentile readers). This holiday makes its initial appearance in Exodus, then again in Deuteronomy. Anyway, fast forward a few thousand years and you get people building these little booths covered with willow branches and cornstalks in their backyards. Anyway, one of the more interesting traditions is Ushpizin…the Exalted Guests.

Seven exalted guests are invited into the sukkah every night, and each night, a different one leads the way. Traditionally, the guests were the forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David, but over the years, everyone debates just whom they’d invite. This year, I have a more dynamic table in mind.

I might keep Joseph on the list if for no other reason than to let him explain how an immigrant from an unpopular neighbor-state managed to rise to power under an autocrat…and how he views immigration here and now, but I want Jefferson and Adams there, too; Teddy (not Franklin) and his niece (yes, she was Teddy’s niece long before she was Franklin’s wife) Eleanor Roosevelt would certainly get an invite, as would Felix Frankfurter, and Bella Abzug. Yep. I’d want Bella there, hat and all. And I would ask them each, “What did you think was going to happen?”

Who wouldn’t want to hear Joseph and Jefferson argue on agribusiness, architecture and taxes? Jefferson, the guy who believed in reduction of government expenditures, a balanced budget, a decrease in the overall size of the national debt, AND alleviation of the tax burden….v. Joseph, the national master planner and possibly first income tax assessor. What a combo!

What could be more fun than listening to the framers of the Constitution rail on what is now considered free speech? I want to hear Justice Frankfurter, a founder of the ACLU, defend that idea in the face of lunatic fringe media in the midst of that discussion.

And speaking free speech and the lunatic fringe, what would John Adams say about the Tea Party? I’m sure the candidacies of Sarah Palin and Christy O’Donnell would positively shock him! Remember, this is the guy who wrote to his rather politically savvy wife, Abigail, saying, “I must not write a word to you about politics, because you are a woman.” Think of the debate between him and Bella, the woman who said “Our struggle today is not to have a female Einstein get appointed as an assistant professor. It is for a woman schlemiel to get as quickly promoted as a male schlemiel.” And in the middle would be Eleanor, ever the diplomat, making sure everyone listens to each other and directly addresses the issues  at hand.  

And finally, at the foot of the table would be Teddy “Square Deal” Roosevelt. From that perch he would hold forth on the importance of equal opportunity.

The point would not be for all the exalted guests to agree, but for everyone to discuss with passion and patience all matters of importance in between bites of blintz soufflé at a table beneath a roof of willows, corn stalks, and stars.

Chag Sameach  -  חג שמח

Tip O'the Week

Planning to sleep in the sukkah? 

Remember to put a weatherproof mat between you and the ground.