Mr. Rogers, Sex, Racism and Aliens from Outer Space

Here I am again staring at a blank computer screen and wondering what I’m going to write about. At times like this do I call on Stephen King or Fred Rogers for inspiration? Mr. King, when people ask him how to write, he answers, “One word at a time” which seems like he blowing them off but, really, he’s not. You can’t write if all you do is think about writing. He goes on to explain that the Great Wall of China was built one brick at a time and you can see it from space. So what’s a little blog post between friends? I can do this! The trick is to figure out the right words to use in the right order and Mr. King keeps that secret close to his vest. 

I mentioned Fred Rogers  as inspiration for blog fodder because too often since the pandemic started I’ve been thinking about of one of his songs, hoping it would conjure up a magical spell or fantasy that will set my world right again.

“What do you do with the mad that you feel

When you feel so mad you could bite?

When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong...

And nothing you do seems very right?

“What do you do? Do you punch a bag?

Do you pound some clay or some dough?

Do you round up friends for a game of tag?

Or see how fast you go?”

I’m obviously too old to bite or punch although some old people have been known to revert back to those childhood habits but I’m not going there if I can help it. “Pound some dough” though is thought-provoking considering that so many people have taken up baking during the pandemic that it’s caused a shortage of flour nation-wide. Did we learn that trick for coping with stress in Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood so long ago that we’d forgotten why kneeing dough helps calm our minds? Or is it something more primal inside us? I always found baking bread to be meditative and it didn’t hurt that making artisan breads was one of the few things I was actually good at doing in a kitchen.

Speaking of kitchens I’ll tell you a secret; I kind of wish now that my husband and I tried sex in the kitchen. (It’s all those stupid romance books I’ve been reading that’s making me type this confession.) I’m not sure if it’s a generational thing that we never did it the kitchen or we just didn’t think of it but whatever the reason that ship has sailed without me. Even if I was still interested, there aren’t men in my peer age group who could lift me up to sit on the edge of countertop so we could---shall we say---line up our ‘baking equipment’ and that might be the least of an old dude’s problems. Egads, I need a Clorox Disinfecting Wipe to get that image out of my head! Funny thing about fantasies, though, I’m always young, fun and sassy in mine. And just in case you're wondering---and who doesn't---"wham-bam thank you ma’am" is literally defined as a sexual encounter conducted quickly. It's been around since the 1950s and it was made popular by Dean Martin.

Tip for the day: We can’t play tag with our friends during social distancing because being tagged “it” could cause us to get us sick and die, and if you’re black you also can’t run as fast as you can without chancing getting killed for #runningwhileblack. There’s a list of 100 Things Not to do While Black online with links back to stories of everyday things people of color have done that caused a white person to call the police---too many of which resulted in unjustified killings. Black kids as young as seven have been shot by the police for doing normal kid stuff. And it doesn’t matter what kind of neighborhood you’re in. A former White House aid under Obama was moving into an Upper West Side Manhattan apartment and someone called 911 to report he was burglarizing the place. Some people say that racism has gotten worse since Obama became president, that he somehow caused a wider divide and I used say, "No" his getting elected just brought the racism out in the open. Then I heard Will Smith squash both those ideas on the Stephen Colbert show when he said, “Racism Is Not Getting Worse. It's Getting Filmed." Yup, the popularly of cell phones is just documenting what’s been there all along.

I've gotta end this blog post someplace and if I was writing fiction I’d have a mass invasion of purple aliens coming to earth in peace with a Covid-19 vaccinate and a way to mindwipe bigotry out of existence. And while we wait for that to happen, let's all pledge to stay safe from the virus and to not rush to judgement regarding those who are protesting in the streets (before the White Supremacists and anarchists entered the fray and turn the protests into riots). Sure, it's bad, it's shocking, it's tragic, it's terrifying and the lawlessness needs to end, but try to remember that when activists like Colin Kaepernick took a silence knee at sporting events to draw attention to the types of things that sparked this recent violence, few people listened. Let's hope something or someone can find a middle ground in between these two extreme ways of reacting to the same social injustices so that more people will demand systemic changes. God help us if we can't.  #blacklivesmatter! ©

Wham Bam...one of the things I didn't know when I was a teenager

Charlottesville’s Unite the Right Rally

It was July 8^th when I last wrote about world events and politics, the G20 Summit to be exact. And no matter how often I vow not to write about controversial and divisive topics here I am again, ready to broach the event that brought homegrown hate groups together last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia---the Alt-Right, Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists, White Supremacists and the KKK. Their Friday night Unite the Right torch-lite rally where at one point hundreds yelled obscenities in front of a church filled with area clergy who were inside praying as part of the counter-protestors was shocking and downright scary. “You will not replace us!” they shouted along with “Blood and soil!” and other Nazi inspired slogans. 

The next morning many of Unite the Right attendees donned their protective gear, grabbed their guns, flag poles and shields and took to the streets and we all know what happened after that including a young neo-Nazi from Ohio plowing his car into a group of peaceful counter-protestors killing one and injuring nineteen. President Trump still has not called that deliberate mowing down of people an act of domestic-terrorism. If the driver had been a Muslim, he would have tweeted that out within an hour and that fact is a dog whistle telling the hate groups all they need to know. Silly me, why would I expect any better from a president who installed Alt-Right Steve Bannon and White Nationalists Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller into key positions in the White House? Even before the latter two were added to the administration, one of Trump’s first acts in office was to shut down the arm of Homeland Security that kept track of home-grown domestic hate groups. Thanks, guys, for helping to elect me.

Many people, no doubt, saw nothing wrong with what the president said on the weekend: "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.” The president dug the hole he found himself afterward by adlibbing the words “on many sides, on many sides” that weren’t in the written text of the statement he was given to read. Almost immediately people took that to mean he was lumping the counter-protesters in with the hate groups who converged on Charlottesville. Surely, a president should be nuanced enough to know there is no moral equivalent between the white supremacist groups and those who came to counter-act that kind of hate. Senator Kamala Harris made that point more bluntly when she tweeted: “It’s not hard to spot the wrong side here. They’re the ones with the torches and the swastikas.” The Tweeter-in-Chief could have put this controversy to a rest swiftly after it started, but he didn’t. It took him over two days to come before America to read another scripted statement, trying to undo the damage he did with the first. 

“As I said on Saturday, we condemn, in the strongest possible terms, this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America…,” he read off a teleprompter Monday, looking like a hostage forced to do it. “We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence. We must rediscover the bonds of love and loyalty that bring us together as Americans. Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” 

Was that statement too little too late? Was it sincere? I guess that’s for each of us to decide for ourselves, but for me I was surprised he didn’t choke on the words, “we must love each other, show affection for each other…” His entire campaign fanned the flames of prejudice and divisiveness, his tweets are nests of nastiness and as president giving Bannon a strong voice in policy decisions is not the act of a man who wants to bring us all together for a rousing round of We are the World.

Republican strategist and CNN political commentator Ana Novarro said: “I've been embarrassed about having Trump as President, many times. But no time, worse than today. I'm beyond embarrassed. I'm ashamed.” I share that shame and embarrassment with Ann, especially now after Trump made his third statement made on Monday about Charlottesville, showed his true colors and emboldening those in the White Supremacy Movement. Make no mistake about it, Trump came down on the wrong side of history and I hope I live long enough to see him pay a heavy price for that. ©

 Bella in the comments suggested this video. My God, half way through watching it I was choking up. It's 22 minutes long so if you can't watch it now, come back. It's worth it if you are still struggling to understand what happened. The girl reporter, Elle Reeve, is impressive and very brave.

Stephan Colbert's Response to Charlotteville

 Jimmy Fallon's response to Racism

 This photo and Nelson Mandela's words below is what President Obama tweeted out in the aftermath of Charlottesville. Always a class act.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” Nelson Mandela

Widowhood Reality Check

Today’s Tip: If you’re a senior citizen who normally wears glasses make sure you’re wearing them when you fix your breakfast. Otherwise you might end up like I did with cherry tomatoes instead of raspberries on your cereal. 

Fast forward through the day and as I write this it's three o'clock in the wee hours of the night/morning and even an Ambien didn't put me to sleep two hours ago when I took it. So I'm sitting here with my next drug of choice: Ben and Jerry's AmericCon Dream. If you're a fan of Stephen Colbert's like I am you'll understand why this flavor of ice cream started jumping into my supermarket basket a few years back.

I think my body fights falling asleep because waking up in the mornings is the hardest time of the day for me. I’m either on the edge of a dream I don’t want to let go or Don’s empty side of the bed often reminds me that I have another day ahead with no meaningful human contact. This stage of the grieving process---six months out from Don’s passing---feels like being stuck in between a rock and a hard place. The past (the rock) is over and we widows know we can’t live there, but the future (the hard place) is taking its sweet-ass time unfolding. I long for the time when living in the moment comes back in full focus, when I have all my ducks in a row to transition into the next stage of my life. In the meantime, there doesn’t seem to be an end to the widowhood paperwork that one has to do. Yesterday I went down to the township offices to pay my summer property taxes and to ask about the procedure to get Don’s name off the tax roles. I was informed I have to file a quick claim. Oh, goody. Add one more reason I have to have paperwork notarized to the other two I got last week at the lawyer’s office.

This week I RSVPed three ‘yeses’ to events at the senior center. One RSVP was for an ice cream social, another for a classic film festival. Whoopie doo, a hot time in the life of an elderly widow! Well, it’s a start. It’s human contact that comes with free ice cream and pop corn. I am looking forward to the fall color bus tour, though---the third RSVP. I haven’t been up north to the bridge in over twelve years. Going with a bus load of seniors and with only one bathroom on board should be interesting. I assume those buses have a bathroom on board, if they don’t I’m in trouble. My old kidneys are roughly on the same schedule as a little kid’s. Oh, my God will I ever quit looking for reasons to worry? I will go on the day trip, I won’t pee my pants. I will bond with a bunch of people in my age bracket. And if I don’t bond over those twelve hours on the bus I’d better come home with a basket full of good reasons that doesn’t include I didn’t try hard enough.

Did I tell you I used to have quite a reputation for being a connoisseur of ice cream? When Don and I first started dating he teased me unmercifully about my ice cream “addiction.” He said I couldn’t pass up a cone shop if my life depended on it and he took the photo posted with this blog during one of his teasing sessions. For my birthday one year he went to a local ice cream factory and got me a twenty gallon can of my favorite flavor. Those heavy, metal dairy cans were meant for commercial use only but that didn’t deter Don from talking his way into buying one.

The next year he gave me a sculpture of a girl eating an ice cream cone and I made him take it back. I was sure it would be like a bell to Pavlov’s dog, producing a conditioned reflex that would make me want ice cream every time I walked by it. I wish I had that sculpture now only because making him return it hurt his feelings---so much so that I never did that again. However, there were more than a few times when I could have made good use of a rubber stamp proclaiming “return for a refund.” Darn it! In my defense he did have some goofy ideas in the gift buying department. But that was Don---silly, outlandish quirks and all. Exhibit one:  The Valentine’s Day Gift    ©

Me - Circa 1972

What's the Point? (Curing Grief)

I was having trouble deciding what to write about today. My head felt like it was filled with pudding; no thoughts were able to wade from one side to another. On top of that, on the way home from an appointment I had lunch at a pity party with a few tears to keep me company. Loneliness caught up with me, I think, when it crossed my mine I had no one to go home to or to care about how I was spending the day. What’s the point, I thought, about anything I do or don’t do?

Closely following that poor-me thought I decided to write about the topic and maybe I’d find some answers in the process. So when I got home I googled the phrase “what’s the point?” Google brought up 15,000,000 hits and the very first place I clicked on stated this in its introduction: “This site is an attempt to inspire people to get out and enjoy life.” At first I wondered if the creator of that site had been peeking through the keyhole when I was having my pity party. That’s what I need to do----get out and enjoy life! Yup, it sounded reasonable. Then the website owner went on to explain his theory on “what’s the point” and he says it’s all about creating the best possible memories for yourself and your loved ones. Memories, he said, are really all we have in life. But it turns out he was trying to sell travel adventure packages: bike tours in Nova Scotia, white water rafting, and skydiving. If that’s really the point then I wonder if I can get my adventure by just watching his videos. I’m too out of shape to bike that far, white rafting with cold water splashing in my face sounds too much like water boarding, and skydiving would make me poop my pants.

After finding a couple more sites trying to sell stuff like needlepoint and arrow heads I decided I couldn’t google myself a short cut to finding out what’s the point. And while I’m deciding this I heard Steven Colbert talking to Julie Andrews about her children’s books in the background. “You have to let your sparkle out,” she said, and I was intrigued by that phrase enough to abandon my writing which wasn’t going all that well anyway and I discovered there is a whole line of let your sparkle out merchandise connected with her books. Somehow I think there’s a connection between “what’s the point” and letting your sparkle out but I haven’t figured it out yet. Or maybe the guy who believes that our sole purpose in life is to create good memories is right and by living his philosophy we’d automatically be letting our sparkle out.

Then it struck me that maybe instead of consulting Google I should have consulted Robert Fulghum, (author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten). So I pulled his second book off the shelf and on the back cover was a giant clue to the answer that had been dogging me all day. He wrote: “It’s not the meaning of life, it’s the meaning in life.” But what really gave me chills was on the first page of the book:

“I believe….

That laughter is the only cure for grief.

And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

Don has been gone just a few days over three months and if I’m to believe that love is stronger than death then does that mean he’s still with me as long as I still love him, that I’m really not alone? True or not, it’s a comforting thought and I won’t feel guilty if I try to wallow in my good memories of Don like a ravenous suckling child. I still might not fully understand what’s the point or how to cure my grief but the above three sources I consulted today all suggest that finding things to make you laugh and that makes you happy inside is crucial. And haven’t I known that all along. ©